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Anarchy Online
nefffffffffff
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Is it worth playing this game on one of their free accounts?
Is the game even that fun?
I was thinking about playing it and I just wanted to see what you guys have to say about it before i waste my time getting into it only to realize that it sucks.
Is the game even that fun?
I was thinking about playing it and I just wanted to see what you guys have to say about it before i waste my time getting into it only to realize that it sucks.
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Realize that AO now is an entirely different game than it was then; because a lot of these people don't.
I played for 4 years and loved the whole time. In fact the only reason I stopped was for FFXI and looking back that wasn't the best decision (nothing wrong with FFXI, I just had more fun with AO), which then turned to WoW and the rest is history.
I should clarify "loved the whole time"; there were some major changes that dramatically changed the game experence. One was level requirements. The game began as a skill based game with no levels on anything. So while you gained levels, you did so to earn skill points (IP's), and if you could manage it with buffs and implants you could equip stuff literally a hundred levels above you. After the introduction of the first set of level req'd nano's (spells), it started to go downhill from there. You still got IP's and had skill requirements for armor/weapons/nano's but because of their level requirements the skill requirements were rather meaningless. This was a big letdown because it seriously limited the potential of any given character and just overall was a drag.
The second big change was OE. Overequip. Introduced before level requirements it was a semi-level requirement which gave a cap to how much you could equip above your "normal" (unbuffed) skills, beyond a point you had diminishing returns on your armor and weapons. However the point at which you were OE'd was relatively high, so unless you were an implant whore like me, it didn't actually effect a lot of people in a major way. It was just the beginning of the limitations.
Third big change was actually two changes. Shadowlands and Camping. Prior to Shadowlands, the first expansion, there really wasn't any camping involved in the game. Sure, there were mobs like The Trash King and such that had a pretty long respawn but you weren't killing them for loot it was for quests. And overall the community was such that it wasn't terribly difficult to either wrangle a group of people to do these guys or otherwise get invited to existing groups to get the quest item. Shadowlands introduced a lot of high end equipment and items that dropped on one or a small number of enemies and required literally days or more of camping one spot for a spawn for a chance at whatever item it was. Luckily these items weren't lightyears beyond what was obtainable by far easier means, unlike say raid gear in WoW pre TBC and how it was just so far beyond what you could otherwise get it actually created classes of players, this didn't happen in AO. Shadowlands itself was IMO great in concept. It added a lot of really fantastic areas (which to be totally honest I firmly believe Blizzard ripped off for WoW and WCIII for outlands) with a ton of in depth quest lines with cool new features. There were missions and a few quests in the base game, but nothing in the vein of other MMO's. It had a random mission thing similar to CoH's contact missions. Minus arcs. But what Shadowlands also brought was the "fringe" enemies who's names elude me at the moment, huge rock guys, who gave an obscene amount of experience for their difficulty and allowed a player to level to 200 with virtually zero effort; wheras before 200 was a major accomplishment that took months; and that's if you knew what you were doing. This type of leveling created people with level 200 characters that didn't have the slightest clue how to play their class, because the only fought one type of monster their entire career, and it was all about DPS, not playing your class.
Fourth change, and the straw that broke it for me, was Alien Invasion. The clan/corp elitism that sprang from this because of bases, notum nodes, and calling down invasion events for gear and Alien Levels, and the corresponding (terrible) pvp, was not only out of place in the game, it just killed a lot of fun. The community shrank and destroyed itself because instead of being Clan or Omni, you were a guild, and people started ignoring non-guildies; everyone just started to become more isolated and less friendly. Prior to this the community, while whiny as hell like all MMO's, was great. A PUG wasn't a bad thing like it is in so many games now, people helped eachother, there was a sense of camaraderie that is gone now.
These things added up just made the game considerably less fun that it was before. HOWEVER, for a player that never knew any different these changes meant nothing to them because they were already in place when they were introduced to the game, so it wasn't a big deal, it just was how the game was.
Anyway, that sounded negative when it really wasn't intended to be. Its just my thoughts on the game. Since it's totally free to play the base game, there's really no good reason to not just check it out. It's not even that big of a download.
Check it out and see what you think. Just keep in mind the game is getting on 7 or so years old and it looks it. it doesn't have the polish you see in your WoW's and LOTRO's. But the graphics aren't bad, and they're not everything anyway.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Then I went back, twice. The first time was when they started their whole free account thing around 2004. Played till summer 2005, then switched to WoW with a couple of friends.
Then I went back again December 2006 after WoWing, and stopped around March this year.
It's an easy game to get into, it's an easy game to get back into. Sure there's a lot of numbers for implants and you can min/max your engineer with a level 100+ pet easy and farm the Temple of the Three Winds (I know I did!) but you don't need to min/max; Yeah there's a ton of crap you can do/get if you're on a paying account, but there's a ton of crap you can do/get if you're playing on a free account.
Then there's the community. The community is nice. Sure, there are assholes and Chuck Norris' and the dimension (server) forums are full of asses, but if you're not a complete and utter dick, people will, generally, not flame the shit out of you for asking a question, unlike some other official game forums; This also applies to in-game chat.
Negatives time. Vanilla has a lack of quests, no crazy glowing aliens, and you'll drool over the kinda stuff paying accounts can get. No access to the wonderful Shadowlands area, and uh, towers? I mean, that's it. Oh right, the new alien zones and PvP station and items. Eh, you don't need that crap to have a good time.
And again, it's a free game. It'll take you a bit to install and patch, and a couple of days to see if you like it or not.
Also, a community for mans with free accounts which surprisingly, is not full of asses!
Yep
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
I still think it has one of the best visually designed worlds in an MMO. I'm sad that I never saw the higher end zones.
Oh god the newbie yards were hysterical, and I think they were actually more fun then a lot of the later content.