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Best "Re-Sub" experience?
Azuredream
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've done it a few times now... digging out the old CDs and patching Gigs of updates to see if the intervening years have added some polish to an old MMO. I'm thinking about doing it again, but I want to know what have been your experiences going back to one MMO or another after a long hiatus.
So far for me, the best experience has been with EQ2, which was fun for another couple of months when I gave it another shot earlier this year. They've really ironed out some of the poor design choices that the game launched with and it seems like they just about doubled the performance on my PC.
WoW (with the expansion) and EQ1 were ok - some things were new and interesting and some parts were just the same old grind.
Anarchy Online and DAOC were probably the worst. The worlds felt sort of like ghost towns.
So what game re-kindled your interest, and how?
So far for me, the best experience has been with EQ2, which was fun for another couple of months when I gave it another shot earlier this year. They've really ironed out some of the poor design choices that the game launched with and it seems like they just about doubled the performance on my PC.
WoW (with the expansion) and EQ1 were ok - some things were new and interesting and some parts were just the same old grind.
Anarchy Online and DAOC were probably the worst. The worlds felt sort of like ghost towns.
So what game re-kindled your interest, and how?
-Azure
Pokemon Pearl Friend code: 0688 2191 3355
Pokemon Pearl Friend code: 0688 2191 3355
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No loot drama, less bullshit travel (though I've lost my touch for moving around zones easily, swapping from SS to SJ makes getting around as a noob again much less painless), and it's nice to have the background chatter of the PA crew going on.
I haven't cancelled WoW, but let's just say I went from 95%+ attendance in raids for the past two years, to skipping two in a row without batting an eye. Oh, Bioshock helps too. AWOOOOOOOOO!
I can see Rubi-Ka being fairly empty, but I always thought the whole point of the Shadowlands expansion was to go explore the new, 1000x better leveling areas. I did not actually play the game before Shadowlands, but that still seems like an expansion with perhaps the biggest improvement over the base game that I've seen in any MMO.
Also, God give me the strength to never come back to WoW, but I don't think I'd have the willpower to not jump back into Earth and Beyond if pigs flew and it was picked up again.
Hear hear. I've been clear for 3-4 months now, and I think it's for good. I got that epic flyer, spent a few days with the Netherwing, and was bored.
Right now I'm rolling with a robotic MM and having a blast. Effectively acting as a Dark Miasma support character for a team that I boss around? Yes please.
one of us
one of us
I miss my Ninja/Force Field MM Mime.
*crowd control and aggro manipulation aside
As for FF, I have an FF def and a con, and in both cases FF is just a backup to their other sets. Dispersion's on all the time, but on large teams I rarely bubble because I'd spend the entire mission just doing that. Pretty much just do it for tough fights (AVs) and when specific people have trouble understanding the concept of not dying. Everything else in the set is extremely situational and you can feel free to take other stuff.
Sup got-bored-soon-after-epic-flight buddy
Anyway, my own story. About two weeks ago I started playing EVE Online again, since I wanted to see how drastic some of the recent updates were. They were REALLY drastic and practically changed the part of the game I play completely, but that wasn't why I ended up staying this time.
About three days in we had about 48 hours of an unending stream of amazing drama and laffo, best summarized by this image:
Bullet points from left to right:
- Tolon is one of our fleet commanders. He is British, very often drunk off his gourd, and a quite talented singer/guitarist. We look forward to these events
- BoB is our hated enemy, and arguably one of the best-skilled groups in the game. Raping them through their pants always feels good (9-9 is the name of the solarsystem the fight was in)
- An epically bad thread someone made in Space GBS, real poster of the year award type stuff. Not as awesome as the battleship rape, but still pretty lol
- These two have less to do with the game itself and more with former drama, but they were still funny. One of our corpmates (guildmates) somehow got hold of pictures of our former CEO (guild leader) in the nude and decided to show them to us. Since said former CEO had left us in a mega theft and drama flameout, it was thoroughly hilarious (especially when the squeamish arrived and saw the images).
- Same as above, only the images got spread to the official game forums, which our corp universally reviles. Mass bannings and laughs ensue.
- Said former CEO threatens to sue over said nudies even though he has no legal basis whatsoever, which he should have known given that he's a three year law student. His discomfort is our joy vOv
- Blowing up 16 POSes (Player-owned Stations/Structures) cost them a LOT of money, time, and resources, basically
- On what was supposed to be a drunken suicide mission in under/badly-geared ships, we ended up destroying several capital ships in another enemy's home system, proving once and for all that no matter how many skillpoints you have or how big your ship is, you can still be a flaming retard in them
Each of these events would be a big thing all on their own, but to get them all in 48 hours?
Man that was a good 48 hours
That's why I keep coming back to EVE. Not just because the developers are always willing to change the game massively if it needs to be (for better or worse), but because the people I play with tend to make it great fun, even out of EVE itself.
Now I've got more of a noncyber life going on, what with the GF and myself moving in together and all, so my commitment to video games isn't there. The last thing I want in an MMO is to have to log on for multiple hour stretches to "keep up" with the rest of the game, so I'm back to CoH where it's alot more friendly to my time commitments.
My old WoW buddies keep telling me I'll have to join them again, or come play another game with them. But fuck that, I'm having fun in CoX, soon as I'm not, then I'll go look for another game. I'm not going to switch just cause something is new.
Playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike AGAIN isn't so bad, after half a dozen pints and a year's break.
Also, I'd like to reactivate my EVE account for a month, but it's really not a lot of fun to play solo.
This will likely change when my TSM WAR invite goes through and I drop CoX.
I got 6.
Don't ask me how, but they kept sending them, and I kept giving them out to friends.
And standing in the middle of the mayham going on around me, grinning like an idiot and imagining my Mastermind casually shouting out kill orders. Because damnit, true villains don't get their hands dirty, they tell others what to do.
I levelled my ass off. I did tradeskills like I was getting paid to do them. I camped items I hadn't even seen in the game in 4 or 5 years, they were so outdated. I grouped in zones that hadn't seen players on a live server for months at a time. But mostly I did the tradeskills.
I had a rival, on EQPlayers, another druid who had the support of one of the top content-busting guilds on the server. She and I were battling for the top 2 slots of "Most Combined Tradeskill Points." She nearly always was ahead of me, but by sacrificing any kind of life (did I mention not sleeping?) I kept up. I did this all on my own. No guild. No friends to play my account or farm stuff for me.
By montyh's end, I decided I'd check my played time. Between July 3 and July 29 I managed to fit 9 whole days of played time into my life. 8 hours a day, every day, for a month, while working full-time. I had to give it up, besides I was at the point in tradeskills where it was costing me thousands of plat to get a few points, and it just wasn't possible for me to maintain that kind of cashflow on my own. The guilded crafter won because she had the network of support EQ requires when you get into high-end tradeskilling.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check her profile. She always was of similar level to I, but I scrolled down and saw this: 29 days of played time. Server was up for about 32 days at that point.
It took a moment for that to sink in. I wasn't competing against a single person. No. I was competing against several people taking turns. And I kept up. A team of at least 3 (maybe even just 2, if they were real fanatics) people should have grossly outpaced me an embarassing margin. They clearly had some kind of planning and coordination, whereas I was just some random shmuck with no life and a bad case of insomnia. Nothing I could do in an MMO could beat that. How many people can outplay a rotating team of several players, in a game where time investment is everything?
I cancelled my sub after that month, because I just couldn't keep doing it. But it was the most fun month I've ever sacrificed to gaming. Getting to do all the old shit in EQ1 that I loved, but couldn't do on live servers because the game has moved beyond them. Knowing all the farm spots, the respawn timers, the placeholders, playing a class I knew so well I could grind with my eyes closed.
For a flavor effect, it's nice (because, let's face it, what other secondary power would a mime have?). As far as actual power goes, I wouldn't recommend it.
First time through, I felt the game to be boring and I was just floating around in space shooting my tiny pew pew's at mindless npc ships all day.
When I came back the second time, I learned all about PvP and the major wars going on around the universe (omg drama), and it pretty much changed the gaming experience for me forever. I feel EVE is one of the best out there, and I love how you can casually keep leveling up without effort.