MMO Talk

Nomad said:

Say bye-bye to the social life mee dear! . Anywho, what's the word on this new Star Wars MMO? Any decent comments? News? Yes I'm looking at you Mr. Saiya MMO Maestro Extravaganza.

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There has been nothing yet.... but that may change any day now. The Star Wars guys give one big release of news once every month so hopefully sometime soon we will have something to chew on.

Nomad said:

Say bye-bye to the social life mee dear! .

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That's what keeps me at bay from buying WoW.

slan69 said:

That's what keeps me at bay from buying WoW.

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Ah, but see, that's the biggest draw to WoW. You can play it casually and still have a social life. IF you choose to, many do not.

Deci said:

Ah, but see, that's the biggest draw to WoW. You can play it casually and still have a social life. IF you choose to, many do not.

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Meh that's true until you get to end game level and then your options are severely reduced although I bring good news! Two new races have been announced for the new Cataclysm expansion.

Worgans for Alliance and Goblins for horde!

www.wow.com

A friend of mine is in the D&D Online beta and he has told me nothing but good about the game. The free to play aspect is very nice too, I think I will be buying this, WoW is so ridiculously easy, its just no fun to me anymore.

I am in the beta as well for DDO and there are some crazy things in there. I'm up to a level 3 fighter and I am in Stormreach. The free to play aspect is pretty cool but you don't get all the content for free. Certain quest chains are cut off from you unless you A: Pay for the VIP account which is your standard 15 a month or B: use DDO points in which you can pay for or get a limited amount via quests to purchase quest chains.

Very few classes can solo well so its a good thing to group up and well grouping up will let you do the hard and elite difficulty versions of certain quests which offer more XP and better rewards... but dont take the levels lightly. Also With the added DX10 support the game looks great and some of the danger wilderness areas like Cirilian Hills look great.

Have some information for all who are interested for a few MMO's. I feel having a live talk session would be better so if you are interested in the following MMO's, lets chat!

Star Trek
WoW
Final Fantasy 14
Chronicles of Spellborn
Champions Online

Fine fine, no one wanted to chat but here is the news anyways... First..

FF14:

There has been a ton of information posted about this game recently and here are the goodies.

FF14 gamescom famitsu interview digest + video showing weather effect

・At this moment, 40-50% completion.

・The graphic quality will be tune up even more. You can see each tree very clearly even they are very far away.

・macro feature will be added.

・UI layout can be movable by players themselves.

・The smile Icon is emote function.

・Those icons below the screen are called action command.

・You can set abilities that you had on those action command.

・Once you select the command, it will show on one of the 2 gauge in the middle of your screen. Each gauge represent left and right hand.
For example, your left hand equipped with a shield, so those shield related command will be appeared on the left hand gauge.

・When the action gauge reached, the command that you set, will be cast.

・There will be a power gauge too, the more it gains, the higher your accuracy and skill power will be.

・TP gauge will effect what kind of skill you can cast too. So gaining TP will be also very important during battle.

・TP will be gained by getting hit, or hit the monster.

・The action command will be change depends on your weapon. If you put on rod or staff , it will be magic related action.

・Action command will only have 10 slots. You are able to customize those.

・The bag mark icon is item bag.

・Players are not be allow to use emote during battle.

・3 kind of camera style : 3 person view, should view, and first person view.

・Players are able to pull up their weapon even not in engage mode.

・Quest mob location will be show on your map.

・Those puks wont be appear before you finished the dodo.

・There will be a development version before beta test. The image will be like a focus group thing.

・Seamless world

・Skill up system similar to FF Tactics.

Also which i think i had mentioned before is that the game will be much more solo friendlier.


WoW:

As many of you may have heard, there has been a lot of stuff leaked about the new expansion "Cataclysm" with the main portion being that Worgens and Goblins will be playable characters.

Also here is the stuff copied from SA:

World of Warcraft - Cataclysm

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Dark and forgotten threats that have long stayed out of sight have finally arrived on our shores, unleashing a cataclysmic event upon Azeroth and now preparing more nefarius plans to take it back.


New Classes
The expansion doesn't have any new class. Instead, Blizzard will offer more race and classes combinations to players, some of them have been datamined on the 3.2.2 Test Realms.

Human Hunter
Orc Mage
Night Elf Mage
Dwarf Mage
Blood Elf Warrior
Dwarf Shaman
Undead Hunter
Tauren Paladin
Tauren Priest
Gnome Priest
Troll Druid

Level Cap
The level cap in the next expansion will be slightly lower than expected this time around; 85.

This suggests Blizzard wants more room for expansions before hitting the level 100 cap. With less leveling to do (along with the revamped leveling listed below likely to increase the speed and ease of leveling), leveling a new race remains appealing for new and existing players alike.


New Races
The events of the cataclysm has caused two new races to seek new allies. The Goblins for the Horde and the Worgen for the Alliance.

Goblins
The Goblins have found themselves washed upon an island off the coast of The Barrens, their islands devastated by the cataclysm. As they strive to recover, they come across an Orc captured on an Alliance ship and rescue him. The Orc turns out to be none other than Thrall himself, and in return offers the Goblins a place within the Horde. These events are carried out in a quest line, allowing players to experience first-hand the reasons behind the Goblins' shift from neutrality.

It is unclear if the old Goblin locations such as Kezan and Undermine will be included in Cataclysm with the revelation of the Goblins' displacement.

Worgen
The cataclysm has cracked open the Greymane Wall, finally revealing what has happened to the kingdom of Gilneas and its citizens. The Worgen have ventured forth from Gilneas and sought help from the Alliance, deciding to join them to combat the new threats of Cataclysm.

Gilneas will make extensive use of the phasing system (much like the Death Knight starting area), to show what happened while the kingdom was cut off from the rest of the world and lead up to present day.

Last but not least, Worgens will have two forms and will be able to morph between a human form and a worgen one. Players should be able to pick both appearances when they create their character.

New Content
Cataclysm will be the first expansion not to introduce a new continent, instead making use of previously unreleased zones and revamping existing ones.

Classic Azeroth Revamp
A cataclysmic event caused by Deathwing and Azshara will change the face of Azeroth as we know it. Most of the new content for Cataclysm will take the form of a revamped Azeroth, taking advantage of newer additions to WoW such as phasing and daily quests. Most of the quests and mobs in the classic zones will also be redesigned to make leveling less painful. Some zones will change drastically to fit this, e.g.,

The Barrens will be split into two separate zones of two different level bands.
Azshara will become a low level (~10-20) zone.

Flying in Azeroth
Part of the redesign of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is the introduction of flying to the two continents, allowing access to many new areas and quicker travelling across the large continents.

Unreleased Zones & Dungeons
With the addition of flying mounts to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms and the redesign of many zones, most of the previously unreachable or incomplete zones will now be made available to players. This is where most of the new content from 80 to 85 will take place. Some of these are,

Hyjal (present)
Gilneas - The Worgen starting Zone.
Uldum (Most likely as a dungeon)

Classic Dungeon Revamp
Redesigning Onyxia's Lair in Patch 3.2.2 was just the first step. As most of the leveling will take place in revamped areas of Azeroth, so too will the dungeons, allowing players to use them to level from 80 to 85.

As far as I know, Ragnaros will also be back in this expansion.

- Malfurion is back, and he's back with a reason; to activate the new Guardian of Tirisfal. And he is...

- Thrall! Thrall hands the reins of the Horde to Garrosh due to his new job as a neutral coordinator of sorts between Horde and Alliance against the new threat, a sort of green tusked Tirion Fordring. Garrosh promptly...

- Declares all-out war on the Alliance and publicly calls Cairne a traitor to the Alliance! Oh, and has him assassinated in secret. Cairne's son takes over.

Deathwing
Deathwing the Destroyer / Neltharion the Earth-Warder will play a major role in Cataclysm. Having been driven mad by Old God whisperings and turning against his own kind only to be fail in his attempts, Deathwing has sunk into the shadows. While the Horde and the Alliance were busy fighting back the Burning Legion only to then be beset with the Scourge, he has been lurking and moving things into place. After Lady Sinestra's failed attempts to create a Twilight Dragonflight, he again retreated to Grim Batol and succeeded where she failed. With his results seen in the Obsidian Sanctum, he has finally created the supreme Dragonflight he sought and plans to unleash it upon the world. But what of the Old Gods' sway over him?

Azshara
Queen Azshara will also play a major part in Cataclysm. Unknown to many mortal races, long forgotten by others, and believe to be dead by her own kind, she has not been dormant in depths of the Maelstrom. Having those around her transformed by the Old Gods into Naga after her failure in the War of the Ancients, she has become far more powerful and a greater threat than she once was. Not content with just Nazjatar and the depths of the sea, Azshara seeks to reclaim power and reign once again. With the true plan behind Lady Vashj's support of Illidan remaining a mystery we do not know what hand Azshara has yet played. The big question remains, is she now serving her "saviors", the Old Gods?

The Cataclysm
I'm still not sure who is the true end boss of Cataclysm is, but the cataclysm appears to have been caused by attempts to incantation to summon extremely powerful beings using an ancient incantation by Deathwing and Azshara. They're both very powerful, but the cataclysm itself suggests something more powerful is behind it, perhaps their shared past of Old God influence?

Yay Guild Wars 2 got announced
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyw8HhhhrG8
the gameplay looks pretty nice

Even though it was inevitable, I told myself I would not play FFXIV unless there was a Monk/Martial Artist class. Now that it's been announced I'll be on there right beside you, if I can ever bring myself to play an MMO again after those years of EQ many moons ago... Oh, the nightmares.

A little bit old but havent seen it posted.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/816935/bioware-mmo-project/videos/sw_oldrepublic_trl_e3.html

EDIT:

Here is new play footage for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic.

http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/816935/bioware-mmo-project/videos/gcom09_oldrepublic_spc1_082109.html

They do some very interesting things with it and so far I think it looks great. Oh MMO's... I dont nearly have enough time to play you all.

I know Handsome will enjoy this! This is looking a lot better then Star Wars Galaxies!

SaiyajinNoOuji said:

A little bit old but havent seen it posted.

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Scorpio said:

I'm not really ready to dive headfirst into any MMO's right now, but my friend will not shut up about Star Wars the Old Republic. Admittedly, it does appear to be shaping up pretty nicely...

http://kotaku.com/5311897/star-wars-the-old-republic-script-more-than-40-novels-long

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbv-LkK6w

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pkzc_star-wars-the-old-republic-trailer_videogames

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I am starting to get interested in ff14 it is sounding alot better then ff11

New info translated from Dengeki magazine

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=19635

-jewelery will be visible on your character
-not completely seamless, but one zone in FF14 is the size of an entire FFXI region
-you can draw your weapons in town
-positioning will have a large role in combat
-voice acting for important cutscenes
-crafters will repair weapons (they can fail, but items will not be lost like in FFXI)
-crafters can add unique colors/patterns to items
-characters are animated using motion capture technology

Fuuuuuck, I am liking all these little things that you can do. Really makes crafting seem special. I can't wait for this bad boy to come on out.

Also FYI, Dungeons and Dragons Online is now free to play. The free to play portion has limitations such as...

-Only 2 character slots (more can be bought)
-Not all quests are available to you
-Limited banking and auction house trading
-Have to purchase the Drow and Warforged races
-Have to purchase the Monk and Favored Soul classes
-You do not earn 500 points every month like the paid customers do.

Even with those, the game is pretty fun. Its free so why not give it a try?

P.s. there really isn't any hardcore PvP or anything so if you are looking for that, give Darkfall a try.

Evilvito said:

Yay Guild Wars 2 got announced
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyw8HhhhrG8
the gameplay looks pretty nice

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That sounds sweet, guild wars was a pretty sweet game.

What do you guys think about Aion? I've recently been playing in the open beta as Elyos and it seems pretty good. The only thing is that it's basically your standard MMO when comes to quests etc. The art style and detail in the world is very nice, one of the best looking MMOs I've seen so far.

EndlessSky said:

What do you guys think about Aion? I've recently been playing in the open beta as Elyos and it seems pretty good. The only thing is that it's basically your standard MMO when comes to quests etc. The art style and detail in the world is very nice, one of the best looking MMOs I've seen so far.

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Well it's a modified Korean Grind MMO. I know its a very very modified version of the Korean version and well, people are saying nice things about it. Only thing that I have seen that is a negative is that even if you have wings and flight, you can't really explore anywhere like you can in some MMO's. That seems kind of a bummer.

THREAD BUMP
I had a chance to play in the closed beta for XIV recently, and I've really enjoyed it.
Open beta starts up on August 31st, so if anybody wants to try it out, I'll be on the Kefka server!
One big controversy about the game is the so-called fatigue system that is being implemented. The wonderful amazing site Sankaku complex(you know how much we love them around here) were the first to take some misinformation and speculation from fansites and post it as if it was real info. Basically they said that your play time is limited to 8 hours of exp per week, and then you earn nothing for the rest of the week. Of course, this pissed people off, but Square has since explained the system.

Pretty much you can switch classes by switching your weapon or equipped item. Once you start leveling that class, an 8 hour timer starts for how long you can gain 100% exp on that class. After that, for the next 7 hours the amount you earn slowly decreases down to 0%. You can still switch to another class though, and earn 100% exp for 8 hours on that class. While you're idling in-game, getting items, or just chatting, the exp rate for your decreased classes are supposed to go back up, although Square hasn't decided the rate at which this will happen. Your physical level also deteriorates, but at a much slower pace(around 14 or 15 hours). Also, the exp that you gain during this time will be kept as "Surplus" and be used for something later on.

They say it's so that people who have more time to play the game don't have an "unfair" advantage over people who can't play as often. What I see it as is a mixture of them trying to get people to mix and match classes rather than just level one straight for 15 hours a day and trying to limit people's progress while the game doesn't have too much endgame content ready.

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11964-surplus-and-you-komoto-speaks/
Here's the official word from Square.

Oh, and Sankaku made an article after Square's offcial word about how EVIL GAIJIN FANSITES made up and spread rumors about the system! My love for them knows no bounds.

I played the Rift beta. It was pretty interesting. It's VERY pretty (like Aion) and also seems to be a grind fest - but what mmo isn't?
Pretty cool idea where you can change your skills on the fly. They got some more betas coming out so will probably check them out too.

I've been playing Warhammer and like it. The pvp is very fun. But the game seems to be dying more and more so...

wanted to talk about Guild Wars 2!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoICk5E9X7g

50 minute video of the game. Looks awesome I think. No official release date but might be around 4th quarter of this year released.

To this day the best MMO I've played is Ultima Online back when it was still popular. I got used to the freedom of that game and never got into other MMOs as much. I still remember things like hiding in front of a guy's house door with my gang, murdering him as soon as he unlocked the door and then robbing everything inside his house. That sort of thing was too good.

I don't really play MMOs. I don't generally like playing games with people online because most people act like douchebags. But I found this information on subscription rates across popular games very fascinating: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

Obviously, WoW isn't listed because their numbers are in a whole other league.

Eluvei said:

To this day the best MMO I've played is Ultima Online back when it was still popular. I got used to the freedom of that game and never got into other MMOs as much. I still remember things like hiding in front of a guy's house door with my gang, murdering him as soon as he unlocked the door and then robbing everything inside his house. That sort of thing was too good.

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I've heard some awesome, hilarious stories about those old days of UO. People dropping notes in the game world with elaborate instructions on how to reach a treasure chest, only to have the chest open with a note that reads: "You lose." Or pickpocketing a guy and dropping in an item that weighs some insane amount, so they can't move. Didn't it also have burnable structures? Like, I could come over to your house and burn it down if I wanted to? See, that's awesome. And it's how I've always envisioned these MMOs being, but they're not. They're just a grindfest with friends in a static world where anything worthwhile that happens in the game world is a scripted experience.

Things like this indeed probably ruined the experience for some players, while enhancing the experience for those who knew how to have fun with the system. Unfortunately, those days of pioneering, anything-goes design are long since gone... Everything is bound by strict rule sets and balance fixes so that everyone has the same experience across the board. BOORRRINNNNGG.

Walter said:

Didn't it also have burnable structures? Like, I could come over to your house and burn it down if I wanted to? See, that's awesome.

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If this was possible, it came with an update and I had already left, because I've never heard of it. It sounds awesome though.

To be able to have your own customizeable house/keep/castle was the best thing ever. Most of my guild's adventures involved robbing a castle, storming a castle, or challenging a rival guild to a duel outside their castle. It's the opposite of what MMOs offer nowadays; like you said, everything is scripted. I remember trying Final Fantasy XIV last year and I probably played a total of 30 minutes before uninstalling. I didn't like that at all.

I recently started playing WoW again after I had quit in 2006 after some of my friends told my that had it changed for the better. The game's starting to get boring again, so I probably won't play it for much longer.

I like that leveling up is much faster. In 2006 going from level 48 to 49 took 12 hours but nowadays takes less than 2 hours. I have yet to feel like I have to scramble everywhere just to find enough quests to level up. I'm currently level 69 and have more than three played days. I suspect that to get to the maximum level, I will probably need more than 100 played hours. 100 hours is still a very long time to get to the maximum level; the game is not too short at all in my opinion.

The dungeon queue is by far the game's greatest improvement. It's too good for words to do it justice.

Unfortunately, there are still certain places where the game encourages reputation farming. If you want to build up your reputation with one of the dozens of factions like sporegarr to get their cool mounts or weapons, you have to do quests where you turn in x amount of item y or kill p number of monster q. To get from neutral to exalted, you would have to repeat the exact same quest about 50 times. That's just not fun. On the other hand, if you want to build up a good reputation with one of the capital cities, all you have to do is equip a tabard and go questing in different dungeons. I don't see why all factions can't adopt that system.

Another gripe I have has to do with the inventory system. Monsters drop heavy amounts of random junk (like feathers and raptor teeth) whose only purpose is to be sold to NPC vendors. Had the monsters just dropped the gold itself, it wouldn't clog up my inventory and I wouldn't have to stop to go back to vendors to dump it all. To be fair, I also keep a lot of items for the Auction House since certain items sold on the auction house would sell for literally 100 times what a vendor would offer. I hope that blizzard will eventually decide to make auctioneers as common as vendors. Side note: Occasionally there would be some players who had a buyout price for an auctioned item that was less than what an NPC vendor would offer for reasons beyond my comprehension.

The combat is slow paced and it feels like your outcome has much more more to do with your level, the monster's level, and the stat boosts that your items give you instead of your reflexes and strategy. No matter how much skill you have for example, there is just no way you're ever going to kill 5 monsters who are 5 levels above you. In a game like Diablo, on the other hand, you could get killed by 5 monsters 5 levels below you or you could kill 20 monsters 5 levels above you without a scratch depending on your class, reflexes, skill investment choice, and positioning. I'm not saying Diablo was perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it had a more fast paced combat system that rewarded you for reacting quickly and having a good strategy. I am fully aware that the slow paced combat system has to do with supporting a large number of players in the same space, but that doesn't mean that it's not less fun.

In WoW one on one combat when you're level 10 pretty much feels the same as when you're level 60, which is another problem.

I do respect the changes they made to dungeons, the leveling pace, the mounts, but no matter how many modifications they make, the game will still be slow paced and repetitive.

Eluvei said:

To this day the best MMO I've played is Ultima Online back when it was still popular. I got used to the freedom of that game and never got into other MMOs as much. I still remember things like hiding in front of a guy's house door with my gang, murdering him as soon as he unlocked the door and then robbing everything inside his house. That sort of thing was too good.

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I haven't got much experience with Ultima Online but I also tend to think that the golden age of MMORPGs lies in the past. Personally my fondest memories are with the early EverQuest times, from launch to Velious.