MMORPG- Need suggestions (NOT WoW)

You'r right about one thing - WoW may be the last great MMORPG.

You do need massive players to make a great MMO, else your just playing a glorified network game.

There were 10 YERAS of GREAT MMOs before WoW - starting with Ultima Online.

My rating on their success is not on the profit line of the devs, but on the impact, commnuity, and longevity. Nobody still plays EQ, but you can't argue with it's success.

I call the above games a FAIL because they were. They failed to capture a player base that was willing to inverst in a long term run (1+ years) with their games. They are all now gone or they hang on as a small shell of what could have been.

DAoC ran for years with a much more loyal and stronger player base than WAR. $50 expansions and all. How can you NOT rule WAR a major fail - regardless of what EA says?

Whatever is on the horizon needs to capture and hold a large player base, else those will be a fail too. It doesn't matter if they are fun or not. Without community, economy, and longevity you don't have a MMO game.

Eq is on it's 17th expansion and plenty of people still play.

Star Wars Galaxies while being a mess of development, still is around over 7 years now and it gets more actual content updates than even Warhammer Online... which is pretty sad and I would say Warhammer is a failure more than most games that people claim are, because Warhammer depended on having large player base to actually work, without players the game is pointless unlike other MMO's which work fine with smaller playerbases. SWG is even staying operational and getting updates while their is a 2nd MMO running under the Clone Wars Adventures, and a 3rd MMO being deployed later this year. EQ is still played, UO as well.

As for glorified network games, that is what even WoW is, lets not get ahead of ourselves. Even with fraction of players many games do well on their own. WoW has 11 million players, but you do not interact but with only a tiny fraction of that. The individual servers only hold several thousand. EVE online only has about 300k players yet it has one of the strongest communities of any games being that it is a completely player driven game in all aspects.

Many MMO's are as active as WoW even, they just have less servers running. What does it matter that WoW has 80+ servers running when you don't interact with majority of the player bases?

WoW broke the mold, even the "great" MMO's of the past before it rarely made it to 1 million players. WoW in some respects was one of the worst things to happen to the MMO world, as everyone ran in thinking they could do similar and get millions of players, but even then many smarter devs have said that one does not need near that many players to be successful. The devs of the 40K MMO are aiming for 1 million as success, and thankfully not trying to be like EA who was boasting how Warhammer was going to be a WoW killer.... that was stupid.

But really often games are claimed as failures way to quick nowadays just because they don't have the impact of WoW, when that level of success is not needed at all.

I can agree with alot of what your saying. Asheron's Call had about 2500 players per server at peak (6 total servers IIRC) and that was certainly a sucessful game.

People still play UO (12 years now)
If not for the isometric graphics I'd still play that game.They still do alot of things nobody else got right. Treasure hunters are a perfect example.

I played WoW at launch and I was unimpressed, but today it is clear they do many things right. The split of PvP and PvE paths is great. The cross server queue system is great. You can solo. You can catch up (this is rare)! Sure, it's cartoon graphics and the immersion blows - but the game works on alot of levels.

If they didn't require such a huge time investment, you could hop from game to game. In their current design, anything that doesn't capture the attention of a good number of peeps for a sustained length of time won't be a good experience.

Oh man treasure hunters!!!! I had my cartography at like 95.8 when i quit =(

Now your talking Erick!

I had a Tower on Fire Island. That game was so cool!

Yeah i had a tower too. Guy next door was a red and we'd spend all day looking for him to get on lol.

You'r taking me back to some good times there.

UO was a great game that few ever were able to replicate it's freedom.

Hmmm we all agree here, perhaps Zephel should try a 10 trial on UO

UO Trial

i'ma try it out when i get home, i have heard of UO but like two years back. Thanks for the suggestion.

ANyone going to play rift when it comes out?

been thinking about it

I know it was mentioned, but I'd say SW:TOR will probably finally knock off WoW, if you're willing to wait another 6 months. Because even though they said Spring, I see it being released in July.

While I really look forward to SW:TOR, I doubt it will knock WoW out, too many people are too invested in WoW to ever leave it.

SW:TOR looks and sounds good, but so have other games and the launch quality plays a big role in how well it's going to do. Sadly most MMO's launch in unfinished states that have lots of problems, and subber bases jump ship quickly. Many games get better but people don't give them 2nd chances.

Well i really want to start rift but NOE of my close friends want to or can't so if any of you guys are starting let me please

Pirates of the Burning Sea? My personal favorite.

Ya I guess that's why it's good to let Bioware take their time like that as soon as people try it out they're hooked.

I hate that that an old republic is being made instead of a mass effect mmo!

Wouldn't you prefer more Mass Effect games than them making a MMO? I know I wish they were making more KOTOR games instead of just the MMO myself.

I personally like MMO's, even though I don't care for PvP, you can accumulate wealth and socialize. And I think they went with Star Wars because it has a way bigger market and Sony kind of messed up Galaxies, it just doesn't make sense to not have a Star Wars MMO. But if TOR comes out well I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to making a Mass Effect one.

It's just that my nerd bone is pretty tired of starwars at this point in my life.

Kyle wrote:Wouldn't you prefer more Mass Effect games than them making a MMO? I know I wish they were making more KOTOR games instead of just the MMO myself.

I personally would much prefer a solid ME mmo to more ME games. I played the first two a lot and enjoyed them immensely, but there is only so many times you can replay a single player game. I like my games to have long lifetimes; games that can fill the gaps in my days.

As far as any good mmos- I don't think any exist and I don't' have much hope for any in the future. Even the game I've been playing for 8years, FFXI, isn't perfect. While it has a huge amount of content, expansive class roles and solid balance, most all players are in end game and its too difficult for new players to start.

[(Anthony)] wrote:I personally like MMO's, even though I don't care for PvP, you can accumulate wealth and socialize. And I think they went with Star Wars because it has a way bigger market and Sony kind of messed up Galaxies, it just doesn't make sense to not have a Star Wars MMO. But if TOR comes out well I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to making a Mass Effect one.

Well it was supposedly Lucasarts that approached EA for the game, so they had a push to do it over anything else really.

Acidchalk > I get what you mean when you say Star Wars might be a little old.
Eldar guy> I agree, there are only so many times you can play through a single person game, that's why most of my favorite games are shooters and MMO's, you can keep going and interact with other people.