I picked up Earthrise the other day, and played a little bit over the past three days. There is a great game in there, but it's not ready yet, and the devs have damaged their chances by releasing too early. It'll never be a AAA title like RIFT, but it would have had a solid niche appeal if it was just a bit more polished. I'm sure the websites are all littered with bad reviews, but I've chosen not to read them until I've given the game a fair shot. However, the in-game community seems very depressed. All the "vets" I have spoken with in-game haven't really got a lot of kind words to say. Just glad I paid only £11.99 for the box. Worth a look if you're a fan of indi FFA pvp sandbox MMOs, but if it hadn't been cheap I guess I wouldn't have picked it up myself.
I keep meaning to try LOTRO. It does look interesting. But like all MMORPGs (it seems to be an unwritten rule) it apparently consumes huge, huge amounts of time. Obscene amounts of time. I don't know why this must always be the case, especially for ones with no subscription fee.
I've literally just logged out of LOTRO after trying it for a couple of days and I'm bored with it. Even the fighting is uninteresting. Still, for a free game I guess its very good, but for myself I'm not gripped by any of it and doubt I will try it for much longer. (I tried the high resolution one with all the settings set to the max)
Still not sure why this is getting so much hype and why people expect it to be out by Q4 of this year despite no closed beta even on the cards yet. Mid-late 2012 is earliest estimate in my eyes. Care to offer any reasons?
They mentioned a hopeful plan to have Alpha and Closed Beta sometime during 2011, so most likely November/December time. They'll probably want a good few months leeway from then until the release so I'd hazard a rough guess of a late Q2 or early Q3 2012 release if all goes well.
Blame the "it's too easy" crowd who think that time required, not challenging game mechanics, makes a game more hardcore. Sadly, developers seem to be buying it.
Lotro isnt truely free - have quit it now after playing for a 6 months as a paid subscriber. free to play have limited quests available and have to purchase quest packs to level in particular zones after level 10 or so. You 'purchase' quest areas basically. Either that or grind for days on end.
Figures really. It's more money for them, if plebs are willing to play for obscene amounts of time. Meanwhile, I'll be on BC2 and L4D2, games that are fun without you having to sink 100 hours into them
present time doesn't look too great for free to play (read: microtransaction) MMOs. Guild Wars 2 coming up looks like it'll be people's best bet being actually free after the initial game cost. GW1 and DDO are getting a bit jaded, they're still the same good games but there's a distinct difference in atmosphere on an old MMO.
All free mmo's will become boring very quickly since you have to grind every last little thing to be able to function at the same level as subscribers. Guild wars 'was' fantastic, it's now largely dead and was brutally murdered with that stupid stupid stupid patch which basically changed the game into nothing but a title grind. Plus the last 2 updates have been utter shite, every huge GW fan i know only plays in the original regions even now (and thats only once in a while for nostalgia). LOTRO is easily the best of them out there at the moment. Remember there are 9 classes to choose from, if it was boring after a couple of hours maybe you picked the wrong type. When playing it as a free account though the grind required to get points to unlock more quest packs/gold limits/inventory spaces etc. is extremely prohibitive. DDO is great.......... if you like D+D. If you don't it can seem a bit bizarre. Champions online is a hell of a lot of fun but is painfully easy and holds no real challenge or longevity to its playlife.
Anarchy Online is still IMO the best free MMO out there, with soul-crushing levels of depth, even for free players. It's a very hard game to get into (not helped by an old engine and a woefully poor newbie island) but very much worth it once you do.
Freelancer? It has spaceships instead of dragons but it's a really good game and even aged well. As for the fantasy stuff, Shadowbane was the only MMORPG i liked and got into. Officially it got shut down and i'm not sure if the community server thingy ever got off the ground but if it did, it's definitely worth a shot.
World of warcraft is still the best alternative when it comes to MMORPG's. It doesn't matter if you are looking for PVE or PVP, the endgame in WoW is simply miles ahead of any other game.
You can do quite a lot in LOTRO before you need to fork out any money. That makes it a risk-free tryout! If you don't like it, quit before you buy anything. If you do, you're in business!
One of the problems for World of Warcraft is the ever-escalating cost of investment. The problem goes like this: 1. Much of the game's good content is the group content - the dungeons and raids. 2. Most of the end-game content is found at maximum level, as (a) people don't play older content as much, making groups harder to form, and (b) Blizzard have constantly improved their efforts, making the newest content much more worthwhile than the older. 3. Getting to end-game requires purchase of all the expansion packs as well as the original game, and requires you to level a character through it all. 4. Result: there is a significant monetary cost investment and a significant time investment before you even get to try the game's raison d'etre, at which point you may discover you don't even like it and feel like you've wasted your time. Few people are willing to make this kind of commitment, and it's a shame that World of Warcraft requires it because that eventual gameplay is really excellent. What we need is an MMO that offers tactical, role-based, coordinated group gameplay through a series of bosses and challenges but that you can just buy, pick up and play straight away. Like Left 4 Dead, but more of a structured experience and less of an insane no-tactics FPS mash. Or like BFBC2, but with the four classes being essential tools in progress through constructed storyline content, rather than just being pinballs flying around a sandbox map. Or like Gears of War, but with more players, and with classes to differentiate the characters rather than each being a one-man army and teamwork being optional. ...so many games have made it halfway. None deliver what I want
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-14-guild-wars-2-how-to-make-mmos-better-interview this interview on eurogamer got me really excited about guild wars 2. I really loved guild wars factions, and later played all the other guild wars expansions as well as the original, and this sounds like a totally different experience, but with some familiar guild wars content and back story. The dynamic events sound really interesting and could be fun. Although i do admit this could all go horribly wrong, I'm buying all the hype for the game at the moment.
The recent patches have largely improved this issue though. Since you can now complete dungeons with people on other servers by using the dungeon finder. Also I hear they recently added incentives if there are lack of tanks or healers, to encourage them. They have also revitalised all of the early dungeons since the release of Cataclysm, which makes them very enjoyable again. WoW is still the best MMO out there, hence why it's so ridiculously popular. But once you play it, it's hard to kick the habit, I always feel a need to go back on it, but I've been cold turkey for 6 months now...
