MMORPG's?

[bungiefan]

Yeah, grinding is just the result of lazy lazy lazy design. 

MMORPGs are relatively young for a genre of game. Also, their goal makes this type of design to be appealing, since it makes the main content of the game take a long time to finish, which equates to people being subscribed for longer periods of time, and thus paying more in subscription fees.

As for MMOs any of us have played, I've only done one firsthand, because I usually don't play games on computers. Final Fantasy XI is the only one I've dealt with since it's available on consoles, and I've had it since just after Japanese launch in 2002. There's also Nobunaga's Ambition Online, but my Japanese isn't good enough for that and I'm not familiar with the rest of the series it ties in with. I just don't play enough to be considered addicted, and I go through at my own pace without pressure to reach a certain level or rank by a certain time. It's just annoying that there's no means to input Japanese text on the American client, so I can't use what Japanese I know to practice unless I switch back to the full Japanese client. My waking hours also line up with Japanese peak hours.

It does something I've never seen in any other MMORPG that any of my friends or roommates have played when I was watching, storyline and in-game cutscenes to progress the story. Each expansion has its own story thread, and most (not Rise of the  Zilart) can be started without progress in any of the other story threads. The past two expansions have also added more activites you can do to earn experience points instead of just forming a party and going through the leveling zones, though it's not as fast as actually battling in a party.

The main appeals to me are that I'm familiar with the terms in the series and the jobs system, I don't have to keep multiple characters to try all the jobs (since you can change jobs at just about every town, though each of the 20 jobs has their own experience level), I can play on a stable and inexpensive console, and it has a lot of storyline.

[Phatz]

Guild Wars is a good one for two reasons. Plus I own a guild (Two members) named the Guild of the Rubber Ducky.
The first is that the maximum level is 20, after which all that defines a powerful player is which skills they have and how they use them. No more grinding for the hell of it here.
The second, and most important, is that there's no subscription fee. No need to feel like you have to play it just to get your moneys worth.

I used to play Star Wars Galaxies, and it was pretty good all those years ago. That was before the "update" which surgicaly removed such features as animal taming/riding, the ability to customise how your character evolved and whatnot and instead implanted a pointless aiming system and a terrible class system where you choose your class and lose all sense of uniqueness (The worst factor of this was that jedi became an option... 50% of the new players were jedi in a galaxy where the jedi are believed to be merely fairy tales...(It used to be only ten jedi per server)). can you tell that this change vexed me (My sister, too.)? 

[sundak]

Rush on Seven Episodes or more commonly known as ROSE is a good MMORPG for kids.  It starts you out fighting jellybeans which is really cute and the graphics are absolutely beautiful.   This is a pay to play game which lost my
interest when they upgraded to ROSE Evolution and made some major changes to the game.

Flyff or Fly for Fun is another good game for kids.  The graphics are equally as breathtaking and the gameplay doesn't really get monotonous until you get up into the higher levels like 50 or so.   This game is free and with the latest update
you can buy cash shop items with your in game penya.  They also have 2 pet systems.  One you can add to your character which is a cash shop pet that picks up your dropped items for you; the other you acquire in game and adds to your character statistics...but they are difficult to keep alive because they have to fed continuously.  I still play this game from time to time but for the most part has lost my interest after level 60.

[PHeMoX]

WoW... the worst invention ever.  Besides, how come they claim it's the best MMO when Lineage II has over 17 million players worldwide? WoW has only close to 9 million.....

Anyways, not that relevant. I think most MMO games really aren't my thing, especially because of the monthly fee, but also because of the grinding.

I think the only reason so many people play WoW is because of the social aspect of the game, being in a VR world with "friends" ...

[MasterW]

Hmmm,

Lineage 2 (play for 3 years)

RF Online (play for 5 months)

Silkroad (2 month)

Cabal (1 month)

and Exteel, Sun Online, R2 (reign of revolution), 9 Dragons, Atrix...  well don't remember all lol

(Some games on korean servers)

[Zam]

http://www.vendetta-online.com/

Sadly, there have never been more then 4 people working on this game at once. So progress is slow...oh so slow...
They've mainly worked on rewriting the bot codes and the backround handling of NPC's and such during the past years. They have stuff like a mission editor players can use on the test server.

Anyway, it's like decent online. It's frickin' awesome, and someday....someday when someone supports the company, it'll be the best thing since the internet.

Go give it a try.

[ChJees]

Strange that noone have mentioned Wurm Online :S.

In Wurm Online so is nearly everything player created. Whether it would be roads or villages, a player was part of it creating. There is around 30-50 skills to profess in and up to 9 "stats" to raise, and the best of all is that there are NO LEVELS.

Wurm Online is free to play but your skills and stats will be capped at 20 until you get premium. (5€ per month for prem.)

http://www.wurmonline.com/

(I play on the Wild server if you wonder .)

Screenies:

A busy christmas day on the Home server.


Example of a fenced in forest owned by a player outside Newtown

[Alec]

Haha, that giant axe floating in the vicinity of dude's hand is hilarious.

[ChJees]

It is not callled "Huge Axe" for nothing .

[Wenzor]

I played runescape for 3 years...but I got bored after all 

also Jagex killed itself...I mean they made so many useless updates, now the game was just completely lame

[Alphasoldier]

I got addicted to runescape for 2 weeks, played it nonstop even skipping school with it, after that I pretty much SWORE that I'd never play a MMORPG ever again, so this will propably be the first and last post I make in this thread, unless we're going on a rant.

[inkblob]

I'm looking forward to checking out of life for a few months when Lego Universe finally delivers

[shinygerbil]

Wow! Now finally there's a mumorpeger I could see myself actually being vaguely interested in.

[alphasmart]

So lunia has matured out of beta into a real game.  It was quite fun actually as it was a stage based beat-em-up rather than a traditional mmorpg.  Ironically, I think the worst part of it was the online bit, which made it quite laggy and jumpy; it would have been fine if it didn't need to be online. and the translation was in very endearing engrish (from korean).  Looking at the updated site it seems to have been thoroughly polished, it now looks well worth a check (even though they added a character seemingly for the sole reason to complete the standard fighter-mage-thief-cleric formula).

[silverflagon]

I've tried one or two and Second Life was the only one that really interested me but it's not really a MMORG, and I got sick of the selfishess of other users and so I left it.
I did try Prates On line, the Disney one and it's about the worst ever, don't touch it not even with an extra long bargepole yuck! There was one other but again it was boring and so limited that I steer clear of them now.

Except does Uru online count? Some how I doubt it because you never see another game player worse luck