Which MMO should I play?

Hi! I asked this question on a different forum and someone recommended I ask it here too. I'm looking for an MMO that's heavily young adult/adult. I'm looking for something that has a mixture of gaming and socializing, rather than a purely social game like Second Life. The only game I'm not interested in is EVE. Played it, didn't like it. Any suggestions?

World of Warcraft. C'mon. You know you want to.

P.S. There's a free trial (up to level 20 of 85). WoW lets you play or be as social (or anti-social) as you want. It's not the newest thing around, but it's the biggest by far. It's certainly no Second Life (except for the Goldshire Inn on certain RP servers, but that's for a whole different thread).

It might not be what you're looking for, but Kingdom of Loathing?

It's basically a text-based MMORPG with stick figure illustrations. It's a turn-based game -- each day you get a number of adventures to spend, and each adventure is something like fighting a monster or getting a choice of rewards. You can eat and drink booze for more adventures. It's silly and pop-culture-reference filled but the gameplay is solid.

Also, it's free to play. Each month they have a new "item of the month" you can get with a ten dollar donation, but none of them are anywhere near necessary to play the game.

KoL is a great suggestion and you don't have to commit your life to it to enjoy it.

But, yeah, WoW is pretty much a giant party.

Honestly, the new Star Wars MMO is a lot of fun and offers decent multiplayer options. Making story decisions together during a quest feels like a tabletop RPG. You may want to do the "lightside" option but your crazy friend may decide just to kill everyone for some quick darkside points. The game is really good until endgame, but that's a good 120-200 hours of solid play before you hit max level.

jdzappa wrote:

Honestly, the new Star Wars MMO is a lot of fun and offers decent multiplayer options. Making story decisions together during a quest feels like a tabletop RPG. You may want to do the "lightside" option but your crazy friend may decide just to kill everyone for some quick darkside points. The game is really good until endgame, but that's a good 120-200 hours of solid play before you hit max level.

Yeah, but if you want to listen to dialogue, it can get really annoying having to constantly mute people.

You should be more specific on what you're looking for in a game.

1. Free, Subscription, or Hybrid?

2. Fantasy, Sci-Fi?

3. Casual or Hardcore? (amount of time it takes to beat the game)

4. Priority in Story? Player vs Player Combat? Raids (Teams vs Environment)?

MMORPG.com is a rough place, but there are a lot of games on there that are community reviewed. Each game has its own forums and you can sort the titles by popularity.

GWJ has strong casual communities in a couple large titles. The one's I prefer are:

Lord of the Rings Online (free, no PvP per definition)
Star Wars the Old Republic (subscription, balance of pvp or pve)

I'll toss in a LOTRO suggestion if you are at all a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's books. The game is F2P with a cash shop but you can earn the cash shop currency in game so don't have to spend any money. Game lore is based on the Lord of the Rings books and the art is generally considered excellent.

Brandywine is the highest populated server and most likely to have young adult players. I generally play on Silverlode, which has a more adult/mature population.

Good luck!

I'll recommend LotRO as well, but with the caveat that the remaining goodjer population is on Landroval, so if you're after folks like us, that's probably the best place to be.

As for the game itself, it's exceptionally well put together, and the Warden class offers the most unique class mechanics in any MMO I've ever played.

Isn't FreeRealms still up? I remember it being a fun mix of what you're looking for.

http://www.freerealms.com

edit: I love the LOTRO's - great free option.

LoTRO is the best free option out there. WoW is WoW.
You may want to just wait for Guild Wars 2. It's not free, but there's no monthly subscription either.

Vanguard. It has three distinct paths to "level" with each being interesting enough to distract you from the others if you get tired of them. While crafting and "diplomacy" in Vanguard do not have as much depth as the combat, they each are systems that simply do not exist in other games like they do in Vanguard. The Isle of Dawn is a great newbie zone for the trial. Just make an effort to be social in the zone chat and ask for help when you need it! The island took such great care of me and the few friends I made while I was there.

Sorry to pimp Vanguard in my two first posts on the forums, but MMOs are my thing and the VG is my MMOthing right now. One warning though: Vanguard has no PvP beyond 1v1 dueling. If that is a deal breaker for you, my next recommendation would be EverQuest 2.

Also, if anyone is a fan of the Bard class in fantasy MMOs, Vanguard has the best implementation of it I've ever seen

Using this thread for my own nefarious purposes.

I'm looking for a particular experience. I've heard stories about certain MMOs that hint at the sort of thing I want, but haven't experienced them for myself.

I hear about castle sieges in Age of Conan and I think DAoC, way back in the day. That stuff sounds great, like the battles I love in Mount & Blade but with the permanence of MMO character development, against live opponents. I want that experience but in an action-slanted game. Essentially I'd like to be an archer on the walls, picking off attackers at the gate or their supports behind the frontlines.

A long shot, I guess. Most of the action MMOs I've seen are of the standard "get a couple dudes and go quest together" sort. I don't even really require it to be an MMO, maybe an arena-based thing. Persistent character growth is important, though.

Sorry this is pretty rambly but my desire is kind of nebulous.

Blind, if you wait intil later this year there is War of the Roses. There is another in develoment too called Chivalry (I think). Both are mote like CoD or BF with swords though. Chivalry is supposed to have sieges.

Those both look pretty cool, thanks for the direction. Unfortunately anything new runs the risk of my laptop not being able to handle it, but we'll see.

Anyone else?

GW2 is supposed to run on quite old hardware, to the extent that ArenaNet have had trouble getting hold of hardware to test on and needed to hit up ebay for it. You might want to wait until it's launched though to make a judgement on it though.

I tried the GW2 beta, it ran without too much chugging but was too ugly to really get into. Also at the end of the day the combat is still pretty standard MMO fare, from what I've played and heard.

If you've got access to the GW2 beta, I'd keep an eye on it. I expect a good few (little) changes before launch. (hopefully not setting myself up for disappointment)

Blind_Evil wrote:

Those both look pretty cool, thanks for the direction. Unfortunately anything new runs the risk of my laptop not being able to handle it, but we'll see.

Anyone else?

Darkfall. The UI is cumbersome, but you're able to get used to it. They're in the process of upgrading it and the graphics, but it can run on older machines currently. This is very hardcore though. You die and you lose everything on your person. It's not for people wanting to solo because the game is just as much about politics as it is about how well you fight. If you're interested i can get you in touch with the folks i played with.

ranalin wrote:

Darkfall. The UI is cumbersome, but you're able to get used to it. They're in the process of upgrading it and the graphics, but it can run on older machines currently. This is very hardcore though. You die and you lose everything on your person. It's not for people wanting to solo because the game is just as much about politics as it is about how well you fight. If you're interested i can get you in touch with the folks i played with.

I started up a trial, seems to be exactly what I'm looking for, once I get used to the controls. Thanks a bunch.

Any tips for starting out? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to start looking for quests or just go out and kill goblins (fine with either, really) to get stronger. There's a real old-school appeal here, it reminds me a bit of what I saw my friend play in EQ back in like, 2001.

Blind_Evil wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Darkfall. The UI is cumbersome, but you're able to get used to it. They're in the process of upgrading it and the graphics, but it can run on older machines currently. This is very hardcore though. You die and you lose everything on your person. It's not for people wanting to solo because the game is just as much about politics as it is about how well you fight. If you're interested i can get you in touch with the folks i played with.

I started up a trial, seems to be exactly what I'm looking for, once I get used to the controls. Thanks a bunch.

Any tips for starting out? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to start looking for quests or just go out and kill goblins (fine with either, really) to get stronger. There's a real old-school appeal here, it reminds me a bit of what I saw my friend play in EQ back in like, 2001.

Nope that's pretty much it. You start off small and stick to your starting city as your skills level up before you start branching out. When you get your primary skill around 50-75 you'll be powerful enough to venture forward. The number of quests are limited and the ones in town should do you ok.

This is like an updated UO mixed with EQ graphics. They're doing a complete overhaul they're calling it DF 2.0 with updated graphics and content. It'll be interesting to see.

The folks i used to run with were part of the alliance that was fought against the guys you saw in the video. Each city outside of the primaries are different in size and able to be captured by guilds. The guilds are part of an alliance of some sort. Check out the forums to get the current lay of the land politically and you can make a choice of who you want to join. Obviously each side considers themselves the good guys.

It originally started out when i played as Goon vs Anti-Goon. From what i've followed since then it's a bit intermingled now. The guys i used to run with were called The Dark Hand of Valor. You can go there and use me as a reference. The current leadership has changed hands but some old timers will remember me and the sites admin will.

If you dont side with someone it'll make life that much harder since you'll be restricted to primary cities or chaos towns (towns where anyone is allowed and there's no city guards) and will be KoS by pretty much everyone. Still that said... i've known folks who's done well for themselves and become sale swords and get hired out for sieges.

If i had more gaming time i'd jump back in. It's the game that has revved up my gaming juices the most since i played SWG.

...three hours later, I think this could be trouble.

I definitely see the wild West style that very early SWG featured, and I dig it.

Three questions, and probably more later if you don't mind me asking here.

1. Sometimes I kill an enemy and don't see an option to loot, there's no little grave and from what I can tell the body just disappears. What's up with that?

2. When gathering, will the game always show me the message that I can't gather more from this node (and automatically stop me) if a node is drained?

3. Do I have a weight capacity? Items have weight values but I haven't seen a number in my stats as to what I can hold.

Blind_Evil wrote:

...three hours later, I think this could be trouble.

I definitely see the wild West style that very early SWG featured, and I dig it.

Three questions, and probably more later if you don't mind me asking here.

1. Sometimes I kill an enemy and don't see an option to loot, there's no little grave and from what I can tell the body just disappears. What's up with that?

2. When gathering, will the game always show me the message that I can't gather more from this node (and automatically stop me) if a node is drained?

3. Do I have a weight capacity? Items have weight values but I haven't seen a number in my stats as to what I can hold.

I dont mind. Ask away.

1. not everything has loot. Or if someone else is near you they looted before you did. All loot is fair game.

2. I dont believe so. Dont remember the messages. There was a certain msg the way it was parsed you would know when a node was empty.

3. Ya you can only carry so much. When you reach that limit you wont be able to move at all on your feet. They made mounts way super heavy so you can really only have 1 extra mount in your inventory without being over weight.

Cool, thanks. I'm going to bump a Darkfall specific thread as to stop gumming up this one.