Ex-WoW players who switched MMOs, what got its hooks in you?

I'm pretty into WoW these days I've tried a huge amount of MMOs and it's really the only one that has kept interested for any amount of time. So those who used to play, has anything struck you in the same way or is even better in your eyes?

Runescape hands down no doubt case closed

I've been playing FF XIV since it's launch back in August last year. The formula is the same while some key changes spice it up a bit, it's not without its faults but watching the game grow the way it did I haven't had a feeling like that since Vanilla WoW.

I played WoW from launch till around 6 months ago before I dropped it. That said, FFXIV is the best mmo going these days by a long shot. After you get past the slow start it cranks up to 11. Its not "innovative" I guess but I never was one to think that you need much innovation in mmos. You just need to do bigger and better and FF does that. I would be playing the shit out of it but I am not in a position to let myself get sucked into an mmo again at the moment. Tera is actually not bad either if you can look past the female armor. For a free game its well made and gives you basically full access to the game without spending a dime. I wouldn't spend any money on it however, so take that as you wish.

If anyone was to ask me what would be a good first mmo to play I would still say wow even though I have no plans to ever play it again.

I still play wow, but Everquest Next looks really cool to me. It's not out yet and I haven't looked into how it's doing in a while, but what I saw when they announced it seemed very cool.

When I switched to GW2 for several months(before putting down MMO's for the foreseeable future), I did so because I had a friend playing that.

Warlords of Draenor.

;)

City of Heroes. RIP, You will be missed.

FF14. They made a lot of really neat secondary changes (QoL stuff, etc.) that make you wonder why other MMOs hadn't made those changes before. People don't typically associate mainstream Japanese developers (Square Enix, in this case) with innovation or fresh ideas, so to see a game go from 'so bad that we fired our entire dev team and refused to charge people to play for like a year' to 'the first-/second-best traditional MMO on the market (depending on where you rank WoW nowadays)' is fascinating.

I also enjoyed TOR just being BC-era WoW (i.e. the best era), but back when I played (launch) there was essentially no endgame, so I basically just did PVP for a few weeks and then stopped. Mechanically, that game was really fun, but BioWare didn't really have any idea what they were doing with their hotfixes and patches.

Also Destiny, but obviously that's a lite MMO and also not an RPG. I'm sure you can find any number of people willing to tell you what they don't like about Destiny at this point, but, if you've played a lot of MMOs and enjoy the style of progression that comes with them, chances are you'll probably like Destiny.

@ajamafalous: I think what might hold even a lot of MMO fans back from liking Destiny is the lack of endgame content. But the template is there, no doubt.

I do agree with the people who say FF14. If I had the time to get deep in a MMO again, it would be that game.

Guild Wars 2. It's just fantastic.

@capum15: How is that game these days? I played at launch and 100% the world then never went back. Heard they overhauled some of the systems in the game?

@zomgfruitbunnies: I don't think they've changed the game systems much aside from balance stuff (though I've never gotten into PvP so I'm clueless about that). They put in Mega Servers so most maps are pretty full. They've continued Living Stories quite a bit and a good amount of things have changed due to those (Lions Arch is all sorts of fucked up now). They changed skins, outfits and dyes to be account-wide which is nice, as is all currency (gold, gems, karma, dungeon things).

They did change leveling and made it weird, making me glad I had all classes above level 30 when that happened. Some stuff is neat, some stuff is dumb.

I took probably half a year off with only sporadic playing, but was able to get right back to it in the past month or so with no issues. Can always give it a shot to check it out if you want.

The Secret World is the only MMO that has ever stuck with me. I guess the setting is just much more interesting to me, and I like how you can do everything with one character. If you want to play a different 'class', you can. You'll have to grind for 3 hours or so to get there, but it's much better than starting an entirely new character.

I kinda wish I could answer something, but out of all the options I've tried (Warhammer - AoR, Old Republic, The Secret World and Wildstar...think that's all of 'em...), I've always come back to WoW eventually. Even that's starting to loosen it's grip after eight years though. Warlords of Draenor seems pretty cool from the little I've played, but playing other games like Far Cry and GTA is so much more tempting - the very opposite of how it's been in the past with each expansion release.

I'm someone who never got into WoW, but FF14 has been my jam since ARR came out (didn't play the original release). All about what @ajamafalous said, mostly QoL stuff that is really noticeable the couple of times I've tried WoW out. Really enjoyed what I've played of WoW but I don't think I could get into it long-term without really missing a lot of the stuff FF14 has. I enjoyed the story during levelling in SWTOR but it didn't hold me long enough to reach the endgame (or what little of it existed at the time, at least).

@capum15: How'd the leveling change? I might jump back in just to see what's going on; I don't think I've played it in like a year or so. Any other notable changes besides the minor QoL stuff and the living story?

Guild Wars 2.

I love the combat system and the living world. If only they would put more effort into WolrdvsWorld then it would be perfect.

@ajamafalous: Gonna slap this into a spoiler block just because it's longer than I thought it'd be. I find the changes to be mostly fine, though I wish they'd fix Lions Arch.

@capum15: Y'know, one thing I never got used to was that heavy armor classes couldn't equip lighter armor, but I guess with the way itemization works in GW2 allowing Warriors and Guardians to use lighter armor would be shortchanging the other classes.

Also, does personal story being locked to level 10+ mean key farming isn't profitable anymore? I used to create new characters then do the story quests to get free chest keys. A run was typically about 20 minutes. If all of the story quests are locked until level 10, that means key runs will be at least twice as long.

When I was playing MMOs (clean for about a year now, thank you), I dabbled in other games just for something new, hoping to rekindle some of the magic of WoW, my first MMO. None of them really changed things in enough ways to have me switch permanently--TERA had great combat but poor story, GW2 played like absolute crap, FFXIV was just a bit too repetitive, etc. That was why I stuck with WoW from beginning to end and why stopping my WoW playing meant stopping MMOs entirely.

I didn't switch, I just quit playing MMOs. As it turns out, WoW was just a freak of nature and got me hooked for a really long time before letting off. I've tried Guild Wars II, FFXIV and Star Wars TOR but they got on my nerves not after too long.

@zomgfruitbunnies: A lot of people figured that key farming was one of the reasons for the Personal Story being locked until 10, so yeah. You'd have to power to 10 then run through the story.

I play Final Fantasy 14 now, though I've bounced around many MMO's - Warcraft, EVE, to Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, etc. This one has lasted longer in a single stretch than any of the others.

It's a little repetitive sometimes but there's generally interesting things to do, it looks great, and a lot of the basic systems are designed well. It feels like a (much) more polished version of vanilla WoW in many ways.

Er, I'm hardly normal but my MMO chain went something like this

1. Runescape - one of my most played games, got me into this mmo stuff
2. Guildwars - dad bought it for me in an attempt to try and make me stop playing runescape, worked 2 years later when I came back and played for all expansions and several years
3. WoW - Got it during burning crusade expo and played till like lvl 25. Completely stopped until cata came out and I got one guy 65. Stopped again till mists/dranour and used boost to get a 90 mage that I play now and suck at completely
4. City of Heros - Not sure were this one fits in but damnit I loved this game. You will be missed. Champions online is a cheap knockoff of this
5. Eve - Played like 150 hours and have no idea what I'm doing other than mining.

Now a days I get MMOs for one-two months at a time when I feel like it. I'm currently 19 days left on my WoW acct coming hott off the heels of a FF14 rouge spree. I own like every MMO out there and enjoy my single months with each, accept for ESO. Fuck ESO.

@capum15: That's a bummer. Guess they really want that key money.

@capum15: The leveling changes seem pretty dumb; that's kinda the only reason I would start playing again (to level a new guy). Did they ever raise the level cap or add another tier of gear? IIRC between my 3 max level (80?) chars I had 2 in full... uh... orange? tier gear, and maybe 1-2 pieces of the... pink? ascendant maybe? gear. I have no problem with gear grinds in MMOs, but the one in GW2 the last time I was playing was, IMO, completely ridiculous. I also didn't like the dungeon design (as far as no trinity), so I probably only ever ran 15-20 of those.

Also, was Lion's Arch the pirate city or the human city? I'm usually super frugal in MMOs so I liked that that city had portals to everywhere else.

Also also, is there any way for me to play through all that living story stuff that I missed? As I understand it, I could if I had logged in while each event was happening, but since I didn't, I'm out of luck?

I only played vanilla WoW, but EVE is where my MMO love is ever since I started. Not playing right now, but every time I hear about an update I want to resub.

I played Everquest from 1998 onwards and nothing and I mean NOTHING has compared. I played off and on since release but quit when Vanilla WoW came out - but came back several times throughout my nearly decade long addiction to WoW. I Could write a literal 20 page thesis about how it has shaped the gaming landscape as well as the online world we live in today. EverQuest was the absolute best, most difficult content, most rewarding exploratory experience in any MMO. I have played nearly every MMO since I picked up EverQuest (including ultima online back then) and besides Asheron's Call and World of Warcraft here and there no MMO comes close to the depth and amazing feeling of having played that game.

I could tell you so many stories that I remember of so many fun amazing groups and people I met over the years. I used to do 72 man raids without team speak in plane of time and it was intense. The 72 player raids will live on as the most absolutely difficult and enjoyable experiences in any MMO.

@ajamafalous: I'll say that while I really don't like the Legendary grind and the Mystic Toilet, I thoroughly enjoyed the crafting system. Especially cooking. That was a lot of fun to level. And buying food ingredients for karma then reselling the ones that can be put on the market was quite profitable for a little while. That got patched out pretty quick, though.

And, yeah, having some distinct roles would have been nice. I'm a Guardian, let me tank!

I feel like these days the goal of MMO's has shifted from "live in a living, breathing online world to thousands of other players!" to "level up and get cool items in a world that happens to have other people!"

It worked for WoW in that there was a ton of content to do - BUT also people were still interacting with other people. If you play most MMO's these days and play them like the developers expect you to, you'll barely interact with anyone, maybe talk in guild chat. Up until raid content and then suddenly you'll be bashing your head on hard content with other people.

Since this is a recommendation thread... I have enjoyed the time I played in EVE Online a lot, they're mixing things up a bit soon and letting you control your spaceship manually. Interactions with other people is pretty much what you do in that game.

I haven't played it but I've heard many good things about ArcheAge, online sandbox world that seems to be about exploring a new world and interacting with other people. Less about getting the next tier of armor.

@ajamafalous: There are Legendary weapons but those are ridiculously expensive to craft or buy. Hell, I personally just buy my Exotic (orange) gear anyway. I tend to use what I pick up until about 60, then upgrade my stuff to cheap but good 60 gear, then wait until 80 and buy a nice Exotic set. I haven't even bothered with Ascended gear.

I'm not too sure on how dungeons have changed since I barely did them back then, but I've been running those recently and with a good group you can bypass like 80%+ of the enemies and head straight for bosses. Real fast.

Also yeah, Lions Arch was the central pirate-looking city (but not actual pirates, it's run by the Lionguard) and it got fucked up. It's still usable but it lost the feeling of community since the main area is now a lot of rubble. The portals changed spots but there's a waypoint next to them anyway so it doesn't matter.

And I think, once you hit 80, you can choose to replay chapters of Living Story from the journal. I haven't done it yet but I think you can.

After WoW, I managed to get pretty into Warhammer age of Reckoning and EQ2. Nothing that's currently relevant held me for long. I think I've just aged past the necessary mindset.

League of Legends was my WoW-Killer. I'm sure people will say that it doesn't count as it's not an MMO, but to me - League fills all those tickboxes that WoW filled without needing to play daily, which suits my life style as i've grown up.

FF14 is the only other mmo I've gotten a character to the lvl cap besides WoW. There are some really cool things about FF14 but a few tedious things that didnt hold my interest. I also really didn't like how broken up the world was. WoW feels like a world while FF14 feels like a collection of maps.

Eve Online