So the games that are the reactions to WOW's success have come out this year, high profile and long developed, the games I am focusing on are Star wars, Secret World and (yes i know its not a WOW reaction) Guild wars 2.

Star wars: old republic:

Jeff told us of how this is a generic MMO but its story line, specifically one class in the sith side had a really good story(Can not remember what it was called). This interested me and was attractive but was not enough to have me drop the cash. Mainly because i just dont like MMO's, they are not a genre i am driven to play and complete. But with the news of this going Free to play, that is where this becomes way more attractive. Bc we know have a lot of cool story to go thru for the cheap price of Free. This has gone on my list, and i will go thru the motions to get the story of the one class that matters.

Secret world:

So another MMO that is a generic but has some special things. Instead of the story being the draw, here it is the way combat works( i remember some unique interesting variations to the normal way an mmo would work) and the weird puzzles/minigames. This becoming free to play really gets me into it, because i think of the MMO's that are out there now, this is probably the more uniquely interesting. On the list too, but after star wars.

Guild wars 2:

Now, Jeff didnt really like this game. To him it was a let down. But I never played Guild wars, in fact when i saw it on the shelf at walmart all those years ago, and some one told me it was kinda like a Rpg which i assumed meant turn based which meant i hated that unless it was pokemon. I dont come to the series with the same mind, to me a well made MMO that did a lot of smart things are reasons to give it a chance. I have heard other people talk about it, specifically Hollander Cooper on his new podcast radioradar. He made the game out to be way more interesting then Jeff did. Of course the guy has rose coloured glasses but he also has played a lot of the game, like really a lot.

So what i would like to see is people correct me, give me suggestions for which to play and why? You could convince me not to even try them. Is there another unique MMO i missed of note? Fantasy star? that one that they quick looked a little while ago with the little girl class?

Jeff is cool, but never take his advice on MMOs, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Guild Wars 2 is the best MMO that has came out in years. With no monthly fee, what's not to love? The amount of content packed into that game for just 60 bucks would make Skyrim green with envy. If you have a PC and enjoy RPGs, it would be crazy not to own GW2.

i would say guild wars 2. i haven't played it but friend said it was good. a no monthly fee mmo, cost money to buy are pretty good. i played guild wars and it was pretty cool. i played wow that was good too. it cost $15 a month, payed by time cards. i had fun, it's fun when you play with people. i met some people playing wow and it made it fun.

I hate MMO's but I bought the secret world because I like adventure games and so far it has been pretty awesome. Except for dying a million times from spawns just randomly sneaking up behind me, which happens in all mmos, and part of what I hate of mmos. You dont feel like your in a rush to get anywhere, and you level up so fast.

The thing that turns me off about most MMOs is the hot key based combat. You spam a lot of number keys and things die, and that's about it for the whole game. Guild Wars 2 does a bit to avoid this with the dodge mechanics, but the one I really have my eye on is Planetside 2. Free to play and an FPS based combat (with RPG progression mechanics and vehicle combat), which makes it a lot more appealing to me.

Not sure if you've considered it but give it a look if the traditional model of MMO combat isn't doing it for you.

So do we know when these games go free to play or a price drop on guildwars 2? might happen, i have no idea what kind of trend there is for mmo's. While i am interested. I cannot gamble 60$ especially if there is no way to recover some cost (i am historically a console gamer, lately I have been all pc). And while I am willing to try it, i just cant take he plunge on gw2. Whats your advice?

@super2j said:

So do we know when these games go free to play or a price drop on guildwars 2? might happen, i have no idea what kind of trend there is for mmo's. While i am interested. I cannot gamble 60$ especially if there is no way to recover some cost (i am historically a console gamer, lately I have been all pc). And while I am willing to try it, i just cant take he plunge on gw2. Whats your advice?

All I could tell you is to hit up youtube and check out any and all vids you can find on the game or games you're interested in. Perhaps you can get a feel for them.

So do we know when these games go free to play or a price drop on guildwars 2? might happen, i have no idea what kind of trend there is for mmo's. While i am interested. I cannot gamble 60$ especially if there is no way to recover some cost (i am historically a console gamer, lately I have been all pc). And while I am willing to try it, i just cant take he plunge on gw2. Whats your advice?

@super2j: My guess would be Jeff didn't like GW2 because he was looking for a fantasy version of Phantasy Star Online which is basically GW1. As someone who actually plays MMO's and have played quite a few of them, the changes made in GW2 are substantial for the experience. I played about a week of GW 1, stopped, and never touched it again. I usually solo a lot in MMO's, because whoever thought waiting around for 5 hours for a team invite was a good idea was out of his damn mind. And that's the formula (to my knowledge) all other MMO's follow. Usually the newer/neater stuff has been happening in the free 2 play space with convenience things like built in grind bots, clicking on a quest to auto-walk there and such, and here's GW2 coming up with 2 genius, streamlining ideas, making all of them obsolete...

1. Quests occur in the game world itself and are active for anyone in the general area. Huge selling point for me. Warhammer tried this, but didn't go far enough. One of the worst parts of MMO's have been the "see mobs being jerks, jump in to save the day, achieve no quest progress because you didn't have the quest", which leads to you not caring about anything in the game world, because why jump in? Why kill that boar chasing you if you're going to get a quest to kill it later anyway? Instead of jumping around town talking to NPC's to get quests (spam-clicking through the dialogue) or not knowing where to go, you can just go out into the world and explore, and come across things to do. This, combined with point nr. 2 is what makes GW2 stand out the most, I feel.

2. Always co-op. Again, this is a notion that hasn't been explored before to my knowledge, and it's an absolutely genius way to handle things. You have a split in the community - some like to solo, some wanna team. This works to bring these two kinds of players together. I can come across a big monster to fight, and "join" in with a couple of people already fighting it - a short-lived but effective team fighting for a common goal. When it's done, I can run away and mind my own business without feeling like I'm a jerk... Imagine waiting for 6 hours to get a full team to do a boss somewhere in another MMO, and then right when you reach the boss, your healer is like "I gotta go, sorry, wife aggro". It's just a ton of things like that which is built on something else... Like the "always co-op" thing works nicely because of having instanced loot, and so on and so forth.

3. Quest progression bar. This is a huge deal that I think most people brush off as "eh". Instead of "get me 10 boar tusks" that stuff is hidden behind a progress bar. And together with nr. 2 and nr. 1 they make questing interesting because everyone that's doing that specific quest is actually helping the over-all completion of it.

The only thing I don't like so far is that the quests aren't instanced post-completion like in WoW... For good and for bad. It means the things you do in the world have no real impact. Anything you complete, will happen again in a few minutes. But in another way that's good, because if you're running through the area again sometime, you can jump in and help people doing it for the first time, this time while being more experienced. So I'm torn about it.

You also lose a bit of the intrigue that comes with contesting mobs and such but I think I'm done with that kind of stuff.

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2.

@SoothsayerGB said:

All current MMO's have features taken directly from Warcraft. Whether WoW created them or not, WoW perfected their style and use. Play World of Warcraft or none.

Simply put. If they are all copying WoW in one way or another. Then Blizzard is going to top them or copy them right back. So it only makes sense to go with the more established world. GW 2 and Star wars are just fine. But World of Warcraft stays on top for a reason. Plus with the new X-pax, Mists of Pandaria, coming out in about 9 days. There will be an influx of players. Literally millions, will swarm to check out the new lands.

People are usually the most drawing and entertaining aspects of MMORPGs. Right? As a long time WoW player, who has tried all the rest and plays WoW because all the rest suck at trying to be WoW. I can say easily. Don't bother looking for something new till next gen. Which, I might add, will most likely be dominated by Blizzard's "Titan Project".

If you want to go deep, balls deep, gooch deep... Go with WoW.

Sadly, I'd have to agree. If you want a massive PVE playground, (with literally endless content) then WoW is a no-brainer.

Guild Wars 2 is superb, but almost exclusively focused on PVP once you reach the lvl cap. It's really just a matter of whether you are able to adhere the carrot-on-a-stick design philosophy Blizzard developed for WoW, and don't mind paying for a monthly subscription.

Both games are amazing fun.

DCUO and Star Wars: TOR have been the only MMO's I've ever played based solely on my obsession with comics and Star Wars.

I'm" not the biggest MMO guy. The only MMO that I tried out and really liked recently was Tera Online, mainly because of their awesome battle system. I ended up capping out too quick and It's a shame they lacked in so many other areas though otherwise I think I'd still be with them a little longer.

@SoothsayerGB said:

All current MMO's have features taken directly from Warcraft. Whether WoW created them or not, WoW perfected their style and use. Play World of Warcraft or none.

Simply put. If they are all copying WoW in one way or another. Then Blizzard is going to top them or copy them right back. So it only makes sense to go with the more established world. GW 2 and Star wars are just fine. But World of Warcraft stays on top for a reason. Plus with the new X-pax, Mists of Pandaria, coming out in about 9 days. There will be an influx of players. Literally millions, will swarm to check out the new lands.

People are usually the most drawing and entertaining aspects of MMORPGs. Right? As a long time WoW player, who has tried all the rest and plays WoW because all the rest suck at trying to be WoW. I can say easily. Don't bother looking for something new till next gen. Which, I might add, will most likely be dominated by Blizzard's "Titan Project".

If you want to go deep, balls deep, gooch deep... Go with WoW.

Sadly, I'd have to agree. If you want a massive PVE playground, (with literally endless content) then WoW is a no-brainer.

Guild Wars 2 is superb, but almost exclusively focused on PVP once you reach the lvl cap. It's really just a matter of whether you are able to adhere the carrot-on-a-stick design philosophy Blizzard developed for WoW, and don't mind paying for a monthly subscription.

@SoothsayerGB: there is only one thing i every payed a monthly subscription and that was for a monthly whiskey media membership. So my frugal mind has a seriously hard time signing on for Wow.

@SoothsayerGB: there is only one thing i every payed a monthly subscription and that was for a monthly whiskey media membership. So my frugal mind has a seriously hard time signing on for Wow.

Don't play SWTOR. It has, hands down, one of the worst, most incompetent customer service teams I've ever seen in an online video game. But yeah, the actual game itself is all right.

Considering how much GW2 is like WoW compared with the original, I think it's safe to say the redesigned it to be WoW without the progression.

I preordered star wars and guild wars 2. Star wars was hit and miss for the leveling up part, there is more than one good class story, but that is hit and miss. I found both the Sith stories great, The Bounty Hunter however I thought was terrible. I only got 2-3 months into this before I realised the endgame was a joke. The much lauded open world pvp was nothing like the Hoth like battle that had been advertised, it was badly designed, didn't work, and was removed (and I've been told it still hasn't been fixed / updated). The small scale pvp matches are ok, Huttball with 2 even teams was quite fun. The downside was only 3 maps on release and up to the point I left, apperantly they added one more. This I thought was really bad, I mean take say Warhammer Online, made on a smaller budget, yet had 4-5 scenario maps per 10 levels, and like 4 extra ones in the final tier. The lack of variety and the imbalance made this grind not fun very quickly. The space flight combat missions are seriously worse than your average flash game, and that's all that is, a bad gimicky flash game. The Raids were very incomplete when I played, and still don't offer enough content right now, but that can be fixed. I would say don't get this unless you just want to level up alts for the story, the endgame is very disappointing.

Guild wars 2 was once again, pretty fun to level. The combat was ok, though on my Elementalist I have 20 weapon abilites available to me at any one time, where every other class only has 5 and an alternate weapon slot. Loved the Vistas (Assasins creed like viewpoints). Story was ok - I played Asura. Not until about level 60 did the shortcomings become obvious. The devs had spent a lot of time talking about 'keeping it equal'. This basically means removing almost all of the progression out of the dungeons, and making it impossible difficult to actually group up and organise WvW. Having no trinity, and no boss mechanics on dungeon bosses (all but 1 has played out like an elite mob, not a boss mob with mechanics), and no progression for gear or anythiing, has made the dungeon experience pointless, and the combat is literally running around in circles autoattacking, trying not to die, faililng, and trying to run back from the respawn point before the fight stops / everyone wipes. It's no fun, and they have removed any reason for wanting to do it again. (don't talk to me about looks, I play an Asura, and noone can see what im wearing cause im tiny).

The Secret World i have just got into now. Having come a bit late, it is not so much an MMO right now, as more like a modern version of an eldar scrolls type game, or something like Dead Island with a story - which actually suits the game a lot better i think than what it would have been like at release (trying to be smart and solve an investigation quest would have been hard with people running around everywhere and chat spam). The level of story and atmosphere in this game is incredible, I really can't believe some of the ballsy moves they have done making an MMO this way. The dungeon system at end game sounds amazing, all the bosses are unique and challanging, there is Normal, Elite and Nightmare versions of the dungeons with completely different fights per version. With the awesome way the ability building works, knocking over a few dungeons a couple times a week should be awesome fun and rewarding once ive murdered my way through this game. I'd almost call it a Horror MMO more than a fantasy MMO as well. Probably the most unique MMO about right now, and if you look around, you can get it for $15 with a month included.

I'm genuinely afraid Guild Wars 2 may get me. Which is why I am staying away from it. I have way too many other games to play. In other news I recently reinstalled LOTRO.

Shit.

That probably won't turn out into much of anything though, just though it would be cool to go back in for a bit. I'm not even sure if I'll do that.

What you have to realize about MMOs is that they can be really time-consuming. It used to be that you had a subscription and so you felt like you had to get your money's worth, but now it's not really like that. Unless you go into GW2 you'll find a microtransaction system which basically allows you to pay up and save time, whether it is by getting to one place to another really fast, or by getting better weapons. I think it's something like this I'm not too well informed. So the thing you have to keep in mind is time. If you get really invested in an MMO you'll most likely end up having to spend a lot of time with it, and that's something you have to be willing to do, or you'll just hit a wall and possibly stop playing. And even if you commit yourself to a game like that, you may just end up looking back and thinking if it was really worth the hundreds of hours you poured into it.

It's also a lot more fun to play with friends.

I guess that's all I have to point out.

MMOs require a huge time commitment to get the best out of them; picking one based on free/no monthly fee is a poor way to go, evaluate based on content and content alone.

Anyone that has spent any real time with mmos knows this; and the only two current mmos that have proven content are wow and rift. .gw2 is an unknown at this point but based on the first game, i wouldn't count on it.

doesnt hurt to try TOR when it goes f2p and its 15 dollars now on origin which comes with a free month

I was unaware of Secret World going FTP, when did that happen?

@Nightriff: its only rumored at this point

@connerthekewlkid: Oh, some said something about it and that is the only MMO that has ever interested me (beside EVE but that shit is just crazy), guess I'll continue to wait

@Snail: @Kidavenger: Unfortunately, i dont think i can commit the time. I mean this in 2 ways, 1. i just wont have enough time to just sit down and play this 2.There is no way i can keep focused on this one game when there are some many others coming out so constantly. I mean for me to play an mmo the way you describe it, then i would have to give up watching tv/and playing other games for like 6 months.@AdMordem: But if i pick one, it will probably be secret world....

I can say that, i ended up buying Battlefield 3 for 10$, this will probably set me back on the MMO front for a while, since it will have most of my mindshare in terms of online play.

@Nightriff: i also tried playing EVE but i was terrible at it :p

@connerthekewlkid: I'm with Vinny, I want to take a tour and just see it all and not actually play it, sounds way complicated/weird

Uh well most will say guild wars 2, I will say hell no to that. If you really want to play a fresh mmo that actually does things differently you need to go with the Secret World.

It has a modern setting that isn't total sci fi with laser swords and space ships, an actual story even if it isn't as well done as SWtOR, great atmosphere, no class system at all (any character you make can be any role you want and even ultimately be all three at different times), and the progression mechanics and character customization are top notch when it comes to build. Character appearance wise it has a few snags but you still have lots of room to play and make a unique toon for yourself with everything from actual military gear, to stuff a street thug would have, all the way to full on business suits, and anything between the three.

Lastly it has the most varied and interesting questing out of any mmo on the market by a long shot, hell some of the quests actually make you stop and think. It won't even be because the quest is terribly designed, ambiguous, bugged, or written poorly either, god forbid. You will have to research classical music on google, look up the names of early colonial painters, visit social media sites created for in game npcs, and all sorts of other crap.

Guild Wars 2 is just a pretty average action game pretending to be an mmo, SWtOR is a solid but bland mmo with a great story component, WoW is .... WoW *shrug*, Terra is another okay action game with bland mmo components, only the Secret World is actually doing anything new or interesting. EDIT: Oh and Rift.... it is just WoW with prettier graphics and some annoying dynamic events that happen so often they become a hassle and a chore.

@super2j: Well it doesn't have to be the most time-consuming thing in the world, and you can certainly play one or two other games along with an MMO, but you'll spend plenty of evenings with friends playing MMOs if you play it kind like it's meant to, or how it is more fun to. And you know, that's fun. But it's also a lot of time for progress that has almost virtually no real world use. Your choice.

@super2j: Don't do it man... MMO's suck the life right out of ya... seriously.

They're huge time sinks that snare you in either because of the time gates, the loot, the "friendships", and the guilt/obligation that you'll feel after you sign up.

When the servers eventually go down.. you'll be left with the inability to reinstall and re-experience a game you probably paid a lot for. Just my 2 cents on the matter, after playing a number of MMO's in the past.

Also, they'll probably take up so much of your time you'll miss out on some of the other games that come out, let alone other things that could be more fun in your life.

@JCTango said:

@super2j: Don't do it man... MMO's suck the life right out of ya... seriously.

They're huge time sinks that snare you in either because of the time gates, the loot, the "friendships", and the guilt/obligation that you'll feel after you sign up.

When the servers eventually go down.. you'll be left with the inability to reinstall and re-experience a game you probably paid a lot for. Just my 2 cents on the matter, after playing a number of MMO's in the past.

Also, they'll probably take up so much of your time you'll miss out on some of the other games that come out, let alone other things that could be more fun in your life.

Damn, this is basically the exact right thing to say to turn me off to mmo's, and it will work until i hear "gone free2play" and then all bets are off