What was your most deep and intricate mmorpg you ever played?

Evelknievel

I started mmo gaming back in 2001 and would have to say Anarchy Online was my first and still today most complicated game just to start into it, the next mmo's soon followed for me in invested time order.

1. Anarchy Online

2. Star Wars Galaxies

3. Eve Online

4. Entropia Universe

5. Uncharted Waters Online 

The history I had with these 5 titles took a lot of time to understand the mechanics and game play. Seems these games are massive especially when it comes to online content to explore and do.

I know we live in a age where games with instant gratification is a must, but I do mix the complexity in the older games in which the newer mmorpg's titles don't even have.

What was your 5 most difficult mmorpg's you ever played in your entire life?

Ice-Queen

Ultima Online and Asheron's Call

FinalFikus

1. Starquest

2. Wurm

3. Shores OF Hazeron

4. Eve

5. SWG

6. UO

7. Xyson

8. Uranus

9. EQ

10. WOWza

Evelknievel

Originally posted by The1ceQueen
Ultima Online and Asheron's Call

I missed the boat on both these games, I hear they were grand though in their time.

Arconious

1. Anarchy Online

2 . The Secret World

3. Everquest (bit biased, since it was my first)

That's All folks

 

dgarbini

I'd vote AO, the skill/level system was very complex and a blast.  The implant system was a great idea as well.  World was huge.  Wish we saw all of those in modern MMOs.

Icewhite

Not An MMO.

Kyleran

EVE online was the most complex and had the most moving parts to track and manage (hence the need for spreadsheets) and on the fantasy side DAOC, I'm still using spreadsheets in this title right now to calculate my gear builds as I figure out how to optimize my templates and learn the combat systems.

 

 

 

thecapitaine

Horizons/Istaria and SWG were the most deep and intricate MMO games I've ever played.  I suppose EVE would top them now if I had played it for longer than a couple weeks.

Evelknievel

Eve Online is pretty extensive just to learn and most players today wouldn't find much enjoyment in Eve unless they were looking for something more challenging in space and time consuming as a more modern and up to date mmo with graphics and game play.

But once you get the feel for Eve, it all becomes clockwork and it's not a complicated as it seems, just more time consuming to show character progression and the understanding of the games mechanics. To anyone that starts this game up at 1st, it is a bit overwhelming and your going to say, what the hell am I doing in this game 

When I was playing Eve back in 2008 it took me a entire month just to figure out the basics and what I had to do to play my part in the Eve Universe, but this game isn't for everyone, especially folks that like instant gratifications in their mmorpg.

bcbully

Wushu

EVE

Yalexy

EvE Online

DAoC

SWG

Quirhid

Complexity is not the same as depth. That said, many MMOs are very complicated, but not very deep. Then again, if you don't understand the difference then there is no difference. Your experience is not worse. Alas, mine is.

Torik

I consider  A Tale In the Desert to be the most intricate MMORPG I have played.  I also considered it to be quite deep but that a YMMV thing.

Wizardry

1The release of FFXi is 1>5 no other game came close.it is much easier now a days and of course once you get the internet involved you can find any answer.

However when the game released it took forever to figure things out,most were hidden away and not meant to be found out easily.

It is to this day the ONLY game i have ever seen with absolutely zero hand holding,no xp for questing and no hotbar icons.So you had to write your own macros and youi had to actually visit all the NPC's to learn about the game and the quests,no yellow markers over NPC heads nor on maps either.

It actually took a year or two for most of the game ideas to be figured out.Several years after that people were still finding new ways to play and do combat.

Every other game i have played,it is auto mode questing for gear and xp and i could eat,watch tv and do it at the same time,usually while hitting 1-3 hot bar icons.

Pvp is of course a totally different type game,but for PVE hands down FFXI.

I would say on a scale  of difficulty if FFXI was the 10 the next closest would be ummm Runes of magic at around a 3/4 on the difficulty scale.Reason is the imbue system took a lot to learn,without internet help of course.Every other PVE game is very bland and generic,almost nothing to figure out that is difficult.

sevitoth

UO

SWG

Shadowbane (guild politics, city building/sieges)

 

 

 

 

Indol

Anarchy Online without question. They don't make em like that anymore folks.

From classes (Fixer, Bureaucrat, Meta-Physicist, Nano Technician, Shade, Trader etc etc.), to items (insanely complex system, plus... grid armor!), to the locations (Shadowlands was insane and beautiful, so were the alien ship raids), to travel (the Fixer grid for fast travel in which you turned into a little inverted pyramid thing and zoomed around a giant blue virtual space to get to portals). I mean, just getting to some areas involved having to acquire various items to withstand the environments like special boots, goggles etc. The implant system, the buff system, the skill system, the player city wars (Notum Wars), alien raids... everything about it was insanely complex and fantastic.

I could go on and on, but basically the whole game was mind-blowing. I just got burnt out after about 7 years of playing it.  I might actually go back and play it again now that I think about it....

dgarbini

Second Life should probably be mentioned as well.  Although you can argue what type of game it is, it can be extremely complex if you go the 3d Modeling or Animation programming side, and it can be extremely deep if you go the esoteric/artistic side depending on your interests and viewpoints.  Though often its simply used as a visual chat room.

Rohn

Probably Ultima Online, EvE, and Mortal Online.

someforumguy

I would say Star Wars Galaxies and EVE. I loved Anarchy Online, but apart from the skill system, there was nothing deep about it. It might seem so, but imo mainly stems from lack of ingame information.

Lot of oldschool MMO's seemed deep, because they had mechanics that someone had to figure out so you could read them in guides. This was because most of the time they were just not intuitive and highly arbitrary. Knowing what mob you need to spawn for what gear item does not make a MMO deep. Or to use AO as example again, its crafting system was just about needing a good reference database.

Terranah

Precu SWG.  I still have a book around here somewhere with all my game notes for crafting, harvesting, etc. 

Hellidol

shadowbane, it had so much detail in building your character and in combat also fort/castle design it was really a amazing game. I am still surprised that no one has bought the rights and made SB2, they would make a ton of money off it for about as long as WoW kept its subs.

azzamasin

Without a doubt Asheron's Call.  There Is something special about your 1st MMO and seeing AC was my 1st I feel awfully special knowing I played 1 of the finest and most complex MMO's to ever grace this earth.  Wish Turbine or one/some of the original developers would crowd fund an identical game with modern graphics and combat system.

Evelknievel

Originally posted by bcbully

Wushu

EVE

 

I dabbled with Age of Wushu during it's alpha and beta days. What a different and brilliant game it was, however I didn't get hooked like some players on this website, but yeah, it had complexity and you had to figure out a strategy on which direction you were going to take your gaming experience.

I recently fell out of Star Trek Online and what a great experience I had coming back after 3 years, however after 6 months of game play it got repetitive once you got to 50 then the hamster wheel kicked in when grinding "Romulan marks, Omega marks and now they got a new faction one to add to them other 2 for weapons and gear".

The exploration in STO is not on a massive scale since each planet you can beam to is small and instanced, but the galaxy map is big on where to go, however when you get there, it's not so big. STO has a game within a game and kept me busy for 6 months, but I tired of it for now and hope to come back like I once did and enjoy the game again.

Axehilt

I don't really rank MMORPGs based on their complexity or intricacy.  Only depth matters, and while you need a certain amount of complexity to achieve a certain level of depth, it doesn't have to be all that much.

Conversely, games which spam complexity at their design recklessly tend to be rather shallow.  (And as a rule they will be shallower unless a greater than normal effort is made to balance all of the available options.)

So I suppose I didn't really play the deepest MMORPG I've tried a particularly long time, because it was a pretty garbage design.  Or maybe the deepest game actually was WOW, whose design elegance hasn't prevented it from being a game deep enough that a completely ridiculous number of people have spent years exploring it.  I don't know that I hold WOW to be magnificently deep, but I do know that the complexity of other MMORPGs often tricks players into believing those games are deep when they're actually rather shallow.

Evelknievel

Originally posted by Indol

Anarchy Online without question. They don't make em like that anymore folks.

From classes (Fixer, Bureaucrat, Meta-Physicist, Nano Technician, Shade, Trader etc etc.), to items (insanely complex system, plus... grid armor!), to the locations (Shadowlands was insane and beautiful, so were the alien ship raids), to travel (the Fixer grid for fast travel in which you turned into a little inverted pyramid thing and zoomed around a giant blue virtual space to get to portals). I mean, just getting to some areas involved having to acquire various items to withstand the environments like special boots, goggles etc. The implant system, the buff system, the skill system, the player city wars (Notum Wars), alien raids... everything about it was insanely complex and fantastic.

I could go on and on, but basically the whole game was mind-blowing. I just got burnt out after about 7 years of playing it.  I might actually go back and play it again now that I think about it....

 

Fantastic game in it's prime and went through the same experience as you did. Good stuff