LF Casual-friendly Group/Role-based MMO/RPG for me and wife

Mephage

Before you flame me for mentioning non-MMO games please understand that I'm open to both MMORPGs and LAN RPGs, anything that can have 2+ players in the same map/world.

I've spent countless hours googling and browsing the forums for a game that my wife and I can play casually (2-4 hours/week). A bit about our preferences:

Wife - Hasn't played a lot of games but enjoys being a warrior type in hack and slash games such as Torchlight 2 or Titan Quest. Likes Top-down MOBA/RPG/RTS games such as Dota 2 and WC3. Only really interested in Fantasy style games. Prefers to only play for up to 2 hours at a time.

Me - Gaming for 13 years, played pretty much every genre. Most played games would be CS, WC3 and WoW. As far as RPGs are concerned, I'm only interested if I am playing a support and/or healer class.

A game that works perfectly for this combo of play styles is Titan Quest but as we've played through it a couple of times we want to try something else.

We're after a game with the following traits:

We can group together from the get go without everything becoming boringly ez mode.
Smooth gameplay and clean combat feel.
Graphics aren't a huge deal but would prefer at least WC3 level, any older and it just looks crap.
Fantasy style (i.e. not sci-fi or real life)
Plenty of combat from the get go.
Specific class roles such as healer/damage/tank (e.g. Warrior and Priest)
Ideally would have plenty of challenges (optional or not) such as 'elite' mob areas and/or dungeons (ideally from as low level as possible).

Here's a list of games I've played/researched and what was good/bad:

WoW - Played 2005-2011. I Quit ~2 years ago and I won't go back.
Guild Wars 1 - Played 2005-. Quite complicated for casual play. Considering a revisit but would prefer something fresh.
Guild Wars 2 - ~20 hours played. No dedicated support/healer class so doesn't interest me.
Titan Quest - Played through twice and was great but not interested in playing through a 3rd time.
Torchlight 2 - ~5 hours. No support class, got bored quickly.
Trine 2 - Played through. Fun but not much replayability.
Minecraft - Played a lot. Wife doesn't like first person and isn't interested in crafting/building.
Eve Online - Played ~2 months several years ago. Wife not interested in space games or the unqiue combat style.
Vanguard - ~3 hours played. Combat/Graphics/Movement very clunky and glitchy which put me off. Will give it another try if someone can convince me it's worth it.
Rift - ~20 minutes played, would prefer something more group orientated from the get go.
Path of Exile - Haven't played. No support/healer class. Looks very complicated.

EDIT:

Just a note, F2P would be ideal, second to that would be a one-time payment like GW2. Sub games aren't an option.

vtravi

I hate to say it but most mmos these days are not group based. You can group with your wife but you are grouping to kill soloable mobs.  I would suggest Lotro because of the skirmish system. Do can do instances as 1,2,3,6 or 12 people and it will scale to the amount of people. You can start those  at lvl 20.

Mephage

Interesting suggestion, I noticed that  to be able to do the skirmishes, you need to either sub or buy some in game currency. Ideally I'd prefer not to have to pay to experience the game.

What about a bit more of a grindy game? Are there any games with considerable grinds where you can choose the difficulty of the mobs that you grind?

EDIT: typo

Grimula

 Lord of the Rings online has some really good Roleplaying elements to the game

 

Pretty fun game if you have never tried it    People can play music in the game and make real songs  pretty awesome music system in game

I think you can get everything for free in the game...just need to work hard to get the points for expansions

Drakephire

I was going to suggest LOTRO as well. There are group quests once you sort of get out of the starter areas that cater to small groups. You can play for free through large parts of the game so you can try it out to see if it's for you.

 

Also, you could try Dungeon and Dragons Online. It is also f2p, and I've heard players are able to gain access to most extended content absolutely free through grinding if that's your desire.

Each dungeon has difficulty levels that you unlock as you complete them.  The dungeons are very modular and easy to access, so very little downtime. And each dungeon can be completed within an hour or two.

DDO has roles too, so you'd have a cleric (healer) and a fighter (tank), or rogue for DPS. One warning though, some dungeons on very high difficulty demand a rogue in order to disarm traps.

 

 

Grimula

DDO is fun also, but you need to buy some expansions or else you are locked out of Everything once you get higher level

Drakephire

Originally posted by Grimula
DDO is fun also, but you need to buy some expansions or else you are locked out of Everything once you get higher level

That's the underdark expac, isn't it? I know people were reaching max level of 20 (back in the day) w/o buying any xpacs. Underdark was the first payed xpac as far as I know.

nolic1

I would say try EQ2 or Lotro My wife and I played both together for a long time. In EQ2 I played a bard and she played a cleric we played to almost max together and my wife and I still to this day call EQ1, 2, and EQOA home. Lotro has alot to it you can grind out points that you can use to get content if you dont feel like paying but it will take some time to do also massive world there. There are many other games though look at the list here 90% are fantasy and are F2P and some are fun and require little fee input unless you do endgame raiding or PvP thats really when you have to open your wallet but most can be played to max for free.

Dirkin

From what you've listed, as far as MMOs go, I'd say your options are really EQ2, Vanguard, and maybe Lotro. Everything else is just pretty far from the baseline you've set.

 

I'm a VG player, so of course I'd love if you came back and joined us there, but the other two would probably fit okay as well. As far as VG is concerned though, if you can get past the clunky animations you mentioned (which I admit are a thing) then you'd be surprised at how much the game offers. It's group-centric with the more classic system, so there are the defined classes/roles that you are looking for, and they are done really really well. It's also not an ez-mode game, though they have softened it from where it was originally. There are open-world dungeons everywhere, large and small. At a casual pace, you won't lack for content for a long long time, especially if you like crafting or any of the extra stuff. Plus, as a tank and a healer you have the basis of a group right there, would make it easy.

 

Anyway, sorry for the plug, but I just like the game a lot and want it to keep growing. EQ2 would probably also be a good choice, and I have not played lotro but it seems similar as well.

Mephage

So the wife and I gave LOTRO a go last night. We ran in to problems from the get go - After installing the base client, the in-game downloader took 30 minutes for us to load in to the tutorial which felt very B grade. The combat during the tutorial felt pretty terrible so when we finished that and spent another 30 minutes downloading the next zone we gave up.

My wife hadn't played GW1 before so we started that up and managed to play for a couple of hours which was fun. I think we'll continue with GW1 until either of us get bored at which point we'll probably give Vanguard another go. LOTRO proved that it's unplayable unless you download the whole client upfront which is 17GB I don't have this month (I live in New Zealand where international data is expensive).