Please help with a recommendation for veteran

HiveFjord

Greetings.

First, my background.  I played Everquest from launch to the end of Scars of Velious.  I took a break, and then played WoW from launch to end of burning crusade.  I took a break again, hopped back in for Cataclysm, and then stopped once Rift came out.  I played Rift to the end-content, and then decided to stop because I did not have enough time to dedicate to hard-core raiding.

 

My wife has recently agreed to start playing an MMORPG with me, and I am overly enthusiastic.  I am looking to play a game that is primarily PVE driven, sandboxy (like EQ1), has HIGH level of difficulty, and has interesting crafting .  I also want a game that has minimal instancing, and am willing to do a subscription based payment.

 

Games I have looked at:

EQ progression server --- I am pretty psyched about this, but I am wary after reading of all of the hacking and botting.

Vanguard -- Looks great, but cautious about the low population and lack of development.

Mortal Online -- Looks fun, but seems like they are having serious problems atm

 

Games I have not looked at in detail but am open to:

EQ2

LOTRO

Aion

 

While theoretically I should just wait for ArcheAge/TSW, I have the itch and want to start playing soon.

zeowyrm

I would heartily recommend LOTRO, but keep in mind that it's not overly sandbox.  I duo it with my wife all the time.  

HiveFjord

Thanks for the reply!  I'll definitely check it out.

jezvin

I would try ffxi if you can learn the controls because they are slightly different than other MMOs.

HiveFjord

Is FFXI instanced?

Rotak

Note: You should verify everything I say, as I don't really know what I'm talking about.

 

Have you checked out Fallen Earth? There has been some very recent dev changes (GamerFirst or whoever has taken over, will be going F2P, plan on addressing combat) that could be good or bad. It's a Sandbox that seems to be fairly challenging so far, I've barely gotten into the crafting but it seems different than other games and it's a very important part of FE. I've been pleasantly surprised with the number of people in game at all hours, again, I'm still in a newbie area though.  It's a post-apocalyptic setting, which to me is a bit of a downer, and IMO the graphics aren't the most pleasing - but there is nothing inherently wrong, that's just my personal view (probably related to the setting).

 

Vanguard is a bucket of fun. It's a great game now. It's also a ghosttown. This game would be my first choice if it could ever fill up a server... fear the disastrous launch.

Snesso

Regarding FFXI: You will rarely enter istanced zones while leveling, only a handful of group missions IIRC, but to level up you HAD to form groups with other people, and it was really slow and grindy. also there were almost no quests at all, nothing like WoW or the usual MMO where you pretty much only level up with quests, there were only a handful and they didn't even give you experience. That was a few years ago, and from what I've read they changed quite a lot of stuff, so they may have added the possibility to level up alone or in a duo/etc. and it should be much faster. Keep in mind that the game is pretty old, with lots of expansions so there is a lot of stuff to catch up with if you want to follow the story missions, and you will probably have an hard time finding groups to complete them. PvP was almost inexistent aside from a little PvP mode called Ballista, but then again they probably added more stuff. The crafting had a huge role, and it was really hard and tedious, but gave you a huge sense of accomplishment when you managed to reach high levels / craft special items.

The game itself was great, the story, music, the overall feel was one of the best I've ever experienced, and I don't think there will be something to beat it anytime soon.

You could also try with FFXIV, that is basically FFXI with shiny new graphics, even though the guys at Square did some pretty huge mistakes and had an awful game start. I tried it for about a month and it felt like an FFXI beta with better graphics, but they DID make it better in recent patches.