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Which one: WoW, LotR, AoC or WAR is for you?
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 22,991
Which one: WoW, LotR, AoC or WAR is for you?
I am going to look at what I consider the four best Fantasy MMO’s out: World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Age of Conan, Warhammer. I would recommend any of these games; so I am going to look at what they are best at so you may get a feel for which one is for you.
Best for Playing Good Guys: LotR, you feel you really are purer than driven snow, a paragon amongst heroes and heroines. WoW and WAR hold joint second place. AoC does not pander to good guys.
Best for Playing Bad Guys: WoW and WAR hold equal first place. LotR has evil guys set in a great skirmish zone but you are not developing a true character. AoC is more casual badass, amoralistic rather than the root of all evil.
Best for Story: WAR and LotR in joint first place, you have a feel of epic events which you are part of. LotR is the better story, hell you don’t write better than Tolkien; WAR has a more personal story, it feels more like you are the centre of the tale and the Tome really stands out. WoW squeezing ahead of AoC in joint second place.
Best for Atmosphere: Here I am asking, do the graphics and sound convey what the designers wanted? AoC in first place by a long chalk, not just the graphics, but the audio and music. LotR ahead of WAR in second place. WoW now looking a bit dated in third place.
Best for Crafting: WoW and LotR jointly in a class of there own, all the bells and whistles a crafter loves. AoC in second place, crafting alright, but limited and not thought through. WAR in third place, they dodged the quest reward versus crafted problem by having no crafted armour or weapons, a cop out. But the crafting they have is decent just way too limited.
Best for Character Design and Looks: AoC has the most options for character design but limited items to wear, but still makes it to first place. LotR in second place with a decent number of options and lots of things to wear including items that just appear to be worn but are not your ‘real’ gear; if clothes are more important to you than your avatar you might put LotR in joint first place. WoW in third place. WAR has few options in design and you often pick up items which don’t actually change what you look like when worn.
Best for Realm v Realm: WAR in a firm first place, they did design the game for this after all. WoW in second place, a true feel of realm versus realm but not implemented well. LotR third, with its skirmish zone. AoC not really a RvR game.
Best for PvP: Bear in mind that the type of server you play on has more effect on PvP than what game you play. AoC and WAR in joint first place. WoW in second place, LotR not dipping its toe in PvP outside its RvR skirmish zone.
Best for Guild versus Guild: AoC in a strong first place being designed for it. WAR and WoW in second place as I guess it’s possible to just have guild fights with some management. LotR does not venture here.
Best for Power/Abilities Specialization: WoW nosing ahead of AoC in joint first place with their well thought out tree structure pick systems. WAR in second place with its rather simplistic tree paths. LotR in third place with its picked specializations, not making you feel your guy is much different to another of the same class.
Best for Combat: AOC with its multipress moves, and no need for melee to target your opponent and just looking a lot better. LotR nosing ahead of WoW for joint second place, both having some more variation in options than AoC but not enough to make a difference. WAR’s standard 2 second timer and limited types of powers put it in third place.
Best for Roleplaying: All these games have good roleplay servers, the server and its players being far more important than the game itself.
Best for Socialising: LotR and WoW in joint first place for areas to socialise in and chat tools. AoC strikes a MMO average second place. WAR brings up the rear in third, at least until zone chat is implemented, but there are good RvR reasons not to have zone chat, so that’s problematic.
Best for Guilds: AoC in first place for a great guild hall (Keep). LotR in second place for its nice guild hall, those of you who like your own home would put LotR in first place here. WAR in third place with some nice guild management tools. WoW in forth place.
Best for Exploring. WoW and LotR take joint first place here. Wide open zones, well themed and with a something new round every corner. AoC ahead of WAR in second place, both these games feel restricted; you are forced to take a pre approved path. WAR’s greatest strength, it’s RvR is again its greatest weakness, nearly all the places you go are at war or preparing for war in some form or another.
Best for Raiding. LotR and AoC in joint first place. LotR has the most intelligent raiding I have seen, but your choice of raids is very limited. AoC has simplistically thought out raid dungeons, but the edition of the Epic level on any zone adds great variety. WoW in third place, big on raids, decent variety. WAR in third place, raiding is extremely limited.
Best for Influencing the World. This is something of an illusion in any MMO that even tries to implement it. WAR takes the lead with its sense of gain and loss in RvR. The rest are all in second place: AoC’s shifting guild balance effects the border zones, WoW and LotR have story like changes to their worlds.
I think that covers it, sorry if I missed out your favourite fantasy MMO but I can’t play them all! Interested in your take if you have played some of these.
Comments
Between those four games, I'd say you ranked them exactly how I would.
The only thing I would change is to put WAR ahead of LOTRO for story. Just personal opinion, but I am well versed in Tolkien mythology and found the MMO a little too shallow. They did a very good job with cinematics and quests, no doubt about it, but I lost interest after a while, found myself too bored and started skipping all the quest texts--something I normally hate doing.. I went into WAR with only a basic understanding of the lore and have been amazed by the writing so far. Every chapter has an interesting story in the Tome, every Public Quest, every quest, every main character, every beast, everything. There is just so much to read and learn, and most of it is very, very well written. I would place AoC and WoW in third and fourth, respectively.
Otherwise I completely agree with you. (:
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV
I'm with you to...
And Narshe, Im versed with the Warhammer lore and I would declare it a tie, both games go off the lore a bit. I didnt expect anything else, is hard to keep to the lore 100% in a game.
I find those listing and ranks to be well researched and thought out, so I agree.
I just wish someone would take all the good things from all those games, put it in a Sci-Fi theme, and release it.
Wishfull thinking? Ya.
I would say for now AoC, IF they would fix everything the game is amazing and probably has a strong lasting lore if they stuck to it and fixed the game.
But if I had to pick I'd most definitely go with Lotro.
I agree with the first part of this - there's is just something about LOTRO, despite all the shine and the obvious effort that's gone into it, it's still kinda boring or something. It seems to lack variety or maybe it's depth, I don't know. Just know that I get fed up very quickly in there - maybe it's too many years in WoW, but I keep hoping for a big purple turtle or an impossibly large double-edged sword to inject a bit of fun into the thing! Codemasters put a lot of effort in here and full credit to them, but I think something's missing, just can't pin it down. Odd, maybe it's a Codemasters thing, because I feel the same about Stormwind and I love D&D.
very well ranked for those 4 game's i'd say.
I would disagree with them being the top 4 fantasy games but that's not for this thread
none there all themepark mmo's.
And your opinion about whats best thats rather personal, most you say is by far not best, and not even true also but hey what can i say its what you like thats fine with me:)
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
I really have to disagree with LOTRO. People say it's friendly and a lot of socializing and what not, but for new players, that's just not true. Maybe all the 50th levels all hang out someplace I don't know about, but people rarely talk, people aren't especially friendly to new people, kinships/guilds are incredibly insular and stuck up (very strict on recruiting, only do fellowships with their own members, etc). Very elitist, really.
And this is coming from someone who had previously been playing Sword of the New World, a game that is notorious quiet (because most people are AFKing).
Also, you actually do write better than Tolkien. He was a horrible, horrible writer. He was a great world-builder, which makes his books special (and the game). But his writing style was just horrible. (This is a common complaint about his stuff from critics, so it's not just me.)
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
You forgot:
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Yeah I found the same thing...... Like a previous poster said I also stopped reading quests after awhile in LOTRO....The number of quests just felt overwhelming and got very boring later in the game......It also felt like I was fighting the same monsters over and over and over and getting almost nothing for killing alot of them......I played for 2 months before quitting then havent logged in since (had a 6 month sub).......
Good attempt by the OP but I feel it breaks down in several areas. The article is inconsistent as in some places it goes into great detail and in others it does not. Almost as if he got tired of writing.
Finally, based on the number of 1st place votes the OPs favorite game is Age of Conan...
yeah, no. LOTRO has one of the best, most helpfull communitys of any game. Its only thies that come in bitching and complaning, or being needey, OR talk about how others games are better, that get shuned.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
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How are you?" -Me
Which one: WoW, LotR, AoC or WAR is for you?
My comments in Red. Also note that some of these things are not neccassarily the result of the developers, but just how things 'panned' out
I am going to look at what I consider the four best Fantasy MMO’s out: World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Age of Conan, Warhammer. I would recommend any of these games; so I am going to look at what they are best at so you may get a feel for which one is for you.
Best for Playing Good Guys: LotR, you feel you really are purer than driven snow, a paragon amongst heroes and heroines. WoW and WAR hold joint second place. AoC does not pander to good guys.
Best for Playing Bad Guys: WoW and WAR hold equal first place. LotR has evil guys set in a great skirmish zone but you are not developing a true character. AoC is more casual badass, amoralistic rather than the root of all evil.
Best for Story: WAR and LotR in joint first place, you have a feel of epic events which you are part of. LotR is the better story, hell you don’t write better than Tolkien; WAR has a more personal story, it feels more like you are the centre of the tale and the Tome really stands out. AoC and WoW joint second place. Agreed, one of the best things about LoTRO and Warhammer is that they place you IN the story. WOW up until this point kinda puts you on top of the story. You see it developing, but you don't feel like a part of it. AOC really has no overall story
Best for Atmosphere: Here I am asking, do the graphics and sound convey what the designers wanted? AoC in first place by a long chalk, not just the graphics, but the audio and music. LotR and WAR in second place. WoW now looking a bit dated in third place. Agreed, although I would push LoTRO up almost tied with AOC and ahead of Warhammer.
Best for Crafting: WoW and LotR jointly, all the bells and whistles a crafter loves. AoC in second place, crafting alright, but limited and not thought through. WAR in third place, they dodged the quest reward versus crafted problem by having no crafted armour or weapons, a cop out. But the crafting they have is decent just way too limited. Haves and Have-nots. WOW and LoTRO have really good crafting systems, AOC and Warhammer have a crafting system that you are better off just skipping. The difference between the haves and the have-nots is HUGE in this catagory. Its hard to say 1,2,3,4 in this catagory.. it's more like saying 1,1..... 20,20
Best for Character Design and Looks: AoC has the most options for character design but limited items to wear, but still makes it to first place. LotR in second place with a decent number of options and lots of things to wear including items that just appear to be worn but are not your ‘real’ gear. WoW in third place. WAR has few options in design and you often pick up items which don’t actually change what you look like when worn. I really disagree with you on this one. WOW and LotRO both a ton of unique customization (especially with wearables). In AOC (and to a lesser extent in Warhammer), your character goes from wearing brown rags with 5 holes, to wearing brown rages with 4 holes. You save a city, and your reward is a piece of clothing that makes you look like a street begger. Warhammer gets props for having armor dying
Best for Realm v Realm: WAR in a firm first place, they did design the game for this after all. WoW in second place, a true feel of realm versus realm but not implemented well. LotR third, with its skirmish zone. AoC not really a RvR game. This is an iffy one depending on your server. In Warhammer, probably 3/4's of the servers are so unbalanced that there is no RvR at all. One site completely dominates and the only real pvp that happens is in scenarios. In WOW, they have blurred the lines between RvR. You end up fighting your own faction in Arenas and the battlegrounds don't affect anything at all. This 'may' be making a comback if Lake Wintergrasp is successful... it will be horde vs alliance that has server-wide implications. But as the game is now.. horde vs alliance is a storytelling device, not a gameplay mechanism.
Best for PvP: Bear in mind that the type of server you play on has more effect on PvP than what game you play. AoC nosing ahead of WAR in joint first place. WoW in second place, LotR not dipping its toe in PvP outside its RvR skirmish zone. I'm not sure what to do with 'PvP'. Pvp in AOC is terrible because it's mindless with no implications. The recent patch really only adds a 'honor' type mechanism that WOW has(more killing = more gear). Warhammer is 'supposedly' pvp, but most of the pvp that happens is inside scenarios, which are just smaller versions of the worst battlegrounds in WOW (AB and WSG). I think IF you happen to be on the 'full/full" servers of warhammer, you have the best pvp of any game, but 3/4's of the Warhammer servers probably have 'worse' pvp than even WOW because of population imbalances.
Best for Guild versus Guild: AoC in a strong first place being designed for it. WAR and WoW in second place as I guess it’s possible to just have guild fights with some management. LotR does not venture here. In a theoretical sense, you are correct that AOC SHOULD have the best guild vs guild. But the fact that most servers are severely underpopulated and only have 1 large guild on each server, really keeps there from being any true Guild vs Guild battles.
Best for Power/Abilities Specialization: WoW nosing ahead of AoC in joint first place with their well thought out tree structure pick systems. WAR in second place with its rather simplistic tree paths. LotR in third place with its picked specializations, not making you feel your guy is much different to another of the same class. Yeah, once you say WOW has 20ish classes rather then 9 classes, there really isn't much customization in any game. Warhammer has more 'classes'.. but many of the classes are very similar, much more similar than say a Feral druid or a Moonkin Druid (which counts as 1 class, but is nearly completely different playstyles). While Warhammer has a much simplier tree system.. the class trees in WOW really don't allow you much room to be different (90% of talents are taken by everyone who goes into that tree). I can't judge AOC because both classes I played had very broken skills.
Best for Combat: AOC with its multipress moves, and no need for melee to target your opponent and just looking a lot better. LotR nosing ahead of WoW for joint second place, both having some more variation in options than AoC but not enough to make a difference. WAR’s standard 2 second timer and limited types of powers put it in third place. AOC is different than the others, but I wouldn't say better. In order to do something in AOC, you have to press 3 buttons in sequence.. in the other games, 1 button will fire the action. I just never bought into the AOC combat. it sounded neat on paper, but ingame it felt unimpressive. Not having to target in AOC was also different.. more like a console game. But it kinda took the whole 'interactive combat' thing backwards. They made combat require more buttons, but not having to target anything just meant you spameed buttons even more mindlessly than other games. I would say WOW and LotRO are the same and the best.. AOC is behind them, but is ok if you like that sort of thing.. Warhammer is the big loser in this catagory. Combat is clunky, unresponsive and just 'not fun'.
Best for Roleplaying: All these games have good roleplay servers, the server and its players being far more important than the game itself.
Best for Socialising: LotR in first place for areas to socialise in, the rest in joint second place with not much between them. I think you missed a couple big features in this one. The first being the chat system and the features they include. Again, warhammer is the big loser here. It's chat system is terrible and there is no zone wide chat. The only people you can talk to are people in a very close area around you, and even then the chat system is terribly outdated. WOW has a ton of features that make it superior to other games.. but mostly it's just very intuitive. In warhammer, if you don't see players, you would never know other people are playing at all. LotRO and WOW are good, AOC is functional, Warhammer is terrible. If you like the 'fluff' stuff like linking quests, items etc then WOW is awesome. It's also great at blocking gold spammer and ignoring people.
Best for Guilds: AoC in first place for a great guild hall (Keep). LotR in second place for its nice guild hall, those of you who like your own home would put LotR in first place here. WAR in third place with some nice guild management tools. WoW in forth place. Agreed here
I think that covers it, sorry if I missed out your favourite fantasy MMO but I can’t play them all! Interested in your take if you have played some of these.
Exploring.. now this is really hard to decide. I have to say, I've played all four games, and all of them have amazing virtual worlds.
I'm the type of gamer who literally explores the world (or zones) from top to bottom and everywhere in between just to see what's there, For me it's a tie between all four. Even with its old and worn graphics, Azeroth is still an incredible world to explore for a fresh pair of eyes. Hyboria had some of the best graphics in an MMO to date, and places like Cimmeria are unforgettable for me. With high praise for graphics aswell, I think Turbine did an excellent job depicting Middle-Earth and some of the areas were incredible. WAR has thousands upon thousands of running NPC scripts, where the NPCs have conversations which I love to read and watch. The capital cities are unlike any city I've seen in an MMO, there's just so much going on. And the tome of knowledge makes exploring really worthwhile, with XP and tome articles and all sorts of goodies. It's not as graphically impressive as AoC or LOTRO (and infact a little bland in some areas), but I really like the art design and the world overall.
Raiding.. I think we all know the answer to this. AoC and LOTRO have some fun raids, but can't compare to WoW's in my opinion. (:
World Influence.. this is pretty easy too. Warhammer is based around world domination, so many things that you do influences the world in some way, whether it's the realm war or advancing the capital cities. All three of the other games are focused around you and your character (or your guild), with the world as a backround and little more. Influence is very little.
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV
I have added some categorises, thank you rikilii:
Best for Exploring. WoW and LotR take joint first place here. Wide open zones, well themed and with a something new round every corner. AoC ahead of WAR in second place, both these games feel restricted; you are forced to take a pre approved path. WAR’s greatest strength, it’s RvR is again its greatest weakness, nearly all the places you go are at war or preparing for war in some form or another.
Best for Raiding. LotR and AoC in joint first place. LotR has the most intelligent raiding I have seen, but your choice of raids is very limited. AoC has simplistically thought out raid dungeons, but the edition of the Epic level on any zone adds great variety. WoW in third place, big on raids, decent variety. WAR in third place, raiding is extremely limited.
Best for Influencing the World. This is something of an illusion in any MMO that even tries to implement it. WAR takes the lead with its sense of gain and loss in RvR. The rest are all in second place: AoC’s shifting guild balance effects the border zones, WoW and LotR have story like changes to their worlds.
A few comments that have made be change my mind by Azrile have prompted me to update my OP accordingly, good insights there mate. I won’t go into were we differ for example, he needs a reason to PvP, I just look for more fun while doing it, that’s a very personnel distinction.
Well as to the person who felt Tolkien was a horrible writer, how many of your favourite authors are as successful in print and film?
Tolkiens writing is not very modern, he does not pay as much attention to character and dialogue like modern authors do. That’s a difference in style of writing, for him world background and plot were more important, which is why it’s especially good for a MMO.
No doubt in fifty years time people will be complaining that <insert your favourite modern fantasy author here> did not emote his characters enough, explore their feelings and have the witty ‘two word one liners’ that will be in vogue then.
Such a shame you didnt put EQ2 into this.
May I pick City of EverQuest somewhere? :P
Honestly, I didn't play any of these 4 games more than 1 day, they where just aggravating me that much. CoX is the game I played the longer...and EQ the 2nd longer. Haven't played a MMO extansively for 1-2 years ( I did play CoX casually kinda 8 months ago or so), I dunno...and I don't really care. Waiting for the good game to hit the shelves.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Tolkien a horrible writer???I think there would be millions who disagree with you.
Horrible writer, no, dry and not that interesting, yep, that describes my thoughts on it. I read a lot, and have read some of my book series 3 and 4 times through. Yet somehow, while I did manage to read through 4 of his works, they didn't inspire me enough to even read them a 2nd time. Maybe its because I'm more of a Sci Fi reader than fantasy.
But back on topic. I think OP's assessment is pretty fair regarding the 4 games he chose to compare, sure, he missed a few, but who has the time to compare the top 10 or 20 fantasy MMO's of all time, would take weeks.
Now which one's for me, sadly, while I've tried them all, none of them provide what I need, because they lack the one factor which the OP went on to state was an illusion, which is player influence on the world.
I play EVE, and unless you've played a game like it (UO, Shadowbane) you just don't understand how much a player can influence a game, and how much that adds to the gameplay.
In EVE I can literally put together a corp, alliance, empire that could dominate the whole of 0.0 space, assuming I have the talent to pull it off. (and there are currently players hard at work trying to achieve that goal)
Even in the safe Empire space, players can use the WAR Dec feature to intimidate and plunder even the most powerful of foes, and terrorize the pve population and force them into submission. You can literally force another corporation or alliance to disband by your actions, and this is a powerful influence in the how the game plays.
But I digress, right now, there really isn't a fantasy MMO out there that has what I need, I'll be waiting for one of the new ones, DFO, Mortal Online etc, to fulfil my need for a more interactive world that I'll really feel a part of.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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