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Looking for MMO suggestions
Vigiliance
Member UncommonPosts: 213
I have currently chosen to get back into mmo's to use a bit of my excess free time to enjoy an old hobby and I am looking for suggestions from your expertise and expierence. While I know our tastes in games will differ naturally I am going to post some criteria and how important is to me with a simple 1-10 system so you can better assist me 
.
First off the following MMO's are excluded from this conversation for me as I have played them to death in earlier years or found some insurrmountable flaws in the game design. They are as follows: Darkfall Online, WoW, and Warhammer.
Criteria:
Progression: (10)
This is very important to me as I don't want the idea of progressing in the game before max level or before being able to participate in "end or late game" as boring and a mandate to getting to the meat of the game. All parts of the game should be fun.
i don't have a particular preference for levels or skill progression however ...I am looking for a variety of enjoyable things to do while progressing. Lets take the classic level system first.
Crafting granting expierence in either the crafting ofan item and/or the gathering of materials. Can also consider grinding mobs for said materials as expierence as well.
PvP Shennagians should I choose to do them should offer me some progression whether in the form of ingame currency or expierence.
Quests: although quests in MMO's are often just oh gather X or kil X of these, I do enjoy lore and actually read the quest log so if you know a game with good questing and lore please feel free to share it with me.
Grinding collectibles/achievements: While I was never a big fan of these in the past I really like the idea of them now, they expand the life of the game and are enjoyable for completionists like my self
If Its a skill progression like lets say darkfall I just want a long list of skills that can all be useful in the lifespan of my characters career.
Anything else that you have seen nothing is TLDR (Be as detailed as possible)...
if you dont want to read much, dont go on a forum.
Innovative crafting system: (7)
Anything you think that makes the crafting system great and outside the norm, I love doing trade skills and crafting in MMO's please be as descriptive as possible here.
I really like the idea of crafting your own gear while progressing.
Community (8)
Are people alive here, is everyone just a douche bag? A mmo can be the greatest game in the world but if no is there to share it with you or a terrible guild system then why play?
The games I play dont have to have the most players online at all times or even peak times, as long as there are enough people online to facilitate the idea that when i go somewhere it wont look like a ghost town.
PVP (6)
This really has my lowest expectations of all my criteria I just want a fun atlernative to pve, I am not worried so much about class balance I know its a terribly hard thing to balance, just enough that the pvp is accessible and that world pvp is an option without being griefed for an enternity...
Character customization(9)
I want an mmo that has good amount of depth when it comes to character customization, I want to make choices, i hate the wow system where you pretty much fill out your entire talent tree and given choices between maybe 5-6 different talents in the end run. It doesn't have to be as innovative as Rift where you can cross spec into different roles but give me lots of meaningful choices...
So thanks for reading this far, any ideas?
*Edited for formatting and making it less of an eye sore.
Comments
Others may flame me. But Here goes: Try out Rift.
Progression:
I'm not level 50, but have enjoyed closing rifts, fighting invasions, etc. from the very beginning. I'm currently lvl 30. I'm not exactly sure how the "endgame" is, but I suspect that it is alot like WOW when it comes to PVP matches, and raiding for loot.
Innovative crafting system: (7)
This area is increadibly weak. It is very vanilla, and makes WOW seem deep by comparison. That being said, you can get any 3 tradeskills (counting gathering) and each completion of a specific thing (item or gathering node) will net you skill points in the particular skill used. Its not a heavy grinding system, you can expect to maintain your own level of equipment with minimal pain as you level.
Community (8)
Mixed bag here. So far people are friendly. The servers are not empty. Though since the game is new, there are plenty of haters. The forums are full of the standard PVP/PVE wars.
PVP (6)
No world PVP in the standard game. PVP servers exist, which has Open PVP in "Contested Regions" (Basically zones that are not the starting zones). There is warfront PVP, very similar to WOW's Battlegrounds. Good entertainment. They only have 4 maps. You can, however, level up while playing them.
Character customization(9)
Its very hard to beat Rifts Customization ability. You choose your archtype, (Rogue, Mage, Cleric, Warrior). Each of which has 9 available souls (8 standard and 1 "PVP" soul). Each soul is basically a class in and of itself. You can choose up to 3 of them and distribute points (as in WOW's talent trees) freely between those 3. You unlock abilities in souls by spending points in its corresponding trees. Core abilities are locked when a certain number of points have been spent in the tree.
On top of that, you can have up to 4 "Roles" which is a separate allocation of 3 souls (Which can over-lap) that you can distribute points in (wholly separate from the other roles.)
My own character has 2 roles that I use. Both of which are primarily focused on a single soul. The first is a BladeDancer, which I find fun. I added just a few points of Marksman to give me the ability to pull from range. I use this set up when out in the world doing quests and other solo stuff. My other Role I use is Straight Marksman. I use this for playing in a party, and running through dungeons. It allows me to stand back and do DPS from a distance without having to chase a mob every time it changes aggro.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Best 2 games i've played in the last 6 months:
DCUO and RIFT.
I can whole-heartedly recommend both of these, but looking at your preferences I'd say you'd probably prefer RIFT. There's nothing incredibly innovative here, but if you enjoyed WOW and WAR, you'll probably enjoy RIFT. The skill system may be a bit lacking after your exposure to the skill system in Darkfall, but the soul system does offer a little more flexibility in character creation than WOW or WAR did.
DCUO=????
DC Universe Online...?
For DC universe. I've tried other types of content as well, including player-versus-player battles. Your introduction to PVP play has you and your teammates taking the roles of iconic characters and capturing key points while fending off an opposing team. I prefer using my own characters, however, since I am beginning to develop a bond with them, as I would in any online RPG, and have had more fun in the arena as a result. The PVP is flashy and enjoyable, though I haven't played enough of it to know if it has lasting appeal or if it's balanced particularly well. I've also taken part in alerts, which are extended player-versus-environment team missions. My first alert's end boss took some time to defeat, but that was due more to an inflated health bar than to an actual challenge. Most of the PVE content I've seen has been rather easy, which has led to a certain sense of shallowness.
I'll probbably end up trying rift for the customization factor and see how that turns out plus its got a long free trial offer, I heard something like 30 months?! Not sure if thats a typo.
Probably a typo, even 30 days for a free trial seems quite long.
I'd suggest looking into Lord of the Rings Online. It's a bit standard in the theme-park style game, but the quests have pretty good stories behind them in general. There's a lot of character progression which ties into doing those "achievement" style unlocks that you mentioned you've grown fond of.
You can choose what piece of armor to display on your character to customize your appearance as well as customize your characters traits to fit how you play. Customization isn't as high as some games, but for most newer games it's pretty high in both character progression and appearance.
Crafting is the area that may turn you off, I personally don't mind it but it's the generic gather/mass produce to level up style. It's got a little bit of a twist with potential critical success recipes (better quality items or more mats) and there's a lot of useful items that can be made.
The community is where it really shines. It's absolutely top notch. I just started and rolled on Brandywine, which is considered to be the rowdy but most populated server, and I've seen a ton of nice and helpful people. They go out of their way to help you and it's really re-inspired me to do the same like the older MMO days.
There's not much in the way of PvP. It's only Monster Play, where players can roll a monster character and fight against other players in Ettenmoors. They're supposidly expanding upon this to be at least more than one zone sometime down the road, but I'm not entirely sure. It's fun, but an afterthought. The game makes up for it with an absolutely amazing quality PvE experience though. I ran the first instance, The Great Barrows, and it was no walk in the park. Each of the three boss encounters were far more indepth than almost any other game's "first group content" area that I've seen.
It may or may not be what you're looking for, but the endless free trial allows you to be the judge of that for free. I never thought I'd be playing it, but it's improved quite a bit since the beta/release back in 07 and I'm having a great time.