Dark Ages

This was my first MMO  I lived and died by it over 3 years  

This has to be the only game I know to give the highest offensive AND highest defensive ability to one character class in a game with not only 5, but the ability to cross path.  I havent played recently though. Who knows whats been changed. If a single skill/item/enemy in the game changes it throws everything totally off balance.  It still amuses me that at adoration players spend their life savings on objects to increase their stats by 2 points. Ive never seen such a starved community

Its not supposed to be balanced.

The game is very simplistic in its mechanics.  Nothing spectacular there.  The uniqueness of it is in its level of player control.  You need other players for everything, even joining your chosen class.  Players make up the police force, legal system and the clergy.  You have to have support of other players (get elected as a respected citizen) and do certain things (mentor new players) to do certain things.   Granted, if you're not looking for trouble, you'll probably never cross paths with "the authorities" but it can be difficult to get other players to help you if you're not very outgoing or sociable.  

Note:  Dark Ages is extremely role-play sensitive.  Even your choice of name can greatly influence your ability to function well in society.  Certain non-role-play words are "translated" for you.  For instance, "afk" is translated to "dreaming."  "LOL" becomes "laughing."

If you are a solitary player, you probably won't get far in Dark Ages for several reasons.  The primary reason is that the bulk of the player base is made up of old-timers who are well entrenched and set in their ways.  Unless you are outgoing enough to pierce those walls, you'll probably feel rather alone.  I've registered, leveled a priest up to +11 and wandered around the various hunting areas and never got one offer to hunt.  That's just insane if priests are still as needed as they used to be. 

There are a couple classes that can solo pretty well at lower levels, but there will come a time when you need a group to hunt well.  The last time I played the game semi-seriously, I ended up registering two accounts so the characters on one account could "vote" for the characters on the other account in order to get the almost required "respected citizen" mark.  That's mostly because I'm not a very outgoing or sociable person.  I come to play, not really to socialize. 

In its defense, however, the first time I played the game years ago, I had a blast, and that was before all the new areas, master classes and sub-classes were introduced. 

I have played this game for 7 years(or simply since Deoch 12, sometime in 2000), so I can give some useful information about it.

Back when it was release, it was an extremely fun game, the subpath implementation brought a lot of your so-called "unbalance", which I agree. Dark Ages IS a completely unbalanced game, doubts? Compare a Monk/Warrior or a Wizard/Priest to a Pure Rogue, or even ANY Rogue subs(Rogue/Wiz, Rogue/Priest etc.), it's not even fair, both in PvE and PvP.

Speaking of PvP, Dark Ages' Player vs. Player enviroment is ridiculous, for some hardcore players, it's "the only fun thing" left in the game. Although, with such an unbalanced difference between the classes, most you'll ever see in the arenas are the famous meta classes, such as Monk/Warriors, Wizard/Priests, Warrior/Monks and Priest/Wizards, some may even add Pure Warriors(Which by the way, were empowered overtime, screwing old Warrior/Monks and other Warrior subs). If you play any other class other than those, chances are that you'll suck and not enjoy the PvP at all.

Let's talk about it's costumer service. One word for it: Lame. DA doesn't have active GM's, instead, they appointed some players as Rangers and Knights, who keep the justice within the game, and report anything unusual to DA Team.
The DA Team also takes a long time to answer player tickets(their method of costumer service), and most of times, their answer doesn't help at all. Standard answers such as: "We'll investigate further about it" makes you realize how much they care.
They also consider minor bug exploits that brings no benefits to player such as a "board abuse exploit" as a more threating hack than the famous speedhacking, thereof they can block an account permanently for the 1st cause, but not for the second(common sense, please).

The game doesn't have enough hunting areas for all its players, it's something around 5 hunting areas for an usual 800 online players. Go figure.

Role-playing? It's dead. It has been dead for at least three years now(maybe more). Times when role-playing was encouraged and required in some towns, are never coming back.

Player-run politics? Think of an corrupt kid with a lot of ego who has many friends to support him. That's Dark Ages politic system. Need I say more? No.

And last but not least, GROUP HUNTING. You only play Dark Ages up to insight(level) 60. Reason? You'll suffer a lot finding hunts after that, because everyone else is BEING LEECHED TO 99. Although recent updates made it harder to leech, it's far from ending. Group hunting has become a myth, 50% of the current players haven't group hunted until they mastered.

My personal rate? 2/10

Dark Ages takes a lot of time to make a decent character, and after you're finally done, you realize that you have spent a long time just to become another one among many(You'll never be unique).