I think it is the F2P that keeps alot of ppl around here away from many asian games. The community in these games is often worse than WoW...(now that is bad eh?)

While P2P is always nice cause everybody is on the same play level. N F2P is about who decided to dump the most money into the game will have an advantage hands down over others. Some F2P aren't totally dependent on the item mall however most are.

But when it comes to graphics I would put asian MMOs ahead of western. Perfect World is pobibly one of the nicest MMO graphics I have seen to date. LotR compares to it...however not when it comes to character customization or animations.

As for grind I don't think there is a huge difference between Asian or Western. 

in my experiene western MMOs seem to have more content and are more in depth. Asian ones seem to be about the fastest grind to get to high level.

That is interesting, because NCsoft is making Aion, an eastern mmorpg that might appeal to the western audience.

Perfect world has a lot of good features even compared to many western MMOs,its more of a western styled asian grinder.Most of them are very basic generic grindfests,with everyone looking practically identical and having very limited chopice in armor,weapons etc.

The worst type of asian F2P is the grindshop type,where youre limited to what you can do in game due to reliance on cash shop items.General cash shops are ok,the ones where you just buy visual enhancements or perhaps an xp scroll or something,but there are many out there where you actually rely on shop stuff to even be able to play.Rappelz is a good example of a grindshop game ,at higher levels your play is totally reliant on your wallet and you end up spending more than what you would on a monthly sub fee in some cases.

A lot of asian games have open pvp in them which brings in a lot of morons,though the same could be said for western MMOs too.

western>asian for the most part,though games such as Aion and PW are looking good and certainly moving on from the archtype asian MMO.

Asian MMo= focus on competition, gaining power, being someone powerful that others look up to

Western MMo= focus on how "fun" the play is, balancing the gameplay so that any alternate paths players want to take are equal to the main paths,

I would like to see a balance.

Personally, I wouild go with a  western MMO over an asian MMO.  Asian MMO's usually revolve around grinding for a long period of time if you want to have a good time in the game.  But the main reason that a lot of people play these MMO's is becuase they are free.  But in western MMO's, you are not needed to play as much to have a good time.  That is why I would go mwith a western MMO.

Originally posted by Arcken

in my experiene western MMOs seem to have more content and are more in depth. Asian ones seem to be about the fastest grind to get to high level.

Despite previous "East vs West" threads, morning boredom may have convinced me to put more thought this time around - I apologize ahead of time for the mindless chatter!

Ultimately, I decided to vote for Asian MMOs over my usual "Both: eastern or western as long as it's good".

Excluding non-subscription titles or MMOs that I have not played for more than three months, my list of favorite MMORPGs turned out to be: FFXI > WoW > RO > EVE > DAoC > L2 - 50/50 between eastern and western MMOs.

Recently, I came across a magazine issue covering Asian MMOs, and I saw that the Asian MMO market caters to a greater diversity of gamer preference - MHF is like an online Shadow of the Colossus! In addition, I am looking forward to Aion more than AoC or WAR in the future in terms of North American releases.