For me, the first impression is vital.  Right after I leave character creation, and punch that first mob in the face, I want to be thinking, "haha! take that!" you know?  Seems like half the MMOs out there screw this up.  I get some lacklaster first attack that feels like a automatic spitball shooter or something, somehow the mob keels over anyhow, and I feel like playing something else.  Yeah, maybe the game will get better if I keep at it, but I really don't care that much.  I've got better things to do with my life than persevere at games that just aren't much fun, right off the bat.

Doesn't help when the combat mechanics don't connect my character's attacks to my button-mashing very well.  Like oldschool auto-attack, where I just turn attack on, and my character starts doing his own thing.  Maybe this is just personal preference, but I want to feel like when I click the punch button, my character punches.

Of the latest crop of MMOs coming out in the next month or two, anyone have any suggestions?  Which ones make the wack-a-mole thing fun, and which can't even get that right?

CoX was fun right off that bat if you immediately found a group and cranked the difficulty way up, even though you only had two skills.

They key points here are group play, and adjustable difficulty levels. So, perhaps Champions, I don't know I haven't played it.

I agree about CoX, which is why I thought Champions would be my best bet, too.  But no, CO feels like the complete opposite, as far as combat mechanics go.  I wish it were more like CoX2, but the gameplay feels a lot different, and not in a good way.  I'm not liking it much at all.  Wondering what to try next.

Even though Aion is based on the auto-attack, which it has to be to retain any playability with "massive" numbers of players on screen at once, it retains that WOW feel of instant feedback.  So, like WOW, it combines the oldschool autoattack with lots of vital special attacks.  Sadly the first impression makes the game pathetically easy.  Its supposed to get harder later on, but you can still grind away solo to max.

In order to have manual attacking all the time, heavy use of instances is needed, IF the developer actually cares about playability that is.  A few MMOs out there might have a more action game feel to them, but its heavily instanced OR it just plays like hell when lag & latency kicks in.   A compromise is still necessary until we're all on Fiber=)
 

Both Champions Online and AION will be solid games.
Champions has great PVE, but PvP is lacking.
AION has very solid PVE and PvP but is very asian. So you will need to get in touch with your inner Korean.

Aions the best MMO I've played in years, if your into pvp of course. Get over that 20+ hump and the game is probly the best on the market imo. Don't let the first 1-15ish levels fool you, Aion gets much much better.

It's like that with virtually any game with me; if I don't garner some sort of attachment to the game within the first 10 minutes being in play I'm pretty much going to leave at some point.

I suppose with some MMO's it could be said that they really don't start until a certain level or it picks up after level "such and such" but that's an excuse for poor game design. Good MMO's make your first moments in the game seem important, build the story, introduce you to your class / race / environment / etc.

If it's engaging and well done it will hopefully draw you into the mechanics, deeper into the world and make up for any negative points you might encounter. The wack-a-mole game being a potential primary dissapointment.

Let's face it; at this point MMO's have a similar guideline. You have stats that increase your skill (whether it be level based or skill based archtype the idea is similar) and you run after critters to bump over the head over and over again in a hope to increase your level or skill either by the act of combat or mission accomplishment. That pretty much sums up the whole thing.

Some end goals differ here and there, pvp / raiding / social / etc, but there's not a whole heck of a lot of movement from that central equation with new games. What's important is the fluff in between and how it changes your experience. Hopefully for the better.

I'm not sure about Champions yet.

Granted, I haven't played it much .. just an hour or two in the open beta .. but my first impression was a decided "meh".

Maybe it's just the type of character I chose; I went for a gadget-guy with ranged combat, but my first hour of kills was incredibly repetitive .. target mob, hold down 2 for a few seconds 'til I finished "chargin' up mah lazor" resulting in a pretty much instant kill on normal mobs the majority of the time. The movement all felt rather inflexible too.

The active blocking is a bit more nifty; being able to reduce incoming damage from a big attack by blocking at the right time did add a slightly more interesting element to the combat, but those big attacks are so few and far between that the mechanic just feels rather underused.

Not a huge fan of the graphics either. Once the servers come back up, I'll try out a different type of character and see if that makes a difference to how the gameplay feels.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

I'm not sure about Champions yet.

Granted, I haven't played it much .. just an hour or two in the open beta .. but my first impression was a decided "meh".

Maybe it's just the type of character I chose; I went for a gadget-guy with ranged combat, but my first hour of kills was incredibly repetitive .. target mob, hold down 2 for a few seconds 'til I finished "chargin' up mah lazor" resulting in a pretty much instant kill on normal mobs the majority of the time. The movement all felt rather inflexible too.

The active blocking is a bit more nifty; being able to reduce incoming damage from a big attack by blocking at the right time did add a slightly more interesting element to the combat, but those big attacks are so few and far between that the mechanic just feels rather underused.

Not a huge fan of the graphics either. Once the servers come back up, I'll try out a different type of character and see if that makes a difference to how the gameplay feels.

I think it has something top do with the engine.  Have you noticed that when your character kicks a small piece of rubble, it just floats away, like a weightless chunk of ice?  The graphics, the physics, the animations, these are the things that are putting players off, as far as first impressions go, and I think it might actually be that the underlying engine needs to be reworked, rebuilt, replaced, I dunno.  I wonder if there's any way for them to do something like that, or if its just the way the game will always be.

Sadly I have to agree, I am in the OB, need to say was not expecting much as the game was not very high on my gaming radar, but getting into beta, atleast I could give it a go.

But like some have said I feel no connection with my character, other then it's pretty deep in terms of customisation, the world feels dead, okay audio wise there seems allot going on. But what's up with those icons that do not move, oops sorry they are police, but again why do they almost all stand still in place? I do really hope that will change when people get into other zones. Why does the music sound like it's comming from some sort of cheap wav. sequencer program? why do I get a overall dated feeling in a game this new?

I do really hope the game does well for those who are into it, but have to say even with a minimal playtime the game just isn't for me.

Overall I got a multiplayer feel from the game, just how it feels when playing games like CoD/BF/UT multiplayer, just more quest and more people per server, unfortunaly that did not make it feel like a MMORPG to me.