Hello, I have been playing MMORPGs for quite a long time (dating back from Ultima Online in 1998.)  Since than I have played numerous titles.  The only titles that captivated me for an extended period were Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.

Currently right now I am in search of an MMORPG that can provide the PvP Dark Age of Camelot has to offer but also skill leveling up Ultima and Galaxies had.  I have tried almost MMORPG under the sun (i.e. DarkFall, Star Wars the Old Republic, and numerous other titles.)

Mainly I am looking to forge my own identity in a game but not role playing wise but actually be captivated by the game and not to get bored and not be obsessed with quests, but actually progressing my own character.

Bottomline I am looking for a sandbox type with some linear elements as well but offering good PvP and strong social aspect to the game as well.

Any suggestions?

Try Eve online :)

Give EVE a try if you haven't yet.  It has a free trial and you can get a longer trial by getting a buddy key from the EVE forum on this site.

I tried it personally, didn't care for the perspective of Starships and such.  I am not really big into spaceships and sci-fi related stuff besides Star Wars.

Okay.  Do you like PVP a lot?  Darkfall has it in droves.

Otherwise, go on down to the LFGame forum and look through the stickies and the posts there.  It will help.

Originally posted by DarkGremio

Hello, I have been playing MMORPGs for quite a long time (dating back from Ultima Online in 1998.)  Since than I have played numerous titles.  The only titles that captivated me for an extended period were Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.

Currently right now I am in search of an MMORPG that can provide the PvP Dark Age of Camelot has to offer but also skill leveling up Ultima and Galaxies had.  I have tried almost MMORPG under the sun (i.e. DarkFall, Star Wars the Old Republic, and numerous other titles.)

Mainly I am looking to forge my own identity in a game but not role playing wise but actually be captivated by the game and not to get bored and not be obsessed with quests, but actually progressing my own character.

Bottomline I am looking for a sandbox type with some linear elements as well but offering good PvP and strong social aspect to the game as well.

Any suggestions?

 get in line and keep waiting with the rest of us from those days of MMOs. once the wow themepark cycle drys up we might get a real game again.

An upcoming MMO that seems to be flying under the radar is The Secret World.  Check it out and see if it's something you would like. 

---

Originally posted by DarkGremio
Hello, I have been playing MMORPGs for quite a long time (dating back from Ultima Online in 1998.)  Since than I have played numerous titles.  The only titles that captivated me for an extended period were Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.
Currently right now I am in search of an MMORPG that can provide the PvP Dark Age of Camelot has to offer but also skill leveling up Ultima and Galaxies had.  I have tried almost MMORPG under the sun (i.e. DarkFall, Star Wars the Old Republic, and numerous other titles.)
Mainly I am looking to forge my own identity in a game but not role playing wise but actually be captivated by the game and not to get bored and not be obsessed with quests, but actually progressing my own character.
Bottomline I am looking for a sandbox type with some linear elements as well but offering good PvP and strong social aspect to the game as well.
Any suggestions?

---

I would suggest wurm online, this is a sandbox mmo where you can forge your own identity, choose a pvp server (chaos or elevation) then join a village as soon as you can, be sure to ask the village who you joined for their official vent/ts or skype whatever they use to communicate for pvp and what not.

I'm waiting for Arche Age, while its not pure sandbox it looks like a lot of fun. 

The Secret world looks actually cool story wise I think.  But I am also a fan of Dan Brown books so that could possibly be why with all the occult elements in the game. 

Otherwise I agree that the Goldenage of MMORPG's has dried up and now is left out to wither with World of Warcraft and all these people trying to make a pretty penny off MMORPG instead of making a game that is truly immersive and progessive and dream come to true to the elusive original MMORPG players.

One game that did captivate me was Vanguard.  It was such a beautiful game, but it is riddled with bugs and theres not to many people playing in and the World is so huge I'm almost tempted to download it right now I just miss the world and the lore in Vanguard

Originally posted by BLueBEar

 

---

Originally posted by DarkGremio
Hello, I have been playing MMORPGs for quite a long time (dating back from Ultima Online in 1998.)  Since than I have played numerous titles.  The only titles that captivated me for an extended period were Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.
Currently right now I am in search of an MMORPG that can provide the PvP Dark Age of Camelot has to offer but also skill leveling up Ultima and Galaxies had.  I have tried almost MMORPG under the sun (i.e. DarkFall, Star Wars the Old Republic, and numerous other titles.)
Mainly I am looking to forge my own identity in a game but not role playing wise but actually be captivated by the game and not to get bored and not be obsessed with quests, but actually progressing my own character.
Bottomline I am looking for a sandbox type with some linear elements as well but offering good PvP and strong social aspect to the game as well.
Any suggestions?

---

 

I would suggest wurm online, this is a sandbox mmo where you can forge your own identity, choose a pvp server (chaos or elevation) then join a village as soon as you can, be sure to ask the village who you joined for their official vent/ts or skype whatever they use to communicate for pvp and what not.

Wurm Online I have played it as well I actually was very interested in it as well. I had fun with it but I have trouble understanding the full depth when it comes to browser/ java applet based games.

Sorry, cant help you.

I intensively hated each and every skillbased game I ever tried. Like the TES games. Unbalanced primitive ugly uninspired crap of a rulesystem. Worst rulesystem ever.

Thus whenever I hear skillbased, my interest drops to zero.

I really dont get why so many people claim they like skillbased. All the reasons given are not true. Skillbased doesnt give you freedom. It gives you triviality. Want to play tank in a skillbased system ? You will know exactly which skills you have to raise. Want to play mage ? Again, certain set of skills.

You cant do something thats normal in classbased systems: like, implement the Paladin, a tank with healing and anti-undead skills. Because when you give a person healing spells that otherwises wants to focus into tanking, either they will be puny and irrelevant in comparison to what a person that specializes fully into healing will get. Or you will have a system like TES : there is no balancing limitation in skills in the first place, and everyone is practically forced to either play Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Mage. The only way not to is to intentionally cripple the character by not fully training them. Thus your Paladin will be an as good healer as any specialized Healer.

One of the qualities of a rulesystem, to me, is how many different playstyles I actually can have when playing the game. How many truely different ways to design a valid and competitive character are there ? A classic skillbased system usually offers only 4 of them: warrior, cleric, thief, mage. Yeah you can mix freely, and with certain luck its even quite balanced and your fighter/mage is not vastly superior or vastly inferior to a specialized warrior or specialized mage.

With classbased, one can implement a Paladin quite nicely. You will have healing spells, and they can still compete with that of a healer, even if they are only 75% or so of them, so actually using your healing skills is not a waste of time. But their mana cost harmonizes with the low mana reserve of a Paladin.

Even "free" classbased systems like for example Rift do not lead to systems with great variance. A mathematically large number of possible combinations do not compile to a lot of variance in practice. People will just find the optimal combinations and play those. You end up with less classes then if you had the classical set of classes. Also, whats the huge diff between two characters who share two souls and thus share 66% of their abilities ? They will very likely play very likewise.

On top of that, specialized classes allow you to have special systems in place. For example, in Vanguard, the Paladin gets a "Virtue Point" system. Virtue points restore over time. They can be used for special abilities. With ideas like this, the player of the "classical" straight tank, the Warrior, who by the way gets a lot of "group commands" to change behavior of the group, and the player of the divine tank, the Paladin, have a lot of differences in their gameplay, even if they both play tank. Same for the dark variant of the tank, the Dread Knight, who again is very different, having a debuff on mobs called the "Dread Counterance" (?) or some such that gets worse over time.

If you like the realm versus realm fights of DAoC, Guild wars 2 has the evolution of that in the WvWvW game mode. That's not out yet though, obviously.

Originally posted by DarkGremio

Hello, I have been playing MMORPGs for quite a long time (dating back from Ultima Online in 1998.)  Since than I have played numerous titles.  The only titles that captivated me for an extended period were Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot.

Currently right now I am in search of an MMORPG that can provide the PvP Dark Age of Camelot has to offer but also skill leveling up Ultima and Galaxies had.  I have tried almost MMORPG under the sun (i.e. DarkFall, Star Wars the Old Republic, and numerous other titles.)

Mainly I am looking to forge my own identity in a game but not role playing wise but actually be captivated by the game and not to get bored and not be obsessed with quests, but actually progressing my own character.

Bottomline I am looking for a sandbox type with some linear elements as well but offering good PvP and strong social aspect to the game as well.

Any suggestions?

Obviously it's a rough time for those of us seeking this type of experience again thanks to all the disposable themepark clones clogging up the industry.

The few that offer some amount of what you're after would be Ryzom, Istaria (formerly Horizons), Mabinogi, Perpetuum, Eve, Asherons Call, Runescape, I was going to suggest DAoC...actually, there aren't many left and the ones that are still going are mostly rough approximations of what they used to be.

You're probably better off revisiting older games like DAoC & Ultima temprarily as you wait for some of the different direction MMOs to come out.

In the long run, I'd certainly keep an eye on ArcheAge (http://www.archeage.com/en) and Pathfinder Online (which sounds like what you're after, and is my current number one hope https://goblinworks.com/ ).

Best open-world PVP right now is Darkfall by a long shot but its not very casual-player friendly and if you haven't played for a long time or do not have people to group with than you will get frustrated often. Starting out may seem like a single-player game until you get into a clan and know where to go on top of that. There is really no competitor that can keep me interested for more than a couple weeks right now unfortunately. Darkfall and EVE are the only PVP games worth playing long-term right now in my opinion but there are plenty of other casual-friendly games that do not fit the description of what you are looking for (besides Mortal Online) but they are not as worth it in the long run (starting out in most games is much funner than Darkfall or EVE).

Originally posted by Adamantine

Sorry, cant help you.

I intensively hated each and every skillbased game I ever tried. Like the TES games. Unbalanced primitive ugly uninspired crap of a rulesystem. Worst rulesystem ever.

Thus whenever I hear skillbased, my interest drops to zero.

 

I really dont get why so many people claim they like skillbased. All the reasons given are not true. Skillbased doesnt give you freedom. It gives you triviality. Want to play tank in a skillbased system ? You will know exactly which skills you have to raise. Want to play mage ? Again, certain set of skills.

You cant do something thats normal in classbased systems: like, implement the Paladin, a tank with healing and anti-undead skills. Because when you give a person healing spells that otherwises wants to focus into tanking, either they will be puny and irrelevant in comparison to what a person that specializes fully into healing will get. Or you will have a system like TES : there is no balancing limitation in skills in the first place, and everyone is practically forced to either play Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Mage. The only way not to is to intentionally cripple the character by not fully training them. Thus your Paladin will be an as good healer as any specialized Healer.

 

One of the qualities of a rulesystem, to me, is how many different playstyles I actually can have when playing the game. How many truely different ways to design a valid and competitive character are there ? A classic skillbased system usually offers only 4 of them: warrior, cleric, thief, mage. Yeah you can mix freely, and with certain luck its even quite balanced and your fighter/mage is not vastly superior or vastly inferior to a specialized warrior or specialized mage.

With classbased, one can implement a Paladin quite nicely. You will have healing spells, and they can still compete with that of a healer, even if they are only 75% or so of them, so actually using your healing skills is not a waste of time. But their mana cost harmonizes with the low mana reserve of a Paladin.

Even "free" classbased systems like for example Rift do not lead to systems with great variance. A mathematically large number of possible combinations do not compile to a lot of variance in practice. People will just find the optimal combinations and play those. You end up with less classes then if you had the classical set of classes. Also, whats the huge diff between two characters who share two souls and thus share 66% of their abilities ? They will very likely play very likewise.

On top of that, specialized classes allow you to have special systems in place. For example, in Vanguard, the Paladin gets a "Virtue Point" system. Virtue points restore over time. They can be used for special abilities. With ideas like this, the player of the "classical" straight tank, the Warrior, who by the way gets a lot of "group commands" to change behavior of the group, and the player of the divine tank, the Paladin, have a lot of differences in their gameplay, even if they both play tank. Same for the dark variant of the tank, the Dread Knight, who again is very different, having a debuff on mobs called the "Dread Counterance" (?) or some such that gets worse over time.

 

couldnt agree more.

So , SWTOR im over it. about to uninstall. wow 30 days and its done. =( ghey

DAOC or wait for GW2