I have often wondered are there any MMORPGs that have random mobs roaming the fields? You know...something that's not part of any quest chain but rather as an incentive to explore the world and maybe enjoy it?

One of my biggest gripes about Atlantica Online is that they keep releasing all these new mercs for you to recruit but haven't bothered to add new monsters or new areas in AGES.  The North America map is a joke. While Asia and Europe are positively hopping with towns and mobs the North American map (guess Central and South America don't even exist in the AO universe) has maybe five towns and huge stretches of land with no monsters or activities within it.

The pre-WoW MMOs never could hold my interest very long. Especially since I kept comparing them to single player console games or the Multi-player options of popular PC games back in the day such as the Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale series, Planescape and Neverwinter Nights. Compared to those games playing things like Everquest or Final Fantasy 11 never was able to hold my interest for more than a few minutes at best.

In one regard I do like the post-WoW MMORPGs. They do try to tell a story (well some of them do anyway like Atlantica Online) and I actually like that. I don't seem to recall much of that in the pre-WoW era MMOs though my experience of such was limited.

I recently downloaded and installed Allods Online and was surprised to see many quests had lengthy story to go with them. It harkens back to the days of table top RPGs or text RPGs when words were pretty much the only way to convey 'atmosphere' and setting in a game. I liked it but I can see more action-oriented gamers not finding such things interesting but rather unnecessary and tedious.

If the gameplay itself is fun grinding is not so bad in my personal experience. But finding a good role-playing group also helps though that's harder to come by. Most MMOs don't have Roleplay servers though unfortunately.

The problem with quest grinding is that the quests suck and involve next to no thinking.  Imo quests should be more like the ones from good old 90's rpgs such as Legend of Kyrandia, Eco Quest, or the amazing King's Quest series.  Those were interesting games, not the mindless wash-rinse-and-repeat quests that we face in today's "modern" mmo's.  There's just no challenge in them, that's why they feel like a grind.  Modern quests are the equivalent of having a paper route and delivering newspapers, that's about how much fun they are.

GS

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I love the smell of necro'd threads in the morning.

I don't like quest grinding the way WoW, Rift, GW do it.

But the way Vanguard did it I actually enjoyed, a lot of the xp came from killing and while missives were kill 10x, they were actually fun for some reason.

Originally posted by WhiteLantern

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I love the smell of necro'd threads in the morning.

good eye

Originally posted by WhiteLantern

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I love the smell of necro'd threads in the morning.

Hey, I enjoy rereading my rants so I got a kick out of it at least.  Geez, hard to believe it was almost three years ago when I posted that.

This thread has been necroed. If you want to discuss the same topic, please feel free to link to the older thread inside a fresh one.

Thanks.