Originally posted by Fadedbomb

 

-$15/month PayToPlay models are the best, because EVERYONE pays the $15 and EVERYONE is on a level playing field. Other players CANNOT "legally" pay for Gold to advance faster than others with RealWorld money, instead of EARNING it like EVERYONE else who are paying the standard flat $15/month. It's FAIR, and creates a LEVEL playing field. Unlike PayToWin.

 

People don't buy god and other items on P2P games? What planet are you from? Just because they can't "legaly" do it it does not mean it does not go on.

I guess i'm different then you, Isabelle, sincemost  MMOs I played, I played for over a year.  I also become very attached to my characters and love to watch them grow and evolve. 

Instead of learning how to play the game, what really turns me on is to have the character evolve. Have new abilities unlocked, be able to do new things, use new equipment, whatever...

I'm also a serial altaholic. Meaning that even though I do enjoy having alts, I tent to play a character until they are pretty high level or even capped before I begin giving the alt any serious thought.

I have also went back to a few games here and there, and played them for a considerable time before moving on again.

I guess it's because of this that I am very happy with the new f2p trend that is grabbing the MMO world. Before,  whenever you quit a game, you either cancelled your subscription or kept paying it even without playing the game (I think I payed for AO for close to a year before I came to the conclusion I was not going to pick it up again).  Then when you want to go back, you have to sign up again and sink money for another month.

With f2p you don't have that problem. You can jump in at any time, and in most cases, all the stuff you bought for real money is still there. So to me that makes a lot more sense.  It also makes coming back a lot easier. And if you come back and decide it's still not for you, then you lost nothing.

Originally posted by mCalvert

Good list, but one correction. Fallen Earth is not a sandbox.

 

Nor is it free. From what I understand it will become FTP sometime in the near future, but as of right now it's only free for a 14 day trail.

I always thought IP games in general, not just MMOs were a lame-brain lazy way to try to make a buck. Even before the Internet, we had such "gems" as ET, Nightbreed, and the list goes on.

When will investors get it that what get players attention is originality? To be honest, even games with high fantasy characters turn me off these days. And I don't think I'm alone either. As an example, one of the games generating the most buzz right now is Secret World. And there is not an elf in sight in. EVE, one of the most endurng MMOs out there is also completely original. Not just in theme, but in execution as well.

Yep, people should drop the cookie cutter IPs and quit being lazy and just come with something original on their own. And enough high fantasy while we are at it too!

I don't mind the pay to chat at all. As long as it's global. It's probably the best way to keep the spammer quiet.

I don't even play WOW, but I can see why the would ban you. Sounded like you channeled the spirit of  Billy Mays and then gave out a link. And not to mention what Slampig said: you quit anyway...

Nice swan dive though.

M y first MMO love was Anarchy Online.  I simply loved the game, and played it for hours upon hours for a good 3 years. Do I think it was the best MMO ever? No. 

Had I thought that, I probably would still be playing it. But the reality is that not only the games, but our tastes and lifestyles change with time.

I no longer have hours upon hours to wait for a raid team to form or would put up with running around for a considerable amount of time looking for someone to buff me so I could get my robot going every time I logged in (I played and engie).

So to make a long story short, whatever game I am playing at the moment is the one I consider the best one ever. But I am fickle and that could change at the drop of a hat.

This game is definitely not for everyone. It's appeal is more for the people who enjoy games like EVE, Bounty Bay/VOC and other such games. It's not a fast paced action game by a long shot, but that does not mean it's a bad game at all. 

I for one, love the "slowness" of the game. It is a great change of pace for the fast paced, dungeon crawl, exterminate everything in sight that I enjoy as well.

Yes, the tutorial could be better, streamlined, etc.  But truth be told, there is so much to this game that even after i was  done with that marathon tutorial I still had some questions that I felt did not get answered and had to find the answers for them elsewhere.

Originally posted by Quizzical

The reason why the graphics look dated is that they are dated.  The game released in Japan in 2005, and what's recent is the translation into English.

Even so, there are games from roughly the same time period that in my humble opinion, the graphics aged a bit better.

 But still,  to me that is not really relevant. It's still a very enjoyable  game, dated graphics or not. What I was trying to say is that I would not list the graphics as a pro.  In all honesty, the boarding battles at sea are a much bigger disappointment than the graphics, but even that did not ruin the game for me... 

I'm quite happy I gave this one a try.

I have tried this game and have come to really like it. It kind of reminds me of Bounty Bay before it was completely ruined for me by their Horizon patch.

I'm not sure if I agree with you that the graphics are a pro, as to me they look extremely dated. The control interface could also use some work, but then again, Bounty Bay's was nothing to write home about either.

My biggest disapointment though is how the battles that happen when you board another boat are depicted. In that respect, I liked Bounty Bay's/Voyage of the Century a lot better. I also think another Con is the fact that you cannot plot a waypoint and navigate to it (though I can understand the reasoning behind this).

All in all it is an extremely enjoyable game  and one that I suspect will consume hours upon hours of my play time.

Originally posted by Novusod

Originally posted by booboofinger

A lot of good all that stuff is going to do you if they shut down the game....

So how about this: if they shut down the server, you can have all my stuff.

In other words you are not leaving the game until they shut it down and all this talk of quitting is just a bunch of hot air.

No...it only means that youreally  did not read my post.  If you did, you didn't  understand what I was saying.

I made my post because I was (and still am) flabergasted not only because the game had such a prolonged outage in all times, at christmas. I was also shoked by the response, or should I say lack of response that Gamers First gave everyone.

It really looked, and to me, it still does look that if anything G1 itself is trying to bury the game. And if it does since I do like the game so much I am exploring other options.

I hope you get this, because I'm all out of Troll Food.

A lot of good all that stuff is going to do you if they shut down the game....

So how about this: if they shut down the server, you can have all my stuff.

I'm with Roin on that....I'd rather not have compensation and have a game that runs well.

As much as I hate people who call DOOOOOOOOOOOOM all the time, I do find it quite worrisome that 

A) One of the servers has been down since before christmas eve

B) The ones that are running have zones that are simply closed

C) The Cash shop was down until last night

D) the forum is still down

E) GamersFirst Cards have apperently been discontinued (this I cannot confirm 100% but it's the info I got)

None of this looks good. And I hope I'm wrong because I do love this game....

@ Roin: how do you get to buy gold for SGE? To be completely honest it's that, and the fact I have a quite developed family that keep me at Sword2. But If things really are as bad as they seem to be right now, I probably will have to switch to SGE anyway. I know there is no chance of finding a game card for it in the US. But would I be able to buy gold with a regualr credit card or debit card?

It’s a shame that this game, which is actually quite good, is in the hands of such incompetent people as G1. 

I had tons of fun playing this game. It's unique in that you can have 3 characters at once and that you can recruit a whole bunch of NPCs into your "family". This kind of brings a card collecting element to the game as well. The music is absolutely superb and the action is is constant. There are also several different types of games like Team Arena, instanced quests, dungeons and yes, also a lot of grinding.

But all this is overshadowed by the inability of Gamers First to keep those servers up. I for one have grown to accept that if the server goes down after 6PM EST, it's NOT going to be back up again the same day. Not only that, but the server outages are constant and getting more and more frequent. So far the one that took the cake, is the one that happened the day before Christmas Eve. While every other game out there is doing Christmas specials, the players of Sword2 got a Christmas Eve Server Outage. What fun! And as I'm writing this, the servers have been down for over 12 hours. I also seriously doubt they will be up until the day after Christmas, though I wish for once they would prove me wrong.

To sum things up, this is a great game, but the staff of Gamers First unfortunately had taken the levels of incompetence in managing this game to new lows. It would be great if they either got their act together, or if someone who is a little competent would pick this game up.

Boy, do I feel your pain.  I was interrupted at least 3 times while reading your article. And tonight was a good night!

But I found a great compromise: sleep deprivation. Once my wife and my daughter are asleep for the night, I pull my can of Red Bull (carefully hidden in the cooler in the work shed outside) and buy myself a couple of hours of MMO mayhem a night.

I guess those days of 12 hour stints are gone forever :'(

Two games come to mind.

First was Anarchy Online. I had a very high level Engineer. After a good hour looking for some kind hearted Metaphisist to buff me so I could get a decent robot going (this of course after another hour finding a Doctor and a Trader to buff me so I could take off my crafting clothing and implants to put on my fighting ones) I attack a green mob and all his friends join in, kill my robot, and me making me lose all my buffs. I figured I had more to do with my life and it seemed that in order to do anything I had to run around for an hour or 2 just to get in a position to do it. That would be fine if I had no life and lived in my Mom's basement for the rest of my life. Being that neither of these described my life I quit and looked for a game where I could have fun without working so hard to do so.

Second was Bounty Bay. I really enjoyed that game. Then came "Beyond the Horizon". Not only did the game lose the realistic tone that attracted me to begin with and turn into" Fantasy with Pirates" but the mechanics changed dramatically. Before the game was pretty open ended and really close to being a sandbox game. After that stupid patch you all of the sudden had traditional classes and worst of all the de-buffs the NPCs had made it virtually impossible to win a sea battle against enemies that were beatable at first with the class I was forced to chose. After having my ship sinked by Nth time I cursed, logged off and never logged back again. 

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

No Jar-Jar Binks??????? LOL

Does anyone know what's going on with the Mytheon Lawsuit? 

I really enjoyed the game but got a bit worried when I read about it. I hope things work out since this is one of the games that have really enjoyed playing in a while. It would be a shame if it never got off the ground.

Sad day indeed. Fantasy art loses one of it's pioneers. And one of my favorites too.

 The only way you will get spam from EE is if you sign up for certain offers. And even then, given the family focus of the game, it's never porn spam.