GW2

I wouldnt play WoW or Rift for free much less pay. In fact u can play WoW for free on private servers, some of which are better than live.  (which isnt saying much I know)

shards of dalaya

Nope I never go back , games (mmo) with a bad launch or usually a cash grab. If a bunch of players quit the dev+patch team quicky evaporates.

Its not a big deal for me though i research games before i play them. For example I knew WAR was going to suck from playing the beta. I think i even made a post before it was released, about how crapy it was going to be and got flamed.

Pretty much the only game in the last 3 years i've wasted money on is Age of Conan (by wasted i mean paid for but ended up not liking).

Lets see SW:TOR will be fun the first time threw, EA is throwing big time money at the game, something like 2x more than has been spent on WoW..  Unfortunately linear storyline based gameplay has no staying power and becomes annoying quickly.  So while i look for large initial numbers this game will lack retention. EA is hoping for 1 million subs for the first year at minimum and I just dont see that happening without some meaningful endgame.

Guild Wars on the other hand knows what their doing. They made some mistakes with the first engine but GW2 should be on another level completely. I just hope they keep the grind down to realistic western levels. Some of the title grinding in GW1 had goten out of hand last time i played. (Granted most of it seems pretty pointless)

DAOC was pretty bad early on but it was the only alternative to the very carebearish EQ. Extremely unbalanced on release early DAOC sported broken class's, bad itemization, unfinished pvp, unfinished crafting and terrible PVE. In fact as I recall the reason I played it was "it wasnt sony or everquest".

With patches DAOC improved and their PVP became relevant, this was its golden age around the time of its first expansion. Unfortunately the PVE never improved and progressively the game became watered down by OP abilities/PVE items etc.

There really is a whole lot more to it, but all you really need to know is after their 2nd expansion the game went downhill fast.

As for DAOC's "Golden Era" I would have rated is as follows: (scale= 1-10)

PVE:  5  - Darkness falls and the first expansion were both interesting enough to warrent a 5 (at the time)

PVP: 8   - The first true mmo pvp experience for most. Discounting AC since it was never mainstream.

Graphics: 6 - Passable for its era, but not good even then.

Sound: 4 - Nothing special

Crafting 3 - gawd it twas terribad

Luckily for the PVP'ers Shadowbane came out shortly after DAOC started to faiL.

I discovered playing with RL friends in WoW just never worked out...  You want a big raid guild that raids every night, they want to pvp 24/7. You want to go hardcore pvp after raids, they want to be ultra casual and only show up for a 3 hour raid (like it was a job) then log.

It always seemed like my IRL friends were "holding me back" for a variety of reasons. Now i just ignore them and let them play / do whatever they want. Not a good attitude I know...but screw it they are noobs.

Who are the people that keep buying SOE products / subs? I mean I hate WoW but if i had to pick between SOE and pretty much anything..inclucing WoW i'd pick warcraft (or even pong).

first week? month?

League of Legends    

http://leagueoflegends.com/

Pros:

* Free

* Very new player friendly

* Good Graphics

* Balanced team matchmaking system

* Premade teams have disadvantage unless all 5 are pro (which is rarely the case)

* Solo que'ers make up a decent percentage of the top 500

* buying options if you decide you like it enough to invest is very reasonable (but not needed)

* Gamespy Gamer's Choice PC Game of the Year!

Along with dragon age, League of Legends is imo the best two games this year 09-10

If you played WoW for two years it wasnt lacking... 420$ for two years worth of entertainment, you could spend that much in a single night out. (without trying)

Fairs are a place of excess...rides,candy,games,fatty food...  Why is this news worthy? A person that works out, and eats healthy could eat something like this at a fair and not be out of the ordinary.

It's the people that eat McDonald's and other fast food crap every day that need to worry. You know the lardass mooing around in wal-mart on the scooters because their too ******* fat to walk.
 

I wont even mention the fact that they're buying chinese crap from walmart and contributing to the downfall of their own lifestyle with every purchase. (eventually they wont be able to afford food when the welfare dries up)</p>

Why would you wait for WoW to fail, based on older games longevity something like WoW could still be around in 10 years.  It could also still be the top mmo in the next 3-5.

Even when WoW gets old blizzard can/will just release new titles, starcraft mmo, starcraft5, diablo6, WoW2.0 etc etc. Not to mention their new MMO their working on.

Blizzard / Activision is only competing with themselves at this point (numbers wise). After diablo and starcraft come out they could control 80% of the online gaming market at any given time.

Two players having a knife fight in CS:source is better combat than most major MMO's.

I would wait till cataclysm comes out, should make old areas and leveling more interesting. Especially for newer players.

The Witcher is one of the very few bright spots in gaming for the last few years. 10/10

I don't play WoW anymore but arn't they switching the entire game around by removing all stats except numbered base stats? Further dumbing down what I previously thought couldn't get more stupefied.

Its the restaurant equivalent of adding a "happy meal".

SOE, EA, Funcom - Basicly in that order for distrust. I wouldnt trust any company EA buys out. either, that includes bioware and their kotor rpg (yes i called it an rpg because its instances+single player).
 

The Witcher and Dead Space are the two best single player games in recent and not-so-recent memory.

Kotor will take some subs, maybe even alot if its good. Tons of bored WoW players around... but yea I wouldnt be suprised if WoW still has 4-5 million players 5-6 years from now.

Originally posted by logangregor

Ugh, Oblivion. Oblivion wasnt half the rpg that Morrowind was.

That killed your whole post for me.

That doesn't even makes sense... there is a Mod that adds the morrowind areas to oblivion.

Seriously a heavily + well moded oblivion is the best single-player rpg game on the market. Just too many morons try to play it vanilla. (and then wonder why it sucks)

Since Moding isn't easy I guess its a noob filter of sorts.