I played it in the beta before it released.  I thought it was basically the same.   Once you get to a certain level boss mobs become grossly overpowered for the appropriate level you reach them at.  It became apparent that they mean for you to grind endlessly in order to have a chance at the boss mobs.  It threw the pacing of the game way off. 

Endgame is such a horrible concept.  I always hated the term.  There should be no endgame.  The MMO market is lost to all the cookie cutter games.  To be honest I dont think it will recover anytime soon.  It is much easier to pump out cookie cutter rapid application development mmo's where the expected shelf life is no more than 6 months and then claim its a success. 

I would much rather be able to play than wait in a 6 or 8 hour queue.  I surely dont mind server mergers as long as I get to play with my guildies. 

As it is now I am on some other server because the one my guildies are on had a 6 hour queue when i tried to join during headstart.  I tried to login last night and it was still a 2 hour queue.  There are people who already gave it up because of not being able to play with guildies.  They should have opened more right from the get go instead of a week later. 

I will take a key.

Id like a key plz.

The other thing about UO that needs to be mentioned is that it allowed for a means of escape.  This is something the new breed of games dont ever really capture.  If you give the wolves to many ways to easily kill people you wont have many sheep left.  There always needs to be a way to escape.

It seems as a studio in this age of gaming if you sell yourself to EA or Activision you are more than likely going to get chewed up and spit out.  Feel sorry for blizzard getting in bed with activision.  I kind of feel now that companies who merge with EA/Activision are just doing it for the money.   How many game companies have we seen get destroyed by them?  I have watched quite a few now go down in flames. 

I hate to say it, but looking at SWTOR I kind of feel the same.   I dont see it being that big of a success.   Sure it will draw in people early likely more than WAR did but I dont see the staying power in that game.  I suspect it will fail and when it does Bioware will be no more since EA will do to it like it did to all the other studios.  

1.UO

2.SWG

3.Shadowbane

thx kaz.....

here are my 2 keys

25D120037D0840B09D1C

E37D520B552548A6B69F

Ill keep the chain going if someone can PM me a key as well. 

I voted no simply because mmo's are not creative enough to keep my attention span longer than a few months.  Most mmo's peak after a few months really tells the same story.  If a game can implement pvp correctly i would be apart of that community for a longer period of time.  Unfortunately, very few games actually get pvp right. 

UO. It was very early in the game near release. While most people were training combat and crafter skills a few people decided they would train up cooking. They would drop items on the ground and most people would roll by see the food and eat it. They would ask "What does food do? What purpose does it serve?" Nobody thought much of it.

As more people got used to eating the food on the ground something happened. People were picking up the food as they were coming back from hunting and then tick, tick, tick.....dead. All the loots on the ground which were scrambled over like raw meat. The once nice individual feeding everybody decided it would be fun to deadly poison the food. Only after he tricked everyone by serving up good food for a few days. Which made his dastardly deed more sinister since it got alot more people.

Thus for hours after you would see people run into town. Lots of people saying "Don't eat the food its poisoned." To which they would reply "Whatever!" Proceed to eat it and then die and have the same people warning them picking their bones clean. This hilarity ensued for a couple of days before people wised up.

One of the first lessons learned proved to be the one that has lasted the longest in my MMO career. Do not eat the food!

This is their master plan.   Use the Rapid Application Development tools to create cookie cutter games.   See how many suckers they can get to pay lifetime subs.  Create a new mmo twice a year. 

Let's see played COH/COV thought they actually had somewhat of a decent pvp feature set.  They never expanded on it, threw it to the side and had horrible balance issues between the hero and villain archtypes.  Pretty much nailed character creation though.

Played Champions Online.  Felt they took a big step backwards in the pvp implementation of that game.  It was really obviously put in as an afterthought.  Somehow they botched what should of been a decent character speccing system.  Again character creation is the most fun part of the game.

Played the beta for Star Trek online.  It does not really feel like Star Trek should.  They used the same design plan for pvp as they have for CO.  Did not bother to sub. Knew it was sub par at best.  The shine of being in the Star Trek world fades quickly. 

Increasingly they have gone downhill from the COH/COV days.  I think a problem in general is with the game creation tools that make use of heavy reusability.  Game creativity has taken a hit in favor of quick to market reusable content game engines.  Just look at the Korean MMO market its full of copy cat games.  That has somewhat bled into the US market.

This should really be of no surprise since the news broke that EA is requiring any game to be released in 2010 and beyond by any of their studios must include downloadable content.  They recognize the potential income from selling bits of content and intend to profit from it greatly.  So yea I fully expect this game to have a monthly fee and a cash shop of some sort because you know when they say downloadable content they intend to charge for it at some point. 

It is simply business strategy.  if you pay monthly it will probably be what 14.99 so 199.99 goes 13 months.  

If you eliminate WOW from the numbers you will see most MMO's last about 6 to 8 months before it settles down.  8 months on out numbers ussually decline unless you are really lucky.  If they can lock in alot of people with the lifetime subscription they come out ahead.  

It just really tells me they have no faith in the longevity of the game outside the MMO norm.  They expect it to last no more than any other MMO.  As any business today will base their projections on the businesses before them.  

For us users we have to decide if it is worth it to us.  I know personally the last few MMO's I have played have not kept me for more than 6 months.  So I am not gonna fall for the lifetime ploy.  The 6 month is looking attractive however.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameGuard

Link to gameguard description and what it stops.  In the external links section is a link http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=136414 that is a pretty good read in itself.  This program is actually worse than securerom and I didnt think that could be done.

Battletech 3025 was out a long while back.  Ofcourse EA canned it through restructuring.  Since they seem to hold the rights from it you will not see another game until EA decides to do something with it.  There are however a few alternate fan projects that are close to being released I believe. 

Yet a few more reaons why level systems need to go by  the wayside for a while. 

When you play with your guildies and you/they outlevel you.  You can not play with your guildies anymore since you/they have outleveled the content you are at.  The only mmo I know that seemed to remedy this was City of Heroes/Villains where you can malefactor up/down.  

What I would like to call easy mode for developers is the tiered content that wraps around the leveling system.  Where a wolf at level 1 is not a wolf at level 11.   At any point in the game based on your level a developer knows exactly where you are going to be.   This is the theme park as they like to call it as they can develop content as the players level.  "Add more rides."  It provides a highly controlled environment for the developers to work in.   For the players it equals a highly restrictive environment. 

What I like to call the diablolization for an MMO.  The item/level grind, Item Randomization on drops, etc.  WoW is blizzard's realization that Diablo could be turned into an MMO. 

These are the reasons why I think that MMO's that try to follow blizzard's lead ussually have a shelf life of like 3 1/2 months before they reach a plateau.  Nothing will be as great as the original.   People lose interest fairly quickly. 

For my taste, drop me in a world and let me and my guildies make a name for ourselves.  I think community, pvp, being your own hero/villain, making enemies/friends, watching cities get built and destroyed is far better than the theme park mmo's where you tire from the same old rides over and over and over again.   

None of the above.  There should be no classes.  You should be able to mold your character the way you want.