League of Legends is the best F2P with PvP if you consider the MOBA genre.

Best F2P pure MMORPG? Umm... Runes of Magic is probably the best, however I found the PvP to be lacking when I played (PvP servers were filled with non-PvP), also I don't think its balanced around PvP. 

Best F2P pure MMORPG for PvP? That's a tough one... not sure.

I find your story all too common among people who get involved in MMOs so early and then plow through content. It's fun to be on the cutting edge of gaming and be the first to do stuff. But it burns you out, and pushes you to outplay the content. If you can stomach it wait a few months then come back. Just as you say with Rift adding lots of new stuff, I played Rift at launch (did a bit of Beta as well) plowed through the leveling and got to endgame before there really was anything and left annoyed. Now going back to Rift its like a new game all over again... so give a second chance... in a few months...

While there is a lot of hypocrisy on these forums including what is allowed/not allowed. I would have to agree that those threads all feel like blatent marketing ads and overlap a great deal with oneanother. It is funny the mods give extra scrutiny to the MO boards or maybe its just shill central over here.

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by Meltdown

Regardless of how one would invest in an MMO (Kickstart or not), I would look for one backed by a well known developer in the gaming world. Sure it seems shallow, but nothing else I feel would guarentee that the people behind said game were dedicated and skilled at their work than knowing that ahead of time. Not only that but developers (and engineers in general) are very proud skilled workers, and when their name is on the front of something like that I feel like you will get 125% of their effort on said project. And I'm not talking about people like John Smedley or Richard Garriot, I'm talking more like Markus Persson.

I'd never donate to any project that is led by a well known developer.

Why should i as a consumer pay for the game that i will later need to buy and if they are already well known why do i need to pay for their investment?

Umm.. if you would never as a consumer ever invest into a game I guess any reason for wanting to wouldn't make any sense to you regardless, so I won't take much from your response, just a clarification. I am referring to something more similar to buying a game in Alpha similar to how Markus Persson did Minecraft, you buy into the game early (investing) to support the game and hopefully get more out of it (promise of all future updates for free). So I am both purchasing and investing at the same time, not what you suggest.

Regardless of how one would invest in an MMO (Kickstart or not), I would look for one backed by a well known developer in the gaming world. Sure it seems shallow, but nothing else I feel would guarentee that the people behind said game were dedicated and skilled at their work than knowing that ahead of time. Not only that but developers (and engineers in general) are very proud skilled workers, and when their name is on the front of something like that I feel like you will get 125% of their effort on said project. And I'm not talking about people like John Smedley or Richard Garriot, I'm talking more like Markus Persson.

Originally posted by Starwars001

With the hugely successful game companies like blizzard, bioware, I hope to see bethesda get into the MMO ring. 

I have a great confidence that they will make some type of successfull sandboxy game.

Hopefully Bethesda annonce something of the sort this year. 

The B's have it

Was slightly difficult to follow, but I like the points about gameplay and that just because one type of gameplay is more popular than another doesn't mean we need to get rid of all the minority gameplay. Solo gameplay is obviously more popular than group gameplay, but a lot of games just take that to mean they can make solo gameplay fun and ignore group gameplay mechanics.

But you're right, there is no "better" of the two, its all a matter of opinion and personal situations (like you only have 30 minutes to play) say if 35% of the MMO-population love solo-play, 20% love group play, 15% love raid play, 15% love crafting and 15% love pvp then a great deal of developers will make a game solely focused on solo play since it is the biggest piece of the pie... but its sort of overlooked that a game focused on group play and crafting also represent an equal amount. 35% = 15%+20%. I guess at that point its more about the company being more effecient by focusing on the largest piece of the pie, instead of attempting to make all pieces equal. 

I assume the point of this practice is to find out what people think makes a challenging game. A challenging game that people who ENJOY a challenge find fun.  Thus making a "fun" game for certain people. For HARD or challenging games and what you can do to make one, just take a look back into our past of Arcade Games and NES Games. Limited Lives, zero tolerance death (die in one or two hits), reaction-based combat, extreme periods of mindless leveling (Dragon Warrior and FF1 anyone), a 'greed kills' scenario (risk vs reward), complicated mazes and puzzles, lack of trivial content. Really you can take any of those. And yes I consider grinding out levels "difficult" and some people find it enjoyable.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by Axehilt

Professional AI programmers (people who've made multiple games and watched how players play them and react to various methods of AI) would point out that if the player doesn't perceive it it doesn't exist.

In this case Bob's AI gives out the same exact quest he could've just been hardcoded to do.  Most (possibly all) players won't know the difference, and if we don't know the difference the underlying logic is completely meaningless.

Time and time again when I read articles about AI the important keys to success are about giving the perception of intelligence.  The actual need for true intelligence isn't there -- in fact in many situations intelligent AI is detrimental to the fun of a game.

So while AI can certainly stand to be more game-like, less exploitable, and less perceptibly stupid, it's actually not a good idea to make it more intelligent for intelligence sake.  

Very true.  There are many ways to simulate intelligence without really adding any AI.  The vast majority of players wouldn't know AI from a hole in the ground.

Yea reading through the comments I would say that what MMOs are best at are giving illusions of AI and intelligence. The minecraft example of a pig running away from someone hitting it with a sword is simplistic. But very simplistic concepts often combine in unique ways to create a truely authentic experience, here is a quote from Majong's blog about updating Minecraft as an example:

"While testing the biome code, I started running out of food in the game and started hunting animals. Cows would just stand there, looking at me as I mashed them over and over to get their precious loot, so I figured I’d just make that mechanic a bit more fun. Four lines of code later, and animals now flee randomly after taking damage. Hunting animals suddenly became a lot more fun and morally questionable as pigs would storm off grunting and chicken (or whatever the heck they are) would jump into ravines. But the real fun came later on."

"Back to doing some further testing. I was exploring a forest biome, hit upon a river cutting through it, and walked over a small hill. On the other side, a wolf was chasing a sheep, but the sheep was running away. I didn’t have this in mind when I wrote the code to make mobs flee, but it ended up giving me an unexpected experience of having some kind of echo system of competing behaviors in various animals, and it just felt.. nice. It made me realize we should explore more mob to mob interactions, and have more chaotic competing behavior."

Originally posted by Creslin321

"Hey...why is that chicken named Creslin?"

Busted

Ahaha, that made me lol. Good stuff. 

Originally posted by Loke666

What really is needed is some devs that stop looking on UO and try out new ideas. Yeah, UO was a great game 15 years ago but it seems like almost all sandbox devs just try to remake it today.

There is so many possibilities to make a great sandbox MMO but a great game will need originality as well as a competent team making it.

It is very well possible that Zenimax (Bethesda) maight be the company that reinstate the sandboxes for MMOs but there are others as well. And I am not so sure that their game even is a sandbox, what I do know is that one of the people behind DaoC is laed designer of whatever they are making.

As per usual good points often get buried amid mindless banter. The devs need to stop looking to the past, and start looking to the future. We don't need UO 2.0, or EQ 3.0 (4.0?), we need somethign new, something bold, and that something is unlikely to be backed by major AAA publishers since it would be such a high risk venture. So forget the Besthedas, Biowares, and Blizzards (maybe companys that begin with the letter B are just better at making games) of the world, the next great MMO will come from an unheard of player in market.

I agree that Cataclysm really missed the mark for existing WoW players. They made a few major mistakes in my mind:

1. Focusing on adding content to attract new players instead of content aimed to please your 10-million+ subscriber base

Numbers do not lie, more players left than joined. Even if the actual numbers are less than what people are claiming it is, they have admitted themselves that the subscribers numbers are down. 

2. Putting difficulty back into a game that you already removed.

I think Blizzard pulled the rug out from under their playerbase by taking them from WoTLK blazing through heroics instances (talking 10 minute runs with a good warrior tank). Then fast forward to Cataclysm and heroics were essentially 5-person raids, stand in the wrong spot and die instantly. If they wanted to appease the hardcore crowds then make a new tier of dungeon running for them under a different name.

3. No new classes

Nothing gets people to come back to a game, or to reroll like a new class. Look at how well they implemented DKs in WoTLK, starting at lvl 55 was ingenius to lure players in. 

The changes to the talent trees, existing pvp zones, tradeskills felt very cosmetic. And not to mention another version of Capture the Flag, oh wahoo, meanwhile Rift introduces Black Garden. 

Cataclysm was disappointing to me, mostly because I loved WoTLK so much towards the end of their WoTLK content patches. If you are 10-million+ subs strong with a certain formula, add to the formula, don't rewrite it! MoP could also be good, if they don't make the same mistakes...

Similarly I would say Xsyon is a possibility. Don't trust the feature-list on their website though, check out some of the forum posts on these forums to see the current state of the game, but again lots of crafting, guild-oriented city-building, and mount and blade style pvp and pve combat. Quite social back when I played. 

I haven't played much Wurm Online, but it is in a similar boat, with crafting, city-building, and pvp. Not sure how social that game is though. 

It wouldn't surprise me, but not because of the company, most companies do a certain amount of this type of thing. Even reputable 'middle-men' sites like Newegg and Amazon will moderate their ratings systems and contact individuals who have posted negatively about a product. I have a RL friend who had this happen, and they contacted him, and offered him a refund to delete the negative post.

So if newegg is trolling their product ratings I don't doubt a MMO company would do the same thing for their own product. But Bioware can't contact individuals and simply pay them to keep quiet, so they might hire people to be positive on the boards.

This should've been a poll :P But anyways I don't think 100% voice overs is neccessary. Certain games do voice overs much better by letting the voice over give an idea of what is being discussed... I can't think of the game I played like this, I believe it was an MMO, but you would go to your normal quest giver and up pops the wall of text ala WoW. But the NPC also has a quick blurb about what they want you to do.... OH NOW I REMEMBER it was Wizard 101!

The game basically would have a decent sized chunk of text telling you detailed instructions on what happened and what you need to do. But a voice over (which is usually done by a single narrator in a story-telling fashion) would say something like "Steve has lost his cat and needs you to find it down on Unicorn way" while the quest text itself is much more....

Bioware took the extreme and EVERYTHING was voice-acted... I think Wizard 101 did a very good job (at least with the starter quests that are 'narrated').

It's true, as far as raw FPS improvements the SSD does not offer a lot. For me once I put my OS on an SSD I will never go back, but I only have a 64GB SSD for my OS which is fairly cheap with 2 250GB 7200RPM HDDs (from older PCs, probably would get a single TB drive now). SSD is a bit more specific to your application than just increasing your CPU/RAM speeds/cache-size.

SWTOR has been a popular topic on the boards here and since it is highly instanced and the 'movies' for each of the quests have to load individually then yes an SSD makes a bigger difference in a game like this. However this is not to say that in a Warzone (PvP Instance) that the SSD will help you, just let you load into and out of the zone faster.

On the other side of the spectrum is probably a game like BF3, where once you load the map the SSD won't be helping you much more than that (maybe let you set up defensive locations a few seconds sooner). And your GPU/CPU is helping more here.

I don't mind people complaining about a lot of things in the game. But complaining about them adding additional content? Puhleeze.

Nope, I bought the game because it looked like it had the potential to be a very fun game based on youtube videos, friends playing Beta and reading up on game concepts. Media influences really never focus on the pre-order crowd anyways...

Originally posted by Biskop

Originally posted by Abdar

While I would like to support the game if it has potential.. the company can't be selling it like a grade A MMO title (namely the monthly fee) if it's not.

Look at what Minecraft has done.. almost 5 MILLION people have bought the game at a resonable price, with no subs.

Bottom line, they need to align their pricing structure with what their game provides, not ask people to pay for it like a top line game, in hopes it will eventually be that.

 

This, and this again.

I wish all these indie devs trying to sell unfinished games could just wake up and realise that a different pricing strategy would get them a lot more players, i.e more money and more resources for developing their games.

MO, DF, Xsyon, Earthrise... No one wants to pay full box price and an AAA-styled sub for games that lack crucial features and polish, games that grow so slowly that years pass before anything changes to the better (if it ever does). Very few gamers pay for games out of pure charity - actually I think those who do, are all that remains of said games' communities. Go figure...

On the other hand, if Xsyon (or MO, or DF, or ER) cost 5 dolars and had no sub cost, sandbox players would flock in droves, and they won't care too much about the lack of polish and the slow dev process.

It is a difficult comparison. Minecraft had little to no maintenance costs compared to MMOs which require server/utility/customer support. So Minecraft could get away with a $20 up front cost with no monthly sub. I wouldn't say an MMO could follow the exact same process, but it certainly shows that if you build a community (by offering low up-front costs) that the community is indispensible in growing your game and in the long-run results in more revenue than charging more up front...

I think more similar than the Minecraft argument are all the F2P games. And how much more popularity games like Fallen Earth got by opening up the doors to play a more difficult version of the game for free and then opening up the possibility to charge a monthly fee for an easier version of the game.

Originally posted by solarine

Originally posted by Meltdown

Good list, my personal fave was all the different forms of travel in Champions Online. Running between quest areas is so much cooler when you are literally leaping tall building with a single bound. Totally badass!

 

Yes. Super Jump has to be the single coolest form of travel in any MMO I've tried. Granted it might look a bit silly to pick among powers that includes Flight (!), but still... :)

Yea the powers were certainly not all created equal, but each had a unique "cool" factor. I think I eventually took the teleportation one cause it worked so well.