This is these "betas" should NOT be called beta.  Yes they are pre-release but they are NOT beta. 

Beta is when you play a game hunting for bugs, in a game state where there are actually bugs to find. 

Beta is generally a real server where they want you to have time trying to break things etc -- it is NOT a phased thing where you get 2 days this weekend and then another 2 days 2 weeks later.  That is more a marketing ploy -- trying to make you hungry for something you can not have. 

A lot of times "real beta" and beta are run side by side.  Rift did this -- they had the "beta" people who played every other weekend and they had a different set of players who had a server that was actually pretty much always up where they did the real testing.  Pretty much by the time people hit the weekend betas, it was just stress and balance testing things.  The bugs were already hammered out.  Individual feedback did not mean much at that point.

Thing is it is giving beta a bad name.  I go into a beta hoping and expecting to have an experience where I can still influence the course of the game, and make a difference.  That is NOT pre-pay preview faux-beta.

I am surprised you did not bring up the Baraka.

Baraka have the ability to completely heal every 2 hours.  While it might seem a long time between complete heals, it does allow you to either plan to use it and defeat one enemy completely over your head or save your rear end the first time you would have died during the day and the second time if you play 2 hours more after that.

Plus it is the race that has the largest hitboxes etc, and since you arent looking at popori I figure you want a large character.  This does make a difference as a warrior actually as you do sometimes avoid taking extra steps etc making you far easier to be healed etc. 

What is unacceptable is that they retain the data for hackers to get at after you have left all of their games.

I am sorry but all account information should be deleted or at least backed up to tape whenever people have left for over a month.  If you want to get back you would have to either reset your password to your email address or have them unarchive it.

I am getting sick and tired of "company you played a game with 5 years ago has still retained all your data and hackers now have your old password real name age whatever credit card you used at the time home address phone number -- blah blah blah.

If you drop the game they should have to drop the data.

Even if you never intend to, you do reuse passwords from 10 years ago -- you forget you ever used it and then one gets unknowingly recycled and bam -- you get hacked.  The more often you change your passwords and the more passwords you have the more likely it is that you will one day recycle a password.

Ok so we have a jedi, a spaceship captain with his spaceship, and a dranei.  What more do we need to conquer the world?

Alternatively we could have a gungan(Jar Jar), an accountant, and a gnome.  What more do we need to .... hmmm...

I was very surprised when they pulled the plug on it -- I mean it could not have cost all that much to run with the way it was set up.  And really, fantasy/humor is one genre that is really missing from the MMORPG world.  One thing dungeon runners was above everything else at times was funny in that cheesy monty pythonesque way that made you groan grin or laugh.

Once it is earned by the guild it stays in the guild and can not be traded outside of the guild.  This still keeps completely obsoleted items out of the economy it just allows more flexibility inside the guild making item balancing easier.  It also makes it far easier to deal with new members and leaving members.  It does not defeat the purpose of binding. 

As for "person X earned that epic" um -- the guild earned that epic.  So long as the person stays in the guild they have access to it.  If they leave the guild they lose access to it.

Good players have nothing to fear at all from "abusive raid leaders."  Those guilds would find themselves without players.  And if you do end up outside a guild, you can join a different one.  Since items stay in guilds and do not follow players -- they would be able to very easily gear you up to a little below the average of the guild. 

It is just a different paradigm.  The items are the property of the guild not the players.  Items would roughly go obsolete about the same speed you just wouldnt be throwing away as many items such as when no illusionists were present on that raid or the one who actually needed item X wasnt on that specific raid.

Plus if half the guild decides to quit the items stay in the guild so it is easier to replace the players.  It makes guilds a lot more stable. 

 Lets look at a person changing guilds:

Guild X is looking for clerics and they put together a set of appropriate armor aside and begin advertising for a cleric.

Person who is not all that happy in guild Y decides they want to change to guild X.

When said person quits guild Y, the equipment earned in guild Y stays in guild Y -- so they have items for whoever they get as a replacement cleric.

The person gets the set of items that guild X put together -- and starts raiding as a part of guild X.

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The point here is that the GUILD is advancing not so much the individual players.

Good players can move from guild to guild and the progress stays in the guild they came from.  They become a part of whatever guild they go to.

Yes this means as guilds grow they can set aside gear to pass to recruits -- who if they dont work out, they do not get to keep.

As for guild leaders ending up too powerful -- if everyone leaves they simply end up having a vault of items and no players...  Players will have little trouble joining a new guild as there is no loss to a guild for accepting a new player -- you just put them in whatever spare equipment you have and let them play.  If they work out they work out -- if they dont they dont.  Their participation furthers the guild.

The only problem you could have is if no guild wants you at all -- and if your reputation is that bad there is a reason for it.

If items from major raids bound to the guild of the leader of the raid it would solve a lot of problems.

First items would continue to be tradable within the guild so that when you get a better item someone else in the guild can use your item.

Second if someone were to quit the guild they would not be able to steal guild items from the guild -- they would go back to the guild vault if someone left the guild or was kicked out of the guild.

Third it would allow the flexibility to move items around to whoever needed specific items.

Fourth it would allow people from outside the guild to participate in a guild raid without worrying they would run off with key items.

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In essence it would make drops from progression raids and major raids etc the property of the guild who ran the raid as opposed to the property of any individual person.   

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Optionally you could set a raid to pick-up as opposed to being run by any specific guild in which case all such items that dropped would default to the old method of bop.

We are just in an uncanny valley for MMOs right now.

Current MMOs are "better" than the earlier MMOs but in the kind of way that causes them to not be as compelling.  In essence in the old days there were a lot of issues in games.  But there were enough of them and it was novel enough that it fell to the left of the valley and people were able to ignore the problems.  Now it is more like having a humanlike robot with just that little issue that keeps cropping up and making it utterly creepy.  So when you have a mistake in a game, it is jarring rather than being ignored.

In the future games will handle this in several ways.  One they will be three-offs where they are enough away from the mainstream in style and play etc that they garner a big following for those differences.  Another will manage to get to the right of the valley and hit the mainstream dead on.  This might not happen for quite some time however -- and with most of the games shooting for it and falling right into the wow-clone valley on the left side -- we can expect a ton more high-dollar failures in the future.

I think one of your main problems is that you are playing the betas for the various games before buying the real game.

Unless you are playing what games these days are calling an alpha (meaning if you get in at least 6 months before the release then this does not apply as those people actually do make a difference) beta play mainly acts as a spoiler.

If you actively play in a beta:

1) You are spoiled in all of the early areas of the game.

1b) This makes your REAL character essentially an alt.

2) Inevitably they will make balance changes to the game that you will not like when you play in the real game vs beta -- hence you end up with "I will never be as powerful as I was at X" syndrome or "I can no longer manage my character conception."  If you wait to play until release then you never KNEW that the character you are playing at one time had ability X that was so very fun and no longer exists or feature Y that you loved was removed.

3) Usually they lower the exp rate in the real game from the beta -- so not only do you have to re-experience the game (especially bad when they do not have multiple starting zones) BUT you do it at a slower speed.

4) The magic of the world when you first experienced it is farther behind you.

This together has you risking being burned out on the game by the time you reach areas of the game that you have not experienced. 

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Really there are only three cases where you should consider joining what is currently called beta.

1) You are genuinely not sure whether you want the game or not.  In this case you should stop playing the moment you make an affirmative choice that you are going to play.

2) You are 100% sure that you are going to play the game for the long term before beta even starts and are completely committed to doing so regardless and are playing to be the very best of class X at the earliest point of the game or being the highest rank crafter of Y from the beginning of the game.

3) You are between games and actually think you are likely NOT going to play the game but have a mild interest in it.  In this case you are essentially playing the game free for a month or whatever on the off chance it piques your interest enough to buy it -- but if not and likely not -- it fills out your experience for it so you dont wonder about coming back to it in the future.

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Again this is NOT counting the rare chances these days of an early beta.  If you get the opportunity to play a game you have interest in many months before release then it is worth the risk of not liking the game on release to be able to have fun with the devs (and yes early betas do let you have such access often on a playful level) and to potentially improve the game itself with your feedback.

Well the last time I lost a full star at one point was when I said something bad about tera in a tera thread.  Be a little careful with your opinions in some places if you care about your stars because they are FAR easier to lose than they are to gain(and the way stars work, every time you lose star points it pretty much caps the MOST you can reach for some time). 

As the one person said -- be careful about which threads you post in.  If you post in a thread that is heading for deletion you will lose points.  Hence making a post in a thread that you know is going away is a very bad idea.

Post length is key.  Never ever post something like "Yes I agree with you" or a one liner response.  If you can't type at least 3 lines of text, you are better off not saying anything.  Again this is if you actually care about your star count.

Also do make sure to log in every day.  I lost a full star over time when I changed browsers because I did not log in on the new browser and was not getting the 2 points for being here.  Yes that one is why I am where I am -- I usually drift back and forth between 4 and 5 stars. 

Lastly, the more you quote the worse it is for your post.  If you are only going to post 6 lines or less, it is a bad idea to quote at all.  If you are posting 12 or more lines a short quote is ok but be careful about quoting some 30 line discussion.  There is no amount of text you can do to counter that.

Rift -- had great fun in beta -- as time went by they kept nerfing my character and character concept.  When they utterly destroyed TTT etc for my paladin I left.  I could only roll with so many punches and I had to adapt my template to nerfs many times and that was the last straw.

Tera -- I actually pre-ordered it and then cancelled the pre-order after playing 2 phases due to the westernizations.

Vindictus -- I found it fun while it lasted but endgame was really lacking.

Dragon Nest -- The game I played before vindictus -- this one actually reminds me of a more limited Tera.

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Only listed recent games -- actually am playing Cabal of all things right now.

I wonder sometimes why they dont do parallel servers like cabal or many of the ftp games where you can log onto any one of 20 channels or so BUT have different difficulty levels.

Server 1 through 6 Beginner

Server 7 through 12 Normal

Server 13 through 16 Hard

Server 17 through 20 Insane

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Beginner = no real death penalty, monsters deal 1/2 damage, monsters worth 80% exp.  Monsters have a 50% chance to drop items one gear table lower than they normally drop.

Normal = minor death penalty, monsters deal normal damage, worth normal exp.

Hard = moderate death penalty, monsters deal 3/2 damage, worth 120% exp, have a 20% chance to drop items 1 gear table higher than they normally would drop (so if a blue item was supposed to drop, 20% chance of it being yellow instead).

Insane = severe death penalty, monsters deal 2x damage, have extra resistance to spells, worth 140% exp, drop 30% more items, and have a 40% chance to drop items 1 gear table higher, and a 10% chance of dropping items 2 gear tables higher.

I was going to pre-order but decided to wait.  Tera is a beautiful game but it takes more than artwork to make a game fun.  I have this funny feeling that it may follow rift pricewise and end up available cheaper in a couple of months.  If I end up between games at some time in the future and the cost of entry is lower I might give it a shot after reading about how the last minute westernizations of the game worked out in practice as opposed to theory.

Golfstar is the best online golf game at the moment IMHO. 

Shot Online is very generic and dated.

Pangya is completely unrealistic and demands calcs to do well.  If you are not doing a ton of math, ignoring the middle irons, and doing special shots as a method of sinking the ball from way far away, then you will at best make it up to average player.

First off, it is NOT vindictus...  Vindictus was faster paced and had breakable environments with very limited keypresses (it was mainly left mouse right mouse).  Tera is MUCH more similar to an open world dragon nest when it comes to the way things work.

Second, En Masse Tera has about the best customer service when it comes to doing tickets etc of any gaming company I have seen -- even in the old times.  Expect a real response in a very short amount of time with a fix right behind it.

Third, the game has insanely good eye candy.  The animations are very good.  You can get to love aspects of your character.

So yes, there are definitely things going for Tera.

The problems I have with it are the westernizations they have decided to do, how those integrate with their other systems, those other systems, the crafting, the questing, and the endgame.

Well -- a lot of that came from the pathing in some of the dungeons -- most notably that one with the harpies etc where it was very easy to get the whole dungeon trained on you.  Combine that with the fact that if you died you lost your stuff -- potentially permanently if you couldnt get to your corpse within a week.  Yes again that was toned down, first with an altar that you could get your stuff back after a week if you couldnt get it back any other way and then with other options and then to what is currently there.

And yes it got to a point where many of the classes could NOT solo well at all from mid-game on.  You had to choose specific classes if you wanted to continue down that path.  Depending on which class you chose, your experience would vary.

Personally what got me with vanguard was the diplomacy system -- and they really dropped the ball at the end with the levers etc for buffs.  There was a lot better planned for diplomacy...  Also there were NOT those overpowered cards in the beta/early game.

Sheesh...  Warhammer actually is a lot different from a lot of the other MMOs.

Public Quests were invented by Warhammer.  These are very nice at lower levels but I do not know if there is enough population to really do them these days.  Back when I played warhammer when it released, they were rocking.

There IS a story to Warhammer...  It does have some depth to it, even if the standard questing is a little weak.

It is easy to get most of your EXP from the Scenarios and RvR.  And realm rank plays a huge role in how powerful you are and the primary role at higher levels.

It DOES have crafting and you can switch your gathering and get low level stuff off high level monsters for if you switch your crafting..  It worked quite well actually. 

Warhammer was one of the few games where I left not due to not liking the game anymore but due to external factors.  IE Make sure you are not playing on the absolute losing side of the realm war.  This was inflicted on me via server merge.

Back when I used to play warhammer (I left after my server merged into another server and the balance went way to the other side -- I couldnt take them invading altdorf 4 times per day) I had a really REALLY hard time finding a guild to accept me without using ventrillo or other voice software and it was only reluctantly that I got into a fairly decent guild which happened to be in the alliance I wanted to be in (that is the backdoor -- if you find a guild you want to be in but it wont take you because you do not use voice -- find out the other guilds in its alliance and check those. )  Note that they still gave a lot of orders in voice that I didnt hear due to not using voice and it did make it hard to get guild groups for the 1/5 day dungeon.

As for twitchyness and PVP -- THAT shouldnt be a problem.  The game is not that twitchy by mmo standards.  Certainly less so than a game like WoW even when it comes to pvp.  I'd recommend playing a tank or a healer as a older gamer vs a dps to make that aspect even less an issue.

I hope there is a full levelling path for pandarians in their world.  It would make little sense to have a 1-20 over on pandaria followed by the standard 20-90 and then back to pandaria for 90-100.  Even if it is shallow, having the ability to level all the way through is quite important.  (It is kind of like it was for the iksar which were very cut off from the mainland and if they had to go to commons to level it would have really taken away from kunark.) 

Worse would be if you just started at 80 as a pandarian...  I like to experience the building of a character (which is kind of why the free to 80 thing while a timesaver is really a poor thing in some key ways). 

At any rate, I will probably give WoW its third chance when panda hits.  I mean one of the main things that stopped me from coming back at any point since I last played(the 1st expansion) was that none of the WoW classes really does it for me.  I am hoping that the monk class is fun to play.