Okay, this'll be a rant so just skip if you're not interested in a narrow point of view on the matter of pet classes.

Pets don't do pets justice. To put it short, but confusing :P

I've played a share of pet classes before, and like I've been discussing with a good friend who's _always_ been a petclass guy, the worst part of the play is their horrible AI if any at all. It'd be interesting if you could have a pet which was played by another player on your terms and instructions, but not very userfriendly :P but I doubt the day will ever come when pet pathing issues are non existant.

Pets right now are just glorified dots. Dots you can kill, but in PvP it's always smarter to just kill their master, so they remain simple dots you shrug off as best you can. If pets were given personalities giving them their own behavoir patterns and the chance to make dynamic decisions under the restictions given by their masters it would add a whole other level of play and make pets pets.

In the PvP rich enviroment WAR will give us personally I'd rather not see pets at all, if they can't have the qualities of this rant ;) Imagine getting ambushed and the only reason you survived was not because your pet was set to "defend - attack when I'm attacked", but because it made the right decision to snare one of your two attackers and finish of the other who had say 1% hp left giving you a window to escape... or dieing because in the middle of combat your pet decided to hurl up as a ball and hide behind a rock leaving you to fight alone.

The comparison may never end, but it doesn't make it a true one or give it any meaningful comparison. WAR to WoW gameplay is as different as it gets. Expecting a Warhammer licensed game to be untrue because of the games of a company who couldn't get a license and instead ripped off all the artwork and lore is like telling people to stop using elves and dwarves in their novelles because Tolkien did it first and his works are brilliant.

(Well, it's not exactly the same. With WAR vs WoW it's the opposite. In this case other writers would tell Tolkien to not use halflings when writing LOTR because they ripped off The Hobbit)

Don't mean to come off as a hater. I loved Starcraft, RRR and The Lost Vikings. WarCraft and Diablo is not too bad either, but Blizzard takes credit for more than they've come up with themselves with ;) WoW is just a Frankenstein product of all the PvE, itemhunter, class grinder games out there and it happened to be accessible enough to bring more people to the MMO scene.

I've played both for some time, but I don't think comparing them would do either one justice. Their tradeskilling might be the closest, and like you say, both have mature communities and so on. Decent, helpful players. Oh, and the "learn what you like, play as you like" approach is the same. No seperating players into classes.

Eve has a far more meaningful economical structure though. To do a short sum up Eve is based on the PvP and economics, which form together to create the goals and conflicts between players making their actions meaningful.

Ryzom is PvE and crafting based. Allthough far above the average, I wouldn't call the wildlife realistic in behavoir. Unlike the zoo's of other games in Ryzom mobs have personality which gives another athmosphere to it.

As much as I like PlanetSide I think someone looking for a flight simulator type of game would be extremely disappointed with it. As the aircraft can hover and fly both sideways and straight up or down they're.. well, I don't quite know how to put it, but they feel more like choppers without gravity.

If you ever played that old sci-fi shoot'em up Descent you'd have a good idea of what it's like. Allthough you can't spin around your axis, instead you'll always be somewhat aligned with the ground.

I wouldn't call Auto Assault any more realtime than Guild Wars, and Guild Wars is about as far away from realtime as most MMORPGs, you still press static hotkeys with skills defined in advanced while moving back and forth :P It's just the rate of movement being different.

I'm not 100% into all these games, but I believe the following are realtime, allthough some are still based on dice rolls if that makes any difference to you:

WW2 Online (out), PlanetSide (out), Face of Mankind (out), Neocron (out), Huxley (dev), Age of Conan (dev), Darkfall (dev, but stalled it seems), Roma Victor (dev, but.. well look at the shots yourself) and maybe Tabula Rasa (dev).

It's hard to tell from the video I saw of Tabula, I wouldn't expect it to revolutionize things though as the rest of PlayNC games have just been pretty themes over standard cookiecutter mechanics ^^

If there's one game that cries out to be a PvP MMOFPS, that would be Starcraft. Interplanetery wars between multiple races all consisting of factions fighting eachother with a vast amount of variety and versatility all land, air and space based.

But like the World of Starcraft pun is hinting at; were we ever to see the SC title taken into the MMO world it would probably just be another everquest clone :( I'd take a SC RTS any day instead, even if it seems hard to top perfection, hehe.

WoW will keep dropping untill it puts in something else than blatant timesinks. Burning Crusade should get it back in the top five again untill people reach the new level cap :P

Has anyone been able to actually get one of these keys for CoV? :P

I thought I'd grab one so I could play around with the costumes on char creation (absolutely love all things sand box), but from the form where you enter email, name and birthdate it either times out or nothing happens after submitting.

Personally I think it's a conspiracy, of course, as the guys working on that page shouldn't be so amatour-like to mess something as simple up ^^

My understanding of it is patches like the one Ryzom is going through right now are what other games would put into an expansion and charge you for. They're far between though and I don't know about before, but for this one we were alerted well ahead of time to avoid nasty surprises :)

It's quite usual really. Anarchy Online has done the same thing and it's a few generations older :P people still play it and haven't been scammed, but it's your credit card of course so do what you please.

I've only been to the tryker 1-50 and 50-100 areas yet, but those have been populated around the clock. From my experience trying out a few races, trykers seemed to have the least people on the newbie island so I can only assume there would be even more people in the other lowbie zones.

I completely understand the problem, in EverQuest 2 the evil side was almost abandon completely where I played. Allthough I'd still play Ryzom even if there only was one guild left there :P as long as I would be part of that guild, hehe ^^

Only guessing here, but your bad experience could be because that early in the game's life most of the starter players were in the higher zones, and everything between them and the new players was quiet, as the older players begin working on other skilltrees or make alts the population would be more distributed along the different types of content again. If that doesn't sound too silly :)

I started the seven day trial three days ago now, not expecting much at all and I've been completely blown away. If you've only played games that hold your hand the entire time going from mission to mission you're in for something very different. The best comparison I can make is to Star Wars Galaxies before all the gameplay changes ruined it :) This is open ended and you're granted full freedom in the same manner. I was bored with MMOs and thought I'd just test this to add another to the record, but I expect to get a full subscription shortly!

I could elaborate on the gameplay features and mechanics, but instead I'd like to recommand just downloading the trial and having a look for yourself. You're not dependent on other people, but if you can find a friendly guild to help you learn the game it'll be in your best interest. The way this world works you'll get much more out of the experience by participating in the marvelous community and get involved with player events and politics ^^

In closing I'd like to link one of the better gameplay movies I've seen, just to give you an impression of it.
(77mb download, rar format)

Really? :/ *Yoda grunt* Seduced by the dark side, they were. Lost they are.

Speaking only from what I've seen and read, no first hand experience with the game.

I feel sorry for the DnL devs and am not particularly found of rubbing it in people's faces. They seemed like the sort who wanted to make a game for gamers, not a game to get filthy rich. Like you've said earlier in this thread, people will be losing their livelyhood and it's for sure that there's been alot of time, money and effort put into this project, but they should have had the good sense to see their own shortcomings if it's as bad as it's made out to be.

On the bright side, I guess Anarchy Online lost the crown of Worst MMO Launch Ever.
Edit: Oh? It hasn't been officially released yet? :P Ah well, time will tell.

I just got warmed up to the idea of WAR after seeing Paul Barnetts brilliant presentation and haven't read much else about it.

But only four classes per race? This seems really odd, not only because Daoc has more than double that, but having just tried auto assault and its four classes there's a great lack of diversity :( Surely these four will be starter classes to branch into specialisations of some sort?

I came across this:
"Q. What classes are there for players to choose from?
A. There will not be a traditional class system. Each player character will begin as one of two archetypes, Fighter and Adept. Fighter represents the melee classes, and Adept is for the magical and academic classes. As your character progresses you may choose future career steps either in the same direction as your original choice, to create a "pure" character, or in the direction of a different career, creating what is known as a "hybrid"."
at http://www.warhammeralliance.com/page_the_war_guide.html

which restored my faith ^^

Excellent article.

I'd been jumping around between MMOs alot after being introduced to the genre by AO and having spent a good year and more there. When WoW came I got caught up in it and it stands as _the_ game which burned me out on the genre, with the amount of time it demanded in return for only a slight chance at being rewarded. The road to 60 was fun, but short. Basically you're going through the same themepark as everyone else. Getting off one ride and on another untill you've done them all and you're stuck with the endgame, which would fit just as well within the context of a singleplayer rpg with online capeability like neverwinter nights :P

I think you put alot of people's thoughts into words here as we're looking for something different. Every company with enough money available can develop a clone of a working gameplay and dress it in a slightly different theme, while the few who try to do something outside the box don't have the resources to pull it off.

Your quote of the SWG dev in particular, it pisses me off to no end. It's that kind of "lets find simple ways to keep people online and make money" which is killing the genre. MMOs have been compared with the .com bubble of the past. It can only be inflated so much before popping. If every game is the same, what's keeping players from jumping over to greener pastures every time a new one is released? There's always been ten crap games for every good one, but MMOs slap on a regular fee to the deal.

I look back at WoW and the only good thing about it was the group of people I played with. As it happens to be, people can be found everywhere and as such I regret the time I spent with the game. In comparison I don't regret approximetly the same amount of time spent in AO because it wasn't focused on getting "more pro items". The PvP wasn't as deep as in Eve, but still there was a touch of player politics going on and in retrospect. It's been memorable to have taken part in several player events which were landmarks for the community I was with. In WoW our guild were the first at euro Burning Blade to kill Onyxia, so what? Everyone kills her at some point. Do you brag about sleeping with the town hooker? Not everyone chased off an omni martial artist scouting your Notum Tower triggering a chain of events where land ownership changed drastically for the guilds involved dragging into a big standoff with propaganda wars fought on forums :P

In the lack of other options, PvP is the thing I want to see more of. Not a big fan off "empireA versus empireB" pvp settings, I still find Daoc to be attractive had it not been for the level grind. What's the purpose of the grind if the real meat of the game doesn't open up before you've maxed out? Why force every character through a grind to reach the point you actually find rewarding? It doesn't matter if the level threadmill is just two weeks, or even one. I can get instant gratification from online multiplayer deathmatches with all sorts of settings without subscribing to be allowed to spend 1-2 weeks on a server preparing my avatar before getting into the equalent content.