The bot population density is not as bad as one year ago, but that doesn't say any good about it, really... specially since back then it was a pathetic circus of grotesque proportions. The only thing you can do about it is “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil”. If you think different then go play sims life because L2 is not for you and ncsoftNA will not get their act together as they have the worst support ever. Now it's too late, since most population are already high levels with subclasses and lots of adena. Players in ncsoft's servers couldn't care less about the bots and the economy after all what they have endured.

If you level without buffs, you are *really* wasting your time with any class. Any class. If you cannot get a buffer friend or a party, then you should consider a buffer on a second account or go play another game.

If you are a mage, you want _at least_ a shillen elder for the mana recharges and empower for extra damage. Pots for acumen (casting speed) and body to mind if have it. if you are an archer you probably want a prophet, who will buff haste (and more) on you, and root your target. These are the two more famous _duos_.

If you are a more group friendly player, at level 70 you can have about 5-6M xp/h in IT, just to say an example. Well, that's quite good ^^ Or even more in MoS but there you begin to need good equipment and jewells. I wonder how the new high level zone will be in terms of xp/h (the one with dinosaurs). But for all this you'll need a full party properly set up, in order to *avoid downtime* and always have your leveling spot nearly clean.

You can really have much much more xp/h doing trains with a pole party but it's something that western players haven't learned to do well in L2 (a waste of poles users, tbh) while it's extended gameplay in korea servers.

When soloing, you will get at this level what 500k xp/h? lol, waste of time, not your game.

About money while leveling, it's a lie :-) You can have full drops, of course, or be a buffer and sit your fat ass for 20 minutes while getting drops. But what you spent while leveling even as buffer or healer is more than the adena and mats you get, that is, not even enough to pay the spiritshots. You have to get money by other sources, not by leveling. Play the market. There are _lots_ of ebayers in the game, make profit from them.

So, all in all, you have to understand the game and how grouping works, because buffing is much important in L2. What classes need and complement other classes. Dont' think "what class has the less downtime" because, well, all have a hell of a downtime by themselves. You also have to think in ways to make money, because it doesn't come the way along.

[quote]Originally posted by Gameloading
[ Every class can take on any class in WoW, if you know how to play it. Only people who can't pvp come up with "z0mg! [insert class here] is overpowered] or [that class is anti my class] excuse[/b][/quote]

You know this is not true... specially since the expansion where the classes are so unbalanced it makes you LOL but also since launch. And this becomes extremely annoying in the arena fights. There are lots of posts about pissed people in the official boards, since this should have been considered at beta and testings and not now in live. Nobody likes the nerfbats of the patches of last weeks.

Blizzard tried to repair and level the problem pre-expansion with the uber-raiding loot compared with the casual loot. But the unbalance between classes persists to worse and equipment continues being crucial.

PvP in mmorpgs (anything in this web) is absolutely not about skill. Go play a shot'em-up if you want skill... If you want to be god in an mmorpg just get the uber-epix loot and the fotm class.

More or less that's it. You play when you want and as much as you want, with some 1-3 hour instance runs here and there if you feel like it. Until you cap top level. When you join to raid, you must follow a fixed time table, usually longer. Farming aside for money and pots.

But you forget another problem; when you want to PK most of your companions and the game doesn't let you, then you've had enough raiding :)

So we have now two reasons, timetables and morons who play online games.

There is another reason, the mindless repetition of content for the sake of farming items and reputation. But if you play an mmo this shouldn't be a problem...

If people are leaving eve online it's mainly because of the bugs and faults of Revelations. Or at least I think this is the main reason. Perhaps some notorious people left because of the corrupt devs, but hopefully the game company will get their act together about this last issue. Corrupt GMs is not a game-breaking factor unless it becomes pathetic, just look at Lineage2 where there are more bots than real players. The problems with revelations are much more game breaking, as they affect the fun factor.

But, at the moment of logging off, did the titan pilot have an aggro timer set on, or he didn't have any aggro timer on the screen?

If he didn't have an aggro timer on the screen, then the ship should be reimbursed and the exploiters (bob) banned, or the game will go down down. If he did see the aggro timer and logged off, then good fight (though stupid way to lose a titan, like ascn's) and this thread is useless :)

All this is bullshit. The only way to make money in a noticeable way is buying low and selling high. If you have a dwarf you can also buy the materials low and sell the final product.

The bot problem is so bad it's... impressive? (think about quake3 when you tripple kill with the rail gun, that "impressive"). Even though the late efforts from NCSoft-NA to arrange them with periodic massive bannings, you *have to* play this game in official server to understand what is a bot problem.

You will have no big problems until you get to level 5x and have to get your B-grade equipment. Then you will understand why buying adena is *so much* extended. And the B-grade will become a joke once you have to get the A-grade at level 6x.

If you plan to play the game to its maximmun, that is to pvp in the clan wars and castle sieges, you will be a fool/nobody if you are not in your 3rd class change (lvl 76+) and full A-grade equipment with overenchanted S-grade jewelry (and better if you can afford some boss jewel). We are speaking about 1000 million adena at least. If you PvP with shitty equipment in a top clan, gL.

The fastest way would be multiboxing support classes that can help your main to level up faster, as buffs are extremely important in the game. For the top equipment, well, Don't Leave Home Without It. :D

As a recommendation, do not make a "healer" char as your main. The damage-dealer characters are more rewarding to play, even if it's some support class as bladedander, swordsinger. As said, summoners were very nerfed in the past but at high levels they are competitive. The current FOTM are necros and daggers, and the most famous class at pvp is the archer. Because of the imbalances of the game to heal at higher levels is almost impossible (potion spamming and 2-3 shot kills).

gL.

Really, this was the error of the last mmorpg.com contest: to deal with just two finalists. WoW vs. EVE turned into WoW vs. "Everything Else".

WoW was not my first mmorpg, neither it was the last. But it certainly was the best for a while. Specially in a new server at the begining of WoW. Unfortunately it didn't have any power of retention on me while the game really did go for worse. You want to cancel you wow account when you:

*cannot PK the moron named "legoglas" near you (VERY IMPORTANT!). Unbreakable factions are a bad idea. You cannot even speak with the enemy, wth!!
*have to go into "unreal tournament" mode to have some fun. No concequences at all. Just farm for your "epic" pvp points. byebye world pvp.
*have to wake up from siesta to farm an instance :=(((( along with other 40 leroy jenkins.
*wipe dozens of times doing tries to the same boss, while having all the rest in farming status (great difficulty walls to deal with not enough content).
*have to suffer three server migrations that made your server (one of the best in europe) go to waste.

Only thanks to the fantastic people in my clan (hi Malus Spiritus) I played wow maybe a bit longer. One thing is very clear, if I leave an online game I only come back because of the people I know there; else it's byebye for good.

But at the end, even that wasn't enough. I got very tired of the raids, never again, and the battleground pvp is worse than an unreal tournament match.

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Originally posted by Gorukha
Were you expecting a 50 million dollar game to be Free to Play ? lol

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Item Shop

If the game follows and item shop model in Korea, do you expect it to be pay to play in the West? Archlord, anyone? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it should be a hell of a game to do any good and break into the market...

Should be added that the item shop system seems to work for a good number of titles. These same games following a pay to play model would most certainly have crashed.

I do not try to hijack the thread into a dicussion about RMT in online games, but every game has it to some extent. With an item mall the game company capitalizes into the RMT market, instead of leaving it to the farmers alone. It seems to work so well that they can even take away the monthly subscription fee! o_O

The overall feeling of the game is really pleasant. Let's see in a few days once I know how to play it ;)

This game seems to be the good surprise of the year. I didn't expect it at all, but at least after the few first hours of play the feeling is really good.

To make a summary, like eve-online but dumbed down and with avatars ;)

As other people said previously, the PvP in WoW is very nice in the way you control your character and play along with a group of people. The "jumping" effect, some people call it.

The problem is just that it has no purpose. You kill for the sake of farming points, just like you could play a game of quake3 or UT. Even worse than that, since there are no tournaments. This has not much depth, considering it's a rol playing game. Just like you farm and instance over and over and over, just to get to the next bigger one and realize it's farming over and over again.

Other games, with much more annoying and unfunctional gameplay happen to have a more interesting PvP! Clan wars with XP loss, conquer territories, castles or solar systems to be able to tax the NPC shops and gather resources, make alliances... some people like it because it makes the game change continously.

I'll post here some little basic bibliography. There are tons more! I would begin with min/maxing the char so you're happy with it in its creation, and with EVEMon to get a basic idea of what you want to get.

The way you'll play eve is just your choice, so no comments there.

Starting a new char. Usual Min/max.

What do I need to fly *XXX* ship well? (very basic)

3rd party software Look evemon for skill planning and quickfit simulation runs.

Ship Setups Index (post-revelations)

Ship Setups Index (pre-revelation)

Agent Mission, COSMOS and Complex Resources. (I'll be honest here, the only time I've literally fallen asleep while playing a game has been running missions in EVE).

If you search in the EVE forums, as there are lots of informations and guides there, use http://www.eve-search.com/

There are lots of webs with databases, BBS and guides like eveinfo, grismarnet, evepirate, coldfront... These are just some very known ones.

The multi-character control seems like a mediocre solution to the grouping problem....... When I play a game I like to play my character and make him as much powerful as I can. When I need more people, I party with other players.

I'll try it out once it goes live in the West.

Anyway, I wouldn't bother even to read that PR bulshit auto-bombo. Certainly the game didn't meet the expectations in Korea...

Unfortunately Lineage2 glorious game also has its problems: economic, grind, and bot.

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Originally posted by SnaKey
When did WoW get PVP?

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Lineage2 Northamerica should require your Social Security Number or your Identity Document Number -and verify it- so that , once you've been banned because of botting, you cannot create another account.

This is why L2 works more or less in Korea. Even though it has its problems: ID thief and that half the grandparents in Korea "play" L2..... ;) So, no, as afterthought it doesn't really work.

You cannot blame at all the people who get scammed since they act in good faith, and it's the game's system "fault" that these acts are allowed.

About the EVE piramidal schemme, there are lots of scamms in real life x100 more interesting and complicated. In the real world these people get prosecuted, whereas in the games they can walk away freely. /care? Bad design, imo.

Now, if you want to steal people, a game is the perfect place to do it. And then you even can tell people how good you are at it! MMOs are (should be?) like wild west, after all, for the good of an exciting experience!!

Anyway, I would be a sad developer if I designed willingly a world where scamms are so much in the word of mouth.