If you are suggesting that all content, quest, raids etc should only be done by people in groups, then good luck with that.

I agree MMO's are more fun in groups, but i also know that finding groups isnt always easy, biggest reason is, people are

in a hurry to level and once they do something once they move on,  i go days trying to find people to do my group quest with.

Im glad i am able to level up doing quest with out having to find a group to do each one.

Now raids are always done in groups, as far as i know .. so most MMO's have group content and solo conten, Most quest

are soloable, and they also have a good amount of group quest to do .. but not where u cant keep leveling if you cant find a group.

so what do u want, no solo play at all ?  guess i dont understand your line of thought here.

First off, I am playing -and love the game so far, BUT !!!   NCsoft has a bot report button that seems to make reporting bots EASY !    the problem is then, WHY do i see so many of them all the time ?!?!

Last night my guildies and i went to the ASMO side and we killed over 105 BOTS in a small area, (half the lower map).  We would find them in small bunches of 2's , a healer usually (chanter) and a gladiator were the norm.   We seen maybe 12 real life players and that was only after we killed a few near a town and they called for help ... We tried to let them know we were only killing BOTS but they wanted to die also  (made a private store saying "KILLING BOTS : DANGER STAY AWAY").  

The point is .. these bots where between the levels of 34-42  .. u cant tell me with how easy it is to report the bots that they have never been reported before .. so why is it there are so many in just that little zone we where in, (imagine all the bots if u take in all the zones),  if NCsoft is doing anything about it , why are there more bots than players?

Because truely, i see more and more diff ones every day  just on our side alone, its retarded and i think it will ruin the game long term.  The people i see and talk with are getting fed up.

Ive been playing since launch,  ive not had to wait to log in, but then, i rolled on a new server when it came out.  Luckly for me i didnt like the Asmo side i had started playing (because of the bad community , nothing else) so didnt mind rerolling on a diff server and started playing Elyos.  The community is 100% better and Im having a blast.

The Gold spamming was the worst ive ever seen in any game, but since the spam filter,  the first day i didnt see any at all, and didnt get any whispers either .. the secound day i had to block 1 person .. and its not been bad since .. today they have more spam filters in todays update .. I think they are trying and have done a good job dealing with it.

The game for me has been a lot of fun. I love flying and the PVP in the air etc has been a blast.  I wasnt even going to play AION because i thought it would be like L2 and i played it for a long time and hated the grind .. Ive not felt like its been bad at all in this game, and im level 31 now after rerolling when i had two characters up to level 20 on the Asmo side, and my gathering skills are both at 250. pluss an alchemy skill of 160.

Im glad the game isnt real easy, people who want easy can play WOW .. not bashing WOW, its easy and i had fun playing it when i did, but its not been fun since they deluted it IMHO .. AION is not the hardest game ive played but it has a good balance i feel.

I love the "SPY" pvp quest you get around level 20 .. its not been about getting ganked at the beginner levels by people way higher than you .. i think its been a really well thought out game from beginning to end, not ground breaking, just well thought out and fun.

If you DIDNT get to the ABYSS , then you have NO IDEA what AION is like.

is all i have to say about that,  

This is my take on the WOW  "Hating" thing.

Wow is a good game.  But, i think most people thought it was better be for  BC.  I feel that most people started hating when it became obvious that they where "DUMBING" it down so any one and everyone could get epics, lowering the raids  etc etc.

They started hating what was taking place in WOW, and because WOW was getting so many people playing it and making LOTS of money more and more MMO's started saying hey, we want a peice of that cash pie as we,, and started dumbing down their games, and making everything so easy that the hardcore players, (and there r a lot of them) started not to hate wow, but what was taking place and turning a good game into something less.  And because so many other companies started doing the same thing you naturally blame the one that started it.

Lets face it, WOW is one of the easiest games to play, i can solo to 80, never need a group, i can get full epics with just spending a little time in BG's etc .. there is little effort involved any longer.

So i think people r more upset with what the companies have done to the game thus hate what the game has become not hating the game as it once was.

Well, that makes sence i guess .. didnt know AION had an AH, but i just started playing it last night, so thanks for that info also, ill have to look around for it   =)

Lineage II was the second MMO I ever played, and I loved it.  The one Gripe I've had with it though was the private stores; you would go to a town and there would be 100's of players sitting in the middle with their stores and it was lag city.  Also it was so hard to sell things or find the best price for items.  

Why cant NCsoft make an AH like most MMO's so that people can sell stuff with out being online and lagging others, and it would also let people be able to log in and play .  ???

I just dont understand the idea behind having private stores ...

You keep MISSING THE POINT !

and ive been playing a long time, way before WOW came out or was even thought of ...

the POINT IS .. most MMO's have always offered a FREE OPEN BETA   duh... thats the point.

Fallen Earth isnt, you only get in if u pre order the game or if u pay to belong to openplanet, either way u r paying !

the point ..

you guys are so funny so far, sept one, he wasnt so bad, anyways, im not pre ordering any more games after AOC and Tabula Rasa, .. im done giving out my money to games that cant offer a free open beta or a weeks worth of free play to see if i like it.

if you people dont mind throwing your money away thats ok, i work hard for mine.  and after i heard they where only letting people from file planet do the beta's i did stop following it. now they do this, i dont care if i dont get to play it,... i still wont throw my money away on a game i cant try for free ever again.

That's right,

I've been following Fallen Eath for years. Many times I thought, this game will never come out, it doesn't seem like they are even working on it .... whats taking them so long etc etc .. even to the point i stopped looking for info on it. Then it actually is going to be released and they are having an OPEN BETA even .. so I go to fileplanet and find out that you can only join the open beta 2 ways, buy a pre release or pay to belong to fileplanet ...

Fallen earth IMHO has treated those who have been following their game from the beginning like trash. I signed up early to their forums in hopes of getting letters now and again about the games progress and also hoping that they would draw beta people from there, but no they draw from fileplanet memebers only .. people who probably never even knew about the game until fileplanet mentioned it on their web site .. now this .. Fallen Earth might even be lucky if i give the game a look over now. Because odds are, I will just wait for Earth Rise to come out.

The moral of my story is that i feel MMO developers should think about taking care of the real fans who have taking a lot of time following their game, instead of dissing them in this manner.

Most MMO's are a grind fest because the developers dont have anything for you to do after you level up. So in order to keep you paying to play they keep u grinding to get to a very high level  .. notice how games use to be level 50 cap back in the day .. now you see 80 - 100+ levels.   They used to make it take months to just get to 50.  I dont know if its because they lack end game ideas, raiding is a grind IMHO;  or if its just easier and faster to put out an MMO where u just quest and level grind so they can start making their money right away.

i used to think they just didnt have good ideas to keep us busy at the end of leveling a character up.

I really liked EQ II   expecually the crafting part .  But I was there at the beginning and left because of a lot of the problems they had early on.   Why dont I go back ?  ive tried it again a year or so ago, but there are so many levels and hardly anyone around in the low zones i was in that i got tired of trying to do things by myself and feeling that i wasnt catching up to anyone soon.

i was thinking about going back myself.  I made a free trial account and started playing it to see if i really would want to go back.

My main characters where in their 30's when i stopped playing the first time.  One thing that started bugging me is how many levels the game has.  I really dont feel like leveling anything to 80.  Games that are 50-60 levels have enough levels IMHO.  It is tough enough to level from 60-80 when they put out an expansion pack .. Thats why i usually stop and never go back to games that have went from level 50 or 60 to higher levels be it 80 or more. 

Cant games get more content etc with out making the level cap higher ?  Guess not, because most of the games out there are over once the questing and leveling is over.  So sad really.

Im taking a break from MMO's until a game comes out where i can play instead of grind be it for levels or gear .. there has to be more to games than just those 2 concepts.  We as consumers are making it all to easy for them to just put out junk because we will play them instead of demand better.  You would think developers would learn when games close faster than it took to make them.

I forgot to say, it was a good post though,  I read the whole thing.

I for one though have always liked NCsoft games .. the graphics are usualy really good .. not all of them are just for gear.

I acutally liked  Tabula Rasa, it was different and inventive more so than most of the "WOW " clones out there.

I must  agree with Aganazer  ... I played L2  and had a great time. Even with all the farmers etc, it was the grind that finally got me to stop playing it.  Aion may not be like L2 in that respect ..  my problem is that since L2 and a dozen other games, I have finally gotten burnt out on the games that just offer gear as a reward or goal to keep playing it, and every patch people just cant wait to see what the "NEW" gear will be that they can grind to replace their old gear .. im geared out !

There has to be a formula for having fun in an MMO other than just trying to get gear through PVP or raids, doesnt matter its all old and im tired of it.  so guess I wont be playing many MMO's for  a long time because everybody is on the "WOW" band wagon as to keeping people playing their game by making them get gear as an end game .. Some body make a game that is played for a different reason please !

Antigua  seems to have the biggest population IMHO,  i have a rat on it, and i can usually find anything i want to outfit a ship

I have nats on all of the other servers but defiant, the times for that one are just too drastic for me to play on and i dont think it

has much of a population anyways when i was there.

some nations on some servers just dont have very many people .. i was french on one and never saw anyone, so reroled british,

best way to figure out how many people each nation has on a server i found is to look at the map and see what nation came in 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th  for the last couple maps, usually those with better population probably came in 1st  and 2nd in the last two maps, those with lower populations probably will show up as comming in 3rd or 4th in the last two maps, it shows current place and the place they came in before.

Well, ive played POTBS now for about a month.   The quest are nice enough, doesnt seem to matter what nationality or pirate you become they all seem to do the same core quest; some quest differ but not many.

I was glad that it didnt take forever and a day to level to 50.  Some games like AOC, just take too much time to level to 80 or 80+ for other game when all you really want to do is get to the max level so you can play with the rest of the people.   Granit some games dont have much play after you reach the max level so then taking your time to level to 80+ doesnt seem that bad then i guess if u like the game.

What makes POTBS diff than most MMO's i found is, the game really doesnt start till u reach 50, sure u can do port battles and PVP etc before u reach 50, but its a much better experience when u r max level.

Unlike other MMO's also, who give you raids when u reach max level, POTBS is such a breath of fresh air in that you can pick ports to flip for future port battles, pvp in red area's  creat pvp area's ( most mmo's u cant creat your own pvp areas they are already defined)  craft, outfit ships, do daily quest .. and there is also quest wich are like raids in that they can give u better gear etc also.

ok, where i find POTBS annoying ... Open Sea  wind direction is a pain in the  butt.  U can find yourself trying to sail to a port and having it take u hours to get there,  tack you say ?  ya well tacking can take u about 90 degrees out of your way, going back and forth really sux and still takes  about 45 mins instead of that hr to get to a port .. i think they really need to figure out a way to travel on OS  (open sea) to where u arnt taking all day to get to a place, wind direction in pvp battles or port battles is cool, but not when u r just trying to get across the map .. ive actually gotten up and made me dinner, or went for a bio break as i crossed the OS map because it was going to take so dang long.

Avatar fighting is fun, i think they made it a lot better.  Too many ports look the same, ... i like to visit ports to see what each one looks like etc, but not enough of them are different.

Will is stay and keep playing this game ?  well, i like the society i found, (guild in other mmo's) community seems ok as long as u use ignore on just a few players in nation chat .. but traveling on OS might make me want to stop playing .. guess we will see.

My guess is, if you was horde it was wailing caverns and if you was alliance it probably was VC.  Either one isnt that hard to do if you run back and keep killing the extra mobs.  still, they are like the beginner dungeons and doesnt really reflect on how hard the other dungeons get.

IMHO  MMO's shouldnt make it where you have to be in a group to play it, they need to make more of the game where you interact with others .. such as BG's etc .. Things that any body could do when ever they get on, not HAVE to look for groups in order to play . Too many people get left behind because they have to find a group in order to finish a quest line etc ..

My personal feeling is, leveling up characters can be done solo, or in groups but should be able to be the individual's choice, but there should be game play besides the normal level up quest that let people play together and have fun, outside of just leveling; and just having instanced RAIDS isnt what i mean .. they always take a certain amount of people and certain class's to do them, im talking about game play that u can get into when ever your able to get into the game. Jump in, play with others and not worry about finding groups and waiting for people.

MMO's need to have zones with ideas that make it where people can play together to achieve goals etc .. RVR is sort of along this line of thinking. But that sort of restricts it to PVP oriented content and i think there could be ways to do it where non pvpers can have fun doing stuff together also.

Having non static cities, and gear that needs to be replaced would help, stuff that last forever and never changes gets in the way of MMO group fun i think.

I just hope that they add more colors to the game than just the ones i keep seeing, green's and browns !

Horizons was the best crafting game around and still probably is as far as crafting being worth wile,  Everyone bought your stuff because they didn't get better drops or quest items, so it made it where a crafter was needed and could sell their wares.  Most all MMO's have crafting, but who cares, because most the time you get better quest rewards or get gear in BG's or arenas.  Wasn't like that at all in Horizons; and so crafting was rewarding and fun. 

Now, not saying that Horizons had the best crafting as far as the process, i think EQII & others were more involved and Horizons seemed a bit easy to do, but non of the other MMO's needed the crafter more than the people who played on Horizons. Even in EQII i could get by with quest items or drops and not worry about buying what people made. Though there is always the exception to the rule, like those who crafted bags, master spells, trunks etc they where in demand from crafters; just seemed like armor and weapons where not. But in horizons you looked for your next weapon or armor from the crafters. It was a great game to play if u loved to craft .. or just wanted to play a dragon.