I have so many ideals, so many things that would constitute different kinds of ‘best MMO’ that are mutually exclusive, so it might be impossible to name one.

But as evidenced by my signature, I would say EVE, Vanguard, and Age of Conan, in their own ways.

Originally posted by zevni78

I just worry the game will attract conspiracy nuts;

 

Oh, it does. I'm a moderately active member of the community at darkdemonscrygaia.com, and to me it seems rife with the same sort of delusions as the Deus Ex community.

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

How much money did it cost to develope DAOC, EQ, Utilima Online, SWG, or Shadowbane? No where NEAR as much as all these new high priced MMOs are going to cost.

I don't know much about the budgets of the others, but EverQuest cost $30 million.

Content is expensive. Many game concepts can thrive on concept rather than content, ala Minecraft, but most of the money has proved to be in the incidentally very expensive high-content products.

Originally posted by gambe1

I think money is not the real problem. I mean, if game companies knew that they would get a lot of players by making that kind of game, they would do it. But for now, there is a big risk that game like that will fail. I still think it's best that sandbox games start small, and then build up, like EvE and Darkfall. 

This. This ten thousand times.

Developing a sustainable foundation of a great game and allowing the support thereof to fund its incremental development into a fuller realization of that concept has been demonstrated very well by EVE in particular, I believe. You just need to be damn sure that the design is expandable and the engine upward-scaleable.

Originally posted by GTwander

Originally posted by ironfungus

Originally posted by Kaelano1

You are just a clone of your parents. 

LOL. Pretty sure that's not true.

It is if they were brother and sister...

No, it's really not. Everyone's a mutant.

You're right, seeing through the eyes of your character breaks my immersion, too.

Oh, wait....

Originally posted by brummel1

ah do they need a cheaper rent!

 

Yeah, sure, they're in financial straits. That's why they're hiring 150 more employees for this office.

I certianly don't sympathize with the people who derive joy from it, but Hulkageddon doesn't bother me. Not so attached to the game that it tears me up to avoid a certain activity for a while.

I'm not sure that anyone who looks down on Sigil for Vanguard was in the beta before SOE replaced Microsoft. Having been through that, I think the greatest tragedy of that game's development is that Microsoft Game Studios underwent a heavy restaffing at the time, which irritated Sigil, which led to the split, which ultimately resulted in SOE stepping in and removing half the things that (I felt) made it great, never to be seen again.

I agree that blind publisher hate is a real problem, but so is granting them immunity.

They also weren't MMOs.

Can't believe I'm defending STO, but I felt that had to be pointed out.

As soon as someone comes up with a suggestion as to how character advancement can be done in a way that cannot be ground through, I'm sure the idea will be taken more seriously. As it is, it sounds like an oxymoron.

Having character advancement implies that there are actions to take to advance your character. People obsessed with doing so as quickly as possible will repeat those actions monotonously, which is what is called grinding.

The only alternative character advancement that I can see is one that is based not on action, but on time, such as EVE's advancement system. I like that, but it seems like the same people who complain about grinding (i.e. the ones who choose to grind) are the same ones who complain that EVE rewarding skills over time prevents people from being able to grind skills to catch up. Interesting stuff.

I don't get it. The color scheme is pleasant and the composition is good, but there's a lot of primitive stuff going on there that really rears its outdated head at me. Most notably the flora. It's weird that there hasn't been non-cardboard flora since Vanguard and Age of Conan. Everything else has improved, but flora keeps hovering around the nasty WoW-LotRO range.

I don't tend to see the current trends going backward from where I'd like them to go, but perpendicular.

Is there anything specifically that you want me to back up? I didn't say anything about what is good or bad, for the most part, just what is and isn't there....

I don't necessarily think it was better. For me, the story is most important, and I preferred the story of discovery that defined ME1. That wasn't the point, though. He explicitly narrowed down on 'RPG choices,' and that seemed odd. There are more 'RPG choices' in ME2. That's not opinion, it's math.

Originally posted by Elikal

Strange. So different are tastes.

I liked the original Mass Effect 1 more. The second was much less a RPG and more a story driven shooter. And what I see I liked DAO more than the streamlined DA2.

Streamlining and less RPG choices are the way Bioware is heading, which is my reason to be skeptical of SWTOR.

I have to know what RPG choices were stripped from ME2. Maybe it has been too long since I last played it, but as I recall, dialogue flexibility was expanded significantly, plus interrupts were something that had been possible and common in tabletop RPGs for decades that only then made it into a CRPG, the Renegade options were less 'dumbfuck' and more 'hardass,' how you handled your companions was more important, there were more of said companions, plus loyalty missions for them that were longer and deeper than Dragon Age's, and your choices overall were greater in number and made for more delicious moral conundrums.

But as I said, it's been a while.

I'll admit any time that there were things I missed in ME2 (the Mako, more side-NPCs, etc.), but I don't see how it was less of an RPG.

I doubt that I'll play TERA, but I know that it makes me happy to see someone doing elves elvenly for the first time since PJ's LotR films. The females' scanty dresses aside.

There seems to have been an organized effort in game development to rapidly interbreed elves with goblins over the last decade, so it's nice to see purebloods around.

Originally posted by dreamscaper

There are two things I want to see in MMOs:

1. Levels. They need to die in a fire. Especially when the game gives massive penalities/bonuses according to level differences. We need horizontal progression, not vertical. We can still have our character accumulate stat and skill points, but there's no numerical value associated with it, and there's no actual level to affect anything.

2. Non-combat innovation. Even with all the advances we've had in technology, almost every single MMO in existence STILL revolves around combat. We have so much potential at our fingertips, yet finding more amusing ways to kill things is the best we can come up with? It's absurd.

I'll regularly service the genitalia of anyone who can make this happen.

Originally posted by Cernan

The last two games that I played and RP'ed were DAoC and Shadowbane.

Ditto, unless you count the EVE's in-character summit forum.

Originally posted by Cernan

Someone mentioned RP and old English in one of the comments.  That doesn't have to be the case.  The Xyson guilds that were RPing weren't speaking in old English.  It is an apocolyptic world.   I think that is another misconception.  People speaking in wierd accents and running around with cardboard swords.  For me, roleplay is just a way to get into the lore and enjoy my character more.  Still haven't round a recent game though where I have enjoyed it.

I've never much understood the Old English thing. Even overlooking the fact that it's really a variant of Early Modern English*, it's strange to assume that it somehow fits into a fantasy setting. I could get behind it in Ultima Online, since it was very stylistically grounded in medieval England and Early Modern English was already used by NPCs; but in most fantasy settings, Early Modern English makes no more sense than French or Klingon. So you may as well use your mother tongue, you know?

* Old English: Wes h?l, ic h?tte Saerain. ?adig, þec t? m?tenne. Is h?r ?nig þe Englisce spricþ?

* Middle English: Al-hail, my namæ is Saerain. I am cladde to mette ye. Is ther ani on her that speken English?

* Early Modern English: Hail, my name is Saerain. I am glad to meet thee. Is there anyone here who speaketh English?

Star Wars ceased to be to my tastes after about age 13, but BioWare has demonstrated that they know how to make me love a Star Wars game in spite of its setting.

Originally posted by mmogawd

So you want... Second Life, set in the 1300s?

Nah, he wants EVE set in the 1300s.

EVE is such a holy grail of sandbox lovers, but many people just can't get into the setting, whether because it's HSF, because it's transhumanistic, or because it's hypercapitalistic.

Anyway, Tazarconan, at risk of seeming very naive, I would suggest looking into Adellion. It's an independent project that has been in the works since late 1999 and doesn't update its site often, so I wouldn't hold your breath for it, but I think that it is very much what you describe, and it isn't dead yet. The developers are nothing if not persistent.