Hate to say it, welcome to MMORPG.com forums.

You can almost play Angry Ad-Libs with any MMO discussion here:

<Title of Game> sucks! It's just more <favorite fail term>. I can get the same experience playing <WoW or F2P>.  This game is going to bomb like <AoC, WAR, or any other PvP-centric game that has failed community expectations.>  The part that annoys me the most is <Grind, Ganking, Imbalances, or more WoW comparisons>. Hopefully, <Insert name of brand-x hyped up open world PvP-Sandbox that will potentially also bomb player's expectations> will save the MMO industry.

Remember, these kinds of communities contain more grumps complaining about the games than people who actually play and enjoy them. That and assholes like me.

heh we must have all replied at once going NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

epic :)

I don't think Blizzard would host their sites on x10hosting.com domains, especially not in the web address that the "beta" link you posted links to.

It's a scam.

Wanted to share the pics from the "HAM-mo-FOW" run we did this past weekend with our allies.

Full 8 man team, 7 Pets, completed FOW in about an hour and a half and we all walked away with a bunch of obsidian shards. Good times had by all!

Party List:

Want in on the fun? Apply at our website or PM Obtena Shadowkin, Redshot Rory or Horus Wants His for an invite.

We are a "Casual Hardcore" guild established by longtime freinds, guildmates and allies and we are looking for a few mature, fun, and awesome recruits to fill our ranks.

Aion: North America, Asmodian Side (Server TBA)
HAMNATION is looking to start a chapter in the upcoming NCSoft title Aion. We're planning on playing on the North American version, Asmodian Side, and we can use some recruits to help us build the chapter from the ground up.

If you're interested in getting in on the ground floor and establishing the core membership for our new guild, please apply today! Right now we're in the early planning stages, preparing for Open Beta where we hope to recruit some more solid members.

Again, we're looking for players who meet the mature(18+), Casual-Hardcore mentality who are fun loving, laid back, but when it comes to game time they give it all they got.

We're looking to fill our roster with an emphasis of Quality over Quantity, and we plan on having our Legion being fun and inviting for those who prefer to keep things fun sans the asshattery.

Also.........

Guild Wars:
Hamstorm Nation [PIG] has recently been established and we're looking for easy going, fun loving individuals who are into PvE as well as factional PvP (Alliance Battles, Fort Aspenwood, Jade Quarry etc.)

Whether you're a complete newbie to Guild Wars coming in late to the game, or a vet who's just looking for a more laid back and fun crew, we got a place for you. Our founding officers have been playing together for years and have seen and done many of the ins-and-outs of Guild Wars.

Those years spent playing have been along our friends and allies of the Defenders of the North [EYE] Alliance. Hamstorm Nation is happy to finally have our new guild back amongst our friends and family there, and we happily plug them as a perk towards membership. The alliance is an active, diverse and fun community that offers a little bit of everything for everyone on both sides of the game.

We love to play, we love to have fun, and we love to tackle head on everything we do. You'll see us on Luxon side of AB with our all pet/ranger teams (look for the swarm named Hamstorm, and no, it's not the build on the back of the prophs box.) You can also catch us doing fun things with our alliance (such as themed Fissure of Woe runs, like WAMMOFOW or HAMMOFOW).

If you're looking for a good home on Luxon side, [PIG] & the [EYE] Alliance have a place for you.

What We Can Offer You:

* A Fun, mature community where we focus more on having fun then enforcing rules or schedules.
* A guild of gamers whose experience with gaming, both offline and on, is very diverse and rich.
* All of the standard communication tools to keep a guild together: We have forums, Xfire, and a Vent server.

If this sounds appealing to you, come by our website and introduce yourself in the Welcoming Section of our forums!

http://hamnation.rpgwars.org/

We are a "Casual Hardcore" guild established by longtime freinds, guildmates and allies and we are looking for a few mature(18+), fun, and awesome recruits to fill our ranks.

Guild Wars:
Hamstorm Nation [PIG] has recently been established and we're looking for easy going, fun loving individuals who are into PvE as well as factional PvP (Alliance Battles, Fort Aspenwood, Jade Quarry etc.)

Whether you're a complete newbie to Guild Wars coming in late to the game, or a vet who's just looking for a more laid back and fun crew, we got a place for you. Our founding officers have been playing together for years and have seen and done many of the ins-and-outs of Guild Wars.

Those years spent playing have been along our friends and allies of the Defenders of the North [EYE] Alliance. Hamstorm Nation is happy to finally have our new guild back amongst our friends and family there, and we happily plug them as a perk towards membership. The alliance is an active, diverse and fun community that offers a little bit of everything for everyone on both sides of the game.

We love to play, we love to have fun, and we love to tackle head on everything we do. You'll see us on Luxon side of AB with our all pet/ranger teams (look for the swarm named Hamstorm, and no, it's not the build on the back of the prophs box.) You can also catch us doing fun things with our alliance (such as themed Fissure of Woe runs, like WAMMOFOW or HAMMOFOW).

If you're looking for a good home on Luxon side, [PIG] & the [EYE] Alliance have a place for you.

Aion: North America, Asmodian Side (Server TBA)
HAMNATION is also looking to start a chapter in the upcoming NCSoft title Aion. We're planning on playing on the North American version, Asmodian Side, and we can use some recruits to help us build the chapter from the ground up.

If you're interested in getting in on the ground floor and establishing the core membership for our new guild, please apply today! Right now we're in the early planning stages, preparing for Open Beta where we hope to recruit some more solid members.

Again, we're looking for players who meet the mature, Casual-Hardcore mentality who are fun loving, laid back, but when it comes to game time they give it all they got.

What We Can Offer You:

* A Fun, mature community where we focus more on having fun then enforcing rules or schedules.
* A guild of gamers whose experience with gaming, both offline and on, is very diverse and rich.
* All of the standard communication tools to keep a guild together: We have forums, Xfire, and a Vent server.

If this sounds appealing to you, come by our website and introduce yourself in the Welcoming Section of our forums!

http://hamnation.rpgwars.org
 

Hrrrm, seems one sided, I know plenty of girls who enjoy chest bubbles as much as I do.

Also,  it's funny she uses Tabula Rasa as a "If they had shown more" example....I have an issue of Playboy where her, the AoC assassin chick and a Cabalist from Hellgate: London posed.

If anything, going all the way topless destines your game to flop.

No pun intended.

If there's still peeps handing out Buddy Passes, I'd also like to request one. Would like to try this before purchasing; but if I enjoy it even a little bit I'll probably run out and buy it this week.

PM me here or email rev.lazaro AT gmail.com

PS-- US version

Originally posted by DarkPony

Too bad my concern was and will always be the chopped to bits gameworld. All the zoning and channeling really ruined 'mah immershunz' while playing it. Bugs and lacking client stability are almost always post launch issues which get adressed eventually. Structural flaws or bad decisions in game design sadly are not.

So i dare ask, for someone who actually enjoys zones/instanced games like Guild Wars and DDO, could I enjoy AoC?

The OP started this thread a few months ago; and others who participated in this thread I still see pretty actively on the Bloodymare forums. Might get that answer sooner. I've been playing it off and on for over a year; I originally left it to go play WAR. Let's just say I have a WAR time card collecting dust on my desk, and Requiem is still on my hard drive getting played.

I'm not going to blow sunshine up anyone's backside to say this game is awesome. But, it does click right for a lot of us. The gameplay can be fun, the layout of the world and the atmosphere definitely caters to a different crowd. It has plenty of faults, my biggest being the occasional font hiccup and the word-wrapping in mid word. Aside from that, it's been one of my favorite games to quest in, and the dungeons can be pretty cool.   What it lacks in content for most it makes up for in community; the Self-Entitlement kiddies looking for something to (unrealisitically) find something in the F2P that shines like WoW or any other AAA premium title have apparently tapered off, and the people who are just looking for something different and get into the groove of the game stuck around. I think I've only ran into one total asshat in the past month *knocks on wood* and that was just someone who got upset I didn't just stand there and smash keys in a duel. But that's any game ;)

Here's my 2 coppers, for what it's worth, from someone who is both an MMO player for many years, and a tabletop rpg player for a lot longer. I hope Dana actually reads this post and it doesn't get lost in the sea of backlash.

I agree overall that no single game or RP server caters to a pure immersion factor of the game. But let's get serious: Even in tabletop role playing and Live Action role playing, there's the story and game with the characters, and then the OOC and chill out and have fun factor. People who truly "immerse" are, let's be honest, the things that give Vampire LARP'ers a bad name and result in movies like Mazes and Monsters. There's a difference between full immersion and just pretending and having fun.

As many have pointed out already, it's not just about typing in character, sometimes it's about taking advantage of the environment and making an extra layer to the game that involves more creativity and community involvement than raiding parties, grind and gear min/maxing. This isn't just for carebears to sit around and cyber one another and get to be the victims of trolls; this is about adding depth with the toys we have.

The Tools We Have

Here's a weird way of looking at it: Tabletop role playing's most popular game is Dungeons & Dragons. This game was an evolution from Chainmail, a miniature war game. A lot D&D's rules, especially the current edition, have combat based more on tactical, almost Wargame like setup than just narrative approach. Hell, the fourth edition right now is even under some criticism for its rather heavy use of minis for combat. So what seperates it from the Miniature Ware Games to being a true Role Playing Game?

Two things: The Ideology, and the Players. The Ideology behind role playing is that the sum of the rules, dice mechanics and abstract systems were designed with the premise that these are tools and building blocks for interactive storytelling; whereas in War games these are truly rules that must be followed for fair competition. Sure, players could role up characters and just fight monsters, gain loot and crawl dungeons without ever having to act out. Some do. But that's the second thing that seperates RPG's from the Mini Battle players: The Ideology. Combat is usually just a means to an end, not the main focus. There's politics, mystery, drama....it's the thrill of playing out a story.

Adding an extra layer to the Virtual Worlds

You said it yourself: MMORPGs are called thus because they have roots in the tabletop game play. You think Everquest and Ultima Online, and the older precursors such as The Realm and Meridian 59 took off because people wanted to grind to end game and be l33t sk33t on the scrotum pole? No, we played those because they were a brave new dimension of the genre of games we love. Somehow, along the way, MMO's evolved more into leveling treadmills and subscription based grinds for pretty pixels and bragging rights.

The reason a few of us MMO players want RP servers and form RP guilds is because we want to play the game in a way different from leveling treadmills and flavor of the week builds. It's not so much about campy dialogue as it is about community involvement. And don't pin this ideology to just PvE carebears, but plenty of PvP'ers too. My favorite times in PvP guilds in the past have actually been related to Roleplaying themed guilds. No, we weren't in character the whole time. What we were doing was playing with a structured society of roles, titles and jobs, a united goal and when it came down to both inner-guild business, Diplomacy with other guilds or taking arms en masse, we did so in the style and theme of our guild's "persona". We did this in EQ's hayday on Rallos Zek, we did this in Shadowbane, and I know many others who continue to do this in any game they play.

Usually on RP servers, you're more likely to see community driven events than you are on the standard servers. Certain games, like City of Heroes and LOTRO, which offer a lot of RP and social opportunities in game, thrive on the community and arguably are some of the most pleasant in-game experiences I've had when I wasn't doing quests or raiding. In Shadowbane (may it RIP), we always played on the Lore based servers because the community felt more tight knit, and lord knows the politics and drama play there were epic (Whether guilds were "role playing" or not. And for many, that was fun.)

And one last thing:
I agree, MMO's today are a different style of game than the tabletop games they draw inspiration from.

However, the tone you wrote it in, came off more like an industry cop out for lack of innovation to provide an environment capable of delivering and encouraging player character social interaction past trade and PK'ing. Some titles out there have worked on this, and thus have developed a strong RP community and player base from it. Hell, I know many EVE players who are excited about the possible space station expansion in the hopefully near future, because it's going to open up some RP possibilities.

Rockin !! I'll make sure to tell her (yeah, you read that right....chick playing a dude. It happens :P )

BTW from both of us:

Awesome 4th Anniversary coverage!

Told my fiancee I would post this here for her:

A few of you might know Starr the Insane, aka Grim Mortbane, from the fan art forums over at Guild Wars Guru. After participating in so many contests, she's decided to give back to the Guild Wars Fan Art community with a contest of her own!

For more information and details check out the contest's site at:
http://mortbane1079ae.wordpress.com/
 

PS -- For those not familiar with her work, I recommend checking out her deviant art site at http://xstarrx.deviantart.com/

I just saw this article at MMOSite.

Seems pretty cool....I wasn't actually following this title until I saw it.

If and when it hits, I'll give it a look. Looks like Hellgate done right.

New Update bringing a new battlefield for Server vs Server conflict. Also will be bringing new dungeons only accessible with keys earned from points in PvP.

http://www.playrequiem.com/news/updateDetail.aspx?num=59#59

While Requiem's PvP has never been a strong point, I am kinda happy to see them at least kinda trying to add something new to the element. Lots of people cry that they should worry about class balancing first; but I have trouble seeing how they can do a good job on balancing when PvP is under played.

(Granted that's my opinion from when I last played before 4.0 update.....don't know what the state of Battlefields and PvP is today.)

Also, the server setup is going to be the PvE Servers vs. Hammermine. Which I think is fair, considering Lintra is probably still a Ghost Town and not everyone on Valdez is going to want to PvP.

DISCUSS!

Coming from a person who played the living shit out of Guild Wars, played WoW off and on and has gaming roots dating back before EQ and UO with text based shit:

WAR will never catch up to WoW in terms of sub numbers. Guild Wars is the only game I can think of that even stands a chance of coming close, but that's at half the accounts, and that's factoring in they never have sub fees so the accounts are always active (pending they don't get banned or whatever).

In terms of content, I'm hoping the new stuff we're seeing rolled out over the next couple months will start to be them finally getting the game on track and in the right direction. I'm hoping it compares to a more PvP mirror of the success Lord of the Rings Online had. 

If you want a game as massive and fleshed out as WoW and GW, go play WoW and GW.

Holy Hell! Agricola lives!

My account hasn't been subbing for over a month (no hate, just wanted to hold off for a bit). I was able to login to their website and transfer without reactivating my subscription.

So at least when I come back I'll still be on the servers my friends are on.

Just FYI.

I'm throwing out a vote for Elindilmir.

Not quite as big as Brandywine by still pretty decent pop. The real charm here is it's a NA/Oceanic server so it seems to ALWAYS have a good population on at all times.

Community is awesome. Very friendly, very helpful, and if the PvMP aspects appeal to you we have a pretty cool Creep side.

It's not offered on the transfer listing, but if you re-roll on Averheim you'll see a community that is both active across the tiers, scenarios that pop and a pretty balanced population in terms of Order and Destro numbers.