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Originally posted by kitsunegirl
I bought a preorder for AoC, but got turned off by various stuff, funcoms handling, the aggressive and abusive community, the bad reviews, the fanboi reviews, the crappy open beta client - tied in to the first item listed. If I do buy the game, I doubt Ill play it til a month or two after the game is launched. Perfect launches are rare, and the way Funcom has been running their ship, Im not expecting one.
Currently, Im considering playing EQ2 again... I hate SOE alot, but the game is relatively fun, it has a lot more content than Warcrack, graphics are less pretty, but more realistic. And I did love playing my fae, as much as I like my Draenei... Its just SOE... and Smedley. >.> Ive cancelled Warcrack and Lotro waiting for both expansions.
Oh, and honestly, AoC is meh to me, the game Im dying to play is Aion. I know its an NCSoft game, styled like Lineage II, but Ive had my eye on it since around 06...

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I'm actually in the same boat. The only game holding majority of my desire to play is Aion. In the meantime I will probably give AoC and War a shot. Currently playing EQ2 and WoW off and on with a dab of Guildwars for my pvp fix. Everything I've seen from Aion is A+ and have been watching it for about a year and a half. Great concept imo.

No, look for something else...lol. You my friend are an unadaptable sludge.
OmG, why does my mage keep changing how I play him? Grow up. You aren't making the games. The way games are progressing or leveling out obviously says that the things you want in a game just aren't going to be done.

By the way, In WoW there really hasn't been many changes in play style. A mage is still just a mage.

I'm responding to this because I am so sick of folks like you who think more time in a game grants you the high rise penthouse over the peons on the street. We all pay the same price to play these games. We should all have access to the lore for one, which the culmination usually happens in endgame content. But because I like being solo I should never know the story? Dude fuck off!!!!

Troll over and out.

Grats, LF to GW2 also. Keep up the good work. Nice game.

You want something that hints at being an MMO till War comes out? I second the motion on Guild Wars. It's a free sub. Can't go wrong there. Pvp ain't bad either the way it's done. Team based pvp in the form of gvg or Guild vs Guild. It's an easy pickup. You go through the pve and you'll be rdy to start the pvp or do them both at the same time.

Sure, to start off you'll be behind the power curve in the amount of skills you will own, but you unlock them for your account so any pvp character you create will have them. It's an easy game to finish (by finish I mean every chapter has the storyline that resembles being played like it were a single player game which is why many consider not a real MMO)and get caught up with a lot of choice on how your character is built skill wise. But being able to be good at those choices is where the hard part comes in. Some have it, some don't.

I personally am a fan of this game because of the way classes don't counter each other, particular skills do. Ie; A monk places an enchantment on an assasin to give hit points back to the assasin eveytime it's hit. A necro, or mesmer could have brought a hex that shatters enchantments. Cool downs are basically nil which makes for a strategic fast paced fight. No cool down is really more than 60sec.

Interupts, enchantments, hexes, conditions, rituals are all very clear cut. By that I mean find your target and be able to see exactly what that person uses when they use it. Makes for finding out how to break an opposing character down or opposing team for that matter.

A monk may be the greatest at healing, but with the hybrid play...an elementalist or ritualist may be some hidden healers on an opposing squad.

I don't really play anymore though as I am now back to WoW getting geared up. I can forewarn you though, if your a fan of movements such as swimming and jumping, and hell...flying, you won't be able to do that stuff in Guild wars. After awhile tho, you'll get past that playing with what they give you.

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Originally posted by gestalt11
If you do this everyone complains about balance.

The two major names coming out are PvP titles so its not that surprising they went for classes.

However I will say I think they are kind of copping out. Although Guild Wars probably is a game that you do not believe fits your archetype. It actually does do so even though there are classes. GW has over 1000 abilites each with their own stats and you can cusomize your abilites with each one via your attributes, which are essentially analogous to skill points. Each class has on average over 100 abilities and everyone can have 2 classes so you can have somewhere between 200-300 abilities to choose from. There are no restrictions in class combinations.
GW lets you build a character in a very similar way to the systems you describe. Whether people like the progression model is irrelevant for this disucssion. The point is that you do not need a UO skill style game to accomplish roughly the same thing. Afterall putting points into skill just gives you abilities anyway.

The reason i mention this is because of the balance thing. GW is a very well balanced PvP game. This is because they came up with a meta-system then created all their abilities to make the real system. They have interrupts and enchantments and enchantment removal and hexes and each type is designed to perform a certain way.
When GW creates a class the only balance concern they need to worry about is whether the abilities do what is intended for that class and that certain undesirable phenomenon like tank-mages are either not possible or have a weakness (like relying on enchantments).


So in other words you won't see this type of system start to pop up again until games start balancing the way Guild Wars, via a comprehensive ability design using a meta system, does instead of the way WoW does, via class and role.
This won't happen anytime soon. Most designers do not have the ability for elegance that Anet or CCP do. Its much easier for them to cobble things together into classes and call it done.

Its the same reason many programmers use iterative Loops instead of recursion even though sometimes the recursion is a far more elegant solution. Its just easier to think about and grab a hold of with your mind. The funny thing is they convince themselves this makes class based balanced easier to do, because its a simple model. But actually its a model with many unseen holes and is thus much harder to balance than Guild War's style balancing.
The class balance model requires a complete reanalysis of everything everytime any change is made. The Guild Wars system does not. That is one of the reasons it is superior for an MMORPG. However this fact is not generally fully understood or taken into consideration and usually the apparent simplness of of the class based model wins people over. Its a sort of misidentification of the KISS principle. They are keeping the wrong part simple.

They think by keeping the classes simple balance will be simple, but then they just keeping running into the problems of cascading changes and strange interactions because they did not actually design systematically.

So you are screwed until this becomes obvious to the slacker monkey part of their brains. I don't say that pejoratively, laziness is important for designers. It is your motivation for doing things right. But at the same time it can be very simplistic and its not until you get hit of the head enough with the problems of the two approaches that you sort of begrudingly say "OK lets try it this way, because that other way was too much of a night mare."

Right now the skilled based people are the victim of completely awful balance, well really complete lack of balance, that existed in games like UO. The designers saw this knew it was bad, heard the complaints and knew it hurt their bottom line. They then looked at how to control those system better and just saw a complete mess and ran as fast as they could to what appears to be the easy solution: classes.

They are now in the process of realizing class balance, while offering some improvments over no balance at all, is in fact a big hairball of wires that you have to untangle every frigging time. So while you can set up decent balance maintaining it is a gigantic pain. And you will need to do some maintainence because there is no way you do it perfect the first time and things change anyway.

The next step will be getting past the idea that class are a necessary evil and there is no other solution. Over the next few you will see that mantra repeated over and over. It already is. Then a few attentive designers will realize the whole thing is already solved in GW and that emulating them will actually give them and the players more freedom and make balance easier to maintain.

So you are screwed for I dunno like 5 years or until Guild Wars 2 comes out. Or you can play Eve. Or maybe that World of Darkness MMO CCP is supposedly making. Otherwise you are screwed for a while because it will take them a while to move to a more comprehensive and elegant balance system and that is what drives all this. Well also the robot like reliance on class roles messes with their thinking too. But in the end they actually need to do the original design with no classes and put classes on top if they want roles, other wise they go back to their hairball.

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oh ok, I missed this post...yeah, i agree

I still think Guild Wars trumps with their idea of how to run a class based system. A pick ur poison, build a deck magic the gathering style with a dump into an attribute pool to make the deck stronger. Couple that with over a thousand skills and bam, a very nice system.

It's class based but built around hybrid play.

New builds, very viable builds are found everyday. Granted they said that in GW2 that the scope would be toned down (which I personally think is a mistake..but hey, it's not my game), but for now that system was/is done well imo. Too bad I wanted a non instanced world and a tad better community or I would still play it religiously.

Devs choose the route of class based systems for imo one very simple/practical reason, it's easier to balance.

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Originally posted by Vincenz

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A lot of people would quit, yes. But they'd also gain other players, and according to player forums, opinions etc. The community and graphics are the biggest problems with WoW ;)

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I'm pretty sure that Blizzard, in fact, achieved a billion dollars in annual sales by basing their entire business model off of player forums...

Let me say this again...slowly...

WoW has no biggest problem...they have 10 million subscribers...they may not have your 15 bucks a month, but that's hardly a problem or a reason to change a single thing.

get it yet?

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Yeah, I get it and second it. Man it's great to be practical. Too many (forum outspoken) elitist, art house characters in the MMO community as a whole who are over thinking the "player plays a game process".

For me it's either play what they give you or don't. As far as complaints go...well, everyone is entitled to have an opinion, problem is that if it's not brought about in a positive manner then no one gives a shit. Certainly not I. If it goes beyond constructive criticism, You are just wasting your breath.

I have been thinking this for a long time, with the over abundance of these sort of threads. If you don't like what a game company is offering you beyond the small changes that could be made...DON"T PLAY IT<~~>GO AND MAKE YOUR OWN GAME. Think you could do better, Don't talk about it...Be about it.

Jeez, people need to throttle back and enjoy what has been given to you and stop taking the work behind any of the projects for granted which is exactly (from what I see), 95% of the threads are on this site or any site like it.

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Originally posted by saluk
It is just very expensive, and the players have rejected so many games in the past, AND you have to actually compete with WoW, which has become the MMO monopoly. Think of Microsoft and the OS market. There are many little operating systems, but none can even come close to the marketshare of Windows, no matter how bad MS tries to screw it up.

MMO is a totally different market than anything else. Some things that make MMO's hard, and different from other games:
* Coding is harder
- network code is really difficult, and the entire game including all game logic etc has to be based on that netcode. In my personal experience, the programming of an mmo is roughly 5x as hard as programming a single player game, and maybe 2x or 3x harder than programming a typical arena based multiplayer game.
* Function of the game is different
- Most games are purchased by players. If people like the game, they will tell their friends, and their friends will buy it. Then you make a sequel, and all of those people will buy your game again, even if it's practically the same. MMo's are not games. MMo's are a service. Like any service industry, growth and sustainability are key. You have to have a good reputation with players, and keep that reputation. During development, you have to plan for the life of your game, 1, 2, 5, 10 years ahead of when you release it. Also, you have to think about how you will keep players coming back to your game without getting bored. Traditional games do not have this problem. There is an "end". An mmo, if it were good enough, should never end. And not only do you have to keep the game fun, you have to convince players to continually pay you money for access to it.
* Failure is not an option
- Another thing that makes mmos more difficult, is that part of the VALUE of any mmo is the community. As a developer, you have some control over the community, but in the end it's up to them to be accepting of new players or be more elite. An elite community is going to have a hard time sustaining the game with new players. Also, if a game comes out at launch and doesn't do well, it has no chance of picking up steam later, or being a gem people find in the bargain bin. Word of mouth will kill the game, no one will be in, and any new players will see the empty fields and not stay for long. You have to get a reasonable amount of dedicated players at launch to have any sort of chance.

To me, MMO's are most similar to clubs. So imagine you have a city, with a giant club that everyone goes to. For 5 years, people have tried opening other clubs nearby. For the first few weeks people check out the new clubs, but then go back to the main show. The music at these other clubs is maybe the same, maybe better. But who wants to go to a club with 3 people in it? Sure, you'll get a few places here or there that offer something really different from the main club, but the people who go there are weird looking. They all wear funny hats, which scares you off. Maybe the funny hats are a good thing, but you are afraid of them just the same.

MMo's have lost so much money. I think if you add up, in general, money made and money lost by mmo's; they are collectively very far in the red - except WoW might tip the scale.

With games that are designed to last a "lifetime", how can any new game succeed?

I think publishers though have the wrong idea. Rather than trying to make a new club that looks like the popular one, which won't do much to ciphon patrons away, they should look instead at the alternative clubs and see if they can't find ways to bring out more alternative people. Maybe bring in people who don't go to clubs any more, because they are tired of the way things are. Oh, also tell the patrons to stop wearing funny hats. At least when new people are around :)

Do what Nintendo did. Whether you like them or not, they managed to come out in the latest round doing extremely well. Instead of being very far behind in the console race, they are very close to everyone else. Did they do this by out sonying sony, or out msofting msoft? No, they did it by being a better Nintendo.

These companies need to stop trying to be a better WoW, and start thinking about being a better alternative.

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Ur "Club" and "Nintendo" analogies are spot on.

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Originally posted by replicant

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Originally posted by Sovren1

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Originally posted by saduce
thats not a big shock considering from what ive heard you can take a lvl one to the max level in a day or two using all the cheats for it. Guess if i had nothing better to do id do it too.

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Ya, me too...I had to lol when I read this. I THINK the fastest time from 1-70 is like 6-7days played time meaning a total of 6-7 complete days with a guide that tells you how and when to pair quest up and finish them with limited grinding (run on sentence, but oh well). That's a few 12 hour shifts and can be done in 99% of the MMO's out there. At least in the majority of the ones I have played.

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The fastest currently from 1-60 is 1d 20hrs using a Frost Mage to Instance PL. From 1-70 is just a little over 3 days played using the same method, but switching 60-70 to a Blood Furnace PL'ing team of 2-4 people. People are finding ways to PL other characters very easily and it will only become easier. Quite a few people are already sub 5 days /played 1-70 just soloing.

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Ok, i've found vids of warriors pling to match the time of the mage you speak of and only since 2.3. I guess I was speaking from the point of view of a few months ago when I believe 1-70 solo was about 6 days played. Think since 2.3 it's down to 4+ by the same person. At least thats all I could find anyway.

...

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Originally posted by rikilii

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Originally posted by Sovren1
Oooooh! What happens when your opinion is fact?

Then it's a fact, not an opinion.

Or you only have an opinion because of a fact?

Then it's still only an an opinion, and it has no bearing on the truth of the "fact" or lack thereof.

Or your opinion of a fact is fact?

Then, once again, it's a fact, not an opinion.

Since it's fact can you not have an opinion that echoes a fact?

It's still not an opinion, if you're just regurgitating fact.

What happens when fact is a fact because of an opinion?

It may be a "fact" that your opinion is what it is. But your opinion is still, in fact, just an opinion.

If fact is truth, what happens when untruth is an opinionated fact?
If fact were fiction, or fiction were fact,
it still wouldn't tell you,
the truth that you lack

W/e...answer truthfully (YES or NO), will the next word you say be NO?
It will not.

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Satisfied?

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Oooooh! What happens when your opinion is fact? Or you only have an opinion because of a fact? Or your opinion of a fact is fact? Since it's fact can you not have an opinion that echoes a fact? What happens when fact is a fact because of an opinion? If fact is truth, what happens when untruth is an opinionated fact?

W/e...answer truthfully (YES or NO), will the next word you say be NO?

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Originally posted by saduce
thats not a big shock considering from what ive heard you can take a lvl one to the max level in a day or two using all the cheats for it. Guess if i had nothing better to do id do it too.

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Ya, me too...I had to lol when I read this. I THINK the fastest time from 1-70 is like 6-7days played time meaning a total of 6-7 complete days with a guide that tells you how and when to pair quest up and finish them with limited grinding (run on sentence, but oh well). That's a few 12 hour shifts and can be done in 99% of the MMO's out there. At least in the majority of the ones I have played.

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Originally posted by Exupery

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Originally posted by SioBabble

It is indeed (launched late June 2003), but when WoW came out, and smashed all records of subscriptions, Smedley went insane with envy as his ass was so totally pwned by the upstarts of Blizzard, and the WoWification of SWG began. There's evidence that once WoW came out in 2004 and took the MMO market by storm, that's when the CURB was ditched and an attempt to slavishly copy WoW with the CU, which was furthered by the NGE, began.
The first obvious attempt to copy WoW was the new graphics of action icons in the UI that the CU introduced, which eliminated the elegant UI icons of pre CU with "cartoooney" icons very similar to WoW.

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Blizzard is older than SOE nubsauce. WoW did come out a year after SWG, but Blizzard is certainly no upstart.

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Think he meant Blizzard's FIRST MMO. NUbcake

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Originally posted by SioBabble

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Originally posted by Sift

You guys are insane... SWG has more of a twitch FPS feel then it does a wow feel.... And every feature wow has is a ripoff so what are you trying to say? I love wow but if your trying to argue that its original... its not.

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Who's saying that WoW is original?
My contention is that WoW is the ULTIMATE 2nd Generation MMO. Blizzard took a look at everything that was out there, took from them what they thought was workable, playable, and cool, and then refined it, tested it, polished it, and presented it, with deliberate simplification to make it run smoothly.
A good example of simplification is the graphics of the avatars. Unlike in many MMOs, your avatar's customization is drasticly limited in WoW, and one of the effects of this is that rendering multiple avatars on your screen is a far less complex and lag-inducing process than it is in SWG.
WoW's success is a boon for Blizzard, but it's the bane of the MMO genre, in my opinion. Because WoW has been so successful, the suits want to be like WoW. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and envy, and the MMO industry has become every bit as formulaic as it matures as the cinematic entertainment (movie and TV) industry is. More and more games are put out that try to slavishly follow the WoW formula, just like you've got dozens of Law & Order/CSI type shows all over the tube, and there are formula films (slasher, teen sex comedy, baddass male action) that are pretty much the same and predictable on the big screen.
In SWG's case, they had an original, groundbreaking system that needed polishing, bug quashing, and more content, either directed, or tools for players to create content. Instead of going forward with the foundation they had, they elected to trash a game that built player loyalty and community and replace it with Star Wars with as WoWized a skin as they could manage.
All because the "King of MMO's" (SOE) found themselves being pwned by the upstarts of Blizzard. Who beat them at their own game by putting out a simpler game than they had, but one that was polished and worked practically from the instant they went live. The aspect of WoW that has a great deal to do with its success, which SOE stubbornly refuses to imitate, because they just don't DO polish...they're allergic to it or something.

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Well said, or typed rather. Pretty much says it all or types it anyway.

Hypothetically speaking...If Guild Wars were a true MMO, class wise it would be probably one of the best if not the best running right now at being balanced. IMO, no one class is structured to be a counter to another.
True MMO's could learn a lesson from Arena-net. An Ele can beat a War, A sin can beat a War, A Derv can beat Paragon, A monk could beat a Derv, A Mes can beat a ranger, so on and so forth. It's all about what you chose to leave home with for a particular battle.

The instancing sux imo, but the pvp has the right idea. Too bad theres auto-facing and practically nothing in terms of movement besides forward,backward,left, and right. It hurt when I first played and there wasn't any jumping or swimming.

I like the way the skills are set up though for a fast paced fight. Cooldowns are glorious in Guild Wars. Basically nothing over a min. Even had the level cap been 70 these short cooldowns would make for awesome fights.

Bring skills in your own bar to counter an effect given to you. Hex and condition removal.

I like how interupting is so clear cut. Hexes are clear cut. Being a healer is action packed and not boring like most real MMO's. always moving to get a great position...even in the pve(pvp is a given). Healing in MMO's like WoW for instance...you can stand in one spot for like most of any battle.

Possibilities are endless.

GvG is where it's at also. The way a battle can lead all the way up to VoD. Shit I miss that. Alterac Valley should be exactly like GvG. Have a reason to break a team down with holding the center of the map and flag running to gain morale.

Imo Arena-net also doesn't get all NERF happy either. When they balance skills and classes it seems to be more so to change the Meta-game. Not really to fix anything that another class cries about being OP.

As much as I did like Guild Wars...I had to come back to WoW because it's just a larger game. It's fun leveling. Grinds at 70 are killer though. To get into the good stuff you kinda have to be in an adequate guild also. If you aren't...there is a large portion of the game you will not see or experience. Shit, pug-ing heriocs was a chore when I was between guilds.

Anyhow..my 2 cents (more like 65 cents with a note attached that reads...this post is kinda pointless).

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Originally posted by zarzu

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Originally posted by Fadedbomb
Almost every oriental MMO that has come out to date are all rush jobs to get it out the door for mass amounts of micro-transactions and a quick buck. The simple fact that there is now a catagory for "Asian MMO experience gains" to compare how a game will translate into time vs experience is proof enough. The reason I say this is because anyone will tell you, a game that requires 6months or more to obtain maximum level is a "hardcore" setting shows that the game is question does not have the content to support normal play styles.

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almost every western mmo that has come out to date are all rush jobs to get it out the door for mass amount of monthly subscriptions and quick buck. the simple fact that we use the word 'grind' in the mmorpg world is because of early western mmorpgs. the reason you tell us stuff no one wants to know is because the amount of serious asian mmorpgs is ridiculously low compared to the serious western mmorpgs, aion is not a cheap low budget mmorpg that looks like the 200 asian mmorpgs no idiot plays, the fact that those mmorpgs are on the market has nothing to do with how good the quality of serious asian mmorpgs is, but rather with the insane mmorpg boom where everyone wants a piece of. all those games suck and flop within weeks, no intelligent person plays them.

there is not one mmorpg on the market with even close to as realistic characters as aion has them, anime style? you obviously have no clue, next you tell me that vanguard, wow, eq2 or daoc models are more realistic than the ones from aion. they are not, they all suck, bad.
yes aion has an asian feel, yes aion has those weird hair colors like pink (oh wait, western mmorpgs do have those too), so what? it has nothing to do with anime, if you gonna compare it to anything on the asian market then compare it to mangas, the ones that are drawn more realistic than most western comics you've ever seen, like berserk or blade of the immortal, which you of course do not know as you have no clue whatsoever of art/comic/game design but still feel like you can comment on it.

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This is exactly why I didn't want to get into this conversation, but you sir have said what I should have.

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Originally posted by Ephimero
The basics of Anime are drawings with the minimum ammount of lines possible, cheap and easy to produce in masses, thus why Japan's comic market is so filled with mangas and why there, the style is such a hit. There are some more complex concepts like the number of circles used for the body proportions and for the head being different than the typicall DC comics style, but I guess this isn't the place.
People tend to confuse anime style with oriental style, and in Aion, most of the ornaments used, and some of the available avatars look oriental indeed, this wouldn't be called anime style tho, cause the designs are way more complex.
Anyways, the concept of asian graphics it's getting blurry on mmorpg communities, if you take a granado espada character and compare it to a real life model, you'll see that the proportions are way more accurate than a wow or even Age of Conan ones, face and body wise, so are we starting to confuse realistic with asian? It's obvious that atm, asian market has brought the best graphics to the mmorpg scene, so that's why I wonder.
Btw, I love this issue since i'm professional designer, and i've been pretty inspired by the manga style/learned its basics, so I could keep writting hehe, but I guess it's time to stop.

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Anime style and oriental style? Confusing realistic with Asian? WTH are you talking about. Not even going to get into this conversation.

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Originally posted by liddokun
Looks like a lot of people are misinformed about Electronic Arts. EA is a publishing company that publishes video games and the like but they have many divisions. They don't even make their own games but instead do the distribution and marketing so how the hell would it be that they need programmers? If you hate EA that much not to play anything that they have associations with then I guess you won't be playing Warhammer online since it's gonna be published by EA and developed by EA Mythic.

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You are the one misinformed about EA. They not only have many divisions that are EA creations(making them EA right) who create many of their titles, but own/ oversee or partner with the many studios that fit into the umbrella. Studios like Mythic, Dice, Flagship and such. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure you can find many more.

Hell, I'm willing to bet if you type into google :EA creates/developes, publishes, and distributes you will find many hits because that's exactly what they do. Not just one or the other. That's like saying Microsoft doesn't make games...they own studios that do. Well, they also have a division that creates their own games in house. Another publisher that does the same thing...Lucas Arts. They have published I think Like 99% of their games. Created a certain percentage of those on their own while the others were with the help of outside studios like Bioware.

Added, If I recall correctly, the last few Bond games were made inhouse by EA and not some partnering studio or one they bought. I could be wrong though. Maybe I should wiki it or actually research it.

I am totally on board with what the other posters have said.

The game for me stood fresh for a long time because it gave you the option to solo nearly every portion of the game with the help of henchies. They came in very handy when you couldn't find that healer or nuker to get on your way.

Then came heroes in NF that were customizable skill wise. This addition kinda turned the game into even a more single player game where you really didn't need anyone else. I like this addition on a 60/40 scale. Gave me time to do things when I couldn't find a group, but made it so that people would rather use them than finding a group which was the down side.

Overall nice story through all 3+GW:EN. Made sense. From what I can tell, many view GW as 3 different games. I however view them all as one. So I play in them as one not being separated.

I like actual story progression through instancing. The cut-scenes really stand out to me and will probably always be remembered. Problem Guild Wars had imo though is that the stories were too short and many things could be skipped to reach the missions that told the main story. NF tried to fix this by reqs to get into missions or for them even to be visible.

I kinda like the way mobs are set up also. Where each battle you are fighting multiples. Where the healer is constantly moving around for position. It's not all tank and spank. Even when it is it doesn't feel like it.

Skill customization is also a plus for me. Gives you the opportunity to play your character in a variety of ways. Great support of hybrid play. I could be an elementalist who only uses assassin skills or a Necro who only uses warrior skills. No pigeon holing in this game. Grouping in pve may try and force you into certain roles, but really...the possibilities are endless.

No sub fees.

Grinding is hardly noticeable to me. The only grind that stands out to me is title grinding. This really has no bearing on anything. Only time I have noticed that it does is puging pvp for heroes ascent where groups want you to be of a particular level. Heroes Ascent pvp guilds also usually have some sort of req for this.

Overall just a nice piece of work. The good points outweigh the bad points for me (bad points of which I will not list here... plenty of those also as with any game). Even though I do not play anymore, I will always remember it as one of the better games that I have played.