I would do anything to have this game back. I swear, I have not been as immersed in an MMO since Ultima Online and I think it even surpasses UO, if not most other games I've ever played.

I just loaded up the soundtrack again and it hurts listening to it. Aside from being fantastic, it just reminds you of all the experiences you had. One thing I really loved about the quests in TCOS is that EVERY quest had a good story attachment to it.  EVERY quest had something important for that character or fleshing out the world going on behind it.

What's amazing is that the story actually threw plot twists your way and there were multiple fantastic story arcs going on at once. I think I only made it to level 37 or so, but I wish I could have experienced all of it.

That's ridiculous. Only some insanely small indie developer would even take this idea into consideration. Nevermind the fact that your theory about what's wrong with MMO communities is flawed from the beginning for a number of reasons.

There are a lot of kids who play MMOs that are far more mature than adults. LOTRO, often considered to have one of the most mature communities before it went F2P had some of the most embarassing 40+ year old players that I've ever had the misfortune to play with. Blatant racism and immaturity was a pretty common occurrence in that game. Nevermind the fact that they have to bring up World of Warcraft EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. with the absolute worst and most mundane arguments layed against that game and the people who play it. Never mind that 99% of criticisms thrown at both WoW and their community were found in LOTRO and its own community.

What's sad is that LOTRO is hardly the last traditional MMO like that. Speaking of which, you ever played a hardcore PvP MMO of ANY kind before or after MMO's became popular? How about any F2P MMO of any kind? They all have immature players who aren't kids.

Plenty of kids played MMOs back in the days of Ultima Online, Asheron's Call and EverQuest. In fact, MANY of the players under 18. Don't even TRY to say MMOs were free of "kiddies" at any point in the industry. I was one of them and I was a good player to play with. I didn't show immaturity. I never insulted people, I cared about my friends and guild mates and the worst you could throw against me was that my grammar was terrible. I was started playing UO at 11 years old.

Let's just assume that some magical age gate COULD prevent kids from playing on some server. You really think ANYTHING would be better? You're delusional if you do think so. It's the nature of the internet that is the problem. A harsh, extremely strict server that has a "three strikes and you're out" policy for immaturity and harassment would be a better solution. If you wanted to go to the impossibly extreme, you could have a requirement for a max level character or two on another non-"maturity enforced" server in order to prove that they have at least SOME skill with playing the game, but then good luck getting more than a very, very small community playing on that server.

Joke topic?

General Gaming

A place to discuss non-MMORPG gaming.

I'd rather have a Crimson Skies MMO.

The games I'm most interested in are Planetside 2 and Copernicus!

Okay, so Planetside 2 wasn't "officially" announced, but I think they told us enough. And Copernicus is always very high on my radar. I await the reveal with much excitement given how much I can have with zero details on the game.

Why Planetside 2? Because I think it's the only post original batch (UO, EQ, AC) MMO that ever had relevant gameplay. At the time, the gameplay was on par with other major FPS games. Sure, Planetside got tiring for a lot of people, but you have to give them props for what they accomplished at the time. Now I look at MMOs today and can't help but see their archaic gameplay compared to the rest of the industry. Even when an MMO tries to become a shooter or action game, it's still a decade behind modern shooters and action games. I hope Planetside could bring modern FPS gameplay to the MMO space again.

I really didn't want to be reminded of this. This topic has popped up quite a few times since Facebook games took off.  The "Farmville Side" (Or the social, micro-transaction, pay for results side of the coin) really believe this is the future of video games as a whole. It's scary how sure they are sometimes.  I mean, you hear them talk and they're in the industry and you're not, so you have to ask yourself, "What if he's right?"

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/402?ch=1

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=2

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=3

http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=4

I recommend everyone check out this episode of the Bonus Round.  It's a discussion on the state of the industry. The guy in the middle is so certain that games, we're talking hardcore games like your Call of Duty's, World of Warcraft's, sports games and such are all going to follow the Farmville approach where you can pay to unlock everything.  He believes games will require longer time investments to unlock everything, but will all offer micro-transactions to unlock and upgrade faster for the players who don't have time or don't want to work at it.

It caused a lot of anger on Gametrailers.com and I can't blame blame them. We as gamers and not developers have to speak with our wallets and word of mouth to make sure this shift never occurs.

Great article. I'm glad someone attacked the WoW haters head on. They're the most immature fools you'll ever meet. And you know what's the saddest thing of all?  The people who jump on the WoW bashing train with illogical and downright stupid arguments aren't all teenagers like you would expect!  They're grown men and women! Go play LOTRO to get an idea. For the so called "maturity"  of the LOTRO community (And it's true as far as age is concerned)  they sure as hell blow it 100 times a day to bash WoW as if LOTRO  is some hardcore MMO, non-mainstream like WoW and therefor edgy MMO. They're so illogical and ignorant that it blows my mind.

My kinship leader was an older guy I honestly liked to be around. He's really knowledgeable about MMOs and we both along with his wife prefer hardcore PvP MMOs. But then he goes off about WoW in global chat at least once a day with the most ignorant statements filled with illogical fallacies... It's just so strange to hear the person I knew making arguments and insults so immature and ignorant.

Of course, this isn't limited to LOTRO  at all, but good god they're obsessed with WoW this many years later. Most MMOs these days move past their continuous WoW bashing stage after a few months, but not LOTRO. Oh no.

Anyways, it just makes me upset why most people... at least most people vocal on the internet through social platforms (forums, game chat, blogs, etc) act this way. They're the same as console fanboys. I don't understand why they exist and why they're so numerous. Why is it that I always loved all consoles and had an appreciation for all MMOs regardless of my dislike?  For instance, I didn't like LOTRO... at all. I still accept it for what it is, praise the fact that Turbine supports the social aspects of MMOs which is dying out and enjoy renewing my subscription every once in a while to continue the story. Meh, it's not worth trying to figure out. (And my post having so much LOTRO wasn't on purpose, it just... came up for all of my examples)

Meh, Half-Life 2 wasn't too exciting for me, but I'm sure Half-Life being my favorite game of all time may have had something to do with it.

Unfortunately, I stop reading at "collectible card games." I  was kind of looking forward to this from the trailers and because it's Petroglyph, but eh... I guess I'll pass this time around.

I knew the exaggerated posts would be lol worthy in this topic. Gotta love MMORPG.com's community.

Console shooters? 

I'll rent it for $3.

I  haven't read a preview for any game in probably over a decade unless I was bored. I can gather enough information about any game simply by looking at it for most genres. As for more complex genres like MMOs, I gather information about it myself and couple it with gameplay videos/screen shots. Of course, player beta opinions help if they're available.

I don't like the simplistic format of most previews on any gaming site. They touch on too many things I already know just by looking at it or they're barely capable of describing the complexities of the game that I may not be able to garner for myself from doing my own research.

The only way to get a decent Chun-Li is to grab an Asian actress and inject steroids into her thighs while making her do leg presses, lifts and squats all day, every day.

I'm pretty sure the controversy had nothing to do with the quality of the game. People no matter how much they wanted to boycott L4D2 knows Valve makes good games.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not paying a subscription for a struggling MMO that I like.  Case in point, I  absolutely love The Chroncles of Spellborn, but decided to get LOTRO  another chance before I  subscribed to TCOS. By the time I  gave up on LOTRO, the dev team was fired and the game was announced to be remade as a F2P  game in 2010.

I also haven't heard a word from  Cryptic on my STO  beta invite which I assumed I was going to get for purchasing the lifetime subscription. Now the game comes out in February and still no sign of an invite. Now, I don't really care for Star Trek at all and likely would have not tried the game out otherwise, but I was rather expecting that beta invite so that I could play the game and who knows, maybe they would have created a Star Trek fan and potential subscriber, but with the way it's looking now, I probably will never receive that invite.

In fact, not a single person I've played with in Champions Online has received the invite with what's very soon only going to be two months left of the beta. Considering their shifty tactics of cancelling the life-time subscription early even though they promised it to stay active until a certain date, I'm really not surprised.

I think the best choice isn't on there.

Let's get it out of the way first. MMOs are mainstream now, so harsh death penalties have gone the way of the dodo for anything that isn't an independent MMO. My suggestion is the system The Chronicles of Spellborn and Champions Online uses. Though, Champions Online does a very poor and almost negligible implementation of it. It's still a similar system, however.

With TCOS and CO, you have a separate experience system that builds up as you kill mobs. In TCOS, you gain Personal Experience Points ,(PeP) which can go up to level 5, gaining yourself considerable benefit from doing so such as large stat and status bonuses. However, it takes quite a bit of grinding to obtain those levels especially the closer to 5 you get. Once you die a few times and realize what you're missing without those levels, you can hardly stand playing the game anymore without those bonuses. Dying becomes a big hit as you lose an entire level of PeP. There is a considerable incentive to stay alive to maintain your PeP levels. Also, since the game had open House based PvP, you dearly wanted those PeP levels if any PvP encounters were to come your way. (Though you don't lose PeP from PvP deaths)

In Champions Online as I've said, the system is barely noticeable and most people don't even pay any attention to it. I believe it gives you something like 6.5% bonus healing and damage if you grind up 6 stars, which actually doesn't take much time at all.

I haven't played Aion, but I saw this topic on the home page and decided to check it out. Anyways, one of the reasons why I decided to not play Aion was because of my experience with NCSoft in Lineage 2. They have a hands off approach of dealing with their customers. I wouldn't be surprised if this game too ended up with cheaters, botters, exploiters, farmers and a broken economy because of their GMs hands off approach to everything. They are why I quit Lineage 2. I'm not sure if this is exactly the same problem you're complaining about, but it sounded somewhat similar to my experience in L2.

The MMO you're looking for is Dungeon Runners, but it's being shut down on New Years Eve.