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.

Natural Selection 2 for me. Nothing else comes close.

It was pretty fun, but I don't have the patience to play any micro-transaction based games. I  had fun experiencing the game, but now I've seen it and don't plan to check it out again. I'd still rather go back to Counter-Strike than any of these Korean micro-transaction shooters.

I'm a rage quitter myself.  I can not stand bad teams or players. I understand that inexperienced players need experience to learn, but I don't want to dedicate so much time with a frustrating experience. Since co-op action games are getting more popular, I really start to feel somewhat elitist when people can't do basic stuff... kind of like those in MMOs. If you're new, then that's perfectly fine, but a lot of action games which are easy to pick up and play and with team mates that tell you how to win still have players who've played for a decent amount of time still being awful.

That's generally why  I don't like online co-op. You have to have a group of friends that play like you to avoid wanting to kill yourself.

No one cares because you're playing a linear, hold you by the hand MMO that highly rewards PvP rather than being a reward in and of itself with a few bonuses given now and then.

Guaranteed HUGE MMOs.
SW:  The Old Republic
Blizzard's next MMO
Guild Wars 2

Those are the only titles that are absolutely without any doubt going to be huge.

I didn't mean for it to sound like I was defending WoW either. I only used WoW to show that the smooth launch of LOTRO didn't really make up for the higher level content at launch.

I'd say Shadowbane if it were still running.

Their rangers were pretty damn versatile in abilities. Ranged, melee, stealth, nature magic/lore, animal pets and taking animal form, tracking and some stuff I can't remember.

Of course, you couldn't really have all of these and excel at each. You had to choose how you wanted to build your character.

Originally posted by Yuberek

 Very true, when was the last time a game had such a nice clean release.   For those that will say WoW, please remember WoW had a terrible release.

At least WoW actually had finished content at release.

MMOs are more and more becoming single-player RPGs. What I don't understand is why they don't just create a single-player RPG with drop-in co-op options. That's pretty much exactly what they are these days anyways. You pick a class and follow the classes narrow path. You complete quests on a narrow path to max level. You enter dungeons with a narrow path to complete them. You PvP with a narrow path to whatever goal modern MMOs have set up for you.

Everything you do is extremely linear to the point where MMOs may as well be single-player games. The only difference is the social aspect of  MMOs. Aside from that, this ridiculously linear path modern MMOs take KILLS the immersion in the world. When's the last time anyone was truly immersed in an MMO? I look back to the old days where we actually had choices and simply lived in a world where the story progressed around us, with or without our involvement. When was the last time some event like an orc invasion on a town actually mattered in a modern MMO? When was the last time you played a modern MMO where PvP actually mattered?

Of course, it doesn't help that the narrow stories always force you to become a grand hero in the universe whether you accomplished anything noteworthy or not. Whatever happened to being an average person living in that world where you have the option to become a warrior and make a true name for yourself among other players?

Our only hope is for independent MMO developers to succeed. They may not be polished or even complete when they're released, but if they succeed with their niche titles, I'm sure they will cause many people interested in developing an MMO to think, "Hey, maybe we really can develop an independent MMO and turn a profit." EVE Online is a good example. Darkfall may not have lived up to expectations, but we can only hope that games like Darkfall, Mortal Online Fallen Earth succeed in the end, so that other independent developers will see that they can create an MMO  that goes well off this new path of modern AAA MMOs and actually succeed.

/facepalm

All MMOs since Ultima Online are "shardless."

Sure I would. Gameplay over graphics.

WoW 2 is decades away if ever. They're more likely to make a Warcraft sequels before WoW 2, which would be awesome. They're going to support WoW for well over a decade from now just like UO. Just be happy that they're working on new MMOs. It's beyond past time for Blizzard to establish some new IPs, which I expect them to go full force into after they finish up Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.