Probably EVE or Saga of Ryzom maybe. I only played Saga of Ryzom beta, but I hear it has a nice community.

I think most gamers prefer to stay with a single game, but are forced to leave because of inherent problems or lack of content. The gamer market is there to drive development, and I think as more games are produced, people will have lower tolerences for "flaws" in a game. They'll have a point of reference to know better and have more options. Companines will be forced to produce better games to stay competitive. Then maybe someone figures out how to make an "end-game" that never really gets old (and a fun way to get there). It'll become harder and harder to sell "trash" games.

It could also just be that technology is a limiting factor. As tech progresses, it may be easier for devs to add content to keep the games fresh. Possibly the reason we see a lot of "short-term" games now could be that the tech is good enough to produce nice looking online games fairly easily, but the effort to maintain such a game (adding new content fast enough) is too difficult to be worth it. I think THE game(s) will happen, it's just a matter of devs learning what people want and the tech being available to satisfy it. I don't think the post-WoW generation of games will be there, but hopefully one step closer. I don't know if anything will have the impact WoW did relatively, but I do know there are more than 6 million people now who are addicted to MMOs and many of whom are getting tired of WoW. :)

WoW brought a lot of people into the MMO genre of games and due to the addictive nature of MMO's it's easy to get sucked into it and not really think about what you're doing. In my experience, there are really 4 types of people that play WoW:

1)Those that haven't played enough to know any better. They haven't yet reached the point where battlegrounds are boring and raiding is monotonous. Maybe they're still leveling up and going through the quests.  It's only a matter of time before they get sick of it like the more hardcore players. Granted if they're very casual players, they may never reach that point either.

2)Those that are hardcore raiders and are in sort of a self-imposed delusional state. Maintaining DKP and upgrading items to show off in ironforge are the only things that matter in life anymore. If you forced these same people to step back and stop playing for a month, a lot of them would probably realize that what they're doing isn't all that fun and would move on. (Hardcore battleground farmers grinding for their high warlord gear fall into this category as well).

3)People that cling to the blizzard name and the false hope that the next patch or expansion is going to make everything all better. The next patch comes and something small is improved, but they continue to hold out hope.

4) People that are really really bored and the fact that there is no real competition for WoW leads them to keep subscribing "for the hell of it". By random chance something interesting may happen in WoW and they can log on and hang out with their old guild. Other games are dated or in development or are just plain bad so WoW simply fills the MMO void.

Not to take anything away from WoW. It's a good game up until you're forced to raid to progress and you realize the pvp is very limited. They brought a lot of new people into MMOs which will bring a lot more and better games to the market in the future. The thing that bothers me is people think WoW is the end all be all because it has so many subscribers. This is also bad for the reason that it may lead other gaming companies to copy WoW's model and repeat their mistakes rather than improving. Wow is a decent game....for a while, but it's not that good. And the fact that it has a lot of subscribers doesn't necessarily attest to it's quality. And its lifespan may be shorter than you think if another decent game comes out and WoW's expansion is anything short of amazing.

Playing Lineage 2 is about as much fun as having a root canal. If you love to grind, then L2 is your game. You will spend countless hours grinding for levels, money and gear just to use in these castle fights followed by more grinding. You should also note that these "epic" fights in L2 happen relatively infrequently especially compared to DaoC where there is a constant battlefront and almost non-stop pvping.  Some people delude themselves into thinking that L2 about pvp. But the truth is the game is all about grinding, and occasionally you'll have a little pvp or politics. This is not to mention the quality of the classes/skills/gaming world. It appeals to some people... Consider yourself warned :)

Keep in mind that Daoc is also an older game and most people are maximum lvl. The leveling process will take some time to get up to speed, particularly with relatively few new players to group with.


If these are your only two options, play Daoc without question. Both are probably not ideal at this point, but then again nothing else available really is either.

I've played quite a few games, and as far as  battles, I'd have to say Daoc definitely has some epic massive battles in the form of castle sieges or relic raids. Granted I haven't played Daoc in quite some time (since 2 expansions ago) so a lot may have changed including the population and pvp (rvr) mechanics. Another game that I know used to have epic battles was Planetside. Huge batttles, very fun. Again this was a few years ago.....

I hear EVE has some nice battles, although I haven't been able to force myself past the newbie stages of the game just yet (approx. 2 months or so from what I hear). A steep learning curve and time investment to get started.

I can tell you which games DON'T have epic battles: CoH, EQ2, WoW, FFXI, Auto ass.... Then there's Lineage2, SWG, Shadowbane who may occasionally have some big fights (if they have any customers left)... but trust me, you don't want to go anywhere near those 3.

For small arena style fighting, Guild wars definitely wins I'd say...

Personally, I'd just play Battlefield2 or something and wait for a good MMO game to come out. Or if you don't mind spending a good chunk of time getting up to speed, then EVE or Daoc may be the way to go.


edit: As far as buying Daoc or Eve, I believe both have a 14 day free trial. For Daoc, I think you want to buy the "Epic Edition" which includes all 6 expansions. You might can even download this directly from Mythic. I know you can download the entire EVE client.

We'll see. I personally think it's being overhyped, but I hate to rain on someone else's parade....which is why i erased my post above. It may turn out to be fantastic, and it would be great if it does. I'll withhold any prejudgement until I've actually played (if I play) because any opinion until then is just speculation.

And for the record, I never said anything in regards to the payment mechanics other than I thought it wasn't good. My comparison to Lineage 2 was more along the lines of the pvp, leveling and the community, not the payment.

nt