@Trucidation:   Thank you for seeing the light.

FlyFF will never be as good as it was, as now:

• The player base is getting worse as the versions go on, as the only way to make it in FlyFF is to be selfish and heartless.
• The overpowered 1H weapon classes, seeing as shields make f' all difference to defence (about a 100 increase in defence from a green shield (lvl3) to a Catepo Shield (lvl113)) so players just go for awakened lower level shields.
• The lameness increases and the skill level decreases, don't even tell me that the siege is a skilled competition.  Private servers, with working skills and no PVP bugs, I can easily get MVP as with crappy equips i can manage a 50k asal with 25k hp.  The way to get MVP?  Baby Aibatt Transies, Scroll of Velocity's, Upcuts, Mantises, 3 parts of sardine set and mp suit+shield.  You can't target me, but I can hit you.
• All the game is about is grinding, and the only reward is numbers (and if you're really lucky, a coloured letter  ).
• Imbalance is even worse than before, as the classes that used to be really good at levelling aren't even as good as other classes.  I mean, Canni's have roughly 96k hp and blades can crit over 40k whilst levelling (over 100k on CW), this means that they can kill 2 every 3 seconds easily.  So that's 40 per minute.  As an Ele, it takes about 2-3 minutes to gather 40 mobs, and to do it safely maybe 4-5mins, so blades easily rip through our killing times.  Not to forget that AoE blades can AoE better post-getting their blain/virain set, as they can easily achieve 100% block rate and high hp.  The imbalance is just too big now.

But yes, I must come to a conclusion, I'll try and sum it up in a few lines:

FlyFF WAS one of the greatest, if not the greatest F2P MMORPG's ever.  Post-V7 the game got steadily worse, and now the game is but a rotting corpse of what once was.  Reminisce, my friends, as all we have are our memories.

Of course everything CAN be fun with friends, granted, but any player can easily have a lot more fun on another game.  No aspect of flyff can outshine a different MMO.

The PVP is massively imbalanced, all there is to do is grind, there are like 5 decent quests in the entire game, the graphics are easily outdone, new players can't make it in the game without gpots/being a complete self-centred arse.

Disprove any of the above points if you like, but I'mpretty sure it's not possible.

Hmm, some interesting thoughts here thanks guys :>

I'm more interested in a game less fixated upon the point and click grind-fests, and more about working with other people/upgrading yourself etc.

Thanks for all you posts so far

Well I had a lvl98 Elementor, so I did do reasonably well, but stopped because all there was to work for was a bigger number .  But all there is to do in the game is grind non-stop.  The bloody weapons are just a joke (+20%mp for a Ele, +20% crit for a Ranger, get real...), the arena either has lamers or people that just hang out (so PVP hardly ever occurs) and ad for S1 bangs...don't you just love using their aoe attack to kill noobs?  I don't do it, but it seems every person there failed so much in arena that they took out their frustration on vagrants/new first jobs.

I'm not saying veterans are a-holes but there aren't many veterans left, as the old generation of friendly faces died.  The new players are about 90% "richards" on my ex-server (Glaphan), and gala still allowing the effing blow-j's.  Have you seen the top-flight asals?  25k was the norm when I left in V11, so now with extra bonuses they can easily hit 60k base asals.

As for 2H weapon users, we're all screwed.  Psy's, BP's and Blades are now much stronger than they were before, bearing in mind Psy's and BP's were already two of the best PVP classes out there.  So now BP's can overpower their asals even more, without sacrificing HP.  How do they do that?  Buy gpots.  The game was about fun back then, now it's just about grinding.

Remember the V7 PK arena?  Or just the arena in general?  That brought the players closer together, and made the game more fun.  What's with the new arena?  Everyone can gang you for disrupting the peace, without fear of retribution as their friends will protect them.

They should just rename the game Grind For Grind as the 'flying' and 'fun' aren't part of the game anymore.

I severely doubt anyone would have heard of me here, probably not even if you played FlyFF lol, but I'm an ex-FlyFF player which means I can grind incessantly wihtout any personal gain.  But what I'd like to do is start on another game, however subscription games aren't really what I'd like to start with.

My question to you players is: what F2P or single-payment MMORPG should I play?

I was thinking of playing Guild Wars, but I'd like a 'professional' opinion lol, but yeah the opinion of players as they have the most honest opinions.  I'm sure you all have your own personal thoughts on what the best games are, and I would really like to read what you think.  But please don't just say things like 'PlAy eVERquEst menZZZZ!!!!1!', not only because the random caps format is hard to read, but because I'd like to know what makes the game fun.

The unique selling points of a game for me are:

• Good community - I enjoy talking to other players, preferrably not the spoilt brat pre-teens I have been accustomed to on FlyFF
• Gameplay - I don't want to just grind constantly, quests and party/guild events (raids, sieges etc) make the game more fun.
• Fun for all levels - I want to be able to actually get a foothold in the game, so a non-f***ed-up economy would be nice.
• Graphics/Sounds - Not really important, but a nice bonus.

Hopefully you can help me choose a new game to start up on, thanks in advance.

~fuxake

As an ex-flyff player (having played since V6) and all-round games enthusiast, I know what is a good game.  I'm sad to say that FlyFF is not a good game anymore.  There's a reason I said anymore - FlyFF was the epitome of a good MMORPG.

FlyFF was the first MMO that I played, as the advert for it just kept popping up all over the game sites I frequented.  I played it for a long time before I checked out some other games (2Moons, RF Online, etc), but I just couldn't stay away from FlyFF.

The game was just great: the GM's throwing events every so often, GW's frequently taking place, guilds being more than just a badge of honour.

But now things have changed.  Since V9 and throughout the versions that superceded it, gala periodically threw faecal matter at the community fan.

V8 was complained about by all in the beta by almost everyone, so intelligently gala ditched the idea.  Instead, they came up with V9!  In essence, the crap ideas that nobody agreed with categorised under a new name to try and cover over the fact that they weren't going to invest any time or money into creating new ideas.

V9 encouraged the influx of HnR Ele's and other lame classes.  Removing the S4 PK, adding global PK on all servers, making exp loss higher, implementing delevelling and, to cap it all off, removing level difference defence, just made the game into a corporate money-making scheme and dehumanising the whole game idea.

After a hard day's levelling, high levels would go chill in the PK arena.  Removing this, grouped with the other piss-poor management decisions,  made a good number of players quit.

Possibly the worst idea though, was removing green weapon drops from monsters.  Fancy crafting a unique weapon?  It's only a 1/50 success rate, but hey it's not as if the components needed cost much right?  Wrong again.  Shining Oricalkums coming in at a minimum of 10mil, jewels costing from between 5-100mil, and weapons costing - because of the crafting idea - over 2mil each.  So to have one attempt at making, say, a GK would cost at the bare minimum 15mil.  That's not including time taken, and that is with cheap parts.  17mil*50 tries=850mil, sounds like a good deal to me...  Enough V9 bashing though, let's move on.

V10 - aka V9.1.  Adding in Master and Hero quests, was a great idea (I can't lie and say it wasn't) but announcing it as a whole new version?  Pre-patch and live patch came up to about 9 files (2 for the actual live patch), which in my eyes is not a new version.  There's not much more I can say about V10, as it affected about 0.01% of the community and I wasn't in that selected few.

V11, was an interesting version with highs and lows.  Azria, a place for gpot users, with higher exp, insanely huge spawns, better drop rates (or at least penya bags).  Great right?  Wrong.  With the high influx of penya in peoples pockets, prices start rising.  Inflation ftw.

So now the only expensive thing is green weapons.  They come from giants now, you know. Gala - "Hey AoE'ers!  Yeah you!  I hope you enjoy the lightly smouldering embers of your bonfire that we just pissed on, because now 1v1 classes are even richer than before.".  So now AoE classes can have a whale of a time levelling, whilst 1v1's can level effectively enough, be a lot better at PVP, and be richer.

Another good point to mention is awakenings.  Fancy getting an extra 20 Int Mister Ele?  Well now you can, and you can get that on both your suit and your weapon.  Shame that about 90% of the time the awakening you get is worse than not having the armour on in the first place.  But hey, AoE'ers don't have enough money to buy reversions anyway.  1v1 players do though!  Thought we were overpowered enough before?  Think again.

So I'm a BP, right, and I have this kickass knuckle and this really nice shield.  But wait, if I sacrifice the 10 defence this shield gives (because shields have almost no effect on defence) and use a green shield with an awakening of +20 Str, I can kill better.  But wait!  If i get my shield to have +400mp, my asal becomes like twice the amount it was!

Tying neatly into my next point: The Arena.  I do love my PVP, especially when an Ele can stand on the outside of the arena and hit me with their 3k's and run out straight after, ooh and BP's can position lag asal me and run out like the lame spastic they are.  And don't forget the mages that are 80 levels lower, but can still whip out 1k dmg, which is great when you're already fighting someone.

V12 - the final nail in the coffin.  So if you use 2 handed weapons, you might as well just quit.  Now a rich blade can kill faster than you can AoE anyway, due to the new awakenings and piercings.  Don't even try and PVP against a full str BP with +2000mp awakenings and +70str pierced knuckle.

Now, to sum up what I'm trying to say.

Have you got thousands of $/£/€ that you want to spend frivolously and have no/little fun whilst spending it?  Play FlyFF.

Do you just enjoy levelling incessantly with no potential gain other than a bigger number on the HUD?  Play FlyFF.

Do you like levelling for a couple of hours, finally reach the goal you were aiming for, just to have your ass handed to you in the arena by some retard child using a skill that kills you in one hit?  Play FlyFF.

FlyFF is a great game if you enjoy playing a game just to level, but for PVP and a friendly community, don't under any circumstances even consider FlyFF.  Siege is lame, and no amount of comments can make me reconsider this thought.  All those levels you worked so hard for are for absolutely nothing, as being 50 levels higher makes very little difference to damage on yourself.

My words to Gala:  You could've made a good game great.  Instead you made a good game unbearable and inhuman.  A game isn't a game, if it isn't fun.

Oh and as for whoever it was that did the original interview for the US release of FlyFF, wtf?! Bringing the game to the casual market?  WoW is easier to level on, you absolute moron.

~fuxake

p.s I hold no ill will towards mentally retarded people.  I do, however, dislike children.

p.p.s I probably won't even check this thread often, but you can post if you want.

p.p.s If you are going to disagree with my opinions, please state why and not act like these are the FlyFF forums and troll.