considering free MMO's : the considering

[Bells]

So, i decided to check out what MMO's are out there nowadays and came up with a few candidates that might be worth checking out. I would like some opinions and maybe some of you guys might be willing to check those out too...

So , let's see...

first there is

CRIMECRAFT THE BLEEDOUT

looks like a gritty TF2 with some GTA in there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pApFF5AqqNY&feature=related

not really sure what to make out of this one... sounds fun and it's quite popular it seems, but like a tad generic..

from wikipedia
CrimeCraft revolves around gang warfare, combining role-playing elements as well as an MMO environment. A large, persistent city acts as the game’s lobby where players can form gangs, accept missions and buy new weapons. The game consists of seven game modes, which can be broken down into two major categories: PvP game modes, wherein players compete against each other, and PvE game modes, wherein players compete against computer controlled AI bots. Other features include questing, achievements, crafting and gang hideouts

the next one is

Sword 2

also known as the sequel to Granado Espada (sword of the new world) which i actually played the closed beta when it was stil P2P.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxCUI47EN3Y

This one i know for a fact that is a TON of fun, it's gorgeous, plays really well and it's innovative enough with it's 3 characters controlled by a single player, mixing stances and special NPC's

The next one

Dynasty Warriors Online

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmKIfgEh61I

gameplay at minute 5

so, it seems like a brawler, team brawler, where you fight armies with armies...sems different enough to be fun, if you like this stuff

So let's go for the next

Alliance of valiant Arms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfZydzEOxxY

THis is the new ''rage'' of MMOfps looks really nice, don't really know if there is much more to it though

And Taikodom is the final one in this list

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJvmptpkg64

i'm already waiing to get a beta key for this one, seems like something worth a trial at least... i would totaly be up for a guild in this.

So, the MMO's out there today are at least good looking... not really sure how good they really are, but the options are interestng. So, any input you guys might wanna give? Or your own suggestions... any MMO you have been looking at?

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Guild Wars.

/Thread.

[mudah.swf]

Guild Wars isn't strictly free though, you still need to buy the game. There is a free trial, though.

[Bells]

same applies to Champions Online, which is going F2P (with premium subscriptions avaliable) but you have to buy the game, which i would play in a heartbeat, if the game wasn't 50 bucks

[Ryong]

Yeah but guild wars is like, 20 bucks. You can get the trilogy for like 40, if you're lucky. I'm going to wait for GW2, though...

But hey, that Sword 2 looks pretty neat.

[MuMu]

From the video it looks like Sword 2 teamplay is more of a way to play without doing anything, like the commentator so proudly states that you can level up sooo fast even when afk. Doesn't look like it has anything else different from the usual MMO boredom, so if you like that stuff, sure, try it.

Pyros (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=38969) already made a great Dynasty Online thread.

You already have TF2 so I don't why you should lose your time with a subpar shooter.

Taikodom could be nice, I guess, most of the videos I see are of just people flying from one location to another. But I'm curious, it looks like a Freelancer MMO.

Addendum: That guy is the worst goddamn commentator ever, Jesus.

[Krylo]

which i would play in a heartbeat, if the game wasn't 50 bucks

Don't.

Was in beta, and it was great for awhile, near the end of beta the fucked up the entire feeling of the game and went in an entirely new direction that just doesn't work as well with the way they have areas set up. And it basically comes down to the people they have in charge of the product being terrible terrible people.

[Hatake Kakashi]

The next one

Dynasty Warriors Online

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmKIfgEh61I

gameplay at minute 5

so, it seems like a brawler, team brawler, where you fight armies with armies...sems different enough to be fun, if you like this stuff

Played it. It's okay... I am a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, though the advancement is slow. I play it whenever I'm not up for something that's more srs bznz.

For F2P, I got into DDO, which really exceeded my expectations. I was pleased to see that while the classes aren't "balanced" they don't need to be. Each class has a specific form and function and has an important role to play in solo or party settings. I kinda really fuckin' like that. For those of you on the Orien server, you can find me as Ryofu (lvl 9 Thief Acrobat) or Kanuu (lvl 5 Paldin, forget the path), by the way.

Some people would recommend Runes of Magic. I do not. The game is pretty, but it's the most bug-laden game I've ever played extensively, the classes have little distinction between roles, so it's basically how well you can take a punch, how well you can heal, or how fast you can deal damage. Despite the dual-classing feature and wide selection of classes, the only viable classes to play (and the only classes that have been viable for about a year now) are Knight (do next to no damage, you merely piss things off), Scout (an archer class that puts out ridiculous amounts of damage and essentially has put rogues, mages, warriors and wardens out of business), or Priest (while they don't have the heal-over-time stackables that druids have, they have other features including group heals that druids lack, making them more useful overall). Runewaker has been made well aware of their shortcomings with broken quests, bugs, and such, but continues to ignore the problems, push new content, and nerf everything except scouts.

Also, they have a nasty tendency to make the end-game content pay-2-win, because if you aren't geared perfectly, the next elite monster around the corner in the next instance will fuck you right in the ass. No lube. No kiss on the neck. Nothing. And the moment they see the sales begin to slightly taper off from everyone getting geared? Fix the broken shit? Naw, new expansion! With that and the inability to trade diamonds (the cash shop currency) between players reliably, the markets are constantly crippled.

Further, the end game instances? Yeah, they're just gear-checks. Less than 6 hours after the newest instances were released, they were taken down by a knight, two priests, and three scouts. The devs might as well have put a 15-million HP brick in the instance with a sign on it saying "Shoot me, pl0x!"

[Ryong]

From the video it looks like Sword 2 teamplay is more of a way to play without doing anything, like the commentator so proudly states that you can level up sooo fast even when afk. Doesn't look like it has anything else different from the usual MMO boredom, so if you like that stuff, sure, try it.

Yeah, I remember hearing that you could, in the first game, set a bunch of macros for your guys and they'd automatically kill stuff, loot and pot. So, botters, but the game SEEMS nice even then.

Bells: Since you understand Portuguese, I've a recommendation: This guy. (http://www.youtube.com/user/MarquesZero) He does gameplay videos of a bunch of MMOs, you may find a good one.

[Archbio]

I think Anarchy Online's basic content is still free.

[Nikose Tyris]

Don't.

Was in beta, and it was great for awhile, near the end of beta the fucked up the entire feeling of the game and went in an entirely new direction that just doesn't work as well with the way they have areas set up. And it basically comes down to the people they have in charge of the product being terrible terrible people.

I was also in the beta and I probably quit about the same time as you, Krylo.

My roommate got back into it, and I was watching over his shoulder- it's back to something that looks and feels... better. A lot of my complaints with it appear to be fixed. Take a peek at how it is currently and see if you feel the same way.

[Bells]

From the video it looks like Sword 2 teamplay is more of a way to play without doing anything, like the commentator so proudly states that you can level up sooo fast even when afk. Doesn't look like it has anything else different from the usual MMO boredom, so if you like that stuff, sure, try it.

about the narrator... yes. yes he is.

When i was playing the beta for Sword 1, there were a few kinks. You do level up in a nice, fast pace. But it was just less grinding. there was also a nasty design flaw that they fixed, that you could challenge someone to PvP and it would atomaticaly be accepted in a few seconds, so you could kick ass of people AFK and gather easy wins.

but for me the game felt less than dull... there is little to do (at least there was) in the game outside of combat and PVP, and the quests are all straighforward. But there is actual strategy in there and you are not locked into a character or account. you can change your team and try new things all the time and even change character for low level new characters if you feel like starting over.

Also, since each player contols 3 characters, if you pull a raid with 10 people you have 30 units on screen fightin, which i thought was a nice touch of epicness

[bluestarultor]

Dungeon Fighter Online is if nothing else interesting. It's not new, but they're still adding stuff. I tried it out with my brother and friend a while back when they'd added the Female Gunner and I have to say that if either of them had kept playing, I'd have had a reason to do so myself. Sadly, Kyle moved on the Aion and Phantom7 just kind of fell out of it, so there wasn't much point.



Perfect World is one I liked. The classes are all good in their own ways and maintain an okay balance. I happened to be well-suited to Venomancer and Mage, but I also played Archer and Barbarian extensively (names may not be correct, but you'll know when you see them). I started in on all the classes, but it just got to a point that I left, ironically, because I didn't want to have to advance, and I realized making a Psychic and Assassin in the Rising Tide expansion when it came out was just postponing the inevitable.

I mean, I really did like playing, especially when my brother was still on it, and it was pretty bug-free, but there was just something that made me not want to creep further and further toward the major hub city. The sandboxes were great for every race, the world was pretty, the music was nice, I got some REALLY nice items from crafting, but, I dunno, part of it was that my computer lagged all the way to Power Point whenever crowds were present, but another part of it is I'm very careful about getting addicted to games and the Internet after a very bad experience.

At any rate, Perfect World will always have my recommendation, no matter how long it's been since I left.

[PyrosNine]

My next Pyros Plays will hopefully be the free to play APB.

(I could also play Mabinogi, as it was apparently Vindictus's prequel! And will run on my computer)

I've already did comment on Granado Espada, but i grew tired of that game because for some reason my connection sucked ONLY when I played that game, that and it was nothing more than fields of enemies for me to slaughter, and not much else.

I wish I could still play Gunz through any sort of advanced router...

[Ryong]

I wish I could still play Gunz through any sort of advanced router...

:aaa: Seriously? I...I don't remember hearing/reading about anyone wanting to play Gunz in the last...Three years, at least. I mean, geez, some of my friends played it for a bit last year to see if it had gotten any better and it was still riddled with the same problems it had back when we tried it the first time: using anything other than knife and shotgun or knife and SMG will never, ever work, game lags making a player disappear from everyone else's screen but to that player everyone else is just standing around while he can kill them.

[PyrosNine]

What? Shotgun and Knife are for people who can't murder instantly with a Shoryuken. Or kill their opponent from across the stage with pinpoint accuracy (the K-style tends to lead to people not considering sniping as often).

I assure you, in my entire time playing Gunz, the people who used Knives and whatnot were on the bottom of the barrel of technique, and were simply riding a one trick pony to death. As in, they'd use it, then everyone would immediately prioritize on them instead of everyone else. And once you got up in the big leagues at around level 20-40, it stopped being a useful tactic, and at high level gameplay, it was useless and just trollin'. (for starters, people could then survive it, and once the element of surprise is gone there's brutal retaliation)

If Gunz were remade and given an actual budget (but they keep the exploits) it'd probably be insanely popular.

As for the lag, it's mostly people too poor for internet as well too poor for mmo shooter.

In free MMO's, Maplestory recently revamped, and has some subtle and some not so subtle improvements to the gameplay, particularly in skills: My Archer's crappy "power shot" was replaced with the much more awesome "piercing shot", which can hit multiple enemies, so dealing with Mobs is much easier at low level, and it seems fighters got something like that too. The world map's changed, and there are new classes right out of the bat, and I gained a few levels within an hour's worth of gameplay, which was almost impossible before (with a high level character mind you).

Previous improvements have been that you can access quests from anywhere, and on some occasions you can finish quests from anywhere, like class quests. You can also pay for an item that lets you finish quests anywhere, so no long hauls back into town.

[Ryong]

Gunz: The time I saw my friends playing and they were lagging? They were at a lan house. There were 5 of us, 3 of them were playing it. They were lagging. I am aware the knife thing isn one trick pony, but apparently everyone I played with was an idiot because I'd always go for the knife guy after getting killed and my team would just always do the same thing - sword block, get shot with a shotgun, die.

Maple: I've played it during the latest update. I've gone from 23 to 100, the highest I've ever done. However, it now takes 2~4 incredibly boring and repetitive hours to train. Also: The community is mostly terrible. Merchants trying to hoard all the money and screwing with the economy blatantly and hah, good luck trying to not get KSed at the good training places. The revamp was supposed to make most places not suck to train, but it ended up failing that spectacularly as the best way to train still means ignoring 95% of the content.

[Bells]

Gunz depends on the version you are playing. different items, updates, skills and strategies.

i played the old version on the us servers and earlier on you could own everything with a rifle and sword. dual Uzis were second favourite

But yes, Knifes were known to be as ''cheating'' as graneade spam is in most online shooters.

I remember playing Combat Arms, and when i played on a small map i ALWAYS did the same thing, i knew where the choke points were and the enemy spawn, so i always tossed 2 flashbangs blindly in that direction as soon as i lifet my spawnpoint. then russed in with ak47 blazing. worked like a charm.

Then, everyone started using cheats and the game went to hell

[bluestarultor]

So, hey, just started in on Sword 2. I have this to say about it. I love all the bits and pieces so far, but some of them are really strange in combination.

The good:
- awesome music
- Victorian look is pretty damn unique
- heavy use of Romance languages (it borrows more than one) is just awesome and reinforces the above
- the graphics are great
- nice sense of humor ("Doby Mick, the giant octopus" made me laugh out loud)
- ability to take three people in your party and switch in an instant is BLOODY FANTASTIC!
- freedom to make more than one "family" is a great touch, letting you have several potential parties to choose from
- "last name" feature is a great way to ensure players otherwise get any names they want

The weird:
- awesome music happens to be ultra-modern electronica, which clashes with the graphics
- designs are rather bizarre and choosing one of two faces per gender per class is a study in choosing how much of a rich f*** you want them to look like
- faces don't even matter much, because it only operates in a window at a set resolution (which isn't a bad resolution, but doesn't bring your party in close)
- Scout class acts as the healer, with a hint of rogue and mechanic mixed in later, which isn't bad so much as odd
- all abilities are based on "stances" which are unlocked by equipment, which means ability overlap between classes and no ability trees, and stances are what you level up to learn more

The bad:
- awesome graphics make older machines scream (had to turn water effects (gorgeous at max, BTW) all the way down to low, which instantly doubled my speed)
- typos/grammar errors galore (note to self: apply there as an editor)
- for some reason, the whole company seems to have resolution issues (both game and site) which leaves text running out of viewable areas regularly




I haven't played enough to recommend it or not, but maybe that info will be useful to you all.



Edit: Ummmm... Beware heating issues. When I said this made my computer scream, I had no idea it was actually making it overheat. I think I might go in and change those CPU settings they were kind enough to provide. >_>;

[EVILNess]

Champions Online was a fun game to play if you had a friend going through the story content with you, I got it when the game first launched and played the month with a buddy before going back to WoW.

My main problem with the game was the way they did the powers. There was no cohesion at all, you could cherry pick the absolute best powers from the power pools and it kind of made the theme characters kinda lackluster, especially in PVP.

[PyrosNine]

Ace Online (or Space Cowboy) was a cool take on MMORPG's, as it was a Dogfight sim where instead of walking around in the overworld attacking oversized bugs and rodents, you flew in a space jet and fought them like they were WWII Luftwaffe. I particularly liked it (not just because of the Space Cowboy name when I first played it) because it made every battle cooler, and the fact you had to focus on having enough ammo and fuel on top of keeping your health up. I also approve of any MMO that lets you listen to your own soundtrack when you want to, as it had a built in jukebox that let you listen to your own MP3's during gameplay. Highway to the Night and Cowboy Bebop theme were played to death, I assure you.

However, it did start to get boring after awhile, and as Pyros is a terrible dogfighter (has to do with me being a cat, probably) this would lead into one big game of mid-air Duck Duck Goose with me chasing them in circles. This would give me a very realistic experience of being in a dogfight, in that aside from G-forces crushing and flying straight up causing you to pass out, getting dizzy is a common malady. Got so dizzy once I didn't play for a week, and that damn beetle was still kicking!

In a similar vein, was Drift City. It was a driving MMORPG, somehow. Aside from health, you had to pay for fuel, and the plot was absolute shit- The streets of the city were being plagued by robotic cars or something, with intrigue between the 'good' car cops, and the 'rebellion' car cops who thought the car cops were up to something. But on the upside, it also let you do the MP3 thing, and the controls were pretty good. Add in some brand name cars and some well known ersatzes, and big ol' cities to race about in like a madman, well, it was fun.

The competitive racing scene was cool, and though everyone could buy upgrades for their cars and whatnot, there was still enough leeway for you to win by pure skill, especially on the hairpin turn tracks.

The game essentially played out as a GTA or Driver game, as aside from the mobs you had to kill (which were semi-random and came out like a police alert) most quests were simple Drive from A to B, Get to A quickly, to the more complicated (follow target A without getting noticed, or CRAZY TAXI!)

Much like Gunz however, the server infrastructure the game was on (at the time, though I hear it's with a new company) meant that playing the game behind a wireless router or through college connections was impossible: the game servers couldn't be reached. Since I live in a basement of sorts, I had to use Wifi, and then I started the college. Sad panda times for when I just wanted to drive a car virtually without accidentally murdering a small country's worth of people and getting arrested, losing my money and all the weapons I picked up while driving! Spooty GTA!

(BTW, Did you know that practiced for my Drivers License Exam by putting GTA3 into first person view driving, with a steering wheel and pedals? True story!)

[Jagos]

Ya know, I just watched this (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2633-Non-Combat-Gaming)

And for the most part, they have it right...

Games are really geared towards only one aspect in all regards.

I would love a game that took some of these concepts and used it for while you were in town. If Recettear can make me enjoy haggling, then dammit, I should be able to do so in a game or talk to an NPC and get different story ideas.

(Gotten bored with DFO. Thing is, the people aren't too inclined to help out and while it's great to do the entire 2D arcade thing, it just seems that it's not doing much in the town areas to keep the peace IMO)

[PyrosNine]

I am currently playing that Echo Bazaar game, but I wouldn't call it ground breaking. The Farmville style stuff doesn't lend itself well to combat anyway, as combat would be the exact same commands as inviting someone to dinner.

[Magni]

When Divine Souls (http://divinesouls.outspark.com/) fixes itself that could be a good deal of fun.

And Perfect World Entertainment made some what of a WoW clone, Forsaken World (http://fw.perfectworld.com/), that looks promising.

I don't see what the big deal over Sword 2 is. It's just Grenada Espada/Sword of the New World... again. I was excited when I saw the 2 after it, but the videos reveal that it is the exact same game that came out 3+ years ago, that at one point had a subscription fee. The only difference I saw was the intro tutorial. Don't get me wrong, Grenada Espada is a great game. I often find myself wanting to play it every few months.

Edit: Oh, there's also Dragon Nest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwuiYhmUwM), brought to you by the makers of Maplestory.

[Ryong]

Edit: Oh, there's also Dragon Nest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwuiYhmUwM), brought to you by the makers of Maplestory.

Yeah, I wanted to play this but, surprise, it's gonna be region-locked, just like Vindictus and Mabinogi. Maplestory is, too, unless you had an account made before the IP block.

I also just remembered: Allods Online (http://allods.gpotato.com/), a WoW clone from the guys who made Flyff. It wasn't bad, although it had some strange things - like the "auto-attack" which isn't auto - but it has lots of different classes and stuff. There's one problem, though: I got to level 7 easily and then oh wait I have to grind already, what the heck? To be fair, I think it'd probably be easier if I just knew where everything was and/or if I wasn't playing the whole thing solo.

[Magni]

Yeah, I wanted to play this but, surprise, it's gonna be region-locked, just like Vindictus and Mabinogi. Maplestory is, too, unless you had an account made before the IP block.

Dragon's Nest is going to be released by Nexon America at some point.

[Ryong]

Dragon's Nest is going to be released by Nexon America at some point.

Right, and it'll be region-locked just like Vindictus and Mabinogi, NA-only and maybe Australia and New Zealand ( I will never understand why ) meaning I can't play since I'm Brazilian.