considering free MMO's : the considering

[Nikose Tyris]

Originally Posted by Krylo

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by PyrosNine

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

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.