Whats the Best RPG's

DrewPeacock

Hey guys hows things, well to start im going to be straight up honest this all came about when I was watching south park it was an episode called 'make love not warcraft', it got me interested in this type of game. Before I had tried one of the Final Fantasies and didnt really like it, but the whole online game community really appeals to me, but the flip side is there are so many RPGs out there I was wondering if someone could suggest a good starter? Im use to playing AOE and MTW/RTW so anything wth that type of online playability, thats if it even exists, thanks - an Ignorant Gamer!

humanji

That's a tough one as there's so many online RPG's that its ridiculous. I'm sure there's more experienced gamers on here that will give you better information, but I'll try my best.

There's several things you're going to have to take into account: The game itself and it's features, longevity and community.

The game is obviously quite important. I don't think there's any MMO's that are like AOE, so in that regard I think you may have to stick with...well...AOE.

With longevity, you have to keep in mind if the game will still be about next year. There's nothing worse than putting time, effort and money into a game just to see it get closed down.

And the community is important, because you'll most likely want help with certain quests as well as to generally make friends with people. Some MMO's have very childish communities and some have very elitist ones.

World of Warcraft is the best known and best developed MMO. It's got a huge player base and is fairly well polished. But it's not to everyone's taste (I personally hate it). I found that there's a fair amount of grinding (repeatedly having to kill monsters to get your experience high enough to get to the next level). As it's the best selling MMO, it's going to be around for a long time. But I always found the community in general to be a bunch of assholes. You can find people and guilds who are great fun to play with, and because they've been around for so long they'll know all about the game and help you when they can, but you'll be swamped with condescending c*nts too. That was one of the things that put me off it.

I've played Lord Of The Rings Online and it's one of my favourite. It's based on the books and not the movies, but you'll recognise a lot of elements form the movies too. It's a This game is mainly Player Vs Environment though, which put a lot of people off. There is Player Vs Player elements to it, but it's not the main focus of the game. It seems to be doing fairly well for itself now. I've heard that it's the only MMO whose player base is actually growing. And there's a load of additional content in the works (to follow Frodo's journey with the Ring). I found the community to be really helpful, although sometimes they take things too serious and I found myself being given out to by guys simply because I clicked the wrong button when doing group attacks (but I should also mention that I'm rubbish at these games! ).

Age of Conan was a very promising MMO. I felt it could of been one of the best, but it was released in a terrible state and was barely playable for most people. I think the graphics are amongst the best you'll see in an MMO, the gameplay, while similar to the WoW style you'll see in most MMO's had various elements that made it stand out and made it a little more strategic than simply clicking you're most powerful attack over and over again. I don't know how long this game will last though, as it was off to a rocky start and I don't think it'll ever get back the same amount of numbers. I played it at the beginning and went back to it a while later and found aspects of it to be very polished. There's still some problems , but for the most part it's playing pretty well. The community is probably one of the best you'll find as they are people who've stuck with the game from the beginning and really go out of their way to help others. As soon as you leave the starting area of the game, you'll be bombarded with requests to join guilds to boost their numbers, so finding people is easy enough.

City Of Heroes (and City of Villains) is pretty much the same as the WoW games except it's about superheroes. It's great fun and has a great community, but I found the game to be fairly slow. The creators of it have recently come out with Champions Online which I'm playing at the moment and love. It's more action orientated, but there isn't an amazing amount of things to do it it. The creators say they will be adding new content and areas every two or three months, so we'll see how that goes. There's also not a lot of teamwork involved. It kind of plays like a single-player game that happens to have a load of other people running around it. But if you need help, there's plenty of people willing to give it, just don't expect them to hang around after.

So thse are the MMO's I've played, and my opinions of them. As I said, others will be able to go into better detail and also talk about other MMO's that are out, or are coming out.

DrewPeacock

Humanji thanks for takin the time for such detail, you made a good point about the game not lasting after spending alot of time on it, this is something I would be looking out for. I have played the likes of Fabel II which I liked but was very disappointing when it came to multiplayer interaction especially quests and the like, and was very short. I suppose I am being a bit picky but then I put that down to ignorance about this genre.
City of Heroes seems to be something you are backing, has that a large multiplayer section as multiplayer is now more and more important in new games!

humanji

You might be able to get a few trials for some of these games. If you check out their websites they may let you try for a month or so for free. I know Warcraft does this, and I think City of Heroes does too. Not sure about the others.

What you could also do is sign up for some Beta tests. Granted these won't be perfect games (hence the beta tests) but it'll give you an idea of what you like and don't like, plus you get to play them for free.

Dcully

Ive played most MMOs out there.
I more or less agree with humanji but i cant recomend Aion enough.
http://uk.aiononline.com/
Its just so damn good, granted its spanking new this side of the world but from what ive played it seems to pretty damn epic.
Its out in Korea a year and has 4 million subscribers there alone.
End game content is supposed to be plentiful.
Only time will tell for us Westerners but of all the MMOs ive played initial impressions are are superb.

Spunge

Oh, to have that first MMO experience again :pac:

Niska

As humanji said, most of MMOs (after they've been out a while) have a 10-14 day trial. Most trials limit your level, and possibly the areas you can go, as well as limited chat options. But they are the best way to determine if you like a game, and if the community is to your tastes.

Fantasy:

World of Warcraft. Some love it, some loathe it. I've quit more times than I can remember but keep coming back. Not a fan of end-game, but have more alts than you can shake a stick at. the community can be hit and miss - the general and trade channels seem to inspire idiocy.

Trial: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/index.xml and the "tryWowFree" in the upper right.

Warhammer Online. Suffered from a still-in-Beta" feel at launch but has improved over the year. More PvP oriented than WoW.

Trial: http://www.war-europe.com/#?lang=en (should be there in a big "CREATE TRIAL ACCOUNT" button")

Age of Conan. Visually stunning, another that suffered from a Beta like launch. Improved ten fold over the year+ since launch, the combo system gives it a slightly more actiony flavour than the previous two.

Trial: No trial available at the moment as they are currently in an intice old players back mode.

Lord of the Rings Online. In many ways the most beautiful MMO out there - the scenery is so atmospheric and invocative. One of the best communities out there, there is a feeling of Fellowship (sic). Mostly PvE - the PvP elements are an almost separate game.

Trial: http://www.lotro-europe.com/free-trial.php

Everquest II - launched at the same time as WoW, most media outlets were predicting a massive(sic) fight between the two. Not to be, EQ2 has a small, but dedicated community.

trial: http://www.station.sony.com/en/freeTrials.vm

Dungeons and Dragons Online. Haven't played this so can't comment. Recently went free-to-play in the States, probably will over here as well once the lawsuit vs Atari is concluded.

Trial: http://www.ddo-europe.com/trialkey.php

Aion: Haven't tried it, yet. Just launched so unlikely to be a trial soon.

Guild Wars. Another I have not tried - doesn't require a subscription, and you should be able to pick it up fairly cheap in places. Not sure if it counts as an MMO, but most people include it in the genre.

Comicbook Heroes:

City of Heroes/Villains (CoX): Five years+ old - the granddaddy of the non-fantasy MMOs. Wasn't a fan of it when i played - the character creator was more fun, imo.

Trial: http://www.cityofheroes.com/trial/index.html

Champions Online: from the original developers of CoX, this is a much more action oriented game. Having great fun with it at the moment. Suffers from some lack of content (though when you realise you need to rescue citizens to initiate quest, patrol for Bank heists etc, there's enough content for levelling). Also some lag, and the retcon (resetting your powers) is controversial.

No trial yet.

Non fantasy:

Eve Online. Space trading, piracy, corporate espionage, exploration. Eve is big. It can be incredibly daunting - it is huge and it can be hard trying to decide what to do (or what you can do, or should do).

Trial: http://www.eveonline.com/

Star Wars Galaxies. Star Wars. Don't know enough about the game to be honest.

Trial: http://www.station.sony.com/en/freeTrials.vm

There are loads more, including many free-to-play ones.
http://www.massively.com/ and http://tentonhammer.com are two good places to look for additional information on MMOs.

DrewPeacock

Thanks dudes was checking out Aion on youtube,out today which ticks the up to date box but will the computer run it even though I do have an XPS anyone played it, or know anyone who has? LotR also looks pretty cool

Dcully

Aions performance is seriously impressive for such visuals.
I achieve better performanace on it than any other mmo i have installed, warhammer,wow,age of conan,lotro.

quad core,4 gig DDR, ati 4870 i gig gfx card

cherryghost

I'm shocked and appalled to see nobody has mentioned Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2

Lister1

Playing Aion at the moment but if this is going to be your first mmo I would give it two weeks to see what they do to remedy the queuing situation. I suspect that the queues will have died down considerably as they let more people in as the players will be more spread out. At the moment though with this issue I think there is a danger of it being your last mmo....


As a fan of Lotro I can highly recommend it. Been playing since the beta over two years ago and still going strong. There are a few issues regarding instance gating that could be done better but if you are in a good kin this should be less of an issue.