Re: Which online RPG?

In article <1190878840.439893.92930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
darin@xxxxxxx says...
I'd like to know opinions about LOTRO, Guild Wars, and CoH/CoV.

I have finished playing WoW after 11 months. Hit 60 on one character
and lost all interest in levelling the alts and no desire to buy an
enhancement for just another couple of months. I have no interest
in raiding or the endless grind of trying to find another piece of
gear, or grouping with uber players in other instances.

For the record, the expansion pretty much negates the old WoW endgame;
green gear drops at the start of the Outlands are similar to blue
dungeon drops at L60. You can level to 70 as fast as you want, of
course (you can even do it via all quests or all dungeons). Gear will
be dropping in big increments all the time. Most importantlyly, the
majority of the players at your level are there.

Just a heads up in case you are considering it. Burning Crusade will
certainly last a *lot* longer than two months. The new instances are
better designed, tough but fun. The quests no longer make you travel
for hours (in fact personally I think they went a bit too far with
compact quest hubs).

The number of players who are uber is dwarfed by the number who think
they are. In fact the compaction of level differences means that from
L60+ you may often be doing dungeons in company with L70 characters.
By the time you get to the high-60s dungeons such as Durnholde Keep,
there are as many L70s doing them as others.

But anyway, to the other games...

Casual play was encouraged. The endless grind for uber gear was
lousy though, and the difference between a twink and a casual
player was immense (not to mention the ruthless condescension
towards players who didn't measure up).

I've not seen too much of that. Players who actively get the group
killed at frequent intervals get criticism rather than condescension.
If you do your job reasonably well and finish what you start, you will
be welcome in any group.

Have been doing CoH/CoV for nearly a month, and it's not quite
what I expected, so want to see what else might be good.
CoV is better than CoH, but still lacking in something.
Both seem to encourage/require doing random missions;
even the non-random ones often feel like Daggerfall style.
The graphics are bland (CoV is better though) and the
landscapes feel too "tiled". Despite it bringing my gfx
card to its knees and WoW being criticized for being too
cartoony, WoW looks much nicer.

I felt that too - graphics and missions are all very samey.

I want to try out LOTRO, since now it finally has a free trial.
I think the setting will discourage all the idiots out there with
the silly names and net speak.

I think that is probably a good choice - at least it will be different.
But will the setting compensate for the silly names and hobbit speak?
I'd guess there are probably fewer 'hard-core' players, and of course
there is no real PvP.

Guild Wars has started to sound good, because of the

I am a bit worried because I see reviews that compare
skills and combat to both magic the gathering and
diablo 2; which just happen to be the top two games on
my least-likely-to-ever-play list.

I can't see the comparison with Diablo. The comparison with MtG is
tangible but slight. It does make the point, however; Guild Wars is
structurally something quite different from a conventional MMORPG. I
didn't find it terribly compelling, and there doesn't seem to be the
same interaction with other player characters.

OTOH, you just have to buy the box, and thereafter it costs you only
chunks of your life...

I haven't played other MMORPGs except Project Entropia (if you have the
slightest gambling issues stay far away from this game; if not - well
it's different, and fascinating in its way, but I doubt you'd like it)
and Puzzle Pirates (even less of a MMORPG than Guild Wars).

I briefly tried Runescape (graphics insufficient) and Dungeon Runners
(empty and boring, at least as far as I got).

- Gerry Quinn



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