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I need a new MMO!

Discussion in 'Coffee House' started by Zhaanish, Apr 14, 2020.

  1. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    OK I still enjoy LOTRO, but mostly their festivals (which is tied into decroating/cosmetics) and their spring festival just ended. I'm kind of bored with questing and such after 13+ years. I had high hopes for New World but it's postponed until August now. I really don't want to start playing and "old" game. Meaning any game that's been out for more than say 1 year. I want something totally fresh.

    What new games (either already out but recent or coming soon) are you watching that do not have mandatory PVP and preferably have player housing (although I could live without the housing).
     
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  2. Castegyre

    Castegyre Active Member

    Maybe consider something a bit different like playing NWN or NWN2 on a private server. People make whole worlds there. There are also games like Conan Exiles, but that is PvP centric. Games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker are fun if you want a single player break from the MMO scene, very reminiscent of older games like Baldur's Gate. There are all kinds of sims or tycoon type games out there. Some of the older games are still very good depending on what you're looking for.

    Sometimes the best change in MMOs is not playing another MMO for a while.
     
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  3. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Thanks but I have a lot of non-MMOs. I enjoy them but they don't have the same immersive feel of an MMO. I like having other options for sure - especially when not self-isolating. I kind of prefer things I can jump in and out of quicker. I actually enjoy deck builders online a lot (Star Realms and Gems of War) and also play a ton of tabletop games offline. We also have a private Minecraft server. But I'm really looking for something in the MMO genre that's fairly fresh. I haven't played an MMO regularly since I quit EQ2 (2-3 years ago). I still pop into LOTRO during their seasonal festivals but that's about it and really only because I have a lifetime sub there so why not. It's not as if I'm burned out from MMOs. Most of the intriguing looking ones lately have mandatory PVP which is a no go for me.
     
  4. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    Combining relatively new with minimal PVP, player housing, and a lack of interest in questing makes for a steep order. The best I can do is give the breakdown of my experiences with MMORPGs I've played in the past few years.

    The short-and-sweet, in no particular order:

    1: Elder Scrolls Online - I played this one (on the side) for maaaybe a year. It looks gorgeous, the world is incredibly fun to explore, the public dungeons are cool, the private dungeons...ehhh...hit or miss. I absolutely loved the combat (especially the synergies -- I wish every MMORPG would take from these) and it had some of the coolest abilities I've seen in any MMO. ESO has a lot of creativity in very good places.

    Now, with that said, getting through the questlines was -- for the most part -- incredibly tedious, and I really hate the classes and how they're set up. As a big mount collector, I also don't like how almost all of their mounts are reskins of the same few creatures...90% of which are locked behind purchases. To me, it always felt like for every one cool item that showed up as a reward for playing the game, ten times as many were sent straight to the lootbox store.

    My experience with ESO's player housing system was very minimal, but it does have it. As for PVP; the closest I ever got to it was getting barraged with duel invites every-single-time I ported into town (seriously, I'm pretty sure these people spent all day standing at the shrine trying to find someone to PVP) until I learned how to turn on autodecline. I did enjoy this game's crafting system, but as I leveled up certain things more and more, the research times really became ridiculous. Still, it's fun if you want a mostly single player game wherein other people are running around.



    2: Final Fantasy XIV - Great house decoration system (although getting hold of a house can be VERY challenging. Getting an apartment, however, is easy), borderline non-existent PVP, very casual (yet enjoyable) gearing systems, and top-notch dungeons/raids/trials/soundtrack to go with them. This game seems like it was designed around people who don't have massive quantities of time to sink into an MMORPG, but it's also light enough on the time-gating where there's still ample stuff to do at any point in time. The jobs (classes) are all very fun and very different, the combat is straightforward, the crafting is GREAT.

    My biggest problem with FFXIV is that -- in my opinion -- all the content up through Heavensward is crap. Questing is overmaxed on tedium, the raids/trials are script-heavy (particularly in Heavensward) and the crafting quests...oh the crafting quests... Prepare to go broke unless you save them for much later. Don't even get me started on the cutscenes in the Praetorium dungeon. It's such a shame, considering how outstanding all of the Stormblood/Shadowbringers content is.

    If you can get through the slog of the first two pieces of content, you find yourself on a nice, relaxed slope of systems that've been refined over the years and feedback that was actually listened to. From the stories, to the voice acting, to the combat, dungeons, and everything in between. You can almost see the difference in production budget. My wife and I still play this game regularly, and we always have a lot of fun with it. For the most part, I think FFXIV's end-game content is accommodating to most types of players (except PVPers), and the community has a lot of charm to it.



    3: World of Warcraft - No. Although I think the average MMORPG-goer could turn to this game for a fresh start and have a fun year or two as long as they didn't power through the content too quickly, its current...everything...is so bad that I couldn't possibly recommend it to anyone. I can compliment the game's vast, really cool open world, and I can at least say that Blizzard does cutscenes very well. Oh, I'm also a big fan of their transmog (aesthetics) system. That, at least, is very well done. Everything else, however, is currently failing on all cylinders. EXTREME amounts of time where there's no new content, some of the worst time-gating I've ever seen in any non-phone game, a development/CS team that'd get along great with Kander, abysmal writing/storytelling, a comically bad crafting system, and a community that couldn't possibly be worse. To add to that, there's so little consistency between quality of expansions that one year, you might having a blast while the next, you're left wondering what the hell happened. Back when I was in love with Legion, if you'd told me that I'd be quitting and spitting on the game in a year's time, I would've through you were crazy.

    I won't bother going on with this one. No player housing, lots of PVP, lots of e-peen.
     
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  5. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Thank you! Sorry if I was misleading - I meant I was bored with LOTRO quests, not quests in general!
     
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  6. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    No problem. If you ever have any questions about FFXIV, feel free to ask. My knowledge on ESO is a bit outdated, but I know there are others floating around on these forums who've played it much more recently than myself.

    Some of my favorite fights from FFXIV:

    - Lakshmi Trial

    - Susano Trial

    - A Shadowbringers fae-themed dungeon
     
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  7. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    I've recently started building for an NWN PW called Netheril: Age of Magic (Age of Magic in the lookup for multiplayer).
    It's a well done world with an active player base, active builders and DMs.

    It's great to have the exploration, discovery and chance for RP in a new place and the addition of creating again.. I feel the addiction of building growing strong again ;)
     
    • Like Like x 2
  8. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    I love building so this sounds intriguing! Thanks!
     
  9. Tekka

    Tekka That Village Idiot


    I don't see Good King Moggle Mog on this list.

    -squints-
     
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  10. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    No, no more Moogles. I was enough of a masochist to go through the entire Postmoogle questline, and for a hat...which doesn't show up on my race. Even worse, on one of those new Firmament tickets, I could've picked 2/3 nodes and won the mount. What'd I get? Moogle attire.
     
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  11. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Well how about this one?




    This guy made a 9 hour video of this crap, which near as I can tell, is about the amount of time it takes to clear a room in EQ1.

    Lols. You wierdos that still like this game need help, man.
     
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  12. Castegyre

    Castegyre Active Member

    Project Gorgon has a less painful old school feel to it. It's been some time since I checked in on it, but I recall it was fun enough at the time.
     
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  13. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    Ugh, that reminds me of the equally long Solusek's Eye raids from EQOA. I hated that place and we always seemed to leave empty handed, but for whatever reason, as soon as it was raid time, that was one of the only places people wanted to go.

    I had an old EQOA buddy that I tried getting into EQ2 quite a few years back, but all he ever went on about was wanting to play EQOA again. Not sure how he was going to go back to the days of multi-hour raids, 8-hour grind sessions, weeks worth of mob camping, and extreme guild-to-guild competition when I couldn't even get him to gear himself up in advanced solos every weekend.

    The old school stuff was great, but my glasses aren't rose-colored enough to blind me to the fact that it was a combination of the times and the people that made it that way.
     
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  14. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Exactly - I played EQ1 intensely until EQ2/Wow came out (tried both). But once that ship sailed for me, it was gone. I just have zero interested in EQ1 since I left it years ago. I was young and had tons of time to waste and didn't mind corpse runs and grinds and raids that took hours. No time nor desire to do that now. Heck I can't even seem to find time to even get involved in a guild in any game.

    I will say I do miss the social aspects though in general - not specific to a game. My husband and I have a Kinship (LOTRO's version of a guild) so we can have a "private" Kinhall and it's fancy and I don't want to give it up. But I keep toying with dropping one of my "solo" characters out of it so I can join a real Kinship and meet some people online. Not so much to play with necessarily, just to have a chat channel besides the general one when I'm solo'ing. Other than seeing all the other players running around in the world (it's still quite populated even in low level zones), I might as well be playing a stand alone game.
     
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  15. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    I wish you significantly better luck than I had. In all the MMORPGs I've played in the last few years, I managed to find exactly zero good guilds -- even just for conversation. Either everyone's dead silent until they want something (and don't expect them to reply when it's your turn to ask for help), it's full of self-centered, blathering kids who feel the need to update you on their latest meal/fart/anime/parse/etc., or a clique-fest of certain people patting each other on the back and completely ignoring everyone else. More often than not, it was a combination of all three, with masters and their officer cronies being the worst offenders.

    I remember how back in the day, when I helped run high-end guilds, I told my officers that I'd only run small-team content with them until they knew how to do it. After that, it was their responsibility to help teach other people and then take those teams along, so that the cycle can keep going and everyone can feel involved.

    These times are very, very different.
     
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  16. Castegyre

    Castegyre Active Member

    I actually had somewhat bad luck with ESO guilds. SWTOR was a very mixed bag. City of Heroes is mostly people who've been there and done that so the expectations bar is high. Still, mostly laid back and helpful people there.

    Of the MMOs I've played recently GW2 is the one that really surprises me. Yes, there are uptight control freaks, especially in WvW or PVP. That's to be expected and nothing new, really. In most levels of PvE I've found the GW2 people to be generally helpful and plenty of them are fairly social. Having access to 5 guilds helps I suppose. Map chat is pretty active in most zones for most of the day. As someone who keeps odd hours I like that. One of the big things that I find appealing is that it's common for a guild to run zone meta events or lead HP or bounty trains openly announcing it and inviting anyone who wants to tag along to do so. Occasionally it's just a person doing it. I think the biggest factor in this sort of behavior over some other games is that GW2 is a cooperative game. There's little reason to fight over boss spawns or whatever, everyone has a change to get credit together. I like that enough that it's sometimes hard for me to play older games now.
     
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  17. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    This is interesting because GW2 is one game I've thought of going back to try again. My main reason for not doing so is the lack of player housing which is a big part of enjoyment for me in an MMO. But I did like it when it came out - I played to max level and then got bored and quit. I know there's been expansions etc.
     
  18. Tekka

    Tekka That Village Idiot


    They've teased their third expansion. Until then, there's 2 expansions + all the Living World chapters + general dailies + some expansion dailies + seasonal events + holyshit numbers of achievements (that you actually get rewards for, I know, don't faint) + endgame relevant crafting + guildhalls with (limited) customizable décor.

    Oh, and all that stuff Cast said.
     
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  19. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    It's funny I still haven't tried anything else yet because LOTRO keeps eating up my time. They have been having festivals back to back during this period and doing other stuff to keep the players happy. Smart on their part! I don't think I've ever seen so many people in the game in the last year or 2 and their zones are always pretty busy at all levels.
     
  20. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    I'm wondering if all MMORPGs have had an influx lately, because over the past few weeks I've noticed a crazy number of sprouts (new players) on FFXIV, as well. The main towns are usually packed on weekends (evenings, especially) but Limsa was even hopping at 12 AM on a Monday. Always happy to see new players, but I'm also leery when they're WoW refugees.
     
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