Having recently leapt into this century with our first ever high speed internet connection, Ardred and I are now looking to foray into an MMORPG. Having never played or known someone who played regularly, I need some advice.
Needs:
Must be available on Mac and PC.
Must be playable simultaneously for both of us on same connection (is that possible?)
Must be less than $30 a month (not including startup costs).
I’ve been looking at EverQuest. I like that it’s established, easy to run, large and fantasy-ish. We’re D&D players, so the more swords and sorcery the better. I like Neverwinter Nights, but from what I can find, it’s not available on Mac.
It would be great to get a game that is playable both as a single player and in an online setting (a la Starcraft). So we can play with ourselves (heh) or in the community at large.
So, any ideas? I went through some of the threads on here… but I’m still at a loss. Would EverQuest work for us? Is there something newer we should hold out for (EQ2)?
(system info)
Mine: dual G4, os 9.2 (soon to be X, maybe), 384 MB ram, 30 GB HDD
His: P4, 2.60 GHz, 512 ram, 120 GB HDD
It’s not quite a true MMORPG, but Diablo 2 is available for both Mac and PC, allows for persistent online characters, and has a strong single-player experience as well.
I’m only mentioning it because you mentioned some non-MMORPGish games, and a liking of Starcraft, which is made by the same company. I’m not a big fan of Diablo-like games, but a lot of people really like them and they require less lifespan devoted to them.
I’ve seen many lives ruined by EQ and similar MMORPGs. These games are not really ‘fun’ once you’ve been playing them a while, they just make you form online friendships with other players and get you hooked on keeping your character advancing in level, in part so you can keep up with your friends. When I was unwilling to devote 8+ hours a day to playing Asheron’s Call, I could no longer play it with my wife, who would. Almost all of these games require you to perform time-consuming and repetitive tasks to advance after the first dozen levels or so, and if you are a ‘casual player’ you miss out on one of the few enjoyable things about playing, the online friendship. I knew a guy who spent 48 hours over three days killing the same kind of monster over and over again in one small cave, just to collect the parts he needed to build a particular kind of armor. The designers have fine-tuned the positive reinforcement for sitting there hitting buttons so that people keep playing.
One I have heard about that might be a little different is City of Heroes, as it does not have loot collection (although levelling can be tedious too, you can at least choose where you want to do it).
If you’re looking to start gaming on a Mac, you’re in for a few surprises. Good luck and make sure you watch this video.
“The confusing thing about PCs is that you go to the store, and there’s just so many games. I mean, everywhere you look. But on the Mac - there’s just 6. And you know which ones are good, because you’ve already played them all on the PC like 5 or 6 years ago!”
It’s not available yet, but World of Warcraft probably has everything you want. Blizzard has kept up their tradition of Mac support, and I’ve been playing the beta on both a Apple Powerbook and a PC.
Also, a port of Neverwinter Nights is available for the Mac. You just have to buy separate copies for each platform; it’s not a hybrid disc like Blizzard’s games are.
The only MMORPG that I have played was Anarchy Online…and I quickly got turned off from it because it wasnt as much swords and magic as i had liked. They did however have some interesting uses for nano technology which made the game unique. I would also recommend World of Warcraft (when it comes out). Ive been following the trailers over the last year and it looks pretty sweet. Lastly, didnt Final Fantasy come out with a MMORPG as well? I believe I read a post at www.game-over.net about FF game.
But yeh…unless you have a ridiculous amount of time to put towards these games, I find that you lose intersted after a month or so basically b/c you dont have the time needed to keep up with everyone else.
Hope that helps
The final fantasy stuff for us is pretty solitary. Plus, isn’t that only on the PS2? We’re looking to challenge our PC with a bit more than the solitare and minesweeper it gets now.
Ardred has played Warcraft (we got III when we got this computer) so World of Warcraft is the way to go. Is it really going to come out at the end of 2004, or is Blizzard stalling again?
No, the PC version was released first. (But there’s only a PC version). It’s clearly a game that was intended for PS2, though – neat game, but it has a horrible console-centric interface. On the other hand, I might’ve stuck with it if I’d had a regular partner to play it with.
No telling. But the beta is very stable, and even the alpha was more feature-complete than many MMORPGs are on release. They’re still making pretty significant changes, but they don’t seem to be breaking anything. I’d reckon it’s very likely to be out by Christmas; the only reason I could see for delaying it would be if they decide to add some major feature and revamp everything to balance it. Blizzard’s pretty obsessive about polishing their stuff.
Hold out for EQ2. Given Blizzards long standing history of holding back releases, I would not be surprised to see it finally released early next year rather than this year.
Granted half of the touted crap Sony is selling about EQ2 will probably not even be available at launch. Rather they’ll add it as later patches and expansions. But they do have a lot experience with the online gaming. Just the tradeskills alone is mindboggling.
Played EQ for about 4 years. Never really too much, just about 15 hours a week, majority of it on weekends with friends. There were plenty of husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend playing together. With the addition of LDON expansion, you can just log on for a couple hours and do an adventure. As a person who actually did spend 48 hours mindlessly killing one mob to get some magical boots, I can say that EQ has changed since those days. Back then, If I couldn’t commit at least 4 continous hours of play, I wouln’t even log on. Looking back at it now, I wouldn’t of done that. EQ is what you make of it. If you want to camp for 2 days straight then do it. Its not necessary to do so. Nor is it really even required for casual players. Its the hardcore players, in excess of 50+ hours a week that wind up doing it to progress in the end game.
