I would suggest a kingdom of loathing as well, but I would suggest kingdom of loathing in addition to COH and WOW, rather than as the only game you get.
I suggest it as a supplementary game for two reasons:
it’s free, so you don’t have to pay two subscription fees.
Because it’s free, and web based, there’s a limit on how much you can play. You have a certain number of turns, where each turn lets you fight one monster, or do one plotted event. More turns are acquired each day, and can also be acquired by eating or drinking. After you use your turns, there’s not a whole lot to do besides putter around with your items. Generally you can spend anywhere between a 15 minutes to an hour and a half a day, depending on lag, whether you are eating good food/drink, and whether you are just farming an area or have a puzzle to solve.
I would recommend against ffxi, as it is very group based. While one can log on and find parties pretty quickly for leveling up, finding groups for missions and quests can be really difficult.
I’m a WoW player. I never group, except for short “hey, let’s get this boss together so neither of us have to wait for a respawn” sort of groups, and grinding with my fiance. (heh, grinding).
Grouping is really fun (if you know your group members), but soloing is better.
Oh, absolutely. I’ve been saving up for a Battlecruiser, and I already have the necessary skills. I’ve been doing a little bit of everything; the only thing I haven’t delved into yet is science and manufacturing. And Electronic Warfare, but that’s not really my style of fighting. The corp is small and new, so we haven’t really gotten into the more advanced areas of EVE, but we’re heading there steadily.
Maeglin, that’s exactly what happened to me. I was on MMORPG.com checking out reviews of Guild Wars and looking at some of the more obscure and unreleased games, when I saw the free 14-day trial ad for EVE Online. Within the day my friends and I were simply hooked. The initial learning curve is rather steep, as you get hit with information overload, but if you give it time to percolate, it all falls into place and operating the game becomes quite easy.
The best thing about EVE, in my opinion, is that skills continue to advance even when you’re offline. It’s absolutely possible to take a day or two off from playing, or longer if necessary, and not completely feel like you’re lagging behind.
I’d only add that WoW addresses this issue by having “rest”. For every 8 hours that you ‘rest’, by loggging out in an inn, your character gets double XP from mob kills for 5% of the XP required to level.
In other words, if you take 10 days off, you’ll get credit for 30 8 hour periods, and for the next 1.5 levels you’ll earn double XP on kills. (It’s not graduated in 8 hour blocks; if you’re gone 4 hours you get 2.5%, etc.)
Pretty good solution, IMHO. It also makes alts more fun–when you want a break from your main character your alt is usually rested up and levels real quick for a while.
I remember hearing about that feature now. Clever solution, similar to the “power hour” in Ultima Online. That kind of thing is useful, as it (should) reduce the effects of addiction a little; you’re less anxious to get home from work or school because you’re losing valuable time. I say should because it doesn’t always help. Lord knows I’ve had a few edgy afternoon these past few weeks staring at the clock and knowing that new skill will be finished and waiting for me in EVE.
Just wanted to point out that the xp bonus as described is for logging out in general. When you log out in an Inn or within a city, you actually make xp bonus four times faster, thus it only takes about 3 days to max out the bonus at 1.5 levels.
Metacom is dead on RE: alts, tho. With 6 or 7 alts you can pretty much always play a character that is making xp bonus. That’s how I came to have a whole slew of high level toons on Spinebreaker.
Lord knows I’ve had a few edgy afternoon these past few weeks staring at the clock and knowing that new skill will be finished and waiting for me in EVE.