If anyone playing FFXIV happens to have a character on the Jenova server and wants to team up with a tank main (PLD), drop me a note. I’m in Heavensward content though (the game’s first expansion), not the endgame yet.
I still play DDO.
SW:TOR has never used the WoW engine (and the engine is one of the bad sides of it), but it is very similar in style.
But back to the OP for suggestions…
It is very strong in story, with pretty much everything fully voice acted. It’s a MMO, so dialogue choices follow more of the Fallout 4 model of “Yes,” “Yes (sarcastic)” “No (I’ll come back later)” except the “Yes (sarcastic)” option often involves shocking the NPC with force lightning, so it has that going for it.
Free to play includes all of the primary story lines, and each of the eight base classes has their own story, so that’s a lot of content available.
I also picked up Black Desert Online when it was free on Steam, it’s a…very odd MMO, sometimes it feels like a cross between a MMO and an idle game where you set up auto fishing, or trade routes, or gardening, and then minimize the game and go do something else for several hours…
That’s definitely one of the things I miss about SWTOR (which I played avidly until about 2 years ago). My friends who played SWTOR with me, who were also big fans of Bioware’s single-player RPG games (Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragon Age) told me that those sorts of conversation choices – and the fact that those choices can often lead to later implications – were very much a hallmark of SWTOR’s roots in those other games.
In the FFXIV storylines, your character is pretty much always assumed to be a hero with a capital H. You don’t often have conversation choices, and when you do, your choice seems to only have an immediate impact in the NPC’s next line, but otherwise doesn’t change the progress of the story.
I was so bummed when they added reaper, which was the beginning of the end of my time in DDO. Now it’s been at least 2 years since I last played.
After about a year of not playing I could no longer get motivated to update my player tools. (Character builder, etc…) It makes me sad; I put a ton of hours into writing those. Ah well.
Are there any RPGs that aren’t Dungeons and Dragons?
What I mean by that is not that I want to play a game that isn’t sword and sorcery, though most RPGs ARE sword and sorcery and that’s very tiresome. I mean that aren’t the same mechanic of gathering experience points, attaining the next level, and accumulating gold and buying items with it. That fundamnetal mechanic has been how RPGs have worked since Gary Gygax popularized it. I did try FFXIV and honestly it just looks like WOW to me. SWTOR is just WOW with better dialogue and a sci-fi skin.
EVE Online is kind of different, but is there anything else? CAN there be anything else or is that the only functioning mechanic?
Are you opposed to any progression mechanics or just the “Whack things and take their shit and get better at it” mechanic? The previously mentioned Black Desert Online allows you to just become a tradesman or merchant, if that’s your bag. But you’ll still progress and become better at crafting (or fishing, or horse breeding, etc) and make money.
Not that I think BDO is an amazing game. It’s fun for a while then practically turns into an idle clicker where you set your character up to repeat a task and minimize the game to do other things.
I recommend the unofficial City of Heroes reboot. It’s free to play, supported by the fan community. In case you’re unfamiliar, CoH is a superhero game, with a lot of options for character appearance and powers. While there is gear, it’s not really needed but is easy to get. It’s solo friendly, but easy to find groups.
There’s a Doper supergroup on the Homecoming servers that’s friendly.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=875847
I know you’ve said MMORPG, but maybe Witcher 3 can scratch your itch? It’s a single player only RPG, but it is vast in scope and it has this strange meditative feel, where you just want to wander around and do whatever. Highly recommend.
I tried “Secret World.” It has a neat premise, but the game is incredibly choppy no matter how I set my graphics settings - and my computer has problems with no other game. So that’s out.
I’m not opposed to anything. It woul;d just be neat to try something different.
Almost all RPGs are basically just Dungeons and Dragons. The fundamental progression mechanic popularized by Gary Gygax is the same one used in WOW, SWTOR, Guild Wars, and on and on.
Fair enough. I was just wondering how broad that mechanic is in your eyes. Any sort of progression system or just ones revolving around stabbing goblins and taking their swag?
It’s not about it being sword and sorcery; it’s about it being about accumulating XP to reach a level, then more XP to reach another level. Taking swag to get better items to be able to take more swag is certainly part of the D&D grind, but the main thing is XP-level-XP. Sword and sorcery themes aren’t the problem - SWTOR is science fiction but it’s basically the same. (Sword and sorcery is SUPER overused, though. There are very few MMOs that aren’t sword and sorcery.)
My other complaint - and I’m not trying to whine, but I find this subject interesting and we’re all locked indoors so what the hell - is that most RPGs I’ve tried don’t impose much on players in terms of choices in character type. By that I mean the classes are all very similar; they have different skins, different flavours, but how you play them doesn’t vary much. There’s the basic difference between tanks, who have to stand in front, and casters, who stand behind, but not a lot else.
When you played the “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” game, choosing skills as you advanced in level imposed choices. You could only pick so many things, and it REALLY impacted how good you were in certain situations. If you emphasized the skills that specifically attacked droids, then by the later stages of the game you could brush droids away like they were a minor nuisance, but it meant you were a little short of skills against organic enemies. If you ignored the droid attacks you were a bit weak against them but had an advantage over everyone else. You could try to balance it out but a bit of both wasn’t as strong as specializing. It was interesting. The online sequel had nothing like that; the “Spells” had different names and looked a bit different on screen but really they all played the same across classes and as you progressed you faced no hard decisions at all.
Eve within some of these games… it iused to be that if you were a paladin in WOW, for instance, that affected where you wanted to be, because of Exorcism. Exorcism was (still is) a spell you get somewhere around level 20, but it used to ONLY work against the undead, and man it kicked their asses. A level 25 paladin that struggled to solo most level 28 mobs could easily wipe out a level 28 undead monster. It mean that a paladin, especially on a solo run, was motivated to seek out areas of the world with the undead, because Exorcism gave them a huge leg up. But they screwed it up; first by making it work against everything but just being a bit more effective against the undead, and now I think it works the same against any mob, thereby completely removing the point of having it.
So yeah, if I have another complaint after “they’re all D&D” it’s that even within each game there just aren’t enough hard choices. Choices are what make games interesting. That’s among the ones I’ve tried, though; WOW, SWTOR, Guild Wars (briefly) and now FFXIV and Secret World is likely the same though it doesn’t work for crap.
Weird, I never have had a problem with any version of the game.
We’re you playing The Secret World or the current iteration, Secret World Legends?
Legends. Literally this past week.
A Tale in the Desert is apparently still going. It’s a nonviolent purely crafting MMO; there’s still a grind to level up but it’s making things to make more things in order to unlock recipes that let you make more advanced things.
I played it way back in 2007 or 2008; it’s very very time intensive so if you’re just looking to kill an hour or two in the evening I can’t recommend it unless it’s changed significantly in the past ten years (which it might have).
As a couple of posters have mentioned, Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong.
I’ve been playing for 8 years now and still play every day (I’m retired.)
Of course as usual with these games it’s about playing a character who:
- fights
- visits places
- carries out quests
- gets better equipment
However this is ‘Lord of the Rings’ - the ultimate storyline. 
So you can play as a Hobbit, a Human, an Elf, a Dwarf or a Beorning. 
There are over a dozen classes to choose from (melee Fighters, missile Fighters, Leaders, Healers, spell casters and even a Burglar.)
You’ll run into a huge number of places and characters from the Books.
You can’t be Gandalf or a member of the Fellowship - but you will meet them occasionally.
The game is huge. You can start as a Hobbit in the Shire, but you will visit Bree, the Misty Mountains, Mirkwood, Rohan and Gondor.
My main character is a Human Captain, who inspires those around her.
She has travelled through Moria and seen the Bridge of Khazad-dum.
Currently she is in Gondor and helping out citizens of Dol Amroth and Pelargir.
Last time I checked, she had completed over 4,000 quests (ranging from making a village woodsman some leather gloves to joining Legolas to chase a Nazgul fleeing from the Fords of Bruinen.)
The game mechanics are straightforward (mouse of keyboard as you prefer) and the scenery and attention to detail is fantastic.
I’m in the UK, but play regularly with a couple of friends in Las Vegas.
Sorry, meant to add that you can play for free or by monthly subscription (about $15, which adds extra content and gives game bonuses.)
If you have questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.
I miss my hobbit guardian from LotRO.
- one of the several City-of-Heroes wannabe heirs opened up its beta (more of an alpha, really)
If you can get their hammered webpage working anyway.
I think that mostly comes from the “MMO” part. If you have a spec that’s effective against droids and less effective against everything else in a single player game, it just means that some sections are more difficult. In a MMO, it means that character is just never invited to non-droid-centric Raids and doesn’t do well in PvP.
Everyone tends to gravitate towards the meta, whatever the meta may be at the moment, so dev time is spent mostly towards minimizing the meta.