Huh. I’m trying, and the “Create Account” button does nothing. Figures.
You can play LOTRO for free - and there’s a pleasant mix of ‘level-uppers’, ‘crafters’ and ‘roleplayers’.
I play on the Laurelin server, which is very amiable.
It’s aimed at Europeans, English-speakers + roleplayers - but there are plenty of Americans too.
I tried LOTRO, and was unimpressed. Hey, if it’s your deal, cool.
I found out I need to find the private server for City of Heroes. Anyone know the link?
First post in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=875847
Been playing it for about a year now. It -does- sort-of run like a standard fantasy RPG, but I’ll give it props for two aspects:
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There’s a -lot- of options for builds. You’re given a bunch of ‘souls’ (base specs for your class) and mix and match as you like. Yes, there’s -optimum-, but unless you’re trying to do end-game raids, you don’t need to follow them.
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The lore. Good lord, the lore! You don’t have to follow any of it if you like, but the storylines are -interesting-, and once you hit some of the higher level stuff, they give you some world information that’s really, really cool. Also, top-level, I just finished questline where I -knew- one of the NPC’s was going to betray me, and it still hit me hard as to -why- they did it, and what came after. It’s well-written. (Not, like, a masterpiece of a novel, but -considerably- better than the writing in almost all other MMOs)
I played Rift from beta, and was a preorder player later, but eventually lost interest.
I loved how beautiful some areas were and I loved how fun the pop-up invasion events were, and how you could be flexible in a build and in coming up with creative macros to use your abilities.
After a while it got tedious though. Now and then I wonder about going back and playing it again. Not enough to actually do it.