So my wife and I used to play Diablo II. The bloom is off that rose after our 6th pair of lv70+ characters.
Then we tried Guild Wars, but it was too frustrating to find any kind of actual leveling group, and the skill system was asinine.
Then we tried FFXI, and that was fun for a while, but the high-level game and currency inflation got so out of control that she got fed up with it.
So, dopers, what MMORPGs out there would cater simultaneously to the following two people:
A gamer dork who likes actual skill requirements, is willing to play up to about 10-20 hours a week, and is willing to bust ass to be the best.
A gamer dork’s wife who likes a decent requirement for skill, good character customization with regards to abilities, is willing to play 5-10 hours a week tops, and wants a relaxed atmosphere where casual players don’t get frozen out.
We’ve already tried World of Warcraft (ugh, too cartooney) and EVE Online (I liked it, she hated it).
I happen to like City of Heroes. It’s straightforward for the basic play but features a lot of variation in types of characters, it’s play centered rather than progression centered (though that can be a minus for long term playability), characters are highly customizable, has a more friendly player-base than most, and is built around being able to progress with relatively limited time constraints. Until the new update comes out in a week or two there isn’t even really loot in the game; you just progress on your own. The game is very action orientated but not so fast paced that someone who isn’t into action games would get overwhelmed.
Confirmation on City of Heroes. Want a trial code? I’ve got a few left. It’s got a very high female playerbase, the most customizable characters in the genre, it’s fun, and it appeals to the hardcore player for the best in PvP as well as someone who just wants to wander around and have fun.
Oh what the heck - I’ll throw in my support of Everquest 2. I have been playing for about a year now and I’m fairly casual, so I can’t really comment on the top end game.
I play with my boyfriend (he two boxes a paladin and a conjurer), I play a mystic (like a shaman) and have recently started two boxing a warlock (for more damage). We are all half elves (had a good mix of starting stats and we all started in the same starting city, which made it convenient). We are currently level 54 (warlock is now 25). I have only played “good” characters in EQ2 (start in Qeynos as opposed to Freeport - high elves, gnomes, halflings, faeries), so don’t have much experience with the “evil” characters (start in Freeport - rats, dark elves, ogres, trolls, etc).
From a casual player perspective:
Nice character models, including two choices of models, nice facial customization, frilly stuff like flowers for the hair (if you get tired of your look, you can change it for 1 gold in game). EQ2 just added a new race with the Echoes of Faydwer expansion - fairies and they are absolutely adorable (pretty colored wings, glide ability, little treetop town with acorn houses). Faes also have the coolest “dance” emote - they spin around, shrink to a tiny ball of light and explode into normal size. The half elf dance is uh, not so cute, heh.
The ability to decorate player houses, I’ve seen some completely fabulous player houses (Pianos, flowers, four poster beds, pictures, rugs, little pets). It’s fun to buy furniture.
Nice offline broker system, sell while you are offline
Good tradeskills - each character is limited to 1 primary tradeskill (like tailoring, alchemy, weaponsmithing, making food) and 1 alternate tradeskill (tinkering or transmuting). I actually make money via tradeskilling and it’s not terribly difficult. There are actually 2 leveling paths for your character - I am a 54 Mystic and a 63 Provisioner. If you don’t want to adventure, you can still level as a tradeskiller.
Excellent questing - It’s actually easy to level off of quests, there are tons of fun little collection quests (picking up feathers or seashells), quests where you learn specifics about monsters and get the ability to nuke them harder, heritage quests - more difficult complicated quests to get very nice rewards (but still doable with small groups), tons of simplistic “kill 10 mobs” type quests. I rarely go out and “grind” exp, I get tons of exp killing the mobs I need for quests (as well as exp for completing the quests)!
Lots of beautiful zones - if you have a system that can play with all graphics on, the game is simply stunning (it’s pretty good even with graphics turned down)
So much content - there is literally so much to do, we are constantly outleveling content before we have a chance to do everything, exploring and quests keep us very very busy
Alternate experience system - besides earning: combat experience, tradeskill experience and guild experience, you can also earn alternate experience to differentiate your character from other characters in the same class.
Mentor system - you can group with lower level people and lower your levels to theirs, you don’t get as much experience as you normally would, but they get an exp bonus, great for leveling up friends who are behind you or seeing content you missed the first time. If you outlevel your wife, you can still hang out and adventure together very easily (currently, we mentor down to the new warlock, doing new content/quests we missed the first time, she’s leveling, we’re getting alternate experience from the quests, seeing new things)
No huge dependency on the “sacred 3” (EQ 1’s Cleric/warrior/enchanter), I have no problems keeping the group healed as a shaman (mystics heal via wards - like a COH bubble defender)
Good class system, any race can play any class, if you are evil and want to be a paladin, you “betray” your starting city with a quest (same if you are a high elf and want to be a shadowknight).
Good guild system - the guild actually levels based on member actions (completing quests, turning in status items). Guilds get perks based on guild level - more space in the guild bank, the ability to buy higher level items, fancier cloaks. Very easy to manage members as well
In game mail system, easy to send stuff to offline characters
Good transportation system - boats, griffons, character ports, speed enhancers (spells, horses, flying carpets), I don’t feel like I spend hours running from place to place (like I sometimes did in EQ1)
I like the spell system. Pre level 50, you automatically get spells upon leveling, with the ability to craft or loot higher level, more powerful spells
Death system is not overly punitive, if you die, you have the option to be rezzed back to your corpse, or you respawn fully geared within the same zone. You incur a small amount of exp debt (which goes away when you hunt/are offline) and your armor takes damage (which is repairable back in town for a fee, starts small as a low level, gets spendy). It’s nice because I feel like I can explore, risk death without too many terrible consequences (cough EQ1 naked corpse retrieval).
Ability to join multiple chat channels - cross server, cross game (with EQ1), class channels, tradeskill channels, make up your own channel!
There is always something to do!
As a drawback, I’ve heard some people complain that the lower levels are a little underpopulated (making it hard to get groups sometimes), but since I have a regular group I didn’t have that experience. I actually like the fact that it’s not so crowded I feel like I’m competing for mobs/quest spawns. Another drawback (for me) is the limit on character slots per account.
Let me know if you have any other EQ2 questions! We are on the Antonia Bayle server. On preview, I have to say that there were parts of COH that I really liked (character creation! flying!) but as a former EQ1 power gamer, it started to bore me silly. I’m glad to see COH will get loot in a future release.
If you do decide to play City of Heroes (and/or Villains) be sure to let us know. Any new MMORPG is overwelming when you start it and there’s a reasonably sized CoH contingent on these boards who will be happy to give a basic primer on the game, but it would be better to not clutter this thread up with it.
What about Vanguard? Challenging game with an incredibly complicated skill system in three separate “spheres” (adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy) takes a lot of ass-busting, and lets you customize your character in soooo many ways. If your wife doesn’t play as much as you do, there’s soon going to be a fellowship system (or maybe it’s already been implemented?) that’ll let her get a portion of all the experience you earn so you stay the same level.
It kinda feels like a mix between EQ2, WoW, and the ilk, but “evolved” and refined. Eh… I think the best way to describe it would be “hardcore”, which may be a bad thing if you’re looking for more casual games. It’s not entirely inaccessible to casual players, but leveling tends to be on the slow side.
Unfortunately, the game was deliberately released during its beta process because the developers simply ran out of funds. It is extremely, extremely slow and has the worst performance of any game I’ve ever played… and that’s an understatement. I gave it a try and thought that it might be quite enjoyable in 6 months to a year’s time, but right now it’s simply too painful to play on my 2-year-old system.
Brainiac4 and I play City of Heroes - on Virtue. Lately we’ve been playing WoW. I like City of Heroes better - WoW is too much the “stuff shopping mall” and I don’t like that.
The nice thing about CoH for us as a couple is the sidekick ability. Where he (or I) have a character that is a higher level than the other, we can sidekick the other up to play together (you can go down as well).
City of Heroes is pretty repetative - but so is Diablo II.
Of the games I have played, I think City of Heroes is the best for the situation you describe. **Dangerosa **and I are similar to your description of you and your wife – she’s less interested in the minutia of leveling and optimization, I’m more interested, etc.
Don’t let the lack of stuff fool you – with the differences in archetypes, powersets and enhancements, there are a lot of options for character customization. And you start off with the best character costume designer ever, giving you near-total control over your look.
I play Puzzle Pirates (www.puzzlepirates.com), since last June. It’s all about skill-based puzzles – not the character’s skill level, but you the player’s skill level. Most things in the game are done through mini-game puzzles, such as pentominos (carpentry to fix ships), a Bejeweled variant (pumping out bilge water), and a Puzzle Fighter variant (sword fighting). The economy is entirely player-run, from bidding on resources at markets, to setting up shoppe, to working at a shoppe and making things. (Not all industries have labor puzzles yet, the game makers just announced their fourth labor puzzle.)
The good news about Puzzle Pirates being player-skill-intensive is, the game is very open ended on how you play your character. The bad news is, customization is limited to the pirate model. There’s no character classes as such – but you can wake up one morning and decide to stop being a pirate and go into shopkeeping. Then when you run short of money, you can go back to piracy, just by hiring out onto a ship.
You want to bust [del]ass[/del]booty to be the best? Skills are ranked on a comparative basis up to “ultimate,” and the competition to get to ultimate standing can get (appropriately) cutthroat, especially in sword fighting. Then comes the competition to reach the #1 spot in a skill, as well as taking on all comers through in-game tournaments to gain one of the biggest prizes in the game: A parrot, octopus, or monkey to show off to everybody.
Then there’s relaxing with the crew (the team you’re a part of), and playing casual card games at the inn. (Hearts, spades, and Texas Hold-Em.)
If you want to give it a try, the server I play on uses a micropayment system, so it’s free to get started. In fact, you can play for several years without spending any real cash. I can send you an invite, so you’ll start out with some seed money and be a part of the crew I’m in.
I don’t have a huge amount to say. In Europe we are due for full release 24/04, but I am on the pre-order early release so have played a wee bit.
Graphics are rather nice. Not cartoony, more like EQ2 I guess.
Class and makeup of the characters is a little limited.
Huge numbers of people will be playing.
Its Middle Earth!!
I know there is a thread here somewhere that points out the negatives, so it may be worth a look as I’m sure they also talk about some positives…
Yeah, I got mine last night, played around a bit with Archangel Zeriel, the Stone-based Tanker Supernatural.
I dunno if Julia has her key yet, or if you even saw the message above where I gave her e-mail. Of course if you don’t wanna blow two trial keys on me I’ll understand.
If you decide you like City, you can get Good vs Evil packs with both games for the same monthly fee as either one alone, and it nets you a couple of prestige powers and extra costume pieces. Most of the Doper contingent is concentrated on Virtue heroside, and Protector villainside, at least our higher-level characters, but most of us have alts scattered all over.
It may be worth keeping an eye out for Tabula Rasa, but it’s not going to be out for months, at least. I don’t have any firsthand experience with it (come on, Beta invite!), but the combat system as described actually has a skill element, while still relying on good old RPG stats and rolls. I don’t really know how casual-friendly it’s going to be, but it is supposed to accommodate broad level ranges playing together.