Sooooo Kubla… what did you decide on?
Thanks for all the great responses!
Still mulling it over. I’m leaning toward DAoC right now. It sounds very interesting, and there wouldn’t be that much of a monetary commitment if I didn’t care for it. I’ve read that players of both the expansion pack and the original game all play in the same world, it’s just that the exp pack players get to access the new realms. Is this a pretty common setup for MMORPGs?
But, Everquest catches my attention too. The Everquest crowd here is pretty vocal about their enthusiasm…kinda makes me want to check it out. 
I didn’t see the Everquest Gold pack at walmart, but there were a bunch of expansion packs. Is it recommended (or necessary) to get all of them, just the most recent one(s), or just a certain one?
Nobody’s seems to be all that crazy about the Asheron’s Call games. Do they just lack the right “feel” to become absorbing and addictive?
I see that a few of you are mentioning that different servers for a game will tend to have a different crowd. Is it a good idea to research the available servers for a game before committing to one and creating some characters?
All this talk of MUDs reminds me of when I started college in 1994. There was always a bunch of people (myself included) that would stay in the Fishbowl computer lab staring at dumb terminals until the very wee hours of the morning. I was wasting my time on the ISCA bulletin board, but 2/3 of the crew were playing MUDs. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t check those out then…
Keep the responses coming. They’re very helpful!
Oh, and GMRyujin, I’ll be sure to check out your website.
All the MMORPGs that I’ve seen deal with expansions the same way… everyone plays in the same “world”, it’s just that you have to buy the expansions to get to the new parts or new features.
I believe the Everquest Planes of Power box comes with basic EQ and PoP. If you don’t/can’t get the gold box, I’d get the Planes of Power box, as long as it comes with basic EQ. Here’s a synopsis of the expansions:
Everquest basic game: Access to the “old world” zones (of which there are a LOT!), all the basic races (2 flavors of humans, 3 flavors of elves, dwarfs, trolls, ogres, etc.)
Planes of Power: Travel advantages for characters of all levels. Other than that, must-have zones for when you reach your 50s.
Shadows of Luclin: access to the bazaar, and zones that you’ll want to go to when you hit level 13-18 or so. Plus you’ll need this expansion if you want to play a Vah Shir (cat person)
Ruins of Kunark: Access to zones you’ll want when you hit your high teens/low 20s. You need this expansion if you want to play a Iksar (lizardman)
Scars of Velious: Zones for characters from 29+, but mostly 40s-50s.
Legacy of Ykesha (newest expansion, downloadable): zones for 40-60 or so. Need this expansion if you want to play a Froglok (frog man).
The “gold box” includes the basic game and all the expansions except Legacy of Ykesha. I’ve never seen it at WalMart, but you can order it online for about $50. Amazon has it.
Servers: I can’t answer for any other game but EQ, but in EQ you’d have a hard time researching servers. EQ has a few PvP servers, a role playing server, and a premium server that you pay more to play on. It also has a few European servers. The bulk of EQ servers, though, are pretty much the same. Yes, there’s small differences in economy and whatnot, based mostly on the age of the server, but from what I can tell, they’re pretty much the same. Go play on the ones your friends play on, or whatever one sounds good to you.
For Dark Age of Camelot, it’s not necessary to get the expansion pack, but it does add truly beautiful new lands, and different playable races. You should definitely consider carefully which server to play on, and if roleplay’s important you want either Percival, Nimue, or Guinevere. I hear Percival and Nimue have better roleplay environments than Guin, but that may be a grass-is-greener deal since I primarily play on Guinevere.
Just thought I’d pop in and offer two comments. One is that you might want to try A Tale in the Desert ( www.atitd.com ) which has 24 hours of free play time. It’s a little rough on the start, and there’s no fighting but it’s still enjoyable. Being that it’s free, you can’t lose anything by trying it.
The second comment is that I really enjoyed Dark Age of Camelot. I thought it had better response from the developers than EQ and that the people working on the game wanted to enjoy playing it, instead of just making it to suck in more money for the company.
One last thing; I like your site, GMRyujin - nice writing style on the reviews. If you want to see my full take on ATitD, you can check it out on my site here
John
Athena did an excellent job with the descriptions of the different EverQuest expansions. I also agree that if you cannot purchase the gold edition, the Planes of Power expansion which includes the original EverQuest is the way to go. The travel features included in Planes of Power make this expansion the one most useful in my opinion, followed by Shadows of Luclin.
Luclin is an important expansion for EverQuest largely because of the bazaar. The bazaar is where players buy and sell almost anything that can be found in the game. In addition to adding the “cat” race, luclin also includes the class of beastlord.
Overall, the gold edition is the best buy if you continue playing the game.
There are four player versus player servers (red servers) in EverQuest. Any server ending in Zek is a pvp server. Each of these have different rule sets that you will want to research to decide which one fits you best.
All other servers in EverQuest are considered blue servers (non-pvp). Firona Vie is the role-playing preferred server which has special rules for how items are dropped and traded. Maelin is the newest server, just opened last month. There are several servers in Europe if you live there or find that you play mainly during that time zone, though most servers that I know tend to have players in all time zones.
Stormhammer is the “premium” server of EverQuest. I don’t recommend starting here because there are very few players at lower levels. This can make it difficult to find groups to play with. You can always move to this server later if you decide you are interested.
Aside from that, I would suggest starting on the server where you have friends or someone to help you learn the game. It is always nice to have someone show you around at the beginning. If you still aren’t sure, make a few characters on different servers until you find one that you like. There isn’t a wrong server to play on…unless you hate to be killed by other players.
Let me know if you need any help. I’d be glad to create a character on any server you choose to show you around and get you started if you decide that you would like to give EverQuest a shot.
I played the A Tale in the Desert beta for a while, and I’ll second that. It’s…interesting.
Dark Age of Camelot is a lot of fun. I played Guin/Hib for ages and moved to Perc/Mid a while back. Percival’s Midgard community is pretty good, very helpful, lotsa people giving ya stuff.
Thank ya, John, by the way.
I’ve been playing Asheron’s Call for 4 years now and it’s very addicting. My husband, who is much more addicted than I, has developed his character more. Random daily fighting to work off stress and big multi-hour quests on the weekend. A lot of social interaction which is a big plus for me.
The AC developers have been really good about not abandoning the original now that AC2 is out. We did the AC2 beta but it was really dumbed down. Not fun to play at all. No real strategy needed - just kill kill kill. If I wanted that I’d go back to Doom 2.
Not yet released outside Japan. COme to think of it, it didn’t do all that well in Japan. MMORPG’s are still much more marginal there.
From my personal experience…
Everquest - the hardest thing about getting into EQ is getting started - it’s not a game which can be played ‘solo’ really so unless you can hook-up with some people early-on you could be in for a dull and tiresome experience…
Ultima - looking very dated now and by-far the worst for making you work REALLY hard to get anywhere - I really don’t think you can consider playing UO for ‘a couple of months’ - you’d get nowhere…
Anarchy Online - I’m one of the fools who survived Rubi-Ka from Launch thru ‘fixed’ (almost a year) but I’ll freely admit I stayed only because
a) I met some really nice people who helped me out and I was happy to see/spend time with
b) being in ‘early’ meant I learned ‘with’ everyone - not from them
The addiction for me tends to be in the mechanics of the character/building etc. etc. - I found myself spending 2-3 hours just working out how to get things to work etc. etc. - as well as 100s of hours slogging away in missions to earn XP, money, items etc.
As people drifited away from AO my interest waned tho - and when you see how much time these things eat it’s hard to justify…
AO does stand out as the MMOG you can play solo tho AND you can play it completely free-of-charge for 7 days if you can download the client (it’s pretty big tho!)
DAOC - I’ve not played (PC not up-to-spec) but a great many people I know have and most say it’s a game which works WELL if you a part of a good guild and not otherwise…
An oddity could be Neocron tho - it’s essentially the same system that gave us games like Deus Ex and System Shock - but with an online/persistant element - looks intriguing but I’m trying to stay cold-turkey on life-loss at the moment…
TTFN
JP
Damn, I was hoping someone would mention Dransik, so I wouldn’t have to. It’s the game I’m currently working on, so I’m a bit biased.
It’s designed for low-end machines, as it’s sprite-based- basically, if you can read the SDMB, chances are your machine can play the game. There are tons of non-combat skills, and a very user-friendly interface. We’ve been in development for over two years, and have just recently gone commercial.
It’s a free download, and about nine bucks a month after your first free ten days.
Take a look, wouldja? I’m one of the artists- actually, I’ve built most of the monsters in the game. I’m currently rendering the Cave Troll.
/blatant self aggrandizement]
Well folks, I went ahead and got Dark Age of Camelot a couple days ago, and so far I’m really enjoying it. I think i’ve put in 30 or so hours over 2 and a half days, and, I gotta say, it’s been incredibly addicting.
I started out with an Albion character on the Tristan server, then created one in Midgard on a roleplaying server, and I’ve worked the most on my Hibernia characters on (I think) the Percival server.
So far, I’ve been enjoying the community on the roleplaying servers especially. I’ve met a lot of helpful people that are willing to show a newbie around. Maybe someday I’ll be able to repay the favor.
All your input really helped, and I think I’ll be involved in the game for quite a while.
What? All this time and no one has mentioned the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG? I know you have time on your hands now, so just play a free MUD until this beast of a game gets released.
Release date is still unannounced but they just entered 3rd beta, which is mainly bug fixes and stress testing the infrastructure. I’d expect the game to be released sometime in June or July.
SWGalaxies has been delayed so much and has had so many features cut, from what I’ve read, that it’ll be hard to tell apart from the other MMORPGs. Plus, I want to avoid it for a few months and let the dorks get some of it out of their system. And let the initial reviews roll in.
As a side note, I got started in Anarchy Online and am having fun so far, though the interface is a bit confusing.
You could try phantasy star online, although that might involve the purchase of a video game machine. Still, from what I’ve heard, iots fun. I can’t say, since I don’t have the interest in online RPG’s to play them anymore.