Guild Wars is free to play (after buying the initial install account), and has been heavily discounted on Steam.
It’s great for solo or guilding with teams. Depending on which expansion, the gameplay shows its age and the character customization isn’t very deep, but I had fun with it heavily for a couple of years, and still log in for fun periodically and for holiday special events.
The last time I looked at CoH, it was so dated looking. I didn’t know I was that picky about such things, but it bugged me. I’m assuming the expansions and stuff are not changing the animations, right?
I have a deep fondness for that game. I loved the customization and the costumes and being an Illusion Controller and getting zombies with bombies to blow one another up. sigh
Alternate animations were made available for most powers about a year ago and the most recent one added an ultra graphics mode which, among other things, vastly improves reflective surfaces.
Cool. I’m going to have to check it out again. I still have the game.
They’ve added power color changing customization (which included some new animations for sets like Super Strength and Martial Arts) and an Ultra Mode which adds more realistic world shadows, water reflections, reflective surfaces on metal costume pieces and things like that. Also, the new costume pieces are much nicer looking than the older “bodypaint tights” pieces.
However things like the character model polygon count hasn’t changed and the faces are still “paper masks” so if that was your complaint, it still stands. CoX is a legacy type game now being five years old and with at least some players on older systems. I wouldn’t expect anything major until one day they come up with CoH2.
Cool, thanks Jophiel and Lute Skywatcher. CoH was the first MMORPG I played and I have such affection for it. I hope they do come out with a CoH2 someday. (Any rumors?) I probably will still check it out again just for kicks.
There’s an upcoming expansion (as has been mentioned) so I doubt they’re going to want to compete with themselves. I’d guess it’s going to be at least two years before a CoX2 is even credibly rumored.
:smack:
Warhammer Online is/or is going to be free play for all characters below lvl 10. Gives you a chance to try it out.
Or for soething very different try http://www.wurmonline.com
Okay, got, and am playing, DDO. Question for the masses- I’ve noticed it has the same flaw ‘real’ D&D has. First level spellcasters are meat if they try to solo. I’ve got a very respectable dual-wielding ranger, but I really, really want to play a mage. They just… Don’t seem to be very survivable. Any tips / tricks?
Don’t solo? 
Cryptic Studios, the creators of CoX, released Champions Online last year. It’s worth checking out the free trial or getting a friend code.
IIRC (played it for about six months but been awhile), they are easier to get going if you use mage armor, masters touch, and an offensive spell, and then basically play them like a fighter for the first few levels. They never really get easy to solo with however.
Casters get very easy to solo with later on. Sorcerers especially thanks to their fast cast and huge spellpoint pool. Indeed some of the raids have been soloed by sorcerers. I’ve soloed even end game quests I’d never done before(well end game back when the cap was 16, I haven’t played since they went micropay) with my poorly equipped and fairly badly built sorcerer.
Early on your best bet is avoiding enemies. Remember in DDO you rarely have to kill much of anything in a quest for completion. In the early game the sleep spell can be quite effective, though it peters off very,* very*, quickly due to the hd limitation on it. The various charm spells are excellent too and remain so throughout the game when soloing but can be kind of annoying for your team-mates later on unless you know what you are doing as you can charm enemies that need to die to complete the quest. Charm Person is available right off the bat and a sorcerer with that can solo pretty much all of kothos and the harbour with little difficulty on normal. And a skilled player who knows the quests can solo most of them through elite with out much trouble. Especially with hirelings.
The easiest way to solo for any character is, most of the time at least, to just run straight to the quest objective. Kill the boss/loot the quest objective/throw the lever that ends the quest or whatever else the quest is about and get out of there. Of course if you care about story you probably won’t want to do that. Sneaking is very doable for most quests though. Even as a mage. In fact especially as a mage since you have summon monster, invisibility, dimensional door, charm/dominate person/monster, hypnotic sphere and other such spells. And traps hurt monsters so if there’s a fire trap or something cast Resist Energy: Fire(or drink a potion/equip a robe in fact there’s a min lvl4 robe that has Fire Resist 20 on it that is usually dirt cheap in the auction house since its a very common drop it would be quite useful for a poorly equipped newbie) run around getting as many mobs following you as possible and drag them through the trap killing them all with out wasting spellpoints. Almost all traps are dodgeable as well so if you have good reflexes you can skip the Resist Energy or even use non elemental traps for this purpose.
Another good tip is that you can switch weapons, shields, robes, and accessories instantly. Even mages should carry a shield. If you are getting hit and just need to buy a few seconds for team-mates/traps/dots/summons/charms/hirelings/whathaveyou to kill what’s beating on you just swap to a shield and block(making sure to face the enemy, unlike most mmo’s that actually matters here!). It’s often much more effective, especially in groups, than running around like a loon as most mages do. But remember to swap the shield out before casting anything(or use a mithral light shield) to avoid a spell failure roll. If you can get your hands on a Robe of Invulnerability(ml:4) everything up to about lvl 8 will be a cakewalk. As the Damage Reduction 5/Magic is applicable to just about everything you’ll encounter other than incorporeal undead and some bosses until you reach the higher level quests.
Other than that the only tips I can think of are the obvious: be prepared. Never go anywhere(once you’re past lvl 3ish) without stacks of potions/wands/clickies of remove disease, remove poison, lesser restore, remove curse, all the protection from energies, for any melee character you’ll also want barkskin, haste, heroism, and maybe shield of faith until you get a good deflection bonus item and some way of applying resist energies for every element, except maybe sonic which is very rarely an issue. On my non casters I just collect five cloaks/rings of resist energy 10/20/30 depending on my level to swap out when needed. My casters all take the spell. And sometimes get the cloaks as well so I can still resist energy when around enemies who dispel a lot or just to save spell points when possible. In fact I usually try to have the most possible for my level fire and acid resists at pretty much all times no matter what.