The folks at Cryptic originally planned to go with a Champions-like system but decided that the vast majority of players wouldn’t “get” it.
Everyone has presented some great information on MMORPGs. If you’re interested, play some free trails and see what suits you best. It varies enormously for everyone, as you can see.
Me? I’m an EQ/EQII geek. Though I left EQ for EQII and never looked back (I thought I would desperately miss my old characters, but… I don’t. EQII turned out to really be my thing), I still remember it fondly - though it was flawed, I’ve heard there have been many improvements, and it is quite fun. It was my first MMORPG, god, five or six years ago, now? Maybe seven… oh god. It’s a hard addiction to break. 
I am a casual gamer, so EQII is perfect for me. I’m not into grinding. I like questing, and EQII enables me to level all the way up to uber by questing alone, if I so feel. I also like to solo - easily done. I won’t be slaying any uber-6-group-raid-mob dragons on my own, but there’s plenty of solo gameplay and phat lewts just for little old me. If you really, really need a group or guild, it’s not that tough. My guild has only four actual members (and our various alts), and we’re level 25. We’re all real life buddies. EQII is very friendly to the casual gamer, as well as to the hardcore grouping grinders. Or whatever. Very flexible. Plus, they are coming out with the expansion I’ve been begging for since I saw my first pixie trickster as a total n00bcake back in original EQ… way back when I was a teeny baby bard: they are releasing a new playable race: the fae. Now leave me alone to revel in my sheer fruity geekiness.
Other than that… the graphics are awesome. I played WoW and found it very cartoon-y. It was okay, though. Pretty.
Obligatory show off pictures:
My main character is a dark elf assassin, but as you see, is also a chemist in her spare time. Crafting has been made much, much less of a grind than in the past, and player-crafted items are very valuable in this game. Very much worth the time.
My cute as a button halfling wizard “alternate” character, who I play if I get bored of my main. That’s her cat. She’s also standing in front of a very large statue, by the way. She’s short, but not THAT short. Gnomes are shorter. 
And one more picture to show two things: cool magic carpets, and items you can get from certain holiday events. My main is travelling around on a carpet, and wearing one of the many masks she got for Halloween last year. There are many other events - last Christmas (or, in EQII world, “Frostfell”) there was a quest that any level could do (all instanced zones, so it is scaled up or down to your current level, so everyone gets experience from it), we all got little Santa caps and a book for our inn room or house. For Easter we got a giant keg to put in our houses - gets your character smashed.
Be careful. One day you might be as big a geek as me. If that’s possible. :eek:
I am booking marking this thread for reference.
I have been super busy lately, but I want to check some of these out even if I understand -25% of what the heck you are talking about.
If you suddenly don’t see me for weeks on end here, send a search party into every game for me…or send a pizza to my house 
In EQII, you can order pizza from Pizza Hut (billed to the credit card used to sign up and sent to your address) by using the /pizza command. 
I think. I’ve never actually used it, but they came out with it sometime last year, if I remember correctly. I don’t know if you still can or not.
Never mind. You can’t do that anymore. I just tried. Said that program has ended. Boo. I wanted pizza.
So, Anastasaeon, have they changed EQII to allow more solo questing? I was in the beta, then picked it up again several months ago - both go rounds seemed to require grouping by about level 7 or so, at least if you wanted to get anything much done.
Well, I’ve been playing since release, and my assassin has soloed all the way to level 54 - mostly quests. And they have made it easier and easier to do so. I have a tiny guild, but I play late at night, and the only reason I group up with them is to get some Heritage quests done. I’ve started several alts, soloed them all to level 25 or more. A wizard (36), a swashbuckler (28), a dirge (25), and an illusionist (25) - never needed to group. I can level them to 25 in about four days, casual, no groups, no grinding - just quests. Very easy.
My assassin is still soloing with no trouble at all, it’s just taking longer to get the xp at higher levels and being a casual gamer. Plus, I’ve been playing my wizard lately. I gained two levels (35 and 36) in an evening of play a couple nights ago. I’m getting ready to ding 37 tonight if I can be arsed.
Ever since they added those cool new faction beginner quests in the beginner cities, getting to level 10 is easy as pie. No more doing all that class choosing garbage; you choose what you want to be from creation now (no more Scout -> Rogue -> Swashbuckler, now it’s just Swashbuckler without all that inbetween crap, thank god). More quests, more rewards, more good stuff all around.
By the way I was still able to log in and play Anarchy Online, even tho the free period was supposed to be over DEc 31, 2005.
Brian
Agreed. City Of Heroes stuck to the same game model that nearly all successfull MMORPGs followed. It’s worked well for them, the game is a financial success, but it’s not very superheroic feeling IMHO.
My wife and I are working on the development of a superhero-themed MMORPG which is intended to be based less on combat and leveling, and more on plot and RP. It’s based on our combined 25+ years of Champions tabletop roleplaying, and deliberately avoids most standard MMORPG conventions. We are also planning on using the Champions combat rules as a basis for the game’s combat system. We don’t expect it to be a major commercial hit or in any way competition for City of Heroes in terms of subscribers, as we’re going to have a different and somewhat more difficult gameplay, and as a small-budget independant production team we won’t have anywhere near the graphical polish or art budget they do.
Just thought I’d bump this thread to bring to light Blizzard’s “pass the pipe” free 10-day trial promotion. If you want to try WoW and know somebody who plays, you can have them send you an invitation and a free 10-day trial (the page to do so is linked off the worldofwarcraft.com front page).
If you don’t know anyone who plays – or you just don’t hear from them anymore – feel free to send me an e-mail to the address in my profile.
(In the interest of full disclosure, invitees who end up becoming subscribers earn their referrers a free month of game time. So if you hate me, then don’t send me an e-mail. Or don’t sign up, whichever.)
We’re all invited to beta test, right
Here’s where I get to be a grumpy killjoy and list the things that are not so great about MMORPGs.
It eats up horrendous amounts of time. This has been mentioned in other posts, but even in World of Warcraft it takes forever and a half to level up, finish quests, or just plain run around the map. (In some MMORPGs, this is made worse by an appalling lack of teleportation abilities, low drop rates, and jackasses who farm. See below.)
Game balance can get very problematic. For plot-based MMOs, the later you join, the more backstory you would have to catch up to to know anything about what’s going on. For gameplay-based ones, you’d almost have to start over with a new character in order to benefit from any expansions involving shiny new job classes or skill trees. And, of course, as soon as anything proves to be an advantage, overnight a ton and a half of players exploit it, and you’re stuck in a cycle of diminishing returns.
People can be real assholes. Somehow, the anonymity provided by the internet gives people the idea that the normal real-life rules concerning etiquette, ethics, and just plain common sense don’t apply. Some older players have a very haughty, elitist attitude towards the “n00bs”, and purposely make life difficult for lower-leved characters. Some of the newcomers to the game try to appeal to your sympathy by constantly crying about how poor they are and ask everyone they come across for money, items, or healing. Some players hit on other players to the point of crass sexual harrassment (in some of the MMOs I’ve been in, this has gotten to such a degree that female players take up male characters or select usernames that imply they’re lesbians to discourage catcalls). Some players try to cheat the game or other players.
This is better or worse depending on the game, the server, and the time of day. (Evenings and weekends tend to be the worst, in my experience, because that’s when all the school-aged teenagers are on.)
I’ve been looking for an MMO I can drop 1~2 hours a day’s worth of gameplay and feel like I’m accomplishing something without hating the world or other people, but so far I haven’t been very lucky. (Then again, maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places.)
CoH has the opposite problem. Many people are alt happy. The first oh, 20 levels or so (and maybe even the first 8-10) are really the most fun, and once you hit the 30s somewhere, it becomes a grind, the character is dull, and its time to see what a different character will do.
Have you looked in City of Heroes/Villains yet?
Courtesy archive.org: the original City of Heroes plan.
Preach it, brother. Hit 50. Once. Hami-raided. Twice.
I can’t even bring myself to grind my gravity controller past 38. It’s just so damn repetitive and boring to me now.
Granted, I’m one of those weird types that really likes exploring and storylines in my games, not just ‘beat up x number of badies’.
(And, just to drop a name, I’m part of AndrewL’s design team. Go me!)
I guess this would depend on your definition of forever and a half. In WoW, it takes about 3 hours to go from level 1 to level 10. From 1 to 60, it took me 19 days of gameplay time… 19 x 24 = 456 hours total playtime. I don’t want to get to the end of things quickly, I play to kill time and to enjoy myself. During the week, I generally play a couple of hours per day… on weekends, I’m usually on for a lot longer. Travel time from one end of the world to the other may take 15 minutes, I don’t consider that too bad.
In WoW, you can respec your talents as often as you want… for the price of some gold. You can drop professions and take up new ones whenever you feel like it… for nothing except losing the cash you put into the one you dropped and spending the money levelling up your new one.
Can’t argue with this one, it’s a good thing /ignore is a easy command to remember.
Good luck, it seems that WoW didn’t suit you. There are a lot more out there.
Once you break 30, the game takes off like a whole new world. Fascinating stuff.
Gravity controller, though… that’s a tricky one. But the new physics models should make it way more fun.
I sort-of agree. But notice that I’ve already been there.
Grav control is a fun power-set, but I’m here for fun new storylines, zones, places to explore and things to find out. Not the same missions over and over, lather-rinse-repeat. I know all the big stories in CoH, and even a lot of the little ones, as I toured every single plaque available in-game and actually took notes on them (Did you notice mayor ‘Spanky’ was apparently born on Talos Island before Talos Island actually existed? Someone get me a continuity checker, please! )
Games that have places to explore, stories and secrets to learn, that’s what I like. My first journey to 50 was great. I was blown away by the ‘true nature’ of the clockworks when I first learned it. I loved some of the alternate worlds you get to go to past 40. The Hess Taskforce? Fantastic just for the visuals…
But I’ve done 'em now. Now it’s just a grind.
Sadly, I’ve just agreed to make a scrapper on Pinnacle to help someone else level, as we’re losing our blaster, and a defender / tanker combo doesn’t move too fast when, at level 37 and 32, we have a total of five attacks between us, only four of which do damage.
I signed up for the CoV 14 day trial a few weeks ago. I got an email yesterday saying it had expired. I played for about a week and then I sort of forgot about it. It was nice that I could sign on for a half hour and run a mission or two. What sucked was it felt just like the missions I did when CoH first game out. Sure the powers were distributed a little differently, but I can’t say that I ever even felt like a villain.
It’s such a toss up. Games like EQ take 30 minutes minimum just to get going (travel, buffing, etc.), but the fights seem to have more depth which sort of makes things worth it. WoW was probably the best I’ve played so far in regards to making the game interesting, but at the same time quick to get into.