MMO Retrospective

I currently have two hobbies relating to the MMO industry. One hobby is playing the games, the other is talking about the industry. Me and my friend Vogl have as much fun discussing what's going on in EQ1 than I ever had actually playing the game.

At any rate, I figured it would be fun to do a sort of Retrospective: what we've played and what we think of them. So without further ado....

Ultima Online: Well, it's been a while since I've played this one. My first trip to MMO Britania was sometime in 1997. My brother bought it for me as a present while he was stationed in Korea. Before UO launched, me and my friends used to sit and discuss all the things we wanted to do in a virtual space. That UO didn't live up to our lofty ambitions isn't really the fault of the game but rather the hype machine that preceded it. At any rate, most of my memories of UO are good ones.

I purchased the first expansion - The Second Age when it was first released. I'll admit that I never saw any of the content. However, the manual that came with it is nice (since the original release to this very complicated game didn't come with one).

After a Hiatus, Me and my friends returned to Britania with the release of Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. The Box came with a pretty cool McFarlane action figure (I kept this one), and it was interesting to see how the game had changed up to that point. The newbie experience was definitely different. Also, we got to take a look at the new 3d interface (released originally with Third Dawn), however I still prefer the old 2d graphics.

On a whim, I purchased The Eighth Age expansion which was pretty much just a review of all the UO expansions to date. I tinkered with it a bit, had some fond memories. Much of the game had not changed much. Interesting to note: with this release, I traveled to the Second Age expansion for the very first time.













Everquest: I bought EQ launch week (not launch day) for both myself and my girlfriend Heather. EQ was her first MMO and my second. We had some good times on here. Two of my fondest memories were traveling on the boat to Freeport fomr Butcher Block for the first time, and Doing a death run clear across the world, dying, and discovering what these spells called "binding" are used for.

I blame EQ for my current MMO addiction. I think EQ, more-so than UO, really showed folks what an MMO could be capable of.

We both bought the Kunark as a Digital Download, even though we were too low level to go there. It would be quite a while before we would ever see any of the Kunark content - we were pretty casual gamers and EQ was not a casual game. However, in retrospect I think this was one of the best expansions released for EQ.

We purchased Scars of Velious launch week. Don't know what to say about it as content because we never saw any of it.




Shadows of Luclin would be the last expansion we would buy for EQ (my friend Vogl kept playing, me and Heather left on this expanison). The system requirements were too high (512 MB OMG!) especially since I didn't care for the new graphics. I'd just had enough of EQ on this expansion. It was time for me to move on, and we did move on to several games after this.












Dark Age of Camelot: We purchased and played DAOC for about 6 months. The game was OK, but it was very much like EQ except with some nice PVP options (we never saw them). I'm not 100% sure what to say about this game really. We didn't play it for very long, although I'll admit it was very polished at launch. I realise the game is still pretty popular, we just thought it was a little boring.







Anarchy Online: My next foray into MMOs was Anarchy Online - which is still one of my favoriate games to date. I thought AO had a great world and nice graphics. I played AO for several months, but quit because of poor game performance and the lackluster launch of the promised "story" in game (the story wasn't actually in game at all). However, I always missed the game and I did make a comeback later.

About the time Alien Invasion released, I returned to AO with my friend Drew in tow. We had some good times on the game playing in the Shadowlands expansion. Shadowlands added some EQ style questing and updated the graphics a little bit. It's a good expansion.

At Dragoncon that year, Funcom was nice enough to give me a boxed copy of the Alien Invasion expansion. It was a pretty neat expansion, however there doesn't seem to be enough folks on the game to truly take advantage of it. Alien Invasion added player built cities and Independence Day style alien Invasions to said cities. You can even get inside the ships and fight a boss.

The one thing I'll always miss in AO is the community it has. Reet Retreat was a neat place where special Rave like events were held with real over the internet DJs (Gridstream Porductions). The Devs even show for them.



Planetside: At some point, we played Planetside for a few months. I really enjoyed Planetside, however I found it hard to justify the $15 a month with Unreal Tournament. This game would be a good excuse to get the Station Pass from SOE, though. While searching for the box art at right, I noticed that Planetside is free to play up to Rank 6? I might have to try this out later...










Asheron's Call 2: Many people did not like Asheron's Call 2. Me and my girlfriend were not two of those people. It probably helped that neither of us had ever played AC1. AC2 was ahead of the curve on a few things: dungeon design, cut scenes sprinkled throughout, changing seasons, fantastic graphics just to name a few. However, all was not perfect.

The game was definitely unfinished. The cities were never populated, giving the players no where to gather. The chat server kept going down, making grouping impossible.

AC2 was taken offline December 30, 2005.



Shadowbane: Ahh, Shadowbane. Shadowbane was quite an addiction for myself and Drew for several months. The graphics sucked, but the PVP was great. What potential this game had! We ended up leaving because, well, at the time we couldn't play due to lag and down servers. The city sieges were really fun, but the lag and disconnects made them impossible.

I've revisited Shadowbane recently. The game is now free to play, along with the expansion packs. Until they start charging for it again (if they do), there's no reason not to play this game. It remains to be seen how much longer this game stays online.






Horizons: Woof. Horizons sucked all kinds of ass. I was lured to this game with the promise of being able to play a dragon. What I got was an unfinished turd with crappy service. I don't think I played this game for more than a week.

Horizons was saved from death when it was purchased by Tulga Games on January 25, 2005. They've since been in trouble from the player base for making everyone re-do their accounts and having unsecured registration. Nice.

I knew this game was a paper-weight when I saw a sign pointing down the road that said "Monsters".




Final Fantasy XI: FFXI wasn't a bad game. In America, though, it's sort of like culture shock. It was released in Japan much earlier, and the American version used the same servers. So, what I got with this was empty newb areas and a bunch of folks who spoke only Japanese.

I did not play FFXI very much, although I may revisit it sometime (I understand it translates Japanese?). For whatever reason, it did not hold my attention for very long.







Lineage 2: Lineage 2 was the first Beta I ever got into - that alone was a gaming landmark in my life. The game was ok - if you like hardcore grinds. The graphics were (and still are) fantastic. I actually like Lineage 2, but it's really a little too hardcore for my tastes. I may revisit this game sometime and see if my characters are still there. I did purchase the collector's edition, and it had some nice stuff in it.

Still, I didn't play it for very long.



City of Heroes: City of Heroes was a neat game. It still has the best character creation system of any MMO. The city it takes place in was neat and seemed to really breathe.

The problem I had with it was it was freakin boring. Besides making new characters and beating up thugs, and doing random dungeons there was nothing to do in this game. There was no loot, no real point to go from point a to point b.

I understand they've made a lot of improvements to this game, so I may go back. It did hold our attention for a few months.





Star Wars Galaxies: Man what can you say about Star Wars Galaxies. If you ask any MMO fan what they thought of this game, most would scratch their heads and say "I dunno". I played SWG for quite a while - about 6 or 8 months. I would probably still be playing it except I finished it.

SWG got so many things right, and so many things wrong.

In the right column we have: graphics, skill based advancement (until NGE), worlds, PVP, crafting, player housing was nice, player cities, sounds and music, etc.

In the wrong column we have: lack of entertainers and doctors and/or the boring grind those professions were, unbalanced combat i.e. creature handlers and imperials, completely weird Jedi grind (the holocron stuff, pre NGE), complete lack of content besides random missions, unfinished bounty hunters, they stopped doing monthly content updates, the "dungeons" they did have sucked, etc.

So, SWG was a sandbox. It was actually a pretty ballsy game to release with the Star Wars moniker on it. I was a member of the imperial guild Malice Reborn, and we had a good time. However, people started leaving when the holocron mess started - plus the bases were bugged and you could capture them from outside.

All that coupled with the fact that I finished all the content that was in the game, and I just had to cancel my account.

Guild Wars: You never really leave Guild Wars since it's not technically an MMO. I'm still dabbling with it every once in a while. Actually, it's not even considered an MMO by a large portion of the community.

As a single player game, GW is ho-hum. The graphics are nice, but I never really got involved in the PVP or guilds. Since you can solo the entire game, it makes grouping not necessary. Anyway, the game is ok, and not having subscriptions at all doesn't hurt either.

Everquest 2: Me and Heather played EQ2 pretty solidly for 2 weeks. I still REALLY like this game, however the 800 lbs. gorilla walked in the room that was called World of Warcraft, and well...

The graphics were pretty good in EQ2, and the quests were pretty solid. Heather really liked the easter egg hunt type quests with the butterflys and such. I'd like to play this game again sometime and really explore what it has to offer.






World of Warcraft: We've been playing WoW now since launch day. It's probably the best MMO in most people's eyes, and I have to agree with them. The things that make WoW a good game aren't envelope pushing graphics, but things that seem insignificant.

First, Character models don't stand there static and not moving. One of the first things you notice (subliminally) is that characters standing around are always looking around, repositioning themselves, etc. It really makes the world feel alive, and I think it's very important.

Next, The game-world is full to the brim with stuff. Most of the MMOs listed above (man, Shadowbane comes to mind) are filled with vast open spaces and occasional pockets of monsters to kill. BORING. WoW fixed this problem by actually puting stuff into their game. How amazing is that!

The community is a boon too. I've been a member of the guild Militis Justica (Server Stormrage) for over a year now. They're good people and we have a lot of fun.