MMO Group of Wargamers who also play MMOs?

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: Ketza

The main problem with AOC is it was released far too early. The game in its current form is very unfinished. We were one of the first guilds on Deathwhisper to get a Battlekeep and the second guild on the server to be "sieged". Nothing concerning sieges even remotely worked. Our walls had huge holes in them. Siege equipment was not working. It seemed like a crude version of a beta test. As a temporary fix they made it so you could not lose a siege as the defender.

The crafting system has been broken and inconsistent since launch.

The pvp system is not in place and the one they are about to introduce is not the one they promised when the game was released. Even on a pvp server in the next patch any type of pvp will result in a murder count (even 80 vrs 80) which if it gets high enough will make it impossible to talk with vendors and NPCS. Also if you are a murdered you can drop items and money on death but of you are not you do not drop anything. Very confusing and borked system. It will kill guiuld vrs guild and world pvp.

The game stability is plagued by memory leaks. In large battles you have to tone down your graphics and turn off the sound or your framrate dips to below 10 fps or you crash.

They had an issue where female characters did not swing as fast as male characters. Rather then speed females up they slowed males down.

The endgame raids are plagued with bugs and zone in issues. it may take your 4 or 5 tries zoning into a dungeon just to get your whole party into the same place.

All of these issues has led to a mass exodus from the game. We are all used to MMOs getting off to a rocky start but this one is a total disaster. Of the 30 members and 40 recruits we came to the game with 2 months ago less then 20% are still playing. Most of the early guilds have left or disbanded. Of the original 8 Battlekeep guilds (you can only have 8 keeps per server) only 3 are still playing with any sort of consistency.

Maybe in 6 months the game will be worth a shot but for now I could not look anyone in the eye and honestly tell them to pick the game up and try it.

Thanks for the response. Some interesting points above though certainly conflicts some information I had that a few of those things were fixed now. I suppose I'm not really that deterred from reading the above because I'm not really going to spend too much time with this title. Just be a casual player.. And since I like to play alts (because the game experience at least in a good MMO will be VERY VERY different as a different class).. I don't think ill run into most of your situations until they are either fixed or Warhammer Online comes out anyway.

If its bad then.. Ill just switch over.. Which I will do anyway since I have more interest in the Warhammer story just for starters. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not I still pay my AOC subscription when Warhammer releases just so I can occasionally still play it...

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel
Anyway, if those of you who are gonna be doing some Warhammer, let us know what server you get into.

I generally run as fast as I can away from the RP Servers (Role-Playing)...And walk a fast pace away from PVP Servers as well. Foreign Servers obviously I avoid as most good-English speaking foreigners join American Servers anyway.

So hopefully that aligns with what others prefer. For PVP I'd just create an alt on a PVP server. Id think anyone with their main on a PVP server has got to be a pretty diehard player and would likely fit better with a super large all RAIDING guild or whatever anyway...

But I don't actually know how Warhammer is planning on breaking down their servers. But assuming it aligns with the above I say we tentatively pick the 3rd Server alphabetically that matches that category (Continental 50, Non-RP, Non-PVP). There is still PVP and RVR in the regular PVE servers anyway.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: donkuchi
I did play what I consider the grandfather of all of these games on AOL with Neverwinter Nights. Limited Maps, Limited Quests, Poor graphics, Repetitive tasks to build up experience, but Great Fun when you hooked up with a good group.

Was the combat turn-based in that mmo? I mean it was based on the gold box engine..

[String]

Oh and by the way, the best thing about EvE online is that there are no "servers", there is only one big "server" and one big gaming world. Which means that it peaks around 30-35k users every evening and has a low point of about 10k right after the daily downtime (happens every day for server maint. and patching). Which also means that whatever you achieve will an achievement as real as it can be in a virtual world. There won't be anyone on a different server outdoing you, if you really are the best then you are. That's why there are quite a few ingame celebrities in eve, for various reasons. From real assholes to people everyone respects and admires. Even the real assholes are people who have achieved something so skillfully that you have to have a grudging respect towards them. It's a game where skill, dedication and innovativeness is rewarded and stupidity gets you killed and ridiculed.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: String

It's a game where skill, dedication and innovativeness is rewarded and stupidity gets you killed and ridiculed.

Sounds awful. I only have so much skill, dedication and innovativeness to go around, and that's best saved for real-life!

[Krasny]

Vel

Thanks for the info on EQ2. I'd ask to join your guild, but you probably start playing just as I'm going to bed.

I may give it a shot. Although Conan does look like it will be good, once they iron the bugs out.

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: String

Oh and by the way, the best thing about EvE online is that there are no "servers", there is only one big "server" and one big gaming world. Which means that it peaks around 30-35k users every evening and has a low point of about 10k right after the daily downtime (happens every day for server maint. and patching). Which also means that whatever you achieve will an achievement as real as it can be in a virtual world. There won't be anyone on a different server outdoing you, if you really are the best then you are. That's why there are quite a few ingame celebrities in eve, for various reasons. From real assholes to people everyone respects and admires. Even the real assholes are people who have achieved something so skillfully that you have to have a grudging respect towards them. It's a game where skill, dedication and innovativeness is rewarded and stupidity gets you killed and ridiculed.

I do wish every MMO was that way. Ultima Online was the first REAL Modern MMO with a player driven economy etc. It also built right into the opening cinematic an explanation for the multiple servers (Shards). The story supported it. You at certain points could even travel between them due to that.

But sadly there are reason why your EVE can be one big game world and most other MMO's cannot. In many cases they aren't much different than instancing vs non-instancing.

I was formerly very anti-instancing as well... But in such a game you end up having to camp for mobs etc and thats a lot less fun.

A Pity and funny that to an extent, as a wargamer, I prefer the realism a bit over playability. I have to say Vanguard went all anti-instanced and wasn't really successful. I don't think a land based game could succeed with one big server. A lot different in space... There is just so much more of it...and less in it... [:D]

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: Krasny

Vel

Thanks for the info on EQ2. I'd ask to join your guild, but you probably start playing just as I'm going to bed.

I may give it a shot. Although Conan does look like it will be good, once they iron the bugs out.

Oh, I should clarify, as I eluded to in my first post... I haven't played any MMO's since last April.. So I no longer play EQ2.

My original guild that I inherited I folded into a larger one when I and others left the game originally. When I came back due to an expansion I joined a totally different guild with the same favorable results. When Vanguard came out we had a lot of dissention/conflict over taking the guild multi-game or not. I ultimately left for Vanguard, which was a similar but technically superior game. It didn't really work out for most people so when I quit that one I never looked back.

I was given free access by Sigil/Sony so I tried Vanguard again.. There is so much that is right about it but you have to look/play too hard.. And most people just don't bother. So I decided not to play Captain of a sinking ship and moved onward.

The only MMO I'm playing at the moment is Age of Conan. At the moment I have no problems/issues with it...

[General Quarters]

I read through this thread but none of the MMOs discussed here are what I'm looking for. I would like a game high on strategy with no fast action or pvp elements, with guilds but little or no rp, somewhat realistic rather than magic, open-ended rather than missions or quests, and preferably a land rather than a space setting. It is a plus if it can be handled in no more than an hour or two each day. Any suggestions?

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters
Any suggestions?

Design one? [;)]

Seriously, though, don't get too hung up on the RP thing. Nobody else does. The only noticeable difference between RP and non RP servers is that the former are at least toned down a little when it comes to inane chatter - you don't have to be a 'role-player' to not want to see endless spammed conversations in universal chat about last night's TV or tomorrow's football game. I came across a couple of peeps in LotRO who were trying to RP outside of a guild environment, but it was literally just a couple.


One other thing that is essential to me, at least, in MMO selection is the game world. I'm playing AoC for much the same reason I played LotRO, because I read the Conan stories multiple times as a child, these games would have been an absolute dream for me at 13 and even thirty years on it's fun to go 'role-play' a little, or just hack n' slash in Howard's or Tolkien's world - both beautifully realized in many ways. That doesn't mean games, computer or pen & paper, can't create worlds of similar depth - several have - but somehow it's not quite the same.

[hgilmer2]

        I've played many of the MMO's.  I had no experience whatsoever in MMOs when I picked up EQ right after its second expansion.  It was still fun then and the idea of having to get groups of people (30+) or more to accomplish things really appealed to me.  But, in reality, 30+ people many of whom had no idea what following directions mean, started grating on me.  But, it was still fun for about 4 years and then played 3 more years and it was increasingly "un-fun".  It was repetitive because you had to keep fighting a boss monster until you could beat it and when my guild finally killed this pretty bad-ass dragon (at the time it was bad ass) with only 1-2 people remaining alive, after we had been losing for months, well it was a rush.

But now the game just sucks because of SOE just using it as a cash cow and making it a huge time sink.

The rest of them seem exactly the same way.  Age of Conan - Didn't see where it is all that much different than any of them else.

Games I have played fairly regularly:

EQ
Eve
Wow
Lord of the Rings Online

Games I tried for a few weeks to a few months and found to be "un-fun":

Guildwars
Age of Conan
Tabula Rasa
Ryzom
EQ2
SWG

WW2 online fell in between those. I really liked it at first.  I liked the fact you could hear shooting all around fairly close and you would try to move to the battle or you could be in defensive positions in a town and the enemy would start attacking.  But, it lost its luster for me so I finally gave up on it.

Warhammer might be good but I refuse to preorder another game ever.  It is just not worth anything they charge you for it up front. 

Spore may be good. 

MMOs are being produced left and right but none of them have risen above the fray, in my honest opinion.  WoW is close just because it is easy and you can play 30-40 minutes and get something out of that.  It's filled with a huge amount of childish aholes, though.  EQ was good because it catered to a more mature audience meaning you really had to work at it to get good.  The disciplne to better yourself made people stay around, become friends with others who went through the same harshness, and then come out on the other side like almost with a badge of honor.  When people talk about the "old days" of EQ they are talking about when it was a pain in the ass to play (at times) but it also forged friendships that lasted years.  People talk about "hell levels" (levels that were basically double exp to level), lost corpses (you had to find someone to track your corpse to find it), corpse runs (you had to run naked back to your corpse, no easy ressurection here!), etc. - all sorts of things that after you did them and leveled to the high levels, you were proud (if that is possible in a computer game) that you persevered.

The rest are wallowing down in mediocrity, if you ask me.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

I read through this thread but none of the MMOs discussed here are what I'm looking for. I would like a game high on strategy with no fast action or pvp elements, with guilds but little or no rp, somewhat realistic rather than magic, open-ended rather than missions or quests, and preferably a land rather than a space setting. It is a plus if it can be handled in no more than an hour or two each day. Any suggestions?

Which of these desires are not filled out by MekWars or BTMUX? [;)]

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

I read through this thread but none of the MMOs discussed here are what I'm looking for. I would like a game high on strategy with no fast action or pvp elements, with guilds but little or no rp, somewhat realistic rather than magic, open-ended rather than missions or quests, and preferably a land rather than a space setting. It is a plus if it can be handled in no more than an hour or two each day. Any suggestions?

High on Strategy is a matter of perspective in MMOs. None of them play much like a wargame. I suppose I can commend Age of Conan here as from a combat perspective its probably the least brain-dead of all MMOs thus far. There is a fair amount of strategy in what direction you attack, shield, and the combos used etc. Some classes more so than others. That and the strategy for how you put together and go into RAIDs and/or the SIEGES in that particular game.

Age of Conan is very solo friendly at the lower levels at least so thats good for playing only a couple hours a day.

There is NO RolePlaying on my server.

It isnt the most magic oriented setting... It has more of that Roman/Greek Antique type feel though you do have necromancers and such running about but definitley nothing like EverQuest there.

Open-Ended vs Quests is mostly a choice.. You can skip most of the content if you'd like but you'll generally advance faster doing the quests.

I've not seen the problems with AoC that others described. Perhaps they are mostly fixed now. One funny thing I did think the game looked awful at first.. Apparantly it defaults to very very low settings to insure performance. I have a pretty nice system (graphics card especially) and I turned everything to max and it still runs smoothly and looks 1000 times better. The biggest one for me was the v3.0 pixel shader.

I was blessed to have gotten my wife involved in EQ2 and stupidly I'm the one who made her quit when I lost interest. My biggest problem now is deciding if I want her to play AoC or wait for Warhammer. It starts getting a little nuts at 4 Subscription fees.. but weird to be getting yelled at not for playing something but not for letting HER play something. I will try warhammer for sure... and may or may not keep my AoC subscription.

Thats one other nice thing about MMOs... lots and lots of real females (despite what some think)..

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: Veldor
High on Strategy is a matter of perspective in MMOs. None of them play much like a wargame.

WW2Ol does play like a wargame if you take an officer posting. You move brigades in the map and try to keep the line intact while giving orders in battle. You can even draw notes and lines in the map as guide for others in the combat and give general orders.

But its very time consuming and not just anyone can become a map commander. But as for individual battles anyone can become a commander in them and it doesnt take any time at all - just accept the posting if you have enough rank (and hope the men will comply with your orders).

[General Quarters]

Matti, thanks. You seem to have paid close attention to the criteria I listed. I looked at the second game you mentioned, but their forum is white letters against black background and my eyes cannot take that. I was interested in MechTek and looked at their site and forum and Wiki, but I can't really tell what the gameplay -- I mean, what is like. I mean, what do you mainly DO? It sounds as if it is one on one combat.

If Matti or anyone else could describe the gameplay in either of these games, or others you think fit my stated preferences, that would be very helpful.

In WW2Ol, it sounds as if it might involved action combat, since it is tactical. Is that right? What IS the gameplay like?

I looked at World of Conquest, and it looks strategic and to fit my preferences. What do people think of it? I don't just mean, like or not like, because different people like different things. What did you like or not like about it? Thanks for the help, guys.

[NefariousKoel]

Warhammer Online's servers are going up on September 18 - just announced.

I've pre-ordered so I'll be in Open Beta and the small Head Start before then. 

Anyone else giving it a swing?

[Zakhal]

I generally run as fast as I can away from the RP Servers (Role-Playing)

I would like little or no rp

Why do you people play roleplaying games if you dont want to roleplay? [:D]

[NefariousKoel]

ORIGINAL: Zakhal

I generally run as fast as I can away from the RP Servers (Role-Playing)

I would like little or no rp

Why do you people play roleplaying games if you dont want to roleplay? [:D]

Because we want to play & have fun, not be pushed into acting like some live-action freak.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel

ORIGINAL: Zakhal

I generally run as fast as I can away from the RP Servers (Role-Playing)

I would like little or no rp

Why do you people play roleplaying games if you dont want to roleplay? [:D]

Because we want to play & have fun, not be pushed into acting like some live-action freak.

Theres very little of that even in the rp servers. The biggest difference is that people are usually more mature and respectful in rp-pvp servers. And they are not named after ex-presidents or porn stars.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters
In WW2Ol, it sounds as if it might involved action combat, since it is tctical. Is that right? What IS the gameplay like?

These are som of the ingame maps. I didnt find pic of battlemap (where you can draw objectivs and report contacts) though:

http://gophur.playnet.com/gallery/maps/mapanibigslow (big flags are brigades => brigades belong to certain division)
http://gophur.playnet.com/gallery/screenshots/frank (places in town that you can capture)
http://gophur.playnet.com/gallery/maps/16mappreview

Features of ww2ol:

ENVIRONMENT
- First Person Point of View in all units
- Advanced Combat Simulation with Combined arms action (Air, Sea, Ground)
- Over 600 Cities and Towns to fight for, in block by block combat through over 29,000 Buildings
- Huge zoneless map of Europe covering over 350,000 kilometers with over 4,000,000 3D trees
- Over 200 Bridges that can be destroyed and repaired
- Line of Sight over 6km
- Thousands of players fighting 24/7

WEAPONS
- Over 80 different vehicles and weapons available (including land air and sea types)
- Multicrew feature allows more than one player to play in the same vehicle
- Realistic Ballistics for all weapons

STRATEGY
- Factory production sets spawnable units in the field
- Airfields host deployed fighter or bomber units
- Deep Water Ports host deployed naval flotillas
- Supply management
- Production Management
- Technologies Research Management
- Brigade Deployment
- Attack Objectives
- Defense Objectives
- Re-supply
- Cut enemy supply
- Blow and Repair Bridges
- Strategic Map
- Early Warning Air Attack System

COMMUNICATIONS
- Area Chat (Whisper, Normal, Shout)
- Enemy communications delivered as garbled translations
- Community Chat (French/Spanish/German etc...)
- High Command Chat
- Brigade Chat
- Private Messaging
- Squad Chat (Talk with your buddies)

RPG
- Multiple careers in 3 Different Armies(Air/Sea/Ground)
- Personal combat stats and records(Kills/Ratio/Death/Best Units and personal diary)
- Rank promotion with gameplay success
- Promotion to Command positions possible with tactical success
- Gazette Online newspaper(English Only)
- Campaign Stats
- Global Stats
- Join a virtual unit with your personal
- Get Missions and Orders by the High Command
- Lead your men and become an officer

ww2ol in pictures

http://gophur.playnet.com/gallery/screenshots?page=9
http://www.wwiionline.com/scripts/wwiio ... _media.jsp

Free trial (remember to cancel the cc before trial ends)

http://www.wwiionline.com/ => getting => free trials

Battles are usually concentrated into few hotspots so you if you want action you need to deploy into them.