Any gamers around here?

[Aroura33]

I've gotten pretty burned out on MMo's lately too.  On the one hand, everything is too freaking easy.  They tell you where every quest giver is with giant!!, and there is an arrow or glowing line leading you to completion.  SOOOO not what I started out with.  On the other hand, I don't have time to spend 5 days figuring out a single quest like I used to.  Well, maybe I do, maybe we all do.  I mean, I played EQ for almost 3 years and never reached max level.  I played other games for years too (DaoC for example), and didn't get bored.  Lately, I play an MMO for 1 or 2 months, and I fell like I have completed over 75% of the content.  NOT fun.

The only MMO I really enjoyed recently was Secret World.  It had bugs to start out, but damn, if you want a challenge, that game is the best MMO in years.  Almost, every quest is hard.  The voice acting ac cut scenes are spectacular, the story line is engaging and actually makes sense. I did spend hours on single quests, specifically the puzzle styles.  I didn't leave the first area for over a month!  There is so much to do in each area, and a Horror Genre was so novel, compared to the Fantasy and Sci-Fi dominated MMO Market, it was a total blast.  I highly recommend trying it, if you haven't.  The dungeons (instances)were also the best I've played in years and years. A few were actually startling and scary!  And hard...damn freaking harder than any other recent MMO.  First MMO in ages that kept me playing for a long time.  I quit after 7 months only because it actually got too hard.  I found the Nightmare instances, as a healer, to be too much of a nightmare.  Weeks spent trying to learn one boss.  I hear they have been tuned down a bit, so I might go back and try it out again.

The only real downer in Secret World is the PvP, which is more like PvE with some PvP tossed in, and not that well done.  Much like Warhammer, follow Zerg around from PvE point to point.  
Everything else about the game is totally awesome!

Damn wish I had picked it up last week. It was half off on steam.

It goes on sale constantly.  Keep your eyes open for the next one, and give it a try!
I just asked hubby to re-install it on my computer, so if you do play, let me know and I can help show you the ropes. :D

[Plu]

If you put the game on your steam wishlist, they will send you an email the next time it goes on offer. Steam is cool like that.

[Hydra009]

Rift is free to play now.  I'm enjoying it a great deal.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, here's a brief primer:

[spoil:2ze8alfr]Rift is a really polished fantasy MMO sort of like WoW, except for a few key differences:
* Souls.  You pick from 4 pretty standard classes (warrior, mage, cleric, rogue) BUT, unlike most other MMOs, you're not locked into a single talent tree.  You get to mix and match abilities from a ton of talent trees.  Do you want to go ranged DPS?  Tank?  Buffs?  Heals?  You can.  And you can switch between them on the fly.  (out of combat, of course)  It literally takes like 5 seconds to switch.  There's no one way to play your class.
* Rifts.  Imagine you're derping around doing a quest.  A rift pops up near you and a bunch of baddies spawn on the ground around it.  You charge in there and fight them.  A couple players join you.  You beat wave after wave of enemies.  The rift closes and you all get your rewards.
* Invasions.  After closing that rift, a whole crapton of 'em open up and tons of soldiers pour out of them - marching on your camps.  You join a huge amount of players and duke it out with the enemy. You defend your camps.  You push back the invaders.  You seal the rifts.  Then their leader appears and you bring hell to him.  Loot for everyone.  (loot is based on participation, not luck)

[youtube:2ze8alfr]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhAjTUiHOQU[/youtube:2ze8alfr]

P.S. You also instantly transport between zones through portals, not tiresome flightpaths.  The death penalty is practically nonexistent.  You can party up with other players easier than falling asleep.  Which you won't be doing any more, because this game is that addictive.

P.P.S. Defiants > Guardians.  If you have trouble deciding, consider this:  if Jesus existed, the Defiants would capture him, hook him up to a massive war engine, then bombard heaven and hell into submission.[/spoil:2ze8alfr]
Features:
* Max cap has been raised from 50 to 60 and it takes a heck of a lot longer to gain news levels in that bracket  (a week or two to get from 50 to 60 depending on how heavily you play, which is about how long it takes to hit 50).
* You also earn planar attunement.  Makes you better against a specific color of rift and its denizens (life, death, air, earth, fire, water, pvp).  You can put points in multiple rift colors.  Unknown if you can eventually max out all of them.
* There are now rampage quests - killing an albino werepanda automatically gives you a quest to kill 11 more.  Basically, these are genocide quests.  Our heroes, ladies and gents!
* Great Hunts.  Special rifts that spawn some insanely powerful enemies.  Think open-world raiding.
*  Lots of new zones.  The Storm Legion content is really pretty good.  The devs are definitely trion their hardest on this latest expansion.
*  Player [s:2ze8alfr]housing[/s:2ze8alfr] dimensions!  Basically, a cloistered little zone of your very own to mess around in with your friends.  Quite a few of 'em are basically water parks with lots of slides and stuff.  Very cool.
* Tempest Bay.  The new City for both Guardians and Defiants.  Jaw-dropping beautiful.

Cons:
* Combat can be a little too frenetic at times.  Quite a button-masher.
* You accumulate quests like candy (almost to the point of it being overwhelming at times)
*  My poor action bars now dwarf the periodic table of elements.  New abilities are great and all, but this is a beginning to be a bit much.

[Nonsensei]

I like Rift a lot, but I have to say that trying to level beyond 50 was like slamming into a brick wall at full speed. Far too grindy.

[Sal1981]

What about that Elder Scroll MMO?

I'm going to check that out when it's done with beta.

We should put our servers and character names down and play together some... my last guild on an MMO had a uber-xtain in it... he got upset a cussing and always talked to us about praying for shit. The problem was that he was the brother of the GM. The GM was a great guy. He was probably xtain too but never talked about it...

I'm currently playing Mechwarrior Online.

I haven't played any of the Elder Scrolls games, but the MMO looks great.

[Aroura33]

RIFT
Cons:
* Combat can be a little too frenetic at times.  Quite a button-masher.
* You accumulate quests like candy (almost to the point of it being overwhelming at times)
*  My poor action bars now dwarf the periodic table of elements.  New abilities are great and all, but this is a beginning to be a bit much.

I still have Rift installed on my computer, but I simply cannot make myself enjoy it anymore.  Mostly this is due to the action bar / too man choices issue.  There are a million options for specs, and each option gives you tons of abilities, and it is overwhelming.
I simply cannot face the grind past 50 either.  my quests are MAXED out, I cannot fit any more in there, but I don't care to do them.  I'm not invested in the story, and I have no idea why I'm doing the quests I'm doing.

I think, possibly, I am just burned out on this type of MMO, because it certainly is polished, and has many playstyle options.  But the only challenge I find is sifting through the million options of soul combinations to make something that can solo elites, lol.

[the_antithesis]

So, fiddling with the 3DS I have to wonder what drugs Nintendo is on these days. Luigi's Mansoon Dark Moon is an enjoyable enough game. A bit cheap at times, but Nintendo games were always king of the cheap hit. I do not care if I only one star every single fucking level, but I do care that the game feels the need to rub my nose in it.

But the controls are terrible. The worst part is you have a flashbulb thing that stuns ghosts and turns minor enemies into coins or worthless puffs of smoke. You hold the A button to charge it and release to let the flash go off. But you can't turn while charging, which is a simple piece of functionality that should be there, that could be there. But isn't there.

It's annoying.

[Savior2006]

Really looking forward to Destiny, the MMO shooter in development by Bungie. I've never really been excited for this genre, but Destiny it seems is going to change that.

[youtube:1nd74l5p]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBNdrJMwrkc[/youtube:1nd74l5p]

[Hydra009]

I simply cannot face the grind past 50 either.  my quests are MAXED out, I cannot fit any more in there, but I don't care to do them.  I'm not invested in the story, and I have no idea why I'm doing the quests I'm doing.

Yeah.  The leveling is pretty excruciating, and the quests are nothing to write home about.  My favorite was one in pelladine where you hijack a mech and go to town on other mechs and some infantry, but they're mostly pretty generic.  I do like the new quests where you can bring a dormant base online and then have to defend it against wave after wave of invaders.  Those can get pretty hairy really quick.

I think, possibly, I am just burned out on this type of MMO, because it certainly is polished, and has many playstyle options.  But the only challenge I find is sifting through the million options of soul combinations to make something that can solo elites, lol.

My main interest is in rifts/invasions.  Zone events make my day.

[Nonsensei]

Yeah but even the rifts and zone events get samey after a while. The rifts are all kill x to get to the next stage, util stage 3 where you kill an absurdly weak boss, then you kill x again to get to stage 5 where you kill another absurdly easy boss then you win!

And the zone events, while a bit more varied, do have a different fatal weakness. Anything that is too cumbersome or requires too much effort just simply doesn't get done. Like in scarwood reach there is frequently this zone event where you have to kill...totems or something? But they have like 1.5 trillion HP and are guarded by mega elites. Considering the reward for completing a zone event is usually a single source and nothing more, people have zero motivation to attempt to do anything other than the most straightforward and convenient events. Its not like there are any consequences for failing an event, so people just skip it.

Rift also shares the same fatal flaw that many other MMO's of its type have: too solo friendly. You can go all the way from 1 to 60 without ever being in a group with another player.

[Jmpty]

Really looking forward to Destiny, the MMO shooter in development by Bungie. I've never really been excited for this genre, but Destiny it seems is going to change that.

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This.

[Aroura33]

So I went ahead and put Secret World back on my machine, and I love it all over again. The new auxilliary weapons are cool, and the first new quest I found took me back to the starter zone, and even though I have high lvl purple gear, the mobs were hard to kill. Much more fun!
I also recalled another of my favoite aspects, which is that aside from weapons, gear does not change your appearance. You can buy clothes in London, and look like whatever you want. There are hundreds of different tops, coats, vests, skirts, pants, shoes, boots, hats glasses, masks, and gloves. No one looks the same, every player really does look individual. And they broke up the reward outfits so you can wear individual pieces!

Anyway, still fun! I am actually going to go play some more right now.  :-D

[Nonsensei]

Ive been waiting for it to go on sale but I got impatient. Its downloading now.

Also holy shit steam says 40,000 MB. WTF?

[Shiranu]

Really looking forward to Destiny, the MMO shooter in development by Bungie. I've never really been excited for this genre, but Destiny it seems is going to change that.

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Hell yeah, looks like a mix of several games I enjoy. I cant wait for it :D.

@Rift: The combat was boring as hell imo.

[Aroura33]

Ive been waiting for it to go on sale but I got impatient. Its downloading now.

Also holy shit steam says 40,000 MB. WTF?

Yeah it's a hog.

If you want to hook up, servers are irrelevant, they use that cross server tech. My faction is Illuminati, but you can play with other factions too, except in PvP.

My toon is named Nynaeve. I should be playing most of the evening. PM me your toon name, or mssg me in game if you want. Hope you like it, and I did not talk you into a game you regret buying.  :oops: