Does anybody have any MMO recommendations?

[WhoIsThis]

I've been debating whether I want to go into the world of MMOs again or not. I'd have to set out the following requirements:

1. Not a pay to win model. Subscriptions are acceptable (preferable even to the micropayment model).
2. Well balanced PvP, and balance in the PvE classes (if applicable).
3. Good community.
4. Developers still at least somewhat responsive.
5. Customer support where applicable is prompt and tailored to that customer's requests.
6. Can reach endgame individually (ex: with top gear and top stuff).
7. Lots of content of escalating difficulty hard enough that only a small percentage of players can achieve it.

So far I have yet to find a single MMO to set out those requirements.

Nice to have:
8. Good graphics


My experiences:
- WoW: There's probably a good reason why WoW became so dominant. It's the closest to satisfying those requirements except 6 and perhaps 3 (although there's worse MMOs in that category). Yet every tier, there's a class or two that becomes OP (I guess that's what happens with 12+ classes), and response is slow to the issues plaguing WoW. Blizzard also seems to be moving away from being a consumer friendly company and listening to the community. That combined with a declining PC market probably means that WoW will continue to decline in the long term. Customer support though is generally pretty good, although wait times can be unacceptably long.

I have to admit I did enjoy raiding, although I never had time to go high end PvP ing in WoW. (It's one of those things where either is so demanding that you only do 1). I should also mention the outstanding addons available for WoW.






Most of these games that tried to be WoW killers failed because well, their developers made bad design decisions:
- Warhammer Online: Very unbalanced PvP. It seems that development was rushed.

- Aion: Extremely grindy. Also, end game doesn't seem that appealing. Some of the grindiness has been fixed, but it's got it's share of issues still.

- SWTOR: They've moved to a micropayment model. Some of the low level levelling was interesting, but the endgame was very poorly designed.

- Star Trek Online: Space combat was cool, but ground combat suffered from very serious imbalances. There have been rumors of some improvements though.

- Age of Conan: Launched in an alpha state. It appears to have been made to appeal to the people who enjoy the Conan novels, and is quite different from what the public thinks. It's a niche title.

- LOTRO: Similar issues to Conan, tried to capitalize on the Tolkien-verse, although being a Tolkien fan, there are some serious inaccuracies. Community is generally better than most MMOs, but there are issues. Niche game though.

- DC Universe Online: Very niche title. Not too great mechanics I hear either. The bigger problem is that it's Sony. They got hacked a few years ago and incredibly, their passwords were kept in plain text! That is appalling security. Everquest eliminates itself for very similar reasons. It's not worth risking the possibility of my credit card being hacked someday. Gameloft too eliminates itself from consideration for this reason - poor account security, not to mention the majority of their games are ripoffs of other studios.

See:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...swords-posted/

- The Secret World: Suffers from poor art direction and I think it's a very niche title.

- The Elder Scrolls Online: From my experiences playing with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, this is not a studio with a history of stable releases. At the final patch of Oblivion for example, approximately 1,000 bugs were left unfixed that had to be fixed by the modding community. Essentially, they're a studio where QA is not a priority. Early reports of the ESO are pretty underwhelming.

- Neverwinter Nights Online: Pay to win game. The mechanics suffer from a "dumbing down" compared to the Dungeons and Dragons that this series was based on.

- The MOBAs: DOTA 2, HoN, and LoL all seem to suffer from their poor communities. They've got interesting content, and I wouldn't mind supporting Valve or Riot, but their communities are just well, very unfriendly.

- Eve Online: Content interesting, but too grindy. Need to play perhaps 8 hours a day to reach top end. Community not great either.

- Runescape: F2P with subscription. Terrible community, lots of hacking. Content is decent though.


Probably not

- Tera: Graphics good, but game lifeless. Appears to have a disappointing endgame too. It's also grindy. Again - the graphics though put most MMOs to shame.

- Rift: I like idea of the "Rifts" maybe worth considering. It doesn't seem very ground breaking though.




Games I'm thinking about:
- Guild Wars 2: I've heard mixed things about it

- Planetside 2: The concepts look interesting, but I haven't played it



Upcoming:
- Star Citizen: Promising concepts - I may support on Kickstarter


Edit:
Must be PC or Android game.

[Cascade]

My friend just got his beta key for ESO, so i'll let you know how that is.

The only MMO I play currently is GW2 and it's great. The devs come out with new content every month at least. I haven't really PvP'ed because it isn't my thing, but I would assume it's balanced. You can get the game for around 40$ now, and there is no subscription. If you have any more questions about it PM me. Also, if you get it let me know so we can play together.

[WhoIsThis]

Yeah I've heard some interesting things about GW2, so I am thinking about moving to it.

[Worship]

Oh there's these cool MMO's that are called;
Pocket Legends
Star Legends
Dark Legends
and Arcane Legends.
They're pretty fun.

But anyways, there was an MMO game released on the Xbox 360, free to download, called Ascend: Hand of Kul. It's fun

[WhoIsThis]

Oh there's these cool MMO's that are called;
Pocket Legends

Game is not being updated. It's only a matter of time before AL and DL meet the same fate.

But anyways, there was an MMO game released on the Xbox 360, free to download, called Ascend: Hand of Kul. It's fun

Looking for PC or phone.

[Snakespeare]

Sounds like what you really want is for an update to PL.

[WhoIsThis]

Sounds like what you really want is for an update to PL.

I am looking for a new game.

PL does not satisfy 1 (due to the existence of elixirs) nor does PvP satisfy 2. Since the exodus of the oldies, 3 is also open to debate.

The honest truth is that between micropayments and subscriptions, I'd very much prefer a subscription based MMO. It has it's benefits:

1. A small percentage of people are not subsidizing the masses
2. There is a better chance of it not being a Pay to win type of model
3. Play a much or as little as you want on a fixed fee
4. The other thing that's great is that it tends to eliminate a lot of the price sensitive individuals, which tends to correlate (weakly) with a somewhat more mature community
5. Finally, if you play at end game, if you're on a Pay to win game, you're going to be that 1% subsidizing the 99% of players. In a subscription, that's not the case.

I think my perfect MMO would probably be heavily modified version of WoW, with endgame gear not from raiding, but from hundreds of hours of individual work, very lengthy dungeons with a difficulty level comparable to progression raiding, and a greater emphasis on PvP balance.

Edit:
If there was a good MMO that met all those criteria I listed above, I'd be willing to pay in excess of $40 USD/month just to play it.

[dudetus]

From the stuff u listed above, I would advice u to try GW2.

Also, Idk if u have noticed (or u dislike) but there's a rly interesting sci-fi MMO called WildStar coming up in next year. It is designed with "tongue-in-cheek" mentality and especially targeting system seems rly special.

If u haven't heard from it, I would recommend u to at least take a look at it.

[WhoIsThis]

From the stuff u listed above, I would advice u to try GW2.

Also, Idk if u have noticed (or u dislike) but there's a rly interesting sci-fi MMO called WildStar coming up in next year. It is designed with "tongue-in-cheek" mentality and especially targeting system seems rly special.

If u haven't heard from it, I would recommend u to at least take a look at it.

Yeah GW2 is worth looking at for sure. Wildstar I have not heard of. I've also looked at Star Citizen.

[Cascade]

GW2 works great on a mac, I just tried it and it looks good and runs smoothly.

[WhoIsThis]

Going to be running it on a PC, although yeah, it's looking like a promising candidate game.

[Cascade]

I recommend looking at reviews or gameplay videos and deciding from that.

[WhoIsThis]

The other option it seems that's open is to just move away from MMOs altogether. That said, there haven't been that many outstanding RPGs these days either.

[Argyros]

Rift is average... It feels like lotro, but with less epic lotr storyline. Personally I disliked both, to time consuming.

[WhoIsThis]

Rift is average... It feels like lotro, but with less epic lotr storyline. Personally I disliked both, to time consuming.

I'm going to move Rift and Tera to the "probably not" category. Tera seems to suffer from a poor endgame.

[Worship]

Have you tried Arma: Day Z? It is an MMORPG..
Also with what you said about ESO, I think you should give it a shot before saying it is amazing or terrible. (I know that it's not released yet) I say this because Bethesda put aside 2 games in the making to continue full out on Elder Scrolls Online. It's also getting released with next-gen consoles, so it basically has to be modernized in quality.. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim grew in quality with the years, so I think ESO has potential. Especially with the fact that the entire Elder Scrolls island (besides Skyrim) will be available to walk around in, and I believe the servers can hold over 100,000 or 1,000,000 people in each, so nice MMORPG gaming. Eh

[WhoIsThis]

Have you tried Arma: Day Z? It is an MMORPG..

I have been considering a transition to ARMA 3. I do like the ARMA community (Day Z I think actually was considered the worst one). ARMA is great because the community is more mature. They're more grown up, some ex-military even. It's also a more realistic game than most.

Also with what you said about ESO, I think you should give it a shot before saying it is amazing or terrible. (I know that it's not released yet) I say this because Bethesda put aside 2 games in the making to continue full out on Elder Scrolls Online. It's also getting released with next-gen consoles, so it basically has to be modernized in quality.. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim grew in quality with the years, so I think ESO has potential. Especially with the fact that the entire Elder Scrolls island (besides Skyrim) will be available to walk around in, and I believe the servers can hold over 100,000 or 1,000,000 people in each, so nice MMORPG gaming. Eh

The problem is that they're a developer that leaves a lot of bugs behind. With games like Oblivion and Morrowind, they are RPGs. That means the modding community can fix the issues. With an MMO, it's all on the developer. The issue is that Bethesda does not view quality and stability important in its game (I know their PR department will dispute this, but their past record speaks for itself - they leave bugs unfixed by the final patch and the community of modders (of which there were many) to pick up the slack). This will not be the case in an MMO. In other words, poor QA in my opinion, has been ingrained into their corporate culture.

Blizzard, whatever their other flaws is very quick to respond when there's a bug in WoW.

The other issue that I find ominous is that there has been something of a "dumbing down" in their titles progressively. We see this from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim. Skyrim and Oblivion were made for consoles and well, their experiences on the PC were not as good as they could have been. As it stands, the Elder Scrolls games are decent games, but they're only decent games after the modding community has had some time to work with them.

[Worship]

I have been considering a transition to ARMA 3. I do like the ARMA community (Day Z I think actually was considered the worst one). ARMA is great because the community is more mature. They're more grown up, some ex-military even. It's also a more realistic game than most.
The problem is that they're a developer that leaves a lot of bugs behind. With games like Oblivion and Morrowind, they are RPGs. That means the modding community can fix the issues. With an MMO, it's all on the developer. The issue is that Bethesda does not view quality and stability important in its game (I know their PR department will dispute this, but their past record speaks for itself - they leave bugs unfixed by the final patch and the community of modders (of which there were many) to pick up the slack). This will not be the case in an MMO. In other words, poor QA in my opinion, has been ingrained into their corporate culture. Blizzard, whatever their other flaws is very quick to respond when there's a bug in WoW.

Yeah Day Z is a mod that's why haha. But I like it.

But with ES, I can agree with you on that. They just release the game, fix first day bugs, and repeat. But I think it is probably because there is no need for them to fix it, since it's a purely solo game. I bet they will try their best with ESO, since it's just online.

[Argyros]

One more thing,
Id recommend searching on YouTube for endgame/community game stuff. I just watched a 10min detailed vid that really was neat, and informative on gw2 endgame.

[Roberto077]

Yeah Day Z is a mod that's why haha. But I like it.

But with ES, I can agree with you on that. They just release the game, fix first day bugs, and repeat. But I think it is probably because there is no need for them to fix it, since it's a purely solo game. I bet they will try their best with ESO, since it's just online.

I'll let you know (I have beta access this weekend).