Some time ago I got an idea to do a MMO RPG A B C.
When talking about MMORPGs and looking at lists, I noticed that I’ve played a lot of them over the years, so I thought it would be a good idea to create an ABC of the games Quil and I have played. Let’s see how far we get shall we?
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Aion [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Pay to play / Free to play on the EU server US will follow this spring)
You can read more about Aion overview. It’s devoloped by NCSOFT and was released in 2009. I’ve played this game a lot for 1.5 years now I think? However.. at the moment they’re loosing members at a fast rate. They are lacking updates with new content. They recently added a small solo instance that lasts about 15 mins, however, it’s too simple for most people and not all that hard to get through it, so after 1 week of doing this on a couple chars it is just boring to the point where your eyes start to bleed. This is they’re biggest problem at the moment. People are lvl 55, and have NOTHING to do but the same damn thing over and over.
Argo Online [Zero] [Official link] (Free to play)
This is a fairly new game (Feb 2011 I do believe). The website offers very little information. However after creating a account and logging in you get access to a little bit more information. The game itself seems very interesting. It is quite different from any other MMORPG I have played. The ‘mounts’ in there seem to be steam-punk inspired hover bikes. The Assassin(ish) class also uses light and heavy guns. Nice thing about that system tho: It will automatically swap weapons for you based on the skill you use. I haven’t gotten very far into the game so i can’t tell you too much about it. However it seemed nice.
Atlantica Online [Quil][Zero] [Official link] (Free to play)
This game is now 3 years old, actually the celebrations ongoing so just a little over 3 years old. It is published by Nexon and developed by NDOORS. This game is a MMORPG in a lot of the aspects of the game. However, there is a big BUT: the battles in this game are turn based. Yes, turn based! You get to move a couple of your team, they do the same and so forth. It may sound weird, but it actually has a lot of positive points to it. The game is less about who has the lowest ping and fastest reflexes but more about planning and strategy.
The turn based nature of the combat can be challenging but it tends to throw you out of the illusion of the game constantly reminding you – you are playing a game. This is neither good nor bad. It all depends upon your own preferences.
Allods online [Quil][Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
Allods Online is a free to play game that was developed in Russia. You can clearly see hints towards this in all kinds of aspects of the game. Some of the NPC names, sound Russian. Not all of the voices are translated to English (while others are). And last, but not least, the second map is called Silveria (Siberia?) and is a snowy and icy map. The gameplay is so far (I’m lvl 20) good. The skills and controls respond quickly and directly (unlike in Lineage II). There are lots of quests to do. From what I’ve seen there are about 70 quests per map. The maps are relatively big. You can reach most towns with a teleporter (but you need to have been there in order to be able to teleport there). The game consists out of 2 sides (The league and Empire), each of these sides then has 3 races to choose from. Each of these races then has classes. The amount of classes depends on the race.
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Cabal online [Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
Developed by ESTsoft Corp. 2006 Licensed and published for the European English language Market by Games-Masters.com
I left this game (and lot of people with me) because they destroyed it with a big patch. Nothing of what was promised made it into the game and people were basically screwed over. Not just on 1 level either.. broken classes, non-functional pets (promises were made). I got in game a little while back and it seems the game has been dummied down to the point where you just have to click a mob once and it will use all your skills FOR YOU! I recently tried the game again to see how it is now, they seems to have fixed the skill issue, however theres a new problem. My character is a lvl 108 or so blader decently equipt. I walk outside one of the beginning towns (the snow one cant remember the name) and get PKed! If theres 1 thing i hate in a game its PK! so that game is so permanently off my list! I mean I am no low level, and i get PKed and killed outside a beginning town? I don’t want any part in a game that has fallen so deep.
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Dragonica [Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
This was an interesting game, I beta-tested this with a friend. It’s a 2D platform game (sort of) but it still has depth because the levels are.. ok this is hard to explain. Let me try again. The game IS 3D. However, you see everything from the side (remember those 80′s games where you could move up and down in a 2D game?) well that’s how this works as well, however with the added element of having a world that’s built up in such a way that there’s multiple layers of these paths. I know this sounds very confusing, but that was the selling point of this game. All attacked were used in Combos, the higher the combo the more damage you did.
Dragon nest [Quil] [Official US Link] [Official EU Link] (Free to play)
This is a story driven game and it is all instanced. The characters are limited both in appearance and in sex. The archers and mages are all female. The clerics and fighters are all male. The graphics are beautiful and well lit. I can enjoy playing this game except for the fact that your mouse is locked into a target system and movement is limited to keys with no remapping allowed that I could find. So I become frustrated and grumpy very quickly. And though there are some interesting ideas this is not a game I will keep.
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Eden Eternal [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play)
This is a another way too easy game to play. Basically, you are able to pick up the quest, auto move to the mobs you need and finish the quest very easily. The instances are short ( one per map ) and I have opted to solo each with no real challenge. The UI and graphics make this game playable and the idea of developing multiple classes all on one toon keeps me entertained, though I haven’t figured out the point of doing so.
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Flyff: Fly For Fun [Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
Not sure how long I played this game. Its a GPotato game (like Rappelz). It has some fun elements to it. You can fly ANYWHERE no limitations to it. The whole setting of the game was a bit kiddy and all that. Bright colors and overall funny and odd mobs. But it was fun while it lasted. However it got boring after level 50 I think it was.
Florensia [Official link] (Free to play)
Another game we tried in our quest for a (temporary) Aion replacement. It has some interesting features. Half the game is like your normal standard MMORPG. The graphics aren’t great. But, the other half, is a Sea based MMORPG where you ‘character’ is a ship! You can level your Sea level (like normal: quests/killing) there’s skills for your ship as well. There are Tank ships and Medical ones. So all the trademarks of a regular MMORPG but with a twist. It was fun to play for a while but it got boring quickly if you ask me.
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Guild Wars: Factions [Zero] [Official Link] (Buy to play)
I started playing this with a friend. He stopped playing after a while and so did I. The game was good tho but a bit different then most games. Only the towns were shared. The fields were just you, or if your in a party with party members. And in all honesty: I cant remember too much about the game. But I enjoyed myself while there.
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Last Chaos [Quil] (Free to play)
Lineage [Zero] (Servers offline)
This is an other NCSoft game. I don’t remember a whole lot about this game. I don’t think I played it for very long. And I don’t even know if I played on the official server.. or some.. less official one. I vaguely remember some grinding on a field and that’s about it. I have to say that this was probably.. 7 years ago? The official server is down now, for good.
Lineage II [Zero][Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play)
Quil and I tested this game briefly. So briefly in fact that I (Zero) didn’t make it past level 1. I’ve said it before and will say it again: when there is input lag between me hitting a key and my character doing something this ruins the game entirely for a lot of people. Lineage II is one of those games. The graphics looked good. However, the controls were absolute shit (sorry no other way to put it). A couple of examples: The scroll for zooming in and out of your character was inverted (compared to ANY other game I’ve played). When you started running it would take 0.5 seconds before you char started to move. This might not seem like much but it feels like you have lag every time. This was in my case not lag. Just purely character animations that had to take a step in order to start running. After you let go of the W key for forward movement, the character had a tendency to face the camera (and thus take 1 more step and turn around after you let go of the key). This all made the game just so highly annoying that I didn’t even want to continue with it. Character controls make or brake a game.
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Mythos [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play US only (EU = offline))
I had a couple of beta keys for this game and took Quil with me to test it out. I think we both got to about lvl 6 before giving up. Which, for us Die-Hard MMO people, is nothing. That game just didn’t feel right. The movement was weird, the controls sluggish (not lag/my PC) and the skills? half the time didn’t work. And I do believe that the camera movement was somehow fixed (couldn’t turn your camera). Overall not something we enjoyed.
[Update]: As of early October they have closed down the European server (after only half a year of run time??)
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Perfect World [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play)
Zero: I cant tell you a whole lot about the game. As far as I know I didn’t even make it to level 20. I couldn’t really get into this game. I used it more as a escape because what i was playing at the time.. that game was down for a long maintenance or had a crash/downtime.
Pirate King Online [Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
I couldn’t remember too much about the game anymore. So I figured: lets download it again so I can write something useful about it. It seems that the version I played is no longer available. They weren’t very clear on this. They call it PirateKing II now. My account didn’t seem to work anymore. For test purposes I started a new character. The game seems very buggy, probably due to translations (that were poor at best, half the game was still in I’m guessing: Korean). What I noticed is that you cant turn the camera behind your character. as I zoomed out all the way and place the cam as far towards the ground as I could, I saw why. The terrain is build up just outside your screen range before that its just all blue. Other that that little issue the game has been dummied down. you now, at level one, get an armor that will last you till lvl 60! Whats the point of even leveling your own character then? Just give me a level 60 char and get it over with?! Needless to say, I wont ever play this game again.
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Ragnarok Online [Zero] [Official Link] (Free to play)
This is and always will be my favorite game. Its hard to describe how this game was when you have never played it in its prime. Even today you can still play on private servers. This game wasn’t great graphics wise. What made the game great was the feeling in the game, the community. It had a wide variety of classes available. One base class that turns into one out of 6 first jobs or they split off into one of 3 other classes. Those 6 jobs all have 2 choices after that. Those 12 classes once more turn into 1 higher class. You can see a graphical representation here. There weren’t any quests when the game started. Everything was purely grinding. The game was developed by Gravity. The official servers are still online, and it seems like there are more official servers now then there ever were!
Rappelz [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play)
I played this game many years ago with a friend. However, we stopped after about 15 levels, the game lagged so bad all the time it was just unplayable. However, after I stopped playing Aion I was looking for a new game. And came across this one again. The graphics are what you expect from a (free to play) game that is 5 years old. One thing I really dislike in the game was the PK. People would just be a**h*les and PK you out of the blue while you’re questing. If there is 1 single thing I hate most in MMORPGs it’s a PK system. 99.9% of the time a PK system is abused by higher levels to kill low levels, brilliant! It was no different in Rappelz. The pet system in the game was interesting (pets are VERY important in this game) but it was bugged. The tank pets (that you needed on some classes to solo stuff) were crap! you basically needed a higher level pet then yourself. But if you start the game, you cant! catch 22… The tanks would be too slow to intercept your target (slow killing) and they would be unable to hit them (a pet is per definition lower level then you are when you captured him yourself). They can’t take the hits either: they’re lower level then the mobs. So the whole pet system is one big catch 22. The capture rate for getting pets is really low too, that was what drove me away from the game. I had a higher chance to capture (a passive skill + a card) and still couldn’t capture a damn thing.
Rift [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Pay to play)
Oh boy, Rift, yes, we tried that.. I manage to get 2 beta keys to rift. Me and Quil went over there to try it out. And oh boy did we not like what we saw. The graphics looked horrible. The engine they used seemed good had lots of cool features (like moving grass). There were a lot of settings to tweak, but the textures they used looked horrible and ugly! This was a beta tho. The skills had (what felt to me as) a 1 second delay between pressing the button and the actual activation. I think we made it to level 10-ish. They didn’t keep there promises ether, they said the rifts were for you to fight off, and they would disappear, well they didn’t! (at least not the one I fought over 4 times). So overall in my experience (and Quil felt the same) this was a crap game. Keep in mind that that was the beta!
Runes Of Magic [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play)
We tried this game after our quest to find a temporary replacement for Aion (until they bring out 3.0). The skills in the game were slugish to react, a think I hate a lot in a MMORPG . The graphics were ok looking but very uhm how shall I put it, childish in nature (colorful). Overall gameplay was very slow. it took me a long time just to get to level 10. Another weird thing unique feature the game had was the ability to learn 2 classes. This meant you started out as a class and at level 10 you chose a second class. The downside was that you would have to activate 1 class in order to level it up. An other thing that bothered me was the camera movement, you did that with reverse mouse keys (compare to all the other games) annoying!. Overall not a bad game, it just didn’t play right for me.
Rise of Dragonian Era [Zero] [Quil]
Let me start by saying that the website is horrible. The form you have to fill out is slow with errors if the filled out values are already used. Then we get to the downloading of the game. Careful what option you pick because the full client uses something called: Akamai. This will distribute the game to other people as well (aka upload when your not looking/ didn’t ask for it). So make sure you uninstall it after you install the game. Then we get to the install part of the game, this is where things get really ridiculous. You can’t pick where you want to install the game. I got 2 choices, Ether: C:\Netgame\Rise of Dragonian Era or D:\Netgame\Rise of Dragonian Era. No manual selection of where you want to install. The game tells you it NEEDS to install Phys-x. But wait, I have a AMD card?? Yup according to the installer you won’t be able to play the game without (so only Nvidia users can use the game? not true..). After you cancel that you continue into some other needed packages. These don’t even check if you have it installed, and pops up with a do you want to repair or remove the package. Then we move on the the DirectX installer, and guess what? They have a sponsored version with a Bing Toolbar inside! Make sure you Uncheck this. The game is finally done installing.. wow.. what a bunch of SHIT so far! this game better be real good or else. And patching the game fails…. After all that I don’t even get into the game. In conclusion, a waste of space.
I got a bit further than Zero did. After all the nonsense to load the game I was able to play. It all started well. Busy server so lots of people to play with. Then I hit a lag spike and found myself running the opposite way from which I was going. All was well till the next lag spike and multiple spikes can keep you from going anywhere for a while. I ran out of quests at level 11. At the first dungeon I found myself locked out because I was playing solo. They added an instant party match up, ie you are thrown into random parties every few minutes. Results: people drop out as soon as they notice the party has formed. Party system = FAIL. At level 12 there were more quests almost all of them in the dungeon. Again, fail. After playing for about 2 weeks I’m bored and annoyed. And all the people I started with have pretty much disappeared and the server is quiet, too quiet.
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Shaiya [Zero] [Quil] [Official Link] (Free to play) (but Pay 2 Win)
Shaiya is a game that was never fully realized. Inflation has made it unplayable unless you pay real $$$ to do so. Now I don’t have a problem donating $ to a well maintained server but Shaiya has been used as a cash cow with no attention paid to maintaining the game. It does have a system of normal, hard and Ultimate characters – meant, I think, to make sure a player knows how to play their toon. You must reach, originally, lvl 50 normal mode to open hard mode and then get that new toon up to lvl 50 to open ultimate mode. This has been dummied down many lvls now. And they added power lvling completely nullifying the original purpose. I met players who had power lvled up to ultimate lvl 50+ and had no idea what they were doing. For all these reasons and a few more I no longer play Shaiya.
Star wars: The old republic [Zero] [Alyce] (pay 4 the game and pay per month)
A new game in the Star wars franchise. The game is a MMO RPG with all the usual aspects to it. Classes, armor and skills. The easiest way to describe the game is to take a run-of-the-mill MMORPG and throw some Star wars theme on it. So far the game doesn’t seem to be very spectacular. It was rather hyped and a long wait to get it. The graphics are decent but not great (on the highest setting) The game does run very smooth on my system. You can pilot your own ship. The mounts in the game are in the form of Speedsters.
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War of the Immortals [Quil] [Official US Link](Free to play)
I was given a beta key and then decided to look again once it went live. First thing I noticed was that the graphics are very hard on the eyes and the icons and hud are made up of very very small components. So small I could not read it. After about 2 hours of “play” - I was lvl 37, had an exotic mount, 2 pets, a cape and fancy clothes. I got there by picking up the quest, using auto run to get there, killed what ever I found there till the quest turned color ( since I couldn’t see it to read it ) then auto run back to turn it in. The game basically played itself and I had no freaking idea what was going on. Basically, this game is all rewards, no work, no challenge and no fun. I’ve deleted it from my computer.
World of Warcraft [Zero] [Official US Link] (Pay to play)
I’ve only played this game on a private server somewhere not too long after it came out(i know its probably different now.. a lot..). I didn’t like the game mechanics in there, the skills didn’t feel right when you used them, everything felt sluggish (no it wasn’t my PC nor Lag). Some MMO‘s have this, like Mythos, Rift and Runes of Magic. Its a feeling that for me 9/10 ruins a game just because playing doesn’t feel right. If I play a game I want tot feel like I’m in control of the character, not that I’m kicking some monkey in the server to do it for me 1 second later.
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