It's funny how things work out, Gonk campaigns for months, goes nuts in the stress test and generally does everything humanly possible to get a WoW account...whereas on the first day I have ADSL, a kindly cantina person gets a second account by accident and gives it to me, ehehe So, anyway, after having a fast connection for just over a week I've been back into MMORPGs in a big way.

World of Warcraft has surprised me so far, it's really engaging and has a hell of a lot of polish for a 'beta'. It is already further along than SWG was when I played it six months after release.

First thing I noticed was WoW's quests are the first that truly remind me of an online version of Morrowind, they are really interesting. Hell I am level 12 now having just done quests and not ONCE stopped to think about grinding my way to the next level, it just happens as I do the quests. The artwork is amazing, each area looks perfectly handcrafted and has a truly unique feel. Combat is pretty fun, well, rogue combat anyway I love stalking critters with stealth on and ambushing them, too fun. I tried being a Hunter to start with but unfortunately ranged combat is a bit lame, they need to fix it up bigtime. Only other negative so far is that whilst there is no loading, seamless, the world is a bit....well....not as open as AC or even SWG. In those games you could just run off in any direction and there was just so much wilderness, very freeing Despite that it really is a great game and easily lives up to the hype. This thing is going to be huge when it comes out.....and rightly so, for once.

That said I've also been playing another MMORPG since I really don't want to play WoW to death in beta, gotta save things for retail! At the start of last year I beta'd a game called EVE, a space mmorpg. I quite enjoyed the beta, but many things weren't implemented yet and since I was still on 56k I decided to pass when it hit retail. Now that I have ADSL I decided to give it another chance and am glad I did. EVE isn't for everyone, it's very slow paced and with 5000 systems, easy to get lost in. In the beta I primarily just mined asteroid fields since a lot of the other content wasn't in yet (mining is tedious as hell at first with your newbie ship)....but now agent missions are in I've been flying around doing courier stuff which is more interesting so far. The player economy is wonderful and I hope to join a large corporation in a week or two so I can get in on political intrigue and PVP For now though I'm content ferrying refugees or tracking down rogue pirates.

So, what other mmorpgs are you people playing? Now i'm in a position to download betas and free trials much more easily I want to check out as many as possible.

There's this one... With bugs... And mages... And stuff...

**crushed by jaiph's tidal wave of text**
Though its isn't really an mmorpg, I loved Rebellion, something just drives me back to that game again and again, its so complex for a strategy game...

I play Chip N' Dale's MMORPG.

Waiting on WoW beta account.

City of Heroes is keeping me very much amused till WoW's official release.

I have a level 37 Claws Regen Scrapper who is fun for just hacking and slashing. He has a few area of effects which make everyone go flying backwards away from him, most amusing and very fun. He's also nigh-on invulnerable to anything in his level range, which is something the devs really need to look at fixing. The only time he dies is when attacking a group of evil doers 5 levels or more above him (the level cap is 50, so something +5 is a big step up), or when 1 time in 50,000 his statis protection gets bypassed and his Instant Healing regenning goodness drops.

My other character is a level 28 Kinetics Defender. Defenders are sorta the mages of CoH, she does a lot of buffing and debuffing and her secondary is a (relatively weak) ranged attack. Kinetics is a really fun power set because you can do all kinds of things like lowering peoples density so they can run really really fast or jump entire city blocks. It's also really good at keeping the endurance bar full, which makes her a great team player. The reason I made her though is for her level 32 power: Fulcrum Shift. Fulcrum gives a 20% damage boost for you and every teammate near you for every mob in the AoE you hit with it. So if you can hit a large group of mobs and have everyone standing in the right spot, people can hit their damage caps and kill just about anything with one hit. Very fun.

Overall I am very impressed with CoH. They have done a really good job of making it feel like you are a superhero. Watching X-Men or Superman on DVD makes me itch to log into CoH, they got so much of it right. Most of the enemies you fight are ultra cool. Higher level enemies means bigger life bars, but also physically bigger and cooler, and many more powers at their disposal. Some of the ones my Scrapper has just started fighting and really really evil and a challenge to kill (at +5 or +6). My biggest complaint would be that after a certain level (28 for my Scrapper, when he got Instant Healing) missions become an absolute waste of time. Missions spawn 3 even level (very occasionally +1) minions and sometimes an LT or boss per person in them, and my Scrapper could get 8 people on a team into a mission, have everyone else leave, then very easily solo the mission himself. He is just that god-like. Hopefully the devs will do something so that at high level street-sweeping in an area 3 or 4 levels above where you are supposed to be is not the only way to make good xp. Some of the mission arcs have cool stories and funky Arch-Villians at the end, I just wish it was worth doing them.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. I can't believe you're still addicted to that game, Spork! Heck, SWG even kept my interest longer.

Kinetics is insanely fun. You can effectively superspeed at level, what, 6? I have a 12ish Kin/Rad defender named Sheep on victory server (really looks like a Sheep even). I love syphoning speed then turning on my reflector bubble and going bowling for thugs.

I hadn't played for about a month but now I'm back messing around with a little spines/regen scrapper named Humbug. He has a magical origin that started when a high level CEO killed his partner, Elizabeth Marley. Her ghost visited him along with two others. The others had the wrong address so they left to find their victim but Marley told him the next word he said would come to life and punish him. In disbelief he shouted an obscure expletive and Humbug was born.

So I like weird theme characters, though I can't explain why Sheep has the powers he does.

I gave up on FFXI, got old and repatative. I might get into WoW, really not sure if I feel like forking over ~15$ a month to play a game anymore.

My best friend lives in Sydney so I never get to see him, but he plays CoH. I think that's got a lot to do with it



Hehe, yeah but Siphon Speed and Repel are useful for about that long... Till you get sick of bowling for thugs. Left both powers out on my respec.

Spines Regen make really good characters. Spines is a lot of fun, 4th of July fireworks!

I want Jump to Lightspeed...


...let the flames begin.

I've been playing FFXI a lot since it was released over here. Tis fun.

Lineage 2 > *

Been playing star wars galaxies, waiting for my WoW Euro test. Got my JTL test, was a nice surprise. Would really like my WoW beta test. Proof I have JTL http://img13.exs.cx/img13/948/JTL.jpg

The only MMO type game I ever played was Earth & Beyond. It was kind of cool, until I realized that the only fun I was having was when I did the quests that didn't involve other players. Plus there were way too few ship designs.

Jaiph, three words can describe the downfall of SWG... Sony Online Entertainment.