Hey folks, I recently shut down my wow account, but theres a few people from there that I'm looking to keep in touch with. We wanted to grab a new game to be able to play together from time to time.

Are there some good fantasy RPGs out there (preferably recent-ish) that have a decent multiplayer/co-op option and that don't require us to dish out monthly fees?

Eh... free MMOs aren't good. I liked FFXI but again, fees got to me and i quit. Silkroad was free when I last played it, and it wasn't bad, but it gets repetitive with the enemies being all the same 6-8 models but only changing colors and sizes...

NWN/NWN2

haha I meant non-mmos

Mythos.

I'm looking forward to Mythos opening beta finally. I've been idly poking at BF2142 in the meantime.

I just shut down WoW as well [again..]. Can't be bothered to play when a few months down the road they'll laugh in the face of all my progress and grey will be the new gold, all in the name of adding Yet More Content I Will Never See while leaving the first cap-2 levels identical. Also like. Real life. Muh.

I have been looking for a good SP game to poke at though.

Guild Wars is still insanely popular.

Probably because half of the game is like omg shoes.

Guild Wars can be pretty fun to play... until you burn through all the content. The PvE content is very short lived and can get tedious pretty fast and the PvP will only hold your attention for so long. If you join a guild that goes GvG often it might be fun for a good while but since the pvp meta game keeps changing constantly with every skill balance update, it can become a real pain in the *** to try to keep up and not get frustrated.

I've tried a few free MMOs before bad sadly most are crap. They mostly suffer from the fact that most free mmos are tedious grinds with very little to no quest content that's worth doing. Korean made games are the worst offenders when it comes to this.

Explain this please?

Dozens of identically-statted sets where the only real point in choosing one over the other is which matches your eyes better.

Or at least it was last time I tried it. Seemed the main point was to send a few limp-wristed minions after monsters while you sat in the back with your dress-up-mates and /danced :p

Ahhh I see

NWN is good. I haven't played Dungeon Siege but it supports co-op.

Free games are usually free for a reason, typically because they're really Korean. When I say the game is Korean I don't mean the game was developed by Koreans, I mean... well, it's hard to describe. But if you play enough of these games you'll understand.

Many NCsoft MMOs are free to play (and also very korean). Two that come to mind:
- Guild Wars (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North so you at least have 20-30 minutes of content to burn through)
- Dungeon Runners which is a kind of coop 3D Diablo only with less story. (Somehow.)

Granado Espada / Sword of the New World. Control a party of 3 characters.
Rappelz: Some goons were going nuts about this game during the beta. I don't know much else about it.
Maple Story: Side-scrolling action MMORPG.
Air Rivals (/ Flysis / Space Cowboy Online / Ace Online): Basically a MMO Starfox, only with less yiff and more korea.
Anarchy Online: Pretty popular with the die-hard fans, but I was in the beta so I'd rather gnaw off my testicles than play it ever again.




korean mmo

NWN is a good choice, since you have the added bonus of a whole load of community generated content, a fair bit of which is better than the retail game. The two expansion packs add a fair bit of value to the game as well. Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 don't have the same kind of depth as NWN does, but they may be worth a try if you can all pick them up cheaply. I quite enjoyed playing them, and I imagine they could be more fun if you were only minding a couple of characters while your mates took care of the rest, since they'd be much more capable than the AI.

True, all the armor sets at the max level all have the same stats with the only difference in the runes and insignias you place on them. Arena Net did this on purpose because the game was built with PvP balance in mind so you wouldn't get that armor balancing crap like you would in games like WoW. The only reason you would ever want to get the elite armor sets that are like 10 times the costs of the standard sets because they look "pretty". Purely cosmetic and absolutely no different from the standard sets.

Added vote for NWN2.

MYTHOS! It's like Diablo 2 through a WoW filter.

So it's suck filtered through a suck filter?

More like awesome through a sweet filter.

So they filtered out all of the sweet?

^_^

Don't play any Gpotato MMOs, they're all serious money traps and therefore aren't fun to play. Every weekly update on those games adds either a) downgrading features or pointless ones that you would never want or b) more cash shop items that you will eventually have to buy (in-game or RL money) to not look or perform like an idiot.

Basically, the games suck.

imo awesome through a suck filter.

Albatross 18

act 3

There's lots of WoW private servers. You can run your own pretty easily. SWGEmu (Not technically an emulator but whatever version of PreCU SWG) is making progress if you're interested in that game.

^Illegal, and dumb.

Playing an MMO which supports thousands of players at a time with 20 people is booooooorrrrrinnggg.

Dumb? Yes. Illegal? No it goddamn isn't.

Its definatly against Blizzard's Terms of Agreement to play on private servers. Its a perma ban from Blizzard servers if they detect it (which they can because you have to modify some game files to make it work)

Yeah, but as much as corporations like to pretend otherwise, their word isn't law just yet.

I guess it really depends on your definition of what illegal means. When I see people use the term 'illegal' I tend to assume they're talking about something being criminal. Even with the definition of 'anything that is not expressly permitted under the law,' MMO server emulation isn't illegal.

There are basically four avenues of attack to block server emulation:

1.) The EULA. Courts almost never find in favor of a software company for EULA violations because they are not presented to the customer at point-of-sale (as a condition of sale). They also violate the first-sale doctrine. EULAs tend to be upheld more in the United States than anywhere else, which is to say almost never. Regardless, legally this would mean a breach of contract which is not criminal. The only policeman knocking on your door will be a process server.

2.) The DMCA. You could fairly easily argue that the protocols are intended as an access control mechanism, but it would be very difficult to argue this point because anybody, anywhere, can use the World of Warcraft software. Blizzard offers it for download on their site. The only access that's being controlled is to the server software, which is not available to anybody for reverse-engineering. The DMCA also has an interoperability exception that can be invoked in this kind of situation. Even if you do not have a defensible position against the DMCA, unless the violation of the DMCA is done for commercial gain it is not criminal and can only be settled with a civil suit.

3.) Copyright violation, intellectual property theft or patent violation. This is trickier. If the server or server project distributes any files to which they do not own the copyright, they're in violation. If the server provides accurate or semi-accurate reproductions of original server-side rules and content, it can be considered a derivative work. Copyright violation is not criminal.

4.) Trademark violation. Does the emulator use any marks? Does it use anything similar to a mark? Does it distribute data files that use any original characters or settings? Can it be confused with the original product? Trademark violation is not criminal.

Bnetd was shut down thanks to a creative combination of vectors 1, 2, 3, and 4, and a very gullible judge. Still, though, the developers didn't go to jail. Actually I don't think the developers suffered any penalties other than losing their trademark-violating domain name. They were even represented by the EFF.

Obtaining the files needed to run a server isn't exactly available for everyone without the MMO's company's consent. If anything, that would be more than criminal enough for it to be illegal.

....What are you talking about? What files, exactly, are needed to run a WoW server that are not original works? Did you even read my post where I explained in precise words that copyright violation is not criminal? Please go back and read it. Please.

Only if you are stupid enough to not backup your original files.

Oh I know that hehehe, I'm just saying you can get a ban.

How is the NWN2 community these days? I stopped playing a month after it came out because it seemed to have horribly bombed. Has that changed at all?

I've been wanting to get into modding again lately, but I can't figure out a game with a decent enough modding community. I'd love to mod Oblivion or the NWN franchise but both are probably dead by now.

Well I got NWN2 a couple of months ago, didn't try the online community but I did play the single player
Even patched to latest version it was buggy as hell, very annoying. Especially since the actual game and story seems much improved.
But when you get bugs that don't let you finish missions without putting in codes, or bugs that permanently destroys everyones gear, even on your backup saves... it's a bit much

The story was pretty fun. I hated the ending though.

Ragnarok Online.

Pretty solid MMO. Although the graphics are somewhat basic, and the characters are almost childish, its very addictive and very involved. There are many private servers, and some have very large communities.

Worth a good check out if your interested.


Otherwise, I'd say check out Sword of the New World. I really enjoyed that one. Beautiful graphics. Unfortunately I had to delete it because its a honking 4gb file, and I'm in dire need of a new HD.

Also, Priston Tale is F2P now if that interests you at all.

I found Rag Online to be one of the most boring mmo's out there, and theres some tough competition for that.

I assume that you would assume from my post that I was referring to the issue of reverse engineering software in order to understand how to properly emulate the server software. I highly doubt that whoever made the wow private server emulator reverse engineered the client software.