A list of all the MMO's I've played (or watched enough of to form an opinion).
This list is a work in progress as I add my own impressions of each game.
By the way, I hate the fact that I can't format the text in the comments for each game.
Showing 1-10 of 45 items
I still don't consider this an MMO but some people do... so... Personally, I was never a Battlenet person. If I played this online with others, it was over TCP/IP. I didn't play it for a competitive mode or to be the most epicest badass out there. I played to have fun. The Diablo games are considered the ultimate dungeon crawl these days. But the parts about it that people, including myself, enjoyed the most were the randomly generated loot and the randomly generated dungeons. No playthroughs of the game would ever look exactly alike. Most levels, other than certain boss levels, changed every time you played through the game. The loot was also randomized. Sure, there were some specific "named" uniques. But otherwise, loot was often made up of specific prefixes and suffixes that would describe attributes of the item, and these prefixes and suffixes were randomly mixed with the item itself. But there's just no way the Diablo games can be called MMOs. You don't play online with a MASSIVE amount of other people, even if you're playing through Battlenet. Not to mention that the game was made as a single player game with multiplayer capability. It was not made as an ONLINE game. I love my Diablos, but I always shake my head when people call them MMOs.
*1999, Release* Boy... I started playing Ultima Online in 1998 or 1999. I only played it for a year or so I think, if even that. As someone who came from playing MUDs, UO was like suddenly playing a MUD with graphics. One of the things that bothered me about this game, ever since the beginning, was the floating chat. There weren't chat boxes (back then, at least) like most MMOs have now. All chat floated above the character on the screen. Another thing that came to bother me as soon as EQ and other games came out, was the two-dimensional aspect of UO. Sure, it was fun. But once 3d MMOs started coming out, UO just seemed terribly dated. Another relic of the last decade/century. That being said, one of the things that was good about UO was the skill system. You skilled up in something as you used that particular ability. Boy do I remember casting the same spell over and over and over. There was no particular class system, that I recall. You skilled up particular skills to create your character to be of the type of class you were looking for. Some people still prefer this level of open-class system. One of the interesting things about UO, also, was that one of the first expansions for the game had split the world into 2 alternate universes basically. One was PvE and the other was PvP. I always thought this was an interesting way of addressing both crowds without the need for different servers. UO was also cool because you could "own land" which was player housing. You could build your house as you pleased, put in it what you pleased. It was all a lot of fun. Unfortunately, because after all these years, UO has tried to stay true to its roots, I just have never been able to go back. Once I went to 3d MMOs, UO lost its magic for me. That, and I think I preferred the class system - that way in groups, everyone basically knew what their role was. UO is long past its prime, but it's still kicking after over ten years. Congratulations, UO.
*2000, Release* Ahh EQ, although I may have told UO he could have it, it was you who truly popped my MMO cherry. EQ led the way for every MMO that came after it. People always compare everything to WoW, but truly, EQ was where WoW got everything from in the first place. The main difference was simply timing. Gaming, in general has become more mainstream now than it was when EQ came out back in the late 90s. EQ was a TOUGH game. Getting a group to quest or grind entailed at least half an hour of getting to where you needed to be, finding a group, having everyone else get there, buffing, getting mana again, and then getting started. When you died, you had to RETRIEVE your corpse, and all the belongings you had on it. And that meant hoping you could either make it back to your corpse, or that some SK would summon your corpse for you so you didn't have to try to get it from under that dragon's claw. Dying in EQ was a much bigger deal that it is in games at all anymore today. Then there were the Epics. Epics in EQ didn't mean what you raided every day for. Epics were something you planned for six months before you even got the chance to do it. Each class had their "epic weapon." As a cleric, we affectionately called ours, noodle. Don't ask. The real name was something like the Ankh of Water Sprinkling or something. Just know that it had a clicky rez on it, which was awesome for raiding. I swear the prequests took forever as it was for our noodle. Then you got to the meaty quests. Where you stood in line with other cleric who were each waiting on a 3 day spawn timer for a dragon who had an item. That probably took another month, depending on how long the line on a server was. And that's just one of the bottleneck parts, though for quite some time, that was the biggest bottleneck. And here priests in WoW complain about 15 minute spawn timers for the Benediction quest. Although EQ may be looked at as a relic by many now, it still remains, to me at least, the forefather of this genre. I realize there were others, but EQ is the one that many others modeled themselves after.
With the expansion of Kunark came something that MMO players began to learn... some may say to a detriment. With Kunark, Karnor's Castle, and the area outside it in the Dreadlands, came what I fondly recall as chain-pulling. What's interesting about this, and how I recall it, is that I wasn't even a puller. Or a DPSer. I was the healer. And I had to make sure to have mana for what we started to call chain-pulling. What was this new thing we'd come up with? Before one mob was dead, our puller was off grabbing the next mob for the tank. It was nonstop until someone yelled for a break. As a healer my job was to sit and look at my book. That was how you regained mana in EQ - you "meditated," which meant you sat down with your spellbook open, taking up your entire screen so you couldn't see what was going on. They later fixed it so that your spellbook no longer took up your entire screen. Ahh the macros from those days... /stand, /cast Heal, /wait 5, /sit Sure, there are other things about Kunark, but Dreadlands chainpulling, and Karnors trains are some of the best memories.
Velious was yet another EQ expansion. Added a couple more factions, and quests, etc. More dragons. Better gear. What I loved about Velious though was the landscape. I've always been a sucker for snowy lands. Velious was beautiful. And it was a damn lot of fun.
Luclin is the moon of the Everquest world. Somehow we figured out how to get there, and learned that cat people live on the moon! /rolleyes. I wasn't terribly impressed with this expansion. However, Luclin did have a couple of great additions to the game - it was a complete graphics overhaul, it added another form of instant travel in the form of the Nexus, and added the Bazaar. Now for each of these - the graphics overhaul was MUCH needed. It was akin to Goldeneye 007 on the N64 verses the new Goldeneye 007 on the Wii. Back in 2001 we were blown away by the new beauty of 3d-ness. The Nexus allowed travellers to instantly teleport to/from Luclin from various places on Norrath (the original world). Previously, any instant travel was limited to being good friends with or paying a druid or wizard. Finally, the Bazaar was a step towards today's Auction House of WoW. The Bazaar allowed people to set up their toons as shop keepers overnight or something, set prices on various goods they wanted to sell, and sell those goods. Alternatively, you could look for something you wanted to buy by checking all these people, rather than sitting in E. Commons, shouting "WTB: FBSS" every five minutes. I should probably mention that Alternate Advancement skills were added in this expansion. While leveling, you could choose to divert some of your experience, or if max level, all your experience, would go towards gaining Alternate Advancement points which you could then spend as you pleased. There was a general tree that everyone got, an archetype tree, and a class tree. Unfortunately, I think AA's just became another "I'm better than you" statistic. They were (and still are, I suppose) kind of like the Gearscore of today.
Planes of Power was a great expansion to follow up Shadows of Luclin. One of the absolute best things about this expansion was Plane of Knowledge and the PoK books. Plane of Knowledge was a central zone with portals to nearly every zone of the old world. It could be equated to Dalaran in its WotLK days. In addition to being able to instantly transport players to most zones, it also had two banks, trainers of every class and crafting profession, a direct zone to the Bazaar, and all in all became THE place to be. The "PoK books" were small pedestals with books on them. At least one could be found in most zones, and these would instantly transport the player to the Plane of Knowledge.
*2001 Beta and Release versions* When it came time to take a break from EQ, my new MMO of choice was DAoC. This game was very EQ-ish, and yet not. It took place, obviously, in the mythical world of Camelot. There was indeed a Round Table and everything. The game DID have a few things that EQ didn't. Like creating armor and weapons... and even better yet, creating armor and weapons that were comparable to or better than the stuff you looted, thereby creating viable tradeskills and a player-driven economy. DAoC also had mounts a LONG time before EQ finally implemented them. Another thing I remember in a good light was that as a healer, I could get experience just by running by and healing someone who needed it - I didn't have to be grouped with them! Unfortunately, DAoC's population couldn't compare with that of EQ. DAoC did bring something with it that caught on with many of the big name MMOs that came after. It was the first game to make you choose a faction, and make you stick with that faction on that server once you chose it. DAoC was also the first game to really introduce RvR (Realm vs. Realm) combat which was basically faction verses faction, as opposed to PvP. I remember now that I did go back to DAoC sometime later... perhaps in 2007 or 2008, and it seemed that the game had become more RvR based than PvE as it had previously been. DAoC is also one of the few games that has done three different factions, and has done just fine with it. People seem to believe that three factions simply couldn't work, but one need only look at DAoC and the few others to see otherwise.
Anarchy Online had arguably one of the worst MMO launches ever. The release was incredibly buggy. Crashes all the time, lag, broken quests, you name it. I hadn't tried the launch version of the game myself, but I heard nothing but bad about it. Then a year or two later my husband decided to try it out. I was still kind of against it because I had heard so much bad, but after watching him play a bit, I could tell lots of work had been done. I started up my own account, and sure enough, the game had improved immensely, even by Funcom's own reports. AO was the first game to really implement instanced dungeons. When you went into a dungeon, it was just you and your group. No one else to fight with for mobs or loot. This put the game lightyears ahead of EQ in that regard. Another great thing was how much the GMs were actually involved in the game. They didn't just show up to answer people's questions. They took part in live events that they even coordinated with players sometimes, and these events would be tied into the lore of the game. Anarchy Online is also one of the few games that has done three different factions, and has done just fine with it. People seem to believe that three factions simply couldn't work, but one need only look at Anarchy Online (and DAoC) to see otherwise.
*Beta and Release* I enjoyed the heck out of Planetside. This was probably the first real MMOFPS, though many people don't know about it or have never tried it. I didn't expect I'd be that into it, but it truly was a blast. One of the things about this game is that we didn't have "maps" we were trying to win. We didn't have battlegrounds, or instanced pvp of that sort. It was all world pvp, and it was great. I often went medical or cloaking in this. Medical satisfied the priest/cleric side of me, but Cloaker allowed me to sneak in and cap something, or get behind their lines and take them out from behind. One of the good things about this game also was that it was a three-faction game. Sure, you can still have a dominant faction, but it always changed. Also, there were bonuses for the underdog factions. For anyone considering trying this game, I'll be fully honest - I don't recall a single bit of PvE in this game, so if you're looking for any, you'll get disappointed. However, this may appeal to the CoD players of today.