Aion, hands down. How they managed to assemble so many shitty, ancient game mechanisms and antiquated, unimaginative quests into one stinking package AND expect anyone to be stupid enough to sub to it, baffles and angers me. Until now, Hellgate: London was the most abysmal pile of crap ever released, but Aion is actually worse.
Mindless PvE grind, you would eventually run out of your grey brain cells. And this is not just at endgame, everywhere. Kill thousands of mobs to get a loot. How creative. Quests fill 10% of your XP bar between levels 40-50, kill thousands of mobs to level. Fun!
The PvP was fun for a while, then it turned to getting ganked or you-gank-in-turn type of play 99% of the time. Fortress sieges are even worse than the WAR castle sieges.
Overall, truly horrific experience indeed. And yes, community is so bad too..
didnt quite get what made ppl like Aion at any point....were only in the open beta but really how fun is it to go get quest....walk 1 meter to the left kill...go 1 meter back turn in. imo its free to play quality.
I bought two mmo games this year so sadly I must Fallen Earth, even if I enjoyed my 30 days of stay in sector 1 The other game is eve and Im quite sold and will hopefully have the same crush on the game that I had on wow years ago.
Edit; hopefully I will beable to try Darkfall online with a trial 2010. Cuse I will never ever in my life buy a game that has so much to say about its own greatness but dosent have the guts to let future customers "try before buy".
Fallen Earth was a nightmarish first experience for me... Just getting the installer to work was a major operation, I ended up having to find a torrented beta client and updating from there. From the time I bought the box until the game was fully installed? 3 days. Suuuuuuucked.
Champions was a let down too - I expected something more/better than City of Heroes... Ended up with pretty much exactly the same thing with a ever so slightly different flavor... It was like expecting dark rich chocolate, but getting a different jelly bean.
Champions Online for me. So disappointed at how basic adn drab the game was post the char creator. It was just dull.
Aion is slightly better for me as the game world was beautifully designed and some of the mechanics were well engineered even though it was a grind fest (but I knew that would be the case being it is a Korean based game).
CO just fails to have any decent lore or charm that makes coming back worthwhile.
Another year goes by and I am still coming back to the usual suspects of Eve,WOW, Lotro and EQ2.
I have played Star trek and that falls in the same camp as CO for me (but I am not a huge ST fan) but I am eagerly awaiting Star Wars as I have huge faith in Bioware, especially after the class act that is Dragons Age.
Aion. Husband and I both subbed, and subsequently unsubbed in disgust. The bots became a joke. And the anti-spam routine- log on, go over to mailbox, delete 5 spam mails, block 5 people, then you get to play. But you have to go around the player owned spam shops which block every major area, and the broker is full of massive amounts of bot item sales that you can't really compete with. Then there is just the extreme boredom factor. The first wave of it hit around level 25- as in, are you serious? I have to camp one group of group-only mobs for 5 levels because there aren't but a handful of quests? And people refuse to group? Oh, and those same mobs are camped by an endless wave of bots that run up and kill something the second it spawns? Then there's that small print thing where you find out you can only fly in specific zones and will plummet to your death if you stay up there longer than a few minutes.
Pretty game. Pretty doesn't keep a gamer subbed, though. Fun does.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."
Worst: Aion, being a Lineage2 player for 3 years I had high hopes, but the autotarget pve and gold farmers prevented me from playing for more than a week.
Undecided: MO. I knew I was taking a risk here but decided to contribute to a game that had a vision I agreed with. Not happy with the result so far, but willing to patiently wait another 6 - 12 months until it matures because:
Best: Darkfall: Has become my new UO and the only MMO I currently log into. Still misses 3 things I loved in UO, customisable housing, those Champion boss spawns and a way to group the skills you are actively levelling like the old UO "other" skills grouping. I can't go back to autotarget games now, never again.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76) Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Darkfall, because i think i spent less than 2 hours in game, dying, rezzing, dying, all whilst looking at the piss poor graphics.
Aion, i tried to like this game, just no. I mean the game was an absolute joke, non stop muumuu killing quests, LIKE FUCK I WANT TO KEEP KILLING THEM OVER AND OVER... Quests were very dry and boring, nothing to maintain my interest.
A game i did discover this year however was Wurm Online, which kicks the stuffing out of the former two mentioned. Its graphics are admittably, terrible, but its a game you -must- try to see the true polar opposite of most MMORPGs
now: GW2 (11 80s). Dark Souls 2. future: Mount&Blade 2 BannerLord. "Bro, do your even fractal?" Recommends: Guild Wars 2, Dark Souls, Mount&Blade: Warband, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Champions Online and AION has to share the "worth buy" medal. Are not bad games, but there are soo few game on then, that you sould not expect more than 1 month of fun.
Yet another year rolls by that fails to unseat 2004 as the last good MMO year =(
Aion, CO... not remembering what else came out this year that was worth looking at. I preferred CO but was left thinking it was a smal bite MMO, not something you can sit and play for hours.
Aion was just outright terrible... as an MMO. Feels a lot like GW without the storyline or mission structure. Being on rails, little to no POIs and harsh death penalty meant it was time to shelf it.
Even expansions this year were meh. LotRO:SOM came with the promise of soloable epic books but... not so much as I'm stuck in Book 11, no one around to group with and no hero mode available for the final chapter. The combat revamp was quite good though so again meh result.
Aion for me. I was hoping to play a game to tide me over until CATA came out and I thought Aion would fit the bill perfectly. Nothing worst than having a playboy model loaded with STDs.
Lackluster PvE (Especially the questlines that charged you with going into enemy territory)
Spamtastic chat system
Gold Farmer's paradise
Palette swap PvP gear
Redundant PvP objectives in the abyss
I got all the way up to 32 with my sorcerer before my sub ran out and didn't bother looking back. Hopefully this year I'll have better luck with a new MMO to throw in my rotation of betas, F2Ps and WoW.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Despite being in alpha and really seeing the design team miss the point, I was so desperate for Champions to come good i made the purchase......what a waste of potential.... and money.... and time =/
Fortunately I didnt repeat that mistake with Aion but it is equally unworthy of existence.
For me 2009 will go down as a year of zero imagination and minimal effort free year as far as mmo's go, we lost one of the more original titles in Matrix Online and only gained more generic excretia to fill the void....lets hope that SWToR, DCUO, APB don't lose their nerve and go for the bare minimum - surely there is some room for imagination and origniality in the genre...somewhere...hmmm?
Aion, quite easily. I played all the way to endgame, to find one 6 man PVE instance worth doing, and a PVPVE Instance that was the only sensible way to earn abyss points without losing them, but you might as well cut the PVP off that, its a 1 hour PVE race.....
Was expecting a reasonably PVP heavy game, instead got PVE with less PVP than most on the market today at endgame.
Champions Online im surprised gets so much hate, the community there is great, and as far as Roleplayers its the only game since Ryzom that i know to have such a strong and friendly RP community, i suppose if thats not your thing though your not going to be as impressed.
Comments
Aion, hands down. How they managed to assemble so many shitty, ancient game mechanisms and antiquated, unimaginative quests into one stinking package AND expect anyone to be stupid enough to sub to it, baffles and angers me. Until now, Hellgate: London was the most abysmal pile of crap ever released, but Aion is actually worse.
Aion, no doubt. It is so shallow. The only good point was fluent combat.
Aion by far. Agree with all posters above.
Mindless PvE grind, you would eventually run out of your grey brain cells. And this is not just at endgame, everywhere. Kill thousands of mobs to get a loot. How creative. Quests fill 10% of your XP bar between levels 40-50, kill thousands of mobs to level. Fun!
The PvP was fun for a while, then it turned to getting ganked or you-gank-in-turn type of play 99% of the time. Fortress sieges are even worse than the WAR castle sieges.
Overall, truly horrific experience indeed. And yes, community is so bad too..
didnt quite get what made ppl like Aion at any point....were only in the open beta but really how fun is it to go get quest....walk 1 meter to the left kill...go 1 meter back turn in. imo its free to play quality.
I bought two mmo games this year so sadly I must Fallen Earth, even if I enjoyed my 30 days of stay in sector 1
The other game is eve and Im quite sold and will hopefully have the same crush on the game that I had on wow years ago.
Edit; hopefully I will beable to try Darkfall online with a trial 2010. Cuse I will never ever in my life buy a game that has so much to say about its own greatness but dosent have the guts to let future customers "try before buy".
I7@4ghz, 5970@ 1 ghz/5ghz, water cooled||Former setups Byggblogg||Byggblogg 2|| Msi Wind u100
Bought only FE this year and I enjoy that one, so.... no "worst buy" for me.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Edit: 2008 snuck into my post. Apparently that MMO year was so bad that it sucked time and space in addition to being just plain awful.
Fallen Earth was a nightmarish first experience for me... Just getting the installer to work was a major operation, I ended up having to find a torrented beta client and updating from there. From the time I bought the box until the game was fully installed? 3 days. Suuuuuuucked.
Champions was a let down too - I expected something more/better than City of Heroes... Ended up with pretty much exactly the same thing with a ever so slightly different flavor... It was like expecting dark rich chocolate, but getting a different jelly bean.
Makes me wonder how Blizzard can pull off what they do.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I think the best answer is their zero tolerance philosophy.
And by that, I mean they don't tolerate anything that could loosely be described as "sub par".
Champions Online for me. So disappointed at how basic adn drab the game was post the char creator. It was just dull.
Aion is slightly better for me as the game world was beautifully designed and some of the mechanics were well engineered even though it was a grind fest (but I knew that would be the case being it is a Korean based game).
CO just fails to have any decent lore or charm that makes coming back worthwhile.
Another year goes by and I am still coming back to the usual suspects of Eve,WOW, Lotro and EQ2.
I have played Star trek and that falls in the same camp as CO for me (but I am not a huge ST fan) but I am eagerly awaiting Star Wars as I have huge faith in Bioware, especially after the class act that is Dragons Age.
To err is human....to play is divine
Aion. Husband and I both subbed, and subsequently unsubbed in disgust. The bots became a joke. And the anti-spam routine- log on, go over to mailbox, delete 5 spam mails, block 5 people, then you get to play. But you have to go around the player owned spam shops which block every major area, and the broker is full of massive amounts of bot item sales that you can't really compete with. Then there is just the extreme boredom factor. The first wave of it hit around level 25- as in, are you serious? I have to camp one group of group-only mobs for 5 levels because there aren't but a handful of quests? And people refuse to group? Oh, and those same mobs are camped by an endless wave of bots that run up and kill something the second it spawns? Then there's that small print thing where you find out you can only fly in specific zones and will plummet to your death if you stay up there longer than a few minutes.
Pretty game. Pretty doesn't keep a gamer subbed, though. Fun does.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."
Bought 3 games for the year.
Worst: Aion, being a Lineage2 player for 3 years I had high hopes, but the autotarget pve and gold farmers prevented me from playing for more than a week.
Undecided: MO. I knew I was taking a risk here but decided to contribute to a game that had a vision I agreed with. Not happy with the result so far, but willing to patiently wait another 6 - 12 months until it matures because:
Best: Darkfall: Has become my new UO and the only MMO I currently log into. Still misses 3 things I loved in UO, customisable housing, those Champion boss spawns and a way to group the skills you are actively levelling like the old UO "other" skills grouping. I can't go back to autotarget games now, never again.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
I knew all of them sucked so I didn't buy any, I learnt from my mistakes from the past unlike most people on this site.
Champions, sadly. Advancement and combat in that game were surprisingly shallow. Very disappointing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Aion and Champions online...
Anybody say Alganon yet?
Darkfall, because i think i spent less than 2 hours in game, dying, rezzing, dying, all whilst looking at the piss poor graphics.
Aion, i tried to like this game, just no. I mean the game was an absolute joke, non stop muumuu killing quests, LIKE FUCK I WANT TO KEEP KILLING THEM OVER AND OVER... Quests were very dry and boring, nothing to maintain my interest.
A game i did discover this year however was Wurm Online, which kicks the stuffing out of the former two mentioned. Its graphics are admittably, terrible, but its a game you -must- try to see the true polar opposite of most MMORPGs
no one is that nuts to say that bought alganon =p
now: GW2 (11 80s).
Dark Souls 2.
future: Mount&Blade 2 BannerLord.
"Bro, do your even fractal?"
Recommends: Guild Wars 2, Dark Souls, Mount&Blade: Warband, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Difficult one.
Champions Online and AION has to share the "worth buy" medal. Are not bad games, but there are soo few game on then, that you sould not expect more than 1 month of fun.
Yet another year rolls by that fails to unseat 2004 as the last good MMO year =(
Aion, CO... not remembering what else came out this year that was worth looking at. I preferred CO but was left thinking it was a smal bite MMO, not something you can sit and play for hours.
Aion was just outright terrible... as an MMO. Feels a lot like GW without the storyline or mission structure. Being on rails, little to no POIs and harsh death penalty meant it was time to shelf it.
Even expansions this year were meh. LotRO:SOM came with the promise of soloable epic books but... not so much as I'm stuck in Book 11, no one around to group with and no hero mode available for the final chapter. The combat revamp was quite good though so again meh result.
Worst 2008: Warhammer. lacked the PVE, and in my opinion if i were to play pvp , i play Unreal Tournament or something.
Worst 2009: Darkffall. by far most the shityest game ever. lack 100% PVE
Succeses this year.
Aion was a succes , im now lvl 37 , and i cant tell how good the game is , world bosses , instances and such.
Not so fun before lvl 30, so thats a bugger , you realy have to get past 30.
System Specc
Intel I7 4770K 3,5 ghz
16Gb RAM 1600 mhz
Nvidia GTX 780
Aion for me. I was hoping to play a game to tide me over until CATA came out and I thought Aion would fit the bill perfectly. Nothing worst than having a playboy model loaded with STDs.
I got all the way up to 32 with my sorcerer before my sub ran out and didn't bother looking back. Hopefully this year I'll have better luck with a new MMO to throw in my rotation of betas, F2Ps and WoW.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Despite being in alpha and really seeing the design team miss the point, I was so desperate for Champions to come good i made the purchase......what a waste of potential.... and money.... and time =/
Fortunately I didnt repeat that mistake with Aion but it is equally unworthy of existence.
For me 2009 will go down as a year of zero imagination and minimal effort free year as far as mmo's go, we lost one of the more original titles in Matrix Online and only gained more generic excretia to fill the void....lets hope that SWToR, DCUO, APB don't lose their nerve and go for the bare minimum - surely there is some room for imagination and origniality in the genre...somewhere...hmmm?
Aion, quite easily. I played all the way to endgame, to find one 6 man PVE instance worth doing, and a PVPVE Instance that was the only sensible way to earn abyss points without losing them, but you might as well cut the PVP off that, its a 1 hour PVE race.....
Was expecting a reasonably PVP heavy game, instead got PVE with less PVP than most on the market today at endgame.
Champions Online im surprised gets so much hate, the community there is great, and as far as Roleplayers its the only game since Ryzom that i know to have such a strong and friendly RP community, i suppose if thats not your thing though your not going to be as impressed.