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Group Based MMORPG
iplay4fun87
Member Posts: 6
in LFGame
Are there any group based MMORPGs out there? I miss the days of classic Everquest when you had to group to actually be able to accomplish stuff. I played WoW to lvl 71 and it was mostly solo and boring as hell. I miss the community and group work that Everquest had.
Comments
I hate to say it but I think those days are gone forever.
However, Wizard 101 is a game where people actually group. If you are in a fight usually someone will join in and help you.
It may or may not be what you like, chat is restricted and there are no guilds as such. Give it a shot.
Three come to mind that are still going strong. City of Heroes, Age of Conan, and Lord of the Rings Online.
I can comment in detail about two. I have not played LotRO extensively myself, have only see a friend play it. I don't like the style or lore, but those are really subjective on my part. You may want to look into that as it seems grouping is very common in that game.
City of Heroes. You don't HAVE to group like in EQ, but it is frequently done. First thing to understand is that though CoX is class based, but there is so much variety in how you combine the primary, secondary, pool, and epic power sets that you will never see two people with the same abilities. Some do things better like crowd control, damage, tanking, single target, AoE, but there is a lot of variation even within a class. So many toons can be made to solo ridiculously well. However, in many ways grouping gets the average character more XP and drops per minute than soloing, so most people do it almost all the time.
Age of Conan. At release it was terrible to find a group. There are fewer servers now and people run together a lot. There is a 'hard mode' that is mainly done in groups and there are a lot of elite bosses that you can almost always get a group together for.
One thing that makes both of these games good for grouping is that you can mentor lower level players so that you can run with your higher level bud, and still be helpful. CoH even lets you level yourself down.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Any MMO released before WoW. FFXI has the most amount of people playing from them.
Lord of the Rings Online is healthy, but it's not much of a grouping game. I have a lifetime subscription to it, I like it, but the only real grouping occurs at the level cap. Prior to that, it's mostly people doing their own thing unless you're in a large kinship of social players.
The problem is primarily due to the quest chains; quests all have about 5 or more steps to them, there are thouasands of quests, but if people aren't on exactly the same step of exactly the same quest, they don't get the completion experience or quest items. Since the vast majority of experience in the game comes from quest completions....you can pretty much do the math. Additionally, there's a relatively light population in the lower levels (the game is very top-heavy), and it's a very solo-friendly game (every class solos just about everything very well). The epic stories used to require groups, but that was recently changed.
City of Heroes, as mentioned, is very team-oriented, but the game has some population issues. If you play during peak hours, I do think it would be your best choice, but if you play during off-peak hours, you'll probably solo the majority of the time. (I'm currently subscribed to the game, and I like it a lot, but even on Virtue and Freedom, it's almost impossible to find a team in the late evening or early morning, let alone the middle of the night).
Final Fantasy XI has also been mentioned in this thread, and that's also a very strong option. I didn't really like the game-play, myself, but it's every bit as team-oriented as City of Heroes, if not more so. I'm not sure what its population is like these days (definitely something to investigate before downloading anything), but it's been the flag-bearer for grouping MMOs for years now.
I believe DDO does encourage grouping (except for the early levels). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
FFXI - easily the most group oriented and highest pop game out of your choices.
EQ2 - less populated but just as much group oriented. You will have problems finding groups at low-mid levels.
Both of these have some sort of system by which high level people can 'mentor' their char down to your level, to make groups easier to find.
My experience in both pre-F2P DDO, as well as the new version, is that the lower levels have the most available chances to group. People are farming the easy favor from the instances set on hard, and all the new people of the game come through these places first. Once you hit the marketplace around lvl 5 is when it gets really hard to find a group. Dunno what it's like past that, but even back in the day it was easier to find groups at level 10 than it was in mid-game.
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A lot of laughable comments here;
I will comment about 2 different issues;
1: LOTRO is way more 'soloable' than WoW is and ever have been. Theres NOONE around to group with when you level, and no good tools to make groups either.
2. World of Warcraft: OP has obviously no clue whatsoever about WoW as it has an excellent tool to make group to explore the group content. Of all games I have played, WoW has definately most to offer when I want to group of all games I have played.
Open your eyes before you post comments like this in this thread, as they are as far from truth as they can be.
Make us care MORE about our faction & world pvp!
To be fair the new LFG tool in WoW is very new, but you are correct.
The last alt I was leveling before I quit the game was leveling purely through LFG no solo quests whatsoever and was 73 or 74 in a very short time frame.
Right after the introduction of the LFG tool, the whole leveling experience chanfges. Now grouping is the prefer way to go because it is FASTER, and also get your better items.
I did my pally from 70 to 80 purely in groups (right after the introduction of LFG) and it was great.
It is good to hear that Blizzard fixed the lfg system in WoW. It was one of the worst I have seen.
What did WoW do to fix the Horde lfg experience? When I played WoW, only one third of the server was Horde and most zones were empty of Horde players with the exception of The Barrens. I found it easier to find groups in LoTRO, because at least you could group with all player races and not limited to one faction group (Horde) like WoW.