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Which f2p game?
Veteran of many MMOs... most every major title since EQ. Spent the most time in WoW, but have unsubscribed (again). I simply don't have the time to devote to any game like I once did.
What I'm looking for now is a f2p MMO that I can play with my 9 year old son. We're playing on a pair of laptops that are a couple of years old, so nothing to system-intensive (most recent games we've played without issue were RIFT, SWTOR, and WoW:MOP). We're looking for something that we can play together, knowing that we'll seldom be the same level, so some sort of sidekick/apprentice system would be nice, but not necessary. It needs to be simple enough that he can click his hotbar buttons and DPS successfully, yet engaging enough that I can get into the min/maxing of my character. He like to DPS, I like to tank.
Also, I'm a bit of an obsessive completist... if I can get an achievement, an obscure profession recipe, a mount, whatever, then I will want to go get it. At the same time, I don't want to spend a crap-ton of cash in a cash shop to get stuff. I'll farm the free stuff and only drop cash on the "have-to"s.
We'll play an hour or so a night during the week and more --- like 4 to 5 hours --- on the weekends. We like to duo our way through as much content as we can and PUG the rest. We're not all that interested in raiding or PvP. We're especially looking to avoid world PvP.
Cosmetic stuff like character/clothing appearance, housing, etc. is a BIG plus.
We've tried SWTOR, RIFT, and LOTRO together and none of them have completely blown us away, but are willing to give any/all of them another chance if we felt there was something there to hook us that we simply missed at the lower levels when we gave those games a quick try. WoW was a good fit for us for a long time, but we're burned out and, like I said, not really wanting to drop a combined $30 a month on a game we're not playing all that much anymore.
Any and all suggestions are welcome!
Comments
Aion is totally F2P, but it does have some open world pvp (more towards end level). However end game is mostly pvp with some dungeons and quite grindy (Korean mmo). Heck you can always try it and if you don't like it you've spent nothing.
Age of Conan is now F2P...it's just a bit.... mature themed. probably not the best for 9 year old. it is an absolutely gorgeous game and the end game is all raiding and dungeons. the combat system is also quite unique.
damn i totally forgot Rift is now F2P.....yea that would be one of the best choices as far as a raiding game goes.
PS; nm, you've already tried Rift.
Yeah, we're all about the themepark at this point with him just learning the basics of MMOs. For us, it's quest hub to quest hub, with the ability to duo (or PUG) small dungeons together.
Honestly, we'd probably still be playing WoW ($30 a month and all) if there was some way for me to play when I have time and still be able to play together with him when we have time to play together. And I don't mean fast xp/skip content together. I mean letting me progress my character after he's in bed, but allow us to play together on the weekends in a way that challenges the both of us in spite of our disparate progression.
So, that in mind, maybe I should have placed more emphasis on the ability to sidekick or mentor/apprentice in whatever game we choose.
If its not free, it's damn cheap, I highly recommend Lord of the Rings Online - still one of the greatest PvE games around in my opinion.
I could not imagine the basic version cost much (I'm 99% certain its f2p). Game would be great parent/child game, especially for a 9 year old. Highly recommend it.
For what your looking I really, really, really think Lord of the Rings Online would be great.
We have LotRO installed on each of our machines right now. He's hot for all things "Hobbit" at this moment, but like any 9 year old, that'll change in a month or two (I'm looking at you, "The LEGO Movie").
We're not very far into it... maybe around level 10 or so. Is there a way to ensure that if one of us (me) really takes to the game and puts some time into it that the other person (him) doesn't get left behind? Any way to mentor/sidekick in LotRO? Any way to have a shared house later on? Is it going to break my wallet to get us some essentials (riding, bag space, quests) from the cash store later on?
Unfortunately I have not played in about a year, but have been really thinking of going back.
I recommend if you play significantly more than him, creating a different character for when you play alone.
You can have a shared house, where you put all the trophies you get, actually the housing aspect is pretty cool.
I can't remember if their is mentoring or not. I believe you can get a monthly membership for 5$ a month? Again, sorry if I'm wrong here, but I remember that 5$ coming with all the basics you need.
why don't you just make a character that you play only with your kid, and one that you play when he's not on?
that way you can make sure you always have a character his level, but you're not restricted to playing when is not online. Sure you'll have to redo content but you can be using a different class/character.
Another option is Guild Wars 2 - It might be more than you want to spend, but I know sometimes the game is on sale for 15-20$ and once you purchase it , it is truly F2P forever. I've gotten more than my money worth out of it - it has true mentoring.
Then of course you have those odd ball ones: Vanguard Saga of Heros - great game, but dead community F2P (I think)
Everquest 2
Everquest 1
Just throwing some ideas out there - honestly though, I don't think anything beats Lord of the Rings or Guild Wars 2.
As a DUO try vanguard. Vanguard stinks solo but the vast majority of the content can be done by a 2 man team.
One bad thing about most games is that there is solo content and group content, with nothing inbetween. TONS of 3 and 4 star mobs in vanguard which will be your bread and butter.
I play Forsaken World atm, by Perfect World International. You can find the website right on this site under games of course. It has a mentoring system, and different classes, races, crafting, fishing, pve or full pvp servers. I prefer the pve servers myself. You do get a mount as you progress and if you wish you can cash shop better ones, but you also have the chance to win mounts by gaining attendance certificates each day that will give you options for orbs that will give you prizes the biggest being a mount of some type, either land or flying.
There is no housing system though, but you can join a guild and the guild bases are pretty cool. They offer different things depending on how large or how hard your guild works at building its base. My guild base is the largest it can be and offers all sorts of things for guild merit points. You can upgrade your gear to kick butt in the instances/dungeons but of course there will be cash shoppers that can hit harder then you or have a cooler mount etc but to me that's all for show. You don't need to use the cash shop to play the game at all. There is an auction house and you have oppurtunities in the game to make gold that will buy those items. Regular game money is soul gold and that you get for quests etc.
The characters are medium as far as customization goes, meaning facial, skin, hair, and eye color. I hate games where there are only 3 faces per male or female, I need a little variety. The server I play on is Ilyflue and for the most part it's a good community of people. YOu can join groups for instances over world chat and making friends is fairly easy. You also get pets and can cook and make potions, it's basically alot like wow only free and has less cartoonish look to it. you can make up to 8 characters so as a few people already suggested i'd make one for your play time and one for you and your sons, then you can always quest together. For the most part if you are between 5-10 levels apart you can do everything together anyway. They keep it pretty much like that throughout the game.
I have an older computer and the game runs just fine for me, it's worth checking out the website and reading up on it anyway. Good luck in your gaming quest. I think it's great you are spending time with son as you game.
When we played WoW, we did the "I'll roll 2 characters... one to play by myself and one to play together with you".
It sucked.
I'll play a character, drop some gold for this, a little more for that. Before long, I've spent a healthy chunk of change on glyphs, riding skills, etc. That's just the gold cost. I'm a bit of a completist. If there's a reputation available to me, I want to cap it out. Same with things like profession recipes, etc.
So, I've spent time working on Warrior(Solo) in the evenings after the kids are in bed. Then comes the weekend. Now we play Warrior(Group) and Hunter(Group). We get to do all the same content again that I've already done on Warrior(Solo), but at least we're doing it together, so not too big a hassle. But neither (Group) character has all of those somewhat-essential quality of life things like glyphs and riding skills... stuff I've paid for on Warrior(Solo). And my son has no desire to cap out reputations or farm for drops. He wants to go from quest hub A to quest hub B.
Plus, I just want to roll one character, I hate having alts.
So, yeah, if there was as a good game that we could play together, him with his one character and me with my one character, that has some/most of the things we're looking for in a game AND lets us mentor/sidekick/whatever, then it would be worth the cash cost (subscription, cash shop, whatever) to us to get to play together.
Guild Wars 2 would work, as you are automatically leveled down to the zone that you are in. Lots of small group dungeons, exploring.
PvP is also a blast with two people, I play it with my brother all the time, although the learning curve will be somewhat hard depending on what class your son plays.
If you can get a good deal, once you get the game you will never need to spend another dime (unless of course they release an expansion down the road).
For whatever reason, we absolutely could not get into GW2. I don't know why. Was just very... unappealing. I have an account and we both dabbled with it, but neither one of us could get immersed in it.
That's another issue we had with RIFT. I liked the idea of mixing and matching skills from 3 different trees, but that's another gave devoid of atmosphere, at least for us. Just seemed very cardboard cut out. GW2 was the same for us.
Anyone know about EQ2? Haven't looked at that game in years. Do they still have some sort of mentoring system? Is housing still very "OK"? Last I remember of it, it felt "boxy", if that makes sense... not very smooth.
I've played EQ2 on and off throughout the years. The only major change the game has gone through is making it significantly easier to level. Other than that, it is what it is.
Pros: House system would be fun for a 9 year old.
tons and tons of PvE content (dungeons and raids)
lots of classes and races (again thinking from a 9 year olds perspective)
Low learning curve.
Another option would be the 101 games (Pirates101 or wizards101) which are aimed at younger crowds but can be pretty fun to play. They have housing and a lot of mini-games, including PvP.
I played Wizards101 with my younger brother and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had.
Guild Wars 2 is for you, you have to buy the game but there is no sub. Its the best choice to play with friends/family as the personal progression does not effect the grouping. You can go WvWvW from level 1 and you can run dungeons together from 30lvl+ even when you are not at the same level.
Other than that its a beautiful game.
After sleeping on it, here's what I'm looking for, in terms of priority:
1. Has to be able to run on our laptops. Final Fantasy: AAR ran fine on one of them, but not at all on the other. Not like "oh, that's a bit choppy"... like "oh, that doesn't even load up". Just don't have the processor speed or dedicated video card RAM. RIFT, SWTOR, LOTRO, WOW:MOP all run fine on both.
2. Have to be able to play together. This is the key. This is why we play games. This is our "let's go toss around the ol' pigskin" activity. At the same time, I want to be able to play and progress my one character when my son is offline without diminishing my ability to play with him when he is back online. Out of the suggestions, it seems that GW2 and EQ2 are the best options for allowing us to play separate and to play together.
3. Cost of entry. We own 2 fully-upgraded WoW accounts. We have 1 copy of FF:AAR and 1 copy of GW2. I have "you bought the box and used to subscribe" status for LOTRO (plus Moria expansion), EQ2 (no expansions), and SWTOR (no expansions). He has only f2p account status on these 3 games. We both have only f2p account status with RIFT.
We'll buy a box, pay a subscription, and/or make purchases from the cash shop if the game meets #1 & #2 above and has a good amount of the following, less-priority features, but I don't want to break the bank doing so. This isn't going to be second Christmas.
4. Simple enough for him to button-mash to kill stuff, but complex enough that I can enjoy the game and all of the dynamics, decisions, and minutiae that we MMO players like to fuss over.
5. Fun customization features. Things like cosmetic clothing, housing, etc. that give players something to do besides just kill and craft.
Thanks for all your suggestions so far. I really feel like I'm getting good feedback and hopefully we can be up and running with a game this weekend.
I'd suggest LotRO, mostly because post-HD it became perfect for your point 4.
1. you said too, it can run decently on laptops.
2. that's a bit tricky, you can play together almost all the time (except the class quests), but it needs some work and planning to do... (reflecting pool for the instanced quests, simply re-doing quests in the open a second time if you progressed far ahead, etc.)
3. One-month sub is a cheap way to make his account a "former vip" one like yours. There's a vip trial at the moment, so you can do it for free even. Later, if the game seems good enough, there are the expansions to purchase, sometimes with good sales and price drops.
4. with HD the game is a great match for button mashing and easy kills
and the group content still holds some challenge for you to fuss over.
5. cosmetic option is huge, housing is only average but a revamp is coming Soon(tm) - it was planned in 2013 but got delayed for early 2014. And there are many player events, rp and music.
Have you tried Star Trek Online?
Has a fairly decent free to play system, the ground and space combat are fairly simple, but can become complex and min maxed for advanced players. There is a mentoring/downleveling system if you right click your party member's portrait.
I play this with my brother because I get way ahead of him, but we can still play together. It also runs in episodes, so there's a kind of yardstick for our game time, we might log in and do a chain of a few episodes in his mission log.
Very playable on a laptop with scalable graphics options.
We also play GW2, the level scaling is great for our playtime disparity, but you mentioned you didn't enjoy that much.
I think if SWOTOR had a mentoring system it would be the winner, since it's very DUO friendly, with companions you can duo a lot of the instances and heroic quests, but you really do have to stay at the same spot
Yeah, we're tooling around with LotRO right now (while EQ2 downloads... trying a few options here). I've not looked at the SOE cash shop yet, but with LotRO, I open the store and see all the stuff to purchase and the prices and get a little gun-shy. If it had a mentoring sytstem, I agree that it would be near-perfect for what we're thinking. But, knowing that it doesn't, it's kind of like "why nickel and dime on two accounts to play this and be in the same boat we were in with WoW when we already own 2 fully-upgraded WoW accounts?", you know?
The only thing you really need to buy are the expansions, the other stuff can be ignored, but I see your point.
LotRO's advantage over wow is the world / lore and the community. (and the cool classes and their trait system... oh, wait. Those were Turbined with the launch of HD.
)
The expansions would be 80 bucks for the two accounts, without HD. It maybe is a bit high for just the lore... but you can play it for free smoothly until the end of Lone Lands, that's about a week. During that you can download other games for testing
edit: and while you're at it, since you've mentioned in point 5. the cosmetic clothing: you can get 1 free cosmetics per account this week with the coupon FINE7. Logically it's wise to pick a store-exclusive one, which you can't get from the game otherwise
a (not complete) list of those ones: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/LOTRO_Store_Cosmetics#Store_Exclusive
So far, my son ranks the games we've tried as:
1. LotRO
2. WoW
3. SWTOR
4. RIFT
5. EQ2
So, it looks like we're going to exhaust the f2p content on LotRO, then see where we are. Thanks for the coupon code above. Anything like that will help get us going in our new MMO home. I'm sure there have been posts made here and elsewhere, but does anyone know or have a link to the cash shop "must haves"? Expansions, obviously. Certain quest packs? Mount speed? Bag slots? Virtue unlocks? Like with WoW, I'm probably going to have to roll a Solo character and a Duo character, so what is account bound and what is single character (and when does it pay to buy something account-wide for 2 characters vs. just buying it for a single character twice --- like riding speed)?
I'm going to have to sit down and see how much I'm going to have to spend between the 2 accounts and how long we're going to have to play LotRO for it to be more cost effective than just loading up and subscribing to our two WoW accounts (since the whole "not leaving him behind" issue is the same in both games)... also considering there is a new WoW expansion on the horizon.
Ugh. My head hurts. I don't feel like playing anything now.
LotRO's f2p model favoring the former vip's heavily. The f2p restrictions are two-fold, character and world restrictions.
At the moment you're on premium account as a former vip, who's not paying currently. Every character of yours which was vip (which existed during the vip period) will be vip forever. So your characters are fine in the matter of virtue and trait slots, all of those are unlocked. Same with the 5 bags. (there's a 6th bag option since Rohan, if you need a bit more space). Also unlocked the swift travel, the gold cap and the AH. (here's the wiki about the account types http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Account_Types)
If you have the Moria box, then you have 5 character slots. If you create a new character, it will be only a premium one, with the premium restrictions (5 gold limit, 3 bags, no swift travel, locked trait slots, etc.). With going vip for 1 month again, these newly created characters will be vips forever as well. Same goes to your other f2p account, if you subscribe for 1 month, the characters on that account will be unlocked for good.
I think the vip trial is valid until tomorrow, so until then you can do that vip-premium method for free. (as in signing up for a subscription with the trial, and then cancel. Then technically you'll be a former vip on that account as well
Sapience confirmed it too: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?534651-14-Days-of-Free-VIP-Limited-Time&p=7035034#post7035034) That way you can unlock the trait slots and bags and gold limit etc. on the son's f2p account for free.
And then there are the world restrictions. Those are account-wide, so buying it once those will be unlocked for every character on every server. Character slots, extra classes (warden, rk, and the creep classes for PvMP), shared storage and wardrobe, barter wallet, 6th bag... Also the content: expansions, quest packs, skirmishes.
Among these the "must have" ones are only the expansions - purchase them only if you reach there, or earlier if it's on a good sale. Quest packs are nice to have, but usually folks timing the 1month vip after Lone Lands, and leveling to 50 during that time while every quest pack is open
If you want to purchase some, the cheapest route is Evendim + Angmar, those 2 packs are more than enough to get from 30 to 50.
Mount speed is a new thing, only convenience and I think it's pretty much pointless. +62% and +68% steeds were good for 5 years, I definitely won't pay for a mount speed boost
Awesome. Exactly what I needed to know. Thanks, po_gg.
So, go VIP for a month. Make the character(s) we want to play. Play them up as much as we can in that month. Once that month is over and we are Premium, then buy content as we need it. So, let's assume we get from level 1 to level 2 during our VIP month (I know, but go with me on this), then what would you buy and when?