Most immersive MMO

Lord.Bachus

i am talking old fashioned character immersion, where the game world pulls you in with its lore and stories, and where you feel one with your character. Where you shiver as your character encounters dangers and where you cheer and feel proud as your character archieves soemthing....


what is your favourite MMO when it comes to character immersion?

Yanocchi

Neverwinter Nights offers immersive experiences on servers with good developers and dungeon masters. Face of Mankind was immersive too because goals and objectives of different factions supported role-playing and immersion. 

josko9

ESO wins this hands down, probably ahead of SWTOR and TSW, which are already way ahead of all other MMOs, as far as Immersion goes.

Cecropia

For me it was the original Darkfall without a doubt; I'd get so into it my hands would sweat all over my mouse and keyboard. I've never felt so immersed in any other game. 

Margrave

EQ1, DAoC, and EnB

Kilrain

Why do people not place reference links when commenting on a question like this?

sludgebeard

SWG. Killing Dewback's on Tatooine with a group of 10 people equipped with only CDEF pistols.

Slapshot1188

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Kyleran

EVE, as I feel I really am part of a space mining and manufacturing corp located in hostile space.

Cyrael

For traditional immersion, I find The Secret World to be fanastic. The atmosphere and setting are simply fantastic, and the fantastic voicework helps as well. The great writing pulls you in, and KG is one of the most memorable characters I've ever encountered in an MMORPG.

Eve Online is very immersive, but in a much different way. In Eve, the boundary between the game and RL are heavily blurred. The 'This is Eve' trailer is a fantastic example - these aren't people roleplaying, this is just normal gameplay with people on comms.

Phry

Kyleran said:

EVE, as I feel I really am part of a space mining and manufacturing corp located in hostile space.

Funny thing about mining, be too successful with the corps mining ops regularly cleaning out the belts in a system, and other miners might contract mercs to wardec you..  not sure about immersive, but, often, Eve is real.

madazz

Yanocchi said:

Neverwinter Nights offers immersive experiences on servers with good developers and dungeon masters. Face of Mankind was immersive too because goals and objectives of different factions supported role-playing and immersion. 

Um... Immersive MMO's.....

Thebeasttt

Immersion has been de-emphasized for the past decade. None of them are particularly good at it these days. Try p1999 if graphics are a non issue.

Braindome

madazz said:

Yanocchi said:

Neverwinter Nights offers immersive experiences on servers with good developers and dungeon masters. Face of Mankind was immersive too because goals and objectives of different factions supported role-playing and immersion. 

Um... Immersive MMO's.....

Which part did he get wrong? It's immersive, it's multiplayer, it's online and on some servers it can be quite massive. Some of the best and most immersive experiences i've ever had in any online role-playing game have been in Neverwinter Nights and FAR outweigh any mainstream MMORPG's. Personally I feel it qualifies, but that's just my opinion.

Yanocchi

Exactly what Braindome said, every single word!

Dungeons & Dragons Online, ESO, Neverwinter and some other similar games are considered MMOs, but in those games you can enter dungeons only in groups of 4-6 players. In Neverwinter Nights I remember going to some adventures, dungeons and DM events in groups with as many as 18 players.

Distopia

SWG then, ESO now..

cameltosis

From the way you've described immersion, I don't think I've ever felt it in an MMO. I also think its very rare that I've ever been immersed in a game full stop. I just don't think that computer games are a good medium for telling stories, not in comparison to books or films, and so I rarely get sucked into them, feel anything about the storyline or the characters. 


However, I think computer games are a great medium for creating your own stories, and I often feel "proud" for achieving things myself in games, or get sucked into games because of what I've been doing. For example, when I encounter a boss in a game, I dont think "Oh my, he's a bad person who's terrorised the villagers, he probably wants to hurt me, I wonder if I'll die?", i.e. I don't get immersed in the story. Instead, I'll enjoy the aesthetics, relish the challenge, celebrate the successes and enjoy the rewards in a way that is completely detached from the story. 

Yanocchi

Here is a list of things that make Neverwinter Nights an MMO on some servers:

* server is online 24/7
* some servers have been online for 5-10 years
* characters are stored on game servers for many years 
* presence of typical fantasy MMORPG grind and quests
* typical fantasy MMORPG auction house for trade between players
* crafting
* housing
* PvP and no-PvP zones
* patcher that downloads latest patches, updates and game content for the game server
* customer support from server admins, developers, game masters, dungeon masters

The only difference is that servers can sustain only up to a few hundred players online at the same time instead of thousands like in some mainstream modern MMORPGs. The typical player limit is 30-75 per server. On the other hand, there have been some MMORPGs with 100-200 player limit per server in the past (Tibia, Dransik, Ashen Empires).

Some NWN servers have much larger communities, though. For example, the forum of Baldur's Gate server for NWN 2 has over 8000 total registered members.



All of the characters you can see in the bottom screenshot are player characters.

Jaedor

Vanilla WoW. Great story.

CIB3

The most immersive online games played by me are Fallen Earth, Firefall and Eve Online.

stio89

Completely subjective like everyone else's answer but for me It would be something more realistic than fantasy and preferably with first person view like mortal online or gloria victus, If we are talking about any multiplayer game then Chivalry hands down until you hear the voice emotes of course xD.

CalmOceans

I thought Vanguard was very immersive. Maybe it was the wide open spaces, the towns hidden away in the forest, the music and viewing distance, it was very immersive to me.

Quirhid

MMORPGs don't do this for me. Single player RPGs and P&P RPGs like D&D I can feel immersed in the way OP describes.

Theodwulf

 Star Wars Galaxies, my character had his own unique  story. He started working a crappy job making engineered goods on Corellia. Then got involved with organized safaris on Dantooine. Struggle with gambling until he had back to back 1 million credit wins, then never gambled again. Then he bought a space ship and attacked pirates for bounties and salvage. Then he got tied up with a bunch of demanding weirdos on Dathomir. Then he started to do space mining. Then the world changed.

  For such a deeply flawed game, SWG had plenty of things to do, it had great music that was well executed and a player could affect the environment, from placing houses and harvesters to having your name on everything you crafted.

elocke

FFXI for me.  SWG was good for immersion too.  It really has to do with how the world is built and how we can interact with it though.  Which is why I have a hard time understanding the comments about Neverwinter as that's all very instanced and closed off zones and very actiony.  It feels too much like a game instead of a world.  Finding a lot of bad MMORPGs, to me, have that aspect.

TroubleHunter

-Tibia
-Runescape 
-Ragnarok

That feeling you need to explore the new maps carefully or something bad can happen to your beloved hero... and that happiness for getting a new sword or helmet... knowing it will really improve your adventures.