What Has Been Your Best MMO Experience In 2023? | MMORPG.com

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What Has Been Your Best MMO Experience In 2023? | MMORPG.com

As 2023 comes to a close next week, we're looking back on the year that was in MMOs. There have been a ton of good releases, but what about moments and experiences?

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koldmiser

I went back to New World in October and have been having a blast with it. It has been a while since I had played and I've really enjoyed the changes they've made.

Sovrath

Sadly I didn’t have any mmorpg experiences in 2023.

Quizzical

Uncharted Waters Origin, which you probably haven't played, so you still have the chance to enjoy it fresh, rather than taking another go at a game that you're already sick of.

Tiller

MMORPG.com, because the forum PvP here is awesome. 

vonryan123

Can't name one either. Last 2-3 mmos I played are either dead and gone or should be. I hope we get something decent in the next few years I don't have enough rpgs to last much longer.

ValdemarJ

New World by a margin. Great combat and one of the few MMRPGs where melee and hybrids really shine. The world is dense with beautiful visuals and an amazing soundscape. I grouped more in New World than I had in years, except for maybe FO76. Great value for the money too.

Hengist

Went back to ESO here at the end of year, and once again, really enjoying it. After years of "not clicking" it went right for me a year and a half ago, and after taking off the first half the year, found myself back and enjoying it all over again.


Couldn't find any interest in going back to anything else, and honestly, I think I'll take my enjoyment out of ESO for now, and await Stalker 2, and maybe some of the other either new, or survival style games coming in 2024.

It's been an awful long dry spell, and the genre needs some new blood, and some different choices.

ancn

Being murdered by a tyrannical chicken menace in the Pantheon alpha.

DeskMonkey13

Not sure entirely. But I just like the content and vibes from ONCE HUMAN. However, and this is an important point, I fear they are gonna go like Lost Ark with their intentions.

Daily limits to things you can do (energy type stuffs) and/or PUGs required with nothign que-able.

PUGs for endgame is eventually what failed Lost Ark. Eventually people get tired of each other's drama and all the chat and issues involved with getting a proper PUG setup.

I could be wrong as I obviously don't know any of their behind-the-scenes but everything in my mind points to them trying to be a Lost Ark and just doing all their issues again.

DeskMonkey13

On the flipside, my best mmo experience I think was in F076 where somehow miraculously 8 of our CAMPs were side by side in the far south part of the map, the SMOKEH region. South and SE of that one huge mine WS.

I don't know it made me smile to have some sorta neighbors in the MMO and we all miraculously didn't cause a map-skip in order to spawn. Was kinda cool happened early last week.

kitarad

I cannot call it an MMORPG as I have been playing MMORPGs alone as of late. So been having fun but not with other people. Irony thy name is MMORPG.

DeskMonkey13

DeskMonkey13 said:

On the flipside, my best mmo experience I think was in F076 where somehow miraculously 8 of our CAMPs were side by side in the far south part of the map, the SMOKEH region. South and SE of that one huge mine WS.



I don't know it made me smile to have some sorta neighbors in the MMO and we all miraculously didn't cause a map-skip in order to spawn. Was kinda cool happened early last week.

I've half wanted to say this for a long time but I wasn't completely sure how to say this until just now (because I purposely discussed it with coworkers at work so I can come home tonight to discuss lmao.)

FO76 should have a sort of "grid" layout. A1 thru A100 across top line, square box style. And our CAMP just "attach to the leylines" *cough lol* and we get that little square box.

I think that would help us all out (and in the end maybe alleviate a little stress on their servers? IDK...but...) It would also create a "quantifiable" (for lack of a better word...) thing that they could program on/against. Like simple checks or something.

EDIT: Also! Maybe let FO76's F01st get 2x boxes. That would be a YUGE! (pinkies up) advantage/want/desire for FO1st too. ((Also, sorry mods for the derail but I don't know where else to share these ideas lol.)) And it would also be kinda a "kinship" feeling to see that your CAMP "gets" say A8 on the map...a little more connection to the world.

Viper482

Dragonflight was great on release, other than that been a singleplayer strong year.

Terazon

New World was awesome. I have loved every second of it. Went in not thinking I would care much but it has become part of my regular rotation.

Angrakhan

I played New World and ESO's Necrom update. Had a good time in both, but at this point in my career/life I approach MMO's as single player games with the occasional opportunity to do some co-op with other people. Once the game gets to the "if thou wisheth to progres, thou shalt raid" state I pull the ripcord. I know technically in both you can still make progress solo, but in both it's very grindy and I just think of all the great single player games out there I could be experiencing.

Between the two I'd say ESO is the better value if you're willing to sign up for the ESO + membership. Buy the latest expac on sale and get ESO+ for a month and you get access to the whole stinkin game from start to finish top to bottom east coast to west coast in a game that is largely soloable. The amount of content is mind boggling. It's a dream for completionists. So much stuff to do.

New World on the other hand just has the box price, which is nice because you can go back and revisit whenever you want without firing up a subscription. Graphics are beautiful and the combat plays nice in general. If you do get a lag spike for network conditions it does start to fall apart. The mounts are a very welcome addition, and they added lots of races and things to do with the mount, so it's not like they just added mounts and called it a day. They really made it a part of the gameplay which I appreciate.

Still as a casual player at the end of the day you're going to hit max level and the giant wall of "well now what?". I mean you can continue to do single player content and while both games will let you continue to progress, it's at a glacial speed and you have to really enjoy some grind (not necessarily a bad thing, just meaning you're going to be doing the same stuff over and over with the same abilities and same gear for a long time) to stick with it. If that's not your bag, then it will be time to move on.

Ryukan

I played WoW Dragonflight a bit this year and some ESO this year, but neither one really stuck with me. I had barely played WoW much at all since it came out, Dragonflight appealed to me but I have just not been in much of an MMO mood this year I guess.

Abimor

Im playing a lot of lotro and a little new world.

Kappadonna

UO Outlands.

Abimor

Quizzical said:

Uncharted Waters Origin, which you probably haven't played, so you still have the chance to enjoy it fresh, rather than taking another go at a game that you're already sick of.


I m doing this on my phone so sorry if it messed up the quotes. I'm so confused by this game I loved the two SNES versions. is this a heavy pay to win or has a sub is it pve or mostly pvp?

Greatsword

My best MMORPG experience of 2023 was to not really play any MMOs for the first time in 20 years and find joy again in the beauty of single player games, especially CRPGs.

Quizzical

Abimor said:

Quizzical said:

Uncharted Waters Origin, which you probably haven't played, so you still have the chance to enjoy it fresh, rather than taking another go at a game that you're already sick of.


I m doing this on my phone so sorry if it messed up the quotes. I'm so confused by this game I loved the two SNES versions. is this a heavy pay to win or has a sub is it pve or mostly pvp?

If you loved the SNES games, then it's highly probable that you'll love UW Origin.  (And if you hated the SNES games, then you'll hate UW Origin for the same reasons.)  UW Origin stays much closer to the SNES games than UW Online does.

If you played the SNES games a lot, you'll recognize the five starter admirals, as well as much of their storylines.  You'll also recognize a lot of the game's music.  UW Origin adds a lot more of everything than the SNES games, though:  more ports (over 200), more trade goods (over 500), more discoveries (over 2000), more ships (about 100, not counting improved versions of each), more inn employees (about 70), more mates (over 200 that are relevant to non-whales, plus hundreds more that are really only relevant to whales), and so forth.

It has separate servers for PVE and PVP.  You can block combat the first ten times you're attacked per day, so there isn't very much PVP combat even on the PVP servers.  The bigger difference between the PVE and PVP servers is red gem investment:  on a PVP server, a whale can flip a port by spending real money, but that's not allowed on a PVE server.

The business model is weird.  It's nominally free like a lot of games, but will probably look very pay to win if you look through the shop without understanding what things mean.  There are really three tiers of things to buy:

1)  Red gem mate skills, which are very cheap until you reach level 70, which most players never will.  If you pay $10, that will probably be enough to cover all the red gem mate skills you want for several months.  Alternatively, you can get red gems by selling stuff on the auction house, and even a brand new player can obtain and sell items that top end players want.

2)  Red gem admirals, which is the main way that the game is monetized.  Five admirals (the six from UW New Horizons, minus Pietro) are free, while the others cost 5000 red gems each.  If you buy your red gems from the red gem fixed term, you can get an admiral per month for about $23 each.  Imagine if in UW New Horizons, there were 20 admirals, and you could play five for free, while the others cost $23 each.  That's roughly what UW Origin does.  You don't need the other admirals in order to play, but each admiral is a major content pack, as well as an S-grade mate for your fleet.

3)  Everything else, which is really only intended for whales, with only narrow exceptions.  It's more pay to get stuff sooner than pay to win.

The gachas will probably look very pay to win at first glance, but what isn't obvious to new players is that the most important gacha is the normal mate gacha, which you get some of by playing the game, and can buy with ducats--the normal in-game currency, not real money.  Once you get enough contracts for the same mate, you can train him up to S-grade, or even SS-grade, though the materials for the latter are pretty scarce.

So far, I have trained up 23 natural C-grade mates to S-grade, three of them further to SS-grade, and one natural B-grade mate to S-grade.  I've got two more natural C-grade mates in training now, and they'll be S-grade tomorrow.  Low grade mates trained up to S-grade are actually stronger than natural S-grade mates because you rank them up in the process of training, which you can't do for natural S-grade mates without spending a ton of money on the gachas.

Your initial country choice will be dictated by the starter admiral that you choose, though you can immigrate to a different country later.  If you play as Portugal (default if you choose Joao) on the Utopia server (PVE server), then you can join CsdaIndia, which is currently the #3 guild on the server, even right from level 1.  We have +1 fleet speed for all members, and won't complain if lower level players just play how you want and ignore guild donations.  (Really, you shouldn't do guild donations until the daily 5 million ducats and 20 blue gems feels cheap, which it eventually will at high levels.)

This is also a good time to start the game, as there are several Christmas events going on right now.  Among other things, you can easily get three improved tier 17 ships from the event, which are high end ships that will help you get started.

ultimateduck

Not a single one. I have a row of games on my desktop but none of them got a lot of play time. A little ArcheAge on fresh start servers, a little SW:TOR, a little Warhammer: Return of Reckoning, a little Zenith VR.

I'd say Diablo 2 Resurrected and Path of Exile got most of my time. It's more than a little bit of a bummer.

Pr0tag0ni5t

Mine was the Embers Adrift anniversary event, the changes they've made has greatly improved the game over the state it was in at launch.

Abimor

Quizzical said:

Abimor said:

Quizzical said:

Uncharted Waters Origin, which you probably haven't played, so you still have the chance to enjoy it fresh, rather than taking another go at a game that you're already sick of.


I m doing this on my phone so sorry if it messed up the quotes. I'm so confused by this game I loved the two SNES versions. is this a heavy pay to win or has a sub is it pve or mostly pvp?

If you loved the SNES games, then it's highly probable that you'll love UW Origin.  (And if you hated the SNES games, then you'll hate UW Origin for the same reasons.)  UW Origin stays much closer to the SNES games than UW Online does.

If you played the SNES games a lot, you'll recognize the five starter admirals, as well as much of their storylines.  You'll also recognize a lot of the game's music.  UW Origin adds a lot more of everything than the SNES games, though:  more ports (over 200), more trade goods (over 500), more discoveries (over 2000), more ships (about 100, not counting improved versions of each), more inn employees (about 70), more mates (over 200 that are relevant to non-whales, plus hundreds more that are really only relevant to whales), and so forth.

It has separate servers for PVE and PVP.  You can block combat the first ten times you're attacked per day, so there isn't very much PVP combat even on the PVP servers.  The bigger difference between the PVE and PVP servers is red gem investment:  on a PVP server, a whale can flip a port by spending real money, but that's not allowed on a PVE server.

The business model is weird.  It's nominally free like a lot of games, but will probably look very pay to win if you look through the shop without understanding what things mean.  There are really three tiers of things to buy:

1)  Red gem mate skills, which are very cheap until you reach level 70, which most players never will.  If you pay $10, that will probably be enough to cover all the red gem mate skills you want for several months.  Alternatively, you can get red gems by selling stuff on the auction house, and even a brand new player can obtain and sell items that top end players want.

2)  Red gem admirals, which is the main way that the game is monetized.  Five admirals (the six from UW New Horizons, minus Pietro) are free, while the others cost 5000 red gems each.  If you buy your red gems from the red gem fixed term, you can get an admiral per month for about $23 each.  Imagine if in UW New Horizons, there were 20 admirals, and you could play five for free, while the others cost $23 each.  That's roughly what UW Origin does.  You don't need the other admirals in order to play, but each admiral is a major content pack, as well as an S-grade mate for your fleet.

3)  Everything else, which is really only intended for whales, with only narrow exceptions.  It's more pay to get stuff sooner than pay to win.

The gachas will probably look very pay to win at first glance, but what isn't obvious to new players is that the most important gacha is the normal mate gacha, which you get some of by playing the game, and can buy with ducats--the normal in-game currency, not real money.  Once you get enough contracts for the same mate, you can train him up to S-grade, or even SS-grade, though the materials for the latter are pretty scarce.

So far, I have trained up 23 natural C-grade mates to S-grade, three of them further to SS-grade, and one natural B-grade mate to S-grade.  I've got two more natural C-grade mates in training now, and they'll be S-grade tomorrow.  Low grade mates trained up to S-grade are actually stronger than natural S-grade mates because you rank them up in the process of training, which you can't do for natural S-grade mates without spending a ton of money on the gachas.

Your initial country choice will be dictated by the starter admiral that you choose, though you can immigrate to a different country later.  If you play as Portugal (default if you choose Joao) on the Utopia server (PVE server), then you can join CsdaIndia, which is currently the #3 guild on the server, even right from level 1.  We have +1 fleet speed for all members, and won't complain if lower level players just play how you want and ignore guild donations.  (Really, you shouldn't do guild donations until the daily 5 million ducats and 20 blue gems feels cheap, which it eventually will at high levels.)

This is also a good time to start the game, as there are several Christmas events going on right now.  Among other things, you can easily get three improved tier 17 ships from the event, which are high end ships that will help you get started.

Thanks exactly what I was looking for in a break down

Abimor

@quizzical
can you give me the link to the download or is it better to play trough steam?