MMO that surprised you

Faemus

What's an MMORPG that was better than you expected it to be once you started playing? What'd you like about it.
Or
What's an MMORPG that totally dropped the ball didn't even come close to your expectations?

For me, the saga of ryzom was a pleasant surprise. I had low expectations, but the depth and aesthetics were actually good enough to be taken seriously.

RemyVorender

Saga of Ryzom for sure. If you can get past it's huge learning curve, you are in for quite a treat. A word to the wise though, SoR's slogan should be:

Saga of Ryzom, Grinders wanted.

//\//\oo

I found EQ2 to be above my expectations, while SoR to be below: I had stopped playing both of them roughly 1.5 years ago. SoR still has a vicious grind with drab skills, while EQ2 has implemented a PVP system to already complement it's polished PVE.

I've been trying to like SoR, but the inability to jump destroys any immersion that it creates. The ability to customize skills is nice, but once you realize that you will simply get linear combinations of a few basic skills that vary in degree it gets boring. I really can't see how so many people can like it.

vendris

City of Villains! I never played City of Heroes, because I always heard a lot of bad things about how repetitive and boring it was.  I heard the same sorts of things about CoV, but I am a *huge* comic book fan, and decided to give it a go anyway.  While the game is admitedly scaled down and much more tightly focused than "full" MMORPGs, I find I'm having an absolute blast playing it.  The character customization, both in appearance and in your power selection and customization, is absolutely top notch.  The combat is fast and furious with very little downtime.  The selectable difficulty level lets you always insure you'll be challenged.  And, most importantly, the game just positively oozes style and atmosphere, and has just enough campy tongue in cheek goodness to do the superhero / supervillain genre justice.

ValiumSummer

My first MMO suprised me.   It was Ultima Online.   I got the client and a 15 day trial from PC gamer January of 2000.   I laughed out loud at the graphics.   I almost uninstalled it immediately.   I doinked around for a very short time convinced that it was the worst game I had every played.   Then  a GM on a black horse came galloping along and started talking to me.   He offered to answer any/all questions I had.   I ended up hooked and played the game for a solid 6 months.   It is why I am here today!

Jodando

Yup. Ultima Online was my first, too, back in 7th grade. Hoo... those were the glory days. I guess the whole concept of MMORPG for the first time just tickled my pleasure bones.

...Try not to take that in the wrong way...

Rising Forces Online, however, did NOT rise to my expectations (no pun intended). It's not a HORRIBLE game, mind you, but I just WAAAAY overhyped it. Stupid mechs...

clobba

CoV greatly impressed me, had been playing CoH since Beta & while I enjoyed it there wasnt really an AT (class) that suited me.....then CoV came out & it was everything it should have been, a more polished, graphically improved version of its prerunner where you could feel that it had used everything they learnt from the first one & improved it.

EQ2 was a great disapointment for almost the same reason CoV wasnt. I did EQ for 4 years or so & enjoyed it greatly, was a bit of an alt freak & hated the grind but for my first MMO it was fun, suprising & at times so addictive sleep got bypassed. EQ2 had a look that was even more improved over its predecessor than CoV over CoH but that seemed to be it. I bought it, installed it, played it & I should have loved it...it was everything that EQ was but more polished.....I didnt even end up playing out my free months subscription, it was like they somehow managed to reach into it & rip out its soul, it just felt repetive, boring & joyless. I take it as a badge of pride in that I stopped 4 people playing it......lol sort of offsets the 7 people I got addicted to EQ, 3 of them to the extent that they gave up social lives for 3 years lmao.

Anofalye

CoH/CoV and EQ where two great surprise for me as a gamer.

EQ2 was a disappointment, but I was expecting it.

WoW was a disappointment and I was taken by surprise about it.

DDO was such a disappointment, they have sooo many things I love...yet...a few key aspects made it unappealing to me.

Teala

It would have to be Guild Wars and Guild Wars Factions.  I actually beta'd early GW and wasn't all that impressed with it at the time because it seemed so limited.  Recently some friends talked me into trying it.  They said that the game has gone through some serious changes since beta and I might find it more to my liking now.  So I bought GW and Factions about 2 weeks ago.  I've been having a lot of fun with the game since.  It reminds me of Asheron's Call in many respects (though the game world is not seamless like AC) and AC was my all time favorite MMORPG.

DamonVile

Wow, I said I'd never play it because the graphics look bad and too many people blab about it all the time. I played EQ2 instead. After about 2 months of EQ2 I hated it and tried wow. 1.5 years later I still find it fun even though I've never been in a 40 person raid and have no intrest in ever going to MC/BWL ect.

SWG also surprised me. At the time I was playing eve and some friends left to try it out. A month later they sent me an email telling me how great it was so I when and picked it up thinking it was going to be so lame. I ended up playing that for a year and really only left because they where going to remove my class from the game

reavo

I was so let down by World of Warcraft.  I followed it through development every single day.  Watched the website like a hawk.  I couldn't wait.  The night before the day it came out I could hardly sleep.  I could have beta tested it but I didn't because I wanted to be surprised and see it finished.  When it came out, I played it and played it and played it and kept waiting for that fun that I was expecting.  But it never came.  Not even a little bit of it.  It was just too easy and there was nothing there.  Hardly and class development or crafting skill development.  And no housing or anything personal to speak of.  I want more complexity out of a game.  At least out of an MMO.  Plus I never felt like I was in Warcraft.  I was and still am sad about World of Warcraft.  I wanted it to be the game I had always waited for.

The game that suprised me the most was probably Everquest II.  I'm talking about after the major update they did after it was released.  I'm still playing Everquest II.  I watched it through development too, but wasn't nearly even close to as excited about it as I was World of Warcraft.  But it has blown me away at how fun and exciting it is.  It's got so much to it.  And so many new things to discover.  It's complex, entertaining, and beautiful.  I love it.  I am getting ready to build me a new computer too and I can't wait to install it on there.  I think that's another one of the cool things about EQ2 is that the graphics are going to last for years to come.  It really did surprise me how much thought and planning went into that game.

Gameloading

hm, for me it was Ragnarok Online, but that was because it was my first REAL mmorpg. back in the days, I didn't know a thing about mmorpg gaming. UO? never heard of it. the only mmorpg I heard of was Everquest, but never played it,didn't like the p2p back then. I played Tibia back then. it was crap and boring like hell, but hey, it was free. I never got far in the game, I was just messing around in it. untill a friend showed me Ragnarok Online. I played it, killed my first monster and thought this is awesome! (If you know how Tibia looks, then you will understand where I'm coming from xD). played it for 2 full years and only recently got tired of it.

Ragnarok Online will always have a special place in my heart

Unknown

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Originally posted by //\//\oo

I found EQ2 to be above my expectations, while SoR to be below: I had stopped playing both of them roughly 1.5 years ago. SoR still has a vicious grind with drab skills, while EQ2 has implemented a PVP system to already complement it's polished PVE.
I've been trying to like SoR, but the inability to jump destroys any immersion that it creates. The ability to customize skills is nice, but once you realize that you will simply get linear combinations of a few basic skills that vary in degree it gets boring. I really can't see how so many people can like it.

---

EQ2 was better than I expected it to be.  IMO current EQ2 is better than current WoW.  I just wanted to try out their pvp mechanics, since it had some novel things others hadn't seemed to try.  I was somewhat surprised to find that it seemed better than WoW, as I had always heard it was way worse. 

People complain about SOE but the admin of EQ2 is much better than Blizzard.  Servers run nice and smooth, maintenance is like 45 minutes not 8 hours and the website is pretty damn nice.  EQ2 players website gives alot of nice info.

Jenuviel

Taking a leap backwards through time, the game that [pleasantly] surprised me the most was Asheron's Call. At the time it launched, Everquest was the only MMO I'd played. Everyone in my guild who had tried AC had nothing but bad things to say about it, but I was profoundly unsatisfied with the downtime and the torturous death penalties in EQ. I decided to try AC out, and I ended up spending four years there (and another six months when the last expansion came out).

As far as games that surprised me negatively go, I guess I'd have to say EVE Online was the biggest of those. It's not that it was a bad game- quite the contrary, really; it seemed like a fine game for the six weeks I spent there, just not a game made with me in mind. I'd read so many positive things about the game on various forums, however, that I went into it with extremely high expectations. Even though the game was built entirely for a different type of gamer than myself, I think I probably would have had a better experience with it if I'd just stumbled into it blindly.

darkfalz

Asherons Call II

DeletedAcct

Definitely Saga of Ryzom. Had me hooked and subscribed third day of trial. Would've been sooner but had to wait for the better half's ok with the credit card All you SWG vets should try it out. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. And everyone else too

scaramoosh

SWG suprised me, i found it shite at first but after a year or so i found out i loved it but then SOE changed it and i hate it.

EQ2 was amazing at first but after the graphics and the feeling of a a new game worse off it was boring. friends and family beta was amazing.

Cleffy

Dark and Light; I was surprised how much it sucked.

Kibs

Definatly Ryzom for me.  I picked it up during open beta as a temp game waiting for another to be released, but I fell in love with it, and I havn't been able to stop playing since   That was over two years ago

hercules

DAoC.When i was invited for beta ,which i applied just by finding it out browsing the internet,i never even bothered to read on the game.

I ,my brother and few friends were all hooked on EQ1.Then i got the email and was in beta.First day i was not impressed,it required doing loads of /command.But then on day 2 i was amazed.From then on i got missing from EQ1 and my brother came to see why.

At launch i converted half the people i know from EQ1 to DAoC and we had a blast for about a year!