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Casual PVE alternative to Warcraft
Right then, been perusing these forums for a few days now, and while there have been some very useful threads that have been most informative, I'd still like to ask you helpful peeps for your advice.
So, as you might have guessed from the title, I'm thinking of ditching World of Warcraft, which I've been playing since Feb 2005. I had multiple alts, 3 high-level characters and used to enjoy raiding. I never PVP-d. However my daughter was born nearly a year ago and since then I have not been able to raid, or even do many 5 man instances, so my gameplay has just withered away. For the last 3 months I've been levelling a priest and a RP rogue (with a penchant for large hats and rapiers). However I've done these quests a dozen times or more already, so I'm really just going through the motions.
What I liked about WoW was the graphics mainly, the chance to plan my talent specs, working out the best dps cycles or mana efficiency when soloing. What I disliked was the complete homogenisation of the classes - there's nothing unique about your class now. It's also become "Bring the gear, not the player" and because I now no longer have the time to do instances my gear is woefully bad.
I would like to find a game that has the following:
- focus on classic fantasy: swords & magic and pointy ears etc.
- lots of classes and races to choose from
- nice graphics
- easy to solo
- don't ever want to PVP
- ability to make your character somewhat unique
- given the time I would play each month, F2P would be good, but not of the highest importance
Finally I play on a MacBook Pro, so mac native would be nice. However I have VMware, so can play Windows only games too. I would be playing from the UK.
From reading the other threads here, I'm currently considering EQ2, Runes of Magic and Ryzom, but I really don't know too much about them.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
The whole time all i could thing of was EQ2 when reading your post. If i were you I would try that first and then move onto, Ruins of Magic (though its pretty much like wow, but f2p). DDO is fun, and its also coming to f2p soon. At the moment, the MMO industry is pretty much in a drought, Im also looking for that right game to play, but for now ill just test a few.
Give DDO a try when it goes F2P (you will need to join US servers, EU servers are not going F2P, at least not yet) it has the best PvE questing to be had (none of the fetch x, kill y, deliver z rubbish). It is geared around grouping which might be a problem, but has very good grouping tools.
Best thing is it isn't WoW like in the slightest. If you want something a little more familiar then LOTRO I found to have things in common with WoW, but I enjoyed it a lot more (I find PvP boring as hell and LOTRO sticks it nicely away to one side where it can be ignored), not that I could really get in to either long term.
p.s. Guy above is a WoW zealot, so you might want to take his attempts at ethos with a pinch of salt.
Current games I would suggest: Lord of the Rings Online (low sub fee), Final Fantasy 11 (10 for first char, 1 per char after, but really don't need other chars at all.), Vanguard:Saga of Heroes (low sub fee, don't expect any new content though.)
F2P I would suggest Runes of Magic, possibly Guild Wars if you enjoy being on equal footing with everyone else, though there's really no gear progression outside of visual enhancements.
Games in the next year will be great for MMO enthusiasts, the best of which, for pve, will be Final Fantasy 14. I would also suggest Guild Wars 2 once it is finished, as they are promising more of a open world type game.
If you find a game that fits your criteria, let me know. I will go play it with you.
City of Hero's fits most of your criteria except its not classic fantasy. Lord of the Rings is shiny, but I find the classes are a bit flat. Runes of Magic is a great free to play and probably fits your criteria best. but, like LOTRO, I find the combat a bit dull.
For myself, I am going to Aion. When it goes Open Beta I suggest you try it out and see if it "fits". It won't be a perfect fit, it isn't a perfect fit for me either, but it will probably entertain you enough till the next big shiny.
You could also give up MMOs entirely for the time being. Dragonage Origins is comming out in November and is looking to be amazing. I realized ages ago my problem was that I wanted the same things from my MMOs that I wanted from my Single RPGs (Oblivion, Fable, Daggerfall, Final Fantasy). This may never happen. Its hard to be the great hero of the world when there are hundreds of great heroes who look like you, dress like you, have the same skills as you and are doing the same quests as you; all at the same time as you.
"No, they can't come in. The Emberflame guild is killing me at 1:00, the Nerasia guild is killing me at 2:00 and I still haven't had lunch yet. I have no time for PUGs today. They will have to make an appointment." - Onyxia
mm cheapest and best looking is eq2 wich will get an upgraded shader ,going from v1 to v3
they corrected lot of issue not very long ago so you ll see very good graphic,a little advice if you use amd processor make sure you patch the processor the old patch amd used before 2009 was a bit buggy.
rom is also a very good game and it will get better also with the book 2 release in september but since its a micro-transaction game it will probably cost more the the 14 $/month for 3 month in eq2
my advice both can be tried for free play each to lvl10 and see wich you like more,eq2 can be scary when you think of adjusting graphic to your liking even the preset look good dont go too high on the preset this game was made with the futur in mind.i dont believe there are lot of computer that can run eq2 at max setting ,i suggest to stay closer to balanced
another popular game on the net that isnt spoken a lot is cabal online at least its always close to the top in the f2p section of xfire.com video section
I really think that WoW's PvP should not be the reason why you don't want to PvP. WoW has bad PvP, especially due to it not having collision detection, which I think should be mandatory after having player WAR (easily it's best feature). If you are willing to give PvP another go then wait for Aion to come out.
If you are willing to play a game that isn't really fantasy but fits your criteria almost exactly, Champions Online allows for an insane amount of customization regarding superpower, it has one of the most robust character creation systems I have seen, it can be played single player, it is relatively casual, and it the graphics are very interesting and unique, I personally love them.
For current games I'd recommend Everquest 2 or Vanguard for what you're looking for.
Just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who's posted. Gonna start downloading some trials, and see how they grab me.
I think I probably will have a tendency to measure everything against WoW, but I'll try not to be too judgemental!
Thanks again, lots more research to do now!
Aion but it's not F2P and OB should be here in few weeks.
Guild Wars 2 was announced but they didn't give us any info about release dates.
Id either say LOTRO or EQ2. EQ2 has a ton of races and classes to choose from probably the most out of any MMO, Vanguard and EQ 1 may have a close number.
EQ2 has extremely great custimization. Decent community and interesting quests. Harder than most in difficulty. Played not long due to busy life at the time. I don't think I'd go back because joining games late in life doesnt interest me.
LOTRO is an interesting storyline and had pretty neat questlines for solo and group play. I just was never interested enough in this game to play it for more than a month.
Vanguard is a fun game at the beginning. Nice graphics, a ton of character choices and races, and nice people everywhere. Problem is those people you see are few and far between. Noob land is packed with people, but once you move on its fairly hard to find people conistently.
Downloading Runes of Magic atm. Ill be testing soon enough. (My filler game before Aion)
Aion - Got boring for me actually after the first day. My ranger wasn't quite what I thought he'd be. The time that's passed since CB6 keeps me hungry for more though. I'll be playing this opening day and will give it a fair shake. Unique feel to this game and I have high hopes it will only get better.
WAR - Awful.
Dofus - Fun strategy based MMO. Played this for quite some time a year or so ago. Unique features I'd say.
Some of my mini reviews
Ranger is a difficult class to level, a good advice is to level your ranger up to level 19 as an assasin (yes I know it sounds boring, but it takes like 2 max 3 days playing casual). At level 19 you will get enough skills to be very good in pve so you can level with your bow finally and never look back.
Back to topic, I cannot suggest Aion to you because it is full of PvP and you dislike it. I play mmos only for pvp so cant really think of any mmo with only pve apart from Lord of the Rings online (LOTRO). It has very good reviews and is fantasy as you like, so I would give it a shot, I believe they have a free trial.
Richijefe
if you trial everquest 2,try to learn proffession,it will give you an idea of the major diff between the two.
was trying that yesterday lol ,i never had that in wow ,was doing a tin axe ,was having to correct the mix lol,like too hot ,too cold,too soft,too, hard etc and it all happen while your crafting i still dont have the hang of it i ll have to read a bit !its like a minigame lot of fun it was for me!
I'd like to find something like that as well...
maybe i'd add in some points that would be nice as well...
- Mini puzzles to solve on the go ? ( would just be nice to get a little away from the typical grind things)
- some kind of ability to choose any weapon you like to specialize in.... ( So tired of allways having to choose like that shield, and weapon, that weapon or that thing for that class only)
- Cutscenes : gives small breaks in the grindings as well and is an awsome way of getting some info, story told in a nice way and/or maybe get some hype befor the battle.
well small adds i like from NWN1...
any1 that has an idea what kind of game that could be ?
Dark_Elf
Try DDO the quests have traps (that a rogue can actually disable), puzzles, ambushes, scripted events and secret doors. I haven't found anything even approaching the quality of a standard DDO quest.
Final Fantasy 14 has some of those things, but it'll come out in a year or so so you'll have to wait for a while (I think it's worth it though).
Quests ('guildleves') have small puzzles to solve while you do them- a basic example would be that you need to kill 2 types of mobs, but to get the 2nd type to spawn you need to kill enough of the first mob to spawn the second type. Expect the puzzles to become harder as you get better though.
You don't really choose class and weapon for that class. You instead choose weapon and class comes with it, so you can pick whatever weapon you want (and change it freely if you wish).
Cutscenes are a big part of the game and story in general as well. There will also be voice acting.