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Looking for a fun non-hardcore MMO
TheScavenger
Member EpicPosts: 3,321
So, since I unsubbed from WoW (not because I'm tired of WoW-like games...I really like WoW style games...but WoD sucks so much. Don't like outposts, and they removed so many daily quests that I actually liked and made it more raid-focused. Plus they nerfed crafting)
In MMOs, I solo 100% of the time. I like crafting, trading, watching groups RP with each other. I like soloing old raids (and in WoW, my death knight could solo some MoP stuff which was a HUGE challenge and lots of fun. Was harder than when I grouped for them lol). I will join groups and join PvP groups if the game has an auto-group finder like WoW does. otherwise I just socialize, chat, trade and the occasional RP. I love soloing old content, I love crafting (my favorite thing to do), I love trading (2nd favorite thing to do), I love exploring a HUGE world (not a big fan of small game worlds and if it has a small world that is a deal breaker for me. If the world is really linear, that is also a deal breaker. WoW has huge open zones)...and I do everything in an MMO other people do, except I don't group :P
I'm also looking for something a bit more modern or up to date...LOTRO still looks good to me, but EQ2 hasn't aged well at all and looks rather bad lol.
My favorite MMOs so far have been Asheron's Call, WoW, Tabula Rasa (my #2 favorite) and Auto Assault (my #1 favorite). Also City of Heroes was really epic too at my #3 favorite (I don't like DC universe or champions online
My least favorite MMOs: pretty much any sandbox MMO (except Ryzom was awesome, just dead population and never updated)
I tried FFXIV, but world is super linear with too many invisible walls and cliffs everywhere. Also the world was super quiet, no voice acting at all (which I prefer in a modern game). It is also a bit too group focused, as it forces you into dungeons. I also found the game really boring anyway. Not a big fan of the anime-style game art (I love watching anime though, but not playing it). However, crafting is great and good house system.
I tried The Secret World, but crafting is horrible and I'd have rather play it as a singleplayer RPG not an MMO. It would have been an epic singleplayer game...but I went in expecting a good story, came out with "hey all these kill x and find x" with huge quest markers and follow the cookie trail made the story really bad. It also destroyed immersion. And quest objects glowed, so you couldn't even think or search for it. I like that in a game like WoW, but not a story focused game. I was very disappointed. There was no way to turn off the glow or the quest markers lol.
Tried Defiance, but really small world. And events had the same bugs I saw at release. There is an event to destroy a crystal, but sometimes its invisible, sometimes its too high off the ground, sometimes its underground and that bug has been there since release lol.
Tried Rift, but tiny world and the cities are horrible. Which kills it for me. Even WoW has more epic cities and I thought WoW cities were sort of small till I played Rift :P
But... MMOs I'm thinking of playing again maybe:
LOTRO (I have an old account I can start back up that has a ton of stuff on it. MMO is kinda aged though graphically, but when I played...community was awesome (dunno how it is after it went free to play) and the stories were great. I really liked the atmosphere.
SWTOR (never really played this one except for beta. Stories were great, but the graphics haven't really aged that well and character models look really terrible and something you'd find in a horror movie with creepy living haunted dolls (or they did in beta, dunno if its improved. But I thought SWTOR was scarier than The Secret World as far as characters go :P They really legit scared the hell out of me in beta. But SWTOR is sci-fi which is rather different, which is nice. But I dunno how endgame is, I don't like making alts (making alts makes me bored a lot faster in any game, singleplayer RPG, FPS, MMO, doesn't really matter) and it seems to be a game for making alts.)
GW2 (this one is pretty new and one I'm kinda most interested in, characters look good except for humans look like creepy ass dolls and worse than even SWTOR characters. When I tried beta, I actually had nightmares of GW2 humans chasing me around because they looked so much like a horror movie doll rofl. I have a phobia of dolls or anything that resembles a doll in games. GW2 made humans look so bad lol. I don't think they modeled them after actual people :P The other races are all really good though. I love the look of the Charr. And I know I can solo 100% of everything, which is a huge bonus. And the world is huge. Another huge bonus.
I'd have to spend a lot of money to buy the box though for GW2...but maybe its worth it. I also don't know how pay to win it is, or if I have to pay for a ton of content to see stories or not. At least with LOTRO/SWTOR I can pay a monthly fee and see everything. Not sure if GW2 is like that, but I prefer paying a monthly fee to see everything instead of spending TONS of money to unlock content which adds up to be more than a monthly or even yearly fee. But dunno if GW2 is like that or not)
Any other MMOs outside SWTOR/LOTRO/GW2 that might fit the bill?
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Comments
Oh man, are you weird haha!
I don't know man. I guess there are tons of Asian MMOs that could be for you? Since you liked dailies in WoW, which is not understandable, but whatever, I guess you are the type of person that likes simple grind? Try like Cabal Online or something similar.
ESO or GW2 would fit you nicely.'
Both are B2P and neither has a p2w cash shop. Both can be enjoyed for the simple box price, or you can spend a little in the item shop for cosmestic items mostly.
Neither will give a leg up on a guy who goes crazy in the item shop. Both are solo friendly.
I personally prefer ESO as I like the lore and overall world it is set in.
I would watch some streams or videos of each and decide if you would like either.
I don't know that it would fit, but it might. Aion comes to mind.
If you haven't already, it's worth checking out.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
I self identify as a monkey.
I never thought about ESO. I never played it either.
How does it compare to, say...GW2? A lot of content to do? I see GW2/ESO compared a lot in the same posts pretty much.
I never played GW2, but I heard it had a lot of non-raiding/non-PvP content. Which is one thing I really liked about FFXIV, is tons of side-content. I liked that about WoW too, a ton of side-content that wasn't about PvP or raiding.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Of the two, I would say GW2 is probably the better game for me (although I'm playing ESO atm). It has a large world, a lot of content and a purely optional PvP means. They seem to keep the game up to date with things. Both games have crafting, and I enjoy both. The graphic styles are different. GW2s seem to be a bit more cartoony than ESO.
I self identify as a monkey.
Then go play a single player game. This is the problem with MMOs today is it wants people who want nothing to do other than solo. Sorry but when I want to play by my self I will go play FF3 or Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2. I will not spend the effort or money on an MMO, its a waste to you and to players who want to play with other people because developers need to make content for people who dont want to play an MMO.
Non-hardcore MMO? Pretty much anything on the market at the moment that isn't PvP centric? Even some PvP-centric games fall far short of hardcore....
I mean, print the list of MMO's directly off the site, and throw a dart....
That was the exact same thing I had in mind.
ESO, GW2, GW1, TSW, Marvel Heroes.
The first four are buy to play, the last one is F2P with decent cash shop.
Cant go wrong with any of them. I dont know about TSW but in the other four you dont need to grind the best gear to enjoy a good PvE gameplay.
Detailed LFGame indeed. Nice favourites, AA rocked
(wow is odd among such cool games, but different tastes I guess 
) Btw, AC dropped sub and supports private servers now, I believe as Turbine is deploying more and more tools and data, we'll see lots of great AC variants over the years. It's up to the modding part of the community.
Yep, it sounds pretty much LotRO (or maybe AC too)
Community is still awesome, and if you go with the sub (as you wrote at the end), then all you need is the 3 expansions post-f2p, everything else is given. At 2014 they switched from the 1 expansion/year into a 2 updates/year dev cycle, which is great for subscribers, since they get the updates for free (until they're sub). Last one, U16 Ashes of Osgiliath just went live this week (https://www.lotro.com/en/u16)
Endgame is usual engame grind like in most MMOs. Alts are needed, since all classes have their own stories, and the addition of the Legacy system also put some weight on having plenty of alts.
I don't really like GW2 (except the SAB) so can't comment it, only the "lot of money" part: since the Thorny expansion was announced, there's a $10 sale on the box pretty often, almost every month
Also, while I wasn't interested in it much so I ignored to explore the model and the Store, but from my short experience it's not pay to win.
almost forgot:
It was added during beta (I think without it the game's reception would've been even more niche
), but your timing is perfect, Issue #11 launched yesterday, and with it they added the option to turn the outline off, and making it much closer to its adventure game roots.
I think you mostly saw action missions. There are plenty of other ones where you don't have a trail at all, nor markers on the map
there are others where you need to avoid killing (or being seen). Give it an another chance, TSW is great. And LoRO too. Or, for the last line of "Any other MMOs outside SWTOR/LOTRO/GW2 that might fit the bill?" I'd add AoC, it has pretty cool crafting, and... 
there's a crafting revamp arriving... 
Soon™ (honestly, it's in the works since years)
You can also go back and solo some older dungeons when you get high enough and the items are tradeable. Since you like trading, you might like this too, since there will be no auction house and there are a lot of items you can trade for that drop in dungeons to gear your character.
You like huge open zones, so that may be a problem. There is a good amount of zoning, but there is a lot of area to explore.
I ended up trying Guild Wars 2, RIFT (again), SWTOR and TSW (again). I also have LOTRO to try too, but trying to get it to work as it boots up and then my PC shuts down. I tried DDO and it did the same thing, so a bit weird. Only two MMOs that just shut down my PC on launching them.
But as for GW2. I kind of liked it...world is awesome. The events seem to be really predictible and not very dynamic feeling like I thought it would be. RIFT felt a lot more random and dynamic and I thought the rifts were a lot more fun and epic than the GW 2 stuff, even though the world is tiny and the cities are the size of my apartment building lol.
I'd like GW2 combined with RIFT...now that be epic. Take RIFT character development and rifts, put in GW2 world=win
But as it is, GW2 events felt really lame...RIFT has amazing rifts (heh heh) but lame tiny miniscule world.
SWTOR seemed okay for MMOs. But.. I prefer playing Mass Effect though, or Dragon Age...both with better voice acting, graphics, character models, story and animations :P
And finally, TSW. Actually with episode 11...its way better. No glowing lame objects, have to actually explore...have to actually think and find clues. That was my main beef with it. World is rather linear of course...but story/atmoshpere is great.
So in the end, I ended up going with RIFT+TSW...both a lot of fun, even if the worlds are kinda lame. Plus RIFT has shiny collectibles like EQ2 has
and housing. So thats cool.
Most disappointed was GW2...they advertised their events a lot, but they aren't really dynamic...people in-game actually timed when events happened. That really killed it for me lol. Luckily I was using my friends account to check it out, so I didn't waste my money.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
You mention gw2, swtor and lotro. I wouldn't go for lotro, the questing is bad and it doesnt get better later on. Swtor isn't so much of a social game if you like that, but more like a single player. Gw2 is kinda interesting but I would much rather vote for ESO which is b2p too. The voice acting in gw2 s terrible and the controls in ESO are much better.
<in lotro the groupfinder never works, you will have more luck in swtor and gw2 doing stuff with others.
Try Swtor. I really can't understand in any way how you found character models to be terrifying but if you can get past that then from what i gathered from your post it's similar to what you're looking for. It can be soloed till lvl cap, has great storylines for each class(wich also means you can alt a lot), fully voiced over, decent crafting system, no-p2w cash shop and if you join a rp sever(like Progenitor wich i am) you'll get a nice community and a lot of rp events. In a few words: a great single-player story driven experience with mmo elements.
P.S. How far did you get into TSW btw? Because that game is by far the most innovative one in terms of questing and world exploring. I'd say give it a try too and stick with it a bit more this time.
This isn't the thread for it, but we could have quite a debate about that.
I don't play MMO's for fun, I play them to accomplish something, and while I might enjoy completing my goals, it isn't necessarily fun nor are the activities I have to do to reach them necessarily so.
It's why I play games like EVE, or others that involve territory control.
As for fun, non hardcore game, I'd go with ESO for fantasy, or SWTOR for Sci FI theme.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Go for GW2. You don't actually have to spend that much money, if you look around you should be able to find a box for an acceptable price. ANETs store sometimes have a sale for a weekend as well if you can wait for the next one.
LOTRO isn't really the game it used to be and TOR have a good story but it kinda gets annoying after a while, they overuse voice overs and cutscenes and the combat mechanics feels just wrong for the Star wars universe.
Ha ha ha, that was a funny joke!
Well, old MMOs the characters kinda creeped me out too :P Tibia was the worst for 2d (the faces look super creepy). Ultima Online was actually pretty good as far as that goes. Asheron's Call I got creeped out by too. But not too bad as it was rather all straight lined really basic character models pretty much lol. Dunno why to be honest. WoW is sorta newer, but it was always fine as far as characters go...it never creeped me out at all even the humans didn't. Can't really explain it that well...dunno why some characters creep me out too much in some games. Warhammer MMO never creeped me out either. EQ2 and Vanguard both creeped me out though, especially EQ2...except the faery races were cool. Like I said, dunno...maybe someone knows more about psychology or whatever than I do :P
But, like the newer the game, I get creeped out more by character models more than older games (in general). Like Oblivion I couldn't even play as the character models were so terrifying for me and mods couldn't fix it. But Morrowind was fine. And Skyrim I got kinda creeped out by too (but not as much as Oblivion), except mods fixed that right up and now I can play Skyrim without being creeped out by the NPCs :P
As for TSW. I got to the zombie area, and there was glowing objects everywhere and the game made it WAY too easy to know where everything was. It was like having an open walkthrough that was even worse than WoW's quest helper lol. And it felt super linear and closed in. But I'm trying it again, and while I'm still in zombie area its a lot better. You can turn off the lame glowing objects and all the quest markers now.
My new character, I went Templar though as I chose a different one before...and I always liked the "crusader" history in games (like total war/mount and blade 1257 mod, crusader kings 2 etc). Not really the same here, but close enough :P Even though faction don't play TOO big of a part in TSW from what I understand of reading...but heh still enjoy Templar more :P
And thanks for the feedback everyone.
I'll give a few of the MMOs suggested a try that have been posted so far.
So far though I'm liking TSW the most though lol. haven't even done much with RIFT as I boot up TSW instead :P
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul