[OT] Other MMORPGs

[Richard Slade]

Since Nid was quite fast on my other thread even though I asked him
NOT to close it, I'll do another topic here just for the rules:
AC - AC2 - Shadowbane
Points about these games?
I wanna try them but wish to know more
And I don't get much outta a site
Those who kknow, tell me about
1)Graphics
2)Lvling
3)Learning curve
4)PvP
5)Transportation
6)Size of the world
7)Kindness of strangers (hint, name *Ahem*)
8)Downsides and upsides
9)If the birdmen (Aicroix or wtf they're called) can actually fly.
(If so how long and that shit)
10)Zoning?
11)Sys reqs?
12)Buginess?

[Mankind]

I heard Shadowbane was too much like Diablo...so that's why I didn't try that out.

Never played Asheron's Call.

I went and bought Asheron's Call 2. But then I had some product key registration failure. So I called Microsoft and they told me to get a new copy. So when I went back I saw Neocron on the shelf and picked that up :) If Asheron's Call 2 had worked when I tried to install it, I might be playing that instead of Neocron now :p

[Richard Slade]

And yeah, what about terrains? How assingly flat are they?!

[Archeus]

My take on Asherons Call, bare in mind I haven't played in over 8 months so it may or may not of gotten better.

1)Graphics

Maybe a little dated now, although the latest version from when I last played was pretty good. It had the advantage of working on even low spec machines.

Also the customisation of weapons, armor, clothing, etc meant that you could be pretty unique most of the time.

2)Lvling

A pain. There set levelling spots that everyone did, something like...

Starter quests from rithwic to soushi got you to level 5 pretty quickly, then to eastham to whack monsters on the beach until about level 10 or so then on to whack lugians for a while, followed by tuskers, followed by etc, etc.

3)Learning curve

Easy enough. Magic in it was at one point very hard. Basically you had to guess the spell by the animation when a person moved and the word they spoke (which linked up to spell components). Instead everyone just brute forced it and used 3rd party tools to track the spells.

The spell system was also broken up into four schools (life, war, creature, item). If you didn't know what you were doing you would gimp your character easily and waste months (until they added a quest to forget skills)

4)PvP

PVP switch via a quest on all the servers except darktide. Darktide IMHO is how the games should be played (sans cheaters). Basically you hit the ground running into the wilderness when you start and don't look back until your close to level 20. After that get joined with a monarcy. Towns become real property to fight over.

5)Transportation

By foot or portals and lifestones. Spells and gems also offered some transportation but prior to the addition of extra portal/lifestone tie spells most people had to plan out a route.

6)Size of the world

Huge doesn't begin to describe it. You could spend over a day just walking from one end of the map to the other, and due to the uniqueness of some places in the world you may never see parts without the helps of others, or hunting items or just being lucky. Tons of dungeons each with thier own sub quests within them. There is tons of content. Islands added as well (at the time I left they added Tusker island which was in the shape of a banana).

Tons of injokes in the game hidden, eg a tardis would randomly appear from time to time, or you would find Ford Prefects towel on a golem (which you could wear). If a bug happened the following patch the NPC's would make some joke about it and write the bug into the storyline.

7)Kindness of strangers (hint, name *Ahem*)

Very friendly. Ignore feature is a deadly weapon in AC (it could probably be the same in NC). Basically being put on ignore was a death sentance in the game. Also the system was built around helping each other so people tended to help others to get them to swear alligence to them which in turn feeds them XP up a chain and highers thier rank to get more uber stuff.

8)Downsides and upsides

Upsides. Content it has to be the sheer content. There is more then enough quests to keep people busy for well over a year (if you weren't into power levelling) and they added new stuff each month.

A lot of stuff was done right, really well. Steady monthly updates of quests and items. Even if it was just a couple of things. Bug fixes, skill changes, etc written into the storyline

Downsides. If you did the low level quests already, doing them again was a chore and levelling was a pain too if you had done it all before. Some monarchies were more intrested in the XP gain then playing the game.

High level quests often required a large number of others to help in order survive (which I don't mind) but lead to some monopoly by larger monarcies. Also dungeons would lock depending on level, which had its positives and negetives but meant content was level based.

Travel took a long time and planning, until portal bots appeared. If your the explorer kind like myself you don't mind so much (used to be fun charting a course to a dungeon).

In general the best characters were cookie cutter skills (no deviations would give you a benifit). This meant at really high levels everyone had more or less the same stats.

Near when I left a lot of people left the game for AC2 and others, and the place turned into a ghost world there were so few people. The others that remained preferred to run bots (trade bots). Which IMHO ruined the game. What was the point in playing if the majority of the people weren't even real.

DarkTide (PvP server) had too many cheaters on it and trash talkers. Muppets ganking newbies as they entered the world was par of the course and weeded out the weak at the start but also pushed off others that would of hung around if they had the chance.

10)Zoning?

you would only zone going into dungeons or teleporting or if too many people in the area. Again around the time of my leaving one of the developers created a way to link the dungeons to the world which was pretty impressive.

11)Sys reqs?

Low spec machine no problem.

12)Buginess?

Very few if any. I think in all the years I played it I only ever had to call a GM twice.