What else is out there?

[Warlock]

WoW is my first MMO game and I've enjoyed it a lot.

I've come to the somewhat regretful conclusion that it's time for me to move on.

What current or upcoming game is most like WOW was at level 40?




I really liked WoW from 1-60. There was always something purposeful to do, often a little bit of story, whether I was alone or with a few friends, whether temporary or permanent. I like the steady acquisition of skills, the wide variety of gear, the ability to customise my character a little through talent selection. I liked it enough that I've taken two of my many characters the whole way.

Having been 60 for long enough for both of those to complete their desired blue gear and get the useful crafts, the only source of further character development is raiding. At first this was fun and challenging, but the shine has faded and now even downing a new boss (Geddon) for the first time yesterday felt hollow - I don't feel that I contributed much. Sure, I used healing touch a lot, but the fact that it was me behind the keyboard instead of 'Warcraft 3 Priest with AI autocast' made no difference to the raid.

So I've contibuted my bit to the 'more non-raid content' threads that have clogged the Bliz forums recently, hoping for things to change... but they're not going to change the game they want to make to satisfy me and it's time I accepted that. So what else is there? I want a game that captures the feel WoW had while levelling up; it doesn't have to be fantasy but I'm not interested in PVP (I boardgame competitively, roleplay cooperatively). I've read a few reviews and there doesn't seem to be much in this line, but I'd like to hear personal opinions and experiences.

[Jim]

Hi,

Knights On-line it's a Free MMORPG...till you find another MMOG :D

Your choice: Which character do you like the most?

Warrior
Rogue
Priest
Magician


Knights Online

ps: Beware this game is Awesome :P

[Artega]

I've been away from WoW for three months now, and probably won't return for a few more.

In the meantime, the games I've been playing instead of WoW:

Unreal Tournament 2004
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Winter Assault expansion pack
SWAT 4
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Rome: Total War with Barbarian Invasion expansion pack
Warcraft III and Frozen Throne campaigns on Hard (I never actually played them, instead jumping straight to Battle.net team games)
Vampires: The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Rome: Total War might fit your "boardgames" category. It's a bit more long-term-strategy-oriented compared to normal RTSes like Dawn of War (which is almost entirely focused on aggressive combat) and Warcraft III.

[Warlock]

Sorry, I should have been more clear - I'm looking for a new MMO (not necessarily MMORPG, but if it is MMORPG then with a decent speed of progression and without forced raiding). I will have a look at Knights online though the webpage hasn't grabbed me. My boardgame comment was an aside explaining why PvP doesn't interest me, not a request for similar PC games, few of which I enjoy much. Too much detail in the wrong places and too much player control over that detail.

[vor_lord]

Sorry, I should have been more clear - I'm looking for a new MMO (not necessarily MMORPG, but if it is MMORPG then with a decent speed of progression and without forced raiding). I will have a look at Knights online though the webpage hasn't grabbed me. My boardgame comment was an aside explaining why PvP doesn't interest me, not a request for similar PC games, few of which I enjoy much. Too much detail in the wrong places and too much player control over that detail.
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After WoW I expect you'll find Knights Online to be rather unimpressive...but YMMV. Don't kid yourself that it is free--in order to get good stuff you must pay cash to buy in-game items.

As far as MMOs go I think WoW is one of the most casual friendly (unless you want to consider something like the Sims Online), and quickest speed of progression (unless you want to consider pseudo-MMOs).

[Drasca]

My boardgame comment was an aside explaining why PvP doesn't interest me, not a request for similar PC games, few of which I enjoy much.
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Too bad, I am really enjoying civilization 4 right now. Sirian made quite a large contribution to it too. Lots of discussion over at
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7
and
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=168

Where RB games are plenty and well written.

[Warlock]

Too bad, I am really enjoying civilization 4 right now. Sirian made quite a large contribution to it too. Lots of discussion over at
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7
and
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=168

Where RB games are plenty and well written.
[right][snapback]99137[/snapback][/right]

I'll probably get Civ 4. Thanks for the link. Sounds like the micromanagement hell of the late game has at least been mitigated a bit.

[Catlyn]

I was where you are now 6 or 7 months ago... don't write WoW off completely. I'm having fun again, and I didn't really think I would.

Take a break for a few months and give it a try again.

[TotoGuy]

Guild Wars. Lots of fun, very casual, instant action yet still with that MMOish feel, great graphics. Not to mention no monthly fee, just buy and play :)
Played the beta and liked it a lot, plan on getting it myself once WoW starts getting boring.

It has a lot of quests and group missions but a lot of the main focus is on the PvP (not surprising since most of the team is composed of ex-battle.net people), which comes in a form of a lot of BG style matches.

[Artega]

Guild Wars isn't as good as it was in Beta. My friend and I wasted $100 on two copies of the game, and came away underimpressed.

I kept wishing the game could be played offline; it felt THAT MUCH like Diablo II.

[Lissa]

I kept wishing the game could be played offline; it felt THAT MUCH like Diablo II.
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That was always my problem with Guild Wars...it felt like Diablo, but without what made Diablo fun...

[Drasca]

I'll probably get Civ 4. Thanks for the link. Sounds like the micromanagement hell of the late game has at least been mitigated a bit.
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Practically nil compared to Civ3. No more micromanaging every tile, or worrying about production loss. Food, Industry, and Research overflow into the next item on your desired queue. Industry production tracked per item on your build queue, so no more saving up production for wonders cheese, and also decays if you partially build and neglect it for too long. Want to maximize industry production? Your governer automatically works the the highest producing mines. Food? That too.

The combat system isn't random (it actually makes bloody sense, and you can see estimated combat odds), and your units come out wounded depending on how tough the battle was and how strong they were initially (and some other interesting factors).

The game is solidly built, and has only gotten more stable and balanced with patches, not less. I am not terribly fond of the interface graphics, but the interface is extremely powerful. I can select as many or as few cities from the domestic advisors, and tell them all to build bombers within two clicks, sometimes three. It is a selectable spreadsheet of information (commerce, industry, research, happiness), etc.

The documentation for this advanced knowledge is somewhat lacking =/ , but we at the RB are discovering what we can.

[Warlock]

Could you say a bit more about how combat works (or point me at another description)? Ta.

[Drasca]

Could you say a bit more about how combat works (or point me at another description)? Ta.
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For every tactic, for every unit, for every strategy, there is a counter.

I'm not sure if I can explain fully, but here I go.

All units have 100 health to begin with, a unit type and a base strength modified by attack penalities and defense bonuses like terrain, crossing rivers or attacking from a boat, and inherent unit properties. We have a rock paper scissor effect with different unit types and inherent properties. For example, a strength 4 spearman (melee) gets a +100% strength bonus vs Horse Archers (mounted) str 6. Axemen are str 5, and with a +50% str bonus vs melee. Swordsmen are str 6, and get a 10% bonus to attacking cities. Only some units can fortify (usually archers, gunpowder and melee), but the bonus is only 5% per turn foritified up to 25%.

Total modified strengths, are compared, and to hit chance and damage is done based on relative strengths, until one unit reaches zero. That doesn't end here, as the unit still alive remains wounded, retaining only the health % of their original strength, and only the health left. So, even though an axeman of str 5 and +50% bonus vs melee units might win against swordsmen str 6, he'll be wounded and left with, let's say, 3.4/5.0 str this time around (it varies a little with prng). The axeman is less effective for engaging in combat. He might be easy prey for some other unit since he's recently engaged in combat and been wounded, requiring time to heal.

Wounding units prevents infinite attacking, or infinite defense via one unit. A lone defender of equal strength to the attacker could possibly fend off one or two, but not several of the equivalent strength.

Rules of engagement: Units attacking always face the best defending unit. Stacks of doom you say? SoD beware...

Catapults and collateral damage. Certain units, usually catapults, can cause collateral damage when they attack. This wounds other units in the stack. Catapults can wound to 50% of their strength, if you build enough of them and attack an offending stack with it.

Catapults also bombard city defenses, which normally add to the defending unit, but this can be reduced with catapults, thus pummeling city walls (they do regenerate if given tmie left alone).

All military units gain xp from battle too. These can be spent at various plateaus of increasing xp requirements, (2, 5, 10, 17, 26, ...) for promotions that can increase general strength effectiveness (Combat promotions +10% each), one promotion additional strength vs a specific type (+25% vs archers, melee, etc), or to take advantage of certain terrain (+20% to hills defense), or various special abilities. With these xp and combat promotions, you won't see much randomness with units leveling up based on their experienced. You'll see that specialized city raider III swordsman str 6 (melee unit) having +75% total being great for attacking units garrisioned in cities, but no good elsewhere, particularly when defending against combat I-->shock axeman str 5 with a total of +85% against melee.

Rock paper scissors, and no randomness. You won't see any one unit getting too lucky, or too powerful against everything. You have city attack units, general combat units, and units you promote in the field to use however you'd like.

That's some of the combat system. There's more, like flanking, withdrawel chance, movement point balances, ignore terrain movement cost, first strike, unique units, and other neat things to consider, but I don't really have time to cover all those details. You'll have to just play the game, read and discover for yourself.

[Rinnhart]

That was always my problem with Guild Wars...it felt like Diablo, but without what made Diablo fun...
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Which becomes a question of: what made Diablo so damn fun? I mean, Diablo 1 was a short, fairly unimpressive game. Diablo 2 was a dated, not overly long game. Both were click-fests. Why were (are) they so fun?

Guildwar's beta (the E3 one)- the PvP was hectic and thrilling. None of us really knew what we were doing, but we had our 8 buttons and that was all you needed to know. I've dabbled a bit since it's release, and never have found that same spark.

[ima_nerd]

D2 was fun because creativity mattered. Yes, there were 8(?) classes but there were so many possibilities. Oh so many possibilities.

[Descended]

I second the player skill mattered thing. Not just being able to run the buttons like a complex arcade controller, but knowing what to attack and how to attack it and whether to retreat or charge. And that was just the combat; you also had to manage equipment choices and skill choices, and those choices mattered.

There is something about games where you can plan out a long term strategy or a set of goals and then be able to see that plan come to fruition, yet at the same time see small, continuous improvements while doing interesting, short-term tasks, like not dieing to a group of frenzied minotaurs who surprised you in a narrow, icy tunnel. The uniques, recipes, and skills allowed for rewarding (mostly in the "I've got this design for a character" area) long-term planning and execution, and the random map and loot generation kept the action from being too predictable for my taste.


Blizzard could make WoW 2.0 ten times as addictive by:

• Having some good and superior items be randomly generated. We know they use a 'point buy' system for balancing stats with an item level. A random item generator that, when given a base item type ("leather shoulders"), quality, and a point value (based on the mob's/chest's level plus whatever modifiers), generates one, two, or three mods for an item would make equiping characters so much more interesting. Imagine what happens to the economy when there is occasional items generated that happen to be perfect fits for a particular type of character. For example, blue plate gauntlets with +agi, +str, +1 crit. Blizzard hasn't provided optimal blue items in each slot for each talent build archaetype, crit focused warrior in this case. If those items could be generated randomly, your equipment horizon opens up dramatically.<>
  
• Randomly generated instances. There wouldn't be a need to make the geography random, which would avoid the biggest technical hurdle. Instead, randomness could be achieved by more flexible use of spawn points (so boss locations or even the creature ecology of a instance could vary) and randomized quests (something that would probably take a good deal more design genius to do well than randomizing spawns).<>
  
• One, two, and three man instances. I likes me a skill challenge, but it's often more headache than it's worth to find four other people to do, say, Mauradon with no one above level 48. Nuff said.<>
  [st]

[Darian]

One, two, and three man instances.&nbsp; I likes me a skill challenge, but it's often more headache than it's worth to find four other people to do, say, Mauradon with no one above level 48.&nbsp; Nuff said.
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Or better yet, scaling the difficulty of an instance to the total level of the player(s) entering it. Imagine a level 45 warrior being able to solo Uldaman -- IF he's really damned good. (As the game stands at the moment, it's absolutely not possible, period.)

Of course, even beyond the technical hurdle of scaling the instance, this would also require a total reconfiguration of the system by which instances are generated and/or entered... but they've already got the "join as group" function for Battlegrounds, so I don't see that it would be that difficult.

[kandrathe]

Or better yet, scaling the difficulty of an instance to the total level of the player(s) entering it.&nbsp; Imagine a level 45 warrior being able to solo Uldaman -- IF he's really damned good.&nbsp; (As the game stands at the moment, it's absolutely not possible, period.)

Of course, even beyond the technical hurdle of scaling the instance, this would also require a total reconfiguration of the system by which instances are generated and/or entered... but they've already got the "join as group" function for Battlegrounds, so I don't see that it would be that difficult.
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It would be possible with better crowd control if a high level player could lock down 2 or more mobs to focus on a 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 1 battle.

Alternatively, if they tweaked combat such that a lvl 45 faced multiple lvl 35's for example, that +10 skill would need to translate into enough of an advantage to make 4-5 mobs + boss encounters possible, and still not trivial for 5 people at an appropriate level. I think it is already hard to balance at the combat level now.

AI henchmen hired inside the instance would be another possible way to make it possible.