This holiday season me and a bud are wanting to go on a virtual adventure. We are thinking maybe Minecraft after the next big update or maybe that shameless Monster Hunter clone Hunter Blade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqnfQBISgQo but I am also wondering about the more populated sort of games. I’m wide open to anything good, but something a bit out-of-the-ordinary would be especially good. I tried hard to think of a good co-op RPG but it’s still slim pickings in the genre unless you want a Diablo-like (we don’t really). The one he seemed most interested in was Homeland for GC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-p50mhiPh0 hence the desire for a more unusual game, but I doubt my PC could emulate it well.
Anarchy Online is a free to play microtranny with comfortable enough mechanics and a great not-fantasy setting.
Dragon’s Nest, maybe?
This is a great game too. It’s essentially 3D Dungeon Fighter Online. Only problem is that the Asiatic version is way ahead of the EN/US one.
DC universe is going f2p on Nov 1.
I do alot of co-op with my brother, and recent games we are having a blast with is The First Templar and Renegade Ops. The former has a few rough edges control wise, but if you like a gritty spectacle fighter with a decent leveling/progression system this game is actually very good.
Dungeon Siege 3, DDO, and Vindictus also kept us entertained for a while.
TANKS! Who needs so called superheroes in their homo-erotic spandax playsuits, bitch-boys with pointy earpieces calling themselves elves and guys with neckbeards playing barbarian warrior women who go to battle wearing iron bikinis when you can have 60 tons of hard murderous steel. It doesnt matter wether you win or loose because when your tank meets a house, the house looses :D
www.worldoftanks.com (or .eu or .ru) if you are still in firm posession of your man-pass.
Both DDO and LOTRO are very high quality F2P MMOs. DDO is more group focussed, LOTRO is more of a WoW clone. Expect to have to pay some money to unlock higher level content though.
Runes of Magic is a reasonable WoW clone as well, and can be easily be played for free until you start hitting max levels. The only thing you may want to spend money on earlier is a mount.
City of Heroes and Champions Online are both F2P as well if you fancy a superhero theme. I’ve just started playing CO and it’s very decent, as long as you can live with the fact that paying players get a lot more skill customisation.
Guild Wars is very good, and has matured very nicely. It’s also very doable with a 2 man team, since you get heroes (customisable NPCs) to fill the other group slots. You would have to buy the game first though. All chapters are stand alone, and unless you want to buy a compilation pack, Nightfall would be the best one to start out with since you get acces to heroes right away.
I’ve enjoyed Eden Eternal for quite a while.
Fairly traditional design, but an FF-ish job system provides good gameplay variety.
I play this currently.
The only real problem with Dragon’s nest is the US version is capped at like level 24 and there is COMPLETELY no end game. There is one single “Boss dungeon” at 24 you can do, 7 times a week, Minotaur nest.
This dungeon drops a lot of things, but one of the things it drops are mats to build an epic armor set. This armor set takes hundreds of parts from minotaur nest and you only get 0-3 each run.
Oh and the game is based on using this enhancement system. In town you can enhance items to be more powerful, giving them a +1-+12 modifier. These get exponentially more powerful as you go up, BUT… after +5 there is a chance to break the item which also gets exponentially higher as you go up. Enhancing isn’t free either and costs some type of crystal that is a drop.
So basically you have to grind tons to make armor, then you have to grind tons to enhance it, but it will probably break before you get it enhanced high, making you repeat the process…
SO yeah, fun gameplay, but the item system is completely korean (very grindy).
My friend and I play this together on a different server that is a bit beyond the usa one. When that server had a 24 cap, we quit about a week after getting level 24 as there was simply nothing to do. The server just recently got a 32 cap, but as far as i know, even level 32s are still doing the same damn dungeon over and over again. We will likely quit soon after 32 as well because as with 24, there doesn’t sound like there is much of an end game.
the US version of dragon nest is 32 now, they open up the 2nd city already a while back.
LoTRO was an awesome mmo that was well worth a monthly subscription, also better than most of the other games mentioned here for ‘adventure’ assuming you have at least a vague interest in Tolkien’s world.
LOTRO is worth a look if you have any interest in Tolkien. I just restarted with a new character last week, and I’m having a blast. It’s a well-polished gem at this point.
I’m not sure I would call it ‘good’ but EQII is free to play now. It’s not really bad, though, and it is entirely possible to play without putting any money at all into it, except perhaps for $10 to buy a few more character slots, more bag space and the ability to buy stuff on the AH without paying per item. Lots of quests, complicated and slow crafting and mounts that fly and jump (yes, you can get them even F2P through quests) - what else could you ask for? :)
DDO.
Everyone else is just pretending. :)
Uncharted Waters Online can be an interesting venture, if you are interested in something a little out of the ordinary and not exactly graphically stunning… it has some of the charm of the older games though.
Anybody tried
or
?
I guess I could, you know, try them out myself. Because they’re free.
Just making conversation.
I played vindictus quite a while ago. The gameplay is fun, but like almost every korean mmo, it is a huge, repetitive grind. The classes also didn’t feel very distinct to me either. Even as a sorceress (whatever their female mage’s name was) i still spent 90% of my time mêléeing just like my fighter would.
There’s a thread about dungeonfighter. Dungeonfighter is 2d dragon’s nest…or, as said above, vice versa. Both are fun games. Pretty sure that dungeonfighter has a higher level cap though. I haven’t played either game that much.
I’m thinking about trying DC Universe now that it is free (well, in 2 days). But I may wait for the initial rush to wear off. Oddly enough, I prefer my MMORPGs to lightly populated.
Puzzle Pirates, just as the name implies, it’s puzzles as a pirate.
It’s truly pretty good, great even, and who doesn’t like pirates?
You should try that free one where you get a job and a car payment and a mortgage and get married and have kids and try to maintain your sanity level while staying out of poverty.
It’s pretty immersive and visceral and other neat adjectives.