Online Games

Which Online Game is most fun ?

I have a selection of online games , mmog's they're called (massive multiplayer online games, or something like that). They all cost the same , 60$ to buy the game (when they first came out) and 15$ / month there after. I had reason to cycle through a number of them and I thought I'd write a review.

World of Warcraft
It's not bad. The rule system is unique and not based on anything else. Combat starts out relatively simple and grows progressively more and more complex as you level up. The first five levels are very rapid , you burn through them in an hour, and you can usually make level 8 or 10 on the first day , assuming several hours game time. Advancement slows considerably after that.
There are a lot of "solo" area's where you can just off monsters all by yourself , a fair number of fixed quests for you to run through , and instance dungeons. The dungeons will require you to party up you cannot really run them alone.
There is a certain difficulty factor that is unavoidable , that is to say if you stay in a low level area , you stop getting experiance. I think the rule is you still get xp if the creature is 5 levels below you , but not 6. And this goes up 1 every 10 levels (at 10th you can get xp of creatures 6 levels below you , at 20th , 7, etc) so you are forced to move on to higher level area's. Elite monsters in "instances" (dungeons that require a full party) generally insure that even a high level charactar that gets no xp from the dungeon will still have a very hard time in it...very hard and fruitless. Ah well.
The games crafting system is interesting and keeps some life into it. Fishing is a waste of time however, that was nerfed a long time ago, but you can make your own weapons and armor and such.
I would rate world of warcraft as a pretty good game, but I don't play it anymore because after a year you just get bored.

EverQuest
I have a new computer.
I must be the only person to have a copy of Everquest and have never played it because it would't run on my old computer. So I put it on this machine and gave it a shot.

Boring , and glitched.
first off, they want you to grind away killing rats and bats as a new charactar, in a combat system that doesn't actually inspire patience (press the auto attack button and wait... or if you're a spell caster there is some stradegy ... wait for the rat to attack , then hit the hot key for your spell and hope it doesn't fizzle.. it should go off before the rat attacks again. Blow the timing , and the rats next attack interrupts the spell).

This took about 1 minute to master and then it was just a boring grind. Gathered my 8 rats and 4 bats and 4 vermin nests I was supposed to kill, and returned to turn them in, speaking to the stated NPC.

She totally ignored me. Wouldn't let me turn in the quest.

And this is on a beginning quest that must have seen a million people go through it with their new charactars. Obviously this game is no longer being maintained.

After a few hours I decided the game was simply too boring, too much grinding , no way to turn in quests, most likely I would get stuck somewhere due to these glitches ... cancelled my subscription the very same day I had applied for it and uninstalled it.

Matrix Online
Charactar creation consisted of simply what does your charactar look like. As you progress , however , you load "abilities" into your memory that give you better and better combat abilities, or spell like abilities (viral attacks and what not .. the whole thing is very computer theme'd if you've ever seen the matrix movies) and of course there's the constant problem that while abilities are easy to come by (you can just buy them at various venders) memory space to load them is in short supply , so you're always fiddling with what you have loaded, what will fit.

Combat comes in two flavours, ranged , and hand to hand. Ranged you select a target , click on the gun or shot gun icon (depending on what weapon is in your hand) and you start firing until either you fall down or the enemy does. Not too complicated.

Hand to hand , is very complicated. You have a selection of attacks, like fast (more speed than damage) , power ( more damage than speed) throw , and block. You also have a special "head butt" abilitie that can only be used on a charactar that is stunned. Oh , your "fast" attack has a chance of stunning. So a beginner tactic is to use your fast attack until the opponent is stunned and then click on the head butt ability to inflict massive damage.

Later on this motief is repeated with special kicks and punches that only work when the enemey is off balance (a throw will leave him off balance) staggered, etc. This tends to make hand to hand combat fairly complicated.

Whats that you say , you'll just stick to ranged ? Sorry , works great at low levels by after a bit the enemy will charge you and force you into hand to hand.

Judging by the training video's in the introduction hall that all charactars go through ranged combat has it's own issues. Weapons don't have the same range, so if you can run fast and stay ahead of the enemey , you can pretty much get free shots off at him until he falls and defeat him without getting hit at all (I also noticed an ability with guns to slow an enemey down by 50% ...hmmm... )

There's a lot of "grinding" in the game (just killing over and over) but the combat system is complicated enough that that isn't as boring as you'd think.

There are also "missions" to be accomplished, and the missions advance some kind of story line that holds the whole game together. When your charactar gets pretty high level (I think level 50) there are "world events" for such high level's.

I see the threads of a crafting system for building your own equipment (you get to see ALL the abilities , even the ones you don't have , and definitions for what they do) though I havn't experimented with it yet. That's always nice.

Multi-class to a fair thee well.

Raise some cash , kill a few thugs, hit the venders. Buy up some "virus/ hacker" abilities, and suddenly your charactar switches from being a kung fu martial artiest to a virus zapping ranged "spell caster" type. Doesnt' work out too well ? You still have those kung fu abilities, just load them up again. Or try out healing for a while , or programming (you get to make a pet that fights alongside with you) and try that for a while. Tweaking exactly what abilities you will load, will you be all the way kung fu ? Or will you take just enough hacking to give yourself some self healing ? Is obviously going to be an art form unto itself.