So I was bored while waiting for my PSO2 to patch and was looking at the different news on the anime its getting. While doing so I remembered this forum actually had a games section and figured this could be interesting. Feel free to post your general experiences with different MMOs here such as any favorites or ones that stood out to you for some reason.
Before I get into some of the different MMOs I feel like talking about ill give some basic information on my MMO history. I've been playing them for a long time now. My first one was WoW. I was pretty big on it while I still had interest in it but that one didn't last too long for me. Plus I couldn't exactly expect my parents to keep paying for it forever. That's when I transitioned into free to play ones. I tried MANY different ones but almost always found myself comparing them to WoW and going "Oh. WoW does this better. Next." In the end I pretty much entirely forgot about most of them but some have managed to stick.
Atlantica Online: This is probably the MMO I've had for the longest amount of time. The turn based battle system where your leading your formation of different mercenaries just appeals to me so much. Its also a nice change of pace compared to normal MMOs. This is literally the only MMO I know of to use a battle system like this. The mercs all feel so unique too and I actually end up growing attached to a number of them. My inner collector also can't resist trying to get all of them. Its not without its problems though. Killing/looting X number of Y doesn't seem so bad in a normal MMO where you can nuke entire groups at a time but when your dealing with long turn based battles? Yeaaaaaaah...
Lost Saga Online: Lost Saga is right up there with Atlantica in terms of how long I've had it. As an arena brawler sort of thing this was also a nice change to me compared to all the other generic games I was going through. Sadly its really poorly balanced imo. I still enjoy starting it up occasionally and playing some matches though.
Fantasy Earth Zero: Even after all this time i'm still sad about this one dying over here in NA. Those massive battlefields were great fun and I especially enjoyed sneaking around trying to assassinate or just generally screw with people as a rouge. Plus turning into those different giant creatures like the wraith and then mowing down literally the entire enemy team was freaking epic.
Pox Nora: As my first foray into something kind of like a TCG I learned a valuable lesson from it. That I suck horribly. Its not like i'm a sore loser (well...maybe a little bit.) but losing in this sort of strategy game is really frustrating to me because it really just makes me feel like i'm awful at the game. In actuality I was probably about average at the game. Either way though it really turns me off from actually playing against anyone other than friends on it which resulted in me mostly sticking to the different single player stuff. Needless to say that gets kind of boring pretty quickly.
Pokemon Mystery Universe: This is one that I only found somewhat recently and its probably exactly what you think it is by reading its name. Basically an online PMD game but not turn based. Interestingly enough its actually a fan made game. As a huge fan of the actual PMD games and the chocobo's dungeon games I've been having a lot of fun with it although the not turn based system took some getting used to. The game does show how its fan made in some unfortunate ways though like a total inability to change key bindings.
Mytheon Online: This is another shut down game that I was sad to see go. It was really unpolished and outright infuriating with its difficulty but I still really enjoyed the uniqueness of its system. That whole idea of having all your skills be "stones" that worked kind of like cards where you had to have them in your "hand" to use them was really interesting. It also created an interesting dynamic when you had some skills that you could only activate when you have 2 or more different stones in your hand at the same time. They may suck on their own but is it worth letting that stone take up a precious slot in your hand in the hopes that you can get some sort of super spell off? Seriously though F*** those bosses. Trying to bring down the different gods that would be bosses at the end of some levels was god damn insane. Hephaestus still haunts my nightmares.
Wizard101: You know this may be aimed at a pretty young audience but man this is actually one of my favorites. Honestly this is pretty much the only subscription based MMO I think is actually worth the monthly payment. So much so that once I finish with collage and have a steady income id like to be registered for it again. It fills a similar niche for me to Mytheon but the gameplay is less frustrating and more expanding upon here with its pip management system. Its still plenty frustrating on its own though. For a kids game my god does this get hard later on when enemies start basically ALWAYS outnumbering you. Assuming you play solo some fights like just you vs a boss and his 2 minions or worse 2 bosses and 1 minions are BRUTAL.
Blade & Soul: Hey look. One of the always mentioned foreign MMOs and NA is actually going to get it! Having played the Russian version which was totally open to all regions and even had a lot in English I really look forward to the release of this game. The timing based combat system was immensely satisfying for me as an assassin. It felt like a game that took actual skill and not just smashing your face onto the keyboard. I remember soloing some boss you were supposed to do in a party thanks to all the different assassins skills that jump around or cause stealth. Took a hell of a long time of course but I eventually won. A game that lets me get away with doing things like that or fighting enemies which massively out level me? Sign. Me. Up.
Onigiri Online: Ah Onigiri. I was actually with this game right from its open alpha stages. It released quite some time ago now but it only recently corrected a major issue I had with it. Starting in its beta phase up until recently experience gains were nerfed HARDCORE. And I mean to the point that even as early as around level 10 or so you would be challenging dungeons higher leveled than you. By the time you reach later regions in the game like Kyoto onwards you would be stuck doing dungeons that were practically double your level. And the game simple wasn't balanced for this exp rate since it was still using the enemy levels, item drops, etc. of the JP version. Interestingly enough the devs who publish the game themselves are the same for both versions. Even with the exp rate improved now there are still some issues like lag and rubberbanding. The sort of issues that seem ping or latency based and result from bad netcode/server/whatever it was. Plus the game has essentially no other features outside of the main instanced dungeon gameplay. It kind of feels like a slightly worse PSO2 with a VERY Japanese theme. Even though basically everything I've said about it has been negative I do still like it though. I guess it just holds a special place in my heart.
Phantasy Star Online 2: Speaking of PSO2 I guess I should actually get around to talking about this one huh? Especially since my patching seems to have finished and I think I've talked about every other MMO I wanted to bring up. Hope for an actual NA release of it seems pretty dim at this point but thank god for the fan translators who have put pretty much everything important in the game in English and thank god that the JP server IP block was removed at some point. Don't know if this is my most played MMO considering how much time I've put into some of the ones I found early like Atlantica but this is easily my favorite MMO. I just wish that I could fully experience the game. The massive multiparty 12 man missions and emergency quests are definitely where the fun lies for me buts trying to do them on the JP server isn't exactly easy. Even ignoring the issue of communication when i'm running around in a mission with that many other players I get some massive crippling delays. Not exactly surprising considering I live all the way on the east coast and am trying to play a game with its server hosted in Japan. I can still get by in them usually but that kills a lot of the fun for me. Outside of that I really only have 2 issues with the game. The first is that its generally too easy for me personally unless somewhere REALLY far above my level. But hey that's what multiple difficulty options are for after all. The 2nd annoys me to no end and its that the special emergency code bosses like the Dark Falz forms have time limits. I really do wish that wasn't the case so I could be fine to solo them on harder difficulties without having to worry about them just taking too long to kill. Failing due to death is one thing but a boss being too tanky is a pretty annoying way to fail a mission.
That's just about all the MMOs I wanted to mention I think. I'm curious to see what other MMO stories and experiences people share.
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