Anarchy online is free

[Leagle]

I would have mentioned it earlier, but it kept me occupied. Dated, but fun.

[HangFire]

Is it just another one of those level grinder mmorgs? I got tired of WoW before it even finished beta because of that problem.

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

I dunno what you mean with "level grinder mmorgs", but it looked really nice to me - only that I don't have the time to play online regularly. Especially not always when the other guys of the group that invited me have time...

EDIT:
Bad thread title, Leagle - wait till Whistler sees this thread, and you're in for a long essay about the difference between freeware and free software... 9_9

[HangFire]

By level grinder I mean one where your main goal in the game is to get better equipment and a higher level. It'd be more fun if all the players had some sort of higher, achievable goals.

I know in WoW players can fight to other factions in PvP, but you cannot really "win" and defeat the other factions, so whats the point?

They really need to make a MMORG thats more of a ROLE playing game. Something dynamic. Have game masters constantly working at creating major and minor events in the world that players participate in.

Say for example a village that a bunch of players call home is suddenly coming under attack all the time by undead. Whirl up a quest that the villagers can do, have them try to figure out who is sending the undead and stop the attacks before the village is eventually overwhelmed and destroyed.

I don't mean just add little pointless quests that the players can do for crap like in World of Warcraft, I couldn't help but think "why am I doing these? Theres probably 15,000 other people who saved the king's shoe from the goblins already".

Quests should actually accomplish something, not just 'do it for the reward'. You should do it or the village is destroyed, and the players lose their homes and the undead will continue to rampage and destroy. There should be real consequence to failure, not just lose exp and loot from death. Players ought to be doing quests that are meaningful.

There should always be some sort of ultimate end goal for the players to achieve as a group, like destroying the other factions, or saving the kingdom from some sort of evil. The end goal should also be achievable, but only with an amazing effort. If it is acheived, then after, make a new goal for the game's community.

From what I've seen, they only discourage this kind of behavoir in MMORGs.

In Ultima Online, a group of players managed to kill Richard Garriot's ingame alter-ego, Lord British. What did they do to reward the players for their creativity and skill? They banned them, respawned Garriot's char and made Lord British invincible.

In Everquest, a massive group of a few hundred players got together after much planning to kill a supposidly invincible NPC dragon. They fought it, and after a few hours almost killed it, but a GM noticed and panicked and reset the server. The players later tried again, and they managed to succeed in killing it with 3 guilds of 400 players and an entire of afternoon of battle.

That is the kind of things that would make a MMORG fun, something that requires a large organised effort by players to accomplish something huge.


Maybe there already is an MMORG like this, but I haven't heard of it yet.

[Leagle]

It is called NWN, and instead of being MM, they are persistant worlds. Nordock used to run lots of stuff, the problem is, it is based on DnD. (An awful conversion if I may say so myself) DnD does not lend itself to MMORPGs very well at all. I find it amusing when I say this, but it is "too realistic". rofl


In fact, I think I'll load up the game now. Hopefully I have a char there still... (My favourite 18th lvl char got erased during an update a year or two ago.)

[Leagle]

Also the netcode of NWN is nowhere near as good, and there are real terrfying issues of being killed because your char skipped a bit. Urg.

[sfx1999]

I have been trying to get the new Planeshift beta to work properly, but it crashes.

http://www.planeshift.it/

It's free, and they claim it always will be.

[Leagle]

hmm, I'll check it out. I have a hankering for swords. (While AO is amusing, it is rather boring.)

[Leagle]

Nah. It didn't like me either.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I totally agree with HangFire, and that's why I don't play MMORPGs. It's tiresome to fight endlessly the same monsters to get a +1, or do endlessly the same things in the hope to increase your level that will allow you finally to wear that top-notch-armor-with-bells-and-whistles that you found in some cavern but can't use it because you're not sk1ll3d enough (while in the same time, dozens of citizens with better armor are walking around nagging you).

On another side, turning Morrowind into a multiplayer online RPG would be pretty cool