I admit it, I’ve been playing a lot of free to play MMO’s, just wondering if there’s anything that can hold my interest or at least be vaguely entertaining when I want some downtime. Gosh wish I had someone to play D&D Online (*nudge*), I am still holding back so I can experience that wonderful game with others. I have to say that there is a lot of creative work accumulated (lost?) in these MMO’s, but the market has got to have a shakeout and the best of breed can come out on top (D&DO is certainly what I’d call best of breed for F2P, at least what I’ve seen.) Surprised at the number that sell points (in plastic “prepaid phone card” form) at places like Target and 7-11. Wonder how well that’s working out for them. “*hic* Little Jethro needs hisself a burpday presunt, lesse this card looks like that PS3 game he dun play. *hic*” (Apologies to drunk rednecks, I mean no offense. You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses, would you?)
So one-line summaries of F2P MMO’s I’ve played recently, in some semblance of order from best to worst:
D&D Online – probably captures the D&D experience the most accurately, and has some nice FPS-like elements to the way the combat works. More than once I’ve shouted out loud at some really neat surprises and dungeon design.
Mobinogi – Interesting Korean MMO, deep crafting, almost turn-based combat, deep skill system, mediocre graphics and no pathfinding (in a game where it’s only click to move). Would almost be appropriate for the kids except for Nao’s bouncing knockers.
Dofus – Love the art, great turn-based combat, nice class designs. Bonus for being Flash. Minus for the harsh F2P limits and for not releasing their really nice Wakfu animated series with English subs (yet?) Oh and troublesome release cycles. Oh and annoying navigation in the world; why they couldn’t do scrolling rather than individual screens with hard-to-see “navigate to the next screen” waypoints is beyond me. While 2.0 improves graphics, the gameplay is identical (ok, that’s not necessarily bad). At least they make it a bit easier to move around.
Pirates of the Caribbean Online – Interesting, I hadn’t heard of this one until massively.com noted updates. Lacks gathering and crafting, which I see as a positive generally. Graphics are very dated, seems like early 3DFX graphics or something, but they run fast on my laptop. Voice-acted cut scenes are decent and infrequent (a positive, although you can skip them if you wish.) Combat is melee-oriented, with a nice “click the LMB at the right time to do combo attacks” mechanic. Ranged combat is standard, although they have a “pirate’s code” so no shooting Navy or other humans. Ship combat is awesome if a bit simplistic, with the ability to have multiple crew; usually the captain piloting the ship with others manning guns and everyone gets in on short boarding actions when fighting flag ships. (Guns are allowed there, thankfully…which allows lower-level players to stay out of the melee.) I’d subscribe, if it weren’t $10/mo ($80/yr, decent discount…) Oh, and streaming downloading and MacOSX support are bonuses. Tempting…
4Story – A Korean WoW-alike MMO that has me hooked right now…Small download (~1GB), nice graphics, fast framerate, fairly simple/linear quests, fast leveling. I’m playing a human summoner, which is probably why I’m playing this so much at the moment…When you kill a creature, you can summon that creature. You can only have one summoned creature at a time, but the mechanics work quite well…I direct my creature to attack an enemy, and it leaps forward while I DPS it from the back. Let’s see if it has staying power. Seems they designed the quests to all be done solo, with bosses that are just barely do-able so far. Oh and their screenshot gallery is hi-lar-ious.
Warhammer Online – yeah, it’s only the first 10 levels for free, and lots of nagging, and they canned half their team, but they have their streaming client and support Mac now too. Good time for me to play a bit of destro, which I never did when I subbed. Huh, I really like D&DO’s “fps mode”, I spend most my time in WAR with the RMB held down for mouse control of facing. Distinct gothic fantasy world, yes.
Maple Story – Side scroller MMO, nice controls, limited graphics (duh), exponential difficulty curve. Oh, and for 2-d, it’s easy to get lost.
Combat Arms – Since the two above are Nexon, I’ll throw in that Combat Arms is a great FPS game, very nice graphics, nice controls. Best $0.00 I’ve ever spent on an online FPS.
Ether Saga Online – Wow amazing graphics and world design, creative creature design, BORING combat and lots of grind. Too bad. Wonderful path finding. ‘course, I haven’t made it past lvl 10, and I am guessing the good stuff comes later, but can I survive booooooooring? Oh and I dig the theme (being a bit of a Sinophile.) One reviewer complained about making to lvl 15 without a single fight; I ran out of quests by lvl 8 (and only quest I had was “get to level 10 then go talk to …”) Wrong way to address criticism.
Perfect World International – By the same guys as Ether Saga, more adult-oriented MMO. Equally nice graphics but same grind problems. But cool that they have at least one race that starts with the ability to fly. Combat is overly simplistic and most enemies are non-reactive slugs that do nothing until you smack ‘em. Ether Saga has better pathfinding, too. But I put in well over 20 hours, but the leveling is sooo slow and repetitive I’ve given up. The graphics are so well done, amazing stuff. (Almost as good as Warhammer Online for atmospherics.)
Free Realms – Whoa, way to kiddy and “here’s an excuse for some lame-o minigames.” Yikes, PASS. Guess the kiddies love it?
Dragonica Online – Kiddie 2.5d fighter game, pass.
Neo Steam – Huh, unique world, frustrating controls.
Flyff – Also suffers from frustrating controls and lack of ability to change those controls.
Some ingenious