Modern MMOs
The term coined at the time was “a WoW killer” for the next big MMORPG. Needless to say, it did not come. With that being said, I still wanted to see if perhaps they are good nowadays and I was missing out on all the fun waiting on Classic for the next year. So I started trying out a few of them in between my time playing single-player RPGs. This list is a two-parter. First, we will see my impressions of MMOs I played while waiting for Classic and hated.
Archeage
A close friend of mine told me about this game. He is a casual player who was also looking for an MMO to pass the time. I managed to play Archeage for a full 30 minutes. I hated it so much, so fast! It actually took me more time to download, install, and register an account than to play it.
The character creation menu was glitching out like hell. The gameplay immediately felt secondary. I also felt overpowered from the get-go for some missions I had to do. The introduction was there, but it was lacking a hook, so to speak. I had no idea who I was, where I was, and what I was supposed to be doing. The user interface did a very poor job of easily and gradually introducing the various game systems.
This game felt like some online meeting place more than anything else. So, 30 minutes later I was out.
Lineage 2 Classic
Not long after Blizzard announced their Vanilla-era servers, NCSoft quickly jumped on board with the idea and tried to cash in on the "Classic" movement. This is not a bad idea after all as there seem to be quite a few passionate people who did enjoy this game.
The promotional stuff appealed to me with some good lore attached to it, as the marketing that heavily targeted me on Facebook suggested...
Once I finally got to play it, the experience was miserable. The combat and travel were clunky as hell. There were too many character stats to understand and again, I had no clue who I was in this world, or what the world wanted, or had to offer me. I managed to play this game for around 2 hours and I hated almost every second of it.
The Division 2
Well, this isn’t an MMORPG obviously but I wanted to see what the hype was all about. 60 minutes later I felt nothing. I’ve seen quite a few YouTubers enjoying this game and I decided to sign up for the private beta. A looter-shooter just isn’t my jam I was to find. It also doesn’t quite feel like an online game but an offline game with online functionality (at least the beginning of it). Also, not being able to jump feels constricted and gives the impression of a rail-shooter.
Now let's see the MMOs I played while waiting for Classic and kind of liked.
Neverwinter
From the start of the game, I got a nice impression of its overall aspects. But once the hours went by it diminished to the point where I realized nothing was impressive about this game. The path animation which shows you where to go, although useful at the beginning, quickly turned into a predestined path that keeps you on track so there wasn’t much sidetracking or getting lost.
I did like the fact that they got the Paladin class sorted out pretty well with nice combat animations and spells and an overall feeling of “this is how a Paladin should feel while playing in a video game”.
But when you go into the menu it feels like you have to focus so hard to understand it. Both mechanically and visually. I did try for a while to understand this convoluted system. It made no logical sense so I gave up in the end.
I did play the 2002 single-player Neverwinter Nights RPG game and enjoyed it very much. The MMO version feels like it’s just that - Neverwinter Nights in an MMO setting. Nothing more, nothing else.
Overall, it was a fun 6 hours.
The Lord of the Rings Online
Heavily inspired by the Lord of the Rings books (obviously) and by World of Warcraft, this MMO kept me in for many hours. The intro is quite interesting with its scripted type of event that I haven’t seen before. Single-player-like, but unique.
Tolkien fans will enjoy this game because the biggest plus is that you can physically visit The Lord of the Ring's locations and characters, though the way they’re implemented is quite un-epic. Boring even, and very much lacking in scale. With some better game design, one can see that the potential was there, and it could have been something else entirely, something good.
There's stuff I like
LOTR Online got the class identity quite well too. You do feel like you are playing your class. Combat is nice and enjoyable but in every direction you look, it seems like something is missing. Like somewhere at around 70% of developing something, say the combat, they stopped.
Not clunky, not unfinished but, I don’t know how to put it but it kind of lacks the cherry on top and the dressing. It’s good, not that tasteful and satisfying but not really delicious either. I especially hated the menus which looked unrefined and ugly.
The aspects that I did like about this game are probably some of the few things that are unique to it. I’m talking about the scripted events and dungeons that happen around the game; the interesting mechanic they added to grinding and farming where say you have to kill 10 boars in a region and you do that.
Then, this region-specific achievement unlocks which asks to kill you 100 of them which will, in turn, reward you with a title in the region and some other rewards but, more importantly, a new talent point for the trait tree. Which is one of the 3 talent trees in the game. This makes grinding and farming very rewarding and makes you feel like you are progressing.
And equally, stuff I don't like
But much of this game is heavily inspired by World of Warcraft and that shows. It’s like they copy-pasted The Lord of the Rings fantasy over WoW’s structure and just filled in the stuff that was missing in WoW, like the Nazgul, and removed the things that weren’t in Tolkien's universe.
And then you see how everything revolves around the real money shop. Want some more bag space? Buy some from the shop. Do you want a mount to travel faster? Get one in the shop, et cetera, et cetera.
After 30 hours it became boring but it was an enjoyable experience. There’s much more to say about it, but out of all the MMOs listed above, I would suggest this one is the one to check out, even for a few hours.
To sum it up, LOTRO is the student who gets a 6 or 7 out of 10. Not the brightest in the classroom, nor the idiot. Just the mediocre one.
If Classic wouldn’t come around I would try those vanilla servers. Oh, have I forgotten to mention? They, too, have launched Classic servers for this game.
Battle for Azeroth
I already made an entire article with my somewhat superficial impression of the current state of WoW, and there isn’t much else to say other than the fact that I don’t care that much about it. Would I play it? The short answer is no. The long answer is that you should read my article if you want to see how the game looks for someone who hasn’t played it in 10 years (at the time of writing).
The Elder Scrolls Online
I had no attraction for the Elder Scrolls universe but I did wound up watching a lot of videos from Kristofer ESO on YouTube and subscribing to him over the past year. I also felt very compelled to try it out for myself. But then Classic got a summer release date and any attraction that started building up got deleted right when I was about to find that download button.
This is more of a special mention because many others are saying this is a solid MMO. I would even argue it’s the best one around right now even though I did not play it for a second. The YouTube videos I've seen do show the fact that combat seems to be satisfying and well-designed. And from what I gather combat seems to be the cornerstone of any RPG.
The Conclusion
Other games would have made this list a complete overview of the current MMORPG offering. Games such as Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14. Not only do I not enjoy Asian-styled games, but I also feel like it would have been a waste of time. The WoW killer has not yet been born.
So my conclusion after trying out these MMOs is that I haven’t been missing out on much really and neither have you.
It is kind of ironic though that in the present day the MMO that will kill the (current) iteration of World of Warcraft is very possible to quite literally be itself, in the form of Classic. And on its release, we will find out if that is true.
