Yep, that time of year again when companies start announcing the "next big thing".

Looking at some of the games coming out on the list provided by www.mmorpg.com (http://www.mmorpg.com) and some have piqued my interest.

I'm curious to see how Dungeons and Dragons Online is going to make out. This one seems to promise a lot, I wonder if it can deliver.

The Age of Conan looks great too. Judging from what the website says, it looks like there might even be seige warfare? One can only hope.

RF Online looks like it might feed the Japanimation junkie within, but I'm really cautious about this game at the same time. Lineage II still lingers in my mind......

Then there's Tabula Rasa (dates unannounced) from Richard Garriott (aka Lord British). He's shed his position with EA (they bought Origin) and left Ultima behind to make this Sci-Fi FPS/MMO . Certainly looks interesting.

Anyone else care to comment? Just trying to get a discussion going :)

DDO was bad beyond words in alpha and beta. It makes EQ look as fast paced and fun as WoW, by comparison.

That, and it's made by Turbine.

It was that bad? All I ever saw was good comments (but that's easily arranged by the company making it).

More dirt please! :devil

I was just plain not fun. It felt clunky and unpolished to play (like all the Turbine games) and the mechanics are miserable.

You can pretty much ruin your character permanently at creation. By ruin, I mean 10x less effective than the same class with a different build, and nothing to do about it even at level 1.

There is no mana or hp regen. So, you have to tiptoe around through the instances and pray something doesn't go wrong that requires one extra heal that'll make it impossible to finish.

The whole thing is just very un-fun.

How long since you last played Sanchek? I hear a different review from other friends in beta.

As long as they keep the normal D&D whatever edition character stuff it's always going to be easy to make seemingly innocuous choices at creation that make you quite literally an order of magnitude less effective than someone who made a character using the correct (and absurdly arcane) combination of options.

The lack of healing didn't bother me so much, but the game was just really boring. The room-puzzles tended towards the obvious and the lead-ins were always way too much pointless text.

Anyone on the Conan closed beta? This one has REALLY got me interested. I won't quote the website, but I would suggest you go have a look, especially if you're a fan of the Conan series.

DDO made me cry as i laid down next to a crying baby jesus.

Darkfall Online and RFOnline are my hopes for the future

Honestly the only upcoming MMO that has caught my eye at all is Vanguard. Everything else just looks blah.

My big fear about Vanguard is that it'll be EQ1, at the beginning all over again with busted quests, imbalanced classes and Brad pretty much telling you if you don't like it, too bad.

I'll admit, I'm interested, but the guy doesn't have much in the way of people skills.

Well my experience with all MMOs is that when they release they do have broken quests and issues :(

The other funny thing... there seems to be a huge cry from allot of places that people want another EQ1. I think a good part of EQ2 problem is that allot of people thought it would be EQ1 on steroids and turned out to not be....and now they are a mixture of EQ1 and WoW and other stuff that just makes you go... what the hell are they doing that for?

I'm watching Vanguard, but no luck getting into the beta yet. So far, I'm interested, and I fully realize that what's delivered as far as gameplay will be delivered unapologetically. The Vision all over again. But I'll give it a shot.

Conan also looks interesting, and the pitch given by the FunCom rep at DragonCon has me willing to check it out.

Most of the things that people wanted that Brad vetoed were eventually changed, and when they were changed they actually made the game worse. So in my opinion he was right. I look at all the games and how they keep getting made eaiser and easier and dumber and dumber and I wonder when we will get a game where everyone starts max level with the best equipment so the "casuals" will have everything without even needing to do anything.

Vanguard Beta 1 is going pretty well, it reminds me a lot of EQ1 in the early days as far as community interaction and stuff. Diplomacy seems like a good idea. I don't want to say too much and maybe risk my son's beta account over some NDA issue, but I feel a lot better about it than I did WoW beta.

That certainly sounds promising Dfrac. I'll definately keep my eye on it.

Eve Online isn't too bad of a game, either. The interesting things about it are that skills train in realtime (even when you're logged out, which is the only way skill training is bearable), and they only have one server that hosts all 20,000 players. It is kinda slow to get going, especially in the beginning stages, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because you play Eve at the same time you're playing another game.

Aside from Vanguard I have been watching and eagerly hoping for my beta invite to www.tcos.com (http://www.tcos.com) Chronicles of Spellborn looks great and has an interesting idea for a combat system.

Vanguard is the only thing on my horizon.

I am sure there will be some mistakes like in all MMO's from it, but over all I like where VG seems to be headed. I expect something similar to EQ1, but with a lot of differance at the same time. They are not going to cater to the whinners and dumb down the game if I am reading things right.

Brad hit the nail on the head when he made EQ, people bitched and moaned (some rightly so) But like someone above said. Once they "fixed" those issues it became clear, at least to me, that they were a lot better left the way they were.

Its a double edged blade. There will always be people that want a no-conflict world where everything is made up for them alone. There are people that dont want to deal with competition. There are people that feel they have every right to all content because they pay for it. Some people feel entitled to "finish" the game. Some feel the game can never be perfect without true balance on all sides...

For all those reasons and many more, I feel its impossible to make everyone happy. THe current situation in MMO's is to dumb it down (WoW anyone?) Make it so there is no conflict of any kind. There can be no true balance in an MMO. Someone has to make a stand and say "if you dont like it, find another game" I am just happy to see Vanguard appears to be taking a step in that direction.

EQ had a bunch of really cool things in it when it came out, but only one thing was truly important. The Community. From everything I have read, VG is going to make as much effort building the community as it is going to put into game play. I for one, would like to see how that turns out.

Back in the day, when we (Vision/VA) were competing to get a shot at AoW it was totally cool. I loved to hate RIP/SoT and everyone else that griefed us. It added a dimension to the game. Back then we knew who the top dog was and why they were the top dog. We were almost as aware of what EW or IVM was raiding as we were of our own raiding. Now days, EQ community doesnt seem to be what it used to be. No guilds are in competition anymore (Yay instancing!) And the one thing that has crumbled the most is the community. I know there is still quite a bit of community, but anyone that thinks its the same as it once was is kidding themselves. I recently spent a month playing again and talking to old friends. I was stunned to hear some of them didnt even know who the top guild was on Tribunal/ayonae. These were people that were in the top guilds before the merger. That just made me sad to hear.

If Vanguard fails to me, I may not try another MMO. They seem to have the best "vision" of what an MMO should be IMO.

Khondor

waiting on vanguard myself, hope it is all that we want in a game ;D

http://cgw.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3147273

Interesting

Dont forget, that EQ1's biggest advantage was... that it was alone. Since EQ1, appeared some MMORPGs with working quest systems, and better class balance, or mechanics. The same strategy, that made eq1 win, may (and will) not work anymore.

If it did... people would still play eq1. Well, more would anyway.

Lani

Played the DDO Preview.....UGH! :(

I had such high hopes for that game.

Looks great, but over instanced, not enough of a "world" feeling.

It'd be great as a stand alone game, but for $15 USD a month? No thanks.

I am sure there will be some mistakes like in all MMO's from it, but over all I like where VG seems to be headed.

Unfortunately, there is little that I've seen on their site which tells me the direction they're heading other than "Hey, we have a death penalty!" It's almost their motto. Oh yeah, that and "We're better than the other guys". I've looked around, but I've seen very little on their site that tells me what direction they're actually going.

Brad hit the nail on the head when he made EQ, people bitched and moaned (some rightly so) But like someone above said. Once they "fixed" those issues it became clear, at least to me, that they were a lot better left the way they were.

I played EQ from Beta.... the only issues that they actually fixed in anything resembling a timely fashion were those that involved exploits. Some quests that were released before the game went live never got fixed (Blued Two-Handed Hammer anyone?). I think that there is a habit of looking back on EQ and forgetting all of the issues. For me the story of EQ is one of lost opportunities, inconsistencies, lack of designer understanding of the userbase and a community lost.

For all those reasons and many more, I feel its impossible to make everyone happy. THe current situation in MMO's is to dumb it down (WoW anyone?) Make it so there is no conflict of any kind. There can be no true balance in an MMO. Someone has to make a stand and say "if you dont like it, find another game" I am just happy to see Vanguard appears to be taking a step in that direction.

I do agree that WoW is a bit 'dumbed down'. The biggest problems with WoW boil down to 2 things: Leveling too fast and not enough content. Using the battle cry of "The game starts at level 60", they completely neglect the users who enjoy the progression. Their endgame is a joke and there is nothing in between "1-3 hour instance" and "8-12 hour raid instance".

Back in the day, when we (Vision/VA) were competing to get a shot at AoW it was totally cool. I loved to hate RIP/SoT and everyone else that griefed us. It added a dimension to the game. Back then we knew who the top dog was and why they were the top dog. We were almost as aware of what EW or IVM was raiding as we were of our own raiding. Now days, EQ community doesnt seem to be what it used to be. No guilds are in competition anymore (Yay instancing!) And the one thing that has crumbled the most is the community. I know there is still quite a bit of community, but anyone that thinks its the same as it once was is kidding themselves. I recently spent a month playing again and talking to old friends. I was stunned to hear some of them didnt even know who the top guild was on Tribunal/ayonae. These were people that were in the top guilds before the merger. That just made me sad to hear.

I couldn't agree with anything more. I've pointed to this several times while talking with friends and up until now hadn't heard anyone mention the same thing in regards to EQ. Until someone realizes that a community requires competetion, I don't think that any players in the MMOG market are going to have the retention level that EQ had pre-GoD.

If Vanguard fails to me, I may not try another MMO. They seem to have the best "vision" of what an MMO should be IMO.

Like I said... I don't see much vision other than the vision of a death penalty. The death penalty wasn't much of the game for me. I could care less if I'm running 15 minutes to get my corpse back or not, losing exp or not. My best memories were never of CR runs, they were of the times when raids were saved due to quick action by 1-4 raid members. Unfortunately most of the newer games fall into 2 categories: 1) everything's so damned easy that you don't have to save your raid from anything and 2) DPS so stupid high that if the tank dies, it's all over.

EQ pre-PoP was probably, IMO nearly perfect. Luclin had issues, but they could easily be fixed by redesigning factions (heck, a good 50-75% of factions in the game were pretty worthless anyway).