Share what MMOs you have played and the pro/cons

[MacGruber]

Meridian 59.
pros: dont remember much other than being able to play across the web for the first time that i can rememeber.
cons: so long ago that I dont rememeber much... maybe google remembers for me....

Star Wars Galaxies:
Pros: being part of a amazing community of people who were as excited for a space MMO as me. Also just being "IN" a SW game, not just playing one
Cons: Took a while to accomplish anything. yes I'll admit i was a casual player, which had a huge impact of what i got done(or didnt) ultimately i quit after 4 months or so. Also server issue sucked monkey bawls

World of Warcraft,TBC,WotLK (sadly a member still)
pros: so many people! so many quests! So many zones! spells and area effects are gorgeous.
cons: So many people.... soo many quests.... pvpers... alliance pugs..... kids' parents freaking out theyre raiding past bedtime on a scary undead avatar.. and the always overstated 2004 chuck norris jokes

what about u guys, and btw, what do you look forward to the most with this one as of date.

Lets make Gene proud Cryptic! ;)

[TheFeelOfCotton]

SWG: ( My very first MMO)
Pros: Loved the SW universe, loved being able to hunt people for bounties :), and the fact that I had my own X wing.
Cons: The NGE

WoW:
Pros: Loved the simplicity, the openess of the game,
Cons: Too loot based, too competitve (raiding mainly I didn;t PvP), it became like a job instead of a game.

LotRO:
Pros: Beautiful graphics, very story driven, nice community, very helpful.
Cons: Takes too long to get anywhere without a horse, Hard to find groups for instances

EDIT: ( I forgot one haha)

Tabula Rasa:
Pros: Great Sci-Fi based MMO, classes were very interesting, and combat was fast paced and tactical
Cons: Too laggy, graphics weren't THAT great, and it was too short lived

[NeoWolf]

RF Online
PROS: Its pretty
CONS: its dull,I mean SERIOUSLY dull

World o Warcraft, TBC
PROS: Nice game, nice classes, huge, plenty to do, established events
CONS: Far too many o the worst sort of MMO players, Far too PVP oriented and far too unsoloable instance based.

Anrachy Online
PROS: one of the first character based sci fi mmo's
CONS: old, laggy, empty and grindish

ULTIMA Online
PROS: Its classic (showing my age)
CONS: its dated

Star Wars Galaxies
PROS: Its Star Wars based, some cool looking armor and ships, homes you can totally customise and call your own. Vehicles and Mounts and a grow your own pet system.
CONS: Its had its day, the NGE changes were appalling, too Jedi-centric, Urban Sprawl, poor quest structure, highly highly grind based.

Lord of the Rings Online
PROS: Excellent Classes, Tolkien Based!!!!, Fantastic Crafting system, Fantastic RP friendly community
CONS: sadly too repetitive when played from a different race perspective.. beyond the initial areas everything blends into the same areas and quests.. so irrespective of whether your playing a man and elf or a hobbit your adventures eventually become carbon copies of one another.

Dungeons & Dragons Online
PROS: it was based on the popular PnP RPG.. and "supposedly set on Eberron".
CON: it isnt very good, and had very little to do with Eberron. community wasnt that great or friendly either.

FInal Fantasy XI
PROS: Its Final Fantasy based, and has Chocobos
CONS: Its awful, dated and not as Final Fantasy based as it proclaims.

City of Heroes/Villains
PROS: Its Super heroes based..4 colour goodness. massive character customisation options
CONS: fairly limited number of power sets, dated, too few travel powers, highly repetiiive combat grind, Origins that makes no difference.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
PROS: its Warhammer based, the Public Quests were a great idea and the RVR was done in a way that got even me interested and I hate PVP
CONS: Sadly it didnt hold my attention for ve long and the equipment is dull and largely the same for most people...meaning little true customisation for individuality.

Matrix Online
PROS: It was a game based on the matrix universe
CONS: It was awful, laggy and if it was a horse they'd shoot it and call it a mercy killing.. and worse yet the cheeky bu**ers still charge for it.

Bounty Bay Online
PROS: Its pirates AAARGGGGHHH :)
CONS: its not very good priates.... OOOOOHHHHhh :(

Tabula Rasa
PROS: Some ncie background material, one of the best intro movies of any GAME.
CONS: didnt look great, was lagged to hell and wasnt in any way the ground breaking innovation they claimed it would be.

Exteel
PROS: anime'esque mechs beating the snot out of each other.. customisable, and fun to play
CONS: no real story just a glorified multiplayer beat em up... guess i go back to hoping for a Mechwarrior.Battletech MMORPG then :(

EVE Online
PROS: not a bad Elite style sci fi MMO, plenty of ships and craftign and mission, hige area of space etc..
CONS: Not really PVE friendly, repetivie questing, non symmetrical ship designs that freak me out. Too many instances of in company corruption in game, too many established clan owning too many of the higher tech blueprints due to th previous mentioned problem.

[Silverspar]

Ultima Online:

Pros: classic game, wasn't about items, was fun to be in.
Cons: Age of Shadows completely ruined the game, and the end game for UO is pretty meh.


Horizons:

Pros: Diverse races.
Cons: Everything else.


Neocron:

Pros: FPS MMORPG set in a post apocalyptic world, very fun and very interesting. Has a lot of potential.
Cons: Small dev team and even smaller budget.


Matrix Online:

Pros: Nice city world setting and character customization and combat engine.
Cons: Sony took it over and it has only been going downhill since.


Earth and Beyond:

Pros: First technical space MMO. Very fun and very well developed game and storyline.
Cons: Was never allowed to grow, EA ram-rodded it into the corner, forcing it to clsoe early.


Battletech 3042:

Pros: Very fun lot's of head on head PvP action and reasons to fight.
Cons: Another MMO that EA closed in beta before it had a chance.


City of Heroes/Villains:

Pros: Perspective matters here, Hero side is dull and boring, Villain side is funa nd active where I spent most of my time.
Cons: Mission maps tend to be repetative, and the addition of content is very slow and slugging lately.


Warhammer Online:

Pros: Very fun and engrossing PvP system and a lot of interesting concepts for PvE.
Cons: Exploits and bugs that people would ignore in a PvE setting are blaringly obvious and annoying in PvP.


World of Warcraft:

Pros: Fun early levels, but not much else.
Cons: Boring grind fest and nothing innovative in game play.


Shadowbane:

Pros: Umm, can I get back to you on that?
Cons: Everything.


Asheron's Call 2:

Pros: Graphically beautiful and tried new things.
Cons: Ahead of it's time, and graphically was too intesnive for many gamers at the time.


Dungeons and Dragons Online:

Pros: Nice graphically.
Cons: Crappy 3rd edition ruleset.


Everquest 2:

Pros: Lot's of choices.
Cons: Made by Sony and boring gameplay.


Lord of the Rings Online:

Pros: Nice use of the mythos.
Cons: Trying to be WoW too hard.


Star Wars Galaxies:

Pros: Can't think of any.
Cons: Ran by Sony and pretty much EQ in space.


Tabula Rasa:

Pros: Umm, not much to speak of here, I played beta and could barely stomache it.
Cons: Everything, pour game design, pour gameplay, and they completely gutted the fun not far into beta. Tried to be WoW sci fi too hard with an FPS feel and fails to integrate FPS with MMO experience, unlike Neocron.


Several more that I can't remember right now.

[Itsbeenalongroad]

Well.....

SWG
Pros-My first MMO as well, I loved everything about it. Missions were true to lore (I saw the emperor!), the crafting system was easy enough for me to use yet diverse. There were no classes, you just did what you wanted and became better at that through doing that.
Cons-Sony, I will never forgive them. Just seeing SOE have a hand in a game pretty much takes that game out of the running for me.

City of Heroes
Pros-More customization then I knew what to do with. You could also do almost whatever you wanted in the beggining, just different ways. For example my guy couldnt fly but there was a modifier or something that allowed me to fly for small amounts of time. That's just cool.
Cons-Didn't really get too drawn into the missions or story at all so I gave it up before CoV came out.

WoW
Pros-addiciting
Cons-addicting, boring when I began to think about it, too much emphasis on leveling to do anything which leads to intense bordom (for me) at the end game when you are done leveling.

EvE (my most recent and longest MMO)
Pros-Very in depth! A veryyyyyyy large selection of ships and a decent program to control trial accounts and the content they can access.
Cons-Too in depth, it became a simulator to me over time and just not fun anymore. The community can be either silent or jerks, atleast that's the experience I had.
BIGGEST CON-Join CCP and BoB or just quit. Because BoB will reach where you live eventually and then you have to move, die, or join. Just save yourself the trouble and quit. Let BoB play with themselves. Lord knows they are the only ones that want to.

[_Pax_]

City of Heroes / Villains
PRO:

Incredibly customisable.
Ability and Appearance were not linked.
Possible to Solo all the way to the level cap, if you wanted - yet still enjoyable to group, too.


CON:

Not truly a lot of variety in gameplay mechanics - click glowies, fight enemies, lead dumb NPCs from A to B.


Dungeons and Dragons Online
PRO:

Based on Dungeons and Dragons 3E rules (supposedly, anyway).
Based on Eberron (supposedly, anyway).


CON:

Not nearly as faithful to the PnP rules as Turbine promised - and many changes were NOT necessary.
Though putatively set in Eberron, almost ZERO effort is made to remain even slightly true to that setting.
Grouping was absolutely required past level 2 or 3, period.
No item crafting (orignally, at least)
No psionics.
No Kalashtar.
No half-orcs.
No Monks.
No Druids with Wildshape.
No Artificers.
No Shifters.
No dragonmarks
Very little presence of the Dragonmarked houses


Auto Assault
PRO:

Driving around at ridiculous speeds, shooting the unholy hell out of everythign in sight
Intriguing backstory/setting


CON:

Rushed to release before it was ready
Buggy Ground Zero
Poor PvP balance
Serious gaps in content at various levels
Little or no incentive to group
Poor crafting system


EVE
PRO

Space ships.
Very very pretty.


CON

Extreme death penalty.
PVPtard overpopulation
The developers are cheating b*st*rds


Tabula Rasa
PRO

Science fiction
Guns!!
My first Closed Beta experience


CON

Rushed to release
Lack of content at higher levels
Lack of incentive to group


World of Warcraft
PRO

Good crafting system
Lots to do
Seems to have had much of the "Grind or Else" taken out of it since two years ago
Addons ...! :)


CON

The "best" stuff is still Group-gated, and requires serious, hardcore Guild participation to have a hope of seeing

[ExAstris]

World of Warcraft

+ easy to pick up and learn
+ continuous seamless world
+ generally well built game with few bugs

- entirely repetative after level 10
- far too loot based
- former 2 result in a grindfest for levels and gear
- characters all feel like carbon copies of each other
- only two sources of customization, gear and talents, and those are built within very restrictive perameters
- way to heavy on the need to group for high end content
- no real way for characters outside of 5 levels of each other to do anything together in game
- worst fan base I've ever encountered (could be my experience though)
- hundreds of shards mean you have to start playing with someone to ever play with them, or pay hefty character transfer fees


Guild Wars

+ minimized level grind
+ 8 powers only forced planning and thinking
+ 'shards' can be swapped between, meaning you're never away from friends.
+ solid pvp play
+ much can be soloed
+ no subscription fee
+ multiclassing

- 8 power limit made your character feel limited
- classes were cookie cutter designs, the only customization was in which 8 powers you picked and what two classes you chose.
- server design was functional but felt strange walking outside the city and never seeing anyone while 300 people sat inside the wall, lacked the continous world feeling.
- additional content in expansions seemed weak and repetative


Star Wars Galaxies (Post NGE only)

+ Star Wars
+ Physical appearance options were great along with multiple species options
+ Has both land and space components (though the latter felt like a bad version of the original X-Wing)

- Everything else, easily the worst MMO I've ever played... It drove me nuts so fast I didn't even play through the entire trial, quitting ater a mere 3 days.


City of Heroes/Villians

+ Best character creater ever
+ Powersets actually had options, you didn't just choose everything in them ala most games
+ Powers themselves were customizable
+ Best animations ever (seriously, watch the ressurection power)
+ Ragdoll (why more mmo's don't have this I'll never know)
+ Playing with various numbers of people with characters of all different levels was a cakewalk due to 8 man teams and the sidekick system
+ Not loot based, the character was the important thing, their skills and abilities where what you used.
+ Travel powers made big maps easy to move about wasting little time

- Minimum content past combat
- The game did such a good job of getting you to the combat that you spent all your time doing that and could burn out quickly
- Some powers only had 1 thing that could be modified, making modifying them not yield any uniqueness
- Playing a Hero or Villian had no impact on what you did in the game, or how you played
- Still a level grind


EVE

+ Real time skill training, no grind, easy to put down or pick up for months at a time
+ Vast and intelligently designed skill system, maxing skills is useful but incredibly time consuming, player choice evolves their character in completely unique ways, no copy characters, no classes
+ Large ship selection, with few ships becoming entirely obsolete
+ Large array of core mechanics driving multiple functionalities of the game, results in lots of things to do in game and lots to learn about each of them helping keep interest in the game longer
+ Best market ever
+ Most intelligent player base I've encountered (on average)
+ Expansions are regular, free, and often have truely new content such as new/refined mechanics, options, etc along with what every other mmo offers in terms of 'new old stuff' like ships and items (which atually fill new roles and are never just better versions of old stuff forcing you to grind again to have the "best stuff"
+ One server, you never have to worry about your friends being on another shard

- Death penalty. The only redeeming characteristic of the death penalty being this harsh is that it keeps the market alive. On the downside it attracts the most vile sort of pvpers, makes pvp rediculously expensive, and can even cause players to quit when the ship they worked to get for weeks gets axed a few minutes after undocking.
- One problem that use to be prevalent was lag, however recent server upgrades seem to keep even crowded systems down to minimal lag even though there are hundreds of people in the same system and upwards of 45k logged into the server.
- Getting started can be very intimdating given the complexity of the game and the minimum skills new characters have to work with. (but hey, it keeps out the ADD 10 year olds :P )

[dturne10]

No one played Knight Online?!

KO-
Pros: Simple, free, easy to learn MMO.
Cons: Everything else. It was too simple once you learned the ropes, there were very few quests, lots of monster grinding, had to pay for the best content.

WoW-
Pros: It was very fun to play if you were with friends or a fun guild. I loved the 5/10 man instances at 60 and 70, heroics were a nice way to make the same instances more challenging and more fun! PvP could be done casually (I can't tolerate anything more than casual pvp) and there was a ton of endgame content to enjoy.
Cons: Leveling was something of a grind while between instances. There were too many annoying little children who asked too many questions. You had to PvP ALOT to get the gear necessary to excel in PvP. Moving past the initial endgame content required more time than I was willing to devote. I couldn't devote myself to raiding 3+ nights a week for 3 to 4 hours.

[chris127]

world of warcraft
dungeons of dragons online
archlord
runescape
heroesvsvillains -cryptic
guild wars

[DerManiac]

Lord of the Rings Online:
PROS: Blends in very well with Tolkien's stories. Beautiful world with nice music. You can almost smell the fresh air in the shire. Nice crafting system. Original classes. Great community.
CONS: Way too hard to find groups for quests.

Anarchy Online:
PROS: Awsome skill system! Free, when played without addon!
CONS: Outdated and only very few players left.

Age of Conan:
PROS: Original melee system. Nice concept.
CONS: Boring. Oh god is it boring. Once you completed the tutorial, it feels like there is nothing left to do. Visuals are overrated. No free traveling!

Eve Online:
PROS: very intense and deep gameplay. Insanely well done economy. Heavy death penalties!
CONS:Hard to figure out. I can't play it without doing something else next to it (like watching a movie), otherwise I would fall asleep.

[ktanner3]

SWG:

Pros:
Pre-NGE

- best combat system I ever played. Three bars that if either of them went to zero would incap you. Added plenty of variety to attacks.

-best system of advancment I ever played. No levels involved and was skill based. There was a set number of skill points you could use and you had to decide what skills you wanted. This added more variety to characters and made them more unique than the cookie cutter characters you see in MMOs today.

-best economy I ever played. Ran like a real market does because the PLAYERS controlled it and things broke down.

-It was an actual challenge. There was no hand holding in this game.

NGE

Nothing was pro about this game.

Cons:

Pre-NGE

-The DEVS. They sucked. They wasted time messing around with the combat engine and no time on content. HAd they done that and left the core game alone, I would have never left it.

NGE

The NGE was a con. It tried to copy wow in every way and failed. The quests were boring and they basically scr*wed over everyone who had been playing the game for the last 2 years.

WARHAMMER

Pros

Graphics were okay

RvR

Cons

Too much forced grouping.

World of Warcraft

Pros

-An addictive game. The developers of this game deserve kudos for releasing a stable game with few bugs. SWG was buggy the entire 2.5 years I played it. I have yet to have a bad mission in WOW or crash.

-Fun quests. Much better than the boring garbage in SWG. If the quests are interesting and involve me in the world, then I don't mind.

-A HUGE world. I'm still exploring and I've been playing for a month.

-A beginning that isn't too overwhelming for a person new to the game plus constant reminders on how things work.This is a very important part of an MMO game because if it's too complicated or not interesting within the first 20 levels the player quits.

Cons:

-The inability to plot coordinates on a map. This is inexusable.

-The economy. It's nonexistent. I prefer an economy that is run more by players.

-Not much else. But then again I'm only at level 25. But I'm enjoying it so far.

[Vicelance]

Various free MMO's

Pro.
Free not much more than that.

Con.
Very little to do after a point.
If you wanted to have anything good you had to pay real money for it killing the whole free to play idea.


COH.

Pro.
Loved the character customization spent most of my free trial there. Can't wait to see STO's version

Con.
Repetitive missions


SWG

Pro.
It's star wars

Con:

the empty cities of player houses I kept running into when traveling around planets.
The space flight controls were annoying and It was difficult to hit targets.
Got bored of it before my free trial expired.


Runescape: One I play now

Pro:

Lots to do.
Updates almost every week.

Con:

the leveling system in this game could be the definition of grind.
The insane prices of high level monster drops makes the pursuit of gold the number one task.
Crafting items is only profitiable at the hightest levels since monsters drop better items anyway.

[jagerbolt]

cool thread!

The Realm Online
Pros - It was one of the very first MMOs. Had a good community.
Cons - Very simple game. Griefing was common. Very laggy.

Asheron's Call
Pros - I liked the allegiance system, very nice graphics at the time I thought.
Cons - Very laggy.

Earth & Beyond
Pros - Was lots of fun, cool plot.
Cons - I didn't have a credit card at the time so I couldn't play. :(

The Sims Online
Pros - Was spiffy to have a sim and interact with others.
Cons - Boring. Nothing to do.

Star Wars Galaxies
Pros - Star Wars! Awesome in-depth crafting and great community. Player housing and stores.
Cons - Took FOREVER. Grinding was non-stop.

World of Warcraft
Pros - Tons of quests to do, lots of instances, pvp
Cons - Lots of the same thing over and over. Immature community. I've been playing 4 years and I'm just burnt out on it.