State of the MMO Nation

2013 was a weak year for MMOs in my household. My wife, who plays MMOs almost exclusively, began to migrate to other titles with her online gang such as Borderlands 2, Saint's Row III and IV and even League of Legends. I played a few on and off....here's a recap:

Defiance

For me the highlight of 2013 was Defiance, which despite being a game you'd think I would love (open-world third-person SF themed shooter with MMO design) I didn't play nearly enough of. The fact that Trion Worlds seems to have forgotten about it (only one of the five promised expansion packs was released in 2013, a bad sign if I ever saw one) doesn't help. I will continue to play Defiance at my usual measured pace, but suggest to future developers working on shooter/MMO hybrids that they consider carefully what the audience of both games might expect out of such a merger. Defiance could use something....I'm not sure what, entirely, but something....more diversity in explorable areas, maybe, and a better hub setup for people who just want to jump into the action? I will defer to Warframe as an excellent way of handling a multiplayer shooter experience online. Defiance, with it's MMO trappings, is still a different beast, though. I expect it to hang on until Destiny arrives and squashes the competition like a tiny bug.

Status for 2014: I will continue to play it casually and hope we see some of the promised future content.

Rift

2013 was the year Rift went free to play, and in doing so it changed the core feel of the game from the comfortable subscription model I enjoyed to a typical overpriced freemium model which I have now abandoned. Despite getting an enormous number of in game credits for my lengthy subscription time I was disenchanted with the way they structured the game and how they priced the "subscription equivalent" option to continue to get leveling perks (there was no longer a discount for buying in volume, basically). Moreover, after buying all sorts of cool looking armor with my given points I realized I had once again made a serious error in my play style: I now had blinged out characters who had done nothing in-game to earn the gear. For someone like myself who plays for the story and experience this is an unforgivable tresspass.

Of second note is the Storm Legion expansion content, which suffered greatly for casuals like myself who found the story hard to follow, the quests insanely grindy, and the overall experience just plain tedious. The magic of Storm Legion shortly after launch did not stick, unfortunately.

Status for 2014: Rift is now on hiatus until further notice. I have even deleted it from my computer. I may return if the itch grabs me. This is a real shame as I loved this game a great deal pre-F2P.

Guild Wars 2

I have hardly played this one at all, and I don't know why. For reasons I can't explain at all GW2 did not grab me as consistently as I expected, or as it honestly should; non-MMO open world titles sort of stole the show in 2013 for me, so games like Sleeping Dogs and Saint's Row III dominated my time, and as a side effect structured and ironically "less involved" worlds offered by MMOs like GW2 were simply less intriguing as a result. For a sharply contrasting example on GW2 see here, though.

Status for 2014: I will continue to periodically fire it up and see if I can get motivated. Meanwhile I will continue to be enamored by much more interesting open-exploration titles like GTA V. Saint's Row IV and Skyrim. One approach I am going to take is to follow Zubion's advice on how to hit GW2 for an hour a day and still feel like you're making progress/doing something. Zubion seriously loves GW2, and I'd love to be into this game in the same way.

World of Warcraft

I reloaded it late in November, finally purchased Mists of Pandaria (like two days before it went on sale) and enjoyed it immensely for about a week before experiencing severe WoW fatigue again. I really want to have some characters ready to go at level cap for the forthcoming Warlords of Draenor, which on the surface appears to get WoW back to its roots somewhat while finally offering a graphical overhaul to the geriatric character models of the original races. But....I just can't muster enough interest to devote the time. It is a "been there, done that, can't stomach doing it for hundreds of hours again" problem. Sorry WoW.

Status for 2014: we'll see if Warlords of Draenor motivates me to slog through the game to get ready. I....think this may be the end of my relationship with WoW, however.

Neverwinter Online

Something about the whole Neverwinter experience is just off. It's got some fun gameplay, but the game keeps you on such a tight rail that the freedom of choice in character design it offers is purely illusion, the characters will all suffer from the same narrow pool of gear choices in terms of looks unless you pony up to the store, and Perfect World's method of handling freemium means you'll have to navigate a treacherous web of purchasing confusion on numerous levels. I am very done with Perfect World managed games, and even though I enjoy the gameplay....they're just too greedy for my tastes.

Status for 2014: I may try it again if they magically manage to add several more classes into the game.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

My burnout on DDO know know limits. The ability to reach the high level content where all their new expansion modules can be found is an onerous and soul wrenching task for one such as myself. I have given up on DDO entirely, the grind was just too much.

DC Universe Online

The surprise end-of-year discovery was DC Universe Online. I recall playing this a bit shortly after it went F2P and my wife and I were more into Champions then so we ignored it. When I got the PS4 I noticed DCUO was available on it, so I downloaded it. This game was meant to be played with a controller, for one thing. It's got very smooth, fluid and fun gameplay. My recent resurgence of interest in DC Comics has helped keep me interested in DCUO as well. I bought the expansion packs on sale over the holidays and have been enjoying leveling up my small gang of oddball characters, including Doc Futurity, Doctor Tachyon, Bowman Thirteen, Ladybot Moxietron and the Smouldering Demon.

Status for 2014: I expect to play a lot of DCUO as a place holder until Elder Scrolls Online arrives.

That's it for the 2013 wrap-up on MMOs and the projection for 2014....see you in the game!

A Random Friday: Tunnels & Trolls updates, Neverwinter and more

Just a short post as I am behind my Monday-Wednesday-Friday quota this week (sort of). News bits and other random stuff:

Tunnels & Trolls

Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe will be running late, as Rick Loomis announced in the latest update, due to Liz Danforth being sick and also behind schedule due to a round of conventions going into August. They wanted to have it ready for Gen Con apparently, but no go. On the up side, the second PDF module is out, and I now have a nice copy of City of Terrors on the tablet.

Speaking of Tablet gaming, there have been a number of releases in the last year or two featuring revamped Fighting Fantasy books (and others inspired by such) which are pretty effective in the ios/Android format. I wonder if Rick and Ken have considered what it would take to turn T&T into an app-based gaming experience, at least for the solo adventures?

Runequest 6

 I am still reading Book of Quests for Runequest 6. It's a great book, and will provide some detailed discussion on it, hopefully next week. I've been talking to some of my players, and we have a new game interest brewing, just need to find a way to squeeze it in. My Wednesday regular campaign is Pathfinder-only, unfortunately; the player collective I have for that night comes for the Pathfinder, and deviating would be to seriously upset the apple cart. Maybe an off-weekend, played at home, so my wife can bring her gruesome RQII elven blood sorcerer out of retirement....

Max Payne 3

Last weekend (July 4th weekend) was very productive in terms of moving "games I've been playing for a while" to the "games I've finished" list. Max Payne 3 was on that list, and I wanted to discuss it at some point as I really enjoyed it, albeit in periodic short bursts, and feel it was one of the better titles of the last few years out there.

Long story short: fantastic campaign (as it should, the end credits for this title was insanely long) and when I could get into multiplayer it was a lot of fun, but strangely (or not) when I finished the single player side of the equation I found myself utterly and totally disinterested in sticking around for the multiplayer experience anymore.  The drive behind this game is the Max Payne story, and that was now wrapped up; continuing the never-ending cycle of violence in Brazil that the game depicts in MP just seemed sort of....pointless? I may revisit it at some point, if only to see how long the community lasts, but... Well, let's face facts; I'm getting old and apparently that has an effect on one's interest in highly repetitive video game tasks (of which MP is easily a component). Also, with like a million games in my to-do roster it's hard to take time for MP unless it's so compelling that it smokes the prospect of something better around the corner. Plus that Steam Summer Sale dealie just started. So...yeah.

Neverwinter

Remember Neverwinter? I've been playing it occasionally (not much), a game here and there, enjoying it in short bursts but not finding it the sort of game that I am motivated to plow through or keep up with, unfortunately. That could change if I find some willpower to stay focused on it (as I recently did, at least for a short while with Guild Wars 2). Maybe once the novelty wears off with Rift's F2P model.

My experience in Neverwinter isn't the interesting bit, however. My wife, who absorbs these games like most humans breathe air, recently seemed to stop playing Neverwinter entirely, after a month-long gorge-fest. I asked her why she had stopped and migrated back to WoW and Defiance....as it turns out, she explained that they all played through at least one or two characters to max level and hit the end game...or lack of it. Best as she can tell, the end game in Neverwinter is nonexistent, and it mainly seems to be an expectation that the community content through the foundry is the source of new material to explore. Anyone who's messed around with the foundry content by now may realize what a problem this actually is; although there is some good stuff in there, the general consensus on the foundry now is that it's lacking the tools for the sort of nuanced and detailed scenarios that it's predecessor titles allowed for. Also, for every gem there are mutliple steaming piles of code you have to dodge, and the Foundry's menu is atrocious for just finding something....I never could successfully locate my wife's own scenario through navigating its menus, for example.

More Neverwinter Observations

A few more observations about Neverwinter Online to accompany yesterday's post:

Class-Locked Gear

Further eroding the relationship between NWO and actual D&D rules is the fact that while great weapon fighters and guardian fighters should, technically, be able to wield any weapon....they can't. Great swords, for example, are locked to great weapon fighters for use. Likewise for other classes. Is the concept that any character should pick up any weapon and be able to fight with it so difficult? Sure, they may get penalized....but locking specific gear to specific classes is very not-D&D-like.

Gear is Very Uniform in Design

I haven't noticed this yet, I haven't played long enough...but my wife and others have. Gear is very limited in appearance for quite a while. Your customization choices boil down to buying dyes in the cash shop, apparently. My guess is that interesting gear is found closer to the end content levels and (naturally) in the item shops for zen. As my wife put it, this game reeks of "Korean MMO design." She's very, very gung-ho about this game, but at the same time she's never been able to stand Korean MMO ideology for very long in the past, so I'll be interested to see how much staying power it has. Luckily, the aesthetics of NWO are (to my eyes) fairly rooted in the D&D 4th edition design aesthetic, which (YMMV) means it looks decent enough and has a sufficiently western flair so far.

Of course, it still inevitably draws comparisons to Turbine's increasingly impressive-in-retrospect DDO, which let any character wear anything with penalties, and also allowed for a crazy level of customization even before looking in their cash shop (albeit with full suits instead of piecemeal).

Unfortunately, limited gear appearance is, while nothing new to the Korean MMO mindset, still a black eye even against the likes of Guild Wars 2 and WoW, which still offer a bit more variety, on average, in the lower levels (even if much of it is special stuff found in instances).

Although this is all quite negative, it still bears stressing that NWO stands up on its own merits, and also does quite well against other MMOs of like design...it just fails miserably as a proper D&D adaptation.

Neverwinter Online: First Impressions

I managed to get a few hours in on the early pre-rlease beta for Neverwinter Online this weekend. Some first impressions for those of you wondering if you should download this game and try it out:

Graphics

The graphics are nice, and stand up fine against other contemporaries. If you're coming to NWO from Turbine's DDO you may be fairly impressed (assuming you've only been playing DDO under your rock, that is). It's nicer looking than WoW, about on par with other current titles like Rift and Tera. Nothing unusual, and if you have a nice modern rig you should be able to run it just fine. I haven't fired it up on my laptop yet, but plan to do so soon to see how a mid-to-lower end machine handles it.

Characters

So far I've played a Great Weapon fighter and a guardian fighter. The game only offers five initial classes, being the two fighter builds just mentioned as well as a rogue type, cleric and wizard. There's a #6 "coming soon" slot that I really hope is going to be filled by a warlock build.

Mechanically the game is superficially built on the skeletal bones of 4th edition D&D. Any element of 4E that didn't mesh well with the style and progression of your typical MMO has been retooled, however. Thus you have 60 class levels, and you can spend talent points to rank up individual powers to greater effectiveness. At each level you gain some predetermined powers, derived from/named after the AEDUs of 4E, but usually only superficially similar to their source powers in execution. You also have a set of skills and some other nods to D&D. While during character creation you do get to roll for your stats....sort of (the numbers seem to balance out so far, varying within a defined framework of options) you don't really get any more customization beyond defining what your character looks like. In fact, you don't even get to pick an alignment (or if you do, I somehow missed it), and my wife, who's played about ten times as much as I have says alignment is somehow tied to guilds, instead. Oh-kaaaaayyyy....

If you arrive at NWO from DDO (it's impossible not to draw comparisons), you'll find about as much of a change (and accompanying shock) as one might have going from 3.5 D&D to 4th edition. Gone from NWO are the full range of character customization, the endless variations and proclivity for tinkering with builds that DDO offers. NWO doesn't even offer the range of options a 4E player is used to. You don't pick skills, powers, feats...anything. It's all gone.

On the plus side, you do get to pick a deity and home town, with accompanying origin tale (even if it is one or two sentences and, unlike say GW2, has no apparent impact on your character's adventures).

Initially I found this lack of customization to be a huge negative. After a while I warmed up to it, but only when I accepted that NWO is D&D in name only, with some superficial trappings. From the perspective that NWO is a MMORPG with an interesting player-driven content option, designed to compete with and in the same space as WoW, Tera, and Guild Wars 2, then it makes sense. But it won't hold its own against DDO or Rift when it comes to the character design department. Both of those games offer robust char gen, and NWO can't hold a candle to them. Maybe with time the appearance options of characters will stand out (it's Cryptic, after all) but that's a pale comparison to being able to make your fighter feel unique in his or her build when compared to other fighters. Hell, the great weapon fighter and guardian builds they do offer are only modestly different (at least through level 10) as it stands.



Gameplay

The gameplay is smooth, and except for one amusing bug on my guardian fighter (he ports into each zone mashing away at Tide of Iron with his shield) I have encountered no bugs.

Skills take import when you encounter various items in the environment you can mine for resources. If you lack the skill you need a skill kit, which substitutes. Beyond that, characters stumble on through their environments encountering mobs, traps, and occasional cut scenes. The dungeons (so far) aren't as dynamic as DDO's dungeons, being about on the same level as in your typical MMO, just with fresher designs.

Like DDO most of the action seems to take place in one large city that serves as a hub of activity (Neverwinter proper), in which you run around gathering quests and completing them, looking for various specific doors and sewer entrances to head on into. Unlike DDO character survival is much higher at low level, although the ubiquitious health potion is a dire necessity. Campfire mechanics appear as well; it seems that these are the equivalent of the short and long rests in 4E, which for the sake of MMO-paced gameplay mean any rest is a sufficient rest.

Powers are all on MMO-style timers, and certain key powers (based on dailies from 4E) are on trigger-timers based on powering up through attacks and damage. These daily-inspired powers are pretty effective when you get to them.

Combat itself is more action-based, in a Diablo/Torchlight/Tera sort of way, except better than Tera in feel. This is where the average MMOer is going to run into some problems. A lot of MMO gamers I know have difficulty with aim-directed systems, where you're operating through a reticule rather than your free-look with a mouse approach (ala WoW). NWO has done the impressive job of near-seamlessly integrating target-look with mouse look when one or the other is needed; basically when it's time to mouse look the game generally bumps you there; you don't have to think about it. It's really (imo) one of the better designs out there for this style of play. However, my wife's friends in her migratory guild who are all adopting the game have been complaining a lot about the feel of this approach in NWO, so obviously this may not be a good sign. To me, it feels great; but I'm very used to FPS and 3rd person style shooters, and have played worse interfaces (Tera, Tabula Rasa) so NWO feels good to me. YMMV.

Combat is otherwise pretty fun, an geared toward the sort of stat attrition balance that you see in most MMORPGs these days. If you've played another conventional MMO, the hit point loss, resource management, time-down on powers, mob strength, idea of interrupts and "get out of the red circle" mechanics are all present and accounted for, just without as much need to specifically target aim, and jumping around can be useful.

Negative? Because the mouse buttons are for attacking, you can't play the game one handed with a mouse, running with both buttons held down. This, believe it or not, could be a big negative for lazy gamers, or gamers who are using their other hand for child management. Put another way: I can't play this game on the side while monitoring my son during the day. It's a "play when the kid's asleep" game. Funny, I never realized that one of the top reasons that WoW could be so popular was due to the fact that mind-numbingly simple play mechanics also meant "easier to play while managing a brood of tiny primates," but it's very true.

Storyline/Questing

Well, I have only been playing a few hours and while I've read quite a bit on the Foundry I havem't yet explored it (or the many, many quests it's been churning out from player-created content). The official storylines are straight-forward and of now special import. There appears to be a lot of content, and to contrast with a game like Guild Wars 2 you will never be lacking for direction, as there's always somewhere you can run off to to find a quest giver, or a notice board with Foundry quests, or some Harper with a few choice bits for you to follow up on. If you like your MMO full of busywork, then hell yeah NWO is absolutely spilling over with it.

Beyond this, there are occasionally some key story bits which let you respond in more than one way, but most of the time your choice of responses to quest givers boils down to, "Hell yeah I wan't adventure and riches" or "No thank you, I have to log now as my child's turning the oven on." not a lot else.

In terms of lore the game is solid, set in the post-Spellplague era of 4th edition Forgotten Realms. No idea how it will dovetail with the impending retcon of the FR setting later this year in anticipation of D&D Next, but it's pretty solid on its own merits. Some of the best lore in the game appears to be buried in the player-created Foundry content, though. The Foundry allows you to set adventures in any era or world of D&D, by the way; you can simply start your adventure off with a planar gate and walla, instant travel to wherever the hell you want. I'll definitely report more on the Foundry later when I get a chance to really explore it.

The Freemium Element

Initially I was ready to dislike the game on the ground that once again it's going to be loaded to the gills with high priced premium digital purchases. I definitely didn't like that death leads to penalties which take a few minutes to shake off by a campfire, although for a pittance in zen you can remove them immediately. Zen are the in-game currency, since Perfect World Entertainment makes all their games use this form of exchange as the cash-to-virtual currency.

At this stage it's not clear to me that I'll need to spend much more on NWO than maybe buying a couple more character slots (because it appears that all the core game content is free), but simultaneously I can imagine wanting to buy more items, such as mounts, down the road. The problem of course will arise when we see what the full cost of these features are, and whether they are "per character" or account-wide. My fear is that in seeking out the money-filled "whales" which fund the play for everyone else that they will price out the average Joe Gamer like myself, who is interested in buying stuff but too money-conscious too actually spend ridiculous sums on virtual content disproportionate to what I can get elsewhere (i.e. full games) for less.

Summary

There is much more to come. I've barely scratched the surface, but what I've experienced so far has me keen for more. I shall report further as I explore in more depth. At this stage, though, I think it's utterly harmless to suggest that you should download and try out NWO for yourself. The game is pretty solid, and while anyone looking for a robuts character creator with the level of customization found in DDO will be very, very disappointed, those of you just looking for something better than your average MMO out there will not be disappointed.

Neverwinter Looms

Neverwinter Online is going into Open Beta on April 30th, with some pre-release events going on which I might get a shot at joining. My wife is excited....she's been sold on the game thanks to her closed beta experiences, and I've had one chance to play in closed beta as well and rather enjoyed it (even if the timing was horrible, a weekend with a Neverwinter beta, Defiance beta, and multiple new game releases!)

Anyway, if anyone has some questions or interest about this game, let me know. I've been approached my some people looking for feedback to relay to Perfect World Entertainment, and as this is a game I am rather excited about I'm happy to oblige. Post below or email me and I will do what I can to forward them on. I'm not terribly good at this question thing, believe it or not, so readers help me out!

2012 RoC MMO Year in Review

Green Armadillo at Player vs. Developer did a sort of cost-analysis/overview of his 2012 MMO expenditures and time, and I thought it would be fun to do something similar, with more of a focus on my "year of MMOs" and what they amounted to (if anything). So, here goes...



Star Wars: The Old Republic
TOR may have come out in December 2011, but I didn't get my copy until late January. My wife played this game continually for close to a year, but it seems that her interest (and that of her highly dedicated RP guild) waned dramatically after the game went F2P, at least partially due to the over monetization of the game going forward (paying for content previously announced as free, for example, and the souring of the community due to the flood of F2P gamers who are sight-seers and gawkers, and presumably not very RP-friendly).

For my own purposes, TOR has a great single player experience wrapped in a world of MMO suck. It has padded regions (Coruscant, for example) that drag on and on, and feel very tedious and grindy to someone like me who approaches this game less as a new Star Wars MMO and more as the KOTOR 3 single player experience we really wanted. Still, the free to play option opened it back up to me, and I find that being able to jump in and play occasionally is making the game more accessible and fun, now that I don't have to worry about a monthly fee. If Bioware/EA could just realize that a person like me would prefer to pay for a couple extra character slots and not have to subscribe, then we'd all be a bit happier.

Conclusion: SWTOR moving F2P was a smart move for certain types of players, but the game still has problems. That said, it's a casual friendly MMO if you can avoid falling asleep during the long slog through boring padded areas like Coruscant.

Tera
Tera was billed for its action MMO combat and its unique revision to an otherwise very Korean style setting. The game was pretty compelling, initially....but some odd hiccups left me cold in the end. A major problem was its early billing snafus; I signed up for six months on a deal when it first came out, but after four weeks I realized this wasn't a game I was going to care for in six months, so I tried to cancel the subscription. Surprise....they didn't provide for a way to cancel! I did get my money back, and in a twist of irony that changed my opinion of the matter from "they are sleazy con artists" to "they or their billing service are merely incompetent" I still got my six months of play time. Which I barely used until the tail end, in a bid to revisit and see if my feelings had changed. They did not.

Conclusion: Tera is a weird action MMO that is fun to play but it has some unfortunately disturbing undertones, a bit too much of the Korean Cutesy for my tastes, an excess of BDSM inspired armor and for all it does offer it just doesn't seem to feel as satisfying as other, better games out there (among which I would include Rift, GW2 and TOR). And their crappy billing issues soured me from ever letting En Masse have credit card or paypal info again, period.

Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 was heavily anticipated and I was ready for it on its first week or so of release. It's timing was atrocious, however (for me, at least), as I had gotten sucked into Rift and so found my precious game time seriously divided. GW2 is a fantastic game, but thanks to its Buy-to-Play model I have been able to safely play it just a bit, and othewrwise set it aside for now while I concentrate on the two other games worthy of my attention.

Conclusion: all MMOs should look at GW2 in the future, for both the payment model and for ideas on how to innovate. Not too closely...a future full of GW2 clones would be sad.



World of Warcraft
Blizzard sent me a 10 day "please come back" trial to Mists of Pandaria. I logged on, tried a pandaren monk, then jumped to the original Kalitherios who was still stuck in that god awful fhsibowl undersea region, was reminded why I left WoW during Catalyclysm and deleted the game, again.

Conclusion: WoW is getting very long in the tooth, and the only way to appreciate it these days is to be stuck with a low end PC, or otherwise avoid other games entirely.



Dungeons & Dragons Online
I was a HUGE proponent for DDO when it went F2P, and it was the first F2P game I also decided to invest in. I rationalized that if I spent $15 a month for a year, I'd have spent $180 in that time, and if I spent that (or less) on in-game purchases over time, then I'd be ahead.

In the end, I spent more than that (and in fact bought about $50 of turbine points plus the expansion pack at half off on a Steam sale this year) but I also played it heavily for more than two years, and only in the last year did I lag badly. DDO has a huge disadvantage over other MMOs, that outweighs (for me) it's advantages: it has a major grind component, and it's XP is (except for slayer/explorer missions) tethered to mission completion. You can spend a long time leveling in this game if you play in the way I do, which is slowly, mostly solo, and with a methodical pace in mind. I have friends who can blast through this game from level 1 to 20 in weeks. I envy them, because they have a system. The system necessary to earn XP at the fastest rate in DDO is beyond my time frame or network of friends, unfortunately.

Conclusion: DDO is still great, but my love for it has been replaced by Rift. Still, I like to revisit on occasion, even if I've given up hope of ever getting to max level.

The Secret World
The Secret World is everything I want in an MMORPG with a modern horror theme, short of it being a single player experience. It has immersive, thoughtful storylines (with key stories fully voiced), a mature theme that's not just "adult" (although it delves in that direction occasionally, too) and a smart world that really meshes well with the modern urban horror/fantasy trend in fiction these days. However, it was subscription based for a while, and so like GW2 it was something I didn't feel I had time for with my Rift obsession.

Now, of course, that has all changed and TSW moved to a Buy to Play model just like GW2. This was a very smart move, and it has revitalized my interest in the game....more so even than for GW2, because while GW2 is an innovative drwarf-and-elf free fantasy MMO, TSW is a modern horror MMO that ditches the Tolkienesque fantasy entirely.

Conclusion: I'll be playing a lot of TSW in the future and plan to focus my money on their planned future content.

Age of Conan
I've tried to get back into AoC a couple times. Unfortunately their cash shop was pricey, the play mechanics felt clunky if you stayed away too long, and the game can't survive its main crippling issue (one that TSW fixed) which was that 90% of its primo A game content was front-loaded in the first 20 or so levels, and everything after that right up to level 80 suffered from a "rushed to finish" conclusion. I recently tried it--again--in the wake of some changes that opened up previously gated instances to F2Pers and I was shocked at how empty the game was (okay not really) and how it just doesn't hold up to today's crop of games.

Conclusion: AoC is a game I want to play, badly. Just not the one that actually exists.

Champions Online
When this went F2P two years ago I was in on day one, took advantage of their first two weeks of excellent discounts, and basically absorbed this game (as did my wife). Then we burned out as the game dragged along; the momentum could not be sustained by the title itself, which still needed more...sometuing...to make it better.

Perfect World Entertainment came along and snapped Cryptic up. At first this was bad; a merge of accounts between Cryptic and PW made accessing their games problematic for a while, enough so I gave up on trying. Eventually they got their act together, and by the time I got back in Champions Online was sporting all sorts of impressive new features. It now remains, like DDO, a game I like to keep installed even if i only jump in once every couple of months or so. Unfortunately it's not really that exciting to play (for me) anymore, and I hate the crafting/equipment mechanics of the game with a passion, but the character generator is bar none the best there is (now that CoX is dead).

Conclusion: it's worth vacationing in Champions every now and then, and Perfect World made Cryptic respectable again...a miracle!

Rift
Rift snuck in toward the start of the year and snagged me first with its Lite F2P through level 20 and then with its mixture of interesting story content and compelling mix of traditional and innovative gameplay. It is officially the first game since 2005 when WoW and the original Guild Wars sucked me in to grab and keep me for the long haul. The core game is so good I continue to mainly play it while I occasionally log onto my level 50 guardian warrior and explore the new Storm Legion content at an excessively leisurely pace.

Anyway, I don't need to blab on about how great Rift is, as I've done that a lot already this year. Suffice to say it's my top dog in the kennel right now.

Conclusion: I bought a one year sub along with Storm Legion. That's about as dedicated as it gets for me in the world of MMOs.

Next Year
I'm looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online. I think some new titles like Firefall and Wildstar may be dark horses ready to sweep in and change everything up. I suspect more publishers will eyeball the B2P model just as much as the F2P model, and if industry analysts like Michael Pachter are right we may see a decline in the number of MMOs being pumped out as publishers grow wary of entering a saturated market.