Ever come back to an MMO after a long time...?

[NeutralDrow]

...and spend an assload of time testing and gushing over the stuff they've added in the meantime?

I ask mainly because I'm currently in the process of affirming that the Dual Pistols powerset in City of Heroes is, in fact, the most awesome thing in the history of ever. And before that, there was the Demon Summoning, and the fact that you no longer need a level 50 to unlock the epic archetypes...but there's still a crapton of stuff added in in the past five issues that I haven't discovered. And before that was WoW, with its Death Knights, and its user-friendly upgrades, and new professions...

I almost want to reinstall Guild Wars to see what's happened there. Unless they just ignored the first game in favor of the expansions.

 

[Soulgaunt]

Well, I just got back into Grand Chase, and I'm now hearing about some new characters, and the fact that it's easy to level! And yet, with all of this, my goal is still to play as Lass.

 

[Marter]

I will occasionally log onto RuneScape, just to see what is new. I don't actually play though. I don't have the time or desire.

 

[DarkDain]

Went back to xenimus, BAM! scallion clerics cant be made anymore. Came back few years later, BAM, 6 new races 2 new classes and the entire map size was doubled for evil vs good theme. that was a big bam.

 

[Sleekgiant]

I go on to Runescape......if only to show off my increasingly rare Easter Egg ring

 

[Soulgaunt]

Went back to xenimus, BAM! scallion clerics cant be made anymore. Came back few years later, BAM, 6 new races 2 new classes and the entire map size was doubled for evil vs good theme. that was a big bam.

That sounds interesting, why haven't I heard of this game?

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

...and spend an assload of time testing and gushing over the stuff they've added in the meantime?

Testing? Yes. Gushing? The exact opposite, more like. I checked out Free Realms last year when it was still new, and while it had very, very little depth, it was surprisingly well put together and very polished, almost on the Blizzard level. It was fun to goof around in it now and then for a few weeks, especially because it was free.

Jump to a couple days ago, when someone else I know just started playing for the first time, which prompted a couple of us who hadn't been on since last year to see what was up with it these days. They've apparently overhauled the entire interface to make it more console-friendly (although the PS3 version still has no release date even announced), which makes it nearly unusable on a PC (and I can't see it working terribly well on the PS3, either). It's impossible to find half the stuff now, and the things that are still there got rearranged to be several times harder to actually use.

As an added bonus, they took a lame combat system and made it even worse, and they reduced the movement speed so far that it's painful to just walk around, presumably so more people would buy mounts/"rides", which cost real money. What was once a great example of a game for kids that wasn't totally dumbed down (just heavily on the casual side) is now exactly the kind of crap people complain about: trying to suck money out of them (via their parents, obviously) without actually being a decent game in return.

 

[Niracas]

Well usually when I stop playing a game I dont go back. The only thing i've done that with is FFXI. Level Synching is AMAZING. Jumped from lv12-50 so fast. My Weapon Skills sucked but I stand by the awesome.

 

[Dart DeathClaw]

I played WoW when it first came out and enjoyed it, but without making friends or getting real life friends to play with me I got bored fairly quickly. A few years pass and some of my new friends say they want me to play WoW, and i happily find out that my old account is still in the archives. The new updates were fresh and interesting, new items, skills, etc. Got bored a month in and haven't gone back. I played Star Wars Galaxies for a long ass time, since start up as well, Buuuuuuut Sony decided they would be able to draw a bigger group if they alter it to be more like WoW. The SW fans liked the fact that it was DIFFERENT from other MMO's, so they lost people. People who played WoW didn't want to switch because they already love WoW and don't want to start anew. They lost a lot of people on, my opinion, an asinine move despite all the new updates and starships all for a "Combat Upgrade." This CU became a point in time where people could say, "Star Wars Galaxies was AWESOME Pre-CU." I haven't gone back to Star Wars Galaxies, but they open sourced the code so a group of Pre-CU fans became temp developers to recode the game into Star Wars Galaxies EMULATOR!! or SWGEmu for people who play that. I played that and was happy with their idea, but it was still a skeleton. I really should go back and see if they have it running at near 100% or not because i did ever so much enjoy wasting time in a universe that I loved. It's not all jedis running around either, and they aren't the best class in the game so huzzah for class balancing.

 

[Flying-Emu]

I went back to WoW recently. Have to say, they haven't made a single change for the worse in the year and a half I've been gone.

 

[DarkDain]

Went back to xenimus, BAM! scallion clerics cant be made anymore. Came back few years later, BAM, 6 new races 2 new classes and the entire map size was doubled for evil vs good theme. that was a big bam.

That sounds interesting, why haven't I heard of this game?

Because it came out in 1996-7 or something and is made by pretty much one guy with a community of, at most, 300 people on at once across a few servers, it used to be 5$ a month, but as of last update its free and all servers are combined into one. I actually havnt found any other mmorpg like it, its kinda cool in its open world hard core style, but the playerbase is ancient and usually jackasses now go to www.xenimus.com if u wanna try it, its something different and worth trying. It actually has another server called the dungeon server that you can go too, its even more hard core difficulty, the entire world is literally an endless dungeon of stronger monsters hundreds of passages and great exp, also full and total pvp.

 

[Yureina]

I went back to WoW once for a time and immediately doubled my money supply within a week or so (~20 to 40,000g). That's the only real story I have about that. "Going back" typically means a crazy spreee of "getting stuff rolling again".

But, i'm never gonna do that again.

 

[revjay]

A couple of days ago I re-tried Lotro. The crafting if anything is worse, they added MORE interdependency somehow and I still don't like the moving at half the speed of smell. I guess it's good I'm a lifer and can keep checking back, or maybe I'm a rube for giving them 300 bucks for something I got over within the first year.

 

[Irridium]

Went back to Runescape once. Found out they basically took out the Wilderness. So I got off and will never go back.

The Wilderness was the best part of the damn game, and whoever thought it should be removed deserves to get beaten.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

Nope, when I quit I quit for good.