Fractral said:
I've finally finished everything that I need to do this summer until October, so I figured now would be a good time to get into an MMO. The problem is that I've never played a traditional MMO before. My sole experience with the genre is a short stint with Planetside 2 and a few weeks playing Runescape about 5 years ago. So I've really got no idea where to start. I was looking into FF14:ARR but I know that there are a lot of games to choose from out there.
So here's what I'm looking for:
-Doesn't require too much thought to play
-Doesn't penalize you for not playing for long periods
-Plenty of single player content (I don't mind 'fetch x' or 'kill x' quests in moderation)
-Has co-op content that is easy to get into
-Optional PVP with no penalties for dying in it
-Not too much fanservice
As a last note, I don't want to play World of Warcraft, mainly because of the nasty reputation it has among my friends.
Thanks in advance.
Final Fantasy 14 sounds about right. It's fairly standard MMO fare aside from the multiclassing, but it's done really well.
Defiance is less polished, but it's F2P, plays a bit more like a 3rd person over the shoulder shooter. If you're a fan of the show, all the better. It's probably my weakest recommendation out of this list though.
GW2 is pretty good, you only have to buy the game once, and is a fair bit of fun. They like their PvP a bit more than I do though (I am very much not a PvP person).
If it weren't for the "not requiring much though to play" part, then these are up there in my book:
The Secret World: This game is great in a lot of ways, and it's F2P. The investigation missions do requires you to think though (and occasionally google things because actual references to actual real world things are relevant. One of the first investigation quests requires you to notice things about the details of textures in the world, references a Bible verse, and involves a riddle -- all in the quest meant to be your introduction to that kind of play.
Dungeons & Dragons Online: This game is very non-standard among MMOs. Very non-standard. The thinking required in this game is generally a combination of two things -- one, strategy is often important, especially in later content and two, you have a *lot* of leeway in how to design your character (including multiclassing), and it is possible to screw it up (but not as easy as some people claim -- if you stay single class, put your stats in something that roughly makes sense and try to keep your choices appropriate to your theme and role you'll be fine, just not optimal). An important thing to note is that mana doesn't regen between fights (it actually *does* regen at the same rate in and out of combat and that rate is fairly quick, but you only regen up to 15 mana, for comparison I'm level 16/28 as an Artificer and have 1085 mana), which means that casters tend to limit their casting to when it means something, and spells are fairly powerful (like D&D), make frequent use of spellcasting items such as scrolls and wands, and some caster specs get certain spells at reduced rates. Traps mean something, and might potentially limit what content you try to solo (they tickle on Solo and Normal, they hurt on Hard, and they can often kill you outright on Elite). If you need help but don't want actual group members, you can pick up hireling contracts off the vendors to help shore up your weaknesses (such as grabbing a pet healer), and each player can use one of these hirelings (or multiple bought off the cash shop), meaning that half a group worth of players can be a full group worth of characters.
Probably 80+% of content outside of the raids can be solo'd (and virtually anything can be done by just about any group, even if the group comp is wildly inappropriate, so long as you work around your weaknesses), including some stuff the game itself will warn you can't be. All questing is instanced, and most have 3-4 difficulty options. For the first 8 or so levels you should be able to solo the highest difficulty if you are careful, then it starts to get rough. The level cap is 28, and the first raid is level 6.
A significant bit of this game's content is locked away in "adventure packs" which are individually not that expensive but add up in the long run (it's possible to run the entire level range without any, but you lose out on some of the most fun content).
When you reach level 20 (28 if you bought one of the "iconic" character options) you have the option to do a "true reincarnation" -- this is like the remort system found in many MUDs where you sacrifice your character but get a bonus for rerolling. In DDO this bonus takes the form of special past life feats, of which you get a stacking freebie for each time around the loop as well as the option to choose a more advanced version of each one you've unlocked. For example, when I finally true reincarn my Artificer, I'll get +1 to all Intelligence based skills, +1 to Use Magic Device on whatever I reroll as and the option to take a 15% not to use charges on charged items and 10 uses of Enchant Weapon/Armor per rest.
