What MMO have you had the most fun in?

[Phoenix_XIII]

Being someone who plays MMO's every day and am constantly installing and uninstalling games weekly, I find a lot of gems and a lot of pieces of crap.

Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE is probably my favorite that I've played. The demon ally system helped me out due to my normally solitary mindset while playing games (even though soloing in an MMO is stupid, it usually works for me.) You never have a true class and you can work on the skills you want so you can adapt to certain situations. I was a Gunner specializing in buffing and debuffing. Great for parties, but I could still hold my own in the off chance that things went bat sh*t crazy. EXCELLENT GAME.

A close second would be the new Aida Arenas. It's in closed beta and I jumped through hoops to get a beta key. Worth every second I didn't have it in my life. It's still laggy for no reason, but it's still a work in progress. For all of you waiting for it to come out in Open Beta, it's well worth it.

S4 League is a lot of fun. Parkour, fast paced shooting, and just overall fun. I recommend it.

Lucent Heart keeps me entertained.

 

[Guffe]

MMO:s I've played: WoW, Lotro and Guild Wars.
Guild Wars was fun but something didn't give me the real open world feeling about it...
WoW, only bought it because I am such a huge Warcraft 3 fan but it didn't pull me in...
Lotro, well I am still playing and last time I had a good discussion and battle was today...

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Eve Online I guess. It's the game that kept me playing the longest even if most of what I found myself doing was grinding for cash in order to keep the replacement ships in good repair for PvP.

 

[EpicPeanut]

I might be kicked in the balls, but Runescape.
Other MMOs seem too straight forward and linear and I like how the main quests play out sort of like point and click adventures. Also, the crafting ystems are the best in my opinion, because you don't nessisarily have to go to "starter" areas to build up your less trained skills and what not.

Just exactly this. Some of the plotlines of the higher difficulty members quests are actually incredibly well thought out and entertaining.

 

[Lenvoran]

World of Warcraft for me. Wrath of the Lich King was pretty alright, but I really enjoyed Ulduar. Nothing past that point was nearly as enjoyable (played a Prot Warrior). Then Cataclysm came out and made me sad. Removed the more free form aspects of Warrior tanking and made it extremely rotational with not enough snap aggro to really do any impressive AoE tanking. And the block change was also very very sad making.

Gave up a little of the ways into Cata. Considered briefly going back for the people I know, but not much point if the play style I enjoyed is gone.

 

[Arkley]

I suppose I'd have to go with Final Fantasy XI, but for the longest time I simply approved of what the game stood for, rather than actually enjoying it. It was a no-holds-barred, virtually impenetrable uphill climb from the very beginning. You had to work together or you'd accomplish nothing, there were no tutorial NPCs or hand-holders and if you couldn't figure something out, fuck you. The best areas of the game were inaccessible lest you completed torturously long and difficult quests that demanded not just your hard work, but the hard work of five to seventeen others. Monsters that dropped highly valuable items appeared once a day to dozens of people competing to claim them if you're lucky, and once every few days to hundreds of people if you're not.

The game was also determined that this silly "online" business wasn't going to get in the way of it telling stories in true Final Fantasy fashion, and came loaded with tons of epic tales that delve into topics from ancient wars to the origins and impending destruction of the world itself.

Of course, in actual practice, none of this worked. It meant if you didn't have 4+ hours to sit at your computer, you might as well not log on at all, as you'd accomplish more or less the same amount of progress. The absolute requirement that you have a large group of people in order to do anything worth doing meant that you'd often be waiting - doing nothing in the meantime - in order to find such a group. And the group would have to contain the right jobs (classes) for the task at hand, too. The steep and unassisted learning curve turned off new players and led (once the "wow it's an online FF game!" novelty value wore off) to a game that demands large groups of players having a constantly declining population.

Of course, that was all a long time ago, and has since been "fixed". Much more can be accomplished in much less time and with much smaller groups. A clever system by which powerful end-game equipment can be obtained was implemented along with tons of new features to reduce the game's time-sink nature. Old quests were made much less difficult and new quests & areas were introduced to lessen the demands on the players.

All in all, the game is much more fun now than it has ever been, I just can't help but feel something has been lost in the process.

 

[Tourette]

Star Wars Galaxies - Before the dark times, before the NGE.

 

[Plucky]

Its probally between World of Warcraft and Runescape personally, on one hand Runescape doesn't have that much of a learning curve except for tactics such as prayer flashing and such, thenagain WoW is neat because each class has their own pros and cons, plus it has other things such as professions and specs....

Runescape
+ No pressure to play in a specific playstyle to make yourself strong due to a lesser focus on teamwork
+ All skills goes upto 99 (sans Dungeoneering which goes to 120) meaning your not limited by what you can do.
+ Quests are more creative and relies less on the "Kill X for Y Z's", Slayer does that.
- The game's armor is limited in the sence of approachability; traditionally people jumps strait to Barrows armor these days as an upgrade from Rune and to experience their effects, unless they jumped past Dragon and got to Bandos armor.
- Allthough the game has Lore, we're pretty much limited to what Jagex posts inside the postbags, Knowedge Base and the Runescape Books, and the quests are usually pretty self contained with little conscequence or difference in the world overall.
- Constant updates that adds nothing but fluff to the game, where in the end only gets half played which leaves Botters botting there for the experience...
- ...the Botters themselves, they're so rampant and take quite a bit of time before they're banned and such that they have effected the heirarchy of items within the economy.

World of Warcraft
+ Loads of classes for people with different tastes, which in their own have their own trees for a different forms of play between users of the same class.
+ Large expansive lands of a variety of backgrounds.
+ Professions; there is no right or wrong profession for a class. (personally, Engineering would be fun, little self equipment enchants like rocket boots and belt rockets)
+ Has an achievement system, ontop of giving a bit of self confidence to players, they can also track their statistics and other things such as which dungeons they fully completed...or even the amount of unique quests they've done.
+ Rich in lore, this is Warcraft here, some people didn't knew it started off as an RTS, they also have comics and books.
+ A grouping system for Battlegrounds and Dungeons, it removes the need and hassle for looking for teammates...though if you're a class such as a Mage or a Rogue, chances are you'd have to wait for ages...lets hope you're a class that can Defend or Heal to get 5 second starts..
- A shameful thing is that to a new player, they will often get to their level caps pretty quick, meaning blitzing past 80% of the content of the 3 previous expansions purely to get to Cata content.
- Areas tend to be empty except for new areas, main cities and (if your lucky) the 5 people camping Rare spawns in various places such as Deepholm for Aeonaxx or that random snow place in Northend for the Time-Lost Proto Drake.
- Playing the game solo feels boring and frustraiting, hence you might want to join a Guild to have people to talk to and to have goals to work towards, a healthy friendship goes a long way espcially if it grants you benefits for a high level guild with perks like 10% faster mount speed or even a GIANT PURPLE PHOENIX MOUNT. <3 <3 <3

 

[qeinar]

back in vanilla wow, and early tbc. and maybe warhammer online pvp which was awesome.

 

[deshorty]

HAHAHA GOOD ONE!
...
Oh, you were being serious. Hmmm I guess that would have to be WoW because I had friends to play along side with, but that being said, I didn't have alot of fun to begin with. It was just a time and money sink.

 

[XHolySmokesX]

City of heroes, played it for a good 3-4 years on and off. i guess it was all the power choises and customisation that did it for me.

the gameplay was a bit too grindy and the Europe servers really underpopulated, but you can't have it all can you.

 

[arrapippol]

Also even though auction houses are probably quicker and more efficient for trading having to use merchant vendors to sell items to people was awesome. Running through the town looking for the best deals on that specific potion or gear before someone else could grab it was fun as hell and I want those days back damn it.

And the wizard buskers outside Prontera! those were the days man. There are a few private servers still going with Ragnarok, though pretty quiet.

 

[Mana Fiend]

Guild Wars, though I sometimes found it difficult to find a party. At those points, it was just boring.

 

[Risingblade]

Mabinogi, it the only MMO that has kept me playing for so long

 

[Zaeseled]

Runescape and World of Warcraft. Those two are the ones that keep sucking me in, time and time again.

 

[Bobbity]

WoW. Excepting the massive grinds, it can be a hell of a lot of fun.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

WOW for definate, its really isn't that much of a grind anymore to get to top level and if you play with friends it can be great fun.

I don't play anymore becuase my friends stopped but another set of friends asked me to go play with them so I might do that when I get my new PC

 

[Cridhe]

Dark Age of Camelot and/or Aika Online. Fighting for/defending relics was a blast.

 

[Westerschwelle]

Ha that's easy!

Ultima Online of course!
It's the best game to roleplay in and it was the most fun even without quests and raids and stuff like that. I wish they would do Ultima Online 2

At the moment I'm waiting for Dark Millenium, hoping that it won't be a WoW ripoff.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Dark Age of Camelot back before the first expansion. Had a great guild, which allowed for amazing RvR gameplay

close second would be Star Wars Galaxies, again, due to being part of a great guild and slowly building our town.

Ultimately, games I still play: Face of Mankind and Ultima Online (on a Freeshard). Unique and fun, whether you play casually or more regularly. Great communities, too.