My Top 10 Upcoming MMOS

[Saitada]

i think i will go with what the thread was suppost come out as; what up and coming game i will be looking forward too when they release.
Wildstar : end list
there is not much comeing out that excites me.
As far as already out games, HUmmmmm
Second Life, StarCraft 2, Eve Online, Rift (before mirco payments), and ofcourse Haven and Hearth.

[hazzor]

how can you possible include so many unreleased games in a top ten list?

[btaylor]

how can you possible include so many unreleased games in a top ten list?

This. There is no basis to go on, only the generated hype. Also I find these lists to be somewhat unrealistic. MMOs are constantly changing. What could be #5 one day could be #3 the next, and so forth.

[TeckXKnight]

I've played more than a fair few mmos and there was a time that I did my damnedest to dabble in as many as could to at least have a cursory feel for them. In no particular order:

Ultima Online for introducing the idea of a world that you can mold and make your own.
Vindictus for its visceral take on the action mmo genre, which more or less didn't really exist before this. It has since gone pay to win because it's Nexon though.
Mabinogi for its excellent combat structure and slice of life take on mmos. It's strange to play an mmo for an entire day just working on jobs, fishing, farming a little bit, and chatting with friends over a campfire while someone plays music; strange but eerily fun. Once again, Nexon game so it is pay to win in the sense that you can dump real life money into the game for in-game gold.
City of Heroes/Villains had extremely boring quests but such an amazing character and ability generator that it spawned a generation of cape mmos after it.
Final Fantasy XI. It was a shit mmo that was boring, grindy as all hell, impossible to do anything, and actually had a boss fight that, if played with every broken mechanic that you could run and a perfect party, still required a solid 72 hours of fighting to finish. But it figured out the biggest problem in level based mmos: getting rid of the gap between players so that friends of different levels can play together without it just being a stompfest for one or a suicidefest for the other. It also birthed the new FFXIV which is looking to be an excellent game.
Guild Wars 2 because it was flat out fun. The pricing model, the market, crafting, combat, WvWvW, PvP, the constant big events, the giant bosses that decide to invade maps every once in awhile, and the general feel that you are in control of the events going on in the maps. It's a very liberating mmo.
Of course Haven and Hearth is on this list as well because it brings control and consequences to worlds where we otherwise have never experienced either. It is not a set story or path for us to follow but instead it is an adventure in a world where we must think, make decisions, and accept the consequences of our actions.

That's 7 and that's all you'll get out of me. Most mmos are boring and bring nothing new, valuable, or exciting to the table. They market their success solely on nabbing someone first and running with the nostalgia factor or provide something that's meant to amp up the addiction factor to the max while providing as little content as possible.

Two mmos that I'm very hyped for in the future: Shroud of the Avatar and the Civilization MMO. Both are by creators/devs that I have a lot of respect for and am anticipating with bated breath. Richard Garriot, creator of Ultima Online, is working on its spiritual successor Shroud of the Avatar. Jake Song, a big name in NCSoft with the policy of breaking the mmo mold even if it's a gamble, is working on the Civ mmo. I have a lot of confidence in both of them and I hope that their games will be great.

[AnnaC]

Yeah I still think in general Mabinogi is one of the best MMOs to date; it had a great combat system that wasn't all about grinding stat numbers, but was about dealing with rythym and flow of the battle. The crazy thing about it, was it also allowed for character progression so many different ways except for combat (ironically most games you need to fight constantly to progress in any meaningful way, and have boring or simplistic combat systems). I loved all the little side-stuff you could do, especially the music was awesome (too bad most of the noobs would just play the same crap anime music all the time). Great game and top-tier MMO all-around.

The only reason I stopped playing Mabinogi (besides needing a break from burnout), was Nexon starting pulling off shenanigans like modifying your desktop icons and forcing you to run the game through their website, and other stupid things that can be distasteful depending on your computer discipline. So unfortunately, even after buying Nexon cash before, I don't think I'll ever try a Nexon game again (which Vindictus/Mabinogi Heroes looked interesting enough to try; although they didn't seem to have the side-stuff that made Mabinogi so great).

[TeckXKnight]

Vindictus is not and Mabinogi 2 will not be in the same vein as Mabinogi at all. You can run Mabinogi through steam now and avoid a lot of the annoying stuff that they did before such as launching through their website. The combat is as awesome as ever but there are two major pay to win areas: Reforges and Enchanting. For like $10 at a time you can prevent enchants from damaging or destroying your equipment. Considering that towards the highest end of enchanting, you're rapidly approaching a 0.1% cumulative chance to get the best enchants on your gear and a failure destroys your equipment, this means that those willing to shell out cash are 1000x better off than players just playing the game.

You run into the same issue with reforges which increase damage, range, success chances, skill training, etc.. Normally a player has a 0.1% chance to reforge an item to r2 and a dreadfully smaller chance to reforge to r1. Buying fine and credne reforges lets you get a 5% chance to make an item into r2 and the same again from r2 to r1.

You might think that the barrier of spending thousands of dollars for slightly better gear would be enough to stop people, but it's not. Running around, you'll find plenty of folks with items so much stronger than yours that it's impossible to play with them.

But you don't have to play with them at all, which is the one big redeeming factor. The combat is great, the economy is fun, crafting is strange and will devour your life, and if you really want to you can sit around with a bunch of newbies and listen to them play the Zelda song for the millionth time. Like you said, stat grinding is silly and entirely unnecessary and the game is designed so that when you do start to slowdown and bottleneck, you reset your level and age and just keep going as strong as ever.

To be entirely honest, I think I hit higher levels in Mabi when I'm doing life skills rather than running dungeons. I make more money and wear my gear out less too. Of course the best crafting materials and what not are earned through combat so it's still necessary, but life skills are where you go to earn money. =)

If you're interested in games like Mabinogi though, it's worth keeping your ear to the ground for Project NT. Unfortunately it's also by Nexon but it looks promising.

[jordancoles]

I might be wrong here, but do we not have a screenshots of other games thread where this discussion would make more sense?
>Post picture
>Discuss the games

[Kaios]

Played Mabinogi awhile ago and enjoyed it but like every Nexon game it eventually got filled with gold selling spammers, grinders that don't say a word (might be a bot or might as well be) and pay-to-win losers.

[jordancoles]

My biggest problem with mabi is that you cannot transfer characters across servers effectively.
Even if you were to transfer your main character, animal/pet cards are also registered to a sever so you'd have to transfer all of those as well to be able to play the game comfortably with all of your toys yet again. Massive cash grab.

[TeckXKnight]

Played Mabinogi awhile ago and enjoyed it but like every Nexon game it eventually got filled with gold selling spammers, grinders that don't say a word (might be a bot or might as well be) and pay-to-win losers.

Over the last few years there has been a major crackdown on bots and goldspammers. All have rejoiced. At this point they more or less don't exist anymore and you can go anywhere without being harassed with their retarded messages. People who just want to grind forever and pay-to-winners still exist though.