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Five MMOs better than World of Warcraft
- Thread starter ManaByte
- Start date
Fragamemnon said:
The question here is: When do you hit the line, where WoWs raiding, pvp, lore, etc. is not enough for you and you need to play a hardcore niche game?
Can you even get into raiding in EQ these days? Same goes for DAoC, where everyone probably hopes for WAR as replacement. (DAoC is such a weird suggestion. The mentioned Lineage 2 is probably the better PvP candidate)
And Eve? I always have a runnung Eve account because it has absolut nothing in common with WoW. Most people don't even get past the tutorial in Eve.
What is the exact meaning of "better"? in what sense? I agree that PVP of DAoC is way more interesting ("better" even) than WoW, but WoW is a better crafted game in every sense. Everquest had all type of design nightmares that would make 90% of WoW players go insane. Eve is not "better" than WoW, is completely different and not comparable at all. And while LOTRO has a nice sense of lore and a good craft, WoW has more variety and deeper classes that allow for more interesting combinations and builds ( I find LOTRO to be quite limited on that).
Just my two cents of course, I think the word "better" was not the right one for the feature.
Just my two cents of course, I think the word "better" was not the right one for the feature.
lockii said:
; ; still say FFXI was the first (and probably still is the only) MMORPG to have a decent original story not based off something else, tied together with great cutscenes. Also its the first to actually have boss battle themes and a decent amount of great music...something most MMORPGs are lacking these days.
I'm taking a break from WoW right now while I wait for the expansion and I've been playing LotRO in its stead. At this point in time LotRO is pretty fucking good MMO, but better than WoW overall? I don't know, probably not, but it definetely trumps WoW in some areas. And because I'm bored at work, I'll list them off for you.
- Graphics. I like WoW's look and understand and appreciate the reasons for it, but the graphics whore in me goes fucking bonkers over LotRO. Every region in this game looks fucking sick, even on my shitty old rig. I have a GeForce 6800, 2g RAM, and a P4 3ghz processor and the game runs at 1280x1024 with 2xAA and all of the texture and terrain and frill distance settings maxed, and I get 20-30 FPS, 50-60 for interiors. Not great performance but its bearable and with the game looking as good as it does, I don't mind.
- Story. WoW pretty much fails at this in every possible way, so this is kind of a given. While no MMO has accomplished truly good storytelling, LotRO gets more right than it gets wrong. You interact with major story characters and play through an epic questline that stretches from your very first moments in the game all the way to the level cap. Most of the story happens in carefully placed instances and is designed to make you feel like you had a permanent effect on the world.
- Housing, Music, etc.. WoW doesn't even have player housing, so LotRO would automatically win this one, but to its credit LotRO handles player housing pretty well. In fact, LotRO handles all of its non-combat gameplay elements pretty well. The music system in the game is fucking awesome and things like chicken session play are just damn cool. I don't think LotRO's combat is as good as WoW's (that could just be due to the fact that I've been raiding and pvping in WoW for over three years now and I'm just more familiar with it) but LotRO trumps it in everything outside of that category.
- Crafting. Crafting in WoW is bland, boring, and irrelevant. Blizzard tried to make it worthwhile with the few epics you can craft but they can't seem to truly commit. Yeah, Frozen Shadoweave might be good when you first ding 70, but arena sets and even Kara and ZA gear quickly replace it. Crafting in LotRO is largely similiar to WoW, but has two main differences. The first one is profession mastery, being able to crit when you craft something and produce a superior version of that something. This adds a certain level of excitement to even mundane things like smelting ore. The second difference is that top level of gear you can craft is equivalent to the best gear you could get from raiding or pvp, in other words crafting is actually worth the effort in this game.
- Cities. This is a nitpick more than anything else but the cities in WoW have always underwhelmed me, they don't feel like actual cities. Where the fuck does everybody live in Shattrath? Or Org? Or IF? All the cities in WoW feel like they're constructing of nothing but NPC vendor shops and a couple scenic landmarks. They function fine from a gameplay standpoint, but they make no logical sense. The cities in LotRO, however, actually feel like cities. Rivendell is probably the best city from any MMO I've ever played (mainly because it looks fucking OMG gorgeous) and Thorin's Hall and Bree aren't far behind it.
- Pv(M)P. Now I haven't spent a whole lot of time playing LotRO's form of PvP (called PvMP, for Player versus Monster Player) but when I have tried it's been fucking awesome. It's so fucking epic, awesome, and rewarding that WoW's PvP feels kinda hokey to me now. I've spent a lot of time in battlegrounds and in the arena and never really enjoyed myself. I did have some good times steamrolling horde in AV during the balance issues but other than that, PvP in WoW is a chore. WotLC is introducing a PvP-focused zone like the one in LotRO and I hope WoW pulls it off and it's not just a non-instanced AV.
- Graphics. I like WoW's look and understand and appreciate the reasons for it, but the graphics whore in me goes fucking bonkers over LotRO. Every region in this game looks fucking sick, even on my shitty old rig. I have a GeForce 6800, 2g RAM, and a P4 3ghz processor and the game runs at 1280x1024 with 2xAA and all of the texture and terrain and frill distance settings maxed, and I get 20-30 FPS, 50-60 for interiors. Not great performance but its bearable and with the game looking as good as it does, I don't mind.
- Story. WoW pretty much fails at this in every possible way, so this is kind of a given. While no MMO has accomplished truly good storytelling, LotRO gets more right than it gets wrong. You interact with major story characters and play through an epic questline that stretches from your very first moments in the game all the way to the level cap. Most of the story happens in carefully placed instances and is designed to make you feel like you had a permanent effect on the world.
- Housing, Music, etc.. WoW doesn't even have player housing, so LotRO would automatically win this one, but to its credit LotRO handles player housing pretty well. In fact, LotRO handles all of its non-combat gameplay elements pretty well. The music system in the game is fucking awesome and things like chicken session play are just damn cool. I don't think LotRO's combat is as good as WoW's (that could just be due to the fact that I've been raiding and pvping in WoW for over three years now and I'm just more familiar with it) but LotRO trumps it in everything outside of that category.
- Crafting. Crafting in WoW is bland, boring, and irrelevant. Blizzard tried to make it worthwhile with the few epics you can craft but they can't seem to truly commit. Yeah, Frozen Shadoweave might be good when you first ding 70, but arena sets and even Kara and ZA gear quickly replace it. Crafting in LotRO is largely similiar to WoW, but has two main differences. The first one is profession mastery, being able to crit when you craft something and produce a superior version of that something. This adds a certain level of excitement to even mundane things like smelting ore. The second difference is that top level of gear you can craft is equivalent to the best gear you could get from raiding or pvp, in other words crafting is actually worth the effort in this game.
- Cities. This is a nitpick more than anything else but the cities in WoW have always underwhelmed me, they don't feel like actual cities. Where the fuck does everybody live in Shattrath? Or Org? Or IF? All the cities in WoW feel like they're constructing of nothing but NPC vendor shops and a couple scenic landmarks. They function fine from a gameplay standpoint, but they make no logical sense. The cities in LotRO, however, actually feel like cities. Rivendell is probably the best city from any MMO I've ever played (mainly because it looks fucking OMG gorgeous) and Thorin's Hall and Bree aren't far behind it.
- Pv(M)P. Now I haven't spent a whole lot of time playing LotRO's form of PvP (called PvMP, for Player versus Monster Player) but when I have tried it's been fucking awesome. It's so fucking epic, awesome, and rewarding that WoW's PvP feels kinda hokey to me now. I've spent a lot of time in battlegrounds and in the arena and never really enjoyed myself. I did have some good times steamrolling horde in AV during the balance issues but other than that, PvP in WoW is a chore. WotLC is introducing a PvP-focused zone like the one in LotRO and I hope WoW pulls it off and it's not just a non-instanced AV.
Lostconfused
Member
A rather shabby list.
ManaByte said:
LotRO has no direct class v class PvP. To be fair, it's really hard to compare class balance between it and WoW.
I will say though that LotRO is probably one the finer crafted MMO's out there, and were WoW not the game all my friends were playing, I'd be playing LotRO.
1) EQ is face ripping hardcore without the end game fun. Raid encounters in WoW are super fun compared to what I was doing in EQ.
2) DoaC is purely RVR and completely blows at PVE. Suffers the same old formula of camping rare spawns for super loot.
3) LotR was not enjoyable off the bat with unintuitive, constricted class types that when in action felt really boring to play with. The whole "performance enhancing" features by cutting down every graphical feature was way to extreme.
4) EVE Online is too niche.
5) What? Is? This?
2) DoaC is purely RVR and completely blows at PVE. Suffers the same old formula of camping rare spawns for super loot.
3) LotR was not enjoyable off the bat with unintuitive, constricted class types that when in action felt really boring to play with. The whole "performance enhancing" features by cutting down every graphical feature was way to extreme.
4) EVE Online is too niche.
5) What? Is? This?
As negative as I am about WoW, this list is definitely not right. I played a solid 40 hours of EVE Online to get a feel for it and I quit, annoyed at the repetitive quests (they literally will give you identical quests over and over again), and the severe lack of information about quest difficulty. Basically, you have to go around between cities (space stations) asking each available person for a quest. While you can look up where there are people who will give you a quest, it's impossible to know if it's too difficult for you until you're halfway done the quest.
There's some very broken fundamentals there... Don't get me wrong, though. I liked it. I played 40 hours of it... But it's grindtastic and frustratingly repetative. Even more so than Wow.
There's some very broken fundamentals there... Don't get me wrong, though. I liked it. I played 40 hours of it... But it's grindtastic and frustratingly repetative. Even more so than Wow.
Flesh Into Gear said:
This is a key point, and could be reiterated for all the games mentioned here in some form or fashion. I've said this in other threads, but I'll repeat it again; MMOs are a socially driven genre, where the game's quality is only slightly more important than the friends and the people you meet. Therefore, MMO games with lots of people are inherently more attractive than games with less people (which is very distinct from many other genres. With Echo Chrome, as an example, I wouldn't enjoy that game any differently if 10 million people played it or just 1).
The consequence of this is that it really makes much more sense to make an MMO that appeals to the masses before the hardcore, particularly when you consider that it's extremely expensive to develop an MMO game and the initial costs including server infrastructure are enormous. It's not a genre that lends itself to intentionally niche productions.
I personally enjoyed DAoC more than WoW, but that's my personal taste. But if I was forced to subscribe to an MMO again, it would be WoW, without question -- I like it slightly less, but I'd rather play a game I like a lot with all my friends than play a game I love alone.
And in a nutshell, that's what long term, hardcore MMO fans face. They can either play a game like WoW with 10 million people, or play a game tailor made for hardcore fans and simply accept that these games will have a profoundly smaller user base and culture surrounding them. In other genres I wouldn't care in the slightest if I was playing a mass market or niche game, but in this one, I don't want to invest a great deal of time into a small, dying game when I can invest it into a growing, thriving cultural phenomenon unless that smaller game absolutely blew my socks off.
Phoenix 2.0
Member
Nope. They're all worse.
FoxSpirit said:
gotta disagree.
Even back when it first came out i didn't agree although i could understand when you take a gander at some areas like Thundering steeps. HOWEVER, Qeynos is still one of the most beautiful maps i've seen in any game. Also, since release all the expansions have featured better and better art.....with the exception of Kunark and Splitpaw, both of whom feel extremely rehashed.
I've played all 5 of those and none of them are completely and totally "better" than WoW.
EQ - quite seriously should have been EQ2. EQ2 has grown and changed into a great MMO that is overloooked now because of it's crappy launch.
Also, I think EQ2s graphics while lacking in art style are quite good. Pretty much the only game in the past couple years to really impress with it's wonderful spell effects and shadows(they actually do shadows right!!!).
DAoC - basically the only thing this does better is PvP. Everything else is on par or worse than WoW. Even then it's a matter of taste. Do you like large scale PvP or small instanced PvP?
LotRO - I couldn't get into this one. The first 30 some levels will bore everyone that isn't a LotR lore junkie to tears. The last levels will frustrate you to death as you can't do a damn thing without a party.
EVE - this felt like an interactive screen saver. So boring and way too automated.
DoMO - uh, God No. Whoever put this in is an idiot. DoMO has a great class system and has an overarching story with cutscenes but the leveling is brutal.
First, let me explain the class system: it's sorta like FFT. You have a main class and each class has 2 ability trees. You can sub job like FFT in that you have slots that you can allocate with 1 of the 2 trees from any of the classes you have unlocked. This means you can have a Mage that has the heal tree from the Priest class and the buff tree from the Rogue class. Also, at level 30 you can allocate your armor slot. Which means your Mage can wear plate armor.
The bad is that past level 20(with a maximum level of like 150 or so) it becomes a brutal grind. Im not talking about your normal garden variety grind, Im talking GRIND. All the parties you get past level 20 will be AoE kill parties where you pull every enemy around you then kill them with AoE, repeat until you hang yourself.
EQ - quite seriously should have been EQ2. EQ2 has grown and changed into a great MMO that is overloooked now because of it's crappy launch.
Also, I think EQ2s graphics while lacking in art style are quite good. Pretty much the only game in the past couple years to really impress with it's wonderful spell effects and shadows(they actually do shadows right!!!).
DAoC - basically the only thing this does better is PvP. Everything else is on par or worse than WoW. Even then it's a matter of taste. Do you like large scale PvP or small instanced PvP?
LotRO - I couldn't get into this one. The first 30 some levels will bore everyone that isn't a LotR lore junkie to tears. The last levels will frustrate you to death as you can't do a damn thing without a party.
EVE - this felt like an interactive screen saver. So boring and way too automated.
DoMO - uh, God No. Whoever put this in is an idiot. DoMO has a great class system and has an overarching story with cutscenes but the leveling is brutal.
First, let me explain the class system: it's sorta like FFT. You have a main class and each class has 2 ability trees. You can sub job like FFT in that you have slots that you can allocate with 1 of the 2 trees from any of the classes you have unlocked. This means you can have a Mage that has the heal tree from the Priest class and the buff tree from the Rogue class. Also, at level 30 you can allocate your armor slot. Which means your Mage can wear plate armor.
The bad is that past level 20(with a maximum level of like 150 or so) it becomes a brutal grind. Im not talking about your normal garden variety grind, Im talking GRIND. All the parties you get past level 20 will be AoE kill parties where you pull every enemy around you then kill them with AoE, repeat until you hang yourself.
PedroLumpy
Member
Puzzle Pirates!
Spruchy said:
That post sounds pretty critical of WoW but I still consider WoW the better game. I've just experience all the content I can in WoW and I'm waiting for the expansion. A lot of my friends are doing the same, it's a typical cycle with WoW. It's no fault of the games, we're just rabid MMO addicts and require more than one game to satisfy our hunger.
Xiaoki said:
Good to know i'm not taking crazy pills. Thats how i feel about LOTRO.
and why do people rag on EQ for being classic? Far as i can see, i just don't see the improvement. Aside from being mostly adopted in EQ. You're playing the same game only streamlined to a linear level. The only real improvement I see to the MMO mold is in City of Heroes and Eve. I simply cannot wait for Champions. That WILL be the top alternative to WoW (which is what this list should be. Alternatives...not better)
Another one who can't find the awesome story within the quest chains. The music is world class in WoW (try finding the sound player embedded in WoW) and I remember the first time entering SW, IF, Darnassus and thinking... "WHOA!" because they looked of grand design. Crafting was made to be easy to get into so that complaint goes against the design of why WoW works. PVP only zones would be a huge waste of resources and I rather have more PVE content than "PVP content" which PVP is really just an ego train.Spire said:
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
I agree with Everquest. I really enjoyed WoW when I played it, but I got sick of it extremely quickly. The same thing happened with LoTRO, but WoW felt like a more polished game in comparison.
Everquest is the only game that has continued to pull me back for almost 10 years. I think it is a superior game to pretty much every other MMORPG out there, but that certainly isn't reflected in sub numbers.
Everquest is the only game that has continued to pull me back for almost 10 years. I think it is a superior game to pretty much every other MMORPG out there, but that certainly isn't reflected in sub numbers.
Wark
Member
I played DOMO during the closed and open betas and I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't go as far to say that it is a better game than WoW. I did, however, enjoy the atmosphere of DOMO a lot for some reason.
Yeah, after about level 20 the grind becomes absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Xiaoki said:
Yeah, after about level 20 the grind becomes absolutely fucking ridiculous.
IzumiK said:
I don't want to read quest text. LotRO actually has you experience the story rather than just telling it to you. A great example would be the recent 2.4 patch, where the Sunwell Plateau and the story of it was essentially told in a trailer. In LotRO, they would have you actually playing alongside that event as it happened.
The music system I was talking about wasn't background music. LotRO actually has a system where you can play an instrument and create your own music, using the 1-9 keys for notes and Ctrl and Alt to shift up or down and octave. WoW has no such system.
The cities (some of them, anyway) in WoW look nice, but aren't pratical and they certainly don't match the scale of the cities in LotRO.
Crafting in LotRO is easy to get into as well, and I don't think you really understood the point I was making about crafting. End-game crafting in WoW is useless to most players, it's a problem Blizzard has tried to address and has said they're going to work harder on.
Crafting in wow has it's phases. There once was a time one of the most sought out weapons was crafted (Arcanite Reaper).
I think realistically for any crafting profession to take off there needs to be item degradation. FFXI had it right with items eventually breaking. Kept the economy going.
Of course the quest for the ultimate loot makes everyone hate this system... w hich is a shame.
I think realistically for any crafting profession to take off there needs to be item degradation. FFXI had it right with items eventually breaking. Kept the economy going.
Of course the quest for the ultimate loot makes everyone hate this system... w hich is a shame.
Flakster99
Member
itschris said:
Thank you for the link and the lengthy impressions. You have sold me a 7-day trial at the very least.
Ferrio said:
Yeah, it's a difficult balance. LotRO's endgame is different from WoW's which benefits the crafting system I think. Raiding is not the main focus in LotRO, it's an option but you can get fairly similiar gear from a number of other methods. WoW's focus on raids is what kicks its endgame crafting system in the balls. PvP got up with raiding in terms of gear with arenas and I'm hoping one day crafting will do the same.
And IzumiK, I kinda wish that april fools gag was real. Using guitar riffs to cast and chain spells would be pretty rad. Someone needs to start developing Guitar Quest right now.
