MMORGs and role playing discussion.

Thanks for making the thread, Larni.Really the only RPGing I'm doing now is MMOs.I played Everquest way back and then I got into FFXI on the PS2. I tried WoW for a bit but I thought it was too cartoony and, comming off of FFXI (which was ridiculously difficult), I found it to be too easy and thus unrewarding. I was just going through the motions and, as Mod pointed out in Message 8, it wasn't roleplaying, it was stat increasing.Then Age of Conan came out and our group all wanted to try it so I joined in. I loved the setting and the combat but the game was just too buggy and clunky. They released too early and FunCom became FailCom.We, the group, decided to go back to Everquest 2, which is really well-made. All the wrinkles were ironed out of the first one and there's a lot of high-tech functions built right into the game. Its pretty easy but all the variety makes it fun and the world is fairly huge. Actaully though, its really been about us all having a game to play together as friends.The EQ2 setting is a little too ghey for me, with all the pastel colors and fairies n'stuff (I much preferred the bloody dirty setting of Conan, and as one friend said: "You're not going to beat boobs and decapitation") ever watch the Age of Conan vs WoW videos on Youtube?There's 4 of us that play regularly, a tank, a healer, and two DD's (a mage and a wizard). We pretty much own any mobs that cross our path. It'd be nice to have a ranger for tracking though.

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I've really only played 4th ed D&D one time, but I've read though the system. I really like it.It does seem more like an MMO, but I think its an improvement and its well balanced.Pre-4th ed, it seems like guys would be like: "Look how awesome my guy is and all the things the I can do".With 4th ed it seems to have changed to: "Look how awesome my guy makes us and all the things we can do."Rrhain kinda has a point with it being made like a videogame, but you're right that its kinda always been like that. I mean, look at Knights of the Old Republic... they basically took the 3rd ed D&D rules right out of the book!

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I LARPed a couple time in highchool with Vampire: the Masquerade. It was okay but as much as your saying the combat in 4th ed is fluid, LARP combat is that pathetic. We mostly just hung out and talked Vampire and didn't ever get a lot done in the game.

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You mentioned Fallout 3. I borrowed a friends PS3 and played that game for about 5 straight hours. I loved it. When I do finally get a PS3, I can't wait to start that game up again. Any advice? Since I knew I was only going to play shortly, I just min/maxed a guy to be a small guns expert. it worked fairly well but when a few mobs grouped up I was fucked. In hind-sight, it might work out well to go all steath and just sneak around the whole time. Would that hamper the XP too much? Whadaya think?

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rbp mentioned Magic: The Gathering. I found all my old cards recently in a move and went into the local gaming shop to check it out. It turned out they were having a tournament that night so I got in on it. I got 3rd place which I was proud of for it being on a whim (although one guy helped me (re)build a deck).Version 10 just came out and from what I saw it looks pretty good.

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Diablo....Holy shit I put some time into Diablo 2. What a great game. I can't wait for Diablo 3 to come out and I already know of about 6 people that are going to jump on it. Too bad Blizzard is soooo slow. Although, I wouldn't want them to fuck it up like FunCom did with Conan.

Its possible to play in short bursts but it ain't gonna happen because the game is too good!Diablo 2 is great, you're gonna love it.Make a Barbarian first, they're the easiest, and just run threw and hack n slash everything to get a feel for the game and how it works.Then go back and make whatever you want.You'll get skill points to spend for new abilities. Save them! you don't have to spend them right away and you can just stack them up for later use when you figure out what build you want to go for. Once they're spent you can't unspend them.

Its not 40k but there is:Warhammer Online Sunset

Everyone I ask who's played that game has that same reply...

Hi Rahvin, (or anyone else who can help me here)Have you ever played The Temple of Elemental Evil? Or what about Neverwinter Nights?They "look" a lot like Baldur's Gate II...I've played and have them both and was wondering how Baldur's gate II compares. If its pretty much the same thing then I'll prolly just fire up one of those two, but if its way better then I'll prolly go out and pick it up.All this type of old D&D games makes me wanna play one.

I think I stopped playing The Temple of Elemental Evil when my min/maxed fire mage just could not defeat the fire elementals I don't even think I could damage them. Kinda put a hamper on my progress.

Well I'm convinced. Imma go and grab me a copy.Thank you.ABE:Niether Best Buy, Wal*Mart, not Game Stop had a copy They all had Diablo II though, if that's any indication of how popular a game is.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Hi GM...(hrm, coincidence?) Yeah, okay. I get it. I went to look at the local stores for a copy but nobody had it. I'll prolly have to order it online.I gotta lot of shit going on so I don't know how soon I can start playing it though. I bought ToEE on a whim. Tried to play it, had all the problems you had, and then shelved it.I was talking about how shitty it was to a friend one time and they asked: "Did you try to patch it?"This was the first time I had ever heard about patching a game.Atari had three whole different patches for ToEE which actually worked. The game ran fine and it turned out to be pretty decent. Yeah, I think I'm a little younger than you.

I was a little excited about this game being on PS3 (I don't want to throw more money into my PC for another MMO), but I've looked at the official site and now I think I'm gonna pass on this game.I don't like the "mentor" idea. All in all it looks rather restrictive on the character variability. I suppose this is a function of the game having to be able to work.The skill tree is like in Diablo, which works for me.I thought it'd be fun to try a new MMO, although chatting on the PS3 with a joystick doesn't sound cool. I guess I'll have to rent it.

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Diablo 3?
Anywhere? No?

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It does look like the're making progress though.I'm disappointed that its all new classes except they brought the Barbarian back... Why they gotta bring up old shit? Could've at least called it a Berserker or something... different. At least they changed the Sorceress to a Wizard.

Oh, you guys are, like, Drow-black. Here my guy, he's more brown-ish.I guess I was white mage last time I logged out. My lvl 50 Black Mage looks cooler.I let my subscription expire and I haven't played in a long time.I've moved on to 7 Days to Die and TitanFall. I don't currently have an MMO that I'm playing. I was thinking about picking up Elder Scrolls Online, but honestly, I've been having way too much fun with 7DtD. Yup, that's the shit. I had a buddy that I played this game with mostly, we'd typically do tank/healer combo. Occasionally, we'd try to run a dungeon with two DPS's, we'd wait, and wait, and wait. One time, its was up to like 20 minutes (of course we were running around doing other stuff while waiting), and then we're all, I guess we should switch back to tank/healer.So we do, and bam, 2 seconds later the dungeon is loading. I always did the story quests at about 3 levels higher than the minimum, especially as you get farther along. Those crazy japanese folks at Square Eniz are hardcore when it comes to difficulty. I don't know how they expect me to do the, say, level 30 quest at the actual level 30. Practically impossible in my experience. The Tank is the "leader" of the group. You decide when to move onto the next mob, and where the fight will be, and who will be provoked first and all that. Then the DPSers have to follow your lead to determine what they should be doing.A great tank keeps the battles flowing steady without compromising the healer's MP levels.Sometimes you'll catch flak from the leet players because you're going too slow. Like, "why aren't you starting to pull the next mob just before the previous fight is finished. You can shave 14.73 minutes off this dungeon if you do that for every group."Fuck those guys tho. Make sure you're having fun first. That's how MMO's started. Then they started evolving towards more variety within the classes, and then every class can do anything, and then it all turned into a big mush of skills and there was no rigor. I really like how FF14 went back to the "old" way.Although, you do have to rely on everyone in the group. One terrible newb can cause the who thing to come crashing down. But that's cool, everyone is important. Well, really for starting other characters. Switching to another class wouldn't be like starting a new guy. "Here's where you pick up a quest. Now run over to that guy to turn it in. Now go find this blinking light on the map. Then you have to go over here" All that preliminary stuff you do at start-up got dull for me, but I already knew how to play an MMO.But then, you're never going to start a whole 'nother character, are you? You'll just keep this guy and try a new class.Did you get the basic subscription? The advanced one allows you to have multiple characters per server, but since that ain't ever going to happen its unnecessary.

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Oh, did you ever play Diablo 3?

Yeah, I started with Thaumaturge. All offense, no defense. It was brutal.I think I got to about the level 15 class quest and just could not beat it. I had to fight, omg, three guys at once Typically, when fighting one guy, you just gotta out DPS them so they die before you do. Well, come three guys there was no way.IIRC, I went and played the conjurer a bit so I could at least have a healing spell. I think they just know that some classes are harder to play than others. Hell yeah! You show 'em who's boss! I know. Man I hate those uber elite players. They're all:"Dude, how come you're not using the super duper staff, that'll increase your damage by another 0.8%. We could use the extra DPS newb."And I'm all: "because I don't play this game 8 hours a day like a total loser and I have better things to do"On the other hand, I've had tanks that had to be 12 year olds or something. Just totally do not know how to tank, and are completely stupid and just can't get it. That can be a little frustrating.Its like: "ya know, you can provoke those guys off the healer, yeah? We might be able to get past the first fight if you don't let the healer die" Ah, that seems worth it. You might want to log in to your account on their website and check, I think the default is to auto-renew after 6 months. You might want to change that to a manual renewal so they don't just bill you again after you forget about it.

Yeah, I'll be getting that. All that sounds great, thanks for typing it up. I can't wait to start playing! Sweet, I thought we might be. I'll let you know if I can't find you. Sounds good to me... Are there any classes that you guys need to have with you? I don't really care which character I start with. I started on Diablo II with the expansion, and never played D1. But that sounds like fun and I'm totally down to try it.

Yeah, that was me, I saw you too. I got the expansion downloaded and started playing.I made a new guy in Season 9, a Crusader. And was re-learning how to play the game. I got to level 5 and then one of my RL friends jumped on with his his maxed-out guy and had me make an adventure game on Torment VI and then he took me to the cow level to power level my new guy. Then another friend jumped on with us and we ran a bunch of rifts until I got to level 70. It only took about a half-hour. Its like they have been sitting there waiting to join them.So now I have a Lvl 70 Crusader with mediocre gear that hasn't spent a skill point and I don't know how to play.Hooray, I guess. They assured me that this is where the game begins and next I need to figure out my build and start working on getting good gear. And that I'll just figure out how to play him along the way, "its real easy" they say.I'll be on later tonight for another hour or so, but I'll be figuring out my skills n'stuff. My work schedule is the same as yours, I'm just an hour behind you. I'll probably be ready to actually play over the weekend. Hopefully I'll see you on.

Right on, sounds good.Hey, if you ever need some help power leveling; I know some guys