Any good PVE MMORPGS out there?

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Cantroy

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I played EQ for 5 years, got to be one of the higher enchanters way back when, from 2000 to 2005... but that game is, to me, a little past it's prime and I cannot "go back" to it, even after trying to and logging into a free server last year.

I played Vanguard for years off and on, and that game is gone now, and really, I think I basically finished it, seeing most of the content, etc. before it went. Sorry, I didn't see Sunshine die, but really, a spider named that?

I played Rift for a while as well, and I eventually only really had the PVP stuff left or the "final" big bosses, but after EQ, I am STILL burnt a bit on heavy raiding and have no desire to repeat that.

So I played Archeage a bit, and the game is beautiful, and you can build a lot of wonderful things, so I played until I was 32 and built a boat and tried to finish a quest, whereupon I very quickly learned that the seas were NOT pve only... It was actually hilarious how fast I was killed by a group of level 50 pirates, which made me actually go and read up about the game to learn that it is really a LOT more PVP than PVE... So yeah, I enjoyed my $15 worth, but am now disappointed by what could have been such a great game for me.

Which leads me to ask here whether there is any such good PVE games out there that would be worth my $ nowadays, or should I just stay out of this gaming section for now. I was spoiled by the lengths the devs went with EQ and the idea of people working together, etc., instead of working apart.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why PVP is good, the idea of the challenge between people instead of an AI being higher overall, etc. Unfortunately, such games usually require raiding on a set schedule and I have become more of a solitary player not that I have family to raise so while the occasional social interactions is sometimes great, I'm looking for a place where my wife and I can relax after work and experience a game we can work together on and not be killed by random people 10+ levels higher than us without warning.

Archeage would be perfect if they dumped the PVP and spent some real time on PVE, but from what I have read, they won't do that, and instead seem to be "copping out" and letting other people create their antagonists for them which really ups the total randomness. The game is really great until you hit level 30 even though it really quest-driven. I liked the story, etc. It just seemed to "blow up" for me now that I hit 32.

My wife laughed when she saw my face after I finally got to take my boat out only to have it "killed" in minutes.. The word is "crestfallen", dear... and yeah, the idea of the game I could get into went with the boat.

So, any ideas from you all?
 
Rift is going to level 65 today =)
With Nightmare Tide
Haven't tried it yet but Rift is a Blast Grind isn't half as bad as it was at launch.
 
RIFT 3.0: Nightmare Tide Release Pushed Back to October 22nd

Actually I'm wrong delayed to the 22nd
 
I'll check it out, although I usually play a mage of some sort. Looks like they have that at least... hmm... The Secret World, I mean. I have a high toon on Rift now, and my wife still plays a little. I just seemed to get tired of it, and this is already my 2rd break from the game. I got bored. I couldn't do anything else higher on my own other than grind faction, and I'm sooo sick of grinding, and all of the gear upgrades were from raiding only. She got into the PVP stuff, which I had no interest in, and maxxed it, and now she is breaking a bit too. It was my wife who tried out Archeage first, even.
 
I wish I could recommend something. Unfortunately, the comradery of the old EQ days are long gone in the US. Game developers don't seem to focus on PvE as much as they used to, they usually strike for a balance of PvE/PvP or focus more on PvP (like Archeage). Even if game devs focused on PvE like EQ, the communities in MMOs (especially F2P) have gone right down the crapper. Trolls, verbal harasment, etc are rampant, and usually even encouraged by other members of the community. This is what really kills it for me.

But, I still play these games and look for smaller communities and just filter out any global chats.

I'd recommend giving Guild Wars 2 a try, the PvE is very fun IMO. GW2 supports a lot of out-of-party teamwork with many world events, a friendly no-tagging system for NPCs & gathered resources, and world bosses. Additionally, the dungeons require good team work from what I saw (especially in later tiers of their scaling dungeon system) and have fun platformer elements to them. Another nice feature is: the content is continuously evolving with new stories, it's not rapid, but it's continuous! Also, if raiding is an issue for you, you don't have to worry, there weren't any large-guild raids you had to be online for when I last played, just the world-event bosses which are more server-based rather than guild-based.

My biggest complaint about the game is the lack of gear progression end-game. It seems to focus more on getting new item graphics rather than better stat items, which is hard for many MMORPG players to cope with.

It does have a lot of PvP, but it's optional and separate from the PvE portions of the game.
 
Final Fantasy XIV is decent... you can also try playing SW:ToR especially with their F2P option.
 
Out of MMO's that are out right now FF XIV is probably the most attractive looking one IMO if you're looking more for PVE.
 
Firefall isn't bad despite the bad rating it got not sure how popular it is a month or two after launch it's a different type of MMO Jet pack Thumpers and sci-fi.
 
I recommend Elder Scrolls Online. There is a lot of hate towards it but it's way worth the AAA pricetag for the quality of production (all quests voice acted) and level of immersion. Interesting quests, cool environments, fun dungeons, it has everything you want in a modern MMO. I enjoyed it with my wife and we're hoping to get back into to finish the leveling game (damn you ArcheAge!) You can probably get a copy for cheap now that it's been out a few months.

What do you think of EQ Next?
 
EQNext has a lot of potential in my opinion. I've tinkered around a bit on landmark, and it's insane what people can create and how great it looks. If their voxel system is up to par with what they've described and shown in demo videos, it could lead to a great sandbox game!

With that said, I'm not sure how PvE vs PvP the game will be focused, and it will be very hard to be a traditional MMO (not necessarily a bad thing) with such a sandbox focus.

I have a lot more faith in Sony these days than the first decade or so when they got involved in MMOs. They really reuse a lot of their game development libraries & assets, and it leads a quality game. I believe they will have a lot of potential with their software development techniques, as long as they can stay innovated.
 
It is sooo hard to think about going back to a Sony game after the totally criminal way they treated, and destroyed, Vanguard. Vanguard, is in a very real way, what EQ should have been and, well, I will never forget that, in the same way that I will never forget someone cheating on me. Uck.

I loved my enchanter, and I loved my psion, but uck.

I kinda did the beta of elder scrolls, but I got into the world and felt disconnected from it after the initial quest line. Heck, even in that initial quest line, I was trying to go mage and ended up picking a sword instead of the staff as the iitial weapon, and was unable to repick. I.e. first flaw found almost immediately. Has it gotten better is one of my questions. I'm not opposed to trying something new to see whether I can find what I think has been missing from a lot of games out there, and frankly, I truly did think Archeage was wonderful at first as it had the classes and the looks I like, but the repetitive quests (go here, kill that) and now knowing how it is imbalanced against even levelling to 50 in a fun way for me, well, drat. I have always liked the fantasy more than the science fiction.
 
Yes, EA ruined Plants vs Zombies for me, and they are such a well-loved company... ok, that was a tad sarcastic. Is The Secret World made only to take $$$ from people as bad as PVZ2 is?
 
I enjoyed Aion when it was P2P several years ago....

If you enjoy a good Korean-style grind, it's F2P now (and I understand the F2P model is one of the best in the biz atm)

Try to wait for double-ish XP weekends etc. Otherwise, the grind will make you very, very sad.
 
also, I may get skulled for this.

But I actually enjoyed DC Universe Online. And it's free to play!

As buggy as it was , it was fun to play.

I enjoyed it way better than city of heroes.
 
As someone that's tried several MMOs since I quit WoW after 7+ years, I've finally come to this conclusion:

If you're going to play an MMO, just go play WoW. It's still the best thing going for PvE and PvP.
 
  • Secret World is awful don't bother with it.
  • FF14 looks great and overall has nice concepts but the game is a bit out of sync, you can adjust to it - but it is annoying.
  • World of Warcraft has a new xpac coming, usually good for a bit of fun but content doesn't come out very often.
  • Wildstar has great combat but has been plagued with a huge number of bugs since launch and they lost most of their players because of it.
  • GW2 is fun for a bit, but the lack of holy trinity and gear progression is a big downer for end game PVE.
  • Neverwinter had the same problem as wildstar, huge amount of bugs at launch - completely untested before launch or simply chose to launch despite testing/fixing not being done.
  • Archeage is popular at the moment because it is new, but the combat is dull and not PvE centric.
  • Rift's new xpac might be interesting, might want to look into it.


WoW/FF14/Rift would be my three suggestions.
WoW will likely be the most polished.
FF14 is good if you are slow paced and aren't combatcentric.
Rift I don't have any data on, but PvE focus and new release appeal.
 
With next gen out, I bet we are going to get hoarded with "The next best wow mmo" lol
 
bpizzle1 said:
As someone that's tried several MMOs since I quit WoW after 7+ years, I've finally come to this conclusion:

If you're going to play an MMO, just go play WoW. It's still the best thing going for PvE and PvP.
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Agreed.

The quality of depth is untouchable.

Graphics you get over in 10 minutes once you realize the amount of crap to do in the game.
Actually, in 10 minutes you'll only know of a fraction of it.

How the interface is fully customizable, the epic auction house, the insanely awesome loot hunt, the grinding for profession progress, the amount of different AI, the intense algorithms that make pvp how it is today, the awesome boss fights and getting epic mounts to raiding stormwind or orgimaar. So much stuff to do, wow is downright unbeatable for in depth play.
 
Going back to WoW is like going back in time.... I remember buying the pre-order, getting to like level 30, and just signing off... Tried mage and shaman at 2 different times, never managed to get to max level, even. Of course now, my account has been expired since 2011 according to the page, so I must have tried it again then.

Can I have my old EQ back, with graphics and toys like in Vanguard and Archeage? I could sooo easily restart an enchanter again or such, but EQ2 doesn't interest me either. EQNext looked promising at first, but there are too many questions for it at this point, and then it's not out yet, so no point guessing anyway.

/sigh I'm just disappointed with the state of the MMO game as far as a true story line and PVE goes... and yet I'm downloading the WoW client as I type this, again.
 
Cantroy said:
I kinda did the beta of elder scrolls, but I got into the world and felt disconnected from it after the initial quest line. Heck, even in that initial quest line, I was trying to go mage and ended up picking a sword instead of the staff as the iitial weapon, and was unable to repick. I.e. first flaw found almost immediately. Has it gotten better is one of my questions. I'm not opposed to trying something new to see whether I can find what I think has been missing from a lot of games out there, and frankly, I truly did think Archeage was wonderful at first as it had the classes and the looks I like, but the repetitive quests (go here, kill that) and now knowing how it is imbalanced against even levelling to 50 in a fun way for me, well, drat. I have always liked the fantasy more than the science fiction.
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Yes, its gotten *a lot* better since beta. I play ESO almost every day and am constantly finding new fun things to do in it.

It helps that I'm a fan of the Elder Scrolls series in general so having a world to explore full of lore, narrative, history and characters from that era is a huge appeal to me.
 
The two best PVE MMO's currently are classic EQ and AO.

You'll get ganked a lot in UO, but classic UO certainly exists as well.
 
TERA is fun with a good combat system,BAMs (bad ass monsters) and fun dungeons. The game is super grindy, though.
 
I'll be going back to WoW very shortly, right before the expansion drops. I know, I know, what about something DIFFERENT. Well, why fix what isn't broken (let's not take that one out of context here). If you're used to a game, you'll probably go back to it at some point, no matter how many times that is in total.

Cantroy said:
I just seemed to get tired of it, and this is already my 2rd break from the game.
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Also, let's not all pretend like we didn't see THIS.
 
After raiding in EQ, DAoC, Shadowbane PVP, EQ2, WoW, Rift, GW2 and trying the new F2P's, for fun I would recommend Firefall, for what you're looking for though,most likely Rift.... Personally I feel like GW2 was the best pieced together MMO, because it got away from the traditional rolls, the PVP is pretty decent and the whole "Personal" storyline was pretty cool...
 
Well, I made it to level 13 in WoW playing the wolfen druid, and now I'm dumped on the elven tree with no clear direction after following the quest line to there. From here out, is it just random quests I find, or do I join the elven quest line? No clue. At least there was a story line instead of go here, kill this, return to go kill more (looking back at Archeage for the most part there)

I know the world is big, as I "finished" the tree once before as an elf way back when, guess I may stay with it a little to give it a valid trial.

And yeah, I have gone back and forth to Rift lat least twice, possibly 3 times now.
 
Cantroy said:
Well, I made it to level 13 in WoW playing the wolfen druid, and now I'm dumped on the elven tree with no clear direction after following the quest line to there. From here out, is it just random quests I find, or do I join the elven quest line? No clue. At least there was a story line instead of go here, kill this, return to go kill more (looking back at Archeage for the most part there)

I know the world is big, as I "finished" the tree once before as an elf way back when, guess I may stay with it a little to give it a valid trial.

And yeah, I have gone back and forth to Rift lat least twice, possibly 3 times now.
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As a Worgen who has finished the entire Worgen area, yes, you can go do the Night Elf areas now, or you could hop across continents and do any of the starter zones, for any of the Alliance races.
 
I always liked Age of Conan. It has a bad rep over its poor launch, but it currently has tons of pve free to play content. If Conan lore and its low fantasy setting appeal to you, the art work and graphics hold up well. The game has a good balance of brutality and beauty. Play melee class and lop off heads and limbs accompanied by award winning music and lovely environments.
 
FFXIV :) I love it. Been playing since beta, and I haven't enjoyed an MMO this much since vanilla WoW. It has its issues, I do hate how end game raids are just.. bosses. There's no real dungeon or anything. Just a boss on each turn. But it's a beautiful game, it's fun as hell, the new battleground style PvP is super fun (Though still needs some balancing, and more maps eventually). They also put out new content pretty quick, as well as QoL fixes. I've leveled every job to 50, as well as an alt character to 50... I seriously love it.
 
Poordevil said:
I always liked Age of Conan. It has a bad rep over its poor launch, but it currently has tons of pve free to play content. If Conan lore and its low fantasy setting appeal to you, the art work and graphics hold up well. The game has a good balance of brutality and beauty. Play melee class and lop off heads and limbs accompanied by award winning music and lovely environments.
Click to expand...

AOC is still a thing?! This was one of the original "WoW-Killers", glad to hear it didn't go down the crap-chute already!
 
Cantroy said:
Yes, EA ruined Plants vs Zombies for me, and they are such a well-loved company... ok, that was a tad sarcastic. Is The Secret World made only to take $$$ from people as bad as PVZ2 is?
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I am on the verge of mailing my copy of Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare to EA and telling them to keep this thing away from the public. The game requires an "always on" connection and the servers are TERRIBLE. I can be playing a game all by myself and suddenly get booted from the game due to a server error. It's a fun game, but jesus!

Guild Wars 2 had the possibility of being fun, but I love playing a healer and they do nt have healers of tanks in the game so it was worthless to me.

As a Healer, World Of Warcraft has been the funnest for me. Between the play styles available and the interface customization I get exactly want I want in a game.

There is also Wild Star which is like WoW, but instead of selecting something and casting you have a frontal cone that you have to put over a target.

But yes, WoW is damn hard to beat. The graphics suck, but it will play on anything and it's the gold standard for content.
 
westrock2000 said:
As a Healer, World Of Warcraft has been the funnest for me. Between the play styles available and the interface customization I get exactly want I want in a game.

There is also Wild Star which is like WoW, but instead of selecting something and casting you have a frontal cone that you have to put over a target.

But yes, WoW is damn hard to beat. The graphics suck, but it will play on anything and it's the gold standard for content.
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I must say, all my years of playing WoW (I played from Vanilla to Cata), the healing was just insanely fun. I would love another Resto Druid-like class in FFXIV.. I don't like the healing in that game as much. Nothing as fun as Resto Druid to me. Tanking is more fun for me in FFXIV than it ever was in WoW though, and I ended up maining tank for raids. The dps jobs are also fun. But healing, definitely most fun in WoW.

WildStar... unfortunately seems to be dying a painful death. I really enjoyed my time in it, but it's optimized so awfully... my old computer would get me a whopping 2FPS in cities. I know my old Q6600 machine wasn't new at all... but geez, 2FPS?? The population seems to be dropping a ton.. but the combat system was incredibly fun to me, as were the dungeons. Oh, and the housing system was SUPER fun.
 
Flurgina said:
AOC is still a thing?! This was one of the original "WoW-Killers", glad to hear it didn't go down the crap-chute already!
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Yea it's still happening. There is a ton of content available free to play. People complain that it is not open world enough, but the loading only happens when entering a new playfield or a dungeon. Once you enter an area it's huge, full of content, and load free. A modern video card can max it out in DX10. The game has excellent motion quality, good looking armor, fun quests by MMO standards. The main appeal for me is the IP. The game does a great job of recreating Howard's vision of the Conan universe. I have soled PVE several characters all the way to the level cap of 80. There is so much content it is hardly possible to see and experience it all in one play through. IMO it is a quality MMO with excellent music and art. But it is not flooded with players, at least until you reach the higher levels.
 
Well, I ended up in WoW for now, and yeah, I've run into PVP a little bit, but not as bad as in Archeage. Wife and I are both having a good time now, and I have a 42 level Druid on Lightbringer... Now, the only problem is that I'm just starting still and the game is big. Should keep me busy for a bit, and I was told I have a lot to learn, but I'm not sure what I should be learning. Does make it interesting, though.
 
Cantroy said:
Now, the only problem is that I'm just starting still and the game is big. Should keep me busy for a bit, and I was told I have a lot to learn, but I'm not sure what I should be learning. Does make it interesting, though.
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WoW is diverse enough that you can make of it whatever you want. There are lots of game mechanics and synergies that you can learn, but only if you want to get into that depth of the game. Other people spend all day playing the auction house. And some people just go around collecting useless stuff that has no real effect in the game.

That's what makes it good. You find your niche in the game.

WoW was the first game I played that allowed datalogs which could be parsed externally. Oh god was that fun. I think some newer MMO's have started allowing this after how popular is became in WoW. I loved pouring over the data, I felt like that guy on The Matrix that said he could see the world just looking at the streaming data.
 
I hit 61 and I was working on the timber-something faction between dungeons and all of a sudden I came out of a dungeon and popped the insta-attack from a mob.. Pegged it for over 18k damage and I ended up just sitting there and laughed wtf??? So I then ran around with my feral druid just using the swipe aoe attack killing everything hat got in my way to get feathers for faction.

I got bored after a few minutes, figured if I really wanted to, I could return, and then was like "Where do I go NOW at 61?" It took me like an hour to realize I had reached "expansion" time and took the map all the way out to look for other continents... Now I'm in the first area in what must be the Burning Crusade area. Ported in and a huge group of mobs were marching toward the port and dying.

I flew around a little on my 90 only to run into a mushroom city of blueness whereupon I promptly logged wondering whether I had eaten something wrong for me... I'll find out when I get home. Was I up too late or what?
 
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