Octopus Overlords

I should have a new PC in a couple of weeks and I'm thinking of breaking it in with a "new" MMORPG.

I played a lot of EverQuest in its early days and I also dabbled some with Asheron's Call but I haven't played anything else in the genre since.

I'm looking for a game which is fully playable solo - I liked the social aspect of EQ and I'd like the option of grouping, but I don't want to have to join a party to advance.

I'm only going to be playing for an hour or so each day so I'd also like a game with lenient death penalties - losing a week of progress every time I died in EQ sucked and it was what put me off that game when I no longer had time for nightly multi-hour sojourns.

Guild Wars appeals due to its lack of monthly fees, but the reviews I've read make it sound like it relies heavily on team play and I want to be able to play alone.

the presence of an active OO group I might meet up with on occasion would be a bonus in any game.

at the moment I'm considering World of Warcraft, but I'm open to suggestions since I don't really know what is out there and still being played.

If a MMORPG was fully playable as solo...they wouldn't be very good businnessmen, eh?

I think each of them is "solo-friendly" to a certain point (number of levels), but the nature of the beast seems to call for cooperative play.

That being said, I can't get enough of CoH. For someone with limited time that wants to sit down and play (not craft or trade or dance), CoH has been the best use of my online time.

Guild Wars is very solo friendly for the first 50% of the game, I'd say. After that it's hit or miss on whether or not you can manage a quest or mission without help.

Smoove_B wrote:If a MMORPG was fully playable as solo...they wouldn't be very good businnessmen, eh?

maybe not, but I think playing a lone hero in a populated world should be an option.

in EQ I had a bunch of characters built up to around level 20 and for the last few months I played I spent my time hanging out in newbie zones playing benefactor to new characters. I like interacting with but not depending on other players.

Ka Faraq Gatri wrote:

Smoove_B wrote:If a MMORPG was fully playable as solo...they wouldn't be very good businnessmen, eh?

maybe not, but I think playing a lone hero in a populated world should be an option.

Well, I believe the current model for the Conan MMORPG calls for a "single player" experience through level 20 or so. At that point you can decide whether or not to join in the "Massively Multiplayer" portion of the game.

Not sure when that's coming out though. I want to say Spring 2006.

So who knows? Maybe there IS enough of a market for it. I also enjoyed the SP portion of GuildWars. The team combat holds no appeal for me though.

I recomend this mmo.

http://www.progressquest.com/

FWIW, I'm probably going to hop on the City of Heroes bandwagon sometime next week. Probably doesn't change your solo decisions, but it's going to be my entry to the MMORPG market.

~Neal

City of Heroes scales the mission difficulty to your chosen difficulty rating and the number in your party. This makes it both team and solo friendly. Though some classes like controllers are more difficult to solo.

This is just my opinion... I'm a very casual gamer and WoW fits me perfectly. I solo 80-90% of the time and I have a nice small guild that gets me through the group quests. The game is easy to learn, has a great background story, very quest driven that takes away the 'grind' feeling, the quests add on to the story, easy to find quests, 8 different classes that accommodates your personal play style, and all classes are soloable.

So, in my mind WoW is one of the better choices for a new MMORPG player.

I love City of Heroes but the grind is pretty bad. Supposedly the best content in the game is at level 20, but in two and a half months playing I have yet to get a character that high.

yossar wrote:I love City of Heroes but the grind is pretty bad. Supposedly the best content in the game is at level 20, but in two and a half months playing I have yet to get a character that high.

Wow that surprises me. I think with the right group of people you could do it in a month.

And yeah, I have noticed a significant change in game content for my level 22 controller. The whole Independance Port / Talos Island / Striga Isle areas are awesome.

Smoove_B wrote:

yossar wrote:I love City of Heroes but the grind is pretty bad. Supposedly the best content in the game is at level 20, but in two and a half months playing I have yet to get a character that high.

Wow that surprises me. I think with the right group of people you could do it in a month.

Well to be fair, after the first couple weeks, I've only played a few hours a week and I've taken weeks off here and there. The typical definition of "casual" some people throw around here is "hardcore" compared to me. If there were more people from OO online at the same time as me I'd probably play more, but that's the price I pay for living in Hawaii. I do have a level 18, a level 19, and a level 11; I just haven't managed to stick to one character long enough to hit 20.

Edit: Anyone have an estimate in hours on the amount of time it would take to hit 20 with an average group and no power leveling?

City of Heroes is good fun, especially if you just want to play for a month or two. I'm thinking about reactivating my account when my backlog dies down a bit.

I played the most solo-friendly class in CoH (Blaster) and one of the least solo-friendly classes in WoW (Warrior), and World of Warcraft destroys CoH in solo ability. Especially with the rested system, where time spent online or offline when your character in an inn or city lets you get double experience for a while, the longer you stay in a city the longer you get double experience, up to a level and a half's worth.

World of Warcraft is a better fit for a casual gamer in my opinion, I played CoH for about 6 months, and still play WoW.

[Edit : City of Heroes has a death penalty similar to but a bit less severe than EQ's. You go into exp debt, which is really just a fancy way to take away experience you earn in the future rather than experience you earned in the past. World of Warcraft has a very mild death penalty (except in PvP, where there's no penalty at all other than the run back to the fight), your items take a slight durability hit, but it's nothing to worry about. Even so, I avoid death just as much as I did in CoH just because I don't want to stop fighting.]

(disclaimer: I quit COH for WoW and after a month or so quit WoW and went back to COH.)


There's also the issue of what you like to do.

WOW has a ton of quests. There are NPCs scattered around who will give you quests. Most of them have a series of quests to do and you can have many active quests available. You either have to kill X number of a certain type of monster or find a particular monster who will spawn on occasion and kill him. Some quests require that you craft or gather certain trade goods. And there are a few quests where you enter a "dungeon" that is created for just you. Each quest has a specific difficulty and you can try quests that are too hard (you will probably die) or too easy (you won't get much experience)

COH has missions. You have a limited number of active contacts, around five contacts for each five levels. Each contacts will give you a choice of two of his missions and you can only have three active missions at any time. The missions are generally a Kill X of this type or is an instanced mission (defeat all mobs in the base or defuse three bombs in the office, etc). Each mission takes anywhere from 10 minutes (at a bare minimum) to about an hour (unless you screw up). There are also task forces available where you form a temporary team and are given a series of related missions that must be completed (you can't do other missions during the TF).

There are a lot more powers in WOW than in COH, but COH has a lot of customization. No crafting in COH.

You can farm mobs repeatedly for exp in both games, but this can be pretty boring albiet great experience/hour. Leveling does slow down in COH significantly and there is no end game for you, although you do get unlock special types of characters once you get a character up to lvl 50.

COH is great for experimentation. Everyone usually has a handful of alts and you have the opportunity to rebuild your character from scratch if you complete certain quests. There's no way to "gimp" a hero. There is no gear to speak of in COH. You do earn "influence" (money) and enhancements (powerups for your abilities). The inf is used to buy better enhs or pay for costume changes.

COH is pure fun. The mechanics require no downtime. There's a lot of action during the battles and there's always something enjoyable to do. Groups are very easy to find (but vary in quality).

The BEST feature in COH is that you can "sidekick" to a higher level character (your mentor). You will get a boost to your powers and will be able to take on higher level content with your mentor. This allows casuals gamers to play with the hardcore players. You don't have to "keep up" with your friends to play with them.

WoW is definitely solo-friendly. If it wasn't I wouldn't play it, being the misanthropic soul that I am. EQ2 is far easier to solo than the original (which I hated for the forced grouping among other things), but is still not quite as easy to work with alone.