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[Folly]

FF14 does have great attention to detail. Aesthetics are all great.

Combat is about as generic as you'll see in any MMO though. Mash your dps/heal button and occasionally side-step a telegraphed attack.

My biggest gripe with FF14 is easily the mandatory story quest line though. Progressing the main story is absolutely required to unlock any of the dungeons and raids, and the endgame stuff requires 300+ hours of fetch quests with tidbits of admittedly decent story.

That and the monthly fee. Honestly there are several MMO's with a 1-time fee, or free to play with reasonable IAP, that offer much more interesting combat and far more lenient grinding.

[Antioch]

The reason why I hate most MMO's is that they have massive multiplayer in their name but the vast majority of your time will be spend doing PvE.


When I play a MOBA, RTS or shooter online at least I am playing against other people.

[Aklyon]

Multiplayer is not defined as competition, though. It is just more-than-singleplayer. Its why competitive multiplayer has an extra word to describe it.

[raalph]

Yeah, there's nostalgia involved. But a modernized version of RS... maybe as of ~the Construction release, minus the little bits of bullshit added before that (like, keep the old trade system, scamming and all; keep the original form of Wildy PvP as the high-risk variant, stuff like that)? I'd be on that like shit on a pig. Hell, keep it browser-based and with the old graphics. I'd pay $5/mo for an MMO where I spend most of my time making friendly conversation and doing weird little quests way more readily than I'd pay $20/mo to fetch rat assholes and get endlessly outscaled by no-lifers who play 12h/day with the dream of one day (approximately five years later) being able to do the good content, even if I have to right-click to loot without grabbing everything and click tiny little pixels to go up or down levels. Oh, and fucking bring back drop-trading. That was so much less bullshit than wasting time grinding money on alts that you were just going to do pure CL PvP with, and it always carried the risk of someone stumbling upon your drop spot and grabbing everything while you were logging in on your alt. And ditch the fucking gravestones, if you screw up and die you keep your 0/1/3/4 and anyone lucky enough to be nearby gets the rest. No way I'd go back to RS as it is now though, I tried and it's unrecognizable.

http://oldschool.runescape.com
Have fun.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I like DDO. 6-man adventuring parties, 12-man raids.

Plusses: Good dungeons. The quality of each dungeon is the same as a WoW raid, and the quality of the best of the dungeons and raids is beyond anything I've seen elsewhere. This is where 95% of the gameplay is; there are some wilderness zones but they work like dungeons under an open sky.
Puzzles. Optional side-quests.
Some crafting and player economy. But not very thorough.
Reasonably strong playerbase, both guilds and randos.

Minuses: Grind creeps in if you want top-tier gear.
Endgame is just reincarnation to repeat the leveling treadmill, but you get a little bonus. Strictly for those willing to put out tons of effort for a small benefit much like endgame gear.
No actual MMO gameplay, meaning you won't see 90 people participating in a single conflict.
No player impact on the world, strictly theme-park, meaning you can't start a village or help the orcs fight other players.
F2P or monthly fee. Microtransactions are not just cosmetic, but it's not strictly P2W.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

DDO could have been great, t'was LOTRO's sister game, but went F2P before it hit its stride. As I like to say F2P is essentially the death-knell of an MMO.

[Aklyon]

DDO was solid for 'does this work on ye olde laptop', and had the bonus of being D&D-related. Can't say I feel like playing it some more though.

As I like to say F2P is essentially the death-knell of an MMO.

F2P is essentially the only way to go, though. All the new ones that try to run off subs as their main income eventually collapse into F2P or fold outright.
I know of only three sub-focused, active MMOs: WoW (the giant lumbering old man of an mmorpg), EVE (the other titan in the room), and FFXIV (which apparently had died terribly in its first incarnation and then revived into a thing worth playing, and has Square Enix's support behind it)

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Perhaps. I think a lot of it is crumbling to board pressure to show profits. Some of it is being a little overconfident. Most of it though is just not innovating in a market ready for change I think. I mean... the WoW model is so fucking boring lol, there is a 5000% chance someone can do it better. No one wants to try though. EVE comes closest I think, but is really just sci-fi WOW with a bunch of economics thrown on top, you still spend a bunch of time grinding for late game battles, etc. never played FFXIV... I hear good things about the reincarnation.

If the MMO genre wants to survive someone's gonna have to breathe some life in to it. I think we'll have to wait till WOW is dead though. Which, of course, my never truly happen.

[Teneb]

Elder Scrolls Online seems to be doing well enough, considering it makes into steam's top 10 whenever there's a sale. Their model of buy once, no subscriptions, also dlc instead of expansions, seems to be working.

[Aklyon]

Its certainly doing better than expected for an elder scrolls games without mods.

[Arbinire]

I really want to love and enjoy Elder Scrolls Online, but it seems every 3-6 months Zenimax Online Studios does or announces something that makes you feel the game isn't being designed by game developers, but by accountants and lawyers who, to answer your question, must first define what "is" is.  They'll shoot themselves in the foot, lose players, do something right, get players back, just to do the same exact thing in principal that lost them in the first place again.

[Retropunch]

I've always felt that MMORPGs just seem to be designed so poorly - all the MMORPGs I've played have just felt amateurishly designed compared to 'standard' computer games. Not graphically, just in terms of story/atmosphere/systems. You get all sorts of silly system quirks and half-quests that just seem cheesy and lame - they'd be ridiculed into the ground if it was a SP game, but suddenly the MMORPG tags makes it all acceptable.

I feel there is a massive, massive gap in the market for someone to come out with a serious, well put together MMORPG with a sensible price tag. 

[AzyWng]

I feel there is a massive, massive gap in the market for someone to come out with a serious, well put together MMORPG with a sensible price tag.

serious, well put together
sensible price tag.

I'm surprised you're even hoping for that sort of thing from people these days.

Or, you know, ever.

[Aklyon]

The people who make sensible, well made games are busy making SP ones. Or non-mmos, at least.

[AzyWng]

The people who make sensible, well made games are busy making SP ones. Or non-mmos, at least.

That's because those people are smart and, well, sensible.