Sixcess

Wonderful story. The online world often shows people at their worst, so it's great to see something like this show people at their best.

After Massively mentioned it yesterday I'm giving the WoW Ironman challenge a go and it's good fun so far. for EU players it's mostly on Earthen Ring.

The most I've ever paid in subs is $60 in a month, but that was spread across 3 different games. I suppose my max would be at most $30, as I've paid that when I had two CoH accounts up and running at the same time.

I've enjoyed WoW, on and off, over the last few years, but Cataclysm killed it for me, with its monotonously easy levelling, pointless mini-games, lazy writing that read like a parody of WoW, and linearity that drained the life out of the world (of Warcraft.) I doubt Mists will do anything to reverse that trend.

I'm doing a 'farewell tour' of the dungeons and Outland at the moment, but once I'm done with that I'm out of WoW. It's a sad shadow of its former self.

I wonder if Second Life still has the Cornfield?

My favourite of those listed would be the Zig. I miss the old CoV tutorial level, since nothing says supervillain quite like starting your career by breaking out in the middle of a prison riot.

@(Unverified)

Aww... I like that can of worms.

All kidding aside, the fact that even a group-heavy game like WoW will allow me to enter the 5-man instances on my own whilst CoH locks the climactic missions of entire zones to an arbitrary team size still irritates me. (The Hollows being the absolute worst example, but there's plenty of others.)

Today? That's... kinda sudden.

Always sad to see a game go down, especially if it was one that tried to do something a bit different go down.

Stories like this make me so glad that Gamersfirst picked up Fallen Earth...

I'd hate to see CoH go down the WoW route of forcing strict adherence to the holy trinity, specific 'follow-this-strategy-to-the-letter-or-die' encounters and gear check bosses balanced with mathematical precision to take you out unless you have exactly the right build. Given the vast range of ATs and powersets the game offers I'm not sure that would even be possible anyway.

But if they're going to have an endgame then it should be challenging, and If that means someone who's been running +0/x1/no bosses from 1 to 50 is suddenly losing fights then so be it, because otherwise it offers no real challenge to the rest of us.

As enjoyable as it is, the default game is too easy too often, with even a semi-competent full team capable of steamrollering most content. The tougher, trickier enemies of Going Rogue were far more exhilerating to fight than the xp fodder of so much of the game. More of that please.

I really like Fallen Earth's F2P model. I've been playing on a non-subbed account recently and it feels like exactly the same experience as when I'm subbed, and the in-game GMs are still the friendliest and most helpful I've ever encountered in an MMO.

Compare that to say City of Heroes - when I'm not subbed there my account feels like a poor shadow of what it is when it's paid up.

NPCs in MMOs have 4 functions - 1) give me quests, 2) buy my loot, 3) add atmosphere, and 4) get killed.

1 and 2 would have to be quite contrived to include children, except as one offs, 3) is okay, I suppose. 4) is an absolute no-no, as anyone who's at all familiar with the Skyrim/Fallout killable kids controversies will know. Not worth the hassle, overall.

Oh and if it's the Old Republic, 5) get 'romanced'... and let's not go there...

Mining, because having a pack full of gold ore just feels good.