Chris

"We've gotten a lot of feedback about the new white background. It's not wildly different from the old one, but we hear you. I cannot promise you it will be changing, guys.

I assume they'll see your opinions on the site colors too (please note: I am not promising you anything)."

How very Square Enix of you*.

*You being the apparently amateur 'engineers', that apparently need a few courses in design.

And there's the f@&#in' white, loss of the nice menu on the right, any form of color and everything else that made Massively look nice. I guess if you're going for that generic 1998 "made in Netscape Navigator" look you nailed it. I'll give it a few days, but I think Massively just went the way of GameSpy for me.

Rather than say "I don't like them" and leave it at that, let me explain what I dislike specifically. The white background is rather annoying, whereas Massively is light but not too bright. The colors used on Massively work together rather well, where Joystiq is just white, everywhere (it seems much more amateur-ish). You have a nice, easy to access menu on the right, and overall the menu on the right is much 'cleaner' than what is typically up on Joystiq (I think this is due to the few colors actually used on Massively vs the blank Joystiq).

I've not used their comment section, but I like how Massively alternates colors every other post, as well as has the easy to see dotted line separating the replies from comments. I tell the system to remember me and all I have to do is type in a box and hit 'Add Comment'. As simple of a comment system as I can think of.

Ugh. Can't say I'm happy to hear this, as I'm not a fan of either the Joystiq or Big Download layout. Seems like a change for the sake of change, but I'll wait and see how it actually turns out. ;)

That was fast! haha

I like both, personally. Taking Blizzard as an example, they have always had some amazing cinematics in their games, and WoW was no exception. However, they also released a number of trailers with in-game footage early on so players knew what they were getting.

When a company uses too much CG instead of in-game footage, then it gives me the impression that they are not comfortable with showing footage of their own game. If they are not comfortable showing their game, why should I feel compelled to play it?

I have two, actually. The first being City of Heroes. I had a friend who was playing in beta and was talking about it quite a bit. I had no real interest in it and wasn't really paying attention to everything he was saying. After all of the 'you gotta check this out' talk I decided to pick it up a few days after it launched. I had the money, it came with a free month, what the heck, right? Years later I am still playing. :)

The other game is LotRO. I was waiting for Age of Conan to come out and there were a group of us that decided to check it out in open beta, just to do something as a group. We had no intentions of actually playing the game and mingling with the 'lore-nazis'. Much to my surprise, the game was actually good. No, better than good, it was great. The class mechanics are, to this day, the best in any RPG I have played (not just MMO, all RPGs). The world is beautiful, the story they put together fit well to the books, and the combat is deep enough to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. Even though I only played from time to time, I ended up becoming a Lifer just so I wouldn't have to worry about the fee and logging in all the time. I may not play as much as I would like, but I still enjoy the game when I do play.

An honorable mention would be Guild Wars, a game I got when it launched, but just couldn't get into (I was neck deep in CoH at the time). I think it was around when Nightfall came out that I found a friend of mine had it as well. We decided to give it another go and the rest, as they say, is history. I still take months off from the game, but I've completed Prophecies, Factions and EotN, and I'm getting close to the end of Nightfall (in the Desolate Wastes area). GW turned out to be a fun game with a few interesting stories. With the two of us teaming up, the customizable Heroes were a very welcome addition. :)

For WAR, I would love to play as the Tomb Kings. I would love to be a warrior raised from the tomb and fighting for the honorable Settra the Imperishable. Its the army that got me into the tabletop game, and I love the look and feel to the army. I'd also like to play an actual undead race in an MMO (Forsaken are too fleshy). Sadly, EA/Mythic/Bioware would further desecrate the IP by having them join forces with the Lizardmen, or worse, the Vampire Counts. lmao

For WoW, they are about to get Goblins, which would have been my first choice. My second would be Naga. Throw the 'implausibilities due to lore and/or no legs' out the window. Tanking as a Myrmidon. Would. Be. Awesome. Of course, they'd again desecrate things by allowing male casters and female warriors.

Someone mentioned above that LotRO would be cool if there was a story to play through as the Creeps, and I fully agree. The be The Enemy and expanding on the story that was mostly implied would be pretty cool. That, and I think Turbine could do a pretty good job at keeping everything very dark and quite disturbing.

WoW, after I hit L80. I'm not a raider and I hated the simplicity of the 5-mans. Stuck around doing whatever for months just because the guild I was in was awesome. I still yap with them though, good people. :)

Second place would probably be CoH. Too much time at the Market, Tailor, Architect, and tweaking my SG Base. haha

@godly967

Post-Searing Prophecies is, IMO, the hardest part of the game to get past, for me. No difficulty-wise, just that it goes on and takes a while to get past. All the while you are looking at desolation. Granted, there are some pretty areas, even in the desolation, but it is overall very dreary. Luckily, it's something that the A.net people realized quite some time ago, making the other games and expansion that much better. Keep at it though, its a great game. :)