Tatsuk

With the potential influx of a large population like the game hasn't seen in awhile, I hope SOE will tweak the game to highlight the option of starting in the individual racial areas, rather than the Isle of Dawn mashup. There's a lot of wonderfully entertaining lore to be found in them, all of which is missed in the default tutorial zone.

I've given more than a year apiece to Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, EQ2, Guild Wars, and Age of Conan; something on the order of six months to Vanguard, Rift and LOTRO.

The ones tugging me back most strongly are EQ2 and AOC, although I have high expectations for promised revivals of AO and Vanguard.

I've tasted of STO, SWTOR, Champions Online, Aion, EVE, DCUO, DDO and Vindictus, but they've yet to hold me for any measure of time.

At the bottom of the article... "Comments are disabled" says it all.

Wife and I just returned to the game to explore the Guardian side for a month or two. But I guess it's up to me to ask the obvious question...how much participation does Trion expect to get for an event that's scheduled for noon on a Tuesday?

@(Unverified)

What mostly drove away my wife and myself is that we like to duo in a game; but in the case of Cata, it was either race to see who could one-shot the next mob to come along, or else head off in different directions to kill things singly. Having all the quests happening within steps of each quest hub was just the icing on the cake, as it were.

So I guess I'm one of those players the devs love, because I'm not at all shy about picking up a fun mount or appropriate appearance armor in a game...though I tend to wait for steep discounts.

By the by, EQ2 does let you swap purchased items around between characters...I'm painfully aware of that, since I've moved on to Age of Conan where you can't.

I could see myself getting excited over monkish pandas, if not for the fact I've been interacting with the Hua Mein in EQ2 for the past year and a half.

I'm definitely in the market for a sci-fi MMO, but what I've seen of SWTOR so far isn't pushing my buttons (the way an updated Anarchy Online would, for instance).

While the original Age of Conan basically lost me around the sparse quests of the level 40 midgame, returning to it with the expansion has found me playing daily with multiple alts for over 6 months, and I'm loving all the level-cap content in Khitai, which sadly puts the more Howard-original zones to shame. It's got a few more months in it for me easily, and I expect further additions akin to Turan will keep bringing me back.

What both games should be worrying about, though, is the approach of Skyrim...

Just listened, and oh my, the defensiveness! Still, my perspective on One Shots:

a) I enjoyed the feature. But it was all there on the front page, so I would only ever click through to the comments if the shot came up with a new angle on a favorite lesser game, like Vanguard or EQ2.

b) My attempts at contributing to the column were never used or even acknowledged, so I figured there were more than enough screenshots coming in. If I knew then what I know now, I would have tried more often.

I will miss the column, hope you find a way to restore it or something similar in the future.

@Sente

My first thought too. My interest in it was first piqued way back before I had tried any MMO, in 2001; I was intrigued with the idea of a game that had no humanoid characters, just alien critters living in alien cultures. Although that's still not something we've really seen, there aren't many signs of life.