Hey there, I'm looking for some honest opinions as to what would be a good MMORPG for me.

Let me preface this by saying that I am fairly new to these games. I've dabbled with FFXI, PSU, Maple Story, and RO, although I've never played any of them long enough to really get good at it. I used to play a lot of MUDs years and years ago, and while technology's come a long way for RPGs, I've yet to find a game that made feel like those MUDs used to. Currently I've been fooling around with Rappelz, but obviously my posting this means it hasn't quite captured my heart.

First and foremost, I'm looking for a game with a friendly community. One of the things that holds me back from enjoying many of these games is I tend to turn inward and not communicate with other people enough. Odd, considering most people seem to do the opposite. I think what's stopping me is I know I'm the new guy and I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't want to get in anybody's way. Consequently I just run around solo, which makes grinding worse and I get bored with a game faster. A strong roleplaying community would be a plus, considering most of the MUDs I played were RP enforced.

Game balance is also very important to me. I'll throw the ability to customize your character without gimping yourself into this as well. It seems a lot of games force you into certain roles based on what class you choose. You find descriptions of the "best" builds for those classes, as well as the "best" equipment set, and everybody ends up being the same. I crave variety. I want to be able to make my character different than the next Fighter/Mage/Thief/whatever without being gimped. Customizing the look of your character is vital too. I can't stand it when everybody looks the same.

I don't mind grinding as it seems it's just a necessary evil when it comes to games like this. As long as it's not unbearable and there's things to spice it up along the way. If I can address my own sociability problems as I mentioned above, that may lessen the sting of grinding anyway.

Graphics are not terribly important to me. You can't be too picky when you played text-based games for years right? It doesn't have to have all the latest bells and whistles. In fact, my computer probably couldn't handle it if I did. I've got a 2 year old Compaq with an AMD Athlon, the only thing I've done is throw 2 gigs of RAM into it. Supposedly it's got onboard graphics, GeForce 6150 LE, but I've heard that's basically useless. However advanced the graphics are or aren't, quality is important. I mean, a game like Ragnarok isn't terribly advanced graphically (at least I don't believe so), however it looks good because quality was important to whoever did the art for it.

Well that's about it. I appreciate your patience if you've read this far, and eagerly await your suggestions.

http://2moons.acclaim.com/ (http://2moons.acclaim.com/entry.jsp?ref=G2-A001-C16-0807) kinda a very decent, and with not bad grahpic, i think you pc can run it. Aslo can see Fairyland (http://tinyurl.com/2a3c4w), pets in this are very fun.

well, XO thats hard, if you want tones of skills and never get bored i guess silk road, if you wana glow when you turn lvl 60 fly for fun, good gameplay if i dare rune scape, but i must say 2 moons looks great ima down load it lol

Avoid Fairyland unless you find leaving your computer on for hours and hours doing job skills, or grinding for hours upon hours to level up only to realize that you have less HP than someone half your level, fun.

Thanks for your suggestions. 2moons looked great but not being able to change how my character looked was kind of a downer. I think I'll try Fly for Fun next. I've always heard good things about it. How's the grind? If all else fails I guess I'll do it the old fashioned way and keep trying things until I find one I like. Thanks again.

Flyff had horrible grind (moreso if you use your skills a la mage).

Maybe Rohan for community (CB right now, isn't really CB), it looks like you'll be pretty much forced to party.