I've looked over and tried some of the P2P's and haven't found anything amazing that has seperated them from the F2P's (Sure they can have nicer graphics or a larger base, but the idea is the same). I've played quite a lot of the MMO's ranging from Maple Story / Illutia to Guild Wars to Perfect World and WoW. If you name a MMORPG (or one of the few MMOFPS's), I've likely played it. Problem is I haven't found one I can settle on for over a couple of months. If only I could have full command over a group of people to design my own game hey :)

I have enjoyed -
Shadowbane - Best F2P PvP experience, beats many of the P2P's.
Zu online - Decent PvE game, good idea with the faction based combat, more than a few problems mind you.

What is important in a MMORPG -
1) PvP - Without this the entire game is meaningless, who cares if you can slaughter AI because you've grinded for years but would lose to a person who has played for months because they have a better grasp of the game. Ideally it would be based on the skill and time spent to determine who is the winner. An ideal system would have open PvP (anyone anywhere), with no repercussions or faction based (think Horde vs Alliance) with no repercussions. I was a big Guild Wars fan, but likely was too obsessed with it and knew too much about the game (If you ever get to this point you'll see glaring flaws with the lack of skill updates).

2) Worthwhile PvE - The Diablo 2 series nailed it. Kill -> Reward. If you add in a useful PvE system that allows some people to farm for better items and allow a good PvP system that allows some people to add in a threat that is greater than the monsters you end up with a great base for the game system. Ideally the game would require groups to effeciently farm areas (and would require roving groups to threaten these people).

3) Distractions - Games that add in other things to do besides level / grind / farm have an edge. Fishing or other minigames are a welcome distraction.



I am waiting for the release of Rohan (The open world PvP system makes me think that the gankers will have a significant disadvantage, but the PvE requiring parties is a good thing) and Requiem (I haven't seen too much in all honesty). If you have an idea for a game that is already out, please put in a small review / your reasons to why you think it is a good long-term game, as I may have missed something if I only played it for a couple of weeks.

Thank you.

rappelz? :) good pet system fun PvE pretty fun dungeon partying but PvP isnt so good idk only played for 2 days there isnt much grind though

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'll never play Rappelz again. The game is centered around cash-shop items (Stamina potions), there is no stats to assign and all skills can be eventually obtained. Pets come in two flavours - Common or devestatingly rare. The grind is (or I should say was) abhorent, all but a few dungeon enemies would not use skills making PvE dull, dungeons had areas that were crowded by groups unless you were in one your group wasn't going to farm, and PvP ganking was horrible there was a massive toll on anyone who killed another player be they offensive or kill stealing or whatnot, the toll was so bad that if you were going to be ganked, you'd let the person do it because killing them wouldn't punish them as much as letting them kill you.


Oh right... And I had my account banned from the server for (I kid you not) having a an account name (not character name, so I wasn't trying to imitate them or anything, I had no idea about that persons account name) similiar to a hacker or scammer or something. GG admins :p