Well, throw one more onto the list: World of Warcraft. I actually started about a week ago, but didn’t really have much time to play or think about it recently.
Having already played other MMORPGs before, it’s not like it’s entirely unfamiliar ground, so what sticks out is how it compares to those others. What definitely feels different is just how well-informed I am going into the game, even right after launch. Due to the huge number of people in the open beta stage, an enormous amount of information is already available on how best to construct and develop characters, what to do for quests, how to gain tradeskill rankings, etc. It’s disappointing in a way to have everything ‘spoiled’ like that already, unlike say EQ where everyone was stumbling along and exploring and developing blindly. Those discoveries are part of the fun, after all. But then again, once you’ve played one, it’s nearly impossible to recapture that ‘newbie magic’ again anyway (you can only lose your innocence once), so being informed enough to avoid the traps and dead-ends can help, too.
The first thing you notice is the art style, of course, since you start off surrounded by it. Whereas EQ2 went for ultra-realistic, WoW went for a stylized, cartoonish look, and I think it works pretty well. Anything that makes you stick out instead of being yet-another-generic-fantasy-theme is good, it keeps the system requirements low (it runs very smoothly even on my starting-to-age system), and it’s just plain eye-pleasing.
Travelling around, the regions seem to be fairly large, and whereas EQ split the world into ‘zones’ you had to transition between, it’s all seamless in WoW. You can start out in the middle of a large city, leave through the gates, run towards a cave, and fight down to its deepest sections without any interruptions. It’s a small thing, but very welcome, and it helps with the whole ‘immersion’ thing.
Combat is fairly fast and furious, at least at the lower levels (I’m only up to 7 so far), and recovery from battle is very quick. Whereas EQ often forced you to rest for a while (often 5 or more minutes) after a solo battle, in WoW health and mana regenerate fairly quickly, and you can also use food and drink to recover them even faster between battles. It’s also supposed to be viable to fight solo all the way to the highest levels, unlike EQ where fighting alone was often dangerous (until you get twinked, anyway) and poorly rewarding. That may seem to defeat the purpose of a multi-player game, but sometimes you just can’t find your friends, you don’t want to be *forced* to deal with other moronspeople, and the best rewards do still require a group effort.
Quests so far are the usual “Bring me a ‘x’,” or “Take this to Bob over yonder,” nothing too exciting. What’s really nice though is that the client keeps track of your ongoing quests in a log, with all of the pertinent information: where you need to go, what you need to do, who to talk to, how much you’ve completed already, etc. Keeping track of that kind of information by hand was always a pain.
But, of course, there are a few concerns. Blizzard gave out a list of server names before launch, and everyone who was planning to play already started deciding which server to join, and what guilds to form. Then, when the actual launch was overwhelming, they brought additional servers online and nearly doubled the number. The problem then is that those of us arriving a little ‘late’ (even if only by a few days) are forced to choose between either following our old friends onto the servers they’d picked, but which will be heavily overpopulated and laggy; or to pick one of the new, lag-free, less-crowded servers where absolutely no friends will be.
I’m also not sure about their decision to make the game world clock equal to the real-world clock. If I stick with the Eastern server I’m on (where other friends have gone), and with my current work schedule, it’ll almost always be dusk or nighttime within the game for me. Fortunately the darkness isn’t so dark as to be crippling, but I’d still like some variety.
In summary, it’s definitely a lot like the other MMORPGs on the market already, but specifically crafted to remove a lot of the annoyances built into the others. Not too surprising, since polishing proven gameplay concepts is pretty much what Blizzard does best.
Whether I get sucked into it as deeply as I did in EQ or not depends on just how much free time I can muster up after other priorities. I probably sacrificed a lot of things I shouldn’t have to spend time in EQ, and I’d rather not keep repeating it for the rest of my life… :-P
(And just in case anyone cares, you’ll probably find me as either Cabrius (human mage) or Cabronius (dwarven paladin) on Whisperwind.)