May I suggest your next destination....

TSW is a decent game, although as CB pointed out, it has some bugs. And because of its design, you might never encounter a bug, or you might be completely blocked in progress because of one.

It's also very alt-unfriendly and has limited customization.

I find it an interesting change of pace, but I think it's very very different from CoH.

Just tried TSW... I felt like I was watching a movie! Long *** cut scene, followed by long *** cut scene, followed me by running slowly to a waypoint, then another waypoint, to be rewarded with another cutscene! I prefer when I can largely dive right into the gameplay... especially for an MMO.

I might give it another try in my remaining 3 days, but it seems they're not big on brevity.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

I posted this in the "where will you go thread." Sorry if it seems like spam. Text-based games may not be on everyone's radar, but if you are looking for a "community" game like CoX the ones below might be worth some time. Both are initially pretty complex but they get easier with time (and due to a helpful community).


For the heavy roleplayers or people looking for something very different, I am considering returning to one of the two games below. IMO, anyone who is considering a career in game design should at least log a month or two in these games and look at what possibilities are out there in terms of multi-player systems. Both games have very tight communities, in some ways similar to CoH. Both cost money (last I checked $15 a month) but you get lots of interaction with the developer team.



Gemstone IV was originally created in 1989(!) It is an experience-based game with 9 classes. The game has been under continuous development for literally decades. Injuries are semi-realistic (a blow to your hand may make you bleed or cut it off completely); Empaths here can only heal themselves; they heal you by first "transferring" wounds to themselves. Enemies sometimes drop chests that Thieves can open... if they don't fail to disarm any traps on them. The "simpler" game (IMO) than Dragonrealms, which was its sequel, but about equally popular.
Main site: http://www.play.net/gs4/
Class descriptions: http://www.play.net/gs4/info/professions/



Dragonrealms is a sequel to Gemstone IV, originally released in 1996. Its exp-system is skill-based. Features some unusual classes (Moon Mage: cast spells that vary in power based on the current phases of the planet's 3 moons, Empaths: as above, but they take a vow to never injure any living creature except the undead, Necromancer: you must live your existence in secret, if another player ever figures out you are a Necro and you are inside town they can attack you or have you arrested by authorities). Like GS4, the game world is HUGE (and unlike most huge worlds, what's out there is actually interesting, too.)
Main site: http://www.play.net/dr/
Profession/Class descriptions: http://www.play.net/dr/info/guilds/guilds.asp
Races: http://www.play.net/dr/info/races/races.asp
Combat: http://www.play.net/dr/info/combat.asp

If it's anything like SW:TOR's cut scenes, I didn't mind those so much.

Don't care about the combat specifics other than:

Is it a one on one game?
Is it a 3 on one game?
Is it a 16 on one game?

Mass solo combat is one of the reasons I love CoH so much, among so many other things.

Actually, (in TSW) the characters talking at you make fun of you for not responding. Fairly often. The game's pretty good at understatement.

I do find some of the puzzles frustrating from a feeling-railroaded standpoint. But it's nice to have such a change of pace.

I'm gonna give it a whirl anyway. I don't really play anything other than CoH. I've tried other things but CoH was home for the past couple years. I don't expect anything to replace it.

E.

I agree with much of what has been said abut TSW in this thread, good and bad. TSW was, when it was still very early in development, literally the MMO of my dreams. Perfect setting, heavily story-driven, and at that point it was going to be FPS-style reticule targeting (which I overwhelmingly prefer to traditional MMO tab targeting). They worked hard to foster a sense of player committment to one of the opposing factions, and to play up the idea of the game's happenings actually going on in the real world, under the radar.

I was annoyed (to say the least) when they abandoned the reticule targeting. It was, apparently, the right decision to make: their engine couldn't handle it w/o serious performance problems. But sheesh...if tiny little independent Fallen Earth could do it, why not Funcom?

I looked forward to Beta, and got a pretty early invitation. I was pleased that all my hopes for the game's atmosphere and immersion potential were realized. It's roleplayer heaven in that regard (although as Sam points out, there's not a ton of scope outside the official canon...). The story writing is absolutely top shelf, the cutscenes are the best I've seen in an MMO, and the graphics look good to me.

However, the character creator is not only limited, it really is hard to get a character that's actually attractive (or notably ugly, for that matter). The finished avatars are just bland. The combat system is dull (and glitchy on my system...more on that in a sec). And some of the communication and team-building tools are pretty poorly done (or absent).

The big dealbreaker for me, though, was that despite doing all kinds of things to optimize the configuration, I just couldn't get the game to run acceptably on my three-year-old machine. I'd have put up with the other things mentioned in order to have the good parts...but performance was so bad that it pretty much ruined any chance of enjoying the game. It's hard to feed my inner immersion junkie when the game kept devolving into a slide show.

I'll give it a try when my finances get better and I can build a new gaming box. For people with reasonably good machines, I also suggest taking the three day trial and having a look.

For me, I'm going to play out whatever time we have left in this game, and I've re-installed CO. Going to need to buy a sub there to be really happy with it (the f2p options are kind of annoying), and I never enjoyed it as much as I do City...but it'll work for my spandex fix. I also play GW1...for my relatively rare fantasy fix!

Just a warning from Funcom's most recent financial report - TSW is currently projected to miss their lowest sales estimate for the title, so there's a big chance of F2P in the near future for it.

Funcom's sales projections were insane. I believe the numbers were 1M or 1.3M for the two scenarios.

However, they have said player retention was better than hoped.

Still, I think you are right about F2P in the future. Within 1 year.