‘Excessive Punctuation’

or
‘MMOs – Comparing & Contrasting’

I’ve played a few MMOs now (not as many as some people I know), and I keep wanting to actually layout my opinions* of them, which is quite hard when most of the forums of these games don’t allow ‘compare & contrast’ threads. So, I’m gona do it here.

The games I’ve played include (in order that I started playing them): Guild Wars, City of Heroes (& Villains), EvE, WoW & finally WAR (Warhammer Online). Of these games I am only still playing for CoH & WAR (thou Guild Wars is no-monthly-fee).

For the purposes of this discussion I will rank the games in terms of various different qualities then give a brief discussion of why I ranked the games the way I did.

Visuals (what the game looks like) –
1. Guild Wars
2. EvE
3. WAR
4. City of Heroes
5. WoW

Ultimately, Guild Wars is made of pretty, the main reason I play it at all after level 20 is a form of digital sight-seeing. EvE, particular after the patch, was sex on interstellar rocket boosters, the ships were awe inspiring, thou the scenery was little more than pretty pictures. WAR is a new game and largely shows it. City is dated, but has some moments where it looks fantastic (see Odorous, Rikti tile-set, Cyborg Pack). WoW wasn’t bad per-say, but the style left something to be desired.

Combat (mechanics of actual combat) –
1. City of Heroes
2. Guild Wars
3. WAR
4. WoW
5. EvE

Though the basics of combat of these games is largely the same, I generally find I enjoy ‘combat’ in ‘City of Heroes’ the most (margins are quite narrow here). Guild Wars deserves a special mention for it’s limited number of ‘powers’ leading to a largely combo based combat style. WAR & WoW suffer from the feeling of having a large array of superfluous powers, and a strongly ‘grindy’ nature to individual combat. EvE is also ‘grindy’ in combat (PvE at least), but to more significant degree.

Teaming –
1. City of Heroes
2. Guild Wars
3. WAR
4. WoW
5. EvE

City makes Teaming easy & fun; the missions/challenges scale to party size, global friends make it easy to locate my friends, & sidekicking makes it easy to team our character even if they are many levels apart. Guild Wars gets points for the fact that most of the game happens post 20 and generally that means you & your friends are the same level. WAR gets points for the open party mechanic & the public quests, but loses points for lack of a global friends function. In WoW if you want to team with friends the only feasible way is to deliberately keep your character the same level. Lastly; in EVE; teaming is a good way to get scammed :p.

Fluff –
1. WAR
2. City of Heroes
3. Guild Wars & WoW
4. EvE

What can I say, I am a long term Fan of Warhammer, & they have ‘largely’ got the setting ‘right’ furthermore, the bulk of the quests don’t suffer from making me feel like some dogsbody (a sin principally of WoW, but GW is guilty too, as, infrequently, is City), rather more like a warrior/hero. EvE deserves a special mention for its grand and beautiful setting/fluff, so utterly underutilised in the game.

PVP –
1. WAR
2. The others
3. EvE

PVP in WAR is fun, accessible, rewarding, AND ignorable. PVP in EvE is brutal, ever-present & if you want to do it you should probably begin by taking lessons. The PvP experience of the other games is largely lost on me, didn’t really do it & wasn’t motivated to try.

General Gameplay –
1. City of Heroes
2. WAR
3. Guild Wars
4. WoW & EvE

Ahh, City; I love the instanced missions; the plotline setup, the way TFs work, the quazi-loot, enhancements, travel powers, big combats, contact with phones. WAR has Public Quests & a few other things to make up for some of its WoW-like failings. Guild Wars mainly instanced world with ‘missions’ is quite an interesting way of handling things. WoW is slow, the contacts give you the run-around, faster movement costs & Things WILL Spawn on Your Head when you are least expecting it (Dudgeons are pretty cool thou). Mission & Contacts in EvE (going out on a limb here) suck: the missions are repetitive, ‘plot’ is some kind of myth told to scare children, and the system of getting new contacts is byzantine and oblique. EvE really is all about the . . .

Secondary Gameplay –
1. EvE
2. City of Heroes & WoW
3. Guild Wars & WAR

You can have a long and interesting career in EVE without firing a shot & there is lots to chose from, being part of the thriving player-based economy certainly has it’s merits & the most Fun I had in EvE was helping a friend run a POS (Player Owned Station). City & WoW get the same rank because their Secondary Gameplay is hard to compare; City has base building (which is awesome) and WoW has its intricate & interesting Skills system. Guild Wars has boring minigames & the skills system in WAR is oblique, frustrating & feels tacked on. :p.

Community –
1. City of Heroes
2. Guild Wars & WAR
3. WoW
4. EvE

Perhaps it is just that I have had more interaction with the CoH community than in the other games, but I have a largely positive opinion of them. WoW’s community has a bad rep, one un-dispelled by the time I spent playing the game. And EvE’s community could be easily divided into two camps – elitist jerks, & whiny carebears, who were constantly at each others throats.


Character Creation/Customisation –
1. City of Heroes
2. - - notable gap - -
3. WAR
4. Guild Wars
5. WoW
6. EvE

What can I say; City of Heroes lets you make just about any character you could imagine, particularly visually. There are limits, sure, but the other games aren’t a patch on City, with their lack of sliders, limited selection of faces/hair colour/etc. EvE has a surprisingly interesting and versatile character creator, which is redundant since you never ‘see’ your character.

Interface –
1. City of Heroes
2. Guild Wars
3. WoW
4. WAR
5. EvE

City of Heroes interface is clean, simple and uncluttered & moderately customisable. Guild Wars interface has similar virtues. WoW’s is somewhat cluttered & the combined nature of some of the functions means removing one removes another. WAR’s interface is really busy & cluttered & EvE’s, while relatively clean suffers from a bad case of drop-down-menu-itis.