Good MMORPG to start for n00bs ?

[Monolyth]

Having played EQ (back in the day), DAOC, SWG, FFXI, & Lineage II, and WoW since beta, I would have to say that EQ won it's fame back in the day because it was a first, DAOC got it's fame for a solid release and development. WoW got it's fame for a solid release and for being the first 'casual' MMORPG.

Lineage II & EQII are NOT casual MMORPG's. WoW accomplished the casual status by instancing important/high level content and providing 'noob' zones for leveling, not to mention noob servers. Blizzards fast implementation of new server types brought in even more types of players.

WoW, however, receives it's fair share of immature players, but as long as you /leave General when you are in the Barrens, you'll be just fine. I would recommend WoW over Lineage 2 to start out, with the large community you will have more support in finding information you need. Give the WoW trial a go, if you know friends in the game try to hookup with them, that will make you get into the game so much more.

But know that once you go into an MMORPG and meet up with another MMORPG'er IRL you will be able to successfully carry on a conversation that no non-MMORPG player will understand at all...

My brother & I both play WoW and at the latest family birthday gathering, we talked for like 30 minutes all the while our family looked around aimlessly wondering if we were suddenly going to jump up on our chairs shouting LIGHTNING BOLT, LIGHTNING BOLT!!!

[Ninjaman09]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

The downside to WoW is that the audience is a lot younger and more immature.. no matter what someone may tell you. I've only been playing it for 4 days now, and already I've ran into two very unique characters. One was a kid that logged in as a female character under the name "buttsex" and shouted over the chat "who wants to *@(! me in the *@@ for 5 dollar??" over and over for about 5 minutes until he was banned. I never saw that kinda stuff on Vanguard after even hundreds of hours of play. You also get a lot more people talking like: "y r u afk.. lol dont u kno we r tryin 2 group???" which gets under my skin for some reason.

Hey now don't overestimate older gamers...plenty of guys in their 20s will do stuff like that for kicks.

/leave general FTW!

The first major goal you should set for yourself in WoW is to find a guild that caters to the kinds of people you want to play the game with and just stick with them. Your experience will be greatly enhanced.

[Xion X2]

So /leave general will still allow you to see guild invites?

It's not so much the joking around that gets to me. I actually laughed at that.. especially since the character was standing right next to me and it showed him cupping his hands to his face and shouting everything he was saying in the little white space above his head. I mean, you're looking all around you at this magical, innocent, fantasy world and you see that and it stands out to say the least.

It's all the kiddie talk that drives me crazy. The "y do u runn 2 ther? y wut quest r u on?" I just get tired of reading through kiddie-speak constantly. It feels like I'm playing with a bunch of eleven year olds.

[mcolbourn]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman09

The first major goal you should set for yourself in WoW is to find a guild that caters to the kinds of people you want to play the game with and just stick with them. Your experience will be greatly enhanced.

Yep I will agree with that when I started off playing WOW i made sure I found a nice guild, even got my IRL friends to join it too. It made the game much more fun. We also used SKYPE which made teaming up much more fun. You could end up with 4 of us on SKYPE and then a random and they always wondered why we worked well together when running instances.

I do miss WOW (been off it now for 6 Months and won't go back) as it does take over your life a bit.

[Tygerwoody]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

And most importantly.. NO BUGS. No bugs when you're trying to group with people, no bugs when you're trying to bind equipment, no bugs that crash you to the desktop in the middle of a large group quest, no item bugs.. no bugs of any kind so far. And though I know eventually that I'll run into one, it sure is a nice change from Vanguard.

To be honest, the only "bug" i have seen is crashing to the desktop. Most any major MMORPG has that problem within its first few months. Hell Morrowind is how many years old now? That game constantly crashes to the desktop even to this game.

Anyway, I'm still having fun with Vanguard.

[Ninjaman09]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

So /leave general will still allow you to see guild invites?

90% of the time, you don't want to join a guild that advertises in /general. You meet people as you go, through the LFG tool, or maybe just running into someone by chance. General is not a good tool to use for this, strange as it sounds. This is not always the case, but if idle pointless banter annoys you then /general is the last place you want to be.

Originally Posted by Xion X2

It's not so much the joking around that gets to me. I actually laughed at that.. especially since the character was standing right next to me and it showed him cupping his hands to his face and shouting everything he was saying in the little white space above his head. I mean, you're looking all around you at this magical, innocent, fantasy world and you see that and it stands out to say the least.

It sounds like you might like a RP (role-playing) server more. While it certainly won't prevent you from EVER seeing that kind of stuff, there'll certainly be less, and more than likely you'll find that you run into people with a similar mindset as yours. However you will be made fun of for being a dork, dork.

It's all the kiddie talk that drives me crazy. The "y do u runn 2 ther? y wut quest r u on?" I just get tired of reading through kiddie-speak constantly. It feels like I'm playing with a bunch of eleven year olds.

Plenty of adults use this terminology as well. The descriptor you're looking for is "lazy" not "kid", though the two certainly aren't mutually exclusive. Remember that the mass appeal of WoW attracts people who aren't typically the sort you'd expect to see in a fantasy game setting, so most couldn't care less about attempting to properly spell their words. This kind of writing is AOL-speak.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by Tygerwoody

To be honest, the only "bug" i have seen is crashing to the desktop. Most any major MMORPG has that problem within its first few months. Hell Morrowind is how many years old now? That game constantly crashes to the desktop even to this game.

Tyger, I like Vanguard a lot, but I've seen every bug under the sun w/ Vanguard so far. For example:

I've gotten the "crafting bug" where my character will finish a "Highly Impossible" classified work order with a 100% grade A without a single complication, and then struggle like hell to finish a "Moderate" work order with a C grade the very next time I attempt to craft. It's too inconsistent, and you never know what to expect. Your guy may craft a moderate w/o with ease on one occasion and then not be able to finish with a C grade the next--causing you to run out of action points early and losing all XP in the process. Extremely, extremely aggravating.

I've gotten the "group bug" tons of times when you're trying to form a group with someone and it says they're already in a group--even if they're not. The only way to fix it is for the person who has it to re-log--only you never really know who has it, so usually everybody ends up re-logging. This is most aggravating.

I've gotten the "loot bug" where you or another in your group is trying to loot a corpse and it says "someone is already looting that corpse"--even if there is no one else touching it. This happened on a recent mission at the ToD with six of us grouping together.

I've gotten the infamous "crash to desktop" bug a zillion times--usually in the crafting halls of Hathor Zhi, but it's happened all over the world map.

I've gotten the "memory leak bug" that causes your game to suddenly drop to a slideshow out of nowhere. Most of the time "/flush" has fixed this; sometimes it hasn't.

I've gotten the "corpse bug" where you're trying to recover your corpse and it isn't there.

I've gotten the "compass bug" that has marked locations on my compass completely bass-ackwards from where they really were, and I've had to turn around and travel the completely opposite direction and retrace my footsteps to get to the right place.

I've gotten the "binding bug" where I have bound an item in my inventory and it repeatedly unbinds itself for no explainable reason. This happened with some chest armor I purchased off the broker recently.

I don't think there are many parts of this game that haven't been bugged so far. Given all of this and much, much more.. I still love the game. But there comes a point when you just want to play something that works instead of beta testing all the damn time.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman09

90% of the time, you don't want to join a guild that advertises in /general. You meet people as you go, through the LFG tool, or maybe just running into someone by chance. General is not a good tool to use for this, strange as it sounds. This is not always the case, but if idle pointless banter annoys you then /general is the last place you want to be.

Got it, thanks.

Plenty of adults use this terminology as well. The descriptor you're looking for is "lazy" not "kid", though the two certainly aren't mutually exclusive. Remember that the mass appeal of WoW attracts people who aren't typically the sort you'd expect to see in a fantasy game setting, so most couldn't care less about attempting to properly spell their words. This kind of writing is AOL-speak.

Ninja, nobody talked that way on Vanguard. And I'm not exaggerating, either. Over hundreds of hours I've never seen anyone on Vanguard talk like that.

It may be a form of "AOL" speak for some, but there's really no excuse in talking like an 8 year old most of the time when others have to read it constantly.

[Ninjaman09]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Ninja, nobody talked that way on Vanguard. And I'm not exaggerating, either. Over hundreds of hours I've never seen anyone on Vanguard talk like that.

It may be a form of "AOL" speak for some, but there's really no excuse in talking like an 8 year old most of the time when others have to read it constantly.

Again, with a much larger subscriber base and an easier learning curve, not to mention the powerhouse franchise it's based on, WoW attracts people that Vanguard probably wouldn't.

My point is that equating lazy typing to immaturity is fallacious because it relies on the assumption that to type "aol speak" means you are necessarily young and/or immature which in many cases is not true. These are people who simply don't care whether or not their spelling, grammar, or punctuation is proper because they just want to communicate quickly and with little effort. I've personally encountered plenty of people who type this way yet on Vent or Teamspeak are clearly intelligent, older, mature people.

It seems Vanguard lacks these kinds of people because it attracts people that wish to take the game world itself more seriously and share this desire with the vast majority of the players (given you and Tyger's accounts).

[Athena]

For a noob I would go with the original Guild Wars or the Good Vs Evil edition of City of Heros. The games are more PVE then PVP and there are tons of helpful people out there to help you get going.

Also City of Heros is easily played on a 56K modem connection if you connect over 38 kbps.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman09

My point is that equating lazy typing to immaturity is fallacious because it relies on the assumption that to type "aol speak" means you are necessarily young and/or immature which in many cases is not true.

Yet in many cases is, which was my point. I never meant to imply that everyone who talks like that is "immature," so if you took it that way then I apologize.

And I was never basing my "immature" comment on speak alone, anyway. Aside from the "buttsex" guy/girl, there have been lots of people who never bother to say one word to me or introduce themselves or anything and send me a group invitation all of a sudden. On Vanguard, characters will walk up to you and wave or bow and ask you if you'd like to group first. They don't do that as often on WoW.

Something else, too, is I'm playing as a chick Night Elf and getting hit on by guys left and right. One Night Elf dude was flirting with me, and his pal standing next to him told him "Dude, you can't seduce her like that." Another girl character I ran into stripped naked in front of me and started dancing in nothing but a bra and panties. No lie.

Although I never played as a chick on Vanguard, I find it hard to believe things like that would've happened as often as it has on WoW so far. And while both were funny at the time (especially for the fact that I'm a guy in real life), it only goes to show that the age group/maturity level on WoW is leagues behind what is on Vanguard.

These are people who simply don't care whether or not their spelling, grammar, or punctuation is proper because they just want to communicate quickly and with little effort. I've personally encountered plenty of people who type this way yet on Vent or Teamspeak are clearly intelligent, older, mature people.

I'm sure sometimes that's the case, but it's still annoying.

It seems Vanguard lacks these kinds of people because it attracts people that wish to take the game world itself more seriously and share this desire with the vast majority of the players (given you and Tyger's accounts).

I think that's true, and I'd much prefer that type of atmosphere. It's one of the things I like most about the game, in fact.

When I first started playing Vanguard, I expected a lot of the "lol..u got pwned!!11 r u rdy 4 dis nxt quest??" kinda speak, and I was really pleasantly surprised that it wasn't like that. Turned out to be the complete opposite, and it makes for a much more believable game world--not to mention better overall communication among players. I don't know about you, but I find it really hard to read stuff like that sometimes.

[Ninjaman09]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Yet in many cases is, which was my point. I never meant to imply that everyone who talks like that is "immature," so if you took it that way then I apologize.

And I was never basing my "immature" comment on speak alone, anyway. Aside from the "buttsex" guy/girl, there have been lots of people who never bother to say one word to me or introduce themselves or anything and send me a group invitation all of a sudden. On Vanguard, characters will walk up to you and wave or bow and ask you if you'd like to group first. They don't do that as often on WoW.

Something else, too, is I'm playing as a chick Night Elf and getting hit on by guys left and right. One Night Elf dude was flirting with me, and his pal standing next to him told him "Dude, you can't seduce her like that." Another girl character I ran into stripped naked in front of me and started dancing in nothing but a bra and panties. No lie.

I don't know what else to say other than that you're taking what in reality represents a very small portion of the player base and magnifying it tremendously as if it represents the average player.

If all else fails there is always the /ignore function.