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What I don't understand though is why so many MMOs follow the exact same formula instead of trying something unique.

Full PvP, sandbox MMORPG with FPS-like gameplay (instead of selecting a target and clicking some OP ability): Darkfall

There are also plenty of other MMOs still around.

Yeah, try Darkfall.

Can't believe no one mentioned Darkfall (http://www.darkfallonline.com), where you actually have to aim like in an FPS, need line of sight, can rocket-jump ("rabbit jump" there) and have a massive skill-list.

Full Loot, absolutely open PvP action, so get ready for pumping that adrenaline. If i'd have time, this would be my choice.

After their review of Darkfall Online, which also happened to be the first time I heard of them, I'll never read or give a shit about a review by them. The chief editor for Eurogamer sided with the reviewer when called out by not only Tasos, lead 'PR' person for Darkfall who claimed to have server logs showing the guy hadn't even played the game, but hundreds of eurogamer readers and even more Darkfall players who almost unanimously agreed it was impossible for the guy to have played the game and still write the review he did as nearly none of it was based in any fact.

Alot of these MMO's have painted themselves into a corner with regard to creating a level playing field between established players and new players. You could have two players of equal skill squaring off but because one has been feeding his habit for a few months or even years longer they win in the random number generator fight that occurs.

Sounds like you want to play Darkfall Online

I've been reading this blog and it seems that the game isn't like any other one I have seen so far.

They say its based on player skill and there are no levels much like Ultima Online and you can build cities like Shadowbane.

That said... I haven't played it so you'll have to take the blogs word for it.

From what I've seen, the best story comes from the players (Only possible in pvp games/servers) in the form of clan vs clan / alliance vs alliance wars, such as the first World War that just ended in Darkfall or that occurred since the formation of Blood until the game started to truly suck in Asheron's Call on the Darktide server, which truly was an entirely different game than Asheron's Call on the other servers. The entire server banding together to take down the Blood powerhouse, and everytime they tried, they failed miserably cause the guys leading Blood (Keepers of Chaos) were able to always stay one step ahead of any strategy used against them.
In Darkfall, there are numerous smaller alliances now after the World War has ended with the surrender of Hyperion to the Death alliance, but prior to it there were really only a handful of alliances, with nearly all of them gunning to take out Hyperion and it's city holdings.
Now with the fall of Hyperion, a new chapter in the story begins as the 2 largest remaining alliances are about to be at each other's throats, and the numerous smaller alliances that have formed are battling it out with each other as well.

I wish someone had written a good 'history' of the World War, but I think it'll be some time before someone does if at all.

There have been numerous 800+ man sieges in Darkfall since release. In the beginning they were horrid server crashing messes, but after a patch or two, it's only clientside problems now in the form of FPS drops depending on your computer setup.
Example of a fairly decent siege, even though it's still prior to people finally unlocking the higher end siege weapons which are just now starting to appear on the battlefield.

I can't wait to pilot a Man Of War!

Why have instances and no loot in a PVP MMORPG? Darkfall has neither, huge 10,000+ simulataneous players in the world, full loot pvp, no restrictions, everything in the game (except scale gloves/boots at the moment :( are craftable by players, it's skill based so you don't need to go down x path to be viable, just pick up a sword/board and kill shit, or pick up a polearm and do it, and the more you do it the more your skills raise. If someone steals your kills? Turn around and gank him, problem solved. No cryinga bout OMG THIS GUY IS KILLSTEALING/NINJALOOTING!!!, just take care of it yourself, or help protect those who are being molested in that way.

How in the name of Jesus Allah Christ (tm) is WoW complex? There's 2 builds for each class, PvE and PvP, and all you do is left click / hit hotkeys over and over as everything is autohit. Complex is a game like Asheron's Call or Darkfall/a) or Ultima Online.

Without consequences to death or losing your city, what's the point other than the game being a persistant version of CS? That's just silly. Consequences, aka item loss, bring excitement to the PVP, both for the winner and the loser. I haven't had the adrenaline rush from fighting 1v4 in a game since Asheron's Call in 01-05, and even then I only lost a few items on death and none were ever of value compared to losing *everything* on my character aside from my starter knife/staff when dieing in Darkfall. The flip side of course is that if I win, and the person isn't naked, I get a nice helping of loot myself.

Warhammer is the bastard child of UO and AC combined with WOW: FFA PVP with no consequences. PVP should be meaningful, you need to lose or gain something for it to be exciting. This is why I loved AC, for it's fast and fluid combat as well as dropping items on death, and now LOVE Darkfall. Dieing and losing everything, or killing someone else and losing everything, makes the pvp that much more exciting.

And I also can't wait for siege hammers/battlespikes (craftable siege weapons) to get their damage upped so i can go raid the fucking frenchies north of my city!

There is no twitch in WOW pvp, what are you talking about? The game is all autohit dicerolls of level/item/class vs level/item/class. Asheron's Call had fully twitch based pvp, of course there was auto targetting but you could manually dodge arrows/magic bolts + move while casting allowing for truly fast paced and fluid PVP combat, also allowing 1 person to take on multiple people, or a small group of people to take on a much larger group.
Darkfall is going even further and blending FPS combat (third person perspective for melee, first person for missile/magic) with MMORPG elements. Full loot, no restriction pvp, no levels (entirely based on raising individual skills ala UO), no autotarget/hit, kingdom/city building + siege warfare, essentially complete player freedom to do damn near anything.

Personally what I want to see is an MMO that is really good that isn't trying to be WoW. I'd really like a more PvP oriented MMO.

It doesn't look like it's been mentioned on slashdot in a while, so I might suggest checking out Darkfall. It's true that it has been in development for a long time, but it's currently in a sort of public-invitation-beta, and it's due to be released by the end of the year.

From everything I've read about it, it seems to be a lot like UO. PvP can take place anywhere, and it's full loot on death, but you're held accountable for your actions by a reputation system and there are NPC guards to protect you in the main cities (this is all exactly like EVE online too). It's also classless and level-less; your character is defined by what skills you choose (and your race to some extent), and there's a max number of points you can have for all your skills, which you can train and un-train at will. Players can make their own cities with their own NPC guards even who can be instructed on who to attack. Most items will be player created. The list of fun stuff goes on, but the biggest problem I foresee is in the area of polish, as it's made by a relatively small and new company. Then again they have been working on it for something like 7 years, so one can hope.

Sounds like Darkfall is the game you're looking for. Closed beta finally just started recently, and they're going to move swiftly through open beta (open is just going to be a huge stress test really) and all reports from those in beta are that it's everything darkfall is made out to be and then some.

I'm waiting to see how awesome Darkfall is. Yes, lots of people still claim it's vaporware, but closed beta has actually started finally, and all reports (official and not) are that it's everything they claimed it would be and more.

Darkfall Online is getting close to having an actual open beta soon and will support almost 100% player freedom. FFA PVP, full loot, sieges, player cities, player driven storyline, etc. You should definitely check it out.

This is only a problem in a game like WoW where you can't lose items on death (specifically to other players) and are built around a constant grind to get that next tier of armor or those next few points in the battlegrounds to get that next tier of weapons. Darkfall, while long in development, is a game that offers complete freedom to the players to run their world as they see fit. If they wish to just be in chaos all the time and killing each other willy nilly, then so be it! If they wish to form a world full with alliances throwing blows at each other here and there to capture more resources (which is the hope/intent of the game) and build more cities, then they can! You can be a roving assassin picking off lone targets who venture too far from a town by themselves, or you can join a massive player army to raid enemy towns and fortresses.

More like I and many other real pvp'ers prefer fast fluid and dynamic PVP such as was in Asheron's Call where player skill was one of the most important factors in a fight, not class/level/items. I could be in basic storebought gear and on a level 120 mage and take down a level 200+ mage in a fight if I was better than him. Level/class/item based pvp always removes player skill from the equation because their pvp is based on spreadsheets and nothing else. Skill based advancement such as UO's or AC's hybrid level/skill system (you gain experience and level up but you spend xp points to raise skills and attributes)
Darkfall is a game that will follow in the footsteps of UO and AC and bring player freedom and skillbased pvp back to the masses.

Some people want a more complex dynamic to their gameplay, and open PVP offers that whether they are good at PVP or not. The politics, the overall guild strategy in the form of choosing targets to attack and resources to try and control, all are great aspects of an Open PVP environment. For people who want a deeper kind of PVP, Darkfall will be the game for you.
Darktide's swear or die stuff only applied to the PK guilds and jackasses in Khao.

Perhaps you need to take a peek at http://www.darkfallonline.com/ It appears like it will infact not suck... and today they said they are targeting beta for this summer, not to be confused with the other proposed beta dates that go back a few years :) check it out.

In almost any MMORPG your toon is 95% gear, 4% Luck/Time and 1% skill. Doesn't matter if it's EQ2, WoW or anyother level based game. Once you cap out your level the only things that can differentiate your toon is gear and skill. If the difficulty of a game is too great many people will not make it to the max level. AA Xp ala EQ/EQ2 is just another leveling metric, it just makes the treadmill run a bit longer. My personal favorite peice of Vaporware currently is http://darkfallonline.com/ . It seems to have a design which would punch this type of activity in the gibbly bits (medical term). It's a PvP enviroment with apparently full loot, it's a levelless system (ala Ultima Online), and the combat interface seems to be far more Half Life then anything I've seen aside from Conan Online. I can only imagine it will be far harder for the IGN's of the world to sell coin in an enviroment where their harvesters are soft, fleshy and tasty targets. Maybe they will just come up with a scheme for a stock exchange style gold purchase system, but delivery is gonna be scary when anyone can attack you anywhere at anytime. Just my 14plat

because it still takes no skill to partake in.

I'll be waiting for DarkFall Online. As an added note for those who love PvP... check out the in-game movie:
http://files.darkfallonline.com/darkfall_battle.zi p

Enjoy folks! I'll be on that when it's out... WoW is still a level treadmill that I'm not a fan of.

For those who are interested in a sandbox MMORPG, the one I'm waiting for is called Darkfall. http://www.darkfallonline.com/ Check it out, you might just find it's exactly what you're looking for.

Or Darkfall online...

Darkfall Online -- http://www.darkfallonline.com/

I'm tired of the level treadmill and carebear-land where nobody is attackable. It's a fantasy world, kill or be killed. Darkfall looks great for that :)

Darkfall is another game that will be all about player skill, using UO style skill raising instead of leveling ala traditional RPG's, and will be open PVP with full drop on death.

Sadly, for MMORPG's atleast, players don't want a challenge. They want to have their hand held while they proceed through the game, knowing no dangers or challenges beyond time. This is a pathetic situation indeed, especially for those of us who live for the challenge, particularly in the form of PVP. Darkfall is our last hope for such a game, and sadly it appears the great ideals behind it will not be enough to bring it to fruition.

WoW style stat increases and items are utter shit, and I highly doubt the guys who made Fallout 1 & 2 would go that route. I'm hoping to see how combat works, especially PVP. Hopefully they go the route of UO and Darkfall and setup the SPECIAL system, if they even use it or a variation of it, to work like in those two games with stats.

That sounds an awfully lot like Darkfall. Or rather, what Darkfalls going to be when they get around to release it ;)

The single greatest MMORPG was Asheron's Call, close second by Ultima Online, and both to be trumped by Darkfall when it eventually, if ever, comes out. Greatest PVP there was, player skillbased for the most part (70%+, and even if another player had a drastically more powerful character than you, if you were good enough you would beat them)

Exactly the same for me. Right down to the quitting WoW and all. So since Mythic sold out to EA, the game I'm waiting for is Darkfall. http://www.darkfallonline.com/ Take a look at it, maybe it will interest you as well.

Is going to be THE most revolutionary RPG/MMORPG to date when it comes out.
Darkfall

With the MMORPG genre. Raids, Battlegrounds, No Open PVP, No looting in PVP, Level/Class based, Timer based, the list goes on.
Darkfall is the game to wait for if you are a real MMORPG player.

MMORPG.com: The usual debate over skill vs. class system rages here. Why did you go for skill-based?

Tasos Flambouras: Why allow players to take the skills they want and need as their character develops and the game evolves?

In a skill-based system, such as Darkfall's, players can create exactly the character they want to play, without limitations dictated by design choices or by the need to balance a class-based system. It's more challenging for us as developers, but we feel it's better for the players and for the game.

In a class based system you get a pretty much already developed character with little room to grow, whereas the skill based system allows you the freedom and the pleasure of developing your character yourself. With the number of skills in Darkfall, each character will be unique.

In Darkfall, you pick and choose exactly the skills you fancy, and if you tire of the combination, you just switch your focus to some new ones - any new ones. In a class-based system the only time you have complete freedom is right before you create your character and then you're boxed in by your initial, often uninformed, choices.

The skill based system allows the player to adapt, as he learns more about what he needs in the game, to best fit his playing style. New players may not know which class to pick since they don't have experience of the game, essentially forcing them to be stuck with a gimped character, or having to re-roll and forcibly retire a character that was a part of the community and had its own history. The same applies as the game evolves and new skills become important.

Allowing characters the freedom to grow and adapt allows us to add new content and new challenges without worrying about being unfair to certain groups of player characters. In Darkfall all players will be able to take advantage of the new opportunities that come along with the evolution of the game.

for reference, the entire interview can be found here: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/feature s/gameID/4/loadFeature/408/page/2/from/

WoW is a horrible game.

The vast majority of endgame play revolves around endless rep farming, honor farming in BGs, and doing yet another instance run.

So many PVPers played WOW, only to find out how bad the PVP system really is. Risk free pvp. Nothing remotely comparable to UO during the tank mage era. Instead, overgeared dimwits burning cooldowns. != skill. This led to a huge PVPer exodus from WoW.

Soon, there will be a huge exodus of the sheep out of WoW, I'm not sure to which game yet though.

Promising candidates include:
http://www.darkfallonline.com/
http://www.vanguardsoh.com/
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/home/index. php

You may be more interested in http://www.darkfallonline.com/ once it comes out.

With blizzards initial money from other games, on top of 50+million a month, they could have legitimate servers that can handle more than 3k per server, and more than 100 people per 'area'

Can't wait for Darkfall!http://www.darkfallonline.com/

Read about this the other day. Not out yet, but looks *really* good. Haven't really played an MMORPG since EQ, but I'm gonna try this one: http://www.darkfallonline.com/

Check out Darkfall

Its sort of sad to see games moving in this direction. There is nothing more challenging than playing vs another human being, and nothing more boring than fighting the same NPC mobs over and over to get the ph4t l00tz. I belong to a PvP guild, and our average member age (of around 140 members) is about 25 years old. I can assure Sony that none of my guild will be playing this game. To be honest, none of us were really considering playing it in the first place, because the EQLive team has never given any serious consideration to the PvP crowd as their crappy PvP servers can attest to. There are much more interesting PvP games on the way (Darkfall, Dragon Empires, or Guild Wars to name a few) to want to lose a few pounds on this level treadmill.

To the people who feel that 'pvp attracts the immature crowd', mabye you're just a bit too old (or too mature) to be playing video games. We'll be all practiced up and waiting for you when you get bored of kiting a_hill_giant01 for the 100th time to get that last bubble of lvl 35.

Anyone should be able to PvP anytime, anywhere. The penalty for dying should be perma-death + loss of whatever items you have but you come back as your characters son/daughter who has rights to anything they had in the bank/storage.

A person should not be able to look at someones profile and see what level they are. This will actually make PvP a risk. Why? Say you have 2 level 15 griefers. Lets also say that New players spawn with a basic outfit and backpack. Sure they could just go around attacking people with the basic outfit, but if there are no safe zones they wouldn't have a good place to camp. On top of that, what is to stop a level 50 wizard from throwing on some newb garb and ganking the griefers?

If a gaming company wants to take advantage of an untapped market, they should make a PvP with no rules. I'm looking foward to darkfall which will allow a bit more freedom.

MMO's strike me now as games that have little risk for dying, and it takes forever to get any rewards (ie they are timesinks) not to much fun to me, seems more like a chat room than a game. Obviously, there is a market for these games, but there is also a market for people who want freedom, and all the risk that comes with it.

Some people will be turned off by the downtime. Some people just don't want to meet new people, either. I actually think the inherently repetitive gameplay has a lot of turn off value, too....

which at first sounds great but eventually you realize you are playing a single player game, it is not really a great game, and you are paying $15/month to play it. Not really a stunning deal.

I know for myself, sure I like to run into someone once in awhile and chat but I hate forced interaction and downtime. The reason I would play a MMO is for human competition, which translates mostly to PvP. Most of the MMO's I've played have had PvP restricted too much, or the combat system was just bad. (For the record I've tried SWG, Everquest, Earth and Beyond and UO {Recently}). I'm still waiting for a MMO that has a fun combat system, and free PvP. I'm hopefull for darkfall.

The problem with MMORPG is that they haven't found a way to properly do PvP and integrate leveling with it. Fighting the same computer generated enemies over and over again is boring. Fighting a thinking human is much more of a challenge, and much more rewarding.

Sure, some games do realm or faction based PvP, but if you could level in a PvP free for all leveling wouldn't be quite as boring. Of course, everyone is afraid of "griefers" but this fear is driving away the mass market appeal of MMORPG.

Darkfall looks like it will be interesting....

Not all manner of cheating, no. But very much can be done in advance, and a decent response time to discovered cheats would definitely help on the amount of active cheaters.

With online gaming what lacks is to simply make the servers more authoritative. A game client should as far as possible be considered untrusted, and not be given much more info than what the user should be in posession of. Doing this without letting lag have a violent negative effect on gameplay requires excellent predicition mechanisms, and is difficult to implement. So basically nothing will be done until customers demand it.

--Erik
www.darkfallonline.com

In online security communities, it's quite widely accepted that "Full Disclosure" is the only way to go. If you publish a vulnerability in some vendors application, the vendor will be forced to deal with it. Why so? In essence, because their sales and reputation will suffer if they dont deal with problems.

In gaming, when a cheat is made public, why dont the vendors feel the same need to fix it before their reputation and sales suffer? Why dont they value the trust of their customers more? Maybe because gamers are so used to cheats that it don't even occur to them to blame the vendor...

It's not by any means impossible to prevent cheats, but it costs the vendors money and time. Until it's economically more sensible for them to do something about it, there will be no changes in the amount of cheating going on. As the gaming industry expands rapidly, we'll see more competition and choice for users. In a few years it might be possible that you simply skip buying a new hyped game, because you know that coming from this and that vendor it'll be full of holes. You rather go buying some other game. Until this is the situation, live with cheats.

I guess my point is, yell at the game developers. They are the ones who made it possible to cheat, they are the one responsible.

--Erik
www.darkfallonline.com

Here's what might be a chance to get inside the industry: Darkfall Dungeon Design Contest

If you want to build cities, destroy cities, take over power in cites and/or kingdoms, set taxes, hire people to do your stuff, and make permanent changes to the world among other things, then check out this game:
http://www.darkfallonline.com
It is a MMORPG heavily geared towards the PvP fragmentation of the players. No safe zones.
Clans can rule the world etc.etc.