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I disagree.

I'm 40 this year and I played the hell out of Descent and Terminal Velocity for the sheer pleasure of using the full 3D experience.

I downloaded the Rebirth version of Descent after reading half his article, and I've played it for quite some time. My reflexes are OK, my brain isn't hurting and I'm WISHING that many of today's games could venture into the 3rd dimension.

I play Star Trek Online and I couldn't begin to tell you how much better it would be (for me, I dunno about these kids who can't fly) if I could actually have the ability to loop the loop in battles. The way they've done it sucks so hard after knowing how to barrel roll and loop.

Free to play. Not rated the best, but if you're a trekkie it doesn't have to be. Two styles of gameplay- space combat with starships and RPG style ground combat with toons. "End game" takes a couple of weeks to get to and then you grind for gear. Or pay $$$ to get gear quicker. Missions against AI or PvP, but PVP is neglected. Again, free to play with the client from http://sto.perfectworld.com/download

When you fly too far in STO [Star Trek Online] you get a dialogue box up insisting that there's FA to see here and you might want to warp out of the system. "Dismiss" makes it come back in a few seconds and you're still pushing at the edge of the map, not going anywhere.

So much for the theory that space is curved, huh?

Still, one can't expect too much from a game that hasn't even attempted 3D flying.

Star Trek Online had this happen. I had an email address specific to that site and it got spammed. Heaps of other people with similar site only email addresses mentioned the same thing on the forums. Don't know if they ever publicly admitted it.

So....this amazing charecter customization is a shitty copy of Rappelz where you get to customize your charecter twice to specialize. And 26 faces? In Perfect World International you can manipulate the face almost as well as you can in Fallout 3. Nothing here that hasn't been done before and done to a larger extend.

Most Americans (at least judging by American MMO bloggers' postings) don't really like the concept of MMOs running on RMTs, but if you want a preview of the Asian style of MMO, try Runes of Magic. You'll notice that most Asian games come with a lot more convenience features than you'd find in e.g. WoW, where basic things turn into a chore. In RoM you have auto-walk, auto-find-NPC, your quest journal's important words are linked directly to an auto-walk path to the monster/person you need to find, there are many methods of instant or fast transport, free player housing from level 1, permanent mount available for purchase from level 1 etc.

If you can for one second swallow your hate of mouse-based walking (there's WASD too, for chrissakes) and RMTs, you'll see that a game doesn't become stupidly easy just because it is convenient to play.

You can find some of that in Perfect World and Jade Dynasty or any of the Aeria games as well, but I wouldn't recommend those. Runes of Magic is very well-adapted to the Western audience. Many other Asian MMOs are endless grindfests, because it seems that people there don't mind grinding to achieve things in a game. Radiant Arcana (as the original Runes of Magic is called in China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea) is a much more grindy game than Runes, since Frogster figured that Western players don't have the patience for a grindfest. I think they may be right.

So before someone writes an article about Eastern vs. Western-style MMOs, they should perhaps look at deeper game design elements rather than just imply "oh wow, mouse control is so you can smoke with your other hand". Also, I think the author of TFA didn't even notice that Aion's Western version had a lot of grind removed and is faster to play than the original. If he thinks the leveling curve is bad here, he should play the Korean one.

Someone get a Taiwanese, a Korean, a Japanese, a British and an American game journalist to work on an article, that way they'd talk to each other and debunk some of the myths :P

I wouldn't say you're missing anything. I've installed and run it three times over the past couple years, and while the team has made progress, it's still very much pre-pre-pre-alpha status. Get it if you're interesting in becoming a contributor... otherwise play Perfect World.

There is a popular business model that takes advantage of such persons. First, get the user hooked on free content, then milk their addiction by offering plenty of goodies for purchase that can 'enhance' their experience, or allow them to show off to their friends. There are many MMO's such as Perfect World that offer the game for free, but encourage the user to buy items that grant a competitive or cosmetic edge in-game. Similarly, the online TV-series Pure Pwnage offers episode downloads for free, but has a number of related accessories available at its 'noobstore'.

AirRivals is pretty good fun too, and the only free-to-play that I keep geeting back to.

There's also:
Perfect World
Rohan
Upshift Strikeracer
Archlord
Dreamlords