Hey everyone! Are there any games (MMO games, game sites, etc.) that you really enjoyed, but they are no longer around? I tend to find myself remembering games I've loved that are gone now, some more than others, and I was curious if anyone else had fond memories of a game that no longer exists. Among mine are: Star Wars Galaxies: For all the broken-ness of the early days, I still loved that game more than I've loved any other game, at least up until the last big game change (when they became a sort of clone of any other MMO and lost a lot of the uniqueness). Even setting aside the fact I'm a massive Star Wars geek, the variety of what you could do was just amazing. I loved the skill trees that were there in place of actual levels, and that you weren't limited to just one specific class and could be any number of combinations (unless you were going for one of the advanced hybrid classes like Bounty Hunter or something). You could be a dancer, a tailor, a medic, a droid maker, etc., you could hang out in the cities (both regular and player made), spend days (or even weeks) decorating your home or guild hall, battle on the ground or in space and so much more. Then of course there was the thrill of exploring and playing around in one of my favorite fictional settings. I'll admit that part of what drew me to Entropia is the similar vast variety in what you can do. They are two very different games to be certain, but they both allow a sort of freedom that you rarely find in any other game. City of Heroes/City of Villains: While I love superhero comics, I've rarely enjoyed games involving superheros. CoH/CoV was one of the select few that I did enjoy. Not only was there a lot of great costume choices (with more added all the time), but the power choices made for a lot of fun options. I'll admit parts of the game were bland grind-fests (particularly in the earlier days), but I still had quite a bit of fun there. When they added Mission Architect, that opened up all sorts of options for players to make fun little adventures. I spent days putting together missions that told a story (and more often than not, dropping in silly little homages to things I liked). I was also amazed at how others utilized it as a way of telling an origin story for their characters. I could list so many more, but I didn't want to create such a huge wall of text, and I'd like to see if anyone else has a game or games they miss as much as I miss those two.
Star Wars Galaxies closed down in December 2011, about the same time Star Wars The Old Republic went live. There are a few emulators out there, but none are quite finished products from what I hear (missing certain aspects or classes, only one or two planets available, etc.).
I think its still around but Dark Age of Camelot was my favorite game before EA games too over Mythic Entertainment and destroyed it. That game had everything you could want and it was decently balanced and all the aspects were in place for greatness. It was great to participate in 3 realm pvp battles with easily over 1000 people at a time with major spell effects going off and everything. You could easily do that over a crappy DSL connection. Here (EU in general you struggle with 20 people in the same area just standing around in places) Sadly EA games came along and made it so you didn't even have to play an alt to skill it to max levels in very little time. When I left they had gone from 15 server clusters with an avg of 15000 people or more on at all times to 5 servers with under 5000 on each in less then 6 months after EA took over. Same thing EU is doing now for hunters with the easy skilling and mission reward system. Hopefully someone at MA will pull their head from their ass and look at that massive fail and MAYBE think of how to NOT repeat that same mistake here. I do miss the many aspects of that game like solo farming for gear where you actually had a chance to get it if you worked at it enough, to the massive raids that took teamwork and coordination to do certain things. Here the hardest thing to do is press auto shoot and hope you are on the privileged list to get something nice.
Ouch! That has unfortunately been a practice I've noticed in a lot of games, even if they don't change companies. The original EverQuest was my first real MMO that I had ever spent any major amount of time in, and while it is still around, it just isn't the same. It used to be that you really had to work hard for above-average gear, and it was a blast doing it. Grouping up and running around an area (not even a raid) was one of my favorite things to do. At one point, I'd spent MONTHS trying for a specific gear drop or saving up to buy it off another player. Now you get that same sort of gear before even level 10 through the tutorial. By level 20 on a new character, I had better gear than my old level 65 character (not my main, but my "main alt" if that makes sense). With Mercenaries and the new gear, grouping is only done at high levels apparently. And while you can get to higher levels a LOT quicker than before, it just isn't that fun because you miss a LOT of stuff. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy visiting the game from time to time, but it just isn't what it used to be. Almost everything until the endgame content is practically handed to you, and there isn't any sense of accomplishment anymore.
