Rasman76

Overall great mmorpg. The personal storyline is a fun way to get to know the world and allows for multiple alts/replays without content getting too stale. Interface is like butter - smooth and easy to understand. PVP overall is pretty fun, though it can take some time to get good at with all the weapon/build combinations. PVE content and pug dungeons are probably the best I've seen - getting into a dungeon or fractal is effortless and the community is pretty forgiving and non-toxic. Ocassional optimization issues/lag can stop the game in its tracks but for a pay to play mmorpg, GW2 does a great job overall.

So I tried the free trial of this because I was really curious. It may be that I never got into Ultima Online but I just can get into the world Garriot has made. Not because the lore **** - in fact it's kind of intriguing. It's all the technical issues the game has. Pros - Love the skills-based leveling system Tons of housing and crafting possibilities Huge world, interesting overworld map Very challenging, lots of possibilities for roleplaying. Intesting PVE questing, makes you really think about how to complete each one. CONS Horribly optimized and a lagfest in towns and game crashes quite a bit. Housing costs HUNDREDS of real-world dollars. This will prevent most players from ever owning one. Kind of crap sound effects (not a big deal to me) No fast travel and PVP (i've heard) is non-existent for the most part. Grindy (to be expected for an old school rpg) in certain areas. SOTA has some potential but it just feels really unfinished and the devs seem more concerned about cash shop purchases for virtual real estate and the next "chapter" but aren't doing much about the current bugs, poor gameplay.

While initially very fun (and mostly free) spending money becomes a necessity to be competitive and get the cards you need to rank advance. yes you can grind them out (at the cost of having no social life or ever leaving your room again). Versus arena is probably the most frustrating element - random card draw and coin cost, equals major chance to bust with not much to show for it. In passing its fun, but you'll soon find yourself over it and onto the next thing...

I tried to like this game but the clunky interface made it impossible to figure out what the heck I was doing most of the time. The new tutorial helped somewhat but I found I was losing ISK, lost and flying back and forth to a space port several times to just complete one standard mission. The graphics are pretty but honestly the devs really need to take a class on making intuitive interfaces - it was just way too complex to make it any fun. If they ever revamp that I may try it again. As it stands I'll just go play elite dangerous instead.