Elder Scrolls were great, but I had a few widdle issues with it. Firstly, I was always a 'traditionalist' RPG'er. In other words, I like the good ol' common critters you expect to see, like goblins, elves, dwarves, trolls, minotaurs, etc. I didn't like fighting silly looking birds with three wings, or dinosaur-type critters, or freaky crabs. They got an A for originality of course. A+ for a huge, engaging world too. Just wish it would have been more traditional.
Oblivion was a bit more better IMO, but it introduced the horrific 'Oblivion Curve', which is now showing up in lots of sandbox-type games, sadly. It's the tendency for an entire game to 'level with you'. Goblins that you killed at level 1 are SUPER goblins when you're level 20, and can still give you a run for your money. This dumbing down of an RPG really, really annoyed me to no end. I actually like going into an easy dungeon sometimes and just cutting a swath through it, or wandering into a place I shouldn't be and finding critters that can eat me for lunch. It's risky and cool and makes you feel that it's important to level, and to get better equipment. The Oblivion Curve is a cheap shortcut, IMO to make things too easy and gauged for your level and equipment. Takes a lot of fun out of it.
I'll definitely try Mount and Blade. Thanks for the heads up. Been searching for a good hack n slash RPG.
I tried Conan, because I had very high hopes, and it was pretty fun for about one month. Then I ran into all sorts of trouble, from broken quests, to just plain no-fun encounters. I also solo'ed the game almost completely. Grouping was a chore, not a fun thing, because things were so frenetic and fast that you never had time to chat or even get to know the folks in your group. You just raced from fight to fight for exp and loot and questing. And game devs really need to realize that doing ANYTHING over and over will become tedious, no matter how challenging and 'fun' you try to make the combat. Making it complicated just makes it more tiring and prevents anything like socializing or getting to know folks. I'd rather do autocombat so I can at least chat with folks while I'm grinding.
Hellgate was pretty awesome, actually. Of course once Flagshit studios went belly-up, it got abandoned. At least they kept the servers up tho. It's fun, different, and not too hard, with a decent storyline and fantastic character customizations. Nobody looked alike in that game. But again, with it being incomplete and no new life in the future, it will eventually get shut down. Huge waste of potential.
DDO was such a travesty that I won't even talk about it. I haven't been that disappointed since the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Horrific on any level. I can't think of even one good thing to say about it.
Vanguard had me thrilled as could be...until Jeff and Brad realized they can make great games, but they suck as studio executives. The only way they could even keep the game alive was to go crawling back to SoE on their bellies and beg for help once M$ dropped them. I was so disgusted with SoE that I would never play any game that ever had anything at all to do with Sony, so Vanguard went untried by me.
Never tried WoW, although a few friends are really trying to get me into it. It looks pretty fun in many ways, but too easy for me.
EQ 2 disappointed me as well, since they made it into a completely new (much less fun) game than EQ, with an entirely different timeline and a fairly stupid story path. Bleh.
Right now I'm really hoping for a few upcoming games though...
Mechwarrior: Living Legends. Durh. BT GOODNESS! WHEEE!
Warhammer 40k Online. Keeping fingers crossed, but I'm afraid to hope.
Shadowrun Online. See above.
Star Wars MMO. Not sure I'm happy about them using the KoToR era, but gawd it's gotta be better than SoE's miserable failure at a Star Wars MMO.
Star Trek Universe. Reeeeally curious, and reeeally scared. That one can be either a monster success or a monster failure. There have been a lot of monster failures tho. I'm really getting jaded.
Yeesh. Sorry for the long-winded response. I'm more bored than I thought.
