Well, I think the heading pretty much said it all...also, I've got little to no money at the moment - are there any non-pay-to-play MMORPGs worth having :grin: ?
Well, there's always Anarchy Online, although you'd have to download an ungodly amount of patches at this point.
I've heard some mixed comments about Earth and Beyond. If you're looking specifically for non-fantasy, that might be an avenue to explore. It's pretty much a space-trader jobbie. Neocron is also non-fantasy, and in concept looks quite appealing, but I have heard nothing but bad about that game. Anarchy online is awful. The UI is obtuse, and I experienced hideous lag when I tried to play it on my ADSL connection (which gets me best ping in most games of UT I play).
Actually, A0 is one of the few acts of repentance in gaming history- all the patches lead to it becoming an insanely well balanced, non linear fantastic game. Though I got tired of it in about a week, I blame that more on my crappy Nanomage character.
You mean AO, surely? My attempt to play it was only a coupla months ago, so unless they've patched it a hell of a lot since then, I'm sticking to my gripes. I'm not really too up on MMORPGs. DAoC is the only one I have played for any length of time. I did a few months on AC when me and Lysa were fitst together (and she was still in the US), but that was only so we could spend time together online. It was a laugh for a while, but that was mainly due to the novelty of it being the first MMORPG either of us had tried.
Etalis, I think Mihawk's efforts to keep Settler away from those god-forsaken, l33t-infested pieces of massively multiplayer online crud are entirely commendable. Stay away from the dark side, Settler!
Well, I suppose you have to call it fantasy, but the members of Aozos have just started out on a brand new free MMORPG called Dransik. Just pop on over to here to download it. It's 44.8 Mb but well worth it. It looks kind of like a high res Ultima 8 style game, but with a much better, more indepth and complex interface. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's good when you do. If you're going to join, then I'd advise reading about it first, or it's a little overwhelming trying to figure out how things work. Also, I'm currently using the character, Katherine. Like I said, it's brand new, and only just come out of the beta stage, so it's still not finished fully yet, but there is already an insanely large amount of stuff in there, and you can even own land, and create your own guilds, shops, houses, etc, so it's more highly interactive and indepth than even Arcanum was! :-o Lots of fun!
I'd be interested to hear which MMORPGs you have found to be like this, Calis, if only to avoid them. Like I said, my experience is limited. In the few months I have been playing DAoC, I've not seen a single person using leet speak. There are plenty of annoying players around, but mostly it's because they're not very good at the game or because they're a bit juvenile. They are not particularly in your face unless you seek them out. and they are balanced by a farily large number of nice, rational, interesting people. I wouldn't recommend a MMORPG for someone looking for a good story of depth of role play. If you're the type who enjoys a fantasy environment and edgy combat against real people, they're not too bad. The main thing I have found is that playing with and against real people avoids all the boredom arising from artificial dialogue and AI deficiences in combat. It's also nice to be forced to play without a go-back-and-perfect-the-combat/dialogue-outcome feature. If you mess up in MMORPG you have to live with the results - that adds a lot of excitement.