Earth and Beyond
My very first MMO (while waiting for Star Wars Galaxies). Utterly boring. Forced paths, if you deviated you slowed to 1/1,000,000th of your max speed. It is no wonder this game died so fast.

Ultima Online
Truth in advertising: I only played a player run shard of this, but imho that made the experience so much sweeter. I can't say a lot because it was a very different experience to the UO I eventually signed up to and played (probably just before SWG came out). The paid version was attrocious, the player run shard was an awesome experience.

Star Wars: Galaxies
-The- MMO of my life. Being an Aussie, it was impossible to purchase this game unless you had friends in the US send it to you. It took 3 months before we could import a copy from anywhere. After logging in this game did not disappoint me at all, not even with the unfinished and buggy stuff. Seeing raids on Anchorhead by a single Imperial player with 1 AT-ST pet, and having 100 rebels trying to repel it was fantastic. I spent many, many late nights in cantinas healing dancers to level up my medic in my pursuit of the elusive Jedi (oh how I wish I knew back then how you were going to abuse me). Levelling was skill points assigned in groups of four columns that represented a profession, and their were advanced professions on top that required you to master first tier professions. There was a Creature Handler profession that involved taming, which was quite well done. The Bio Engineer supplemented it and was a rather complex and well developed profession. The mystery of not being spoonfed made this so appealing (it was actually due to lack of dev resources, but I didn't know that at the time). Going on missions to hunt rebels and then being flagged for temporary pvp and being shot in the back by a bounty hunter. I got angry at the time, but afterwards realised how fun it was, and the potential it offered. This was all before the first Jedi was unlocked. After the promise of not knowing what it might take to unlock yours, it could be anything, it turned out they simply resorted to mastering 4 professions, randomly chosen when you created your character. Of course, I had to master every single profession (all 32) before I unlocked mine, 7 months later. Then, of course, everything goes down hill... people discover the FOTM builds, the bugs, the design flaws etc... Patch 10: Vehicle Graveyards was a disaster. Player housing and cities were excellent, mounts were a little under done. At this point, almost anything in the game can be solo'ed with Doctor buffs. Still, its fun. PvP was fantastic. Players erected factional HQs costing them millions of faction points, then opposing forces would come enmasse at a prescribed 2 hour window to battle to destroy it. Freaking awesomeness. At this point I am in an awesome guild who will help you with anything and regularly travel all over the galaxy just to kill hard and rarish mobs. Man I don't remember anything as fondly as these times. I was also the first to attain a Jedi in my guild.

Then came the personal issue. I was forum correspondent for Medic, then Doctor. We made lists of bugs for the devs for our respective professions that we represented. The devs never really spoke to us at all. In my year as correspondent, I got a single answer from a dev about a profession I didn't represent. Players mean while believed we had the ear of the developers. This is where SOE screwed everyone over, following the plan of Raph Koster to the letter: "Elevate some players in the community to make them feel like they have some extra say, something for others to aim for, then give them nothing". Toward the end, they invited all of the correspondents to Austin, Texas for a summit. At first I was the only foreign correspondent, and was told I couldn't go. After that, the new Bio Engineer correspondent, who was from England, and also female, was secretly invited and had her ticket paid for. All correspondents were told not to tell me, until I saw someone post that she was there, in Austin, and questioned one of the others that I knew, and they told me straight away they were told not to tell me. I confronted SOE and Gordon Walton basically said "yep, we screwed up, can't change it now". So now I am personally insulted by this game that I love.

Then comes the CU/CB/CR (Combat Upgrade / Balance / Revamp) which we eventually named the CURB because they couldn't decide what they wanted to call it on any particular day. Then after a year we learnt that all this talk of combat upgrades meant nothing, and they had not actually started work on it at all! When it finally does come out, it does improve the game but still has its issues. I think this was the game at its best, Jedi was fun at that point even though it was still hard. At this point though, they start digging the heels in and start removing the drains on the economy, like condition on armour and weapons. Instead of putting in more drains and making the game truly awsome. they basically kill the economy dead.

Then comes the NGE (New Game Experience). If you are a game designer and don't know what this is, shame on you. This in the industry is known as the shining example of what not to do to a running MMO, how to alienate and lose subscribers and generally piss everyone off that ever cared about your game. The game goes to crap because SOE wants to cash in on the WoW crowd. They strip the game of originality, its uniqueness and its soul, and I quit. I have returned on occasion, usually from free time, some say its become an awesome game, but it hasn't. It's just a cheap WoW clone now. My heart is utterly broken. Pre-CU had it's issues, Pre-NGE was probably the pinnacle of the game, but NGE was an utter disgace. I say was, because the game is now cancelled. You have about a month if you ever want to see the game, but I recommend you don't bother. I have spoken to Dan Rubenfield about the NGE several times (he is the one responsible for coming up with the original concept for it), and though everyone blames him for it, I know it was not what he had in mind. Many member of management however have earned my wrath.

City Of Heroes
Several guild members left to play this game. I played for an hour. Not very exciting.

The Matrix Online
I tried this after SOE bought it. Utter garbage. Boring repetive gameplay, bleak dismal graphics, no coherency, nothing to do.

Vanguard
I jump on board on release and quit a few minutes later. All I can say is LOLWTF?

World Of Warcraft
Run of the mill. I played to L52 when the cap was 60. I came back a year or so ago and got to L80. I'm now L82. Gets boring after a while but fun for a few days.

[s]Spreadsheets Online[/s] EvE
Started playing, seemed really kewl, loved the interface. Oh, can't get out of my ship? Can't land on planets? Combat boils down to waiting until you win or lose with auto attack. No missions, well, there was one mission, and it was the same every time. There is not much to do, you fly around, mine some asteroids, repeat the same mission, look at the dull worlds, go through a gate and get ganked and lose everything. Nothing more to see here.

Star Trek Online
I got in their beta before release with Steam purchase, played for a week after release. Feels like you're flying a tiny toy ship. Not very exciting. NO BRIDGE VIEW. Gah. You make a star trek MMO and don't allow us to fly our ship from the bridge and you expect your MMO to succeed? WRONG!



I tried a few other MMOs like DAoC and GW, but I spent such a little amount of time its not worth mentioning.

I never played a MMO I really liked. All MMOs I know are bad.

Here's why:
- Single Player games are often better in the story and still offers often a simple multiplayer part, which is still better thant that of MMOs. In MMOs I often played alone, and when I played with others, that number was never really higher than the number which is served in those multiplayer modes in singleplayer-rpgs.
-> so at least I felt it to be better to experience a good story with an offline game and if I wanted to play with others I would have to use such Multiplayer-Modes

The only thing a MMO could offer, what a single player game couldn't offer, would be a pvp-only world. No one really offers that, except EVE Online, and I played that one... it felt just like a big excel list and was pretty boring^^

MMOs are pretty fucked up....

I forgot to mention Everquest 2

I played EQ2 for a long time as well, eventually leaving at L72. I think my disappointment with that game came mostly from not being able to solo much at all at high levels. Even being in a great friendly guild that grouped and raided a lot, raids were quite boring and repetitive. It's a very group / raid focused game and that's not what I want from an MMO, I want solo with the ability to interact with other people, pretty much like sunandshadow. Star Wars Galaxies gave me this prior to the failed updates. EQ2 I felt was a fairly nice game, polished, good looking, but so repetitive even with all the quests and areas available.