MMOs. The very term can make some people wary. There’s a huge time investment involved. Questing, looting, raiding, experiencing the story, getting killed by a half naked guy who’s 8000 levels higher than you….it’s a lot to take in. Good news for you then that the staff here at Sanitarium.FM love MMOs. And we play a ton of different ones. So if you’re looking to jump into an MMO read on. We’re going to breakdown our five favorites and why you should give them a try.
World of Warcraft – k1ng0fspades
After a decade long lifespan, WoW is still the most subscribed MMORPG in the world. In many ways it sets the gold standard for its genre and many MMOs still live in its shadow. It’s gone through many iterations over the years, constantly evolving and improving and altering the formula to respond to the ever-changing needs of its playerbase. I began playing in early vanilla when reaching level 60 and earning enough money for an epic mount was the ultimate achievement, and despite a few hiatuses during content drought, I’ve remained a loyal citizen of the world of Azeroth.
In classic WoW, the world of Azeroth was simply the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and traversing this world was a magical experience that captured my young imagination and created a life-long love for this universe. Each expansion made this already staggeringly huge world even larger, more immersive, more interesting. Each expansion added new features to every class, new classes, new races, new collectibles, new challenges to surmount, which created a hunger in the playerbase to explore every facet of the universe, conquer every obstacle, earn every reward.
Blizzard’s customer service is second to none. Ask any player about any exchange they’ve ever have had with a Game Master and they’ll tell you, the agents are constantly friendly and sincerely invested in providing the quickest and most effective service they can. If there’s one thing that creates loyalty to a game, it’s customer service that cares and understands the perspective of the consumer and Blizzard embodies this mentality.
Legion is highly anticipated as a return to the glory days of WoW, with the release of the demon hunter class and presumably the final conflict with the eponymous Burning Legion, one of the most iconic enemies of the Warcraft universe. Despite years of declining subscribers, the game is still going strong and still remains on top, and there it shall likely remain.
Get it here: https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/
WildStar – Digmbot
WildStar has had it’s ups and downs. Now a free to play game, it seems to have found some new life. A game that relies heavily on mobility in combat, Wildstar uses a telegraph system to make sure that you always know where your attacks are going and where enemy attacks are coming from. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to dodge everything- Wildstar’s bosses have some fiendish patterns that make your average Japanese bullet hell shooter look like a walk in the park.
Combine this with a charming and unique wild west meets outer space aesthetic, a wicked sense of humor and a truly insane cast of characters, and you have a recipe for a fun, fast and colorful MMO. Quests can be turned in from pretty much anywhere, so this game is light on backtracking to quest givers. There are multiple crafting systems, and you can make some truly meaningful decisions about how you specialize your characters trade and crafting skills. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the character classes.
WildStar is unique in that every character class can perform two roles. The medic is capable of putting out a staggering amount of DPS. The stealthy assassin-like Stalker can also tank. And the Engineer…the engineer has a bigass mechsuit, badass robot pets and a gun the size of a small city bus. Keeping players from feeling locked into traditional MMO roles gives you a sense of freedom in the game, and lets you tailor a party of friends to your needs without having to rely on locked in rolls.
With a free to play model, fair micro transactions that prevent buying power and a ridiculously fun style of play, WildStar is the perfect MMO if you want a little more action in your playstyle and also love goofy, wacky and sometimes creepily insane characters.
Get it here: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/freetoplay/
Guild Wars – Lonesamurai
Guild Wars holds a special place for myself and the radio station, we launched the Sanitarium.FM with my weekly Ascension show on a Tuesday night, sat in Lion’s Arch International District 1, sometimes with Gaile and Froggy along for the party and a host of players joining in the conga lines
Guild Wars 1 was, for some, a strange beast, it had no jump button and outside of towns and cities, the area was instanced for your party, whether that party was made of other players or just a team of AI
But that was part of Guild Wars charm and that charm still exists to this day. This was at a time when World of Warcraft had just released as well, but Guild Wars held it’s own against WoW with a fifth of the player figures WoW had. It’s clean, easy to follow gameplay and skill system, a pvp system Blizzard would eventually steal from for WoW arenas and an art style that still looks fantastic to this day
Guild Wars 2 may have been a disappointment to all the station team and the guild, but GW1 still makes us feel nostalgic and was totally worth the £180 I spent on it all those years ago!
Get it here: https://www.guildwars.com/en/
Eve Online – Lonesamurai
Nowadays we have Elite and other gorgeous space flight sims that satiate our bloodlust and our joy for the exploration of the final frontier (que Star Trek theme)… Way back when the station first started though, the other MMO we regularly covered was EvE Online, still, in my opinion, one of the best space MMO’s out there, and although Digm and others disagree, I actually loved the 3rd person point of view and even CCP’s lore behind it 😀
Some find EvE Online a straight up excel spreadsheet simulator and some like to play the game that way, sitting in Jita, playing the market, but personally, my fave past time and sometimes I miss this, was sitting in my Amarr Tech 2 Battleship clearing tier 4 zones, then coming back in my Cruiser and salvaging the lot for profits
EvE can be as massive or as small as you want to play it, and unlike Elite, with its closed and personal servers limiting players griefing, Eve is a death threat just ready to slit your throat. PvP is usually brutal and quick, with gate campers sometimes in groups of two or three, each ship with a role to catch unwary pilots that forgot to check where they were going.
But it’s in the corporation (guild) play that evE gets really exciting, with some guilds of hundreds of players going up against other guilds with similar numbers for some truly epic space battles, the like Elite and others just couldn’t do right now, but maybe in the future.
The first time you see a titan warp in on top of a combined fleet and open up its doomsday weapon is a site to behold, unless you happen to be in the path of that doomsday, then, it’s time to clone jump and set up a new ship!
Blade and Soul – Digmbot
Do you want to be a Kung Fu Winner? Then Blade and Soul is the place for you. A Korean MMO, Blade and Soul places you in the shoes of a student who’s school was destroyed and is out for revenge. Taking inspiration from movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Blade and Soul allows players to run, jump, flip, fly and literally race across the very surface of the water as a kung fu master. With a healthy selection of classes, including a brand new warlock magic wielder, the adorable yet deadly summoner, and the punchy punchy kung fu master himself, there’s a playstyle here that will suit you. Want to teleport around, leave little wooden logs to confuse enemies and then plant bombs at their feet? Assassin is the way to go. And theres more to it than just the classes. Blade and Soul rewards combos. Use your abilities correctly and your menu of combat choices keeps expanding in a glorious and seemingly never ending buffet of destruction and kung fu glory.
The story is engrossing and well voice acted, the locations are gorgeous and inspired by the best of kung fu movie and anime art, and the characters you meet prove to be memorable, even if you only remember them because you can’t wait to stick a sword in their guts. Blade and Soul doesn’t place higher on this list unfortunately, because at it’s heart it is a Korean MMO. The vast majority of quests are going to boil down to kill this many things and bring back this many items. You must return to most quest givers to hand in quests, making backtracking a huge part of the game. On the plus side, being overwhelmed by gear is rarely an issue, as you feed your gear other gear to level it up in Blade and Soul. This, unfortunately also has a few negatives, as you can find yourself farming the same spot for quite a while to get an item you need to breakthrough to the next level.
At it’s core, Blade and Soul is a fun romp through a mystical kung fu inspired world. Movement and combat are glorious, but the game is dragged down by what becomes a huge grind fest when you get to higher levels. Still, if you want to run on water and glide through the air while being followed by your giant mallet wielding cat familiar, Blade and Soul is the only place to go.
Get it Here: http://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/freetoplay/
