Out of Pod Experience

The first MMO I played was EVE in or around 2006. A while ago I tried WoW for about a week, then Aion, Star Trek Online for a few months (now free to play incidentally), Fallen Earth for two months (also Free to play) and occasionally I dabble in APB... (free to play..)

There may be one or two others.

Edit: If it counts as an MMO, Battlestar Galactica Online too.

I have tried and been disappointed in many MMORPG's on rails like Rift, Aion, and SWTOR but the ones I really 'played' were:

Played:
DAoC - Excellent, but cheating is rampant on top of a F2Play community today.
WAR - A sad period of "I told you so"s from VKhaun about how badly Mythic handles games.
Fallen Earth - Good crafting/economy, but got boring for me and it's hard to start up.
DCUO - A flopped attempt at a 'fighting game' MMO that failed to deliver or match it's competitors.

Champions O. - An attempt to be more 'open' than CoH/V which I thought was superior, but made the game extremely shallow since you had an obvious 'best' of every type of power. F2Play was mismanaged and it's all but dead.

SWG - A fantastic MMORPG with exploration, player housing/towns, customization galore, and a healthy setting for PvP. Like most SoE games, they refused to expand it where it needed to be expanded. Player housing slowly filled all the available land and like lemmings the devs ran right into that wall and did not put in new planets or space. Players explored dunegons and found very little in containers that respawned their contents slowly. PvP was difficult to balance to begin with, then they revamped their defense conditions two or three times... potential lost IMO. Far better than SWTOR, especially the space combat, but apples and oranges I suppose.

Guildwars - Does this count? I really just got tired of it. It was a great game, had lots of fun, but there were only two really engaging story maps for PvP and the high end PvE was really... noisy... MESSY I guess is the best way I could put it. Looking forward to GW2 because I think they do well, but I have no interest left in GW1. Been there, done that.

EQ2 - I really wanted to like this game but the horrendous art style and frustrating enemy con system just wouldn't let me stay.

DDO - Good, but I was downright offended by some of Turbines actions with customer accounts, and I don't give them my money or time anymore.





Playing:
City of Heroes

CoH/V is the one and only game I can think of that gets BETTER with time. The character creation system is astounding, the power sets are numerous and acceptably well balanced for a PvE game, content continues to flow faster, people hired are better (+1 for Dink!) than those let go, population shrinks but they are constantly making the game more accessible and keeping players able to team up despite level differences, and the primary gripes I had with the game personally have been addressed very well. Namely, there's more -recharage (use powers more often) and more endurance regeneration (use more powers without running out of 'mana'), and there's something worthwhile to chase in the end-game.

There's a dead zone around 35 where not many people are playing. The end-game and early-game content holds most people to playing their mains or playing fire-and-forget alts that never reach maturity and that's where my main is currently stuck, but I work nights, so I'm usually online in the very worst/lowest populated time frames and I can still manage well enough that it's fun.

Got a huge unexpected bonus from work. Really just about took me out of my chair when I saw the direct deposit. Threw a BUNCH of money, think at least... THREE monocles... at their cash shop and bought a bunch of quality of life game stuff, costume parts, etc. Don't regret it, having a blast.

Currently, I am only playing EVE Online.

Previous MMORPG's I remember playing include:

Algenon
Champions Online
DC Universe Online
Dragon Nest
EverQuest
EverQuest 2
Fallen Earth
Guild Wars
Lord of the Rings Online
Rift
Perpetuum
Runes of Magic
Star Trek Online
Star Wars: The Old Republic
World of Warcraft

Hundred Years War - Historically-accurate turn-based MMO. Really a great "thinking man's" game. Requires a lot of psychology for team-building (English side vs. French side), diplomacy and intrigue. Intense strategic planning and second-guessing. Unfortunately the developer gave up on it as a commercial enterprise and made it kind of a community-run thing. Tech functions gradually declined, along with the player base.
DAoC (briefly)
Jumpgate - Was excellent I thought. Will probably join the new version (Jumpgate Evolution) when/if they ever finish it.
EVE
Battleground Europe: World War II Online - Very unique side vs. side MMO.
DDO (briefly)
Xsyon
PotBS (briefly)
EVE again - Still can't find anything else comparable out there. In terms of IQ challenges, variety of things to do, and technical smoothness.

i used to play WoW way back in like 2006. ive tried SWTOR but eve has my 15$ a month.
SWTOR is cool but ever since wow im done running around. i tried global agenda on steam that was pretty cool especially since it was free and good graphics but still Eve Online has my attention when i want to play an MMO

1998-1999 Elephant Mud
2000-2004 EQ1/some UO shards
2004-2006 EVE Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, DAOC, EQII, Tibia
2008-2012 Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, AoC, WAR, LOTRO, Fallen Earth, APB, DDO, Rift, DC Universe, WoT , STO.

Those I invested quite some time beyond the free month/trial and spent money or several hours I could have better spent sleeping :D

Only ones I'm stil playing are LOTRO since I'm a lifetimer and EVE mostly for forum access and the occasional skill swap and cruise around, mission running.

Nothing really good out there, and if I knew how the MMO market was going to end up (2012) I would have remained since day one back in 2000 in EQ1 with my beloved necromancer and assorted skelly pets of fun. Also I miss VANGUARD :(


Edit: Now that I have read what others have posted, I also hate how MMO's today end up being rail road theme parks, peak of it being RIFT. I had such high hopes for it ...

Yay, certainly looks like that. With videogames becoming specialyzed and expensive years-long projects, they also grow conservative.

I'm sure that out there there are many good ideas for MMORPGs, but most either never get funded or are funded to the expense of not scaring the investors = being a WoW clone with "assured return".

EVE is terribly rare; it was born in the right time, when someone like CCP could succeed. Now if you attempt to start from scratch, you get Perpetuum as most. Adn it takes a lot of faith to stadn by a project like Perpetuum as it grows up... if it grows up.

EVE is now old an respectable, but if EVE started today from scratch, likely would be dead in a couple years. CCP is quite brave by developing WoD, but they can dvelop it only because they got their own funding from EVE's success. White Wolf wanted to make a WoD MMORPG and they got to be bought by a bigger fish, aka CCP, which later ripped their guts off in the 20% layoff.

So, it is possible to make original MMORPGs? Theoretically yes, but financially, don't. And i'm not sure wether there is a demand for original MMOs...

There were actually a lot of aspects that I liked about Rift, like changing out souls on characters (ran Pal/Reaver/War for tanking needs and Reaver, champ, BM for pvp), the scenery, and of course the Rifts. I got bored of it because the servers I was on were the lowest pops and most of the time it felt like I was playing a single player game.

I miss Dark and Light...

Very ambitious but poorly executed. At least it wasn't Mourning though.

I am currently playing EvE and I play WoT and Global Agenda on and off.

I used to play RuneScape, but the game's PvP was just way too easy to master. I never bought a subscription, but I pwned many noobs at the game. All you had to do was freeze them, hit them with an arrow and quickly switch to your 2H to instakill them and prevent them from escaping. It's kind of like a maelstrom with 3 infinite webs with arties that can hit at 0.