The new era of MMORPGs?

I've been watching a lot of Korean and Japanese MMO previews lately and I realized that most of the new (and slightly less new) titles have FPS-like WASD + mouse and no click-targeting. Unfortunately, most of them also look like they'd cripple my four year old Intel GMA so I haven't really been able to try any of them, but I must say that it's a promising development at least where combat is concerned.

Would anyone who has actually played some of these MM Os care to update me on this newest bandwagon?

edited 28th Jun '11 4:26:09 PM by Recon5

I don't know about FPS targeting, but yes, a large number of MMOs recently have been moving away from the World Of Warcraft style pseudo-turn based combat and moving towards Action MMOs.

And it's a change that I heartily approve of.

...

There is a point there. All Attacks on wow are based off of a 1.5 second delay. Even the so called instant attacks can only be used once every 1.5 seconds.

edited 28th Jun '11 6:11:36 PM by stevebat

That's really not pseudo-turn-based, though...

Look, whatever you want to call it, I absolutely hate it and want it to die in a fire.

Point is, I'm glad the industry is moving away from it.

I don't. Neither do others.

You might be glad for it, but many others won't be,

I played Fantasy Earth Zero for a bit, which heavily abuses the FPS controls and promotes PVP over everything. It has a big, fundamental problem with how resource gathering works though. Namely someone has to stay crouched in front of a giant crystal constantly while other people do the fun stuff.

Vindictus is good too. Combat gets a tad repetetive because of the limited Dynasty Warriors-like moveset though. Actually Dynasty Warriors online is another action MMO. But the Forced Tutorial is so tedious i can't see anyone getting past it.

Of course the best nontraditional MMO, and the best MMO period in my eyes, would be Dungeon Fighter Online.

I honestly can't play World Of Warcraft-type games anymore. I never liked them in the first place, but with the advent of true action-mmos coming along (Hell-o there TERA) i'll be abandoning that playstyle completely

Rift and Guild Wars and other western MMO's are keeping it alive. It's not going anywhere any time soon. I'm just glad our friends across the pond are trying to shake the stagnation out of the MMO genre at least a little.

Indeed. I'm all for other areas being explored.

What I don't want is for the current style to die off completely, either.

I'm looking for a decent action MMORPG. Dungeon Fighter Online seems like my best bet, but it isn't global yet. I've got my own MMORPG project, but in the meantime, I just want a game I can play.

I do! -Is egged-

In all seriousness, it's getting really hard to tell a lot of the MMO games apart. Armored dude, wizard dude, scantily clad elf, orc with and axe, dragon flyover. There. That's the trailer to 90% of the MMO games currently on the market. And that's just how they look. The fact that they all play with the same target/action bar and have the Fighter, Mage, Thief and Cleric dynamic every single time strikes me as incredibly silly.

I mean, in my previous post i named five different Action-MMO games. And they all look AND play completely differently from eachother. I guess when you finally get out from WOW's shadow you start to really flex those creative muscles.

Hmm. Well if you can't play Dungeon Fighter Online, i guess Vindictus wouldn't be available either. Dynasty Warriors online honestly isn't that good unless you're a hardcore fan already. TERA hasn't been released yet. You could try Fantasy Earth Zero if you can stand polygonal graphics and tons of otherwise petite women with ludicrous bust sizes and Jiggle Physics. Shin Megami Tensei Imagine isn't a full on action RPG, but it's still pretty close. You might want to try that. Grand Chase too.

edited 28th Jun '11 6:39:43 PM by ShirowShirow

From what I can tell, MMORP Gs are getting more action oriented, and more dynamic. Other trends I'd say are taking place is a smaller focus on grind, a move from pure pay to play models to free to play with VIP subscription models, a shift away from standard fantasy, inconsequential death penalties, and a lot more accommodations for solo players.

Frankly, I'd say it's a good thing. They're becoming more accessible to groups that weren't being appealed to before, and they're starting to branch out and get a little more creative in how they do things.

@NLK: Try Champions Online.

edited 28th Jun '11 6:37:40 PM by Miijhal

@NLK: Give Spiral Knights or Global Agenda a spin.

Why must neither of those work on my computer? V_V

I was watching some of the Cynical Brit's CO playthroughs and I must say I found the concept of mouseclick combos extremely amusing. However, most of the newer Korean action MM Os (Dragon Nest, Continent of the Ninth, Vindictus, TERA Online to name a few) still seem to use hotkeys for their skills despite having a FPS crosshair in the center of the screen. On an interesting note, DN seemed to have restricted the number of active skills to make hotkeying easier so for a while I thought that was the only way to do it, but games like C9 have the traditional large banks of hotkeys.

I didn't mention side scrollers and arena brawlers because those have been around for quite a while, but Risk Your Life and its sequel (anyone remember those?) were the only 'TPS-MMORP Gs' I'd seen until the past year or so.

World Of Warcraft is really pushing the envelope on the EQ/Lineage control scheme so I guess we needed a change at some point. To think I once thought WASD + M1 was the most revolutionary thing to happen to MMORP Gs.

@NLK: I'll recommend Dragon Saga aka Dragonica anywhere else. It's Freemium but ingame items can be sold for cash points (at least in the SEA version) and apart from promo items there's nothing I remember that forces you to shell out real money. It's a lot of fun if you like side scrolling beat-em-ups and the EU community at least (the G Potato version) has an admirable sense of honor about PVP mechanics exploits. It's 3D but it runs really smoothly on my four year old laptop.

edited 28th Jun '11 8:51:58 PM by Recon5