I have current subs to: WoW (EU), WAR (EU), LOTRO (EU — came back for a month to see Moria and forgot to cancel the resub in time so have an extra month now.)

Would be happy to give CoX a go, or any of the above. With CoX, I’d have to start from scratch though (so could be US or EU). Or even EVE or … I dunno really. Trying out Vanguard or EQ2 with friends could be cool too.

Or whatever else we may all be playing. Speaking of, *is* there a game we’re ALL playing? Premium and/or otherwise.

Current subs: WoW, CoX

I probably wouldn’t be averse to LOTRO with friends. Was in LOTRO and Vanguard betas and picked the latter on release. It had a more complex (*snort*) crafting system.

Still, I’m firmly of the opinion that it’s the fellow players that make an MMO as much as the game itself, so TCoS wouldn’t be off the cards for me, but I’d more likely be there for the companionship than the game in that case.

I imagine Zoso could be ‘arm-twisted’ into enjoying the company of others too, being that he’s the easy-going amenable one with the competent social skills.

I dunno if it ties into raiding so much, but I love shiny new things and cool game mechanics. So if I’m giving my first impressions, you can be sure I’ll glom onto anything like that and pass briefly over the same-old-same-old. But I really wouldn’t take my first impressions as meaning that what you want isn’t what MMOs deliver (it might be, but I’d need to know more about what you want!). And I also don’t know about Spellborn and raiding.

I do love puzzle-type games. One of the reasons I like PvE (and, yes, raids) is that I enjoy the challenge of thinking up and executing tactics to beat the puzzle of the encounter. It’s not the only thing I like about MMOs, I love immersive persistent game worlds, but I long since gave up on any MMO giving me the immersion I had in MUSHes.

But I guess what I wanted to say is that this is really my first impressions. I only levelled one character to level 7 and did a few quests. The things that really stood out to me were the combat stuffs and the way the debuffs worked, so that’s what I wrote about.

It may appeal to the raid obsessed because combat is a bit more of a minigame here. So figuring out how to optimise your skill deck is likely to be a big part of the game. How big a part I dunno though, it’s just what mostly caught my eye in this first impression.

The downside for me is that the quests really were quite dull, and I was quite intimidated by the huge list of available skills. It’s not a smooth learning curve.

Would be fun to hang out somewhere though, I think all these games are pretty cool if you go in with a bunch of friends (or at least people you want to talk to ).

* Where you think of the perfect cutting remark (or really clever comment) only AFTER slamming the door and starting down the stairs. (Or hitting the Submit button.)

For this, I would try it one more time. Though I’d have to redownload it… and my HD is getting crowded. (Right now, CoX test >> anything else. Mmm Mission Editor.)

@ Melmoth re: tolerance. I bet it does. I was wondering the same myself as I read it, and thinking maybe I was a little harsh. Maaaaaybe I can learn to play a reticle system. (Though the plain fact is, I’ve been crap at those since … always. This is not a recent thing for me.) I can’t walk, talk and chew gum with a reticle system.