I’m currently playing (sort of) 3 Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG): Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR), Rift, and Eve Online.
RIFT
Rift is broadly similar to WoW. On a story level, both feature two multi-racial factions locked in violent conflict, with crazy nasty things out to get both factions, the elemental dragons from the Rifts. Rift has an interesting conceit in that one faction, the blessed-by-the-gods guardians have their characters’ starting area set in the past, where they beat back an incursion by the elemental dragons, set in motion by the rival faction, the techno-magical Defiant, and they then warp to the “present” at the end of their starting zone. The Defiant, on the other hand, start out in the future, as the last outpost of life on the planet, scoured clean by the elemental dragons, after the guardians failed to stop them. The defiant suck the souls out of the guardian “ascended” to create their own ascended, and send them back to the “present” to duke it out and save the world. Rift compresses the story in ways that WoW (which has different starting stories for each race, not just each faction) or SWTOR (starting area for each class/faction combo) do not. It’s a smaller world that WoW’s world, but it’s also younger (in terms of amount of time each MMO has been on the market).
The mechanics are remarkably similar to WoW. In WoW you choose a class from 8 base classes (9 including advanced classes, and soon to be 10). How it works after that has changed a few times and is slated to change even more in the next version, but each class has three talent trees, which modify abilities your character gains as they level. Characters get one point per level to invest in that tree. Characters generally pick one and run with it, turning to another tree only after maxing their first tree out (used to be this was a choice, now it’s mandatory). Eventually, you were allowed to set up the ability to build a character’s talents multiple ways, and swap between the builds. In Rift you choose one of four callings (the D&D classics: fighter, cleric, mage, rogue). Each calling has eight “soul trees” associated with it. By the time you exit the intro level, you have three souls. Each soul tree functions very much like a talent tree from WoW, with three catches. First, within a calling, a character can mix and match soul trees freely. Not all choices are good, of course, but there are several legitimate combinations for any given role. Second, characters have to diversify a bit. Every third level, characters get a bonus point (normally just one per level, like WoW). And you can’t have more points in a given soul tree than you have levels. So starting at level 4, you have to put points in another tree. Finally, characters don’t get new abilities just for leveling, instead players invest points in a particular soul tree, the character will gain corresponding abilities.
Finally, Rift’s artistic style is more serious than WoW. The buildings in WoW don’t seem structurally plausible, nor do the characters in many cases. Sure, elves are supposed to be thin, but Barbie has more realistic proportions than night elves. And, WoW is an older game, which shows in places. Rift’s characters look human, or like plausible variants on humans. Its buildings look like something that could plausibly be built with materials and technology that are neither supernatural nor modern. And there’s something just a bit grittier, and less silly about it all.
SWTOR
Mechanically, it seems to be a dumbed down WoW to me. There are technically 8 classes with each class having two options to pursue at level 10, but as best I can tell, there are really only 4 with different names for the republic and empire versions. And each of those 4 base classes splits into two advanced classes. Both advanced classes share one skill tree (akin to talent or soul trees), while each has two skill trees unique to the advanced class. One skill point per level, modifying abilities gained as a character levels. But at the higher levels of a skill tree, there are just enough slots to advance you to the next level. It doesn’t seem like there’s much in the way of interesting choices in the skill trees, which is a shame, because the system has been executed in interesting ways in other games. They do have a very basic space combat simulation in it as well, which is a good way to kill five minutes for some minimal in game rewards, but not all that impressive overall.
Graphically, the style is fine, but I find the game a bit underwhelming in quality. Character customization leaves much to be desired. Whether it’s the lack of neatly trimmed facial hair or five o’clock shadow, or the plastic-y looking hair, it’s just not up to its competitors. I found Dragon Age: Origins (lo those many years ago) more impressive.
Eve Online
I have heard about Eve Online for years, and was intrigued by what I’d heard, specifically that it had a strong, player based economy that was more the focus that the combat angle. I liked the player economy when I played Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), because the best items were crafted by players, there was a crafting system which encouraged lots of cheap items of decent quality and a few luxury items that were substantially more expensive for modest improvements in quality. So, I noticed a free trial and decided to give it a whirl.
Eve Online seems practically story free. It has history, it has flavor text for its factions, and a variety of other interesting factors, it has some minimal attempt at character for its NPCs, but story doesn’t seem to be what they focused on. The setting is space. You are a clone fresh out of the vat and early on in the intro sequence, there is an anodyne, nearly synthetic voice which casually mentions that since you are alive the original has been euthanized. Sadly, I’ve not seen something showing nearly as much flavor or personality since. I was kinda hoping for something GlaDOS-esque. But visually, the game is amazing, and the economy seems very well put together. It gives you an appreciation for the immensity and scale of space. Most of your travel is done by warping from place to place within a solar system, or warping between solar systems (and the special effects for this are neat the first 10-20 times. You’ll be used to them within an hour or two). This is done quickly (takes only a few seconds to do either one of these steps, though for longer trips you may have to do several warps and it could add up to a few minutes). However, while moving, you see how tiny your ship is in comparison to space stations, how tiny those are in comparison to planets, and the distance to the star at the core of each system. Sadly, the systems all feel pretty similar, despite the lovely (if scientifically horribly inaccurate) nebulae depicted all over the sky.
However, from my brief dip into the game so far, it seems like most of the world is player-made. Players can mine resources from asteroids, and use them to build items ranging from minor ship upgrades to complete space stations. I think that is awesome. I don’t think I want to go that far down this particular rabbit hole, but had I started hear, I can’t imagine I’d have been terribly interested in other MMOs. There are some limits of course. While players can “innovate” by upgrading or tweaking game-created designs, there is no way to design a whole new ship, or base, or what have you. It does look interesting, from a heady, economist perspective with interstellar travel and all that, but it lacks any sort of character or human interest angle from my initial playing. In fact, while you do create an avatar for your pilot, they could have set up the game just fine without it. You could have stayed on board your ship the whole time and it would have been much the same game.