Demigawd

I started online gaming back in '98 with Ultima Online. In that game during that time, you had no choice but to confront other humans, often who possessed considerably more powerful avatars. That is, until you played your character-of-choice up to grandmaster level.

And then it became sporting. Your character was at the top compared to the raw power of everyone else. In UO at that time, if you weren't a GM staff mage, you sucked. Now the addition of the Chivalry, the battlefield appears even between melee and magic characters.

I left Ultima Online in '00, and tried Everquest. After banging my head against EQ's level mill, I went to Asheron's Call. While I liked the turbans, it was really just another level mill.

Forgoing online RPGs for two years, I came back to Ultima Online recently in December '02. With the addition of Trammel and later The Age of Shadows, you can build your character in peace-and-enforced-harmony, and THEN go to Felluca for the PvP challenge.

In the day, I played an anti-PVP. I just finished talking with a guy who claims to be an old-school Red. We chatted without after his flight, probably because I was a 7xGM mage retooled as a pure mage/necromancer and his character was a newbie one. He said the Papua Fire Pits was good for PvP action these days.

Why do I post this? Well, it seems Ultima Online is keeping old accounts active. I lent a friend my account as a vendor/house account while I was errant. The oldschool Red claimed he quit in '00, and came back in February '02, and the account was still available.

So, come on back to Ultima Online, if you used have an account. If you're on Chesapeake shard, give me a holler via PM. I'm working on a necro-mage, a chivalric knight, and a blacksmith, and I'm interested in PvP and classic adventuring.

MasterJackass

I hadn't played an MMORPG in over two years until recently when I purchased Shadowbane. The game has a lot of potential, but at the moment is being held down with server problems and unforseen bugs/exploits. Its pvp/gvg system is really cool, but is either not being utilized at all through alliances or on a few servers has become quite borglike where if you don't join up your city is burned to the ground.

Still the game breaks away from the rest of the MMORPG scene and tries to do new things and thats something to be said.

Demigawd

I've read up on Shadowbane through its "vaporware" period. What sort of race/class combos are available as of now in the game? Could I play a giant? A dragon? I'm all about diversity in MMORPGs.

MasterJackass

There are four basic classes that you start out as till you hit level 10. Fighter, healer, mage and rogue. After that you promote to your main class. Rogues can become rangers, scouts, assassins thieves while a fighter can become barbarians, warriors and etc.

From there you can focus on certain skills and even add discipline discs that add other skills and spells.

There are regular races which you can choose from such as being a dwarf(male only), half-giant(also male only). There are elves, aelfborn(sp) which are like half-elves and irekei which are somewhat like red elves who live in the desert. You can also be a shade which looks like a bald albino goth.

There are also restricted races that you have access to if you either preordered the game(to late now) or bought 3,6 or 12 months of gameplay. Don't fret because one of the three races opens up every month so you can play any of them after three months. These races are centaurs, minotaurs and aracoix(sp) which is a type of bird human that can fly.

Each race also has special stats(except humans) such as minotaurs cannot be snared and centaurs can run really fast.

The game is level based, but it goes very fast. Went from 1-20 in about 4 hours on one of my characters. Guilds can build cities and destroy other guild's cities(something I haven't participated in yet).

There are so many ways you can create a character in the game its a little intimidating(you don't want to gimp your character).

It is a fun game, but if you want to check it out you should wait a few months till they fix the bugs and lag.

Ohio_Infidel

I am hooked on a game called EVE-Online right now. It has great PvP.

Demigawd

I may check it out for the hell of it this coming weekend. I kinda like the true test of true beta game testing.

MasterJackass

Well if you do pick it up I mainly play on mourning(unofficial roleplaying server). A suggestion would be once you pick a server you like make a healer as your main or alt and make some cash summoning people. I'm probably the only person who likes a server crash because I can make a killing off of people needing summons.

Bumble Bee Tuna

I think a game that would qualify as a "sport for us nerds" would be something along the lines of a FPS, perhaps a very team-oriented game like Battlefield:1942. That resembles a sport a little bit better, and has the advantage of being an even playing field all around.

-B

Kinross

The game you are looking for is Planetside. It comes out in two weeks