Looking for an MMO

Metraxis · n00b Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 16

In the vein of the Looking fior an RPG thread, I find myself looking for an MMO to eat up some time with.

Requirements:

Price: Not a huge issue. A game that is profitable is one that gets attention, and subscription pricing is fine with me up to a certain point.

Native: Either Linux native or running perfectly on vanilla WINE. The EOL on the official Linux client is the reason I quit EVE. If I wanted to be aggravated by my computer, I'd do "emerge --sync && emerge -uvDNa --quiet-build world"

In short, I'm willing to pay for my games, but not to futz with them to make them work after paying for them.

"Finished": MMO and Linux game directories seem to be full of half-finished development ideas and simple proof-of-concept worlds that haven't had their "Under Construction" signs moved about in the last 3 or 4 years. This gets boring, and betas that last forever seem to be excuses more than opportunities.

Popularity: Several dozen concurrent players are really needed to generate the kind of social dynamic that sets the MMO as a genre apart from other game types.

Games I've tried:
A Tale in the Desert - Played through nearly all of Tale 1, and had a good time. A lot of the work seemed to get too worky for me after the first year, though I did enjoy wine-making and genetic engineering a great deal. I like crafting systems and technology trees, but a complete lack of homicide opportunities may have been a bit much.

Puzzle Pirates: Fun for a while, but ultimately suffe4red from being entirely too incomplete when I played. I tried again recently, but it only held my attention for a few weeks.

Regnum Online: Again, very much a work in progress when I tried it last, and Portuguese is not on my fluent list.

Planeshift: Respectable, though with perhaps too much space for its player base. I almost never saw anyone, and the client was a bit crashy. Again, some years ago, so things may have changed.

EVE: The first really good MMO experience after a Tale in the Desert. Played for a year or more, but the Apocrypha expansion killed it for me, since the PRrmium Graphic client under WINE consistently died on me within 15 minutes of login. A recent peek through their Forums seems to indicate that a certain amount of surgery is needed to make the game run even now.

Vendetta Online: I've enjoyed physics-style space flight since MANTIS back in the day, but there seems to be too much obsession focused on 'not being EVE' which has led to some bad design decisions.

Things I'd Like to Avoid:
The World of Warcraft simply doesn't appeal.

So there's my screed, and any advice is certainly welcome.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

LotRO works great in Wine (although you need a little launch script). Only tried the 10 day trial of wow, but LotRO seems to fix the little annoyances I had with that game. And the stories and lore is much better.
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Metraxis · n00b Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 16

LotRO looks promising from a strictly game-play standpoint, but initial browsing at WineHQ suggests that attempting to actually install and run the game is going to be an exercise in futility. Can you shed some light on the reality of the situation?

disi · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:58 am Post subject:

Those guys here: http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/

It's a first person MMORPG based on the second world war.
They made a poll to ask if they should offer a Linux client on Phoronix forums once.

It runs on a MAC so there shouldn't be too much trouble to run in wine...

Here is a "wine" guide: http://wiki.wwiionline.com/index.php/Linux

//edit: I haven't tested it myself, but always wanted to

just had other things on my mind lately than playing :/
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Raptor85 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 208

Ultima Online w/ the classic client, never had an issue with it under WINE and I've been playing it on linux for nearly 8 years (on and off, taken a few multi-year breaks)now. (first program I ever actually tested under WINE)

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

Metraxis · n00b Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 16

As it happens, I'm currently experimenting with Runes of Magic, which runs quite nicely in WINE 1.44, including playing nicely with KDE Desktop Effects while running full-screen, and has an installation package that works (segmented download of the whole package, rather than a fetch-installer) perfectly well. The revenue model seems similar to that of Kingdom of Loathing, which has held my interest for 5 years+ despite being a browser-based stick-figure game, so I may stick with it.

it seems, based on what I've seen at WineHQ, like there is a software package underlying a lot of these fetch-installers (Boost something or other, it's been a couple days since I read it) that is the real cause of the issue, and unbreaking it in WINE will unbreak a lot of other packages, including LotRO.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

The problem with LotRO is that the launcher is .NET which doesn't seem to be installable through Wine. Should be easily worked around if you can find your way through all the information at WineHQ though.
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cloudff7pc · n00b Joined: 10 Jun 2010 Posts: 2

Why don't you take a look at Anarchy Online? I'm sure that's installable in WINE and it's a science-fiction game with a lot of numbers involved if you wish there to be in order to twink your character. Similar to World of Warcraft in that you train up by doing missions and killing but the userbase is much more mature.

jodel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Sep 2004 Posts: 113

btw, they're making LotRO free to play now.

Also I really suggest you give WoW a try, its Wine support is perfect.
Mr. T can't be wrong

Hyper_Eye · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 9:54 am Post subject:

Runes of Magic is really nice and it is free-to-play (has purchasable items.) The only thing I dislike is that after installing the client you have to let it download and apply every update and it takes a ridiculously long time. Seriously, let the updates start and then walk away. Once it is installed and updated though you are in for a great MMO. While many aspects are WoW-like it has some nice features that make it unique such as a detailed trade system that allows for working with multiple trades and a dual-class system. In my sig there is a link to my vids on Youtube and I did a video of RoM running with Wine a few months ago. It is now one of my most popular videos.
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