I played DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) for about two years. I played WoW for about 4 months. I played SWG for about 5 Months. I've been playing Eve Online for about 3 Months and DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) since the headstart launch on Feb 24, 2006.Obviously I really liked DAoC. In fact I would recommend it to most anyone for a long term game, even tho its been out quite awhile.Pros: Its very playable on dial-up, even in PvP. Three realms to choose from. Can create many characters on any server/shard cluster, but only in one realm per cluster. There's lots of PvE with all the expansions indoors (dungeons, cripts, etc.) and out. Even under water in the ToA(Trials of Atlantis) expansion! You could PvP underwater as well! Good mix of instances and open areas. Nice selection of items from weapons and armor to jewelry. Leveling is a bit slow, but I really enjoyed it most of the time. You can pvp from level 1 to max level. I really like playing a thief, because I could stealth and attack from stealth provided I wasn't detected, which was most of the time. Necromancers and Minstrels were the Albion PvE kings for many encounters, if you had pretty good equipment and best buffs. Soloing wasn't hard for the most part, especially with a buffbot. PvP was good in full groups and was a blast with 100+ people raids into enemy realms.Con's: It takes a long time (6 months?) to become competitive in the highest levels of PvP which is pretty much the end game. There are high level raids, artifacts, and the trials that are really absolute musts for PvP. High bandwidth is recommended for pvp, but it is possible on dial-up most of the time. May be hard finding people to PvP below level 20. Most of the trials require raid sized parties of 12 if not more, but were schedualed fairly often. I went on several with 100+ people. Any artifacts you may want to acquire, require leveling by killing mobs in certain areas depending on the artifact. Some artifacts level fast and some are painfully slow. 100+ people raids to enemy realms was infrequent. Like 4 a year iirc. 100+ people anywhere was lag city on dial up. Could use some balancing class wise. Most jewelry isn't seen by others. Only your cloak iirc.WoW was fun for a while. Can create many (50?) characters and lots of servers/shards to choose from. Could solo most everything around your level, but level faster in groups. I duoed most of my medium to high levels with a friend I met in-game. Not much to do after max level except raid. I couldn't PvP on dial-up. Six or more people on each side would lag me really bad. Not sure if this has improved in the last 6 months. Good game if your looking for something to do for a few months.SWG was fun when I started. Fantastic player oriented crafting system, but all that changed with the NGE (New Game Enhancement) revamp. Now its like a clumsy first person shooter and crafting has fallen by the wayside imho. It was really dumbed down as far as profession choices go. Can only create up to 8 characters per account. Only one (or two?) charcters per server. JTL (Jump to Lightspeed) expansion is the best part of the game, again imho. Great 3D PvE space combat. Not sure if there is any PvP left in this game.Eve Online is still interesting to me. Can only create 3 charaters per account, but one is plenty since you can only train one at a time and training occurs in real time, even if off-line. Its a skill based system where anyone can learn any skill. Takes a couple of years to learn most/all skills. Over 90% of the items are player made. People are fairly friendly. PvP is fun and engaging, but can be expensive equipment wise. Some equipment may get destroyed if your ship is destroyed. The rest will be floating in space where your ship exploded until the timer runs out or someone (anyone) picks it up. I was having some lag trouble on dial up in PvP and PvE. Mostly during prime time. Haven't played since they upgraded their hardware, but will first chance I get. Just set a new record of over 25k people in-game on the only server/shard. Thats like double the record set like 6-9 months ago. It will be interesting to see how many concurrent users they can handle in this non-instanced game. There really is a lot to choose from when learning skills. You can do research, crafting, trader, miner, hauler, and missions. Maybe more. The universe is huge, but a little lacking in color and heavenly body stuff. One solar system looks pretty much like any other. Definately has a lot to offer tho overall.DDO: Best PvE combat ever imho. Less than a month old. People were very friendly. Has a built in voice chat for groups, but it is still a bit buggy sometimes. Does its best to follow the 3.5 PnP (pen and paper) ruleset. No crafting yet. No PvP ever. Hard to solo. Dialup lag still in full groups, but has improved tremendously. Not much to do but quests, which they need more of. Free expansion due next month to current subscribers. Some Dungeon loot tables need to be rebalanced and prolly will be. Everything is instanced. Some novel ideas may make this a pretty good game eventually, but if I'm not satisfied with the game after the the free expansion I will prolly cancel.No matter what you decide, may your aim be true and don't forget to duck.Reguards,Olgamer7
