Any Old Skool Asheron's Call Players in Beta?

[BJHawk]

I'm 41 now and hope an AC type game comes out before my gaming days are over. My son's 10 now and he plays games with me but never got to enjoy AC. I would to share that with him.

Here's hoping GW2 hears our pleas!

I think that is super cool. When I was a kid we only had one computer with a decent graphics card, so I usually would watch my dad play AC. It was much more interesting than TV, and he even let my brothers and me help decide where to go and what to do. Once we had multiple computers, he let us create our own characters and play around. I think in total I probably played a few hours a week for 2-3 months. I was level 40-something though, and Jump was my highest skill.

I agree with everything else you said. Linear gameplay gets old really fast for me. After about three "kill 10 x" quests, I'm usually ready to quit, and after three more I'm ready to shoot myself (not really). A gathering quest every so often doesn't spice it up, despite what designers seem to believe. The ability to repeat the same quest x number of times each day does not spice it up either. Typical modern MMOs seem to place 99.8% of the fun in raiding/PvP at endgame, while 99.8% of player time is spent in an extensive grind trying to prove he deserves to have access to that fun. Questing for XP is merely a somewhat complicated attempt to deter people from botting to endgame. My experience may be especially bad, because I'm young, frequently broke, and mostly play free-to-play MMORPGs. I'm sure these are even worse than p2p games, though I've had more fun in some of them than I had in any p2p games' free trials.

I don't expect GW2 to be all that AC was, but everything I've seen tells me it will be the best game since. I certainly hope they are able to pull off everything they have planned. If they can, it will be fantastic.

[Abused]

Totally agree.

I'm blessed with a high paying job that I've had since I was 20 and you're not missing out on much. I still play F2P games more than paid games just because the bar is so low with paid games. MW2 for example, great game, no support. Hackers ran rampant and the developers did nothing. I swore I would never buy another Infinity Ward game and I haven't.

F2P games I still play or keep track of:
Battlefield F2P - http://battlefield.play4free.com/en/
Quakelive - http://www.quakelive.com - I play it all the time
Dungeons & Dragons - http://www.ddo.com One of the better F2P MMOs and made my Turbine
Everquest2 - http://www.everquest2.com/
Firefall - http://firefallthegame.com G4TV mentioned this game and I've been following it. Looks pretty good!