Totally salute you for saying it dude, so many others in the past just slope off - making it worse for the guys who do stick around till the bitter (I get there first btw as I am already so bitter
) end in which ever game. You know you'll find a home somewhere - just hope its a group that isnt as bitter as us (or me...)
To be honest, the MMOs we do play together just get less and less engaging - for me at least anyway -
Wow - was the first for many of us, and the first of that specific section of MMOs for me (crafting in swg and pvp in planetside were very different to what I found in wow) and really did have a hook and worked really well on bringing people together - until LFD and such things came in.
Lotro - great story, lots of stuff that could be done as groups, but eventually again we drifted apart on there due to RL/whatever/EVE, and then when we did it try it again the great group content wasnt there, it was now bitesize or just easy mode. And then of course there are its expansions which just make it more like a korean grind mmo every few months.
War - Massive promise, awesome execution up until we saw the cluster fuck that was T4. Good story, a world several of us had dabbled in as nippers and generally fun times. We had a good solid group up until that point - and then we went EVE.
EVE - My baby. Again started with a solid group, but I think the time commitment for eve is too much for many - especially as we got older and had families/career changes/vanished (Rubino!). I am still there mind - mainly as its the best of the PEW PEW environments on offer. No battlegrounds, no grinds to get gear to be better - just market trading if you have half a brain (or incursions if you dont). Hell Im a director - and major content provider - for a community of over 2000 characters (possibly 1600 actual people, several hundred of which are online every week. This keeps me engaged - and feeling like I want to nuke the world some days - there is very few boundaries as to what we can do/how we do it. My attachment to eve is my own issue of course although in some ways a symptom of the wider issues that plague our little group
SWTOR - Class line (trooper at least) so bloody amazing. Really is great playing that through - and being in the same timeline as KOTOR with the throw backs to it just adds a nice touch. But, as others have said, they felt too much like a single player game with some chat thrown in. Ive mentioned elsewhere that they could have intertwined them all more - much more as in actually intertwine them, give players more reason to group outside of heroics (and even then so many people across the game just gave up on those due to the retard crowd making them harder than they seemed) and the flashpoints, which except for FE are forgettable and do not really seem to tie in to any story that I can see. Personally, I am not sure if I am done or not with the game - still want to experience some of the other storys, but while they are more solo experiences I dont think its worth it - given that the grouping options dont "grab" me as much as such used to do. I got to 50 on my Trooper, took one look at the "dailies, tokens, weeklys, bags for this, bags for that", lazydev mode of content provision and just realised I cannot be bothered, despite wanting to try and keep going. Such stuff doesnt engage me, I want content, story, that sort of thing in a game like this made in a universe that is so rich and by a great group of software bods, not the same old same old that bores me in level based mmos as it is :S
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Also yes we have all grown up and changed a lot, we just arent who we were 7 years ago (dayum!) or 4 years ago for others and so on.