Oh and just to torture your bitten finger some more: Champions, Champions, and Champions.

You are quite right about the quests – I’ve actually dropped Legacy now, only doing mission terminal quests to slowly level up, while having more fun doing sandbox stuff and just playing around. I’m trying to get into the crafting, got a capped alt, but it’s hard…the vets truly have the upper hand there.

Did you ever try out Ryzom? If not, they got a 21 day trial and the crafting in that game is amazing.

As you pointed out, it’s buggy. Many of the issues I experienced during its first year are still present. The quests are still silly (go kill 10 butterflies), and at times don’t make sense (Jedi running around killing people who have offended Jabba?). But the housing has always been the best any MMO has had to offer, and the crafting is still the most dynamic of any game I’ve played.

I probably will give Fallen Earth another try, as I do like the setting.

I hope your friend bounces back soon, that’s always sad to hear. And I know why people are angry at SOE, but take a look at what I’ve written about the game here and you’ll see a bit more of my thoughts about why I think it’s time for the haters to finally let it go.

During beta, one of the biggest complaints was the lack of heroic feel in our characters. Specifically posed was the question, “Why am I running around the desert killing mutants, under the command of the military, rather than in the city, fighting crime?” Then there were the comments calling it not CoH 2.0, but CoH 0.5. I can’t help wondering if Jack is now wishing they hadn’t sold CoX to NCSoft.

Aion is gorgeous. But the grind… ugh! I stopped playing, pending release of the supposed grind-fixing patch. Once that’s been applied, I plan on giving it another spin.

LotRO I played in beta, and during the first few months of release. I enjoyed it, but there was a problem acknowledged by many of Landroval’s early players: it was too hard to find groups.

I spent two full weeks trying to find enough groups to finish the quests at Garth Agarwen, and could never find groups for Fornost. And I could only get as far as Chapter 4 in the books, before even those groups became impossible to find. I eventually gave up and returned to WoW.

Fallen Earth frustrated me during beta. While I loved the tutorial — the commercial that plays when your clone awakens — I found the zombie mobs overwhelming, and with a ridiculously high spawn rate. Perhaps I’ve become spoiled by the ease of WoW, but I don’t think a Level 1 should die half a dozen times, just trying to performing their introductory quests.

What I’m most looking forward to in 2010 is TOR, and hope Bioware can pull it off. I’ve been itching for a good Star Wars game since NGE was released. BTW, my issue with NGE? The replacement of a skill-based system with a class-based one. I liked the variety of the prior system. Given the prevelance of class systems, it was unique. If I was going to be pigeon-holed into a single class, I may as well quit and play EQ2 (which was new, and which I did).

Great summary! I left out EVE from my summary too, I thought I’d do a separate entry for that. Can’t remember if the AA stuff is in there or not, perhaps I just haven’t thought about it – it just looks so preeeeetty already.

All your nice words about King’s Bounty is making me consider picking it up. I remember Eurogamer giving it a shocking 9/10 when it was released.

Speaking of LotRO and me moving to American servers…when will we see you on that side of the pond? C’mon, you know you want to…