Shaiya

[Goalie]

I have to say this game is quite interesting.  It's a free MMO, and to be honest, the gameplay reminds me a lot of WoW.  You'll see what I mean when you try it.

There are two factions, the Alliance of Light and the *Something* of Fury.  (Can't remember what that something is)  There 4 different species, and in each species there are 3 classes, so altogether there are 12 possible combinations (Not including gender).  There is an area called "The Borderlands," where both factions can meet in a never ending duel for territory.  There are 4 modes to play on, and each mode determines how much experience and skill points you receive.  Plenty of quests, bosses, dungeons, and monsters to kill in Shaiya; you'll just have to see for yourself.

The developers, Aeria Games, have several other games to choose from.  I believe that Shaiya is their only MMO.

[HastaLaVista]

Tried it, but it didn't "WoW" me. (heh...)

Currently am playing Runes of Magic, which is so much like WoW it is scary... but it follows the typical free to play MMO formula. (Cash shop stuff that, while not necessary, is really the only practical way to play the game smoothly... The only permanent mounts are cash shop, though you can rent 2 hour ones in game for game currency. Upgrade materials from cash shop have a much higher chance of success than free ones, etc...) One nice thing is that they allow people to sell cash shop items in-game for game currency, so if you really want a perm mount, you can farm the gold and buy it from a player who bout it with real $$$.

It's still in beta (open beta) but is supposed to go live in a couple weeks. I have no idea how they are going to manage that, as there is no end-game content yet, and about 1/4 of the quests still have text in Chinese... lol! Not to mention broken quests, and a lot of bugs.

The cool thing about RoM is you pick 2 classes, your main and sub out of six total, giving 30 (?) possible combinations.  Then you can switch between each as needed. When you have 1 class as main, you have access to some of the other classes skills and benefits. The down side is that everyone has an opinion about which combos are good and bad, and will let you know it all the time. Also bad is that you have to level each class separately from level 1 up to max lvl 50, so it is twice the work, and  there's not enough quests to avoid a lot of grinding in the later levels.

-Loq