i'm not sure exactly what keeps bringing me back to WoW... i like the challenge of the endgame content; the competitive nature between guilds to be the first one to kill a certain boss. i like the teamwork involved. i like to pvp a lot too, although a lot of people are disappointed with the BGs and the new world PvP stuff coming out in 1.12 look pretty stupid. 

about a Quake MMO for some time. I picture the coming together of all three Quake legends [General Quake's Minions, the Strogg and the Vadrigar]. It could be some sort of fourway war spread out through various different galaxies and dimensions.

Character levelling elements would have to be kept to a minimum to maintain Quake's simplicity, but perhaps higher 'level' characters could carry different default weapons, stronger armor, higher ammo capacity etc.

It would be a gigantic team coop game.

Mmmmm. 

I don't know what netcode, server architecture etc etc etc would have to be arranged, but the idea of having about 30 or 40 players cooping on a map a bit like marcher.bsp but EVEN BIGGER is almost more than I can cope with.

(my brain is bent out of shape from programming to hard right now though) 

If I recall correctly, LordHavoc is working on some kind of MMOFPS...not sure if he's using some kind of modified Quake engine as the framework for it (probably not) but I know he mentioned that as being one of his current projects.

Everyone I know has been saying Titan Quest is an excellent game and therefore I think it is probably well worth �17.99. Most of these same people spent between 50-70 hours just getting through all the content the first time around.

I think MMORPGs are a pretty transparent money grab and as such I have never played one. I love single player RPGs because you get a nice smattering of story along with your combat and you enjoy spending time with the carefully (or sometimes not carefully) crafted characters. In an MMORPG I don't get to spend time with carefully crafted characters -- I get to spend it with annoying people who will e-yell at me because I'm not "aggro" enough or I haven't spent 200 hours mining for gold some shit like that.

The other thing I like about RPGs is that they have an end. Even if a book was the most engaging thought provoking book in history, I would want there to be an end at some point so I could dwell on it and be satisfied with having finished it. 

where can i get this MMORPGs??? 

a massive multiplayer quake could be done. Quakeworld servers with deathmatch=0 and spprogs.dat (so it becomes coop-like) and teleports leading to other servers. Would require some customization of course, and I don't know if the game dynamic is plausible at all, how you would design the maps etc, and how you would "score" the progress etc. 

I was thinking something along those lines. A modular system like GuildWars, so you could have non-combat maps [such as a quake/strogg/marine/vadrigar HQ] where players meet up and discuss tactics etc. before jumping through a slipgate or on to a spaceship to go to a battle map and meet a set of players from an opposing force. Upon winning a battle, the team wins something or other for their HQ. Quakes forces might win Runes, whilst the Strogg could take back the corpses for energy, etc. etc. 

if you had separate textures, downloading maps could be really quick. This could already be possible by making maps with really simple textures and using external tga:s. Dunno.

Slipgates to other servers were done already in 1997 or so (remember when iNET had a "front end" server which had slipgates to all of their servers). 

All you Titan Quest gits need to get on irc sometime and we can have romp around online. I have a lvl42 battlemage and recently beat normal skill. 

my current character is fire / ice mage, and yeah the lower tier ice spells are a bit poo, but DAMN once you get a high level lightning bolt spell it does serious damage! basicly my level 11 lightning bolt can 1-hit pretty much anything apart from bosses, and as it goes up levels it gains area damage too (heh).

Anyone tried the "spirit" (I think its called that) class tree? It looked kind of necromancer 'ish and I was gonna try it next. 

http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/etqw/ 

I think Quake2 as some sort of "Guild wars" alike game. Is a central server for coop games. but I am not a q2 guy so I dont know much. 

i replayed both games, system shock 1 and 2, recently. what a great retro experience! :)

i thought ss1 would be too hard to swallow in terms of graphics, but with the cd version (which is abandonware apparently) it was very ok. all it needed was an inofficial winxp patch..
controls are dodgy at first but it works once one knows the strafe keys. i really liked the game's atmosphere - very immersive - and the textures looked cool (colorful, in a positive way). also, this was the first time i played the game with voice-acted audio logs, which are a nice addition (even though they always pronounced "cyborg" incorrectly :)).
proper story (back then it was still original) and story development; cyberspace; skulls in crates..
the ending was a bit strange though, because the final cutscene started immediately after having drained shodan's health (no death animation).
strongly recommended if you are in the mood again!

getting ss2 to run, on the other hand, was quite an effort: i had to run the setup with some arcane parameter, apply lots of patches and use a slowdown tool while playing. later, i had to get fixed versions of two of the maps for they would not load, and finally needed to regsvr some file to be able to watch the ending cutscene...
well, graphics are better of course (3d), though at the same time made the game look kind of boring - too bright and shiny. compare ss1 with ss2 screenshots and you will see.
i liked the way the story was continued, with the approach of "the many" and all. near the end, one even has to destroy its body and fights within a living organism grown over a part of the ship. the final area (shortly before the fight against shodan) was also pretty nice, as it is a part of the first level from ss1. average ending, but at least made way for another sequel.
the 'leveling system' (buying tech/weapon/etc upgrades) as well as the choice of different player classes in the beginning was more distracting than helpful. psi powers did not really kick it either.
what annoyed me most were the respawning enemies - it's ok in principle, but it just sucks having to blast away security mechs every single time when returning to certain spots..
psi reaver enemies were quite a nice idea, though: they are floating apparitions with very tough psi attacks that respawn after a short when being killed. the only way to defeat them is to destroy a weak 'brain organism' hidden nearby. might be interesting to see something like that in quake... ;)

btw. a somewhat nice feature of both games (related to recent prey fake-death discussions): almost every deck of the station/ship has a regenerator which can restore your body when you have been killed. but it has to be found and activated first (otherwise one gets transformed into a cyborg or just dies). this at least still maintains some tension until the 'rescuing switch' is found (especially if one plays as intelligently as i did and walks into the wrong direction, only finding it after having cleared the entire deck :P). 

now that I have a comp that can run it, either of the dungeons sieges recommended ?

which one's better ? grpahics ? 

I completed the 1st one and quite enjoyed it, though it can get quite trite in places. I only played the demo of number 2 and wasn't particularly impressed by it.

Have you looked at titan quest also? 

I thought it was pretty good. I normally suck quite profusely at RPGs (how ironic, eh?) but I didn't have much trouble with this. I never finished it, though. I got near the end and just stopped playing, but I don't remember why exactly.

Graphics are decent to good. If you're still playing Quake and those graphics don't bother you, then I doubt you'll have a problem with this.

I haven't played Dungeon Siege 2. 

I'm not much ofan RPG man myself RPG (hehe), but I liked Diablo2 and heard this was similar (ie more hack/slash than RPG).

might give it a whirl. 

I had heard the enviroments wereboring but I couldn't imagine they would be SO AWEFULLY LIFELESS and they really killed the immersion. Bad dialouge/acting combat/enemies feel weak although when placed in groups in a room full of physic objects it gets slightly interesting.

I totally will not play the full game. 

People complain a lot about the FEAR environments being boring but they're just office buildings and warehouses with some tech facilities. They're not anything amazing or innovative but they are well executed and good at what they do. It's a game about a guy terrorizing a city and you work with a SWAT-type team to take him out within said city. What did you expect, volcanoes and tropical tree forts? 

It's definitely not for lack of talent on the level design team. They had some veterans including long lost community member and former Freshteam mapper kanaeda 

was not about it being offices and wareshouses but that they were poorly excecuted and not very convincing at all with crappy lighting etc.

Maybe later levels look better but these days I tend to judge games quick wich I guess in some cases might be unfair but if it doesn't hook me I'm not going to waste my time on it. 

http://frictionalgames.com/penumbra

Its a first person horror/thriller set in an underground complex of some sort in Greenland, and featues some pretty nifty ideas and oldskool puzzle gameplay.

I have to mention 1st the physics and how the player interacts with the world. Top open a door you have to click and hold the mouse and then drag the mouse in the direction you want to apply force to the door, thereby opening it, sounds simple but this mechanic is used for multiple things in the game and works great. Reminds me a little of that old game "Trespasser" with the virtual hands (that sucked) but thankgod the implementation here is solid and easy to control and really helps sell the immersion.

Which brings me nicely to the 2nd great thing about this game, the atmosphere. I dunno what it is about this game, but it really sucks me in, its just so creepy it freaks you out! The combo of doom3 style lighting and visuals, the player controled physics interaction, and the fact that you have NO WEAPONS to defend yourself just makes it terrifying.

Yes there is NO WEAPONS, this is not an fps, more of FPP (first perpon puzzler) like Portal etc, it does have some very oldskool puzzle elements such as combining items to create new items (this can be quite obscure at times) and using inventory items on the world.

Again this brings me nicely to the major drawback I found with this game, some of them item combos and world objects to use said items on can be very obscure and not clear at all, which does lead to frustration when you cannot find where to go or what to use items on. The game does have a handy notebook system to keep info on but its not enough, something I hope the developer fixes for the full product.

In closing, this game rocks, totally differrnt take on the horror/thriller genre and it works, it is created by an indie developer (just 3 guys iirc) and has cool motion blur :D

Please try this :) 

this sounds like the kind of game I'm inclined towards these days. 

that sounds like the first game in a looooong time that is interesting. 

...there seems to be some sort of electrical chord...

The in-game text really strikes a cord with me.

Oh, but yeah, the control scheme sounds interesting.