There are many seasonal events that offer additional quests and rewards and change the look and feel of the areas effected (mostly hub areas). Living World content has a major impact on the game world, including an entire year long period where the main hub at Lion's Arch was destroyed as part of a Living World story and then rebuilt.
The game has fantastic attention to detail with consistent visual design between the races and absolutely stunning scenery, especially in hub locations like Lion's Arch.
Depending on your race, your profession, and a few other choices you make when you create a character, you will have a unique story arc that unfolds with you as you level up.
They have released two additional add-on products, each with new stories and worlds, Perhaps more importantly, they added gliders, and lately mounts, for enhancing the game experience everywhere, even in the classic world.
Whilst there's at least one event for pretty much every season they've recycled a lot of the content each time. For instance, the Halloween events tend to be roughly the same each year.
You can absolutely play up to level 80 and have lots of fun exploring the personal story and the open world. But there are a few things that are locked until you spend some money -- any amount of money -- on the game. The most annoying feature when on a free-to-play account is that you can only buy and sell a very limited number of things via the game's trading post. Having said that, in my opinion the value you get for the money you do spend is really high.
Guild Wars 2 was one of the pioneers of the "World vs World" combat system, where three servers are given a group of maps to fight over for control and dominance, rewarding the victors over battles that rage on for several days. MMOs since have copied and enhanced this formula, but it's first big success was with Guild Wars 2.
You pick a class as usual, but, once your character reaches level 10 it can go and grab any and all of the other classes. Each class has it's own weapon (axe for marauders, daggers for rogue, etc.), so you just equip that weapon type to switch classes. You do have to level every class from 1, but there are plenty of opportunities to do so (side-quests, solo and group repeatables, dungeons, etc.).
The game itself has a base price of $19.99, but also has expansion pack prices that could be added on top of that. This is just to get the game, once purchased the player will also need to pay a monthly subscription of $12.99 to continue playing the game, which can add up over time making for a pretty steep investment for some.
The trial period is very generous, but it does end. The main story quest really starts to pick up right when you hit the cut-off. The thing that really starts to hurt the most, aside from the level cap, is the inventory space. You do not have access to a bank so, while the inventory is pretty big, you end up playing inventory tetris quite a bit.
The card game from FF8 is in FF14. There are NPC's throughout the game world that you can challenge to Triple Triad duels. You do not lose cards when you lose as you did in FF8. Each NPC you can challenge has a small pool of cards you can win. They can also not give you any card for winning, so getting all their cards requires grinding a bit. You do, however, get credits for beating them that can be spent on booster packs in the Gold Saucer.
The Gold Saucer from FF7 makes a return in FF14. You can play Triple Triad (card game from FF8), race chocobos, gamble, participate in random events (like a race or a dance-off), etc. You get a special currency that you can turn in for cosmetic stuff like mounts (or for more Triple Triad cards).
You can play the game for free, but there are restrictions. You can level all the classes up to 35 (which is a LOT of content). This means you are locked from dungeons or whatever that require a level above 35. You also cannot access the Market/Auction House.
There are things called FATES that will spawn in certain places on the map, and they are like quick little quests that are rewarding to do. They range from easy to hard.
You have a quest line you follow from the moment your character is created, and the story is good. It is also how you gain access to dungeons (with a few exceptions).
There are a lot of references to earlier FF's. There are Moogles and chocobos. There are guys named Cid, Biggs, and Wedge. You fight the classic summons, such as Ifrit, Shiva, and Alexander, and classic bosses such as Ultima Weapon. They are also looking into possible ways to implement Blitzball from FF10, and they have already implemented Triple Triad from FF8. The Gold Saucer from FF7 is present, as well.
ESO's character system is based on skill lines; each class provides three. There are dozens of other skill lines, including all weapons and armor, which are open to all characters. Resource stats (Health, Stamina, Magicka) aren't tied to class either. This means any character can use any gear and be built to fill any role.
Elder Scrolls games have always placed the world's unabashedly bizarre mythology in the forefront, and ESO is no exception. Between quest storylines, hundreds of in-game books, passing NPC dialog, and the landscape itself, ESO presents a world that feels bigger than the player and can be incredibly immersive.
Not only is controller support provided, but a combination of elements of the games design (minimal UI, enforced focus on favorite/preferred actions, and a clear vision to design console support in early on) means play with a controller is a great, comfortable experience.
Minimalist HUD-approach brings focus to action and the world for immersion rather than focus on hotkeys, cooldowns, and other immersion-breaking intrusions
There are only six skill slots (five regular and one "ultimate") available at any one time. A character can swap between two equipped weapon sets, making at most 12 total skills available in combat. With well over 100 skills to choose from, finding two characters with exactly the same build is the exception, not the rule.
While the game can be played in third person (which may work better in PvP), there is an option to play in first person view which keeps in tradition of the view found in other Elder Scroll titles. This gives this MMO the feeling of playing Skyrim or Oblivion, which should appeal to those who are fans or familiar. It is also a unique way to play an MMO, which could appeal to those tired of traditional third person view MMOs.
Though "flavors of the month" will arise in any competitive game, ESO's versatile characters and MOBA-like limitation on simultaneous skill availability greatly reward creative builds and counter-building.
WoW doesn't offer an engaging story [until endgame] or anything beyond point-and-click gameplay, especially with the many other MMORPGs following its model, which leads it to quickly become tedious.
WoW is the defacto MMO, almost every MMO created after it came out has been influenced by it in some way. Still to this day it is one of the most played MMO's online and has one of the largest brands tied to its name.
In the early days of WoW there were significant differences between the classes; classes had unique skills which defined that class and giving it its identity. Unfortunately, over the years, most of that variety has been stripped away and now all of the classes have minimal differences other than being ranged, melee, healer or tank.
While this was done to (unsuccessfully) bring balance to the classes, it ultimately resulted in a lot of the flavour of the game being stripped away leaving a much blander experience overall.
Vanilla Wow used to have a very slow leveling process, this allowed people to experience and enjoy the world and dungeons as they leveled up. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case and the leveling process has been completely destroyed by being made trivial. It is so fast that if you enter a dungeon you will almost certainly have out leveled any loot you find by the time you finish it. Not that most people worry about loot while leveling as most players have access to heirlooms which further trivialise the leveling process and turn your character into a leveling God.
Everquest is quite an old game, and being so many people have played it at least a few times in its long history. This makes for a fun game to revisit to get back some of those feelings of many years ago.
This game was made far before WoW came and made questing the way to level up. Leveling involves finding a place to group up with other people and grind the same enemies for hours, only to possibly have it all undone when you die (which means an exp penalty).
Rifts are small event-like things that spawn randomly throughout each non-city zone. You run into them, complete the objectives, and are rewarded. The exp is really good for lower-levels. There are also zone-wide events that are also very rewarding and involve multiple rifts.
There are puzzles, platforming gauntlets, collectibles, rare mobs, and more to find in each zone. The zones are more than just "containers" for quests.
The game servers are divided into a blue zone (trammel), a red zone (felucca), and 3-4 more.
The red zone is set up so any player can attack you, or be attacked by you.
Meaning, any miner, or anyone hunting monsters is fair game to be killed and looted.
Blacksmithing, leatherworking, tailoring, etc are available to be learned by your character.
With these you perform tasks for NPCs, and get runic hammers or sewing kits. These "may" imbue your armor or weapons with special effects. It's possible to make very strong equipment this way.
But also quite weak - vendors in the city are full with these randomly generated equipments for low prices.
You can build your own house in this game (if you can find space available), either a small 7x7 house, up to 18x18 or even a castle. It's unlikely to find big vacant spots however as most available land is taken.
You could buy another player's house, and customize it to your liking - up to 3 stories high. Here you may then store your loot, crafting materials and loot.
Want to be a sword wielding mage, carrying a shield, and play the flute? You can!
Want to be a master of animals, able to fish, dig up treasure, poison your enemies? You can!
The game allows you to distribute up to 700 skill points in a WIDE variety of 58 different skills, with up to 100 (up to 120 in a select few) per skill to choose from.
The game will feel choppy and sluggish - especially in popular areas if you're on a non local server.
It's 2D, but there's also a (less optimized and unloved by the players) 3D client which replaces the player and monster models with 3D versions. This is an issue as melee pvp combat generally relies on "who has the fastest computer or connection" in order to catch the other player.
There is a free version nowadays (freemium) where you can run around and have limited access to areas, no bank, and no player housing. Or you pay 12$ per month for the full experience.
If you don't feel like paying a fee per month, there's a number of free shards available. Ultima Online:Forever, among others. These kind of free servers generally have different or older rulesets and may have more pvp for those who seek it.
The game still gets a yearly "anniversary" edition, which is generally nothing more than the same game on dvd, with a chair or painting for your ingame house. At a cost of about 15$.
Unlike the Korean version of the game, this game has to be bought in order to play. However, there are still many free to play elements in the game, which restricts player freedom. Such as the energy system which restricts continuous production in crafting. There are also other restriction such as blocking trade with another player.
You have a plethora of different options when creating your unique character. You can choose from 4 races, 9 character classes, 10 professions, 7 vocations, plus countless skills and traits.