I remember in UO we had to use stuff like ICQ. The only chat was spatial local chat. There was no global chat. It's so much nicer using programs like Discord. Alot of games now incorporate official servers when you login. Our community usually has its own. I try to avoid chat channels myself. Having to type gets you killed lol.

I would guess it's the quality of the material/resources you collect.

The graphics look so detailed. Can't wait to see more stuff posted.

Ok if gear gives you better penetration then in effect better gear allows you to do more damage. If for example I run into a guy and he has the best gear with special mats that give him 100% damage penetration and I have gear with basic mats that give me no penetration who do you think is going to win every battle? I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to point out that everyone won't be equal. I don't want there to be equality myself. Otherwise I have no reason to go get those special mats.

If you are wanting equality explain to me in specific detail how you want to see special mats used in crafting so I can understand your position. I just don't see how gear will be equal unless it is purely cosmetic. This is specifically about gear as well. I realize different builds and even different playstyles are going to create better players.

Well I tried to appeal to my son's generation of friends to play UO with us. Once they saw the graphics they said no way. I grew up on those styles of graphics so they are fine with me. UO struggled when EQ came out. Most of the players I polled who left our guild for the game said they liked the better graphics. When SWG came out it was more of the same and well it was Star Wars lol. When I played the free server for UO alot of our players said they couldn't go back in time and play those graphics again. I'm guessing for alot of people how good the game looks is a factor. I like the look of Fractured. It has that old style isometric look of Diablo yet an improvement on the graphics that show alot of detail.

Is spell damage not affected by stats? I was assuming damage for all forms of combat was affected by its primary stat. Is this wrong? If it is correct then gear raising stats does make your spells better. Now according to this article

https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-4-skills-galore/

Spell damage is directly affected by your intelligence score. If you raise your score you raise your damage output. So with gear that raises your intelligence you have raised your damage. You spells get better. So by simple logic better gear means better fighting skills. So players will not be the same strength as time goes by and gear is collected. I don't know any game I've played where collecting gear wasn't part of character improvement.

If the devs removed loot drops and the need to improve your gear why even hunt at all? There is no excitement for loot drops other than mats and if mats didn't turn into anything other than cosmetic improvements then most of the players are not even going to bother with hunting.

Shoot by the time they get the game working good they will probably be outdated on their graphics lol. That is what killed UO in my opinion. The game ran so long that people graduated from 2D graphics to 3D. This year I tried a free server but just couldn't get into the old graphics engine. I think the best mmo I've played to this point is SWTOR. I loved that game. The graphics were nice and I loved all the storylines with the cutscenes. I just got tired of the constant leveling. I was trying to maintain too many characters lol. It got to the point that by the time I leveled all 16 toons the next expansion came out and it was time to do it all over again.

Boy this thread got off topic lol.

Now I know I saw people posting about gear giving them stat increases. That would imply that as time goes on people will get stronger. Also new skills/abilities can for sure make you more powerful depending upon how much damage they do and what debilitating effects they have.

Oh wow is Star Citizen even a thing any more? lol. I remember my buddy telling me about it and I checked it out. First thing that turned me off was all the store grabs for ships. It looked play to win and I'm not a fan of those. Most FB clicky games are like that. I know I'd be mad if I dumped a huge chunk of money into it and now 7 years later it still has no release date. I also bought the Cortex app from steam waiting patiently for Firefly Online. Oh man I was excited about that being a Firefly fan. They even posted videos of working parts of the program. Then they mysteriously vanished with no word. So sad

Any investment into an unfinished game is a risk.

Waiting too long can hurt also. Life is Feudal had a huge hype in the beginning. They had a few unique systems that got some attention. Then the game drug on well past launch. So the devs felt pressured to give everyone something. So they released a system that supported about 50 players in the world before it started crashing. This went on another year or two. They finally released their mmo but by then everyone had moved on. Even their mmo I think is still considered in beta. Alot of games seem to have the everlasting alpha/beta tag on them in steam. Those games get horrible reviews which keeps people from buying them. The devs either do some serious fixing or the game slides into oblivion.

My buddy plays Atlas. He swears the game is good but yet if you read the reviews it is trashed by about everyone. He says those were primarily from the launch before the big fixes. I still won't buy it simply because I see all those bad reviews.