Originally Posted by Golgo13

Seriously though what is it like now ? Is there something comparable to PR out or not so much.

Well I think ArmA has gotten to be a prety cheap price now, so at this point its worth getting just for the engine alone, cause its very cool engine to play around in. If your talking about the community aspect online, and thats the sole reason you are thinking about it, then its still a mixed bag IMO. I wrote these things in april 2008 and they are still all relevant now in december 2008:

Originally Posted by fuzzhead

- The Vanilla ArmA Gameplay / Game Modes. No one tells you this, but vanilla arma is actually just a shell of a game. It does not actually contain ANY compelling gameplay. It ships solely as an engine, with ZERO interesting multiplayer missions. The singleplayer IMO was buggy, dull and totally uninspired. So then why even bother with the game? Well the developers of ArmA basically relied completely on their modding community to make their game playable online. Which is probably why so few people actually play online. However, their modding community is VERY talented and have been hard at work developing missions like evolution, sahrani life, domination and beserk. However, there is still very little variety in missions and the biggest problem is lack of detailed, TEAMWORK ORIENTATED missions, leaving a big open hole which should be the bread and butter of this game. PR has this hole filled, and that IMO is the biggest difference in the 2 games, ArmA is still searching for that good game mode / mission where teamwork really does make a difference, whereas PR has already found what works for it and has expanded on it greatly.

Originally Posted by fuzzhead

- The Player Base. Players in ArmA are typically the lone wolf type, and its missions are geared towards spec ops and snipers, which DOES NOT conduct well with teamwork orientated gameplay. If your idea of teamwork is flying a cobra and blowing **** up while a spec ops guy runs in and blows other things up, then a typical arma round may be right up your alley. But if you prefer a more infantry based teamwork where players use suppresive fire, fire and movement, flanking, formations, APC fire support, armor columns, etc. You will be gravely disappointed. That kind of stuff happens in PR, I have yet to see it happen in ArmA EXCEPT in well organised private groups such as Shack Tactical. The fact is, the PR community has come to know and love these style of gameplay, but the ArmA community is still struggling to find its feet and its still sadly all about the lone wolves at this point IMO. Until a mission/mod starts focusing purely on a teamwork orientated design and gameplay, I dont believe ArmA will ever evolve past the basic notions of teamwork it currently has. Step on a public PR server right now and you will see squads moving together, fighting together, communicating together. Step on a typical public ArmA server right now and you will RARELY see any of this. Do NOT expect players to know what a column formation is or what suppression fire means, this goes right over the head of your average ArmA player.

- Player numbers. Right now globally, Arma has less players than Project Reality nightly. That says alot considering PR is a niche mod on an aging platform. ArmA NEEDS more players in order to survive, and it needs players who can fill leadership roles, get player excited about the game and get people into organized online play. The ArmA TG server (until recently) has very low population numbers, and is not consistent in the quality of play.