So last week I was faced with a choice. I managed to get a FP key for Age of Conan. I bought Grand Theft Auto IV.
While AoC was downloading, I got into GTAIV and realized that finally.. somebody making games in this industry knows what gamers really want. While playing GTA IV, I stopped in my guilds vent now and then to see what's up with AoC, but after installing, I just couldn't switch gears from gaming perfection to MMORPG.
Everything about GTA IV is nearly perfect. People of course will always bitch and whine about things, so there was a little bit of that going on, but for the most part, the game is fun, solid, attention grabbing, immersive, stable and most of all it's full of Brucie.
It got me thinking about the upcoming APB MMORPG. Will APB deliver all that we have grown to love in GTA in an MMORPG? If we use history as a reference, it will point to failure unfortunately.
While I was very interested in seeing what AoC was all about and wanted to see the reported issues first hand (by the way, I didn't encounter any negative technical problems with AoC except for an install problem which turned out be AoC's requirement to disable virus scanners.. which I definitely don't approve of).
Anyway, the gaming bar, in my opinion has been raised. Any publisher putting out a game, whether its a modern day version of Pong, an MMORPG or an FPS, they need to do the following test.
Play their game side by side with GTAIV. If your game does not give you the same feeling or better as GTAIV, you need to just save your time and money and start all over.
