Edit: Thanks Tarib for the response, pretty much proved one of my points wrong :)

I am a level 40 Conqueror on EU Fury PvP server. I am a fanboi. Please reply to this thread with "typical fanboi thread" as you will be correct on some accounts. Not on all. I enjoy the game greatly but am perfectly happy to accept that it has many problems. I think that you should read this entire post, I am bored at work which is why I thought I would write a massive essay, it wouldn't even bother me if nobody reads it, nevertheless I will post it both on MMORPG forums and Official EU forums as replies from the majority of outspoken people with retarded grammar (I know my grammar isn't amazing, I write long extended sentences sometimes with poor punctuation, doesn't bother me) and logic, as it will make me giggle. You should read this all because I am so amazing and never wrong (not in this post anyway, I think it is pretty much entirely opinion based, and opinion cannot be wrong, unless based on wrong information, and if this is the case please let me know). I'm sure that not many people will care about my opinion, so feel free to tell me this and I will ignore you completely.

Firstly a (not very) little bit of background information :)

Ok to start off I discovered AoC only 3 or 4 weeks before the EA started, as I was living under a rock created by the mighty Blizzard. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed living under that certain rock (I understand that to mentioning the name here is similar to high treason, and punished as such). I just got bored of the style of play. I have played only Runescape (even the old school version ^.^) before being dragged in by Blizzard.

I purchased the game, and realising that I wanted a full weekend of AoC when I first get the chance to play it, I also paid for the early access.

Started downloading the game, took around 26-28 hours (left on over night etc), then installed without a problem. Opened the patcher and patched the game fully over the days before the EA, with the last few updates causing me to panic that I would miss the grand opening :). But not to worry, after some urgent phonecalls to friends also participating in the EA, and a few MSN conversations I discovered that the game had been delayed from 5 til 9. Fine, so I get the last few patches and at 9PM on the Friday I start rolling.

I rolled on Fury for the mad PvP fun. Character creation, I'd decided beforehand in my many excitingly uneventful days at work that I would be rolling a conqueror, so started the character creation. Planning to be a GM I wanted to be Aquilonian due to their Roman style culture, which I thought was more fitting for someone with responsibility than a blood loving Cimmerian. I loved the character creation, and ended up with the biggest (all sliders to full, wanted just a general beefcake, not a muscly *******), coolest looking Conqueror. I was amazed by the amount of options for editing my guy's appearance, somewhat similar to Tony Hawks character creation). Created a few other characters to get all my desired names, success on all accounts :D.

The very first scene confused me somewhat, didn't understand what the hell was going on until my poor guy could be seen underwater, though didn't even realise this was what it was for a while. Did all the first quests, and got to Tortage. At this stage my performance was pretty appalling, 5-15 fps even on the very lowest settings (this got fixed later). I was really enjoying the more interactive combat system, but got pretty frustrated by the lack of workable / commands and the chat system. Also the right clicking of the addtional hotbars switching them round (turning them 90 degrees) made think that I had messed something up, fortunately a simple 2nd right click put it back into place :)

Got to tortage and loved the look of the place, although realised that the lag was pretty annoying for me (and by this I mean FPS performance). My character was currently an indistinct blob on the screen. Enjoyed Tortage and all of the night time quests, although before this I got pretty annoyed at myself for rolling on a PvP server. I spent a good few hours on White Sands Isle at level 11 or so getting ganked silly by level 18s that were having a ****ing ball of a time. Eventually gave up on the place and as I said did the night time quests. I enjoyed the reduced lag and the storyline quite a lot.

Eventually got out of Tortage and onto Old Tarantia literally just after dinging level 20 with the finish of the last question. Was pretty overwhelmed by the stupid amount of popups on the screen with new abilties etc, and having seen "Furious Inspiration" at an early level and not being able to find the skill ANYWHERE I wasn't hoping for much.

I started reading forums such as this badboy, and the official ones as soon as I got to work on the monday, and soon learned a few hints about improving performance. Here I am going to share something special for those with medium-low end graphics cards. [b][color=red]Turn Shader Model onto 2.0[/b][/color]. This doubled my framerate and more, I now get anything between 10 and 45 FPS, even on high settings; and this is with a piss poor GeForce 8400M GT.

Ok that's the end of my queer little story, I won't ask if you enjoyed it because I am a super good story teller, and overly confident with my abilties, so I assume that you in fact LOVED it.

I consistently see whine threads on these forums especially, and also on the EU official forums. I also see some people that, despite claiming to play, and continue to play, the game; seem to hate it and have made it their mission to CONSTANTLY point out, and exaggerate any bugs/bad points of the game (The name Zorndorf comes to mind...).

Now as I have said I am slightly biased in favour of Funcom. This isn't a choice I have made, it is simply something I noticed about myself when reading the whine forums, I was automatically thinking of come-backs and rebukes to any bad things mentioned about the game, regardless of any truth to them.

The things that I enjoy about the game are as follows:

 ~ Instances

I tried tanking the group quests like Mayhem in the Fortress at about level 36 or 37, and despite using all my taunting moves found it night on impossible to hold aggro. Decided to start putting points in taunt, then decided to completely fill it, and tanking is now not a problem :) (unless a ranger in the team doing ridiculous damage, they can pull mobs off me). I also like the apprentice system, a level 43 made the whole group their apprentice in Sanctum and it meant that mobs did less damage to us, and we hit them as if we were level 43, although it nerfed the experience we received.

 ~ Combat system

The way that weapons do not target a single person, instead they hit a certain area, makes grouping much more interesting and challenging. As a tank I have to position mobs so that DPS classes can hit them simulataneously, whilst maneuvering the rest of my group members into an optimum postition for receiving heals. All this whilst not being able to walk through people, and having to move carefully and intelligently so as not to be blocking by the other melee classes.

 ~ The graphics

They are awesome. Even on my shoddy graphics card I can have high settings, 4x AA. Looking around the landscape seeing the mountains in the background, the beautiful water, and the really good shadow effects, all really add to the immersion for me. I recently logged back into the game under my rock, and realised how stunning AoC is in comparison.

 ~ Funcom

You read the forums, occasionally (see 1 of the bads) respond, and you really DO listen. Compared to a LOT of other games the amount that Funcom takes player opinion into account is really quite impressive.

Of course, as any player has, I have got annoyed with certain aspects of the game.

 ~ The UI

I am limited to a relatively small resolution and as a result t he lack of hotbars is pretty frustrating. I cannot simply extend the bars as I am limited by the lack of space on my screen.

 ~ The chatbox

Although now more clear with the change to the colours used for different things, the chatbox is still pretty frustrating. Being able to drag select text written by others is a nice feature, but it very often doesn't work, sometimes unselecting it for no reason, which is pretty annoying. Also the linking of items into chat is very annoying. My inventory covers my chatbox entirely, and so linking items in is pretty tough, and you cannot link items from where other people have linked them.

 ~ The guild interface

The manual says I can change the names and abilties of different ranks within my guild. How?! There really is no way. Also the "Leave" button. Why the hell is such a thing in such a position, easy to accidentally click on, and with no second "are you sure" option. Then there's the guild leader bug, where if a guild leader leaves the guild (most times by accident) then the guild becomes leaderless, and someone has to petition a GM to get someone else promoted. Why isn't it just impossible to leave a guild while you are the leader?!

 ~ The map bug

Hasn't happened to me for a while so may have now been fixed, but while it was happening it was INCREDIBLY annoying. Both the minimap and the whole area map would completely grey out, still showing quest markers etc but none of the terrain, and only rendering if zoomed completely in, if at all.

 ~ Swapping of zones

Whilst only a minor annoyance to me as I like the idea of instancing to prevent quest camping, over populating and lag, whilst grouping switching instances is annoying, especially as you have to zone back in on a spawn point.

 ~ Itemization

Not the same sort of complaint that other people have been talking about, but just the fact that between level 20 and 36 I was using the very 2H weapon, Ngoth the blue axe thing. Not a massive problem as weapons seem to scale with levels, but still pretty annoying.

 ~ The Funcom team

Why do Dev's reply constantly on US forums and not EU forums? We should sue for discrimination (this does actually bother me quite a lot). Also IF it is in fact true that level 50 - 80 is a grindfest with very few quests then I will be massively annoyed, and this is 1 thing that may actually be a gamebreaker for me. IF I cannot get to level 80 solely on quests then why the **** not. Don't give me the excuse that they didn't expect people to level so quickly, of course they did, nobody (ok, there may  be a few exceptions) can be that stupid. You should NEVER release an unfinished game, regardless of genre. If Assassins Creed was released with only half of the levels available, and the rest "coming soon" on a patch then it would be a massive travesty. Regardless of what people say, the fact it is an MMO does NOT make this in any way acceptable.

I haven't experienced many of the bugs that lots of people are complaining about. The above problems are the only problems I have experienced. I also do not agree with all the whines about instancing and other such problems. The only things that I have not mentioned above that get on my tits is the fact that the Necromancer and Demonologist class are still pretty wank. They need buffing, there are hardly any of the things on my server as people have apparently just got fed up with having difficulty soloing mobs their own level. Oh and the fact that combos are slow to register a directional attack. Oh and the charge bug where you get deflected back.

So basically I am loving the game despite all of these apparent problems. None of them for me are game breaking (with the exception of the possible 50 - 80 problem). I haven't even needed to use a bank or trader so the fact that they weren't immediately implemented doesn't bother me one bit.

If anyone has any bugs to point out, or things that annoy you feel free to let me know and I will give my amazing opinion on them.

In conclusion. Holy shit. I have written a lot. Another of my traits that makes me fantastic. The game is great.

Play it if you want to, if you don't, don't. If you do not like it post why, we need to know WHY so that these problems can possibly be fixed. If you do like it, post WHY so future MMO's can maybe include these features.

Hmm no replies... maybe I will have to shorten my enlightened opinions in the future.

it was...ok

feedback:

you misspelled nigh (you added a t to the end)

aside from that,  yeah....it was ok

Interesting read-

Seems like a fairly balanced description of the game in  it's current state.

Good morning MMORPG

your experience with the game was basicly my experience until lvl 55 or so.  there were some things that anoyed me a bit , but overall, was having fun. Still between 55 and 60 that fun started to vanish a bit and after 60  was a pain. And then all those little things that anoyed me before started to become bigger and bvigger since i was lacking the content to make them vanish.

And thats my big beef with AOC, Until lvl 50 or so it is one game, after 50, even more after 60, it is a complet, almost empty of content , game. Yes i did lvl to 80, but right now i'm playing other stuff since there is no point to log in unless i want to :

1) grind $

2) gank people

3) grind resources to a crafting system that doesnt work

4) do 2 not very well designed instance, that some (many) time bug, with bad loot drops

AOC

up to lvl 50 : 9/10

after lvl 50: 5/10 (and i'm being generous here..... if it wasnt for fun pre lvl 50, would score 3/10... yes stuff is that bad, atm, for +60)

overall: a 7/10

cheers,

 edited: corrected the 5/5 to 5/10. added osme coments

Originally posted by Dkevlar

your experience with the game was basicly my experience until lvl 55 or so.  there were some things that anoyed me a bit , but overall, was having fun. Still between 55 and 60 that fun started to vanish a bit and after 60  was a pain. And then all those little things that anoyed me before started to become bigger and bvigger since i was lacking the content to make them vanish.

And thats my big beef with AOC, Until lvl 50 or so it is one game, after 50, even more after 60, it is a complet, almost empty of content , game. Yes i did lvl to 80, but right now i'm playing other stuff since there is no point to log in unless i want to :

1) grind $

2) gank people

3) grind resources to a crafting system that doesnt work

4) do 2 not very well designed instance, that some (many) time bug, with bad loot drops

AOC

up to lvl 50 : 9/10

after lvl 50: 5/5

cheers,

Do you mean 5/10 at the end by any chance? :P

Yeh things may change for me as I get higher level, I'm hoping that it may just be opinion, which mine will differ from.

Also just one other thing, I thought that there were more than just two level 80 instances?

Originally posted by Walliss

Why do Dev's reply constantly on US forums and not EU forums? We should sue for discrimination (this does actually bother me quite a lot). Also IF it is in fact true that level 50 - 80 is a grindfest with very few quests then I will be massively annoyed, and this is 1 thing that may actually be a gamebreaker for me. 

I dont know if 50-80 is lacking. Maybe there will be a content patch or maybe there is a company with the guts to reintroduce "natural growing" in the top levels. It was not always that people could solo quest from 1 to cap. WoW and EQ2 patched their game to be like that. But even those games have not been like that at release.

Oldschool EQ2 was very group heavy and quests didnt give enough exp to hit level cap. The exp came from group/guild activities when working on the epic group quests.

Then Blizzard discovered that a vast number of players doesnt want to group or get involved into guild activity. Thats why they patched away a lot of epics. Today you can level all the way solo. EQ2 followed WoW short after. SOE patched all heroic overland mobs into solo mobs and in step two removed even their unique linked mobs. Late EOF and definetely since the Kurnak expansion EQ2 is a soloer game with some dungeons you dont have to do if you dont want to.

I dont mind this style of gameplay. I enjoyed it in EQ2 and in WOW. Its like a breeze.. no roadblockers, no efford. But man do i miss the times when id did prismatic 1, prismatic 2  or Icy Digs with my guild. I even loved claymore in KoS although i think SOE has it a bit oberdone with the spawn camps in that expansion.  But the sad part is that people now demand soloable gameplay up to cap.  As if everyone has forgot about old and often very good times. D2 wasnt a mmo, but those who played it know what efford it was just to reach cap. Many people never reached it. And in games like EQ2 and AoC its not a big issue, both games offer mentoring/apprenticeship.

I do agree with you that it is not a necessity and may even be out of choice rather than lack of time that Funcom have not put lots of quests in this part of the game.  I do love playing with my guild, and running instances (for example I levelled from 37-41 just in Sanctum, was loving the tanking ^.^), however I do also enjoy quests, and having played Runescape for a fair while, do not fancy having to grind mobs for any extended period of times :)

Sadly WoW had a lot of content post 60 from the box. . no, i'm not a wow fanboi, but i have the guts to admit that blizzard was dead on in content . One could level only based in quests, and even then , at max lvl , 60, there were dozens of hard quests to do. 

 i'm also not talking about 40 man raids,  but "elite quests"  that could be done  solo, or grouped or even in raid ( non instance raid) like the fordring quest serie, the nathanos quest serie, the argent dawn (stratholme) quest serie, the scholomance quest serie  and a lot of other stuff that gave top blue quality rewards (for that stage of the game).

note, i haven't played wow in like 1.5 years, almost two, so don't know how it is now.... But remember well that in march 2005, not even 1 month after release, was doing EPL/WPL quests. And AFAIK those quests were active since the moment servers went up.

it is not really AOC fault, or Funcom's fault,... it is our fault as paying customers. How many of us would buy a car with a adverstised  max speed of 200 mph, notice it didnt gave more than 120 mph, and still not whine ... a lot.. and ask for a refund? And why do we settle with this just because it is a " mmorpg game"?

cheers,

About the performance enhancing tip you mentioned: can you explain exactly how to implement it? Is there some sort of .ini file? As i intend to play on a 7600GT i am more than interested...

thanks and nice post!

Well the shader model change can be made by editing the actual gamefiles, but imo it is easier to just change it ingame. It is a clear option under advanced videa settings. Makes such a massive difference for me.