our numbers are big. the word of mouth impressive. but do we make much of a difference?

how about joe schmo?

i have seen a lot of joe schmos on. i still play this game, slowly. have a 46 assasin as my main and numerous other high teen toons to let out into the world when the time is right.

im in between a joe schmo and a forum tiger.

is the core gameplay of AOC good? can the forum tigers come back if more content and other promises are introduced later on?

if a patch squished all bugs and added all content promised at launch, would you be playing AOC after that patch?

can joe schmo sustain AOC until problems that the tigers bitched and left the game for are fixed?

or, at its heart, is AOC a good game mechanical wise?

im curious what your opinions are on this. emotions tend to get in the way and they make things fuzzy to understand. i understand alot here are emotional and feel burned and are now armed with pitchforks and the like, but can AOC be a good game with all you have experienced? Please no funcom will never get it right, lets just assume they do one day, ok?

i will admit it needs fixing,balancing and all sort of things, im not a fanboi...i just enjoy AOC. it suits me just fine. plus this is my first mmo im pvp'ing in. not actively arena pvp or things like that, just stalking people from the shadows on my way to quests. a jolly good time. even bought a belkin speedpad thing which i should have done years ago, if one existed.

Short answer, no. Unless there is a major revamp to all of the features, AoC has little draw to an MMO player. At it's core it is missing 'Hooks' in all its basic content.

Crafting, PvP, Character Leveling and Guild mechcanics are all lacking any meaningful long term progression. The reason MMO players subscribe to games for years, they are chasing 'the next big goal' .

Sadly AoC lacks any kind of complexity, it's almost as if it were designed as a time waster on a next-gen Cell Phone.

These forums seem to be important enough for Famine (FC CM) to feel the need to read and post here.

The company that made probably the most complex MMO ever (later surpassed by EVE), decided the answer to its low popularity was too much complexity, maybe now they will realize Anarchy Online's original problem is the same as AoC's, it was launched broken, and never recovered from the bad press and hard feelings.

I hope that 'The Secret World' doesn't launch as a simplistic, broken POS, but I also hope Gaute Godager never manages another game. I doubt I or FC will be so lucky.

Originally posted by Unfinished

Short answer, no. Unless there is a major revamp to  all of the features AoC has little draw as an MMO. At it's core it is missing 'Hooks' in all its basic content.

Crafting, PvP, Character Leveling and Guild mechcanics are all lacking any meaningful long term progression. The reason MMO players subscribe to games for years, they are chasing 'the next big goal' .

Sadly AoC lacks any kind of complexity, it's almost as if it were designed as a time waster on a next-gen Cell Phone.

Not entirely true some games offer toys , Which allow you to set your own goals .Early SWG and EVE online are two prime examples of this .Maybe that's why I don't think AOC is a terrible game , It just needs a ton of work.I'm used to playing games that don't set my goals for me , I prefer this approach to development. I don't feel that was the goal of AOC , They tried making a game that gave you goals to obtain. Those goals are pretty much worthless without a PVP system in place.However that goes back to the issue of the game needing tons of work .

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Originally posted by Unfinished
Crafting, PvP, Character Leveling and Guild mechcanics are all lacking any meaningful long term progression.

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I disagree.

As of today this is all true, but he asked for your assessment on these same areas of the game in the event that the content promised at launch were all actually put into the game in a hypothetical miracle patch, or gradually over the course of six months if the weekend warriors kept the game afloat until then. I'm going to assume that a less boring and more worthwhile crafting system as well as more sensible guild features would be included here.

PvP should be less about long-term progression than high-end PvE in my opinion (and PvE content needs some attention too, but not as direly so as the PvP content... Or lack of PvP content), but the much-heralded PvP system, if released the way it was promised to be prior to launch - yes, I know it's far-fetched - would include PvP levels, PvP gear and PvP feats, and a somewhat sane class balance. Couple that with sieges that are now miraculously playable with decent framerates without being plagued by bugs, and include Border Keeps that are actually conquerable, and you would have meaningful PvP content. I've done a siege (yes, it's true!), and it's actually fun at the core. It is undeniably epic to charge against the walls of a keep together with 47 companions, and try to survive the hail of retaliatory attacks from above as you advance with your siege engines in tow - just a shame these scenarios are nigh-on unplayable for what seems to be like 90% of the playerbase.

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by Unfinished

Short answer, no. Unless there is a major revamp to  all of the features AoC has little draw as an MMO. At it's core it is missing 'Hooks' in all its basic content.

Crafting, PvP, Character Leveling and Guild mechcanics are all lacking any meaningful long term progression. The reason MMO players subscribe to games for years, they are chasing 'the next big goal' .

Sadly AoC lacks any kind of complexity, it's almost as if it were designed as a time waster on a next-gen Cell Phone.

Not entirely true some games offer toys , Which allow you to set your own goals .Early SWG and EVE online are two prime examples of this .Maybe that's why I don't think AOC is a terrible game , It just needs a ton of work.I'm used to playing games that don't set my goals for me , I prefer this approach to development. I don't feel that was the goal of AOC , They tried making a game that gave you goals to obtain. Those goals are pretty much worthless without a PVP system in place.However that goes back to the issue of the game needing tons of work .

Once you have done everything there is to do in game, you either re-roll or find a new game. Many people who played from launch did everything there was to do in the first 4 weeks, without Mountain Dew on tap and pooping in a sock.

There really just isn't much there. Anarchy Online was like that in many ways when it launched, every aspect of the game has drastically overhauled over teh past 7 years, and now barely resembles it's original incarnation.

AO was FunComs big head start on their next MMO. Instead they repeated the exact same process, instead of using it as a launch pad, they used it as their business model.

Originally posted by Lichthammer

 

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Originally posted by Unfinished
Crafting, PvP, Character Leveling and Guild mechcanics are all lacking any meaningful long term progression.

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,... but he asked for your assessment on these same areas of the game in the event that the content promised at launch were all actually put into the game in a hypothetical miracle patch, or gradually over the course of six months if the weekend warriors kept the game afloat until then.

No reason they can't, they did exactly that with Anarchy Online. But it wasn't 6 months, it was 18 to just be playable, and 3.5 years to be compelling addictive fun.

99% of the launch day players were long gone by than. And MMOs was a genre in it's infancy, AO got new customers because it was for many their first MMO.  I don't think the industry works this way anymore, the market is a thousand times larger, and the choices for customers has quadrupled. MMOs are no longer a niche genre, they are a part of  mainstream gaming.

They can recover,

   But only if they come clean with the industry / fan base and admit up front that it is work in progress.  And then... at least make leveling meaningful.

  I'll give you an example, I have a friend that plays WoW, he has 3 or 4 characters that he enjoys playing on a regular basis.   Then he read about some WoW emulators and made a character on one, he leveled to 80 in 3 or 4 days and could go anywhere and do anything in this world....... and he walked away from it.  I asked him why and he replied that it was not a challenge and there was no sense of ownership or attachment to the character.  Now I understand that WoW is not the model game, but it it harder to level that AoC.

  Understanding that a computer game is not "work", there still needs to be something that tells the player that they are progressing, without dumbing it down.  If AoC was not supposed to be level centric, then they should have built it like Guild Wars and not a game that gives the semblance of a MMO with true levels.  If their goal was PvP and endgame then cut out all of the other "requirements", make everyone the same level (1 or 80, no matter) and get on with the PvP, making it a gear centric game.

  I can not speak for the younger crowd, but my generation wants a challenge wether it is at work or play.  We also want that sense of community that is missing from a lor of games now, I know that it will never be as it once was (lol) but I can always hope.

It's been 3 months since launch.  All of the major endgame systems are broken or not implemented at all.   PvP system not implemented, crafting is broken, Seiging is broken,  Raids are broken, stats are broken, itemization is bad.   The client is still not 'acceptable'.

In the past 3 months, the developers have made no real progress on making any of these things acceptable. 

Anarchy Online made a comeback, but you have to understand the financial part of the story.   Anarchy Online survived because Funcom borrowed money  (using the launch of AoC as collateral).    Funcom can't do this again.  They lost money on the launch of AoC.. 

Both Anarchy Online and AoC will be gone soon.   There simply is not enough money to keep two unprofitable projects going.   Even if Funcom had an " I WIN" button and pressed it today and magically fixed all that is wrong with AOC.. the negative feelings about this game would keep people from coming back soon enough to save Funcom as a company.  Funcom will be bankrupt by Jan09

Probably not. Not unless they revamp class design to make dps casters less boring and one dimensional. Playing a mage in that game was really boring. Geting out dpsed by a priest is pathetic and their aversion to healing/support roles killed the game for my gf who's traditionaly played healers. She didnt like the game much at all and neither did I. I found myself playing a priest to fulfill my favored role of caster dps. Which I thought was bizzare.

IF those problems get fixed then the answer is maybe. Depends on what mmos are out at the time. If theres something else out thats good (STO, AION, CO, DCUO, or Kotor) then no theyve lost me. If these problems get fixed before any of them come out or if all of them are bad then I might.

might  go back and give it a month if  everything was fixed up to a point  . did enjoy what game there was to play   . just could not be botherd to grind to lvl 80 with nothing working . lot of the quest were just to dam easy

These are the things AoC does RIGHT:

Graphics, Music, Melee Combat

That's it. Those 3 things kept me playing for 3 months. I had my fun, but in the end, AoC just isn't a good MMORPG. There is just too many things that needs fixing, overhaul, and/or added to make AoC a good, fun, addicting MMO. From observing Funcom's actions the past 4 months, there is just no way they can do it fast enough to attract all the players that left the game.

I may be able to last another month or so, but my guild already left the game and so has many other guilds. Without competition and others to play with, a MMO is just not fun. There is basically nothing to do in AoC once you get to level 80 and killed over 3,400 people in PvP like I have.

I wanted this game to do well, but there is little hope for it suriving. It's really a shame too, AoC had and still has so much potential. Too bad Funcom is the company running it and too bad they made over 75% of the playerbase hate them.

As for this topic, the "forum crowd" is extremely relevant. There's lots of trolls and flamers, but the "forum crowd" dictates how well a game launches and how well it can sustain a substantial playerbase these days. Sad, but true.