AO was my first MMO, and it still holds the largest spot in my heart of all MMO's I ever played.

Then Shadowlands was released. AO is brilliant, only until the moment I set my feet into Shadowlands. Then it becomes so bad that I feel I am on some psychedelic drugs. And the higher up I get in the zones, the weirder & worse things becomes. Shadowlands is the worst of all expansion in any MMO I have ever played.

I bet my head that if FunCom could let us level to 220 without setting a foot in Shadowlands, alot of players would return. I would at least. Heck, I wouldnt mind if I could get to 220 even only by Alien Mission; which would be ridicolously easy to implement.

It's been ages since I played, but even back last time I played it was hard to gather groups in Shadwolands. If I am not completely wrong, things have only gotten worse as the time has goes by since then? Such a shame, cause AO is a game with an insane potential. Too bad it is a pain to get to 220.

I would love to hear me wrong here, so if anyone has something new to tell me that AO has now implemented something new of a system that either allows us to solo to 220 without too much time sink OR something extraordinary has happened regarding leveling to 220, pretty please let me know.

200 regular levels + 20 Shdaowland levels which are the "max level", then 30 Alien levels added to this aside. Enough pts, perks & traits to develop your charater with (VERY sandboxy feeling!).

AO is by far the most complex MMO ever made. It is a gem. Unfortunately it got ruined by Shadolands (my opinion), with it's psychedelic setting without sci-fi; just a bad trip in a medival landscape packed with super-hard-to-kill mobs (especially for newbs)

Not neccesseraly.

There are "Froobs" in AO, which are the free acounts that gets access to vanilla AO. Many/most if not all that has a paid account usually have a "Froob" account for buffing, banking, and/or transactions etc.

Froob accounts is max level 200. Then you can add to this 20 levels more, getting to 220 if you have Shadowlands expansion. You can get 30 Alien Levels as well from a 3rd expansion "Alien Invasion", but these levels are offering perks/traits, not "max" levels.

I miss playing AO, but the graphics are so out of date that it bugs me a little.

Any one know when they are bringing out the graphics engine update?

I also loved AO back in its day...the most underrated MMO of all time in my opinion. I only made it to level 167 tho heh.

I recently went back to check things out and OMG, those graphics were painful! we're talking graphics so old they needed carbon dating. If Funcom redid AO today with updated graphics that made the game's graphics on par with today's games, it would blow all other MMOs out of the water.

And also....if you hung in there for 200 levels, what's 20 more?

Originally posted by EndDream
Presumably they are waiting to make changes like this until their engine update is done and they start promoting the game again.

.  Although I have my fingers crossed that they examine their entire payment model for AO.  And(of course) hoping they don't make it worse.

Aye, the payment system wasn't great. It is rather odd or was when I last played. Original level 0 - 200 free but the expansions cost monthly... each. Now how many expansions are out? Quite a lot of money. But if and when they update the graphics engine then it would be worth playing it with no expansions, but if they want to make money then they will have to change their payment method otherwise people would just stick to the froob.

Originally posted by Mr_C

AO was my first MMO, and it still holds the largest spot in my heart of all MMO's I ever played.

Then Shadowlands was released. AO is brilliant, only until the moment I set my feet into Shadowlands. Then it becomes so bad that I feel I am on some psychedelic drugs. And the higher up I get in the zones, the weirder & worse things becomes. Shadowlands is the worst of all expansion in any MMO I have ever played.

I bet my head that if FunCom could let us level to 220 without setting a foot in Shadowlands, alot of players would return. I would at least. Heck, I wouldnt mind if I could get to 220 even only by Alien Mission; which would be ridicolously easy to implement.

It's been ages since I played, but even back last time I played it was hard to gather groups in Shadwolands. If I am not completely wrong, things have only gotten worse as the time has goes by since then? Such a shame, cause AO is a game with an insane potential. Too bad it is a pain to get to 220.

 

I would love to hear me wrong here, so if anyone has something new to tell me that AO has now implemented something new of a system that either allows us to solo to 220 without too much time sink OR something extraordinary has happened regarding leveling to 220, pretty please let me know.

Well for me shadowland is a great expension i had a lots of fun with it. I dont know why you hated it so much.

I dont know if there is a new way to get to lvl 220, maibe the best way to find it is to ask on the official forum.

For me i would probably play again if the new engine was release but i dont have much hope.

What the...?

I love SL and enjoyed leveling through it. One of my favorite zones in AO.

Originally posted by wrightstuf

I also loved AO back in its day...the most underrated MMO of all time in my opinion. I only made it to level 167 tho heh.

I recently went back to check things out and OMG, those graphics were painful! we're talking graphics so old they needed carbon dating. If Funcom redid AO today with updated graphics that made the game's graphics on par with today's games, it would blow all other MMOs out of the water.

 

And also....if you hung in there for 200 levels, what's 20 more?

Cause you can solo quite easy to 100ish, but after level 100 things gets insanely much slower. After 200 it is virtually impossible to solo without risk getting mad; people stop soloing around level 100, cause the time sink is just not worth it. It is not unusual to hear people have tried to find a team for 3 days without any luck.

The 20 levels after level 200 is "not only 20 more levels" since 1 level after 200 is around 10 regular levels. The higher up in level you get, the fewer there is around to level with as well as the mobs becomes way harder to kill. There are people around who can level fast, but these are the "elitistic" ones of AO, and does not care at all about lower level players except themself and/or a few of their friends. Another "option" is to pay massive ammounts of credits to "professional levellers". The amount of credits these charges is so high that it is impossible for a newb without buying credits on ebay.

Originally posted by Whitebeards

 

What the...?

I love SL and enjoyed leveling through it. One of my favorite zones in AO.

None of my RL friends who I played AO with liked SL. It was so bad that most of us stopped playing AO and left for other MMO's. We returned occasionally, but unfortunately SL expansion was the beginning of the end for AO as I see it.

Originally posted by Mr_C

Originally posted by Whitebeards

 

What the...?

I love SL and enjoyed leveling through it. One of my favorite zones in AO.

None of my RL friends who I played AO with liked SL. It was so bad that most of us stopped playing AO and left for other MMO's. We returned occasionally, but unfortunately SL expansion was the beginning of the end for AO as I see it.

All my friends loved SL. And that was the only reason why we stayed in game for so long. But don't think how that matters though.? or it is the old trick where people starti mentioning friends, families and even their dogs and cats to give more weight to their opinion?

AO is an old game, that is the only thing working against it. SL infact brought a lot of players back who were getting bored of classic AO zones. Pandamonium raids were the highlight of AO back then and most fun i ever had raiding and zerging. So to say SL was beginning of end for AO..maybe for you. Don't be too hasty to speak for rest of us.

I only played the Shadowlands expansion and I really enjoyed it. The zones were brilliant and different monsters was good also. I really enjoyed my Adventuer, I played on the German server as I had better connection there and it was good for a young lad (at the time) to interact with people from another country for the first time.

Once the graphics engine is updated I will take a look, but from what I heard they are making it so it has the same amount of graphics as Age of Conan. So it may not be perfect but its better than the old carbon dated graphics, hehe.

I can't say that I hated the SL but I am with the OP in that I would be very happy if I could play AO without ever setting foot there again.

SL cost me most of my org, friends and led to me quitting once I got to the range I "had" to go there.

It did not belong in AO.

Kind of like pandas and pekomen in WOW.

Shadowlands killed AO for me.

It did not fit the lore.

It made most of the equipment from Rubi -Ka worthless.

Most of the people I knew in game tried it and hated it.  Then they left.

Some of the skills would not work in SL. ie Grid armor, Yalms.

SL seemed like a different game, like they were trying for Everquest ver 1.5.

Anyway those of you that liked it, you are welcome to it.

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Originally posted by kb4blu
Shadowlands killed AO for me.

It did not fit the lore.

It made most of the equipment from Rubi -Ka worthless.

Most of the people I knew in game tried it and hated it.  Then they left.

Some of the skills would not work in SL. ie Grid armor, Yalms.

SL seemed like a different game, like they were trying for Everquest ver 1.5.

Anyway those of you that liked it, you are welcome to it.

 

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I think it literally was from another game - they basically ported the content straight over to reuse the assets after said game fell through.