Originally posted by Mr_C

I wonder what's so "soloable" as you describe it? Not even the daily "soloable" missions they implemented are soloable. I have really no idea what you are talking about, but I would love to hear about all this solo content that you claim (and you alone) exist in AO.

You cannot really call an item shop for "solo content". That would be a void comment that does not exist in my head.

Pretty every daily mission is soloable, done it with Doc, Enf, Shade, Trader, Soldier and MP. Some dailies can be though in the lower portion of the level range they are for, but that can be alleviated through twinking. Even some of the elite dailies which are meant for teams can be soloed at certain levels and twinked. Also many other parts of AOs content are soloable, some of them twinked only though.

And twinking is one of those things that make AO a great game, I would even say one of the things that it is about.

Also I think SL pretty much fits the AO story if you really know it. Reading Prophet without honor and all those story background articles helps with this.

The bad thing about SL is that it was buggy as hell and even lacked content when released. But all this has been fixed / completed by now or better has been since some years.

Also I have yet to encounter a community even close as helpful as AOs. And yes, for sure there are people for whom that description doesn't fit, but they are and always have been the minority. I'm not only speaking of ingame help but also helping with tools, guides, etc.

On a side note: No, you don't pay this game montly per expansion. There are now 2 variants:

Froob which includes vanilla AO and Notum Wars (booster pack mainly containing tower PvP).

Subscription with fixed cost, it doesn't matter what expansions you own. Expansions themself each a one time fee, but nowadays they don't cost that much and there are often enough promotions giving all expansions for little to no money.

There has once been a sort of mini-subscription where you just got AO + NW + SL for a smaller montly fee. But this has been canceled some time ago. I think that may caused the per expansion confussion.

SL is a sh*t expansion. I started play AO back in 2002 and had alot of fun till SL came out. I tried to like it and grind hecklers, only because I wanted to stay one of the top omni NTs and because I didnt want to leave my org, but somewhere around 211-213 I had enough and quited for LA2 weirdly enough, not WOW - hated WOW back then. : |

Originally posted by Gaoxin

SL is a sh*t expansion. I started play AO back in 2002 and had alot of fun till SL came out. I tried to like it and grind hecklers, only because I wanted to stay one of the top omni NTs and because I didnt want to leave my org, but somewhere around 211-213 I had enough and quited for LA2 weirdly enough, not WOW - hated WOW back then. : |

Actually the story and world of the SL expansion were fantastic.  The idea was fantastic.

However, they nullified a lot of the origional content, which was a clear oversight (it should compliment not replace) as well as the horrible, terrible, worst idea ever with hecks.  Hecks turned the game into a boring grinder.

Unfortunately hecks and the replacement of the need to do origional content far out weighed the postives it could have brought to the game.  SL had potential, it was just...well..it was a stand alone game that they just shoehorned into AO, and it shows.

A little work to it and it might be a fantastic compliment...well perhaps a lot more work that is worth it.  

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Originally posted by Crunchy222
*snip*
Unfortunately hecks and the replacement of the need to do origional content far out weighed the postives it could have brought to the game.  SL had potential, it was just...well..it was a stand alone game that they just shoehorned into AO, and it shows.
*snip*

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On a positive note this is no longer the case.
As of now SL is just an alternate route for leveling to the original content (and content added to non-SL areas).
Also they worked many old content into upgrade paths (items and such) so it is again of use.

As said SL had a very bad start, but has been greatly fixed since then.

Originally posted by MisatoTremor

 

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Originally posted by Crunchy222
*snip*
Unfortunately hecks and the replacement of the need to do origional content far out weighed the postives it could have brought to the game.  SL had potential, it was just...well..it was a stand alone game that they just shoehorned into AO, and it shows.
*snip*

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On a positive note this is no longer the case.
As of now SL is just an alternate route for leveling to the original content (and content added to non-SL areas).
Also they worked many old content into upgrade paths (items and such) so it is again of use.

As said SL had a very bad start, but has been greatly fixed since then.

I loved the lore and the world behing SL.  It was a fantastic place imo.  Its just how it was implimented really wrecked a lot of what made AO...i would never want to play AO without SL...i just want the implimentation of it be more AO style...if that makes sense.

I really miss that sun in SL rotating in a tiny circle in the sky.  Also had an aweome ability to keep the game fresh popping n and out of SL and messing with missions in rome and dungeons ect.

I fear that the game engine has been delayed more, now that they have to move from canada to (was it georgia?)...i remember the first move to canada from norway put them back a long time in getting the engine ported.

They REALLY missed their window of oppertunity on getting the game to a modern level all those years ago, this has simply taken such a ridiculous amount of time that its nearly pointless.  Unless of course they did animations character models and brought combat up to par with modern games, hell even a combat system like TSW which a lot didnt like would be a huge improvement.

If this is just a engine and texture job, given the time, will make for a nice walk though once its done but i doubt i would stay.

Did not mind SL, it introduced grinding to a degree though, garden keys, faction grinding, zone unlocks and whatnot.

Even though they were not actual zone unlocks, with help you could get into al the zones, aside from the last one I think wich required the inferno ring. ( Long time ag )

This was the brilliance of AO in my book, in beta, when I was awestruck. I spent over 3 hours running in the same direction, and it took me like 2 or 3 zones south of TIR, belial forest I think.

Deadly but possible.

I kind of liked SL, symbiants ( pocket bosses ) were awesome, even though a bit wowified, but SL were dangerous and I liked that, especially if you were on top of the curve so you were often the first player going somewere, god I loved it!

AO+TERA Graphics?

Hell yes!

As a side note, I got almost 2k dollars for my AO stuff when I quit, not counting the character, that I still have, that cash saved my ass in big way, saved my life really so for thar alone I am eternally grateful to AO.

I started playing shortly after SL launched. I thought it was a really awesome expansion and loved all aspects of it, with the exception of heckler XP in the lower zones.

Funcom clearly did something wrong though, since such large parts of the player base refused to deal with it. I think it must have had something to do with what was communicated about the expansion prior to launch.

My most awesome mmorpg moments were had dancing around the Tiunissik camp, for countless hours on the way to 220.

And the faction raids in Inferno - almost everyone hated it, I loved it, especially when I solo-doced it.

Now if they only could fix the 220 puller problem ..

Originally posted by FromHell
Need to check this out when the new engine transition is done. The videos looked good

 Same here... unfortunately haven't got any word on when have are they going to do this :(