Age of Conan

Originally posted by Battlekruse

In my opinion, AoC is more of a console game, it looks no different than PSO or Monster Hunter, which are fun don't get me wrong, but it won't the same appeal as any other "classic MMO" architecture. Mythic has been successful in the MMO department whereas Funcom released one of the buggiest MMO's to date.

Well I'll respect your opinion and add my own... based on your post.

In my opinion the accurate statement would be:  Mythic was successful in the MMO department.

DAoC had a better launch than AO.  Now go to camelotherald and watch the server populations for a week or two.  Take note of what the max "online" population ever hits.

Then we could talk about who had to sell out to a large corporation to survive..

Personally I'd say lets see how AoC and WAR do when they are both on the market.  Then we can have some nice comments based in the relative "current" facts.. and not something that happened years ago and really has no bearing on the current situation for either company.

Originally posted by drarkanex

Oh man...  Of course AO was buggy.  They release Beta 4 to the general Public and everyone jumped on.  When AO Came out, the ONLY MMO out there was EQ.  People were looking for something different and they certainly found it.  Funcom was crippled for a month after release of AO, but after 25 days from launch, they bounced back with AO and there were no major bugs after that.  Funcom learned a valuable lesson.  All of this was WAY before World of Warcraft.  If I remember correctly, World of Warcraft had the buggiest launch.

Mythic held my attention for 2 hours with DAoC.  then after that I felt i'd wasted my time.  Now Mythic is going to chew up the Warhammer franchise and ruin it.  I was excited about Warhammer til I found out Mythic was developing it.  I will not go to Warhammer..

Also, what makes you think AoC is a console game?  Is it the fact that PC and Console will be playing together or just the interface?  Because to me, I don't see the Console qualities you say.

I{ Mod Edit }  AO went down in history as THE WORST RELEASE.. Funcom.. aka.. 2 really high doods in Norway who majored in marketting, released a overly hyped POS that wouldn't even AutoPatch for 25 days. You must be higher than Oslo Bob to think AO was anything but a piece of garbage for .. i dunno.. its ENTIRE Shelf-life. There's a reason it got most improved game.. its because it had no-where to go but up.

I also gotta ask.. WTF are you getting your information. At the time AO slimed its way onto shelves.. UO had been going strong for 4 years since 97.. EQ came onto the scene in 99, as did AC. DAoC came out a poultry 3 months after AO.. and proved IMMEDIATELY what a success a well-made game can be if not developed by retards.

The fact that you think AO> DAoC shows me where your MMO knowledge lies.. but heres the sad part.. You actually think Oslo Bob learned a lesson from AO. This is my major point of contention with your post. AoC is a piece of garbage just like AO was. Everything thing that AoC hyped until now has either been changed/removed, or if not.. will be an EPIC FAIL come launch. Mainly.. their "seige pvp" system. Engaging combat? Hah thats a joke.. within 5 mins of playing i figured out a ways to run background macros that cycle my shields around so quickly that an opponent has no way to really strike your weak side unless they get lucky timing. This is not a skill game.. this is once again a demonstration that Oslo Bob's true skill lies in marketting and NOT MMORPG development.

Enjoy the trash that this release will inevitably be. I sadly enough have to continue playing Shadowbane vs. 10 million chinese on &*^^% servers b/c this game cant even do better than a dead game with no staff.

I cancelled my three sony accounts for conan. If it ends up stinking, i'll just find something else.

I am done with sony products now.

Originally posted by drarkanex

Mythic held my attention for 2 hours with DAoC.  then after that I felt i'd wasted my time...

Sheesh, then clearly nothing will entertain you then nub...

DAoC had many, many great elements and was spot on for the first 2 or 3 years until some of the suspect expansion were released.

Originally posted by Skuldin

 

Originally posted by JK-Kanosi

How many of you quit other MMORPGs? How long has it been since you quit playing MMORPGs? Why are you going to play AoC? In other words, what is so special about AoC that other MMORPGs hasn't done before that AoC is doing, that is making you resub to MMORPGs?

I am asking, because I recently (about a month ago) quit MMORPGs, because I have just got bored of them. Those MMORPGs I did like, I quit playing due to the smallish communities or because I was too behind the mass to ever take part in the fun stuff. I am interested in AoC, but haven't been sold on the fact that it is different enough to not bore me after the newness wears off.

 

JK-Kanosi,

 

I am going to give you a bit of background on me since you asked for people's opinions.  I'm 33 years old which puts me at the age that I remember every MMORPG from their inception and MUDs. I played and ocassionally (when the wife goes out of town) still play paper and pencil RPGs with some buds from work.  I played Ultima Online for a time and a bit of EQ, I was never a fan of sci-fi games like Anarchy Online.  I fell in love with Dark Age of Camelot and even played it in the final stages of beta.  I played that game for a long long time.  I played it in Shrouded Isles and I played it in Trials of Atlantis,  I even came back and played it in the next expansion or two.  It had the realm versus realm combat and the dungeon people would pvp over and it had gear that wasn't soulbound to allow you to make sets to level up other characters and give to them in the guild. 

Dark Age of Camelot had weapon dyes and awesome guild cloaks that let your whole guild choose to have colors like a real unit in combat.  It had guild houses and personal houses (i hated the layout of hte zone for this but other than that it was pretty cool) where you could put the trophy heads of epic beasts you killed.  Most of all it had an end-game entirely devoted to PVP.  Realm Abilities to me are the SINGLE best idea in any MMORPG i have played.  I have played WoW and sold off (shhh I know illegal) two 70s but it NEVER had that epic feel to it.  Everything was instanced and timed. I played on a RP-PVP server (Ravenholdt) and I couldnt have told you one name of an enemy player on my own server because there was no need for rivalries because all of the PVP was in battlegrounds or arena. 

Dark Age battle grounds and sieges had no time limit which made the world seem more "real".  Numbers in fights werent always fair and that led to a stronger community where people had to have friends to call in from time to time and even alliances between guilds to defend the relics. World of Warcraft had none of that feel.  It was poorly disguised grinds for factions that in the next expansion no one will want because that faction's gear will be worthless. 

Age of Conan promises to revert a bit more to a Dark Age of Camelot or even EQ1 feel.  Death hurts (I still think they need to do xp loss) and it should matter in pve especially.  Age of Conan is gritty and not a "pulp" as World of Warcraft with all their poorly disguised joke names and quests.  World of Warcraft is for people who aren't into the fantasy Genre very much.  Age of Conan is for the guy like me that grew up eating and drinking gritty fantasy where blood spills and people die...a lot.  I grew up quoting Conan the Barbarian movies and taking to heart a few of the lessons Robert E Howard bestowed upon his readers about civilization's imminent decay and how barbarism always comes back around in due time. 

Age of Conan has that "taste" i've been missing in MMORPGs, it won't be for everyone and if you are a member of the non-violence yuppy club that thinks women shouldn't have their ti&$ hanging out it isn't for you. 

I for one will crush my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentation of their women..

It isn't your job to convince me to play AoC, it is Funcom's. However, when there are fans of AoC who were on the boat until they've tried the game; came back and gave it a bad review on top of revealing that siege warfare, the feature that many people are switching to Funcom for, is actually not in yet and hasn't even been tested. I believe fans over a company who has something to lose by telling the full complete truth. At any rate, I am just trying to see what AoC actually brings to the table and delivers that everyones old MMORPG doesn't.  I am a skeptic, which is a good thing to be, so I believe the one poster who replied with the "new car smell" analogy.

Originally posted by JK-Kanosi

How many of you quit other MMORPGs? How long has it been since you quit playing MMORPGs? Why are you going to play AoC? In other words, what is so special about AoC that other MMORPGs hasn't done before that AoC is doing, that is making you resub to MMORPGs?

I am asking, because I recently (about a month ago) quit MMORPGs, because I have just got bored of them. Those MMORPGs I did like, I quit playing due to the smallish communities or because I was too behind the mass to ever take part in the fun stuff. I am interested in AoC, but haven't been sold on the fact that it is different enough to not bore me after the newness wears off.

 

Dear JK,

I am a MMO vet, I have been playing since Everquest was released, and played through almost all of the 14 rediculous expansions.  I have tried eve, lotro and alot of other free trial mmo's.  I have played WoW for a very long time over 2 years since it was released.  The main reason to be honest I want to play AOC, is because I not only want something completely new.  But because this game reminds me alot of Everquest when it was first released through the ruins of Kunark Expansion.  It felt like an actual world that I could explore, it had very good graphics for the time and the players on the game were very mature and fun to play with.  The overall game concepts were amazing.  I see Everquest or a part of it in AOC the way its released now.  WoW on the other hand was amazing when I first played it, but the expansions unfortunately killed all the time we vets poured into it, by make level 58 greens in Outlands better then some epic raiding equipiment.  In Aoc I see the focus more on grouping and sieging as a community and alliance rather then gear grinding being forced down our throats.  If Aoc becomes a gear grinding game I will leave it too and try something else.  But based on the current game, my friends playing the beta and the concepts the game seems that it will be a blast, a game I will probably belong to for many years to come.

Long post below for a simple question... ignore the fact that I keep switching between CoX and CoH, you get which game I'm talking about I think (City of Heroes / Villains)

My first MMORPG was CoH about 3 years ago... was really fun times. I loved the character customization of the game and the feeling that your hero was unique. There's constantly CCs (the shortened word for costume contests in-game) constantly in Atlas Park, probably still around today, because of how extremely original people could make their characters. This was the only game of it's time (maybe even today) that offers such a nice freedom on character customization and the look and feel of your avatar, including the powers you have, probably even better than what AoC is doing. I played it happily for about a year until I finally got bored of it. It's very odd, and sort of functions differently than other games today. Let's see WoW.... it's basically a grind to level 80... your main goal is to reach the top as fast as possible. Not that you didn't have fun in-between, but your actual goal was max level. In CoH, leveling to the top basically never crossed my mind... I had a blast in-between. It was the end-game and lack of replayability that killed the game for me.... when I got my first toon to level 50 I wondered... "what now?" The game lacks a PvP community (literally, PvP zones are practically empty, even on weekends) and the PvE content is quite stale... I tried making a PB ( peacebringer, an "epic" class that could shape-shift that you are allowed to create once you get a character to max level) but that didn't really change anything... gets boring once you hit the mark.

After that point I had quit MMORPGs for a long time. 6 months later I played WoW because I knew a lot of friends who were playing it. I got a character to level 33 and just couldn't take it anymore... like I already said, it was the exact opposite of CoX... it just felt like a grind to me, very little fun other than socializing with others. I quit after about 3 months of play once that character reached 33. At this point I went on another 6-month break... I had the urge to play CoX again. I hoped that maybe they improved the end-game content... they didn't really, so I didn't go back on my first character ever created to actually play from that point onward ever again, only to enter CCs to gain some in-game money. I made a new character and surprisingly felt refreshing after the break I took. I played for 6 months and enjoyed myself until level 44, when I realized... the same thing is going to happen... what exactly am I trying to reach end-game for? So I quit the game and haven't played since. From here on out I switch between just playing games on my xbox, eventually xbox live on the xbox 360, and going back and forth between WoW... never got a character past level 46 to this day...

So what exactly is all this rambling good for...? Well, what I'm looking for in a game more than anything is fun. I think that is what all of us are looking for. I want a game that entertains me from start to finish, and then some with plenty of end-game content. I want WoW's seemingly neverending end-game content coupled with CoX's awesome gameplay experience... and it's community to match. I loved CoX's community, so much better than what I found in WoW.

I believe AoC is going to offer both the things I like in both MMORPGs... not to mention great immersion, a not necessarily new but different combat system, and outstanding graphics... it's got real promise in my eyes. The only thing that worries me is the community, though I can't really judge by this yet... that might be a determining factor, considering many of the people I know who play WoW will be sticking to it simply because their computers can't handle AoC. I want a community where I can find friendly people to group with in seconds, what CoX offered... we can't tell what AoC's actual community will be like until a couple of months after release. If this aspect is at least slightly fulfilled I'll be very happy with what AoC has to offer.

To Douhk,

I think what you enjoyed about CoX, may be exactly what I enjoy about it. Yes, the customization is unmatched, thats a huge plus. However, a lot of people can't point their finger at what else CoX offers that a lot of other games don't. I'll tell you what that is. Ok, granted CoX is about SUPER heroes / villains, and the game was made accordingly. What I mean by this is your "hero / villain" could