Keep up the good work guys ! Great game :) 

The expansion still doesn't solve the main issue with this game. Its how much their mid level dungeons totally sucks, even the revamped ones like Black Castle and the Main System are crap. They're too god damn hard and filled with uber trash mobs that a typical group at that level would never bother to crawl through them. Take Black Castle for example, its the first epic dungeon in the game, it should be straight forward and be a "trainer" for group mechanics. Instead it's a brutal romp full of uber trash mobs and bosses that will drive a typical noob group to tears.

As if that isn't enough the reward for the effort required complete this hell hole totally sucks.

Basically unless Funcom realise what is wrong with the content they have now, cranking out another expansion pack isn't going to bring people back.

To the author;

WoW much? Damn the way you wrote this it sounds like your only MMOG expansion experience is WoW, with lines like'

'Most paid expansions run with either a new class or a raised level cap. How do you justify charging players for this one?'...

you sound like a WoW fanboi. WoW expansions suck. Another 10 levels, another new race, 2 new powers powers per class, a new tier of talents that will yet again completely fubar the games balance and result in months of fixes, not to mention such issues with entirely new classes (or class diversification,) and a group of new zones that have the same boring fetch/kill/fedex quests.

Give me a break, WotLK sucked after you hit cap, and that took all of 4-7 days for 90% of players. Of everyone I know that played WoW when WotLK came out, NONE play the game anymore. Almost every single one of them quit within weeks of the expansion hitting. To the point that it is so clear a large portion of WoW players thought WotLK sucked that the next expansion is radically different from the first two.

What AoC is doing is the best way to build an expansion. Add tons of new content at a variety of levels, give plays a 'post-cap' way to advance and farther customize their character. A lot of you folks talking about how bad the game is after the tutorial island (Tortage) clearly haven't played since the first few months. The last thing the game needs right now are 10 more levels and some new classes.

Jairoe03 has it right.
"Despite me not having played AoC as of yet and just purely reading the article for what it is. I still think AoC is doing something right that WoW never does is to NOT increase the level cap... I think AoC is taking the high road in regards to adding other ways to developing the character and providing new experiences as opposed to WoW who just repeat the cycle of releasing higher and higher tiers of equipment along with more and more 10-25 man raids. They provide very little in experience and diversity at the end of the game (in terms of PvE since this is generally their stronge suit) and the only real rewards come from the 10-25 man raids that do not cater to casual gamers well."

The last thing AoC needs now is a WoW-styled expansion of layering new levels on top of one another with the same old boring arse advancement systems that take most players days to get through and yet more boring raids.

I think it's smart of Funcom to handle the expansion this way. Once you get out of Tortage you can go to Khitai, from what it sounds like. Making a second starting area right now would be a mistake in the long run because it would split the new players between 2 areas in the game, making the game feel more empty than it is.

Speaking specifically to the level cap, Ellingsen said virtually the same thing; that the company was looking to expand on what was there to begin with, giving player an opportunity to take the characters that they currently have and build on them rather than simply stacking a few new levels on top

That's really interesting. Considering that AoC will have been out close to 2 years by the time the expansion will launch (if the expansion would come out before Q1 2010, it would have been given a date already), it's nothing short of stunning to believe that people still want to remain the same level and get new content for that level.

Sure there will be new high level areas and also new spells and skills as well as alternative abilities, but after 2 years of playing the same classes at level 80, people might want to actually progress their character upwards again.

I don't know about other people, but i don't necessarily care about loot. I like exploring (a lot) but that does not make me run a dungeon more than twice (to make sure i have seen everything in it) - i like running through dungeons in groups to get experience, level my character and advance my character. At least when a new expansion comes out.

I have played both WoW expansions and all too soon was the leveling over and then the grinding started again - one of the reasons i stopped playing WoW shortly after i hit level 80.

It was the same in EQ with expansions. Those that raised the level cap are remembered very strongly and favourably.

In the end it's Funcom's choice of course, but after close to 2 years of playing the same game, it would have been nice to see characters gaining levels again.

And the excuse that they "Want to add more content to the level range" is really quite lame - with an exisiting engine, an existing tool and 120 people working on the game, i would certainly hope that you can create quite a bit of content in 2 years since launch.

"I don't think you need a new class and a rasied level cap in order to call it an expansion," he began. "We are adding an alternative advancement system that I think is going to be quite similar to actually getting higher levels. You will actually be expanding a character that you already have and for us that just felt more natural with the current condition of Conan. We wanted to add more diverse high level content to the game"

No you certainly don't need a new class and a raised level cap to call it an expansion. But players certainly have come to expect it from expansions that were fully priced (hence the reason the question was asked in the first place). EQ, EQ2, WoW, Lord of the Rings etc. all have done just that - with a full priced expansion they introduced new classes, new races and raised level caps. On top of massive amounts of content and system updates. EQ introduced Alternate Advancement points with Shadows of Luclin, which also introduced a raise in level cap and about a 30% increase in gameplay area (can't remember if there was a new race or not).

Pure content and system upgrades (which is what 90% of the AoC expansion is all about) are usually done for free from other companies. Turbine releases free chapters to their Lord of the Rings game, Blizzard ususally has a large content patch within a year after an expansion, free as well. EQ2 had downloadable optional content - for a small price - which added considerable amount of content.

No, i think what Rise of the Godslayer really is (and that is my personal opinion), is a way of launching the game big in Asia (china in particular) - hence the China theme, hence the no level raise (so Chinese people don't feel like they are behind and have to catch up - a mistake Blizzard made IMO) and hence the full price.

A proper expansion would have concentrated on closing the gaps in the map between existing content (and remove the need for travel NPCs that whisk a player away over thousands of miles), expand on the exisiting lore of the current content, raise the level cap and maybe create a new class. A Kithai expansion should have come further down the line.

So, why the decision not to add another starting area to the game? Some players feel as though Tortage is simply played out.

The long story short here is essentially that the focus of the content for this expansion was meant to be for players above 20th level, meaning for players and characters that had already played through the Tortage experience.

"We adding a little bit of low and mid level content, but mostly this is a high level expansion. That's been our goal from the beginning."
 

So we get a new race wohoo! but you will have to do Tortage again. How many alts will you have before the expansion hits? 2? 3? 4? so you'll have done Tortage multiple times already. And no new class. So the destiny quests will be the same as well. And still there is no way of skipping tortage and going straight to level 19/20. And with not a lot of new mid and low level content why would anyone actually WANT to level up to 80 again? only to be stuck at that level?

There is a reason why Blizzard has increased xp gain from quests and monsters below level 60 - people are tired of going through the same content over and over when leveling up a new character.

But hey - at least there will be new mounts! If WoW has shown us one thing: people are crazy for mounts! It's as if Funcom is looking at WoW (and other MMOs) to see why they are successfull and then picks the most random things to copy, instead of understanding why people want to play MMOs.
 

Though i don't like FC, i think they did alot of things right with the expansion and agian it shows that booting Gaute and putting Craig in charge was the best thing to do. Horizontal progression instead of vertical is a very good move, though compared to adding and balacing 5 more levels is also sort of an easier way out. Still i think that these are 2 things Funcom definately did right.

Of course, this way people will complain that it is content they should patch in for free -if the expansion would contain 5-10 more levels, other people would complain like "bah, 5 levels more of the same, need more 20-80 stuff", "they can't even balance the current 80 levels" or "only 3 new zones to level 80-85 in??" etc.

Also no problem with not having new classes on my side, but i think they missed a great chance to add another "more basic" healing-class, adjust it with BS, PoM and ToS and sort out healing altogether a bit.

But as history repeats (and moreso in FC's case), i doubt that this addon will come in without any major disappointments or heavy technical difficulties. If FC still suffers from the megalomaniac illusion that AoC will make it to the XBox360, there is a great chance they will ruin the zone design again by dividing everything in tiny boxes with constant loadingscreens as it is now. In case they dropped that idea, they may enlarge the environments for the better and collect another bonus point on my list.

Anyway, AoC's progression and FC's moves are somewhat interesting to follow compared to the copy+paste stuff other companies spew out for years and again.

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Originally posted by shzrocka

In my opinion, these are changes that should be happening with patches over time for free. Seems like to me that funcom is trying to make more money by selling 6 (not so major) updates packed in a box. This purely my opinion, take with a grain of salt.

 

This person gets it. Besides paying for the last year of beta testing Funcom has figured out away to make a few more bucks out of ya and your still paying to beta this game. This time around folks are gonna be more cousious and may not come back as much as they want them to. I believe also you will not get to see expansion till you've already paid for it. Anyone doubt it will not come with alot of problems that disrupt the game. NO!

Jihad works both ways

Regarding having to pay for the expansion, while no real details have been released about this, I'd expect to pay about $30US for the expansion with the convenience of an online download (check out LotRO's and other retail expansions to see how it works).  I'd also expect a "gold" game box to hit the shelves for about $50 (possibly less).

I'll bet you a case of your favorite brew that these two guys quoted here, serving whine with their cheese, haven't actually played AoC in many months and are merely continuing to parrot the woes from last summer.

The reality of life, to clarify and to inform you both, is that AoC actually reached release quality some months ago and if you were playing the game now, you'd know it. 

Your arguments are soo last year and stale, no longer apply and are therefore irrelavent.

I'm delighted with this news myself, as AOC's problem with me is that it's a vertical climb without a great deal of breadth...I've returned to it every few months, but no matter what class or race I start with, the path after Tortage has been the same...starting in Cimmeria until I hit the quest ceiling there, then moving on to Aquilonia, then having to ferret around for quests in Stygia until I'm high enough level to tackle Tarantia, then on to Fields of the Dead.  More variety will be welcome!