Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by Aercus

Originally posted by LordBonezy

I don't watch informercials. I didn't believe everything Funcom was saying about AOC, but we were told week after week and month after month that fixes and features were coming.

Come to try this game out again like 100,000 others, only instead of for free I subbed for a month (a few days before free trials came along) stupid me, the only things that had substantially changed were performance and the servers had been merged, and DX10 was in beta rather than non-existent.

This thread is not about what funcom did at launch it is about what they haven't done to get the game where it needed to be to be a huge success after launch. Today there is nobody measuring or calling it successful and how can they. The game clearly isn't what they expected to get back on their investment and they thought it was when they did the free trials and they figured out pretty fast that it still is not.

This game hasn't got features advertised on the box, or in the manual even 20 months after launch with no sign of them coming in this game. They are talking expansion product, without even bothering to deliver at least some form of all the features of what they promised with the original. They don't have fully functioning and playable sieges. Sorry you lose.

 

Almost no games after WoW have been successful, and that's because WoW ate pretty much the whole casual segment.

Horseshit. MMOs are growing fastest in PC gaming, and PC gaming is either holding steady or slowly declining. With Windows 7and an improving economy it will begin to grow again.

For a MMO to be successful they need to pump out expansions (if themeparks, see WoW and Lotro for reference) or be sandbox games (like EVE). I've tried/played WoW, EVE, Lotro, EQ2, L2, VG, AO and a number of others, and have left them all behind with no intention of picking them back up. 

Wrong again. Consumers need the features and content advertised. If you buy an adventure book, you expect the pages to contain a story with chapters pertaining to that story. AOC was an adventure fantasy set in an MMO without a lot of players, with borked mechanics and features missing. Deliver what you are advertising and you'll do well, don't and you won't. This isn't about the need for an expansion. Who are they making the expansion for? Most players who played and quit the game because it is missing features, buggy, and doesn't contain enough content or mechanics favorable to fair and fun play to justify the price being charged are not going to pick up the expansion. Rather than fix the product they have, trying to sell an expansion on a game already not fleshed out and functioning isn't going to win them a whole bunch of new customers.

Just because they don't appeal to me, and the majority of people who have tried them, does not make them failed or bad. Pulling up the population of a game as an evidence to its quality is a moot point as almost no games have a particularly good retention rate, and the largest game is bigger than all other games combined.

I would agree with you if the number was 50/50 but its 96% quit, 4% still subscribe to a game which can casual players a year to play through entirely the first time. It's been about 20 months since launch, so explain to me why the ratio is 96/4 when this market is growing, diverse, and supposedly contains so many casual players.

The MMO market is small, new players gravitate towards one game, and the vast majority of existing players does not readily switch games due to sunken-costs. Until WoW disappears there will be no WoW killer due to these factors, and no matter what Funcom does or does not do, or did or didn't do, has any impact in making AoC a success. And this statement will go for all MMO launches which try to get millions of subs - they are doomed before they are launched. That is not the games or the companies mistake, it's how the market is.

WOW is an example of how to do it right or at least well. AOC is not by any measure. I can't believe you are writing that the reason AOC was unsuccessful at holding onto hundreds of thousands of subs or trying to attain millions of subs, while their game remains broken, while it still does not contain features hyped months before the launch, all while they have abandoned efforts to fix borked implements and add these missing features, I can't believe you are blaming that on the market. The market indeed does decide on the value of a product.

96% of players who have ever tried AOC have left to do other things. If they had managed to keep even another 100,000 of the million who have bought the game, still subscribed the current server makeup would be populated and healthy, and the game would not be in danger of server implosions. However that is not the case, and that is why AOC is failing.

Doing nothing or maintaining the current pace and focus of improvements, patches, and tweaking is not helping. Notice the downward trend in every metric to measure population and buzz for the game, they all agree, effective measurements or not, reliable or not, they all agree on the direction of the game's population.

Steady

Slow

Decline

Defending AoC must be more fun than

hey why is Dragon Age ads all over *MMO*RPG.com ??? 

more fun than playing AoC

The total Western MMOG market is estimated to have a revenue of about ~1.3b in 2009  and will most likely hit the 1.5b mark in 2011. That's about a 50% growth over 2007, which is around 7-8% annualy. Certainly quick, but not exactly explosive, right?

If you were just starting to play a MMORPG, which game is it the most likely you would pick up, the one everybody has heard of, or an unknown title? Do you think most newcomers to the genre start out in WoW or another game? Do you think the average gamer switches games frequently or infrequently?

It is my contention that this leads to few newcomers joining new releases, and the gamers you do get are not the ones you desire. Developers don't want the people who blast through the content they spent 5 years making in a few weeks, they want the guy that plays an hour or two every other day, not reaching end game for a year at least.

Consumers wants a game they find entertaining, which can be delivered in a myriad in ways. It's not the lack of promised player housing in WoW or drunken brawling in AoC which drive people to or from the games, it's their inherent entertainment value. Your proposed factors may or may not had an impact on the entertainment value of AoC, but to draw conclusions like you do, you would have to know the psychology of everyone that left, and not just assume all left for the same reasons you did.

No mmo has a 50% retention rate. I'd say 30% might be the best for the ones that have aimed mass market. It's a boom or bust market, and only WoW has boomed (and possibly Aion, remains to be seen). 5% or lower retention rate sounds bad, but it's something that happened to pretty much all releases the last few years; AoC, WAR, TR, HG:L, DDO, VG,etc. WoW certainly appears to be well polished today (based on the opinions of the players), but remember that when launched it was no better than the games that has succeeded it.

With almost all games post-WoW failing, don't you really see a trend that sticks deeper than the game itself?

I've been playing AoC since launch, I stuck at it through the memory leaks and saw an improvement when the Ymir's Pass content was added, the memory leaks were fixed and all was well.
lvl 80 came soon enough and my raiding began in earnest, then it began to sink in...Nothing else to do...Raid T1 and T2 every week, rinse 'n' repeat until you and the guy next to you are identikit doubles.
I've been doing those same raids (every week) for maybe 8 months, plenty of time for AoC's new helmsman Craig Morrison to analyse AoC's problem and fix them, and in the process keep existing players and attract new ones.
None of it!
Morrison's master plan has seen the introduction of more bliddy dungeons for people to run through each week!
Add pets
Give players 'loyalty points'
Mess with gear stats

It's a shame that the very description of AoC's genre hasn't yet sunk in to Morrison's brain.........RPG!
 

[Disclaimer : I play AoC mainly because I am a fan of RE Howard's Conan stories, and the excellent community that exists on the server Crom]

Originally posted by Aercus

The total Western MMOG market is estimated to have a revenue of about ~1.3b in 2009  and will most likely hit the 1.5b mark in 2011. That's about a 50% growth over 2007, which is around 7-8% annualy. Certainly quick, but not exactly explosive, right?

If you were just starting to play a MMORPG, which game is it the most likely you would pick up, the one everybody has heard of, or an unknown title? Do you think most newcomers to the genre start out in WoW or another game? Do you think the average gamer switches games frequently or infrequently?

It is my contention that this leads to few newcomers joining new releases, and the gamers you do get are not the ones you desire. Developers don't want the people who blast through the content they spent 5 years making in a few weeks, they want the guy that plays an hour or two every other day, not reaching end game for a year at least.

Consumers wants a game they find entertaining, which can be delivered in a myriad in ways. It's not the lack of promised player housing in WoW or drunken brawling in AoC which drive people to or from the games, it's their inherent entertainment value. Your proposed factors may or may not had an impact on the entertainment value of AoC, but to draw conclusions like you do, you would have to know the psychology of everyone that left, and not just assume all left for the same reasons you did.

No mmo has a 50% retention rate. I'd say 30% might be the best for the ones that have aimed mass market. It's a boom or bust market, and only WoW has boomed (and possibly Aion, remains to be seen). 5% or lower retention rate sounds bad, but it's something that happened to pretty much all releases the last few years; AoC, WAR, TR, HG:L, DDO, VG,etc. WoW certainly appears to be well polished today (based on the opinions of the players), but remember that when launched it was no better than the games that has succeeded it.

With almost all games post-WoW failing, don't you really see a trend that sticks deeper than the game itself?

The market is growing we agree, Funcom didn't lose 7-8% marketshare with AOC, they lost 96% of their playerbase to purchase ratio, whatever that translates to I don't know and don't care. The market is growing, so should AOC were they average or better. However they are far below average and for reasons I've stated before.

I have no idea which game is most likely to be picked up. Most referred would probably have to be WOW, but there is just as much negative buzz as positive buzz about WOW at times, so word of mouth is their best marketing method. Most new MMOs need the positive impression followed by better and stable impressions and a concurrency with the rest of the players playing, to stick around. Another major need for MMOs is stable populations, see AOC or WAR as examples of where when this doesn't exist for any reason nor do the MMOs.

WOWs retention is much higher than AOCs and over a much longer period. About the only worse performing game than AOC would be SWG that I can think of, in terms of it having 1 million subs sold, and less than 100k playing today. AOC didn't fail because of WOW or any other reason except the merits of AOC and their product implementation.

My point is that we ought to stop placing the blame on present day subscriptions, performance, and characteristics of the game on the launch which was almost 2 years ago. We need to look at the game today.

Broken sieges, unfair imbalance between classes, both techincal and mechanical. Do you recall when there was an imbalance between female and male character damage levels? Was that acceptable? Why should the caster/melee imbalance which heavily favors casters be permitted?

How about imploding servers now? This is a real problem now and until they tweak mechanics and fix broken shit this isn't going to go away. Its only going to get worse.

If the game was vastly improved over what it was at release then more people would be playing. 

It isn't as if people have not retried the game or there is a free trial. 

If the game isn't growing then it is pretty clear the changes have not been great enough to keep people entertained or resolve the issues they had with the game. 

In other words a game with exceptional gameplay will grow on its own.  The game will sell itself with the exceptional gameplay it offers.

I don't hate the game or love it, but it is time to stop blaming the release of the game for the current situation.  If enough was changed then some sort of rebound could have happened.  It isn't like the majority of the market who tried conan isn't still looking for a new game.

Originally posted by Daffid011

If the game was vastly improved over what it was at release then more people would be playing. 

It isn't as if people have not retried the game or there is a free trial. 

 

If the game isn't growing then it is pretty clear the changes have not been great enough to keep people entertained or resolve the issues they had with the game. 

 

In other words a game with exceptional gameplay will grow on its own.  The game will sell itself with the exceptional gameplay it offers.

 

I don't hate the game or love it, but it is time to stop blaming the release of the game for the current situation.  If enough was changed then some sort of rebound could have happened.  It isn't like the majority of the market who tried conan isn't still looking for a new game.

 

 

 

 

I completely agree. I don't have AOC either I think it was a pretty good exprience, just lacking and it fell apart towards the end for me. I think Funcom is a company that should be disbanded though cause they are unethical and not good at making MMOs that are addictive and functional.

Originally posted by Frostbite05

most of the features wow promised were there at launch. Over 50% of the age of conan content was either not part of the launch or never existed in the first place.

Actually that isn't true Frostbite.

Blizzard initially said that the easy leveling curve was so players could get to 60 quickly to begin working on pvp and their hero class.  Well the pvp was pointless until several months later when the (now old) honor system was put it with battlegrounds.  Until then it was just grief here, gank there, with no gain or consequece. 

Hero Classes were promised at release.  They had originally said that you would get to 60, then become a <whatever>.  For whatever reason, they never followed up on that and refused to even talk about hero classes until Wrath.  At that time it was a hero class (read: singular) that required no effort to get.

Honestly thought, can't really compare AoC and WoW fairly.  AoC it geared towards higher end PC's and mature gamers.  WoW is going for mass market appeal with lower-res "cartoony" graphics and younger players.

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by Daffid011

If the game was vastly improved over what it was at release then more people would be playing. 

It isn't as if people have not retried the game or there is a free trial. 

 

If the game isn't growing then it is pretty clear the changes have not been great enough to keep people entertained or resolve the issues they had with the game. 

 

In other words a game with exceptional gameplay will grow on its own.  The game will sell itself with the exceptional gameplay it offers.

 

I don't hate the game or love it, but it is time to stop blaming the release of the game for the current situation.  If enough was changed then some sort of rebound could have happened.  It isn't like the majority of the market who tried conan isn't still looking for a new game.

 

 

 

 

I completely agree. I don't have AOC either I think it was a pretty good exprience, just lacking and it fell apart towards the end for me. I think Funcom is a company that should be disbanded though cause they are unethical and not good at making MMOs that are addictive and functional.

So Funcom... a corporation publicly traded on a stock exchange, with hundreds of employees, scores of investors, and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of shareholders "should be disbanded" because you don't like their products?

That's pretty narcissistic.  if you were a Coke drinker, should Pepsi Corp should be disbanded? I mean they are unethical and not good at making soft drinks that taste up to your standards.

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Frostbite05

most of the features wow promised were there at launch. Over 50% of the age of conan content was either not part of the launch or never existed in the first place.

 

Actually that isn't true Frostbite.

Blizzard initially said that the easy leveling curve was so players could get to 60 quickly to begin working on pvp and their hero class.  Well the pvp was pointless until several months later when the (now old) honor system was put it with battlegrounds.  Until then it was just grief here, gank there, with no gain or consequece. 

Hero Classes were promised at release.  They had originally said that you would get to 60, then become a <whatever>.  For whatever reason, they never followed up on that and refused to even talk about hero classes until Wrath.  At that time it was a hero class (read: singular) that required no effort to get.

Honestly thought, can't really compare AoC and WoW fairly.  AoC it geared towards higher end PC's and mature gamers.  WoW is going for mass market appeal with lower-res "cartoony" graphics and younger players.

 

Lol since when have boobies attracted mature gamers?

It's a myth that AoC has older players. Every guild I have ever been to has had tons of kiddies who lied that they were adults and who always refuse to come to vent because then they would be exposed. All you need is one look at public chat and you'll see how "mature" AoC community is.

First off, where did you get in my post that "mature gamers" equates to "boobies"?   I would think the immature gamers would be going for the digital boobies as it were.

As for looking at public chat, there is technically no "public" chat, I will assume you mean Global?  Many people actually disable that as there is a LFG channel if they need to find peopel for a pug.  As for the "quality" of chat in Global it is no where NEAR as bad as the infamous Barrens Chat that WoW has.  If you ask a legitimate question in Global you will rarely get a snarky reply (unlike in WoW). 

When speaking of a mature game, it's more than the "boobies" as you put it.  There is adult language and themes as well in many of the quests.  Not to mention, AoC has fatalities....

Originally posted by Nipashnaka

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by Daffid011

If the game was vastly improved over what it was at release then more people would be playing. 

It isn't as if people have not retried the game or there is a free trial. 

 

If the game isn't growing then it is pretty clear the changes have not been great enough to keep people entertained or resolve the issues they had with the game. 

 

In other words a game with exceptional gameplay will grow on its own.  The game will sell itself with the exceptional gameplay it offers.

 

I don't hate the game or love it, but it is time to stop blaming the release of the game for the current situation.  If enough was changed then some sort of rebound could have happened.  It isn't like the majority of the market who tried conan isn't still looking for a new game.

 

 

 

 

I completely agree. I don't have AOC either I think it was a pretty good exprience, just lacking and it fell apart towards the end for me. I think Funcom is a company that should be disbanded though cause they are unethical and not good at making MMOs that are addictive and functional.

 

So Funcom... a corporation publicly traded on a stock exchange, with hundreds of employees, scores of investors, and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of shareholders "should be disbanded" because you don't like their products?

That's pretty narcissistic.  if you were a Coke drinker, should Pepsi Corp should be disbanded? I mean they are unethical and not good at making soft drinks that taste up to your standards.

Coke and Pepsi both deliver good products and services, and they don't screw their customers by delivering half cans of soda with holes on the top but letting us all know it will be fixed in 2-3 months or maybe 4. To be fair I'm not the typical MMO player, never played WOW don't play AOC or any competion anymore because honestly nothing else currently appeals to me. I have given Aion some thought but I'm holding out for Mortal Online, I'm thinking that is going to be a pretty good game if they can get it off the ground. AOC is simply dying fast and I have no faith given the history of Funcom that there development team is going to build an expansion worth paying for.

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Coke and Pepsi both deliver good products and services, and they don't screw their customers by delivering half cans of soda with holes on the top but letting us all know it will be fixed in 2-3 months or maybe 4. To be fair I'm not the typical MMO player, never played WOW don't play AOC or any competion anymore because honestly nothing else currently appeals to me. I have given Aion some thought but I'm holding out for Mortal Online, I'm thinking that is going to be a pretty good game if they can get it off the ground. AOC is simply dying fast and I have no faith given the history of Funcom that there development team is going to build an expansion worth paying for.

Minus the launch of AO, did you ever play AO? And then thier follow up expansions? If anything, I turst thier expansions more than the originals. Shadowlands was a great addition, and Alien Invasion added elements to the game that were pretty revolutionary at the time, and I thought it was great. I was not around for the Lost Eden expansion, or whatever the name of it was, but I heard from many of my friends that it was well done as well.

I think you just have a pretty large bias against them for some reason, and would just rather assume that everything they have ever done, and will ever do is crap. Two bad launches. That sucks, but that is pretty much all. AO developed into quite the game, relished by many even to this day, and it added elements to the MMO genre never seen before, or really even after. AoC has not gotten there yet, but they are still on the right path. The game is doing much better as far as the fun factor, and if they keep building onto the base, they will get a great game. It is just a shame that it took so long.

I hope they take a que from AO, and once the expansion comes out, they make froob accounts for the normal AoC, and then you need to subscribe for the expansion content.

I think most of AoC's problems stem from the launch. And I'm not talking about bugs. They launched the game not just buggy, but incomplete. And not admitting it.

This lead to them trying to complete dev and continue new dev in a live environment. It lead to various game dynamics being either broken or gimped and because FC wouldn't admit it, no one could know if a given system was supposed to be that way, was broken and to be fixed, or just a place holder until they managed to get installed what was originally intended.

Not a confidence inspiring state of affairs in what was to be a top-shelf game.

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Frostbite05

most of the features wow promised were there at launch. Over 50% of the age of conan content was either not part of the launch or never existed in the first place.

 

Actually that isn't true Frostbite.

Blizzard initially said that the easy leveling curve was so players could get to 60 quickly to begin working on pvp and their hero class.  Well the pvp was pointless until several months later when the (now old) honor system was put it with battlegrounds.  Until then it was just grief here, gank there, with no gain or consequece. 

Hero Classes were promised at release.  They had originally said that you would get to 60, then become a <whatever>.  For whatever reason, they never followed up on that and refused to even talk about hero classes until Wrath.  At that time it was a hero class (read: singular) that required no effort to get.

Honestly thought, can't really compare AoC and WoW fairly.  AoC it geared towards higher end PC's and mature gamers.  WoW is going for mass market appeal with lower-res "cartoony" graphics and younger players.

 

Lol since when have boobies attracted mature gamers?

It's a myth that AoC has older players. Every guild I have ever been to has had tons of kiddies who lied that they were adults and who always refuse to come to vent because then they would be exposed. All you need is one look at public chat and you'll see how "mature" AoC community is.

 

First off, where did you get in my post that "mature gamers" equates to "boobies"?   I would think the immature gamers would be going for the digital boobies as it were.

As for looking at public chat, there is technically no "public" chat, I will assume you mean Global?  Many people actually disable that as there is a LFG channel if they need to find peopel for a pug.  As for the "quality" of chat in Global it is no where NEAR as bad as the infamous Barrens Chat that WoW has.  If you ask a legitimate question in Global you will rarely get a snarky reply (unlike in WoW). 

When speaking of a mature game, it's more than the "boobies" as you put it.  There is adult language and themes as well in many of the quests.  Not to mention, AoC has fatalities....

 

Your skills of assumption are pretty amazing.

It's a known fact that both boobies and fatalities attract immature players, not mature. Adults and mature gamers don't generally get all excited if they see pixel boobies or someone decapitated. Adults like "deeper" games, not just cheap eye candy and fluff.

I don't know what kind of chat they have in WoW but I can tell you that AoC had the worst public chat I had ever seen in an MMO. That is of course only my own opinion, yours may be different.

Right now I am playing Fallen Earth and I could instantly tell that its community is much more mature than AoC's. People are actually nice and very helpful. In AoC I saw mostly frustrated kids who liked ganking.

Ah you never played WoW, which explains some.  You don't have the comparison to understand my reference.  Basically The Barrens was a 10-20ish zone, rather bland (oversized plains) so when people were off questing there, the general chat channel usually filled up with odd topics.  Chuck Norris references, bad jokes, etc.  They even make t-shirts now saying "I survived Barrens Chat" over at Jinx.  I'ts gotten to the point that saying "barrens chat" is referring to something stupid and irrelevant.   I've seen in CoH and AoC, someone making a comment about "gosh let's not turn this into barrens chat".

Now as for me assuming, you knowing for a fact that fatalities and boobies attract immature gamers... is a rather big assumption on your part.  The boobies part, that I do agree with if it was just for the sake of "the boobies".  As long as it's following the theme of the storyline, boobies don't bother me.  An example is the Black Pyramid quest lines.  The fatalities are different, since they are actually a short term buff, there is a practical reason to try and get one to go off.  Mature themes are quite common in this game, which may or may not include fatalities and boobies.

Your last statement about "frustrated kids who liked ganking" tells me that you played the game early on and on a pvp server.  On pve servers, there is no ganking.... period.  Simply can't happen.  Not long after release Funcom added a buff to prevent ganking upon rez called "shield of the risen".  It even lowers the cast time of your Path to 1 sec should the ganker be standing there and you want to leave.  Currently they have a criminal system so that if someone continues to grief lowbies, it will penalize them by making them difficult to go into cities (guards attack), having to pay 5 silver to zone elsewhere and having only 1 rez pad per zone to spawn at.

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Actually I have played very recently and on a PvP server. I know for a fact that there's a lot of mindless ganking going on and if you claim something else then maybe you haven't been playing since launch?

Okay, I'll bite... Which server do you play on?  Don't need a character name, just a server.  Cimmeria and Set are not that way.  From what I hear Wiccana is not either.  Your comment is very general and needs to based in FACT so it can be proven true.  If you are not willing to admit which server is a gank-fest, then you are exaggerating again.  Furthermore, if you and your alter-ego hate this game so much, why are you paying to play? 

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Frostbite05

most of the features wow promised were there at launch. Over 50% of the age of conan content was either not part of the launch or never existed in the first place.

 

Actually that isn't true Frostbite.

Blizzard initially said that the easy leveling curve was so players could get to 60 quickly to begin working on pvp and their hero class.  Well the pvp was pointless until several months later when the (now old) honor system was put it with battlegrounds.  Until then it was just grief here, gank there, with no gain or consequece. 

Hero Classes were promised at release.  They had originally said that you would get to 60, then become a <whatever>.  For whatever reason, they never followed up on that and refused to even talk about hero classes until Wrath.  At that time it was a hero class (read: singular) that required no effort to get.

Honestly thought, can't really compare AoC and WoW fairly.  AoC it geared towards higher end PC's and mature gamers.  WoW is going for mass market appeal with lower-res "cartoony" graphics and younger players.

 

Lol since when have boobies attracted mature gamers?

It's a myth that AoC has older players. Every guild I have ever been to has had tons of kiddies who lied that they were adults and who always refuse to come to vent because then they would be exposed. All you need is one look at public chat and you'll see how "mature" AoC community is.

 

First off, where did you get in my post that "mature gamers" equates to "boobies"?   I would think the immature gamers would be going for the digital boobies as it were.

As for looking at public chat, there is technically no "public" chat, I will assume you mean Global?  Many people actually disable that as there is a LFG channel if they need to find peopel for a pug.  As for the "quality" of chat in Global it is no where NEAR as bad as the infamous Barrens Chat that WoW has.  If you ask a legitimate question in Global you will rarely get a snarky reply (unlike in WoW). 

When speaking of a mature game, it's more than the "boobies" as you put it.  There is adult language and themes as well in many of the quests.  Not to mention, AoC has fatalities....

 

Your skills of assumption are pretty amazing.

It's a known fact that both boobies and fatalities attract immature players, not mature. Adults and mature gamers don't generally get all excited if they see pixel boobies or someone decapitated. Adults like "deeper" games, not just cheap eye candy and fluff.

I don't know what kind of chat they have in WoW but I can tell you that AoC had the worst public chat I had ever seen in an MMO. That is of course only my own opinion, yours may be different.

Right now I am playing Fallen Earth and I could instantly tell that its community is much more mature than AoC's. People are actually nice and very helpful. In AoC I saw mostly frustrated kids who liked ganking.

 

Ah you never played WoW, which explains some.  You don't have the comparison to understand my reference.  Basically The Barrens was a 10-20ish zone, rather bland (oversized plains) so when people were off questing there, the general chat channel usually filled up with odd topics.  Chuck Norris references, bad jokes, etc.  They even make t-shirts now saying "I survived Barrens Chat" over at Jinx.  I'ts gotten to the point that saying "barrens chat" is referring to something stupid and irrelevant.   I've seen in CoH and AoC, someone making a comment about "gosh let's not turn this into barrens chat".

Now as for me assuming, you knowing for a fact that fatalities and boobies attract immature gamers... is a rather big assumption on your part.  The boobies part, that I do agree with if it was just for the sake of "the boobies".  As long as it's following the theme of the storyline, boobies don't bother me.  An example is the Black Pyramid quest lines.  The fatalities are different, since they are actually a short term buff, there is a practical reason to try and get one to go off.  Mature themes are quite common in this game, which may or may not include fatalities and boobies.

Your last statement about "frustrated kids who liked ganking" tells me that you played the game early on and on a pvp server.  On pve servers, there is no ganking.... period.  Simply can't happen.  Not long after release Funcom added a buff to prevent ganking upon rez called "shield of the risen".  It even lowers the cast time of your Path to 1 sec should the ganker be standing there and you want to leave.  Currently they have a criminal system so that if someone continues to grief lowbies, it will penalize them by making them difficult to go into cities (guards attack), having to pay 5 silver to zone elsewhere and having only 1 rez pad per zone to spawn at.

 

Actually I have played very recently and on a PvP server. I know for a fact that there's a lot of mindless ganking going on and if you claim something else then maybe you haven't been playing since launch?

Ok last time I will reply to your comments as it it obvious you aren't reading and/or understanding what I am saying. 
 

I DID say that you must of played on a pvp server, on PVE servers there is NO ganking.   Ever.  Now if you play on a PVP server isn't that the idea that ... there is pvp?  Ganking isn't somehow unique to AoC it happens in every MMO that has pvp servers:  DAoC, WoW, EQ1, etc.   In case you haven't realized by now, I play on a pve server because I want to enjoy the quests and storyline.  I went through my pvp phase back when I played DAoC with my nightshade.

Yes I have been playing since launch by the way.

The point I was trying to make is Funcom added features to reduce the amount of ganking.  There will always be someone who will gank regardless of what the game penalizes them with, so that can't be helped.  Now, you cannot be ganked right after you rez due to the Shield of the Risen buff as one example.

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Actually I have played very recently and on a PvP server. I know for a fact that there's a lot of mindless ganking going on and if you claim something else then maybe you haven't been playing since launch?

I DID say that you must of played on a pvp server, on PVE servers there is NO ganking.   Ever.  Now if you play on a PVP server isn't that the idea that ... there is pvp?  Ganking isn't somehow unique to AoC it happens in every MMO that has pvp servers:  DAoC, WoW, EQ1, etc.   In case you haven't realized by now, I play on a pve server because I want to enjoy the quests and storyline.  I went through my pvp phase back when I played DAoC with my nightshade.

The point I was trying to make is Funcom added features to reduce the amount of ganking.  There will always be someone who will gank regardless of what the game penalizes them with, so that can't be helped.  Now, you cannot be ganked right after you rez due to the Shield of the Risen buff as one example.

Okay IPLAY, you are complaining because two PvP servers (Aquilonia and Fury) are a Gank-fest.  This is Rich!!!

It really must be terrible that those servers are so active that there are so many people that play on that server, and they want to Gank you on sight.  With the way you speak and act on Forums, and the aggressiveness of many European Guilds, I suspect you are on a Kill On Sight (KOS) list.  I really would not be surprised. I guess, by your own words then, since you were REALLY there, that the population is strong and there are a lot of people running around to allow for ganking, in general.  Thank you for the report of renewed populations on two of our European AOC PvP servers; this is REALLY GOOD NEWS.  Thank you!

I play nearly daily on a US PVP-RP server, and I have been killed twice in the last two weeks on various questpoints. Honestly, the player did not camp my corpse and must have been passing through, since he killed my four-man team (mid-level 32-44) very quickly.  I believe he was Stygian, and he attacked a group of Cimmerians in a Cimmerian zone.  This may just be an example of RP, so I guess I have respect for him to a degree.

LIST OF MERGED SERVERS:

US Servers

Set (PvE)
* Damballah
* Bardisattva
* Dagoth
* Derketo
* Hanuman

Wiccana (PvE)
* Mannanan
* Ajujo
* Thog
* Zug
* Omm

Gwahlur (PvE - Oceaninc)

Tyranny (PvP)
* Scourge
* Bluesteel
* Stormrage
* Deathwhisper
* Doomsayer
* Shadowblade

Cimmeria (PvP-RP)
* Bane

Bloodspire (PvP - Oceanic) - merged on 7th January 2009)
* Hyperborea

EU Servers

English Servers

Crom (PVE)
* Ymir
* Bori
* Bloodbrand (Ahriman)
* Dagon

Hyrkania (PVE-RP)

Fury (PvP)
* Battlescar
* Wildsoul
* Soulstorm
* Twilight

Aquilonia (PvP-RP)
* Corinthia

German Servers

Mitra (PvE)
* Ibis
* Asura

Aries (PvP)
* Titus

Asgard (PvP-RP)

French Servers

Ishtar (PvE)

Ferox (PvP)
* Strix

Stygia (PvP-RP)

Spanish Servers

Zingara (PvE)

Indomitus (PvP)

what is your point?

 Just let this thread die.  LordBonezy is only trying to come off as a serius poster but all he want to do is try to make "the servers are dead" the truth.

Rumors has it that LordBonezy is the smarter one in the trio BlackFanaBonzers. Think they had a hit or something in the early -90`s....

Originally posted by Halandir

Since Funcom were marketing "steaks" lets look at it from that perspective...

Yeah, lets make a wall of words based on that... or not

I agree, don't blame all of AoC's perceived problems on the launch. Move past it and enjoy the game for what it is now.

After the belief that the latest mmorpg's were gonna rock the mmorpg world, another generation of mmorpg gamers have been lead to disappointment. And considering the relative decline of the until now big mmorpgs (like wow etc).

Many of the until now Aion and [insert mmorpg here] players will have felt the lack of a semi-realistic world, and would like to give AoC a go.

Don't be afraid. You can still pretend that FC have betrayed you.

Enjoy :)

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Coke and Pepsi both deliver good products and services, and they don't screw their customers by delivering half cans of soda with holes on the top but letting us all know it will be fixed in 2-3 months or maybe 4. To be fair I'm not the typical MMO player, never played WOW don't play AOC or any competion anymore because honestly nothing else currently appeals to me. I have given Aion some thought but I'm holding out for Mortal Online, I'm thinking that is going to be a pretty good game if they can get it off the ground. AOC is simply dying fast and I have no faith given the history of Funcom that there development team is going to build an expansion worth paying for.

 

Minus the launch of AO, did you ever play AO? And then thier follow up expansions? If anything, I turst thier expansions more than the originals. Shadowlands was a great addition, and Alien Invasion added elements to the game that were pretty revolutionary at the time, and I thought it was great. I was not around for the Lost Eden expansion, or whatever the name of it was, but I heard from many of my friends that it was well done as well.

I think you just have a pretty large bias against them for some reason, and would just rather assume that everything they have ever done, and will ever do is crap. Two bad launches. That sucks, but that is pretty much all. AO developed into quite the game, relished by many even to this day, and it added elements to the MMO genre never seen before, or really even after. AoC has not gotten there yet, but they are still on the right path. The game is doing much better as far as the fun factor, and if they keep building onto the base, they will get a great game. It is just a shame that it took so long.

I hope they take a que from AO, and once the expansion comes out, they make froob accounts for the normal AoC, and then you need to subscribe for the expansion content.

No. Pre-Shadowlands AO was one of the greatest MMO's ever, at least imo, after SL, it lost much of it's greatness. Shadowlands turned AO from a sandbox to a themepark, and made it so you had to grind billions of the same mobs over and over to level.

And Alien Invasion? Are you fucking nuts? That is possibly the worst pay for expansion in the history of MMO's, all it added was GAME BREAKINGLY overpowered armor and content that was only accessable to a small minority of the population (IE the orgs can could afford citys, and there was limited city spots and no way to pvp or contest a city spot, you had to buy them off ebay for hundreds of dollars no joke). Quite frankly AI ruined AO, at least for me. You needed to kill something like 50,000 aliens to get max alien level, and again most people couldn't even use the content because the vast majority of players didn't have a city.  The alien armor added to the game would be the equivilant of adding epic armor in WOW that gave you 1000 points to every stat and damage type, and only 1-5% of the population even had the ability to farm it, which took months.

Fuck funcom expansions, though I do hope they do something nice with Rise of Godslayer, because despite my off and on anger towards Funcom, I still enjoyed AO and AoC.