Mesmer (human) - my main was a mesmer back in GW1 (nd I loved it!) ,so I plan on mesmer being my main character in GW2.   Also plan to have a Charr Engineer as an alt.

I'm hoping I like the game as much as I did GW1, but there are some concerns for me.

Didn't Warhammer try something like that?  I believe that kind of gameplay was what they intended to include.

However, that didn't work out so well;  when one side was locked out of facilities etc., affected people would just relog to another character on the opposite faction and/or another server.

Whilst the initial goal was admirable, the consequence was less so.

There are some obvious ways to limit that (e.g. restricting an account to one faction and/or server only), but that runs a high risk of alienating more people than the original idea might attract.

I'm hoping that some aspects of what you want might be found in GW2, but I'm remaining cautious about how well it will be implemented in practice (will try the game to see how it feels).

Originally posted by Orphes

There is three choices.

 

1. You donate directly, $10 (any amount really) to childsplay.

2. You bougth this upgrade and indirectly donate $1 to childsplay.

3. Or donate nothing.

 

Option three is better than the second option, right?

 

It could well be...though it depends what you mean by "better".  It's certainly financially better for the charity for people to do 2 rather than 3.

Is it morally better?

For a consequentialist view of morality one would probably think so as it would, one hopes, be improving the lot of the less fortunate.

However, not everyone agrees that the consequences of actions are all that matters, morally speaking;  many would hold the reasons for which something is done as being of prime importance in moral considerations.

I have to say that I don't like this kind of marketing ploy; particularly distasteful to me is how it instrumentalises charity

Originally posted by DLangley

Please be aware that discussing the use of 3rd party programs is against the rules. Just for future reference.

Good to know, but just to remind you that macros are actually part of Rift's own programming i.e. built in by the game designers.  So, in Rift, they're in no way 3rd party.

To echo others' feelings, I very much disliked Rift's macro system - it reduced some specs to needing very few buttons, and made the game play less interesting overall.

My opinion re macroing is therefore "gawd, I hope not!"

Originally posted by Meowhead

Originally posted by Faelsun

I think Darkfall fulfulls a need in the mmo community, dispite its flaws and what is said about it by angry fanbois who hate the game, it has so far survived 3 going on 4 major WOW clone pulblishers and has a paid subscriber number last time I checked, which is something LOTR, AOC, WAR, and D@D online dont have anymore so.............

Hmm?  There's still lots of subscribers to LotRO and D&D Online... not sure about AoC and WAR, but I'm under the impression they have subscribers too.

It very well might be even more than Darkfall, even with the freemium thing going.  I don't actuall yknow the specific subscriber numbers, but they do have subscribers. :)

Maybe Darkfall should consider going freemium!

Both WAR and AoC have subscribers.  For AoC, you can do most of the early game and very little of the end game as a free player.  For WAR, I thought free accounts were capped to Level 10 or so (?)

Each to their own I guess.  I enjoyed AoC when I started, and I still do.

Even though I've had some periods when I get tired with it, I keep coming back and am enjoying it at present.

I also played Rift, taking a couple of months' break from AoC, but it wasn't to my liking (wasn't keen on the mechanics, and didn't find it immersive, personally).

I've never tried or played WoW but, based on my experience in Rift, don't intend to.

Hope you find a game you enjoy.

Originally posted by Deadlyne

If you dont spend any money and play for free you will only have access to tank classes.  

Really?

I was under the impression that FTP players could one play one class from each archetype, as follows -

Soldier archetype - Guardian (yep, this one tends to be tanky)

Priest archetype - Priest of Mitra  - Healer

Rogue archetype - Barbarian  - Melee dps

Mage archetype - Demonologist - Ranged magic damage, focussing on AoE

Can see what you guys mean - it does sound a little staged.

Aside from that, I'm glad he raised the issue of voice acting, as this was one of my major gripes with GW:Factions - the voice acting in that was (IMO) painfully bad....so bad it was immersion-breaking.

Luckily ANet upped their game re this for Nightfall....

So, to hear that they are actually thinking about the quality of voice acting/synchronisation in advance for GW2 provides a degree of reassurance, although the fan reaction from the English fan-base that the VO is "cheesy" is not.

I agree - Rift really didn't feel immersive to me.

Switching roles all the time was also a negative to me re immersion.  I tended to play my main as a chloromancer as much as I could, but even that paled, as the instances were ones I'd managed to do many times, and one invasion began to feel much like another.

The world itself didn't grab me, even though some of the ideas behind the game lore-wise are kinda innovative.

In essence, I pretty much agree with all of your points.

Unlike you, however, I'm no longer finding it entertaining.  I think my 6-month founders sub still has a few more weeks to run but, after that, I'm out of Rift (TBH, haven't even played it for a month now).

Well, I loved mesmer in GW1 so, assuming that the secret class is indeed that, a Human Mesmer for my first character.

Second character will be a Charr Engineer, I reckon.

If you're using Kaspersky, this is a known issue.  There's a post by one of the devs about it on the Rift forums - apparently Kaspersky are working on a fix.

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?222198-Kaspersky-antivirus-reports-a-trojan-in-today-s-update-downloaded-by-patcher&p=2755825&viewfull=1#post2755825

Another one to add to the heap  - mesmer was my favourite GW class, and I hope to play that (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in GW2.

Ranger was also fun in GW, though I'm not sure that, in GW2, it's following the same kinds of ideas it was in GW

Mesmer - Guild Wars

Bear Shaman - Age of Conan

Warden - LotRO

Hm...I enjoyed GW1 (a lot) but the plans re graphics of GW are perhaps the only thing that could turn me off the game.  I'm confident in Anet's ability to release a quality product without too many bugs.

From the preview vids, the graphics look to be of very high technical quality, but the artistic style is not really to my tatse.

I mean.....personally I'm happy with the animations for necro and ele, but find that too much when looking at warriors and rangers - to me it feels overdone.

I guess I just prefer low fantasy to high fantasy. Re the races, it's similar - I have a feeling that I may end up preferring the "humans only" set up of GW1 to seeing Asura, Charr etc. also looking for groups.

That said, I still plan to get a CE when the game starts and play a mesmer (again), assuming that the class is in the game (which I'm pretty sure it will be).

I guess I'll suck it and see, but am cautiously optimistic.

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by Destiny2010

Originally posted by finaticd

Stopped reading at REVENUE (aka sales) compared to LAST quarter was down 500. Digital download and virtual item sales would have boosted that this quarter.  1.5 TUSD loss.  Never change Funcom, never change.

As far as I know, no Virtual Items were sold first quarter 2010 by Funcom (for AoC at least, not sure about AO) Expansion sales started after 31st  of march.

The first quarter ended may 21st so any sales in the last 3 months up until maybe may 18-20 would be included....so these that where sold on release day of the expansion and prior.  http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=216584 . Funcom's quarters are not calander year so it isn't like January-april is Q1, it is fiscal so past three months is Q1.

No -  it's a preliminary statement to 31-Mar-10.  It's quite clearly stated in the notes to the interim report under 2 - Basis for preparation - check page 5 of the document.

Originally posted by eureka105

I've just never heard anyone say Conan stories are crap. The are considered to be timeless classics in their genre. Hell, they CREATED that genre. I've read them all and they are really really good.

By the way.. It's spelled Dostoyevsky. He's good too. But next time you take difficult names from Wikipedia I suggest you use copy-paste

Agreed that the Conan stories are good.

However....before you criticise someone for how they spell a name and suggest that they check wikipedia, it would be wise for you to check the wiki.  If you had checked the wiki yourself, you would have found :

"Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (Russian: ????? ??????????? ????????????, F?dor Mihajlovi? Dosto'evskij, pronounced [?f?od?r m???xajl?v??t? d?st??j?fsk??j] ( listen),[4] sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski or Dostoevskii ..."  (taken from the wiki)

Granted that the poster's exact transliteration isn't listed there, but it's hardly correct that there is one (& only one) correct way of doing so.  Transliteration into different scripts, although there are norms, can vary greatly.

On the original topic re launch dates, I'd guess at around March 2010 ,although that's just a guess.  I really hope that they release it after adequate testingand can avoid a rushed release to beat another game's release date.  The last thing AoC needs is an expansion that's rushed out of the door before it's ready...

Edit : Bah, the board screwed up the Cyrillic characters.  Ah well, the original text is on the wiki in any case.

Originally posted by eureka105

Is there a dumbest poll of the year competition that I missed? Of course Conan will shut down. The only question is when. People who answered "NO" probably think Conan will be around until the end of time?

Admittedly the poll is poorly phrased, but the difference will be in how literally people interpret the question.  A literal interpretation of the question would be to take the OP to be asking whether or not AoC will last forever...and no, of course not...that would be an odd view to adopt.  Interpreting it in such a literal way (as you seem to think possible in your post) renders the question virtually meaningless unless, somehow, you seriously think there is a question about whether or not AoC will last forever.

A more normal interpretation of this kind of question would take a timescale to be implicit, and to take it to mean "Do you think that AoC will be shutdown or go F2P in the forseeable future?", which I personally would take to be something like the next couple of years or thereabouts.

 I'm pretty confident that AoC won't shut down within the next couple of years, and I think it unlikely that it would switch to an F2P model over the same kind of timescale.  However, re the last point, it all depends on how many people AoC can attract back - it's a money thing there;  I don't think it impossible that it will, but am happy to adopt a wait and see approach in the mean-time, as I'm happy to continue paying for AoC at the moment (though would like more content soon).

  A couple of people in my (PvE-server) guild have returned, and the main things they said they objected to in the past were the vast number of bugs that AoC used to have, and the lack of endgame content.  End-game content is of course still quite limited (IMO), but the prospect that the Iron Tower will be released soon-ish is tantalising some of my friends. 

I've heard a rumour that the expansion will be released in the shortish term (next couple of months), although I personally find this hard to believe.

Edit: Spelling + splitting into more paragraphs

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Thre are 31 servers, some low some high, most medium. Lets remove the Australian servers, because they are merging. So tha leaves 29 servers.

If you take 5k subs per server, which is very low, then they have at least 155k subs. This can scale upwards to 10k subs per server, which would equal to 290k subs.

But think what you will. I know 2 of my RL friends still play and are having fun with lots of other players, thats enough proof for me that the game is still alive.

There aren't 31 servers left....there may have been some time ago, but there have been several rounds of server transfers since then.

Looking at Warhammer's own server forums, there are currently 14 servers......8 of which are source servers, and only 6 of which are destination servers.

Source servers are - Ironfist, Vortex, Monolith, Magnus, Skull Throne, Darklands, Ironclaw, Praag

The remaining destination servers are - Badlands, Dark Crag, Gorfang, Iron Rock, Phoenix Throne, Volkmar

This suggests to me that the (current) aim is to reduce the number of active servers to 6, which doesn't bode well.  One day, some servers may re-open or, being pessimistic, there may be further server merges.

Edit : Glad to hear your friends are having fun - that's what counts at the end of the day.  The game is still alive at the moment, which is good, but the prognosis looks poor to me.

Edit2: @Metzli - D'oh!  Yes, I did.

I'm looking forward to the expansion as well, and am very pleased to see that FC won't be increasing the level cap, although the new skills that can be opened up are a form of character progression post-80.

I'm also hoping that FC don't introduce any new classes - they need to ensure that the current classes are balanced first IMO.

As for the classes that Khitani characters will be able to take, my guess would be that they will, like the other 3 races, be unable to take a class from one archetype, and my guess for that would be the priest archetype.

Although the Khitani are noted mages, I'm not sure that having necromancers would fit with Khitai.  Stygia is a nation obsessed with death, possibly justifying keeping necromancers Stygian-only.

As regards the soldier and rogue archetypes, I'd guess that they will allow players free access to all of the classes under them for Khitani characters.

Although the tiger mounts seem like  a step towards high fantasy, I'm hoping that the magical side of things is kept low-key to maintain some notion of low-fantasy.

I've just been having a look over on testlive, and crafted items are now much more useful.  Default crafted items now rank somewhere between world drop blues and dungeon blues.  The "City" recipes are a bit better, and Culture recipes are better yet, with culture items being near to raid items in power.  So there is now definitely a place for crafters to have a shot at making good money, as long as they can get the recipes of course.  The most profitable would probably be armoursmithing, followed by weaponsmithing.

As far as the gemcrafting system, it's changed significantly, but I'm still not sure how much depth it actually offers.  Each crafted item now has either 1 or 2 coloured slots.  One can only put into the socket gems which are of the same colour as the socket.

Each gem colour plays a different role now, for example, blue has many mage-oriented benefits plus the abilities to resist same.  Green  is focussed on melee dps roles, particularly on the assassin or the ranger, and white is defensive, so is ideal for a tanking role.  There are some strange inclusions in colours (e.g. + combat rating (electrical) in green), but these may be errors.

Gem cuts are no longer random, and you can rely on what you're going to get.  Whilst the colour of the gem determines the effect type, the level of the item determines how powerful the effect of the gem will be.  E.g. socketing a white gem with the effect of increasing protection vs elemental stuff into a L80 item will make that gem offer much more protection than if socketed into a L60.

The system seems intended to allow people to have some choice, although this is constrained as to type, as well as by the fact that there are now a lot less slots to play with.

Sadly, I have no idea how it compares to LoTRO.