Originally posted by tkreep

The game does not have much substance and the dungeon designs realy suck.  BS story and lore too.  But its something to play til final fantasy and old republic comes out. 

And those 2 games will have threads just like this to.  Some people will like those games and some won't, but one thing is for certain those that do not will have nothing better to do than come here and whine about them and how they wasted a staggering $50 on something.  

To the OP

Saying pvp has anythng at all to do with immersion or feeling forced to min/max is misplaced and more to do with you.  As mentioned before in this thread no greater group of min/maxers exist in the MMO space than pve raiders.   Even worse are the hard core raiding guilds themselves who dictate to a strict raid rules, times, schedules, vent, how you play, and what gear you need in addition to consumbles and some down to even how you will spec your character for those games that have choices. 

Getting better gear is what pve games today are about and you will compete with others of the class you play based on gear in getting into groups, guilds, raids.  And do not say it is the challange of the pve, because if you put the exact same gear in an easy less time consuming instance or rais as you did in a hard one almost every pve player would be in the easy one because they could get  gear faster.

Sounds like you have issue with MMO's in general and using pvp as a scapegoat rather than looking at the real issue which issue you seem to have,  game design. 

All these sites take money from them, what do you expect?  I have never seen a hard hitting interview from any "gaming" site, they are to worried about banner ad money to do that.  And they are most certainly not journalist. 

The difference with Aion is all the hype is coming from players not the game company.  Mythic drove the hype for Warhammer, Funcom for AoC.   Aion at least in North America the hype is driven by players who have played the game in Asia and those who played beta.  So no it is not over hyped.

That being said this is a game like all games in not going to appeal to everyone no game is,  if it is not for you understandable but you look really foolish making the post you did after only getting to level 10 in what amounts to the newb island in EQ2.

I agree with your pick of Blizzard being #1 but I have a feeling it may be Starcraft Online not World of Warcraft.   They may hold off for another year but I just have a feeling we will see it towards the end of 2012 and it will easily be #1 whenever it releases.

Like your article but I think you missed an opportunity.  Potential of what exactly?    And I would only put my 2 cents in on Stargate that game has about as much a chance as releasing as I do in ever making an MMO :P

As to others it is an opinion piece everyone has one deal. 

Aion is already a success it has almost 4 million subs in Asia.  What it does NA and Europe is just gravey. 

Is Aion going to have 2-3 million subs in NA probably not but you never know it has the potential to grow if the end game is fun.  I do not see a problem with getting 500k which will put in behind WoW in 2nd place in NA.

All the recent NA MMO's fail because they had a piss poor end game, and such blazing fast leveling that you got to the lack of an end game mostly before your 30days are up.  Easy mode games will never keep subs, there is already a game that is way better at easy mode and it is called WoW.  Why would you play a game that is worse, bugged filled, unpolished verision of it.

Aion is polished, as bug free as you are going to get, graphically good, and has some things such as flying, the pve/pvp twist, interesting combat with chains and movement bonus's, it does enough slightly different for me to want play, how long I will play will depend on how fun the pvp is.

The OP sums up what  *many* former WoW subscribers feel took the fun out of WOW.  If you still like WoW no one is forcing you to play Aion, stick with it, but no reason to get all defenisve about WoW and slam Aion in the process.

The MMO market is big enough for both to do well and no need for the my game is better than your game.  I am just happy that a new game is going to release that is not a POS out of the box.  That alone I am excited for.

No the WoW killer is called the Chinese Government. Without those subs WoW has a little under 7 million subs, Aion has close to 4 million and that is without NA and Europe.
 

As to NA subs I think they will have more than 500k, Aion is hitting at the perfect time, WAR failed, Conan failed, people have already finished WotK months ago, no word from Blizz on an expanision which means it is at least 1-1.5 years away, nothing else on the near horizon for big games (6-12months),  and unless you want to repeat the same old content for your 7th alt in WOW, I think Aion is going to pull in a lot more than 500k as long as its end game is as fun as it looks. 

They already have very strong preorder sales and those sales are all by word of mouth, they have done 0 advertising and no slick marketing that WAR did.  I think they will still be growing unless they do something stupid 6 months out.

Nothing is going to be a WoW killer, but I do believe Aion is going to be a close enough equal and finally show a game besides WOW can be a big world wide success, and that that this will be the first big success of an Asia MMO in the NA market.  That is good for the MMO business.  And its end game revolves around pvp rather than farming the same instance over and over and over again which is the biggest selling point for me.

Originally posted by rav3n2

Originally posted by 0guz

Originally posted by graggok

I think WoW will be fine when they are done destroying Aion, Blizzard will release thier new MMO which they claim is in the works and renew themselves as the MMORPG juggernaut that they are, as most of us subscribe to the next game that catches our interests

what new mmo? which new mmo? where?

even dont know mmo's name you say that mmo is god :D

 

I dont doubt blizzard will release a great polished game (their upcoming MMO) but i dont think it will have the impact WoW did mainly because of the fact that I doubt that the 10million people will just leave WoW over night to their new MMO and considering they have announced its a completely new franchise some ppl just really like the warcraft setting.

These threads are such a cliche!

Most of the buzz is the game is Starcraft Online, if it is it will do big numbers with the world wide following starcraft has.  And no game is going to kill WoW, even if they lose 50% of their subs,  they still would have 5-6 million. 

Aion is going to be a good game, will not kill WoW but a decent amount of WOW players will give Aion a look.  If NCsoft West takes what they learned from L2, and fixes the BOT issue the game will be great, if the BOTS are not taken care for the NA/EURO release then this game will fail to live up to its potential and will be the next Conan or Warhammer with all those WoW players going back. 

Thanks for the write up, I have had a similar expierence so far but I am decided to try 2 different arch types through 10. 

So far I am very impressed the the game engine, coming form Laghammer this game is as stable as I have ever seen when it comes to large amounts of players in one area.  Which promises for some fun with the end game pvp. 

When I first logged into the game there had to be over 250 people in the starter area and I did not lag at all, I mean 0 lag.  That alone sold me on at least trying this at release. 

What will determine this games fate is its end game and how much fun it will be. 

Mythic has said this before about ae's, closed beta players told them about this, players since launch have told them this, so forgive the doubt in them actually doing something about it in a meaningful way.  If it is anything like the typical Mythic they will completely break BW and Sorc's to the point of them being worthless(think assassins or archers in DAOC) or do so little no one will even notice. 

It will be fun to watch all these rabid fanboys who have been defending this game turn on the people they spent years defending.  Should be some fun reading.

Some things are better off left as vaporware.  

No the game just plain bad.  Once all the new wears off and you realize that open RVR is just a zerg fest with the winner decided by who gets bored first from res zerging, only 1 scenerio runs regularly in any tier, combat is boring you fight the same way no matter pve, pvp or class, keeps are a joke and a downgrade from DAOC, static seige points, and some of the worst pve ever.  

What was Mythic thinking

Originally posted by imbant

Originally posted by Votan

 

While I wish them the best of luck with the game, not sure they have not missed the window  for this game to be a success with the development time it has taken.

 

 

 

I disagree completely with this statement.  Developement time really is used too broadly...whose to say longer development time doesnt = better game with more content?  They certainly promise way way more features than the games out there right now.  While it is a tall order...whose to say they dont have them all.  not me, and not you.  so until it releases, if it releases, i guess we cant tell if it has missed its window.

From the looks of things, there are a ton of people interested in the game and have seen its video with graphics in it.  I prefer its graphics over WAR or WoW and many others do too.  There is more than enough interest for them to make a big profit...its up to them to deliver the product though and keep stable servers.

That is why I said I am not sure that they have not, I make no blanket statements, so not sure how you can completely disagree with me.   We will all have to wait and see, not trying to be a troll just my opinion of the MMO market.  In general 7+ years of dev time, past games that have taken that long have not made it to market, or lived up to expectations when they have.

I hope they break the trend and those looking forward to the game get a chance to play it.
 

Just strange they would do that considering this is really the first time(unless I have missed one) we have seen a long in game video from the devs given all the issues,concerns over dev time, vaporware, and  dated bad graphics that have gone around all the MMO boards about DF they would spend production time to do a "medium" or non-optimal vid....

I have not followed this so I will take your word just a very stange way to promote your game showing what most will see rather than the best or what it would look like on a high end rig..shrug...

This is a production release video of in game footage and is shot under ideal conditions. The graphics are not horrid but like I said this is a production quality release by the company (meaning the very best they can get) and it still "dated" , not bad, just dated even using the best download I could find. 

Those who are saying this is using medium settings or that they are not using the very best settings and graphics the game can produce from the game engine are mistaken.  Why would a company release a production video to its potential customers not showing the very best they can get out of the game?  Hey look at my in game video of substandard images, with the settings on medium, on a low quality monitor using a crappy graphics card taken with a bad video capture/editing software.

While I wish them the best of luck with the game, not sure they have not missed the window  for this game to be a success with the development time it has taken.

No one has played Dark Fall so you do not have anything to compare at this point.  The only thing you can say 100% is Warhammer is releasing September 18 and has already gone gold and Darkfall is still after 7 years vaporware.

Darkfall has missed the opportunity to be relevant but still has fanboys that will say this is the next great game without ever playing it believing what the game devs have said will be in the game (we all know how that works reference to Dark and Light) because they are in love with the idea of a sandbox game.

Darkfall has been talking about beta since 2005 and are promising way more than a small company can deliver. It's graphics engine is very dated as seen by the vids that have been released. This game is simply the next Dark and Light even if it releases which is still in doubt. Game had a lot of promise in 2001,  in 2008 it has simply missed its window to be successful in the current marketplace of MMO's. 

Below stolen from Jyiiga moderator over at VN.

Darkfall Development history

On August 29, 2001, Razorwax announced the development of Darkfall and launched its official website. The Razorwax development team initially consisted of five members: Claus Grovdal (Lead Design and Producer), Ricki Sickenger (Lead Tools and Game Logic Programmer), Henning Ludvigsen (Art Director), Kjetil Helland (Lead 3D/Client Programmer), and Erik Sperling Johansen (Lead Server Programmer).

In October 2002, Aventurine SA was founded in Greece, ostensibly to develop and commercialise Darkfall. The Razorwax team was integrated into Aventurine, and five other developers from Norway were hired into the company. When the Razorwax team and the Aventurine team had their first meeting in Athens, a member of one of the teams joked that Razorwax should relocate from Norway to Greece due to the lower taxes and cost of living in Greece. Eventually, the two teams realised that this idea actually made very good business sense, and by December 2002, the relocation of Razorwax was finalised.
In September 2005, the signup for a closed clan beta began. The first Darkfall gameplay video was released on February 2006.

Aventurine did not have a publically playable version of Darkfall available at E3 2006, however various people were shown a standalone demonstration version of the game. In June 2006, just after E3, the Darkfall team began releasing bi-weekly Questions and Answers through Warcry.

An announcement on July 11, 2006 stated that preparations were being made to begin beta. An interview with the developers on August 25, 2006 indicated that Aventurine did not have a publisher for Darkfall, and were considering the possibility of self-publishing the game.

On January 17, 2007, Aventurine announced that a fully functional and stable beta build is running on remote servers and that the game is being shown to prospective partners, distributors, publishers, technology providers, etc.

On January 30, 2007, Aventurine released a video containing about one minute of ingame footage, showing melee combat, mounts (including mounted combat), spellcasting and naval combat. The developers have stated that the combat will be similar to that of Mount and Blade.

On May 31, 2007, Aventurine's 9th Developer Journal responded to some of the recent beta inquiries, and announced that their internal target date for beta was summer 2007.

On August 2, 2007, Aventurine stated that although the game is technically ready for beta, beta will not start until negotiations with possible publishers are completed.

On September 13, 2007, updated public beta information added to Darkfalls forums stating "Solo player beta applications will be taken soon. Please watch the news forums".

On February 22, 2008, they released a "location test video" depicting various player-crafted city locations in the game. "For today's update we put together a medley of location test videos, from in and around clan cities and racial outposts".

On April 11, 2008, Associate Producer Tasos Flambouras announced Darkfall was now feature-complete.

On May 9, 2008, a WarCry developer journal stated that "... launch date will be inside 2008, with the public beta preceding it by a few weeks. This is official and internally we're a lot more specific, but pending an announcement, we cannot say more at this time."

On June 30, 2008, Aventurine confirmed they have signed with Greek company AudioVisual Enterprises to distribute Darkfall in Europe. AudioVisual later made a stock market announcement to this effect.
 

On August 29, 2008, The Darkfall beta page changed into a beta sign-up page.

7 years for a beta sign up page..........
 

Vinadil,

I play RoN or Civ for a limited time and not the same way I would play and MMO.  It is a multiplayer game I play with some friends for only so long before it becomes old and there is no impact to the game company when I stop playing RON. I may play RoN for 2 months and not pick it up again for 7 to 8 months or maybe never again.  Games like RoN an Civ make there money from box sales only, have significant less cost and really no overhead once the game is on the shelf.  If I really enjoyed my time I am highly likely to purchase RoN 2 or Civ 5 which is where they make all of there revenue.  It is not the case with an MMO they need to recoup investments, pay for overhead on a monthly basis and need subs long term to make back the money outlay from launch. 

I am sure there are players that want to have a permadeath game, my arguement is more on the lines of if a game company is willing to put up 15-20 million dollar effort to find out if it will attract enough players to make it worth while for game companies and investors to make there money back.  I have not seen a large segment of any player base crying for permadeath, I have seen them requesting lots of things but that is most definatly not something that would even make the top 50 things players would request in a next gen MMO, and will not be the attraction that is going to pull many current players away from what they are playing now.

You say now that so what you spent 8 months only to lose everything, my point is that this WILL erode your player base quicker than not and the point of these games is to extend subs as long as possible not code stuff into a game that would most definatly reduce that base quicker than average.

And using Shadowbane as an example of a game that left it up to the players to police themselves build cities and those same players drove away a significant part of the player base away from the game rather quickly when it is left up for the players to make the content.  They put player built cities in and still failed cause the overall gameplay was sub par.  Shadowbane at its peak had 50k paying subs not 100k.  Wolfpack’s initial projections were for 50,000 – 70,000 subscribers in order to be cash flow positive.  Shadowbane had approximately 40,000 subscribers in December 2003, and some estimates put the current number under 20,000. This was not a successful MMO. It was a money loser.  Check MMOChart.com they have the most accurate sub counts for MMO's and where I got this information. 

Not to continually repeat myself but The Chronicle first is allowing for a complete out of permadeath by having other chars that can not be killed off, creating a situation where just about everyone will carebare there main, and use other characters for the most part of there gaming.  I fail to see this a permadeath game.  On top of The Chronicle is still in vaporware status and we do not know if this game first will release, and if it does wether or not it will even be successful.

I do not think any of us know how many box's and subs it will take to make up for development cost, some games like Horizons have still yet to recoup there money and bankrupted the orginal company so it is hard to make a statement like enough people to make money. 

So for a game like Shadowbane which at launch had very dated graphics compared to current products on the market still needed 50k to 70k subs to just break on expenses never mind turn a profit.  Are you so sure permadeath can sustain 125k, 150k+ subs depending on the cost to make the game on an annual basis, not just at launch or under 6 months as games have gotten much more expensive to make since Shadowbane released.  I know for sure I can not say yes or no to that question but I am more inclined to think no unless it is implemented flawlessly as to not cripple the player once it happens.

It interest me to see what the next gen game offers its players, if they can put in permadeath in some way I have not thought about or seen and it works I would play it.  I am not against permadeath or for it either I want a fun game, one that is not going to punish me hard if I should make one mistake or lag out, LD.  What I have seen and heard I am going to have a significant penalty for a death of a main in The Chronicle if that is my sole character.  That no matter how you slice it is a time sink that will limit my play time with my friends....