You can call out Funcom for a lot of things they did wrong I will give them some high marks for doing some things that almost no game company ever does;  admit its mistakes, apologize for them, and more importantly fire people associated with the AoC project including the lead designer and co-founder of the company. 

If you have a level, gear based game you can not have open world pvp it really is that simple, way too many tools that will do nothing but farm low levels and the undergeared.  If the game design allows for a very large gap in power between characters playing your game, how could you even consider allowing for completely open pvp?  The gap even exist at max level do to gear. 

As for your example of L2 many back in the day had perma red characters for nothing but griefing was not many but it was enough to make it difficult for new people to play the game.  As for UO, the same case people made murder characters then had others characters they would switch to till another easy opportunity happed by.  The flagging system does not work because it is so easily abused, and nullified. 

DAOC is the best model it allowed for almost 50/50 split between open world pvp and closed pve.   DAOC had a significant exp bonus for killing in the frontier and had open persistant battlegrounds staged throughout the leveling process that also had a large exp bonus and was the preferred method of leveling for many.

Even as the game stands now it is better than many of the new MMO's that have come out in the past 5 years.  But I think VG is a game for the "older" crowd, this is not a game for the SWTOR or WoW fan club.  I play it on and off and have a lot of fun with it.

The great thing about this game is it has been left alone and not completely dumbed down like many other games, even EQ1 and 2 have been slowly WoW'd over but not VG.  I hope if this is true they are not coming into make it more like WOW...... 

As to the store question they could put just about anything they currently offer in the EQ1 or EQ2 store.

I  just can not get around voting for anyone else but Cryptic with the words "worst developer in the business" in the title.  In my opinion you needed to include Cryptic if you put Funcom and Turbine in the poll they are in the same ball park.   Cryptic took one of the holy grail IP's and gave us STO easily one of the worst MMO's ever......

As for Funcom AO was not a bad game, was a terrible launch but the overall game was pretty good, least to me :P As for Conan did not care for the game but even worse than the gameplay was players the game attracted.  Worst community in any game I ever played.

All we can really do is hope that one of these companies finally gets it right.  For me every MMO in the last 5 years has gone in the wrong direction from what I enjoy.  Even existing MMO's I use to enjoy have become unplayable.  TSW sounds like my type of game, but as someone posted earlier I will wait at least 3 months before trying any MMO's going forward.  I really hope TSW is a great game I think we are owed one for all the crap we have been given over the past few years.   

1. Never use beta as a promotion tool splashed all over the web page, pre-order and get a spot in the “beta test”
2. Do not do a twitter/facebook contest to get into “beta”.  Matter of fact; do not use Twitter or Facebook at all for this.   If you are looking for real beta testers those are the LAST places you should going.
3. Be very clear what stage the game is in, what the beta tester can expect from the game in its current state and very specifically what testing you are doing and feed back you are requiring from them.  Yes I said it REQUIRING from them.  This is not a play test make sure that is completely understood.
4. Once you do let us in, do not then turn around and tell us we do not know what we are talking when we give specific feedback you do not want to hear.  If a very large majority of the real beta testers tells you something in very specific detail without trolling is VERY broken in your game, listen to them do not threaten them or out right dismiss them. 

Most people who post here have formed an opinion and expressing it!   Some happy some not so much.  A lot of the comments are not the game itself is bad but more so that game does not feel or play like an MMO along with the lack of features many have come to expect. 

My opinion is this game needed at least another 3-4 months of work before it was released.  Bench marking this game against other Bioware products I think many were expecting much more than they got.  If this game was released as a single player/coop game using the guild wars model it would have been better received but as a MMO...for many it just does not fit what they have come to expect with that title.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

It's called the "me" generation.

Simple test, while watching TV and the commercials are on keep track of any/all that are "fast and easy", hell even 5 hour energy is being advertised as faster with less hassle than coffee.  If coffee is considered "tough" we as humans are doomed.

I just finished cleaning my keyboard from the coffee I spilled laughing.  If coffee is considered tough.... ROFL....one of the funniest things I have ever read here!  Thank you for making me laugh!!

Bad for the industry not really the video game business is not much different than TV and the movies.  How many pawn shows are on tv now since Pawn Stars was so successful?  How many CSI's, NCI's, Law and Order shows do you have?   Most of the time the orginal show is the one with the biggest audience and the rest are trying to take some share of that market.

What SWTOR is doing is carving out its section of the WoW market.  I know some are going to say its nothing like WoW, blah, blah but it really offers the same core game with some twist.  Bioware never claimed it to be something new and genre changing so I am really shocked by the shear volume of hate on most forums(it is not just here it is every game forum).  All this shows there is still a market for these type of games, but not remotely close to the orginals success. 

For me I realized a long time ago they are not making MMO's for me anymore, it was a hard thing for me to accept but it is the truth.  For many who are really hyped up for GW2 I think they are going to be even more disappointed than they were with SWTOR. 

A majority of the player base that started at release and stuck with playing one character are max level.  I think you did not account for the large amount of players who really enjoy what SWTOR game play offers are spending their time leveling a 2nd/3rd/4th character doing what SWTOR does well which is the story.

If you really think it takes 20 hours a day to get to max fast in this game I am really not sure what game you are playing because its certainly not SWTOR.

I am sure this has been mentioned already but I did not read through the 30 something pages.  All this information is for the quarter ending 12/31/11.   No way to know on subs and retention until Apri/May when they release Q1 numbers. 

Originally posted by Axehilt

The appeal?  Skill matters.  Zerging doesn't.

Most players see through the shallowness (and really dull lopsided combat) of zerging.  When games are won through skillful decisionmaking and/or twitch, interesting things can occur.  When games are won by "yay, I brought more friends to the fight", interesting things virtually never occur.

I agree somewhat with your idea of skill should matter however most instanced based MMO pvp is not a fair and balanced test of skill either.  Many instanced PVP fights ***in my experience****(WOW, WAR, RIFT) end up with the same result as being zerged by 100 people or you being part of that 100 person zerg.  More times than not you are pvping against people that have a combination of inferior gear, horrible class balance, or just simply filled with bad players.  But once in awhile you get that great epic fight against a equal group same as non-instanced pvp. 

No, however every game is going to have a cash shop of some kind going forward.  If anything SWTOR proved you can get a few million people to buy a game that is not really an MMO and have a surprising amount of them still willing to pay $15 a month to play it.

Think of the money Skyrim could have made if they simply added a multiplayer mode and had called it a MMO. 

What was done here and on many sites was a preview, first impression however they did not label it as such.  In order to actually do a real review you would have needed to play through the entire game. 

Reviews by most of these sites are sort of like a movie review based on the teaser trailers.  Every movie ever made looks great if you soley base it on the teasers :)  That is why you get ratings from 8 to 9.6 on games and rarely ever see anything 7 or below. 

I would really like them to undo the last 5 years of "improvements" and "features" and give us vanilla WoW back.

I guess I come from this from a different point of view.  I do not understand why all forms of PvP are not embraced to attract the biggest audience. However today most games put rewards only on instanced PvP and WoW took it to another level by making its instanced pvp almost meaningless.  It is all about arena's now.  That is where the reward is. 

As mentioned a few times already PvP is now an e-sport.  And to those saying fair and balanced that is so far from the truth.  It is all about class make up and gear.  I have been on the giving and receiving end of this "fair and balanced' pvp and it is anything but.

No one has any idea how the lack of the trinity is going to be received by the general gaming community once the "this is new" phase ends.  We have all seen things that we all thought we would like or sounded great on paper but when we actually played it was either bad, lack luster or simply not to our liking.  I am very sure that for ***some**** the lack of rolls will end up being a big turn off even if they think they like the idea now.

Many players took great pride in being a good tank, a good healer, a good dpser who could play the class better than anyone else.  The lack of this could end up being a significant negative long turn.  Have to wait and see how it plays out past the new phase.

The term "casual gamer" has turned into a code word for "easy mode" gamer.  I mean by that a game that caters to the instant gratifcation crowd who wants everything now or at light speed with as little "work" or time as possible. 

It lost its orginal definition years ago.  It use to mean someone who took their time, smelled the roses, played a few hours a night, stopped playing the game when any chance to roleplay happened,  chatted it up standing around in a town and was not at all that much concerned with what others were doing.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by dermy

So i think what doomed this game was a flat out inablitiy to give or receive constructive feedback. 

Hardly any of them do anymore. Which begs the question why waste your time testing these games unless you just want a free peek?

...and then people wonder why many want to get into testing just to do that. Gee, I don't know maybe because the companies market it that way and the majority of the time don't heed the testers anyways that do provide feedback?

So... there's that...

I think a lot of it is, yes I am going to use it...wait for it...."old school" beta testers used to get in to actually test the game and give feedback while it was actually still in the development process, now when you get an invite to any beta the game itself is done. They are not going to or be able make any real change to the actual game. Sure beta testers now may identify and fix a few bugs usually involving grammer or textures, test server loads, maybe a few quest bugs, game balance but the game world and general game mechanics are already done and will not change.

Beta test today just means stress test our game, and a hype machine to entice pre-order suckers. That is why you almost never get to test the "end game" and test in weekends or weeks rather than year(s) like it use to be. 

Hmmm maybe I was expecting something else from the title.....  After reading it my feeling is MMORPG.com should have had a contest or selected members from the boards here to be good cop, bad cop I think it would have been far more entertaining/amusing  :) 

Good cop was rather weak what "I read" was its talking star wars /drool and the bad cop while slighly better did not give the knock out punches needed.  Come on SB you can hit a lot harder than that!  Think they both need to watch some movies/tv shows with good cop, bad cop.
 

I want a rematch!  This one ended in a boring tie.