I hope they don't want to balance out all classes. They only should try to balance groups. And i mean balance in some kind of complicated rock, paper, sword.....

Originally posted by skoupidi

Really awsome video. Can't see why people are liking Rift more than this game. I guess they aren't so burned out of the old combat systems as most of us are.

 It's the races of TERA that makes me doubt the game. The "new"  combat system might be good, but I have seen Darkfall turn from combat heaven into Harry Potter Online.

The vid looks nice, beserker is an interesting option as I will abandon being a healer when choosing TERA as my mmo.

I had most fun in Lego Universe Beta, so I voted for that game.

8-bit = finished games; their games had to work, because an update or patch wasn't possible.

8-bit = every game was unique and was never done before. Nowadays most genres have been milked and gamers aren't swept of their feet easily. WII is a good example: The 8-bit of 2010. A lot of new gamers discover gaming by playing on the WII. All games are new and fun to them. For most of us, they are simple remakes of Nintendo hits from the past.

Originally posted by ScribZ

Originally posted by Volkmar

Let's get straight to the point. Why is WoW so succesful?

Many people claim that WoW copied everything from its predecessors, but if that would be the case, there is really no reason WHY it would be so succesful.

Let's not FORGET here that what new MMos go through today, also WoW went trough. When WoW released, it was not the VOID. There were UO, EQ, AC, DAoC and even AO, SWG and other MMOs. All of them had years of content behind them (EQ already had half a dozen+ of expansions), and STILL, WoW created a new market out of nowhere.

Why is that, think about it a second.

Is it they had a fan base? Maybe, but SWG surely had too, and they did not explode in subscriptions even if they had a great popular, mainstream license as Star Wars and a Star developer as Raph Koster with them.

My conclusion is that WoW succeeded because it made things DIFFERENTLY. It removed the conception on which EQ was based, for example, of the DIKU MUD that needs years to get to max level, very appealing to geeks but not so much to the main stream.

Many will agree being CASUAL really helped WoW... and what is the lesson in this? WoW succeeded by being different.

So it comes without saying that if someone would like to repeat such a feat.... they should do it too!

Secondly, having YEARS of content do not necessarily equal success. Take EQ for example, most of the new content is geared at high level characters and for a starting character is actually a negative... because most players will be busy in the high level area and the low level areas become a ghost town.

I've seen it happens about everywhere and I am sure you too. But never in WoW. in 6 years, the low level areas have been always full of frolicking newbies, alts and what not and i think THAT, more than added content is what permit a game to attract new people. One of the worst thing that can happen to Joe the Newbie is to be alone in this majestic looking area... with nothing but mobs around.

 

 WoW did not get where it is today because it was better than all the rest. Dont even kid yourself into thinking that, because it isnt' true. WoW became what it is from two factors:

One being Blizzard's ability to advertise and market thier products. Before them, no MMORPG was found in mainstream department stores like Walmart, and there wasn't prime time TV advertising for them. MMORPG games were taboo, and finding them on the shelf in a comic book store or video game store was the best anyone could hope for. Advertising for them was never done main stream, it was only in the known circles of gamers. Blizzard is undeniably a marketing genious company, it accounts for at least 75% of their success on all thier products.

The second reason WoW took off is 'right place right time'. WoW hit the mainstream market at the exact time of the push for affordable, in home, broadband service. DSL was just coming out and the Bell companies were just starting to push a low cost option for people to get onto the internet. Cable companies were lowering thier prices to compete with the Bells and ISPs that used to provide only dialup for the masses (AOL) started to look for broadband alternatives to offer thier customer.

Had Blizzard not had the advertising and marketing expertise, or if they hit the market at the wrong time (no broadband push by the telecommunications industry) then it would not have taken off as it did. WoW didnt' offer anything unique enough at the start to create its own fame, it was the combination of the right place right time and hitting the mainstream masses in advertising and marketing that created it. Take away those two things and WoW would be nothing more than a 100k niche, and the genre would be back where it was 6 years ago.

What we should thank Blizzard for is bringing our genre to the mainstream, but in the same token we should hate them for it as well.

 I like to add 2 important but often overlooked points aswell:

No obivous hackers, cheaters and dupers are or were active ingame. (okay I have kileld my fair share of botters and goldfarmers)

Dedicated Gamemasters who did not interfere with the gameworlds on a grandscale.

wasn't there already a guild called Myrmidons in Darkfall. I remember them having at least 1 flamewar with Apollo on Darkfall Forums before the release.

Originally posted by Seffren

Originally posted by Khealler

Read the post, they have 500 keys to give away. Day 1 involved 100 keys. Don't you think they would not have also EU friendly times planned for the remaining 400 keys...... you would have had point if they gave away all 500 keys, now you are just a whining kid.

I bet you are from the US.

 Nope Europe and I was able to be the 8th poster :) I could whine with these kind of contests too. It is not fair to people who will work the nightshift in Europe. I can never win a giveaway that is during "normal" office hours, because I'm sleeping. Anyway we Euro Trash had our own giveaway today and those 100 keys were handed out within 8 minutes. My girlfriend is now upset because it was posted at her scheduled "toilet"break and she needs at least 10 minutes to do number two. Now she is pissed, because MMORPG>com knows when she is on the potty and now she didn't have a key! Not Fair!

People just should have some patience. Hold your horses with the whining.

Read the post, they have 500 keys to give away. Day 1 involved 100 keys. Don't you think they would not have also EU friendly times planned for the remaining 400 keys...... you would have had point if they gave away all 500 keys, now you are just a whining kid.

Here's my official request for a VIP beta key!

La Noire is something I'm going to buy.

Dragon Age 2, maybe aswell, but DLC is a hidden expense. Sure you don't have to buy those additions, but somehow you still have the felling you have bought an incomplete game.

No true sandbox game is going to be released. So 2011 is not going to be a "great" year for me. Maybe it is time to give up on gaming and find me a girl.

Originally posted by Anubisan

Originally posted by Azdul

Originally posted by Lukooone

No, there are no caps in this game for skill/stats.

And thats the great problem, everybody around is almost the same, a MageFigtherArcherCrafterGatherer. 

In the beginning of beta DF had soft skill cap. Also - you were unable to buy opposing schools of magic (Witchcraft / Spell Chanting, Fire / Water, etc.). DF even has skill degradation code ready. It was implemented quickly after launch, but eventually was not enabled.

Why ?

Because skill cap is just lazy way to hide the problem of unbalanced skills. It "kind of works" in games where PvP aspect is not that important. 

The right way to solve the problem is to balance magic / archery / melee / heavy armor / light armor / rays / bolts / nukes / AOEs / mounted combat in such way that even limited set of skills is sufficient to compete.

This makes no sense. How does a skill cap hide unbalanced skills?? If anything, it makes them ever more blatantly obvious because people can't switch to something else if what they're doing isn't working.

A skill cap would make it so that no one could be everything... people would have to fill special roles rather than being jacks of all trade. This would mean that every different role would need to be balanced. The laziness you refer to is in the design AV decided to use. By letting everyone be everything, AV is just basically saying "screw this, lets just not balance anything". So now everyone has to be everything so that they can take advantage of whatever skill is overpowered at any given time. When it eventually gets nerfed, everyone can then be whatever else is OP without losing the other skills they trained. For a new player, the idea of having to basically train up everything is extremely daunting... and frankly not worth it for the majority.

 You have a point, but why should roles or a collection of skills be balanced?

Most people play a mmo(rpg) to play with others against others. If a succesfull build is working, a lot of people will pick that build. Still every build have it flaws or it counterpart. So the team that has the best mix of builds will win in theory. There's your balance.

I never heard the Germans listen to the Allies complaining about the fact the German tanks were overpowered.

Gaming is all about learning  of your mistakes, improve your tactics, work on teamplay and be flexible during combat. So don't use the balance card. Trying to enforce balance, has destroyed a lot of games.

Balance can also be achieved by altering items, instead of altering skills. For example if archery is too overpowered, implent arrow weight. A person can only carry 50 arrows. Ofc he can carry more, but where do you put 1000 arrows? He would have his hands full and can't fire his bow till he drops those 1000 arrows.

Magic too overpowered? Increase the regen time for mana. The wizard can kill most of your group with his spell, but when he's out of mana, he has to defend himself with his staff.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Rockgod99

You only like the New raids better because you were unable to get 40 people who were skilled enough to fully progress in Vanilla wow. I see a few posters talking about raiding yet they only got half way through BWL? LOL

Obviously the new is better (because you could actually do those lol!!!!!!), You guys were the ones crying on the forums back in the day saying blizzard shouldnt cater to the top 5% of the raiders...

 

I remember you guys "We pay 15 bucks a month too!!!! we should see the same content Whaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!"

Yeah, because vanilla wow raids required all 40 people to be "skilled" and there wasn't room for anyone with a pulse to fill in the last dozen spots.  

 

 Maybe in your blue gear, all players had to be skilled. Molten Core was pretty doable with only a good tank and 39 noobs. Maybe not Ragnaros, but the other bosses had some margin for error or low DPS.

We were a top 5 guild on our server and Nefarion wasn't even killed yet, we already sold epics from MC. As long as people listened to the raidleader, you didn't require skill. Just do what you have been told, hug the wall, run away or hold dps. You don't need skill to do things like that.

Vanilla WoW was great because you could bring your friends with you in non-progress raids. You could even bring them when wiping on a new boss in AQ40 or Naxxramas, when some people just want to keep on trying after the raid was over on Tuesday nights.

Piracy is a factor, not the main reason.

Companies need to invest a lot of money in the game engine. An engine that has to run smoothly on a million and one different rigs. Those rigs change every 6 months, so when you have a development of 4 years, the top of the line computers don't even exist yet. With the Playstation (1) at the end, when the PS2 was just released the best games where launch for that console. Developers improved their engines for a specific console and where pushing out better and better games. (then again, console games aren't cheap either)

Anyway investors of the game don't like to see that $6 million of their money start giving them revenues after 4 years. They want instant succes, so they force the devs to release their games as soon as possible. Cutting the development time from 4 years to 2 years. The devs already made a optimistic time schedule, 4 years the game would be playable but, an extra year would have given them that extra polish time. So instead of 5 years of development, it has been reduced to 2 years. That is is your quality reduction, not piracy.

5/10 :

+ Setting of the gameworld

+ Robots

+ dynamic resource gathering

- slow paced

- clunky controls

- no leaving the robot as human

- lootbags can only be looted by the killer

Originally posted by ninjajucer

Maybe in other games, but not DDO. Dungeons and Dragons was always about a group of heroes out to vanquish evil and right wrongs. The pvp aspect was thrown in for the people who just wanted to test their mettle against others.  It is not anything near to real pvp. There are no rewards for it just to see whose build is better. Thus the arguement is useless.

 PnP D&D had friendly fire or the DM was just plain lazy :) Friendly Fire would improve every game and it doesn't need to involve pvp. It is just plain stupid as a fireball with the size of Hummer would not hit any of the heroes when the wizard throws it at the goblins which are toe to toe in melee combat with the other heroes.

Originally posted by Nizur

Originally posted by Khealler

Originally posted by Rockgod99

Remember that big sea monster AV put in DF...

The one that everyone was going crazy over?

The one no one gives a shit about anymore?

yeah... Enjoy the Ice dragon...

 If you remove the jalousy, the sarcasm and everything else, the kid has a point. I mean posting this on the Darkfall Forums would make sense. Posting this on a multi-game platform is just simply bragging.  You could have made the post a bit more informative, maybe gave it a different title; Like the new expansion had all kinds of improvements. Here is a video of us killing the new Ice Dragon. Then again i might have had too high hopes for the Darkfall community and e-peen is really everything...

Or maybe you're reading too much into it and showing your bias?

This site is for all MMORPG's, yes, but this particular forum is dedicated to DF. Why wouldn't they post a video of a new mob here?

 Well if a person was playing or slightly interested in Darkfall they would visit to official forums won't they? My point is that the Darkfall forums on MMORPG is to inform people who stumbled on Darkfall and/or potential players. I still think bragging about some kill is pointless here, informing the masses with a funny  post/article or blog including the video would show a much more mature Darkfall community.

Originally posted by Benjola

Friendly fire is by far the best feature of this game, along with  stuff like melee splash damage, collision detection and aiming is what makes the combat realistic, challenging and fun.

Sadly, the game is severly lacking in other areas.

 This. Friendly fire is a real strong point of the game. Although there are no real penalties for killing a guildmate in battle. Most of the time you rez him and continue looting the hostile players or mobs.

Originally posted by Rockgod99

Remember that big sea monster AV put in DF...

The one that everyone was going crazy over?

The one no one gives a shit about anymore?

yeah... Enjoy the Ice dragon...

 If you remove the jalousy, the sarcasm and everything else, the kid has a point. I mean posting this on the Darkfall Forums would make sense. Posting this on a multi-game platform is just simply bragging.  You could have made the post a bit more informative, maybe gave it a different title; Like the new expansion had all kinds of improvements. Here is a video of us killing the new Ice Dragon. Then again i might have had too high hopes for the Darkfall community and e-peen is really everything...

skillcap vs no skillcap

Darkfall is a mmofps and MO is a mmorpg, the only thing the games have in common is the fantasy setting. Mortal Online is very unfinished as Darkfall has already received some polishing. I have to admit I had more fun at the Darkfall release then at the Mortal Online release.

it looks great, but Darkfall doesn't need better graphics. They need to fix several elements ingame. If I want to play a mmo with stunning graphics, I would pick the Playboy MMO.