Originally posted by Gilgameesh

At the end, if I have to compare water implementation in different games, then the best water I've ever seen is in Myst Online (no surprise as Myst series had always a very high standard graphic).

 

You should check out Bioshock, it has amazing water graphics and also a great style :p

But it is really awesome how Ryzom ages, I mean, WoW has timeless graphics, but Ryzom tops it, because it is less cartoony and even more alife imho.

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Yah, it is depressing.

Between Dust514, microtransactions, loads of bugs, major lag since Dominion and a messed up sound engine since Apocrypha it is really hard for me now to not stop my sub.

Lag is greatly improved from the depths it hit in the summer, so credit to CCP there in all fairness. Dust and vanity microtransactions aren't a reason to quit. Dust you can simply ignore and it wont affect you. Microtransactions you can ignore until they stop being just vanity items and become abusive.

I'm depressed because there will be a constant, extremely powerful temptation for CCP to introduce "just a little" advantage to their cash shop, and as I said, we know where that road ends. As and when they succumb to that temptation is the time to quit.

Until then, might as well enjoy the game as before. No need to cross that bridge until you get to it mate.

 You make sense of course, still mad atm.

Thing is, atribute remaps for plex is not a vanity service, it is a way to avoid a gameplay restriction.

Yah, it is depressing.

Between Dust514, microtransactions, loads of bugs, major lag since Dominion and a messed up sound engine since Apocrypha it is really hard for me now to not stop my sub.

Originally posted by Philby

If the choice is SWG 2 or WOW In Space. I will go with WOW in space. SWG never was what some remember it to be, whereas WOW quality is something to aspire to.  The game is going to have a lot of familiar elements, after alll its an MMO and some things are required to make it work, hopefully it will be the good elements of what went before and not a rehash of the same tired, failed formula we have seen so much of lately. Nobody is more skeptical than myself about upcoming mmo's but hype and trash talk about unreleased games all go in the same trash can while I wait. Thinking for oneself isnt too popular on this site bt some of us insist on doing so.

 WoW has quality, but can hardly be called an mmo these days, or at least how I look at an mmo, a game you play together with many others and interact with and build a community ...

Honestly I never really looked at SWTOR as an mmorpg, more like a single player online game with a sub. And if I ever play it, I will know it will just be for the ride in the theme park, not for the long haul.

Originally posted by Hrothmund

Originally posted by tank017

Originally posted by Illius

I think we need to consider the fact that WoW brought in a lot of people who were not gamers and especially people who wanted to play it that aren't necessarily Internet Savvy...

How many housewives have I met that play WoW but barely know how to access the internet?  Then of course there are tons of naive people that think just because something seems legitimate it must be so.  Since the number of users who play WoW is so great even the simplest phishing email will garner some kind of result.

It's what happens when people want to just play WoW and don't care where the addons come from and believe things that in game people tell them.  I'm sure there are quite a few people who get their kids to set the game up for them so that all they do is double click ont he shortcut on the desktop, type in their very basic pasword and burn through a few hours of game time.

 Wouldnt doubt for a second that this is true.

Im pretty good with the internet though and can usually spot a scam when I see one,but they managed to still get my account info.Like others have said,I wonder if there is some sort of leak coming from Blizzard itself.

I think one of the reasons for the rising number of hacked accounts is that after the realID system got implemented, once a person who has a lot of realID friends gets hacked, all of his or her friends become vurneable to brute force attacks for their passwords.

 Actually the hacking surge was already happening before RealID.

I believe it is just a case of large scale phising.

You know,  people clicking on those " your account is banned " or " your account security is breached " links in their mailbox :p

The first time I got such a mail, I reactivated my account ( with trial ) and checked everything out, all was still in order :p

Lately I am getting alot of Aion mails, but I never played Aion :)

I really don't care if people use the f-word or whatever, what I do care about is a level playing field and people openly talking about exploiting is definatly a turn off. I would of course report them first and see if they are taken care off.

It reminds me of how cheaters ruined Diablo II

Originally posted by prototypo

It's funny because i always look in every Star Trek Online thread  just to see if the community's feelings might change but i guess not, this must be killing there PR. What sucks the most is that i wouldnt consider myself a trekky because i only really like next genration & deep space nine, those two shows alone keep me coming back and hoping that this mmo improves to the point where i might just throw cryptic some dough (Crossing my fingers for season 3)

Hmm, you should really check out Voyager and Enterprise, ( if you haven't already :p ) I really liked those, and I also liked TNG and DS9.

Originally posted by LordAdder

 If CCP truly wants to commit to excellence as their new motto for the year states, then stall DUST 514 and Incarna for a period and commit the resources and manpower to fixing and polishing the basic EVE. 

 I'd say stall DUST514 and release Incarna and make a serious effort to fix alot of bugs in the Winter expansion.

However releasing an expansion ( in the Winter ) with no new content at all is not in the best interest of CCP nor the playerbase.

Actually I found that Tyrannis did not introduce so much new content and rather alot of fixes.

Sor example on the sound issues most bugs were fixed, now the only thing left is to rebalance the effects, which is surely taking them long enough ( since Apocrypha ), still alot of fixes where carried out.

Planetary Interaction is pretty basic, but works fine, a good basis to work on.

I agree that alot of features need to be fleshed out, but currently the only true game breaking issue is the lag introduced with Dominion. They do put alot of effort in fixing it, but it just doesn't show, and that is pretty much the only thing I want to hold against CCP, the inability to fix the game breaking lag introduced with Dominion.

FYI :

EVE Online breaks PCU record !

The new record is 60,453 pilots online at 19:53 GMT on 6 Jun 2010.

Originally posted by Xianthos

A off-topic question.

How many uniq users are playing EvE online? As every one i know who plays eve got 2-X accs. Its kinda longer you play, you must have more then one account or you use en mass plex :s

People talk about 330-350k users, but in fact if you count every twink you would be around xxx xxx?

 Quote from CCP Kieron :
"I don't have exact numbers, but less than 20% of the EVE community have 2 or more subscriptions. The other 80+% are single account users."
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=461283&page=2#36

And since EVE keeps growing that number should decline as new players tend not to get 2 or more accounts in the beginning, also highsec players have less need for 2 or more accounts and as stated before alot of the players reside in empire space.

LOTRO is a top mmorpg, I was pretty surprised that they went F2P, because they were doing pretty good.

But I assume that they want to bring LOTRO to new heights ( in terms of players and income ), and looking at DDO they have a big chance of success.

I actually think going F2P is not bad in itself. And the basic setup looks pretty good to me : pay to unlock content, which you then still have to play yourself, or pay the old sub and get everything in a package.

However when they start with selling XP potions or items, then they go too far for my taste.

Either way, since I never tried DDO, I will have to wait and see how they exactly handle F2P.

I think it is unlikely for AoC to have equal or higher numbers than LOTRO, there is no doubt tho that AoC is getting closer.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

 

It won't be for everyone, and some Star Wars lovers will be upset it's not the sort of Star Wars MMO they wanted. 

The Sandbox players are already upset, for example. 

 

 The Sandbox players are not upset, because they knew long ago SWTOR would be a casual single player pve mmo. So if they are in their single player pve mood, they might sub to SWTOR for a while, until they want to play their sandbox again again.

Whatever, there are plenty games with consensual PvP and single player gameplay ( WoW and LOTRO to name 2 popular ones ).

I just bough the lifetime sub to LOTRO, for when I am in the single player, non pvp mood, but when I want to play a real mmorpg I go to EVE Online or Ryzom.

Making the death penalty lower would not fix anything. The player base is not asking for that.

During my time in lowsec I lost many ships, even had to relocate two times, once because a pirate corp was killing me too much and once because there was just to much activity and hard to get back to highsec for trade.

But now I found myself a nice place in lowsec again ( for now ). Still I had alot of fun ( and pain :p ) avoiding the pirates, sneaking thru gatecamps, ninja looting the pirate kills, etc. in my previous home areas.

Death penalties are not the problem, they are not even harsh, except on older players ( who have to pay alot on clones on top of the more expensive ships they fly ).

What is a problem are the many leftover bugs and incomplete features from previous expansions.

If CCP needs anything then it is to fix bugs, lag and incomplete features, and then they would get even more subs.

Not that CCP has a problem currently, EVE is the only Premium MMORPG in the West that is still growing ... ( as far as we can tell ). And with the Tyrannis expansion many bugs were actually fixed.

Well globalization did not happen partly due to alot of devs / publishers not opening up their servers globally.

Again, EVE Online is one of those examples of how to do it right.

But I believe the OP was talking about Western Publishers selling in the East and vice-versa.

So for now, the only 2 real successes have been WoW and Aion ( from the top of my head ).

Also, this link is interesting, but proves little :

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1321437&page=1#19

Because for subscription numbers, the people that subscribe their first month are not counted, neither are volunteers.

@ OP

Your facts are incorrect.

Here are the numbers for active paying accounts :

March 2009 ( Apocrypha release ) : 264646 active paying accounts

June 2009 : 307340 active paying accounts

August 2009 ( Unholy rage ) : 299921 active paying accounts

January 2010 : 328992 active paying accounts

On top of that there are around 40k active trial accounts on average.

Either way, Apocrypha was a major success, and the only real bad thing introduced was a buggy sound engine.

Visit my site http://www.mmodata.net to view the full history of Sub and PCU numbers from EVE.

Now it could be possible there is a decline currently, because the sound engine still is not fixed and the lag issues since Dominion are still big, but there was definatly no decline due to Apocrypha.

I hope to get new numbers from CCP soon.

The OP is incorrect.

However Ankama has been misleading on various occasions.

If you look at the subscriber history of the game you can clearly see they just can't have anything near 3,5m paying subscribers.

But read this interview with Ankama, it will clear things up :

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25334

I quote :

"Do you have any new subscription numbers for Dofus or Wakfu?

CG: In terms of total subscribers, we are over 3 million. At the moment we have over 500,000 active subscribers, with a total of 3 million active players in a given month. As for total registered players [meaning all who have ever touched the game], we've reached 25 million. "

So they had over 500k active paying subs and 3m active players in October 2009.

Now they have 3,5m active players, I estimate, considering the slower growth of active players ( they had 800k active players in april 2008, 1,5m in October 2008, doubled to 3m in October 2009 and then "only" 500k extra in april 2010 ), they have between 510k and 520k active paying subs.

You can check the subscription history of the Dofus ( and other mmo's ) on my site here :

http://www.mmodata.net/

Dofus is under the Subscriptions : 150k - 1m link.

Hope this cleared up some confusion. At one point they had me fooled as well, you can read about that here  :

http://mmodata.blogspot.com/2009/10/part-of-dofus-numbers-were-incorrect.html