Originally posted by Po_gg

To the topic, Wraithone +1.  Not this topic again...

 

But as a Howard fan I just can't leave actionreaction's post without a reaction :)  So, what is exactly those lame covers prove? (steve perry... oh my). Those mere fanfiction-quality writings from the '80s, influenced by the comics and the rising era of sword'n'sorcery type fantasy with cardboard cut-out characters? :)

I'm not saying those years haven't got any part on the current look and setting of fantasy-genre in games / books / movies, I'm just saying it's not Conan's (or Howard's) fault. RefMinor wrote right, even the first Conan movie was much better than what your covers suggesting... :) just as the (original) books.

Hmm, I assumed Ref was being ironic, being familiar with the cover art of Weird Tales in the 1930s where a lot of Howard's stories first saw print:

http://barbariana.com/2011/10/faces-of-conan-1-margaret-brundage/ for 3 examples specifically featuring Conan.

If you downloaded the game from the NC-West Aion site (na.aiononline.com) then you can play on the NA servers, there does seem to be a significant EU timezone population there made up of people annoyed by Gameforge's management of the game -- however to connect to the servers you need to tell the NCsoft launcher you're in North America, thus:

1. Open NCsoft launcher
2. Select "File" menu
3. Select "Settings"
4. Select "Advanced" tab on the popup.
5. For "Region" select "North America."

According to an article on Massively, Aion NA will be getting updated to version 4 on 26th June.

This is a couple of weeks later than originally scheduled, but on the other hand the original schedule involved holding over the new high-level instances for a later patch: instead these will be incorporated in a single patch along with the new zones and two new classes (source).

Originally posted by Senden
Sorry to sort of hijack this thread but it saves me making a similar server related topic. Got a trial key for the game and going to register it later and give it a try once I've finished my work however I was wondering if there are pvp servers on this game and if there are any actual benefits in joining them such as world pvp? Also I'm from Europe, should that effect my server choice at all? I believe there isn't any official EU servers if memory serves correctly however not 100% sure. 

All dimensions ("servers") have the same ruleset and same physical location (somewhere in Massachusetts iirc). Arcadia and Leviathan are labelled as roleplay dimensions but there is no actual official RP ruleset (naming conventions, chat rules &c.).

There is currently no PvP in adventure zones; PvP is confined to minigames (instanced battlegrounds, 2 at present), Fusang (a persistent warzone) and the Fight Clubs (FFA PvP arenas, one in each hub city). Your choice of dimensions determines which copy of the warzone you fight in (there was originally one instance per dimension, but they were merged together into "battlegroups" owing to low population). Update 1.7 (an early version of which is currently on the test server) is planned to introduce limited open-world PvP events; full details of how this will work has not yet been announced.

Originally posted by eyelolled
I hope I don't get banned for this, but here is a picture of one of those little cuties with even less on.  ; )

Now that is just disturbing. You, sir, are a truly sick and twisted individual.

;)

Originally posted by eyelolled

Originally posted by kakasaki

Originally posted by Homitu

Scarlet Blade's use of anime sex symbols as a marketing tool is anything but mature.  It's precisely its very juvenile nature that has put so many people off.  It comes off as a cheap gimmick that plays to the 14 year old adolescent boy in us all.  

What the OP is talking about seems to be Game of Thrones style sexuality and violence.  Scarlet Blade doesn't even belong in the same sentence as Game of Thrones in terms of adult themes and maturity.  

Pretty much this and well said. Sex and violence in the right context makes sense and should be defended. The Scarlet Blades of the world are mediocre products that use sex to cover up the fact that is is a mediocre product. No amount of anime soft porn will change that. That being said, I defend their right to make mediocre games aimed at 14 year olds. I abhor censorship of any kind... you take the good with the bad. 

I honestly don't know anything about the gameplay in Scarlet Blade, so I can't judge that. I also don't know anything about Game of Thrones but I will look into it.  I would just like to see more games cater specifically to adult audiences with adult content, and the industry seems to avoid that.

There was a Game of Thrones MMORPG licensed but it appears to be either vapourware or stuck in development hell, at least there's been no news for a while, the game website hasn't been updated this year (and with the third series of the TV having a week left to run they're missing an opportunity to type it).

As for Scarlet Blade -- while like others I'm amused by the hypocrisy of some of the attacks on it -- no. Fanservice nudity & sexual innnuendo per se I have no particular problem with -- hell, I've played a few actual eroge (so people talking about SB as "porn" or "hentai" tends to prompt a "You keep using that word . . ." reaction) -- we already have enough utterly generic grindfest MMO games cluttering the market. Given that Shaiya appears to be still running, I doubt SB is going to crash and burn any time soon, though.

Pando is an abomination which at the very least leeches your bandwidth and is widely regarded as spyware, but fortunately it is not necessary to manually edit config files to stop Aion from reinstalling it every time there's a patch. It can be disabled by right-clicking on Aion in the games list in the NC launcher, and selecting "properties" then un-checking the "Use Pando Media Booster" for downloads" tickbox.

Originally posted by stragen001

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Originally posted by Kyleran

That's exactly the thought that ran through my mind when reading this. I thought that maybe the people writing isn't the same people deciding what ads should be running on the site though.

Actually this has been confirmed by staff, the team managing the business side has nothing to do with the editorial content, so that does explain the disconnect. 

This, a thousand times this. The owners handle all the ads, and leave me and our editorial staff to do anything at all we wish with the content.  There are many emails when Craig/Ben and I have had to set the record straight with PR, marketing, etc.  Editorial is separate from ads, and we can't be expected to avoid negative opinions just because you bought ads on the site. 

Though some would love to believe that our writers are "bought and paid for", nothing is further from the truth.  

I totally get what you're saying bill, but you have to admit that its a bit suspicious that you wait until the ads finish before your negative piece about scarlet blade and your no doubt negative review about scarlet blade....

Except he didn't, there was a fairly negative op-ed piece about Scarlet Blade over 2 months ago,and btw the current main background ad is from the same publisher.

Originally posted by Grailer

here is a concept ,  rewarding people not in your group for killing something someone else is fighting .

In other words  kill stealing is actually considered grouping .

Uh what does this have to do with TSW? You cannot kill-steal in this game: for regular mobs it uses a first-hit tagging system, anyone not grouped with whoever gets the first hit gets no XP and no drops. Quest mobs (with the flag symbol above their names) give no XP and no drops, anyone who hits them gets credit if they're on the appropriate mission tier.

EDIT: typo, clarification.

Originally posted by user4852

title.

noticed the NA version is much more "Free", so can EU pplz play it without proxys and crap ?

It can be played without proxies -- there is no IP block.

Latency may be an issue, as discussed in other recent threads here -- with some classes in particular the extra net latency across the Atlantic may put you at a disadvantage in PvP. Having said that I get less overall lag playing on NA servers (physically located in Texas) from the UK than I did playing on the EU servers.

EDITED TO ADD: One thing I forgot, you may need to set the region on the NCsolf launcher to NA manually (File -> Settings, select "Advanced" tab, select "North America" on "region" dropdown.

Originally posted by Drakynn

Originally posted by Zushakon
Don't trust these boards, them haters are passionate no-lifers with nothing better to do.

I agree with you but find fanbois just as bad which is strange since they should be spending  their time playing their chosen cause.Also who really cares about ratings one way or another on this site?

I suspect the answer may be found in Urban Dictionary, sub voce "E-peen"

Originally posted by huxflux2003

How can this game have such a high rating? 9 out of 10 people trying it get disappointed. Steam and mmorpg.com forums are packed with people saying the game is crap.

How can it have such a high score? Makes me suspicious about the scoring system...

If you go to a game's mainpage on this site and click the "ratings" tab, fairly near the top you'll see how many votes the user rating is based off. In the case of DF:UW it was ~250 when I checked (as opposed to nearly 1k for GW2; I actually expected the difference to be larger but then I suppose MMORPG.com is a bastion of MMO hipsterism so a more mainstream commercial title won't necessarily have the same proportion of its fanbase hanging around here as something like DF).

Additionally there is an arcane (well, not literally secret, it's been explained occasionally) forumla by which ratings for games besides the top-voted one get scaled as a function of the top-voted game's rating.

Finally there's the oft-repeated truisms that (1) *everything* has a "hatedom" and (2) someone who likes and is enjoying playing a game might come here long enough to give it a high rating but is likely to prefer spending their time actually, well, playing the game than arguing in its defence on an internet forum.

P.S. I don't play Darkfall and have no intention of doing so -- I do however have purely selfish reasons for wishing the game well.

Originally posted by Banquetto

One thing that is very clear after reading the comments here - it's not just banner ads that Scarlet Blade spent their advertising dollars on. I'm not sure I've ever seen so many shills in one place.

rrrright . . . because anyone who has anything good, or even non-negative, to say about a game you personally dislike has been either bought or brainwashed. Sigh.

Originally posted by Drakynn
If this thread proves anything is that some people have no sense of humor and don't understand it in others hehe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

I'm genuinely unsure which of the posts calling the advert pædo-bait were sincere and which were simply trolling.

I suspect the game is rubbish anyway, my experience with other title Aeria has published makes me reluctant to even bother downloading it.

There is no charge for the client or ongoing access to game content.

There is a cash shop which sells a selection of cosmetic, convenience and flat-out advantage items as well as services such as server transfers and character name / appearance / gender changes. For reference, cash shop currency currently sells at 1US$ = 80 "NCoin" (purchase in lots of 400, 800, 1600, 4000, 8000). Some cash shop purchases can be traded to other players.

EDIT: this was in reply to Damonvile.

Originally posted by greywolf2002

Not gonna speak about the features of the game per se, because i haven't played enough, but thing was like this for me:

 

-Friend suggest we could give this game a shot, looks nice even if it's old.

-Ok, why not? We start our chars and quest together for a while.

-Hey, mob dropped this nice item you can use. Give me trade.

-<<you are="" a="" freeloader,="" so="" you="" can't="" trade="">> (This is basically the system message i got)

-We look each other for 2 seconds.

-"Fuck this shit game?" - "Fuck this shit game."

 

And we left. Best free model? My balls.

This sounds like Aion EU you are talking about, which was sold off to Gameforge, a move which has proved unpopular with a large^H^H^H^H^Hvocal section of the playerbase & runs under a "free to play" model which completely gimps players who do not purchase the pseudo-sub or "Gold Pack."

OP was talking about Aion NA which has no such restrictions, though if the location in your profile is accurate you might have some latency issues playing there.

EDITED TO ADD: @Colddog04, yeah the link you give is for Gameforge's Aion EU operation. I actually did have vet status there having subbed for a few months when the game first launched in Europe, but have basically abandoned that account because of the hash GF made of running the game.

Originally posted by Realbigdeal
[mod edit]

90% of everything sucks

Edited to add: Personally, I would rate Scarlet Blade the worst MMO game I've played this year, but the only others were GW2, Aion, Age of Conan and The Secret World.

Originally posted by Rusque

Originally posted by coretex666

Originally posted by Riposte.This
Sweet, another terrible Korean MMO that will be pumped out way too quick and be F2P. Another Ninth seal, or Raiderz be my guess.

Prejudice, hate, subjectivism...what else we got here

Historical reference.

If something happens over and over and over, then it starts becoming your problem if you don't see the pattern.

Does this mean that this game will be terrible? Not necessarily, but if we want to take an educated guess and observe Korean MMO track records, then it's very likely that it will continue along those lines.

Meh, the truth-value of the above would not change if "Korean" omitted (or replaced with "Western" when the topic was a game from a European or NA developer). Vide Sturgeon's Law.

I do wonder though if the people complaining about this game's aesthetics accidentally got redirected to a video for Tera, Aion, Blade & Soul or some such instead of the one linked. Character models, costuminng, weapon designs didn't strike me as being in anything like the East Asian fantasy-art style we generally associate with Korean MMORPGs. Hell, as someone else mentioned, a couple of the characters shown look like almost direct lifts from the Lord of the Rings movies.

Originally posted by Gorwe

1. I heard that they invented new kind of server where you get more xp(not necessarily good if you ask me), but at the same time are safe from ganks(awesome!). Is it Open for f2p?

2. Now this is downright stupid and noobgages. What about RP? Is there any to be found in Aion? That was my Main concern with Aion.

3. Will my Ping crush the experience for me if I go to na servers(it's not Like I have any semblance of a choice...)? You know, the eu->na ping...

1. The "Fast Track Server" was introduced with 3.1 and contains copies of each faction's "homeland" zones (not including the capital & housing zones -- i.e. Poeta / Verteron / Eltnen / Heiron / Theobomos and Ishgalen / Altgard / Morheim / Beluslan / Brusthonin); XP from mob kills and gathering is doubled and there are no rifts so you can level in peace up to 50. No cash shop purchase is required to go there (Aion NA has no sub option).

2. No idea. Only recently came back to Aion NA after about a year away. There is a RP section on the forums (http://forums.na.aiononline.com/na/forumdisplay.php?f=57), it seems comparatively quiet. There is no official designated RP server.

3. Playing on NA from the UK, I get better overall playability than I used to do on the EU servers at launch though still suffer from occasional lagspikes; generally for PvE content the game is still playable. Can't comment on PvP, the few fights I got into on the NA servers were decided by level or gear disparity over latency.