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Originally posted by Yalexy

Do people even read what information is there to be found?

TSW will have no PvP-items. And the only items with stats in TSW will be weapons and chakras, which have to be crafted from players.

All the shop is going to offer will be vanity-items as there's no items in TSW besides the two mentioned. All clothing is going to be for appearance only, without any stats.

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Companies lie or change their mind all the time. What isn't there at first can always be added later based on how the game is doing. I personally don't know what will be in the shop. I was responding to what was being said in the thread regarding cash shops in general.

I used to hate cash shops but do to having less time to game in general my stance on them has lessen a LOT. I doubt I'd spend a lot of money in them, especially if I'm playing a sub, but I'm not against something that would make my time easier and allow me to not waste time in general. If someone wants to spends a LOT more of their own money (end up spending more in the shop then they'd do on a sub) to make Funcom richer go right ahead. That's on them. I'll be selective about what I buy if I do or not buy at all. The problem I still see though is with PvP. Items can break a balance in a one on one situation. However we should be dealing with group based PvP and if it's down right there shouldn't be an imbalance.

I don't have the patience, time, or general desire to grind for a particular item or hold out hope I'll win the roll on an item. Requirements on items are key I think though. They've already put in the play time to get to the right level. Let them have access to that sword or helm. It's when you let people have access to everything regardless of their level and time put into the game is when people should be really worried.

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Originally posted by zipzap
i voted yes simply because of the fact that older gamers have money(working and so on then) and therfore have the option to do it. this doesnt mean that older gamers are less patient.
 

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I would agree with this. They would have the money for this to even be an option. Also though they have less time to waste.

Personally as I get older what I was willing to deal with and accept when I was in high school and even in my early college years have simply become unacceptable. It's why I've moved away from playing MMORPGs. I don't have the patience for that long grinds, to deal with snakes or minor gnolls at the start, etc. My patience is monopolized by work and family. When it comes to games I want to play. Yes I can deal with going through levels to progress and to gain more abilities and weapons. However not to the point where I'm forcibly stuck just so the developers/publishers can keep getting $15 out of me each month for as long as possible.

I think this is why I've been playing so many FPS online lately. The level progression is fast. I can experience new things in the SP but when it comes to online I can interact with others and not be stuck trying to get to the endgame (where there real fun is). I'm thrown into the middle of things and can have a great time from the time the first match starts.

That being said though I've never used a cash shop. Not that I'm not willing to do it but I haven't been interested enough in a MMO that I'd be willing to drop the extra money to just get past the grind to see more content. If the monthly fee was less I might be willing to do it.

Recently I had the desire to play Everquest 2 and Age of Conan again. This fire was stoked again due to the free play time offered by both SOE and Funcom. Still after installing both games I was greet with a 3GB at the smallest update. I took a look at both games and just said no. I uninstalled both and put the CDs away.

I know MMORPGs are constantly updating. I've been playing them since EQ1 and DAoC. However the idea of constantly redownloading the entire game again is just so damn unappealing. Even if one were to buy the latest box version in a story one would still be facing these updates. Perhaps I'm still burned out on MMORPGs. These big updates used to didn't bother me. I'd set it download in the evening and let it run through the night and maybe repeat that for another night. Still now just the idea of doing it now sort of makes me mad.

Has anyone else wanted to return to a MMO but been so turned off by the big updates to get back into the game? Or perhaps something else that just killed the desire you had?

I stopped looking forward to this years ago. It was the only thing that kept AO installed on my computer and why I kept my free account. I would have loved to sign back but saw no real reason until they updated the engine like they said they were going to. Saw that they weren't really serious about it when Age of Conan was announced and then released. Then Secret World, etc.

I don't have a problem with UO's graphics. 2D or 3D I could deal. My major problem with the game is the graphics lag that has yet to be fixed if it even can. Having my character run in place every few seconds totally kills it for me. I just find it extremely frustrating to watch. It's not a computer or internet connection issue. A purely a client issue that takes place in the original 2D client, Third Dawn client, and he new client. I'd play the game longer then a trial period if that were fixed.

I'm noticing that Qeynos isn't as revamped as I thought. I recognize the land marks but it is slightly altered due to the change in graphics I think. Certain parts of it look like they were changed though to line up more with Everquest 2's Qeynos Harbor I feel. The closer you get to the dock the more I feel is the case. It's not a massive change though I think. Or I'm completely wrong and my mind is playing tricks on me.

After spending some time on the progression server I learned something else. Remembered to be exact. I really struggled when I first started playing EQ1. I quit a number of times due to how long it took to level and dying, that and being in my early teens I could only convince my parents to let me play at times since it was their credit card. It wasn't really until Shadows of Luclin and the Planes of Power expansions that I really started to enjoy the game and started playing it a lot (within reason and as long as my grades were still high). I came in originally right before Velious dropped. Due to getting frustrated I never even experience Kunark until Luclin. That was when I was finally able play long enoug to level high enough to travel to some of those areas and even then it was on a limited basis since I enjoyed the Luclin areas so much more. Shadowhaven became my favorite city as well as some of the NPC cities there. I remember taking all my characters up to the moon as soon as the Plane of Knowledge went live.

I don't want to start from the very beginning. I thought I did but I had rose colored glasses on I believe now. Unlike some others the very beginning of EQ wasn't pleasant for me. I'm more of a fan of the Shadows of Luclin to Lost Dungeons of Norrath era. I stopped playing when Gates of Discord came out due other things in life becoming more important. What helped me through those early times before those expansions were two friends from high school that were playing the game before I was. They helped ease me into the game, where as now the Gloomingdeep tutorial does a decent enough job of getting a players feet wet. The new server doesn't have that. It should at least have the very original offline tutorial EQ1 used to have.

So while I still have to relearn parts of the game, the progression server isn't for me in the end. So I started a character on the Luclin - Strom server.

It's been years since I've played Everquest 1 and I mean really played it. I tried a free week retrial or something a few years ago but never really put much thought into it. I recently purchased the updated version (latest expansion) and while I only just created my character and got lost in Qeynos (Damn city revamp. All my points of reference have been spread further apart it seems.) I learned something interesting. For the past several years I've played World of Warcraft and Everquest 2. I found myself trying to figure out how to get a quest as soon as I started. Where the quest npcs were. lol

I started character on one of the new progression servers. So I was just dropped right in Qeynos with my human paladin. I was reading the npc text and took me a few minutes before I remembered I had to repeat what was in the brackets. Then I realized I'm not about to be sent on a quest to kill something and then to return for a reward. I have to simply go out and kill things and do whatever I want for the most part.

So essentially I have to unlearn everything (or really just a lot) I've learned from other more recent mmos. In my mind I knew this would be the case but I don't I ever really wrapped my mind around it. I was still trying to adapt my knowledge from WoW for example to this game. I was looking for all these things even though I knew they weren't there. I had to face palm at myself as I logged out as I had things to do.

I think I'm in a better mindset tonight. Should be interesting to see how things go.

Has anyone who started playing this game again recently or in the past experience this?

See I never thought the older graphics looked horrible. EQ1 was my first MMO so I tend to compare it with newer games as they come out. Others look so much better but that doesn't mean EQ1 looked horrible as a result. Just older and different. I know why so I deal with it and it's never been a huge negative when I rate it.

Going to be playing again (starting from the bottom) but currently waiting for the game to install/patch. I won't be in until tomorrow evening at the rate things are going. Anyway does anyone know of any videos (on youtube) of recent gameplay with settings maxed?

I recall what the game looked like a few years ago after the character models were changed. However curious as to what the zones look like now after they were revamped and changed/updated.

I guess I really don't know any better. I just picked up both Vanguard and Everquest 1 (latest expansion) on Direct2Drive.com. Between lower prices, sales, and a 15% off code for all MMOs I figured I'd jump. I needed new copies to add them to my current SOE account (has DCUO on it).

As long as the game doesn't feel like a graveyard I figure it might be worth another shot. I managed to play a little of Rift and I ended up canceling my preorder. Not for me so I figure with no luck with recent MMOs I should go backward.

Human Elementalist will be my first character.

Sylvari

It's going to take a lot to make me want to play as a Charr I think. The equivalent of the Orc campaign in Warcraft 3 and someone like Thrall to make see them as something other then murderous beast that I had to flee from in GW1.

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Originally posted by blueturtle13

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Originally posted by Stormscion
so pure sandbox means it has steap learning curve ? wtf are you talking about 
look like disgrunted elitist bitter veteran from eve.... 
 
eve is as sandbox as it gets. 

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 Noone said anything about a steep learning curve defining weather a game is a sandbox or not.  Not sure who thinks EVE is hard lol it isnt. Also  EVE is  as sandbox as it is. Not as it gets. Second life is more of a real sandbox. As is Tale in the Desert or Wurm or hell even minecraft. There are restrictions to things you can do in EVE it isnt 'total' freedom. Not even as much as it used to be.
Nice quote from Tobold: 
CCP stated that over 80% of the EVE players never leave safe empire space. And over the years there has been a lot of PvE content added to EVE. For me it isn't obvious that you can count all EVE players as "sandbox players", as obviously a good number of them is mostly engaged in activities like agent missions, which aren't fundamentally different from running quests in a themepark MMORPG.

 

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It's easy to understand why over 80% of Eve players are like that. The risk of leaving the safe sectors is so sever at times. You can items you spent literally months or years working on or toward. That's crazy.

I think there is a wrong impression that those that don't like griefing or unfair pking and complain about it don't like PvP. I enjoyed playing Dark Age of Camelot. I enjoyed Anarchy Online. I even enjoyed Shadowbane before it went to hell with griefers. PvP when it's ideally done works and is fun. People that choose to play a PvP game have no problems with the idea itself. It's when the system is abused and griefing takes place that people complain.

What many people have issues with is those that stand outside of safe areas and purposefully lay in wait for those of lower level for an easy kill. They usually hide behind the idea that they are role playing a robber, etc. No they are killing lower level players because it's easy. They take pleasure in making the playtime of another player miserable. There is no challenge in what they do.

This is what happen in Shadowbane and Ultima Online before it. In SB the idea was that players would fight other players to control areas. Guilds were fight other guilds and lay siege to their cities. If you are leveling in an area others would come and try to drive you out. When the game first launched it was fun. Once I got to the main island I got into a group and we fighting in an area to gain money. Many were from a guild and were hoping to save up enough first to get better weapons and armor and then make a small city in some out of the way area. We knew it would be dangerous which is why we even had some others off to the side as spotters so we wouldn't be jumped unaware. Others were joining to simply level like me. It was fun. Some higher levels tried to attack us while we healed up but then we took after them to drive them away. Numbers saved us. Slowly over time what happen was groups of high levels were coming around to stop newbies from even establishing themselves. Purposefully targeting low levels and not others of their own level or rank.

It got so bad that the developers were forced to increase the leveling range of the newbie island so people could level up even further so they wouldn't be prey to those on the main island once they got there. You couldn't walk out of the npc controls cities on the main island without being attacked. It was unreasonable to expect everyone to group before heading out due to the different times people played. It made joining groups already out in the field impossible. Pick up groups weren't possible as a result and that really is how majority of people play MMOs.

This type of thing happen in Ultima Online I believe. The system was abused with people targeting players that wanted to craft (clearly weren't capable of fighting back at times. That's one example. This is why Trammel was created. People still say it ruined the game. No it saved that game from going under. PvP is abused by certain group of players when there is no structure (Frontier in DAoC, etc) and there is a reason why FFA games either die in time ("prey" leave) or stay incredibly small and niche.

Those that act in this manner, who purposefully abuse the system setup, know exactly what they are doing. They know full well that their "enjoyment" comes at the expense of others. They know they are making others miserable. Those that do this I do not believe at all are really kind people in real life. How you act when you have anonymity I believe shows the type of person you are really are and who you really want to be.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

 

I keep seeing Fallen Earth cited as a sandbox and I'm curious what  features/tools it has that make it any more of a sandbox than Aion or LOTRO.

 

It isn't a sandbox game in the end. I fell for that claim as well. It's really a task/quest hub MMO.

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Originally posted by DrunkWolf
I will not flame your opinion, instead i will share mine.
Tried this game and im so glad i was able to get my money back for the pre order. it is just like every other theme park MMO out there. and the PVP is garbage.

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This. I had it preordered via Amazon.com and was able to get into the head start. You still had to put in your cd key after that and I had ordered the boxed version. After playing for a few minutes I canceled my preorder for the very reason typed above. That and I think I really am burnout on MMORPGS as I didn't care I was playing.

The game is polished. I will give it that. I liked the art style and the UI. However its a theme park mmo like all other theme park MMOs out there. Don't be fooled about what you are getting in regard to this game. You are pushed from kill task hub to kill task hub. I refuse to use the word quest anymore in regard to many MMOs as they are not that at all. If you've played World of Warcraft then you've played Rift. The worlds are different, the stories are different, and the enemies are different but it's basically the same game with the addition of "public events" ala Warhammer Online. They took everything that was standard in MMOs and polished them the way Blizzard polished them with WoW.

That's not knocking the game. In my honest opinion this is what Rift is. It might very well do well as a result but if one is looking for anything different then I don't think it's worth playing. At least it isn't to me.

The lack of time to play wasn't really an issue for me until lately. In being burnt out on MMOs I decided to try a different type of online experience. One I hadn't really given much if any time to do before. I started playing FPS. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the PC and Goldeneye 007 and Call of Duty: Black Ops on the Nintendo Wii. The interaction with other players (team mates and/or enemies) has been interesting but what has really grabbed me is that I can honestly jump into a game, play, and then leave. I can play for a few minutes to a few hours and still feel satisfied.

While FPS have a ranking system they are generally usually small. Different guns handle differently. How well you do can easily come down to skill or just luck at times. Unless I'm dealing with single player RPG I don't think I have any patience anymore for the leveling systems developers put in MMOs. They are massive time sinks in the end. They are there to keep you playing so you pay more over time. So you become attached to some character so you keep putting more time into it. People play games like Call of Duty or Super Street Fighter 4 or Madden or StarCraft 2 or Diablo for extremely long periods of time because they are simply fun. There is no artificial system in place that makes it seem "you need to play more" that I can tell.

Leveling has been made easier in MMOs over the years but that doesn't change how much time these games actually require out of you. It did take me a while to realize this really was the case. Especailly if you want to see the most interesting aspect of the content. It's debatable if it's worth it or not. The presentation of games have just been altered.

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Originally posted by Solestran
As far as I'm concerned, the menality of PKers is the same as those jerks who cut you off in traffic, cut in line, bitch at the manager till they get their way, have full conversations on the cell phone when with company, lie on their tax returns, be nice to your face then stab in you the back,  embellish stories to make themselves look better.....etc.  People may role play online, but their underlying morals are usually the same in game and out.

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I agree completely with this. While the person might not be completely evil in real life I believe the core of their true personality are on show when it comes to how they act when they have a tiny bit of anonymity. Those that take part in Pking and griefing, knowing full well how much frustration and non-enjoyment it causes others, and then say they aren't like this in real life are liars for the most part as far as I'm concern. People that are nice to you when they look you in the face and then bad mouth you behind your back is a good analogy. We all like to pretend we are someone else when we roleplay. That's fine but your actions and how much you revel in them (while trying to make excuses) show who you really are and what you might really do if you could really do it.

So no I don't think a person that is a ganker could really be a nice person in real life. They might pretend to be in real life but they really aren't. They're putting up a front.