If you're a sandbox gamer you will hate this game if for no other reason than it drives a nail into the coffin of a future sandbox game. Sandbox games are dead.

Actually, this is a very good game. Tons of fun and of course, fun is what I pay for ... not feature "A" compared to feature "B" or whatever is needed to play the hate game.

There are some very interesting concepts in this game that have kept me glued to the screen. The story line for each of the classes I've tried out has been fantastic ... I even got laid last night by an evil NPC. I like the graphics. I love the combat which reminds me of a cross between WoW and CoH. Very nice animations.

The game feels like it has depth ... yes I know the sandboxers think no theme-park game could ever have depth ... and there is plenty to do so far. Oh ... there are no elves.

Best thing to do is either buy and play it or wait until they give a free trial.

Luck!

I Played that game from day one.

I find it funny that people think that it was this fantastic games that was ruined by the NGE. The NGE was installed because the game was failing. All the NGE did was kick a games that was already down.

For all of the sandbox gamers out there, you may support the game because of the format but I bet you've never really played it.

They built the game in the wrong time period which eliminated force users as chars and they had to resort to a fubared made on the fly system that allowed you to unlock a force char. It was clunky and simply not worth it. The subs went down.

The planets were not hand made. They consisted of generic areas with nothing special. Missions for terminals had no cohesive purpose and they sent you out to these same generic areas. BORING. The subs went down.

You couldn't jump. Now, while players jumping around makes me roll my eyes, the fact that you couldn't do it at all just puts a question mark on the entire engine and ts limits. The subs went down.

Housing is a cool addition. Its not a game in itself and while people will thump their chests and proclaim a game failed that didn't have them, it didn't help SWG. It didn't help EQ@. Its a minor feature and obviously not a very important one judging by the subs of the games that do have them. SWG just couldn't make the importance of housing stick like UO did. The subs went down.

When it became obvious that the game wasn't living up to its potential ... that sandbox games were for the most part dead and people wanted to play theme-park games, they went with the NGE. They borked that so bad even dedicated SW players couldn't stand it. The subs went down.

Yes, there are people who haunt these forums with the mindset that the sandbox game style is the ultimate gaming experience. They are in a minority. If they were legion, games like WoW and SWTOR wouldn't exist. Sandbox is dead ... it has been for a while ... and no amount of "pretty" will bring them back. SWG is dead. It died years ago. Let it rest in peace.

EQ2 went F2P because:

Their sub numbers are very low.

They have so many expansions that it would be very expensive for a newbie to buy and play that game.

They want your money and if they can't get it like a real MMORPG, they will get it any way they can.

Games that go F2P always start with "The standard P2P monthly sub isn't the future, F2P is or something like that. Anytime you see that run ... run fast ... run free ... run like water through a first time Mexican tourist ... just run. 

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Originally posted by Praetalus

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Originally posted by david361107
to the OP..wth dude? you bring up a subject and are like, "this isn't the place to do whatever about this here" and are like, ok i want to talk about his more but don't talk about it or whatever..wth?
 
wow is no longer adding subs..period!! (not counting adding countries) doesn't matter if they bring in panda's or dumb down their now easy game or talent trees, which should now just go away because it's all cookie because they made it that way.. All Blizzard is doing is trying to hang onto subs as best they can, and it's not a bad thing for business, it's just how it is. Actually until Netflix i've never seen a company move in a direction to totally burn themselves more. Short term, they are doing great and if you ask me they are just buying time for whatever new mmo they have coming and even killing WOW for the hardcore players so that they will all move over to whatever new MMO they have coming out in the next couple of years. I mean Blizzard isn't dumb..actually it's pretty cool watching how the fan boys are trying to hold on and the others are just like, really? do you hear what your saying? lol
anyway, i hope blizzard does come out with something new because even this is getting old.
 
peace
lascer

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Let's start here shall we? Doing they are doing great in the "short term" - Are they? The games been number one for 7 years. 7 Years. 7. That's not short term for an MMO - it's actually quite long-term when you consider all the games that came out post wow that are now f2p and have completely fallen apart. The company is not burning themselves just because a group of players are bitching about an expansion they don't like. As a parent, I can tell you that Blizzard will handle this just like any parent deals with a child throwing a tantrum. You ignore them until they get over it. (Just like the nerd rage I heard from people bitching about the Draenei Race in BC who were "quiting" lol)
 
Next, you guys are talking numbers on WoW and not taking into account the numbers from other games. Even if wow had 5 million subs, it's still more then number 2. Get that? Still more by at least 50% then the number 2 game.
 
Let's just all knock this stuff off. It's not going anywhere. It's not. Period. This MoP expansion is just the next chapter, you really think they'll end it here? Even IF it doesn't do well... and it will.. They have at least 2 more expansions planed to hit a cap of 100. So go ahead and talk your smack and act like it's going away. It won't. Like it or not, it will remain.
 
..... Now that I think about it... You know why it will remain number one? Number one reason - IT CAN PLAY ON ANY COMPUTER SINCE 1985. You don't have to upgrade shit to play it and kids can play on their parents shitty computers, or grandparents shitty computers. It plays on laptops flawlessly, it plays on school computers. It plays on internet cafe computers. This is not an accident folks... hell, I've rencently rigged an old Mrs. Pacman machine to play it as well as a electric football table with a wired on screen.
 
There's no accident that Blizz only does incremental updates to the engine and not an overhaul. It's good business. Eq2 was a much better game then WoW in 2004.. you know why it flopped and never passed 400K subs? It ran like utter shit on even the newest PC's. The game still runs like pig ass now and it's been 7 years. I'm telling you and will with my last breath - this game will remain number 1. TOR will come and go just like the other 20 wow killers that hit the market. 
 
Ok.. I can't think of anything else to say right now.. 
 

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Correct in every way.

I'm not a Panda fan at all, plus I'm going to TOR but in truth, I have no doubts that I'll be back in WoW sooner or later.

Blizz didn't get to where they are at from being idiots no matter how many people want to believe that.

Anything else I have to say I won't ... you have said it all much better than I could.

We started off with 3 talent trees that you could put points into ... nay tree at any time ... as you see fit.



The we went to a system that narrowed the choices forcing us inot a single tree until a higher level at which time you could chose talents ... though only a few ... fro the other 2 trees.

Now they want you to have a pick of only 1 out of three every 15 levels.



Wouldn't it be best if they just dumped  the talent trees and just let a Ret Pally be a Ret Pally and Shadow Priest just a Shsdow Priest? This game gets more simple as time goes on. Remember when we had to train skills? Gone. Had to be carefull on which talents you picked? Gone. Hunters and ammo? Gone. Class quests? Gone. Rogues had to make poisons? Gone.

When is the line crossed between making the game more efficient vs insulting the intellegence of your players?

I'm not a 12 year old but I play WoW and have from the start. I've ventured into other games as well but always come back to WoW because it has the content my play style requires. In fact, I have always intended to come back to WoW using other games as a break. Sometimes I would get carried away and swear off WoW but I knew that unless the new game really rocked I would be back.

This is about to change.

I will play SWTOR. I might like it and I might not but at this point I doubt I will come back to WoW. The KungFu Panda thing is about as hokie as I can think of ... and I've seen some hokie stuff. Making the game even more simple also doesn't cut it. I'm still in game, but I haven't logged on for quite a while now and I will probably let it just run out.

Now, SWTOR may or may not be a great game but that changes nothing. It has potential and if it does byte then I can move on to a ton of other games out there. Either way, WoW is just about over for me. From what I'm hearing I'm not the only one. What does this mean? Not a damn thing ... I don't have private talks with every player ... but I think WoW has made a mistake. They could have went with the emerald dream and things would've moved along just fine but the Panda thing is just too romper room for me.

I can't agree with the OP that WoW just handed SWTOR the world but they have handed SWTOR me.

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Originally posted by eric_w66

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Originally posted by Malkosha
I was wondering if TSW uses the same game engine as AoC?

In AoC, the graphics are fantastic as well as effects like godrays. However, the AoC game engine is VERY poor when it comes to performance. I attribute this to the poor handling of SMP.

If you play AoC, you will notice that on multicore machines, it only uses 1 CPU. You can go into Task Manager while the game is running and change affinity back and forth and it will use the other cores, but it only lasts for a short time before it reverts again. Even when using more than one core, the load is not even close to being distributed evenly.

If TSW is using the same engine and they haven't coded it for better SMP support then I fear the game performance will be subpar on machines that rely on multicore CPU's.

This of course is a "make or break" deal for me. While the game sounds interesting to say the least, poor coding will kill any dream and ruin any game no matter how innovative they try to be.
 

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SMP is not very useful in game engines. There aren't a lot of parallel computations to be done, and what there are are usually graphical in nature and are usually shuffled off to the video card, which is built for that kind of work.
 

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On the contrary, MMO's require extensive CPU work and the difference is noticable in many MMO's. Even WoW for instance, as old as that game is, takes advantage of SMP and even though the graphic engine isn't video card breaking, performance improves greatly with multicore CPU's.

AoC suffers greatly in performance because of poor SMP support. It always has. Unless FC works on this problem, you will find performance issues between single core CPU's that run at a higher clock rates vs multicore CPU's that run a lower clock rates per individual core. I've experienced this myself as have many others.

Here is hoping FC will do it right this time.

I was wondering if TSW uses the same game engine as AoC?

In AoC, the graphics are fantastic as well as effects like godrays. However, the AoC game engine is VERY poor when it comes to performance. I attribute this to the poor handling of SMP.

If you play AoC, you will notice that on multicore machines, it only uses 1 CPU. You can go into Task Manager while the game is running and change affinity back and forth and it will use the other cores, but it only lasts for a short time before it reverts again. Even when using more than one core, the load is not even close to being distributed evenly.

If TSW is using the same engine and they haven't coded it for better SMP support then I fear the game performance will be subpar on machines that rely on multicore CPU's.

This of course is a "make or break" deal for me. While the game sounds interesting to say the least, poor coding will kill any dream and ruin any game no matter how innovative they try to be.

I think Funcom has some of the best ideas around. When it comes to being creative they are one of the best in the biz and every game they released has seen me running out to get it based on concept and hype alone.

Not this time because sadly, their ideas never quite pan out.

They will be using the Dreamworld engine for this game ... the same as in AoC ... and since the engine upgrade in AoC I've had all kinds of performance problems. I'm not even close to being the only one either. While my rig isn't a monster it isn't all that bad and it used to play AoC just fine. Not now. 

The same thing hapened in AO and anyone who played that great game with the horrible performance knows what I'm talking about. Yes, some people won't have a problem but they are few and far between and more than once I've heard of people passing even on free play because of the terrabad performance of that engine.

The best way to plan for a FC game is to make sure that your PC is so powerful that it can overcome the bad coding and set your sites low so you can be surpised.

I will pass on this one. Between AO and AoC there is just to much past grief. I expect this game to be no better.

I have a problem with "Secret World". It uses the same engine AoC uses and that engine is flawed. It doesn't fully use SMP and needs a super-PC in order to over-power its bad design. Framerates swing all over the place as you stutter through the game ... unless like I said, you have a super PC to play it on or setting the settings to "fugly".

GW2 has already failed. Yes, it may very well be a great game but when hype meets reality, the shock difference will send people packing. Sadly, they will be runing from what is probably a great game.

STO is done. Stick a fork in them.

WoW will reinvent itself again and still reign as the King. We will see what the next Blizz MMO has to offer.

ToR will be the MMO everyone who isn't a WoW fanboi will play. It will do very well and is the only one out of the bunch that could actually take down WoW.

Just  my opinion of course ....

Yes, subs are down ... for some an action based MMORPG just isn't their tatse.

However .... AoC is a great game and the dev's have made great strides in terms of quanity AND quality. This is a AAA title from the bottom up. True, its not a WoW clone. If thats what a person is looking for there are tons of them out there. AoC is its own game and what they have tried to bring to the table was done very well. Too bad they bungled the start. They will pay for that oversight till the end.

First off:

AMD X2 5200+
9600GT
3G RAM
Vista 64

Its an older system ... but with the MB I have its easily upgradeable. Until then this is what I have to work with.

After playing most of the weekend, I didn't have a memory leak problem or any other problems come to think of it. Actually, using the same settings I had before the frame-rate is higher and many of the old graphics issues I had like clipping, etc, are all gone. Keep in mind that I live in Linux for the most part and my dual boot setup is for gaming only. This means that I only have the minimal setup needed to run games and nothing else. In many ways its a very clean system.

When you see a sticky on the official forums and replies of "we are working on it" from the dev's, I guess it tends to make you a little uneasy about what to expect from your system. Add in some bad press and some community angst and you might get the picture that all is not well in Conan land. The game however plays well even on my old system and 'm having a blast.

All in all, the game has improved in performance as well as content. I will probably hang for a while and see how things go. The game is more than playable and very fun. Not much else you can ask for in a game.

As a follow-up, I've received the "Your account is activated" email so now its a moot point. I'll just try it and see. Nothing to lose but time ..... and it beats watching TV.

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Originally posted by astoria
I haven't heard about any memory leak ior read about it on the forums, but I can tell you my personal experience. I have WinProf 64 OS and I don't have any memory problem. I have ram and CPU meters running all the time and they don't stress out running on a GTX 450 1GB, Intel Core i5-655K, w 4 gigs of ram. Most settings are high and running DX10. I have turned down some that I frankly can't tell the difference visually. Get decent FPS 30-50.

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Thanks for the replies!

On the AoC forums, this thread: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=232368 talks about it and it seems to affect some but not all. I guess I can just try it and see.

It's been a little while but I thought I would come back and play again. I installed the client and let the patcher run over-night. No problems.

I was just about to renew my sub when after cruising the forums, I discovered that there seems to be a memory leak problem for people who have 64bit OS's. This halted me in my tracks.

The last thing I need is a client that eats RAM for breakfast. I'm already wary about my system specs. My PC is much better than when I first played but after reading a few posts, there are people that have systems which blow mine away (I can never stay on top of the curve) and they are still having performance issues. Add the mem leak to this and I decided to wait until I learned some more before I commit.

Since I can't post on the official forums unless I renew ... and I won't do that if there are major problems ... hopefully, someone on here can clue me in to any performance issues and the status of the mem leak fix. I remember playing EQ2 all those years ago with the same problems and it just takes the fun away.

So .... can anyone clue me in?

Thanks!

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Originally posted by Ceridith

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Originally posted by Malkosha
 

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Most rifts are placed beside quest areas, not directly inside them, meaning you can still go about questing relatively uneventfully. The only difference is that you may occasionally have to wait 5-10 minutes for a foothold to be cleared out a quest hub so you can turn in your quests.
Honestly if that's such a huge inconvenience, you should probably go back to playing world of snorecraft where you can grind quests in a blandly static world that never inconveniences you in the least.
Rift is supposed to be dynamic, which means things change and can sometimes be inconvenient. But that's what makes the game a lot more interesting that your bland quest grinders.

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And here is the issue.

Fanbois are always the first to tell someone "go back to world of snorecraft" yet are dismayed when they do and they find themselves in a game hats all but failing due to lack of population. They are also the last ones to understand what this was caused by. It takes a few months for this to happen buts it been the downfall of every game released since WoW.

It seems to me that is far better to address the issues that might make players quit, look for compromise (not that you can actually make the changes) than it is too drive them there because of an attitude that a certain game should be worshiped.
 

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The problem is actually that most of the complaints are merely conflicts in personal preference, not core game mechanic issues.
I just find it absolutely ironic that so many of the people complaining, are the same gamers who whined and complain they want something different, something that isn't more of the same old static junk. Then, when they get that, they complain that they can't play the game as if it were the same old static junk MMO that had them begging for change in the first place.
Honestly the whining is getting really tiresome.
The simple truth is that rifts and invasions do not legitimately impede you from doing anything in the game. At best you can run around rifts and invasion forces, and at worse you have to wait 5-10 minutes for players to take back a quest hub. The only people having problems are the ones too lazy or easily put off by any measure of inconvenience.
What makes Rift uniquene from other MMOs is it's dynamic rift content. Rifts, invasions, and everything else related to them  are supposed to have an impact on the game, particularly yours and everyone else's gameplay. Yet at the same time, any impact there is can be easily avoided or resolved with a little bit of effort. If Trion removes the effect rifts and invasions have, then there's virtually no reason to even have them, and then there's virtually nothing that truly makes Rift as a game unique from the competition.
I'm no fanboy, I'll definitely attest to the fact that the game is by no means perfect. It's got it's balance issues, bugs, etc, some of which have annoyed me a good bit -- plane shifting through the world for example. But, these issues are being acknowledged and adressed by Trion. More end-game content is also being added to give people more to do at max level.
But, I'm severely annoyed at the people who complain about the game's core game mechanic, as if it's some glaringly huge flaw in the game. Honestly, it's what makes Rift, Rift. I love the rifts, the ivnasions, it makes the game world feel alive, and like I'm actually participating in it, rather than only running from point A to B doing boring quests.
Complaining about the influence of rifts in Rift would be like complaining about being PK'd in Darkfall. Honestly, if you don't like having to deal with the design focus of the game, then why the hell are you even playing the game?

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Actually, you make some very good ... if not outstanding points.

I've been playing these things for so long I've lost track of the years. Everyone seems to want the "next big thing", they want "something new" they want "something different and unique" but when they get it all they do is complain.

Its not just different games with different ideas, its also represented within the same game. They want a change to their class but when they get it someone always has to whine about it.

I guess that's just the community or maybe its just people in general.

As an example, at work we have people working on PC's. They do "A" then "B" then "C". They do it everyday. They want a change but this is the job they are paid to do.

Now, switch around "A" with "C" so its now "C" then "B" the "A". Same job but in a different order. Not only do they complain but now they demand training sessions.

I guess MMORPG's are just like that those job scenarios and the players are just like those people. They may say they want different but when they get it, its all whining and crying.

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Most rifts are placed beside quest areas, not directly inside them, meaning you can still go about questing relatively uneventfully. The only difference is that you may occasionally have to wait 5-10 minutes for a foothold to be cleared out a quest hub so you can turn in your quests.

Honestly if that's such a huge inconvenience, you should probably go back to playing world of snorecraft where you can grind quests in a blandly static world that never inconveniences you in the least.

Rift is supposed to be dynamic, which means things change and can sometimes be inconvenient. But that's what makes the game a lot more interesting that your bland quest grinders.

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And here is the issue.

Fanbois are always the first to tell someone "go back to world of snorecraft" yet are dismayed when they do and they find themselves in a game hats all but failing due to lack of population. They are also the last ones to understand what this was caused by. It takes a few months for this to happen buts it been the downfall of every game released since WoW.

It seems to me that is far better to address the issues that might make players quit, look for compromise (not that you can actually make the changes) than it is too drive them there because of an attitude that a certain game should be worshiped.

It hard to say what will happen, and I think the OP has valid concerns.

If you are concerned, I would just wait for a few months. No harm in waiting that long and you will miss nothing. Games like this are not a sprint, they're a marathon. In a few months when the newness wears off, the fanbois will stop making excuses for the slightest hint of discontent, the haters will zero in on a single weakness and the populations will either still be growing have stabilized or are dropping. At that time, you will get a true view of the game.

No need to rush. Just wait it out. Being first ... or in the first rush ... buys very little if anything at all.

I played in the beta and I think the graphics looked pretty good.

The only "gotcha" that I see is that when I look at the hardware requirements for Rift and compare them to AoC which, IMO, is a much better looking game, I have to wonder about the underlying engine. AoC does so much more from animations on down with much less of a hardware requirement.

Of course, with enough hardware you can overpower anything and it becomes a moot point. Even then, if graphics is your main draw to a game, then you're definitely playing in the wrong genre. Rift covers the bases quite well. Its not the best but if the game play is great it doesn't have to be.

I find it amusing that when confronted by a review that slants a little ... sometime a lot ... to the negative, the poster is accused of being a Blizz employee. When I come to those accusations I tend to skip over the rest of the post even if they have some great points in them. Its a credibility issue. The idea of a company trying to bad mouth another game by creating accounts or paying gamers to post in a negative way, is best left for those whose formal wardrobe includes a tinfoil hat. Which is worse? The dumbing down of games or the dumbing down of gamers?

Having said that, I do like to listen to people defend their game. At least those that are still riding on the reality train. Not all games are for everyone and someone else's turd might be another's diamond. A lot can be learned from different opinions both positive and negative. Just ... well ... keep on planet earth.