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Originally posted by jdnewell
I have recently returned to AoC and find it a much improved and fun game now.
I was there in beta and even bought it at launch, quit after my month was up due to the many many problems we all already know about.
Overall I think the game deserves a 2nd chance for people who may be on the fence about giving it another go. With that being said I understand many peoples feelings for funcoms business practices.
I personally will not be buying another Funcom game at release due to buying AO and AoC at release and being burned both times.
 

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I can understand why people are on the "hate wagon" for FC. After all, first AO and the AoC. Shame all the way around.

However, if you are one of the ones waiting for RotGS let me say right now that this is where you want to be, Really. I'm not allowed to say why just believe that the expac will do more than just add content ... it will change the nature of the end game and brings some new things all the way around.

All I can say.

AoC is on its way to being one of the best around and if you let your bad feelings for the old FC gang derail you then its your loss.

Hopefully no one has posted about this yet. I searched and found nothing so far so ….

Am I the only one who thinks that STO is very much the same game as COX (City of Heroes/Villains) but sort of reskinned with a Star Trek theme?

First off the two game are mission based. In CoX you see the people with newspapers who give out missions and in STO you call Star Fleet for the same. In both games, some of the missions are set in stone, that is, they never change. Others however, if not most of them seem to be randomly generated.

In CoX you ran through town to get to a building, go in the door and your mission starts. In STO, you travel through sector space and enter (warp) through a space door. In CoX you can run into villains on the way to your mission. In STO there are wandering “enemy signals” that you can run into before the mission.

In both games there are a limited number of tiles used in these missions. I’m sure CoX has many more by now, but at first they were few and far between. STO seems to be the same way with both space and ground missions looking alike with just a few random relocations of key parts.

In CoX your main avenue of leveling came from missions. In STO the main avenue is episodes. Alsmost the exact same thing.

There are many more comparisons I could do that could fill pages but the bottom line here is that the design and feel of the two games are very much alike. While this doesn’t make STO a bad game at all … I loved CoX while I played it … it might explain why they were able to produce STO in such a short period of time, why there is so much instancing and why many of the missions look the same even though they are located in completely difference parts of the city … oops … I mean galaxy.

Just a thought …..

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Originally posted by DthRevan

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Originally posted by dhayes68

I'll concede it might be good. But it ain't MMO good.  In other words it may provide a level of entertainment commensurate with standard video game fare, but when you put it in the MMO category, the expectations are a lot higher. Is this a game I'll be playing for many months? Years? No, I was bored in less than 10 days.
Got to keep that in mind: good game != good mmo.
Of course if they hadn't tried to convince everyone the game is an mmo and just released it a a standalone with multiplayer, none of us would be discussing it.

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I agree, an mmo it is not. Pretty much all content can be solo'd.
The only thing so far i've seen is the CE that requires about 20 players...

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Disagree. I got out of the forced grouping EQ1 sheep thing years ago and to be honest I'm surprised anyone still falls for that crap. Well, there will always be those that are stuck in the past with no way to escape.

I love this game. The more I play the more depth I find in balancing ships, BO's and your skills. The space combat is great with plenty of action to keep me busy. I must not be the only one either because the damn game is crowed as hell. Tons of people playing away. Unless you change it, most missions put you on teams with others. This can be both a good and bad thing.

Sorry but your limited definition of what an MMO is is sadly lacking, narrow-mined and a little one dimensional for me. I'll be here a while you obviously won't. Have fun finding a a great game that fits into your small little world.

Luck on your next game!

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Originally posted by Rocketeer
Im not sure about this game being so solofriendly. I currently do Defend sector mission in the sector north of earth, and i regularily run into groups of 1 dreadnaught, 2 BS, and cruisers and stuff there. No way in hell can i solo that at same lvl with a Tier 2 ship. I have seen T4 ships(which are +15-25 levels to me) get wiped by groups like that. I cant even scratch the shields on that dreadnaught and if the BS stun or tractor beam me(they like to do both) and that dreadnaught hits me with his frontBFG i go from full shields to half hull(you can imagine what happens if i get hit at half shields). Yeah it probably cant kill my science ship if i get it alone cause im way faster and have many survival related skills, but killing it?
 
Also even if i avoid dreads and do the regular missions, nowadays i sometimes have stuff like 3 of the stunning/tractoring BS with friends, and the small BoPs fire Highyield plasma torps like candy, and their big cruisers have a boost that lets them outrun me. If im stunned and my science team is on CD(only buff breaking the stun) it means death for me cause you cant even adjust shields or move during that stun and it doesnt take more than a couple torps for my hull to completly crumble.
And im already lasting alot longer than other players cause im a engineer and we have stuff like a 30 second -40% damage buff that regens shield(which frankly is awesome). Tactical officers(they get offense buffs) in an escort(they lack shields and defense oriented BO stations) are in for hell trying to solo at my lvl(not yet commander). I have seen them blown up in like 10 sec(stun, tractor, 5 HY torps impacting, dead).
Im not saying you cant solo, im seeing people doing it, but you have to pick your targets, and your better in the right ship with the right fitting and skills. And even then it will be much, much easier in a group even if they dont help each other. Good thing is that its usually easy to find someone to group with, i usually get 1-2 people if i ask in zonechat(the LFG tool is frankly crap).
 
Hmm didnt see that mentioned yet so here it goes: The npcs have pretty much the same abilities with the same strength that we players do, but racial limited. Fighting Hirogen is nothing like fighting romulans which is nothing like fighting borg etc. Alot of times in other mmos i had the feeling that most npc just run around melee or ranged autoattacking stuff(Eve or wow come to mind), and otherwise being exactly the same just with different skins and names. Sometimes they have a special ability or two, but not to the point that it actually would require you to change your tactics.
Its not until about mid LT commander that i saw the enemies actually use those abilities though, so there probably is some grace period till around lvl 15 i would say.
 
Facts abilities and skills:
Overall abilities in STO are more powerful than in WoW or eve, for example Tractor beams pretty much stop moving/turning/cloaking, stuns can last more than 15 sec if not broken(they do grant harsh immunity timers though) and abilities that affect an attack usually have extreme effects on the order of 2x-5x damage.
Damage reduction abilities go anywhere from 15%-80%, and run between 8-30 seconds, some are only for shields, some only for hull, some only vs certain damagetypes, you get it.
There are abilties that make beam weapons heal instead of hurt you, or reflect damage back, an AOE effect that make npc enemies attack each other instead of you/your team for 15-30 sec(for players everything becomes attackable, but your not forced to attack, alt tab=bad, selfheals suddenly affect target instead of targets target or self), or a target jam that prevents a single foe of targeting you for 10-20+ seconds and using any abilities/attacks against you that require you being in his target(basicly everything but PBAOE).
BO abilities have ranks, like skills in many mmorpgs, but here a BO can have rank I, II and III of the same ability at the same time if you want. There is a max of 4 abilites per BO(commander rank), the different ships have different limits on usuable rank abilites, but not on BOs themselves.
Abilities work differently here. Player skills(which are the minority) are affected only by your personal skills. BO skills(majority logically) have their Magnitude decided by the players skill, and their duration/recharge by the BOs skill. There are some rare exceptions to this where a skill has fixed duration/recharge, here the BO skill also affects the magnitude.
Most abilities scale in some way beyond the + from putting points in its corresponding skills. They either are atleast partly % based(my selfheal got stronger in my new ship), scale directly with items you can equip to your ship, or scale with a powersetting in their corresponding subsystem.
You can have more BO with you than your ship has stations for. For example i have 4 stations(1 weapons, 1 engineering, 2 science), but 8 BOs. I use different BOs when solo than i use in a team. Replacing a BO with another can be done anytime your not in combat.
Player skillpoints are limited, you reach a point where your maxlevel and stop earning them. BO skillpoints(which go into a pool instead of to an individual) are not, both have maxlevel in abilities though.

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STO seems to have far more depth than I thought when I first started playing. Working the skill trees alone can be interesting after you learn the math and which skills bump other skills. Also, the gameplay itself seems very smooth and space combat is a blast.

The only thing from the OP that is a FACT is that there is no free trial. Everything else is conjecture or a game of semantics trying to give the appearance of facts.

I find it interesting how many people come to these forums with an objective of trolling and spreading hate for games ... which are after all ONLY games ... and are so persistent and passionate while doing so. The forums for this and every other game here, may be the basement of the MMORPG world.

A couple of months ago I built my 22 yesr old daughter a budget PC. It has an AMD 64 X2 5200+ CPU on a Gigabyte MB. She offered to switch out MB/CPU/RAM with me since all she does is cruise the net while I love to game. Also, with an AM2+ MB, I can plan for future upgrades.

It took me a little over an hour but I made the switch. She kept her case, drives, etc and since we both run Linux, we didn't need to load drivers or anything. It just found the stuff, installed it and off it ran.

I dual-boot with Windose for games only and had to load new drivers, chipset, etc but in the end it seems to work just fine. Windows is so lame ....

She hasn't seen much of a difference in speed. It makes sense in a way because she doesn't run any multi-threaded apps and the core speed difference is marginal.

With that plus a 9600GT I should be able run this game. I owe daddy's girl big time.

Thanks. Maybe I should just wait ....

I've got an old AMD 64 3500+ CPU with 3G RAM and Nvidia 9600GT running on WinXP. It plays AoC very well at high settings... as long as shadows are turned off and view distances are lowered a bit. Considering that I only boot into XP just for gamming, there is almost no other overhead at all.

I've heard that you can play this game with a single core CPU but I'm not sure mine will do it. The official forums show people playing it this way while other say it can't be done. Anyone here play on something as old as my machine? With the way things are these days, an upgrade will be quickly followed by a divorce :0 and the divorce will be costly.

Thanks!

This just goes to show you that no MMORPG, regardless of how well made it is, can ever balance classes for PvP or PvE. There are simply too many variables including gear, specs and abilities not to mention the ingenuity of players who can and will exploit the game design.

Class balance is like the Holy Grail of MMORPG design. Look for it and you will not find it, try to grasp it and it will slip through your fingers. The truth is that class balance doesn't exist. It never has and never will. All of those players who rant, rage and scream for such a thing, are as clueless as the knights of old who gave their lives for nothing more than an impossible dream.

About 2 months ago.

I really liked the game, tried a bunch of different chars. I like quest leveling (WoW spoiled me ... I can't MOB grind and have fun any more) and found a quest hole at around level 35. I tried to go back to the other "Just out of Tortage" areas and found quests that were too low for my level. Sure, I could do them and get the experience, but going around one-shoting stuff to finish a grey quest line didn't do it for me. Made me lose confidence that the rest of the game wasn't the same.

Might try again after RoTGS. Might be a smoother leveling experience.

Looks pretty good.

If these are like the screenshots of the original game, you may find that they don't do the game justice. Its one of the few games where I can realy say the the game looks better then the screenshots, and the screenies look great.

The expansion opens new areas, new races and new leveling experiences as well as new PvP scenarios. It will sell well if word of mouth is positive. Of course, the expansion HAS to be good. If the expansion is a bomb then the game will die. IMO, AoC will live or die by the expansion.

There is one franchise that I think would make a perfect MMORPG ... esp on the PvP side.

Highlander.

You can start at an earlier time period and each expansion would bring us closer to the present. Dueling would be prominent as would "good" vs "evil" Immortals.

There can be only ONE ....

Good idea. Reminds me of LoTRO and their lifetime sub deal.

Don't expect Free to Play or any other major changes unitl after the expansion. Basically, AoC is on hold until the expansion is released. If they pull it off then expect subs to increase. If not the game will collapse.

Just an opinion.

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Originally posted by finaticd
@ the forum traffic discussion:
According to this site www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/ there is not enough players online to do anything, spo maybe they come to the forums to recruit more players. Those types that come to forum don't realize that AOC has verry little to do.

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My God ... do you live and die by that crappy X Fire? Do you have stock in them or something. Maybe one of their dev's?

Anyone who actually bases anything off those numbers and really believes they tell anyone anything except what X fire people do is ... nevermind. The world needs idiots too just to make everyone else feel better.

Oh Boy!

Its another "I hope that FC is doing bad and since I have no proof I'll throw up X Fire to prove it".

X Fire? You have got to be joking. X Fire stats aren't worth the page their printed on and everyone ... but you I guess ... seems to know that.

Another X Fire FAIL thread ROFLMAO!!

Try with something substantial you sad little X Fire man ....lololololol

This one is easy. AoC

When I want to play a pure fantasy game complete with elves, dwarves and fairy's I'll play WoW. Best fantasy of that type out there.

When I get fed up with the aforementioned fairy tale stuff, I'll go for AoC. Darker, more inovative and getting better all the time. It, like WAR may have crashed and burned on release but as time goes on its getting very solid and just plain fun. Besides, there is just something appealing about jumping into a horde of enemies and chopping away hero like until you are the only one left standing.

AoC. Better graphics, better world, better concept, better dev team.

Very interesting thread. In fact, this thread has been VERY helpful. Just saved me $50.

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Originally posted by catlana

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Originally posted by dismantled

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but the GM's on Anarchy Online will also greet new players and ask if they need any help. Anarchy Online being of course Funcom's other MMO.

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This is a pretty good policy. Most people will have alot of issues in the first session of any activity.

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I was going to bring this up also but its worth repeating. This seems to be an FC staple and had this happen to me in AO. Never did happen in AoC but I did have a problem and got an in game GM pretty quick.

When it comes to CS ... I've seen much MUCH worse.

Seems to me that in order to have a remake, the game itself must be fairly old. SWg, while old is rather new compared to Ac1 and UO. CoX is also a "next gen" game compared to the old school games.

The only games that would really fit the bill are anything before ... and including ... DAoC/AO. AC1 and UO are the best bets since the game play style is so different than the DIKU MUDS like WoW, Aion, EQ etc we have today. Remake AC1 and UO and you have something both old and new. Remake anything else and its just another EQ clone with different features.

When you consider that on quite a few boards, the "Aion is a grindfest" thread occurs quite often, I guess that Aion IS a grind.

Then again, so is every other MMORPG. The difference between them of course is that some games tend to hide their grinds better than others even to the point where people say their is no grind at all. These tend to be some of your better games. I guess from all the posts, on many different boards, Aion doesn't fare to well in this area.

Shame really.