Well I am checking the game out and I see lots of problems right up front.

First I downloaded the installer - ran the installer and it did not give me any options as to where I wanted the game installed. It appears this game plays out of the web browser? so perhaps not a big deal - however - I place all of my games in a specific area of my hard drive so this is a big negative for me.

Second I launched the game I think? it opened up a web browser window. My default browser is firefox and it does not appear to create the windows properly. If i hit full screen window the size of the actual graphics in the window stays small while the window itself goes full screen. The information inside the small window appears to go off the edge of the window and I have no scroll bars to see the rest of the info. I am guessing this portion of the game is not designed to work in firefox and is perhaps only designed for internet explorer?

That is as far as i have gotten so far.

Additional Info. I made an account and logged in directly to the website. The website is what it was trying to display earlier in a small box but displayed normally if I simply went to it with my browser directly.

Its the webbrowser in the client that is messed up. I can only see a portion of the webpage it is trying to display.

Uhm I am pretty sure that has been the Essence of WoW from its creation. WoW has always been about the "casual" give it to me now cheat code generation crowd. Thats why it has made so much money and why I will never play the game.

Originally posted by Msenge

Originally posted by Kaez

For those of you suggesting that this is BW's fault and they should suck it up, I ask you this question: If a bank leaves the vault door open by accident, does that mean you can take the money? And if you do, will you not be held accountable? Really, use your f'ing heads!

I'm not generally saying your essential point is wrong...but in your bank example wouldn't the bank/bank employee that left the vault open face punishment as well?  So you're suggesting Bioware/some Bioware employees should be punished as well as those that participated in the Ilum snafoo?

 

Essentially yes. If Bioware management can pinpoint the people responsible for a glaring bug/exploit making it to release and this is not an isolated incident then likely those employees will be fired for the very obvious reason that such things piss off the playerbase and a pissed off playerbase will probably stop playing their game.

If the management responsible for oversee particular teams  always seem to end up with bad teams doing stupid things then the management will likely be fired.

Lastly if the person responsible for oversee the entire project has a bunch of bad managers making all sorts of mistakes then likely the investors/publisher will call for that person to be removed from their post or other efforts will likely be taken.

So in short...yeah if the development team makes a series of repeatable mistakes due to incompetence then someone will likely lose their job - otherwise the game will probably go out of business as the playerbase flees.

Most players know when they are using an exploit or something just isnt right. The highest level I reached in the game was lvl 30ish due to the fact I just got bored so I did not make it to Illum. I can say though that by the time you reach that area you should have a pretty good grasp of the game and how the rewards work and how fast you could be expected to recieve rewards. If something is out of balance it is likely to be very noticable.

Knowingly doing something wrong is a good way to get your character banned/deleted or punished in some form or another no matter how much you whine to some random forum somewhere, no one will really care.

I have a great solution. Just dont bother with the forums. They are useless in any case. If you otherwise enjoy the game just play the game and let all of the other crap go. The devs dont really care about the forums or what is posted in there,,,the game is what it is and wont be changing in any significant way except for more of the same type of content.

I personally never saw anthing that would relate to in-game censorship unless perhaps someone was trying to use a copyrighted name.

The two things that will likely prevent me from even trying this game are the energy constraints and the quest based system. I understand why Fremium titles do this as they have to have some hook in order to make money, however, for me it is such a huge turnoff and can easily end up costing an individual more money than a typical sub cost. I personally think games like this would be better served with a low cost sub option where energy is unlimited. If the game is otherwise good they would probably end up making a lot more money.

I am also really really tired of quest grinders. Quests grinding in my opinion fragment a games playerbase to the point the game ends up being like a single player game in an MMO universe. I know this appeals to some portion of the MMO population but I am pretty much done with this style of gameplay.

Is there any real compelling reason to play this game over any other game out on the market right now? Especially a game that is allready in english?

If so what features or new ideas would make this game worth the trouble?

Its kind of like pornography - you know it when you see it. There are lots of lines to be drawn, lots of grey areas etc but the basics for me start with a very simple concept.

Thousands of players that interact with each other in a single world.  Without this you can not have an MMO. Just because you have this does not guarentee that it is an MMO.

The 2nd item on the list for me is that in said world you have a chance to randomly meet up with anyone of the thousands of players at any given time. If there is "locked" content - that content only makes up a small portion of the game and only involves a small percentage of the advancement process. Locked content are instances in which only a select few people can enter and they have that instance all to themselves without any outside interference.

The 3rd item which is an outgrowth of the 2nd item on the list is that the actions of the other players in the world can have an impact on your game experience and you can have an impact on their experience and this impact is not restricted to locked instances.

Under these guidelines games like GW1, starcraft and Diablo are not MMO's even though there are thousands of people with the potential to interact with each other. I have never played DDO but from what I gather DDO would also not be an MMO.

This does not mean they are not good games and they dont cross the line from a simple multiplayer game to something that lies between standard multiplayer and MMO.

I think where this site screws up is that they treat too many games exactly the same and mix and mash them all together. Everyone has their own set of tastes and many people have tastes that cross various boundaries. It would still be better to define some boundaries and let those whose taste crosses those boundaries to go to each section.

For instance free to play should be seperate from sub based. Web based should be seperate from standard client/server based. Games that fall into that grey area should be seperate from games which are solidly one thing or another. Simplify the lists, seperate the content and the site becomes usefull again.

Something to note also..the dev team was only 25 people. Today a AAA title has a team in the hunreds. If you think in terms of measuring sucess based on total money made versus the number of people required to make the product EQ still ranks right up there in the top.

It was a great game and the idea of challenging the player is what still sets original EQ apart from any other title to this day. Those of us who enjoyed that part of the game are still waiting for another game to come along and actually challenge us.

For me Corpse runs/Level loss/Content that required groups/The inability of most of the classes to play the entire game solo - these are the things that while frustrating from time to time also made the most enjoyable experiences too.

I pretty much feel the same in that I havnt found an MMO that can keep my attention for long. This is due in large part to a predictable formula. Create a basic piece of content. Throw a bunch of different cosmetic skins on the same piece of content and claim to have a "huge" game with "thousands" of quests etc. In the end you have experienced most of the game by lvl 20 out of a 50 level game with the last 30 levels becoming repetivive. The first 10 levels you can usually get in one night with the pace slowing down to lvl a week for lvl 20.

The genre has definately been dumbed down to appeal to masses of players in creating games in which you the player can not lose even if you wanted to try. You are guarenteed to hit level cap if you play 150 to 200 hours. You are guarenteed to acquire the best equipment if you keep putting the hours in. The "power" player really doesnt do it much faster than the casual player other than the "power" player will put in 14 hour days while the "casual" player puts in 2 or 3 hour days.

Untill this changes MMO's will remain somewhat bland and boring. WoW has been a huge sucess because they brought in a bunch of people who had never played an MMO before and everything was cool and exciting.  As this population plays more and more MMO's they too will get bored with the current model.

While I cant answer directly as I havnt thought of this issue in a long time the basics are straitforward in my opinion.

The first item: You must be able to "win" or "lose" in crafting. It should be set up in such a way that the actions of the player can cause the crafting to suceed or fail. There have been several attempts at this from the original eq2 crafting system and I cant remember others atm. This would require some sort of mini game in which meaningfull choices have to be made. There are many different directions that one can take such as limiting a crafting process to number of points and set of actions. Each action takes a certian number of points and causes something to happen. When you run out of points the crafting process ends and you end up either with an item or a mass of crafting material. How good the item is and what the item is could depend on the initial items and the choices made. Higher skilled crafters will have more choices available and the ability to use more tools which have more pronouced effects.  Also when talking about mini games I dont mean something based solely on a random number generator in which the choices you make are cosmetic in nature only and are forced down a particular path by a random number generator. This is ultimately what happened in I think Vanguard or EQ2 (dont remember which now its been too long) in which the number of failed, basic success and super success was controlled by the game in a form of percentage in which the mini game was made easier or more difficult in order to insure a certain percentage of item success across the board.

The second item as another poster has stated is some form of item decay can be usefull. Some will complain about constantly having to replace equipment etc, however, that happens in MMOS right now. Most games are set up that all equipment is replaced every 3 to 5 levels untill level cap at which point you start grinding gear and constantly attempting to upgrade gear in any case with the best gear bound to a player. Item decay wont change a lot except reduce the need for binding equipment to a particular player.

The third way is to allow crafters to upgrade and improve existing equipment. SWToR has a method in which this happens in that some armor and weapons are modable and crafters can make mods such that a moddable piece of armor is usefull forever by simply upgrading the mods in the armor. Mods are also available from vendors in SWToR so this doesnt necessarily help crafters 100% but it does help crafters. A variation in this system could go a long way so that a Sword gained at level 1 could be enchanted and garnished to be good for many levels with the idea perhaps of upgrading to a weapon with a better base material that has more enhancement potential.

The downfall right now is the "main stream" player wants to play a solo game in an MMO environment and thus complain when forced to have to interact with anyone.

I dont really see that game as being that big. I am enjoying it for what it is but I have no illusions about the granduer of the game. Its about average on overall content. The biggest addition to the content are the cut scenes and voice overs. They are everywhere in the quests of the game. The quests are 80 to 90% of the pve portion of the game with the flashpoints and heroic areas making up the other 10 to 20% of the pve portion of the game. I think of the spaceship stuff as a seperate mini game. Each world has about 20 to 30 quests total which will net you 2 to 4 levels depending on whether you are below level for the content - on level with the content or above level for the content. I complete each world in 2 to 3 days playing perhaps 3 to 4 hours in a day. There are somewhere are 10 to 12 worlds? I havent counted them yet...I am on Tatooine at the moment. That is for Republic space. I assume there are additional worlds for empire space and empire storyline.

The problem I will be running into soon is the only reason to do PvE content is for the storyline's. Once I run out of storyline there is no reason to do PvE. You can do the flashpoints to farm gear and the PvP battlegrounds to farm gear, however, once you have done a flashpoint they are small enough that repeating them quickly becomes boring. PvP can be fun, however, there are only 3 maps currently and allready the fun is wearing off on those.

I think the game will keep me amused for another month...through January and perhaps into February...hard to say at the moment.

Its the age old problem with MMO's today. In order to produce enough content devs repeat stuff and simply add a few complications for higher level content. In the end the repetition gets boring and the game becomes stale. Allready I have seen map layouts repeat within the same world and even the maps they have are usually pretty simple affairs. A few rooms with a couple of corridors populated by whatever mobs inhabit a particular planet. Most mobs are simply one of the character archetypes with a particular cosmetic skin and the skills of that level of character archetype.

My only hope was this game would hold me untill GW2 comes out. Maybe it will maybe it wont.

While I voted no to it being the king of MMO's. I still play it and enjoy it. That doesnt mean its bad or anything...its good enough for me to hold me untill GW2 I think.

Originally posted by Master10K

Originally posted by caremuchless

Originally posted by Polarisation

I still think the complete removal (read: dumbing down) of resource (energy/mana) management - while initially fun - will dumb the gameplay down to a point where the people who enjoy the deep strategic complexity of GW1 PVP and other MMOs will get bored.

 

I worry that GW2 will be little more than an arcade game with persistence.

You want tab targeting back too?

Some people just fear change and so they attack the changes that threaten what they have grown used to. It's common human nature, nothing to be otherly concerned about and will die down once the game is out and players have had time to grow use to it. Similar to how all modern shooters have some form of regenarating health now.

And some people lack the comprehension that just because something changes does not make it better and just because something is old does not make it bad. Whether the system is good or bad only time will tell. I myself am partial to a system with limited resources that must be managed with no variation of in-combat and out of combat regen. The skill then becomes as much in choosing which ability to use and when to use it for the greatest effect.

In the case of GW2 though it seems that the time length of a skill will be the resource to be managed overall which can work if done right. It appears they are doing it right.

Originally posted by jonnyfrag

btw, the 'official thread' is at over 500 pages right now and has been recreated 3 times already since Friday.... this being the second official thread after the first one did the same thing. Its not a small problem and no it's not 'people aren't used to ques' it's 3-4 hour long ques, ques on EVERY east coast server by 9:30 their time, and only a dozen or so west coast servers with no que at all yet.

SW:TOR  launch day is here, but you still are waiting for a while to play!

 

I dont know if its my play times but the longest que I have seen is 45 minutes. There have always been servers that have no ques when I play...I did plan badly and picked a server that almost always has a que of 20 to 40 minutes. I just plan ahead though and start the que up while I go do something else long before I actually intend on playing. This has worked out for me and the ques for me are slowly dying down and getting shorter.

The one thing they could do to help ques is allow free character transfers between servers.

My biggest response is Who cares? I never ever listen to any critic when I make a decision to buy or not to buy any game. Taste in games is very personal and what some geek in an office somewhere likes in a game could be completely different than what I like in a game. I will read reviews not for the scores or final opinions but rather to see what information I can get on what the game actually is.

Is the game buggy?

Are there players active in the game?

What is the playstyle?

What type of game is it?

etc etc.

It will work as any retail version of the game is exactly the same as any other. The only difference is what key is used to activate the account. Further even if you buy digitally it is not necessary to use origin to insall the game. You can download the basic game client(which is not origin) and being the download process through that client. The first "patch" is the game. Having said that it would be much faster to install using a physical copy no matter what your circumstances are if you have one available.

Orignally I was not going to buy the game untill after I played the Beta. I am/was bored in general with no other games to be played, so I went ahead and bought this one as I was/am enjoying it. I always knew however, that this was only a short term game for me untill GW2 came out. Something to bridge the gap utill then. Of course if GW2 fails in the sense that it is not as good as I expect(for my particular play style) I do not have any other games on the horizon that peak my interest.

Some games you just have to treat as single player games and ask yourself - Is it worth the money - Will I get enough enjoyment from the game to justify the expense. If the answer is yes you likely bought the game. If the answer is no you hopefully did not. In the end you only have yourself to blame if you buy something you dont like.

Whether or not a game is good is very subjective in most cases and depends on a person's personal preference. Take minecraft for instance. Millions play that game and I cant see for the life of me why. To each their own in the end.

I think nothing happens nothing changes to any great degree. A few months(IE 6 or so) from now GW2 will be out. They have a different model which I think will be equally successfull. Other devs will try other things some will succeed others will fail. The one part of the equation most people on these forums fail to take into account is the true measure of sucess for an MMO. The first measure is did the game recoup all of the expenses incurred in creating the game. On top of that because the industry is so volatile most investers would want at least a 50% return. I think any game that meets that basic goal is a success.

Some games though have a lot of gravity based solely on how much money has been invested into them. They require a huge fanbase to recoup their expenses and as a result succeed or fail they will shape the industry to one extent or another. Blizzard at the time spent approximately 10 times what the normal investment was into a typical MMO into WoW. They took a big risk and succeeded. SWTOR spent about 5 times what is currently the norm and as such took a big risk. It appears the risk is paying off at the moment but its still early. As such they will have an influence on the genre no matter what happens.

And no matter what happens good or bad at some point down the road another company or individual with deep pockets will come along and spend 5 to 10 times the norm to make a mega game. The only negative thing about mega games is they tend to be watered down to the lowest common denominator in order to draw as large a crowd as they can.

The only solution is to keep grouping with people and friend those who are likeminded. Over time you will get a good base of players who like to play like you and it wont be a problem. Waiting for RL friends also works.

I only played the original GW1 so cant comment on how the game changed later...but to say the mesmer had no offensive power just wasnt true from GW1. One of the best skills I loved to use in pvp was the casting interupt. It did significant dmg to an oppenent if you managed to interupt them casting a spell. I killed many a caster as a mesmer using the interupt and one or two other symbiotic skills. I also did just find in the pve portion although my memory of all of that is a bit hazy now as it has been so long since I played. Not having an offensive ability was never an issue for me though.

But to GW2 - I love the look and feel of the mesmer and it appears to be everything I would have hoped it would be. Only time will tell though once we actually get our hands on this game to see what it actually plays like.