Well here's the thing, I enjoyed EQ1 back in the day for a number of reasons primarily because the game didn't hold your hand through anything. The game was hard and even small things like navigating took some effort and knowledge because there was no maps at the time and you needed to know landmarks to navigate zones. Another thing that I enjoyed was that it was a slower paced game, now in games everyone in a rush to get someone and they HAVE to be there as fast a possible, I still remember the boat ride in EQ1 taking a half hour in real life.

Also, games nowadays lack any suspense whatsoever and you OG EQ heads know what I mean. Traversing Kithicor forest at night time, the tiny tinge of fear you get when someone yelled Spectres to docks in the Oasis of Marr, or the frantic panic of trying to find a safe place to hide when some guild set loose The Sleeper. No game now seem to have any of that suspense because no games have any real penalty of death, death in EQ1 meant lost experience that could have been several hours worth so without that no one gives a damn about dying, I know I don't.

Honestly I miss the player to player interaction for selling merchandise pre-Luclin expansion the most, Shadows of Luclin killed it for me with the bazaar. I enjoyed the simple things in that game like sitting in Kelething spamming chat with my wares and the whole negotiation and bartering with people mmos nowadays don't have these things or at least they don't feel anything like the original mmos.

Lastly, I miss the community. Back in those days the only people who played EQ1 were mature and older individuals , with the exception of myself; I believe I was 15 at the time. Games now are filled with immature players that spam chat with the most pointless rantings about Chuck Norris or why they are so much more l33t than you. Back then the only spam you got was trade spam or people yelling about a train to the zone.

It's kind of funny though thinking back on this game because it still does quite a few things that new games haven't implemented, like speaking in your own racial tongue and being able to learn others like dragon, orc, etc. The drunk effect and building tolerance lol, I remember not being able to cast as a mage because my character was so drunk he was swaying from side to side and the only way I could cast was to wedge myself between to object to keep myself still.

While I agree with you Labryinth, unfortunately I feel those days are over, people nowadays don't have that much time to dedicate to playing and I think it's just these companies and game devs know that so that make games that cater to all players the best way possible, which unfortunately is much more casual than we are used to. That's just my opinion though.

Brecca - Tunare

Devillan - Vazaelle

Rift certainly has the potential to be the next big thing, but like stated before this is a premature assumption and we would need to revisit this in a month to see if this point still stands. It does look good though so far, early access alone did have over 1 million active accounts, but a lot changes in a month. For all we know that 1 million active accounts could be all they get, but with the way WoW content is going I'd say the numbers will go up, maybe not by leaps and bounds, but i don't see them dropping. As far as the listening to the communites goes I agree they do listen, however they aren't so great at responding. GM tickets currently stay open for days and at launch posts on the forums about the ludicrous wait times weren't met with any response except deletion. The game is still young so only time will tell, I personally really enjoy the game and would recommend all who play or plan on playing to play past the tutorial zone, then make the decision to keep playing or not.

Hey I was wondering if there was any KR members around from pre-server merge?

Don't hate the game, hate the players.

I really can't wait, beta was soooo good.

I thought this game was, postponed indefinitely?

Tralak, dude you must not get out much because I've encountered plenty of good looking women that play video games either console or pc. It seems you simply choose to base your opinion off of your limited encounters and basically stereotype people who play video games as a short, overweight kids with bad acne. I'm not trying to bash you, but dude it's kinda hard when you say something stupid like that. Haven't you ever heard the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover."?

Maybe it's cause you're young or not a social person, but just because someone looks like a particular stereotype doesn't mean they are and I have several friends to prove that. My friend Lou looks like one of the dudes on that show Jersey Shore, but the guy is an encyclopedia of Star Wars knowledge, he's read every book written about the series. My friend's sister is a hot hair dresser and kind of a girly girl, but she is hardcore into shooter games and dedicates her time off to skrim with her clan in ranked clan matches.  I mean just because you have never encountered a good looking gamer doesn't nessecarily mean they don't exist, it just means you aren't looking or you just don't care to that's all I'm sayin.

Like many of the previous posters the line "Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious--that's definitely not where we're going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny," caught my eye as well. I was a bit thrown off by this comment, but I remember the Fallout 1 and 2 and how much I enjoyed them. Fallout 2 is by far my favorite of the series and I trust their judgement.

YES!! I HATED this guy AND Dragoon Zytl AND Ambassador DVinn

[img]http://common.allakhazam.com/images/i/d/id356.png[/img]

This guy was just so annoying because he was in a low level dungeon zone but could easily kill players that were lvl 25ish.

I'm going to have to disagree with you Tivian, while the cgi was not Avatar quality the cgi in Beowulf was certainly much better than that of the animation in the Ultramarines movie; judging from the trailer that is. The cgi in the trailer was dated and not even as as good as Dawn of War II cinematics (I'm not trying to flame this movie because I absolutely love this franchise), but the fact of the matter is this movie is animated by a much smaller studio and to compare this to any hollywood movie is just unfair. Beowulf had a 20 million dollar budget and was professionally animated (By a big studio Sony Pictures Imageworks to be exact), whereas the Ultramarines movie is animated by a small group called Codex Pictures,  and it's because of this that the Ultramarine movie quality is not going to be as good as a hollywood production or near that of a big time gaming company.

On top of them working with a smaller budget you have a company that has never had the experience of animating actual people; allow me to explain.  The folks from Codex Pictures are well known for their productions of the Lego Bionicle trilogy, this would possibly explain they strange animations like the weird robot walking animation from :20-:25 of the trailer. I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though the animation looks dated I'll still buy this movie and probably like it.

I guess they're working with a tight budget the animation looks a bit dated, regardless I can't wait to see the finished product.

Originally posted by Bleu

 

None of what you've just said is verifiable as anything but base conjecture, and it's fairly easy to point out that Warhammer and Age of Conan both offer up worlds based on older and arguably (at least in Warhammer's case) more or similarly popular franchises, while still coming nowhere near WoW's subscription base. World of Warcraft is incredibly accessible both in terms of its hardware requirements and content, and I'd say that's been far more influential a factor in its popularity than Warcraft's attachment by now. conjecture no. fact warhammer and aoc failed due to them being wow clones talk to anyone who's played aoc and they will tell you that funcom ignored and is ignoring pvp in order for more pve content. also conan as always been a nitche franchise and warhammer fantasy is not as big as a name as warhammer 40k.

also look around everyone is tired of wow and it is very clear that blizzard would rather pull something like the realID thing then fix what is wrong with wow. most of my frineds have quit wow and i think raph koster said it best when he said wow would be the worst thing for mmo's.

mr koster was once again right.

 

Edit: Ah, I realize this defense of World of Warcraft is a bit derailing. To stay on topic, I'd at least like to point out (if it hasn't already been), that the easiest parallels we can draw from what we know of ToR's space combat gameplay to other games are to Rogue Squadron and Star Fox - both of which remain awesome games and powerhouses within their respective genre. There's absolutely nothing about an on-rails shooter that defaults it to a lazy, uninspired style of gameplay. Honestly, go grab a copy of Sin & Punishment 2 and have a go at it. I'd suspect that a lot of complaints would be eased if those complaining had more experience with the gameplay style in question.

Bleu, I'm not sure if you've played AoC, but that game was not even close to being a WoW clone. The 2 games have far less in common than they have in common and this is coming from someone who had leveled 2 lvl 80 characters and completed most of the raid content. As far as being a niche franchise goes, yes I completely agree. The Conan franchises is probably one of the oldest fantasy franchises around predating Lord of the Rings by about 5 years, usually only appealing to an older crowd.

I can understand they maybe trying to draw us in with the fact that Starfox and Rogue Squadron were in fact popular games, but they need to understand they are making and MMO not a single player. The whole reason why people play MMOs is to interact and play with a large group of friends, by making it a rail shooter how are you gonna do that? Maybe they'll just have you able to add a friend in and join you? That would be terrible cause then it's basically Gradius in behind the ship 3rd person.

You may not think that a rail shooter is lazy and uninspired, but it definitely is at least lazy in my eyes. Reason? Designing a rail shooter is far easier and less time consuming that designing a free roaming shooter and that's fact. For a rail shooter you only need to have things that are in you line of sight designed, where a free roam everything around you has to be done. I'm not going to go and say "Oh Bioware is being a bunch of lazy jerks." because maybe they have some other reason for it, maybe this is just a taste of space combat until they finish up something more like SWG Jump to Light Speed.

It's a Korean game so grinding is expected happen...often.

Originally posted by AzurePrower

 

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In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map. From there, you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.

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Remember Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic where the ship flew automatic and you were at the turret firing at enemy fighters, etc.? Yeah.

I'm still excited for SW:TOR none the less.

That would be totally lame if that's what they mean by space combat, however that alone won't deter me from checkin out this game.

I hope the space combat is similar to that of SWG, I really enjoyed the fact that you could target areas of the ship to disable weapons or power.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Huh?  Where is the story in Aion?  It is no better than Wow in that regard.  Then you have the brashness to mention Star Trek Online as backed by a story line.  If you play any of Cryptic's offerings, you would know that a story line is the last thing they would ever put in a MMO.

I don't know any of the current MMO's that offer any story telling at all.  That is why many of us are excited at the upcoming titles.

 

I totally agree with Oz, many of the current games have a very loose story.  Games like Aion, WoW, and pretty much any Cryptic game lack story, given at one point in time WoW did have an okay story as time progressed and they released more expansions they just butchered the story and tried to mash stuff together to further the story, sadly it didn't work. This is why I can't wait for the Old Republic, Bioware has been well known for their immersive storytelling and judging by some of the videos. Being a huge fan of well written storylines I really hope the newer titles will break this habit of poor story and give us something truely exiciting to play, read, and experience.

Awesome review Carol, would the MMO staff PLEASE let this woman do more reviews on PC hardware used for gaming?!

Graphics are beautiful and the interaction with npcs look fantastic, can't wait to see more!

With that interview I've basically lost the desire to play this game as much as I love 40k, I can't play a game that is being dumbed down to cater to WoW players.

I'm in early access right now and I gotta say it's pretty even right now, some instance enforcers outnumber crims and some instances it's the other way around. Overall though it's really even, even in stances it's not 1 to 1 it's damn close, very rare to see one side outnumber the other side too much.