All Posts by Shannia

Same here.  I won't be subscribing because there really isn't enough in the game crafting wise to keep me in it.  There is no market because of the poor quality of the crafted items compared to drops.  You can't go gemcutting because socketed items will cause you system to crash. 

The game didn't grab me.   On my way to 45, I never got the urge to log in to play AoC.  Without that urge, I can't justify spending money to subscribe.

Funcom is very, very slick about this.  They KNOW they pulled a fast one.  They also have Gaute writing a letter apologizing for their short comings, especially LACK OF CONTENT!  Then he tosses out the carrots of why to stick around.

If I went to Texas Roadhouse and ordered a $25 steak dinner and they delivered a McDonald's happy meal to the table and told me to come back this fall for steak and potatoes, I'd be pissed off and never go there again.

Not the MMORPG field though... why people will line up and pay for potential I will never know.  But you know what?  Got to respect their right to do so.  Give it another year or two, and the only way you'll be able to sign up for closed beta is paying them $15 a month and eventually, if you get lucky, you may get a closed beta key.  It isn't IF, but when.  The time is coming.

First, a bit about me.  I'm a social player and am not in MMORPGs for combat (and am not afraid of getting blood on my blades) but for socializing with my guildmates and making THEIR adventures more successful from my crafting.  Most importantly, I don't pay companies for potential.  Either a game has me the first hour or it doesn't.

The game is a great, great game.  The story plays very well.  I won't deny it.  However, it respect to TWO things in AoC that drive me insane.  Avery, my friend, you are a used car salesman!  LOL

Crafting.  Crafting is AoC is a joke.  Funcom, one of the EASIEST ways you can improve the game is completely remove crafting.  Reintroduce it later if you can develop a good system, but the one now is bad at best.   Resource spawns that regenerate extremely slow.  Itemization of crafted items is a joke.  Trash mob drops are 10x better ANY item except on the tens.  The end result is, there is no economy for crafted items.  As soon as you get to 41 or 42 level mobs the armor that you crafted is already outdated. Same goes for everything else.   We won't mention gem socketing because just the mention of it may crash your system (pun intended).  After experimenting with the crafting system in AoC myself, I can honestly say that is by far the worst crafting system I've experienced in any AAA game (that has crafting).

Instancing/Zoning.  I really don't need to go into details.  If you played it, you know the drill.  People either love it or hate it the amount of zoning in AoC.  Me personally, it completely breaks the immersion factor for a social gamer.  They don't call the game Age of Clonan for nothing.

For me, crafting and zone cloning are what holds this game back.  And the combat system, is repetitive which can lead to bordom.  Thank goodness there is a great story behind the game because it makes you forget about the repetitiveness of the combat system very easily.

Bottom line from everyone's favorite troll, even though I sit on the fence.  I give Age of Clonan at 7.5 out of 10 or 75 out of 100.  I take 10 off for each of the crafting and cloning.  I also take 5 off for combat.  I also give back +5 bonus points for the story because it is a damn good story driven game and deserves a bonus.  Unfortunately, the game didn't grab me as I would have hoped. 

Until next time...

Hey OP, the guy you are siting has a lot of valid arguments.   Funcom spent $65-$100 million making this game.  For a game that cost so much to develop, the game has a lot of wholes that the game director just now addressed.  He fully admitted the lack of content a lot of people have been bitching about for a while now.  Props to them for admitting their mistake of selling a beta to the customers.  It takes balls to do that.

I've been away from the boards the past week because I wanted to see the game for myself and see crafting in particularly.  The instancing in this game is just horrible.  You go in an instance to go into another instance to go into another instance... I mean seriously, at many times in this game you are literally six instances deep into the same zone.  IMHO, they could have balanced that out a lot better.  Nothing breaks immersion like being in a zone and having to find which version of that zone a friend of your's is in so you can meet up and quest.  Sure, there are other mechanics about it, but it is LAME!

I didn't like the instancing in GW, EQ2, TR, or Hellgate:London.  I surely can't stand it here because it is so much more profound.  The machine I'm on now is only two months with 8 gigs of ram and such and I still have up to 5 minute zone changes.  It drives me insane.

I love AoC.  Make no mistake about it, it is one of the best stories I've seen in a game in YEARS.  Funcom deserves a lot of credit for that.  I think the graphics are too good because of what they have to sacrifice to have those graphics.  I'd rather have a much more seemless world or at least one that is a lot more transparent.

Crafting.  Take it out.  It completely sucks.  The resource spawns are a pathetic joke.  If a server or zone crashes or comes back online after maint., a resource spawn comes back at 1% and has to grow.  Totally insane.  Add to that, 1/2 the crafting professions are broken or not in yet, and it sucks.  Itemization of crafted items are a joke.  The trash that drops off of mobs are better than what was suppose to be some of the best gear you can get in the game via crafting.  Add to that if you socket an item, it will crash your client.  INSANE.  Very bad crafting system that needs completely and 100% removed from the game and redone from the ground up.   Let their be NPCs where guildies can buy the resources off of to build their cities and let the NPCs build the city for the guilds.  Problem solved. 

AoC is a great game but a very bad MMOG.  If AoC is the direction the genre is moving in, then I'll retire from MMOGs.  I love the wide open worlds of games like UO, SWG, and WoW.  Some instancing is good, but Age of Clonan is just insane.

I think AO has an open ended free trial.  Expires 1 January 2009 I believe.

The man wants 1,000,000 beta subscribers for WAR.  I got an idea...

Have a promotion for all the new games that came out this year, anyone who turns in an Active AoC or POTBS account to WARHAMMER ONLINE gets a free WARHAMMER Online beta account.  Just like buying a new car, turn in your hunk of junk and get a new car in return!   I bet he could easily get his last 300,000 beta subscribers he needs with a promotion like this.

Wouldn't that be awesome if game developers would give you "trade in" value for your old MMORPG accounts?  LOL, just a late night thought.

Originally posted by Cabe2323

 

Originally posted by Shannia

 

Originally posted by Cabe2323

Originally posted by SignusM

This reminds me of the kind of letters the Vanguard producers would write, about all the things they're going to fix in the next patch! .......

Except Funcom has actually been fixing things and patching like crazy.  Plus they didn't have a completely broken product to begin with unlike Vanguard which was a total flop.

 

Oh really?  How are them battle keeps treating you?

 

I wouldn't know nor do I care.  Since I am level 43 and just enjoying the game. 

 

I don't know what people's problem is.  Every MMO released is released unfinished.  That is the nature of MMO games.  They aren't finished. 

Anyone that played World of Warcraft at launch would know that it was unfinished at launch.  This is Blizzard and they couldn't even finish the game nor could they launch a game that wasn't really buggy.  The closest is Turbine's LOTRO.  That has been the closest to a perfect launch and complete game, but even they were short on content at higher levels.  WoW was missing their PVP system, missing dungeons in the 40-50 range, missing raids, etc. 

 

LOL.  The difference is, the interview on the 17th, Gaute promised there were battle keeps in game.  He didn't bother telling people that the content is blocked because player city stage two and three are not in the game yet.  Players can't get to the battle keeps at level 80, because lower level content is missing blocking them access.  It is a repeat of AO.  Sad really.  I feel sorry for the PvPers, they got screwed the hardest at the release of this game.  There is nothing for them except pvp mini games atm.

Originally posted by Cabe2323

Originally posted by SignusM

This reminds me of the kind of letters the Vanguard producers would write, about all the things they're going to fix in the next patch! .......

Except Funcom has actually been fixing things and patching like crazy.  Plus they didn't have a completely broken product to begin with unlike Vanguard which was a total flop.

Oh really?  How are them battle keeps treating you?

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Not bad at all.

Seems like posters in this thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/183710

need to read this, then the user reviews all 2k plus of them, then the critical press scores...

 

LMAO...

Gee, not a bad review from Gamespot, who would have thunk it! 

Of course gamespot is going to give AoC a good review.  Besides, THEY BOTCHED FUNCOM'S PVP EVENT THEY WERE HANDLING.  They owe'd Funcom something.  The last time Gamespot gave a bad review to an EIDOS game, we all know what happened.  Gamespot has proven their loyalty lies with those that pay for advertising on their site.  There loyalty isn't to the people who read their reviews.

First post ever on the forums and you want new section titled Bioware's Un-named Project?  Meh, I find this thread very funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware

Vaporware is a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. The term implies unwarranted optimism, or sometimes even deception; that is, it may imply that the announcer knows that product development is in too early a stage to support responsible statements about its completion date, feature set, or even feasibility.

I don't think it is an out right lie, I just think Aventurine bit off more than can chew.  Time will tell and they said "this year" is a definate release date.  We'll see.

 Oh, and for the record, yes, AoC is the biggest Vaporware title to date.  So much promised content, yet so much of it lacking from the game.  I really, really feel sorry for the PvP fanbois of AoC.  They got screwed over by Funcom.  The PvP folks can't get to the battle keeps because they have to wait for Funcom to put in city stages two and three in game and complete those before those guilds can build battle keep.  So sad, really.  "Heads will roll!" they were told.  So sad.

Originally posted by Stanford

 

Originally posted by StyleMonkey

I will gurantee you without a shadow of a doubt that Darkfall will NOT come out with even half of it's promised features.

 

How come you changed you mind that fast ?

6/03/08 8:32:19 AM.. you made a post here on this DarkFall board supporting DarkFall is vaporware.

How come you think now it has half of his features about 6 minutes later ?

The title vaporware doesn't mean that the game isn't in development.  It just means there was a failure getting to launch and is in a prolonged state of development.  Unfortunately, they don't make a Viagra for game developers when they get "soft" on the issue at hand. No pun intended.

Originally posted by Dkevlar

1 or 2 months fixing bugs

then 2 more months adding post lvl 50 content.

overall: around 4 months.

and yes i'm a disgrunted lvl 80 player.

I bet you were sold on the Border Kingdom Battle Keep system, huh?  How are them battle keep seiges going?  Glad they are in game.  Too bad only stage one cities are in game atm but you can't build stage two or three yet.  Guess it is gonna be a while before we see battle keeps.  Just glad they are in the game.  LOL

Originally posted by Thornrage

To OP

Yup, there are bugs and glitches but overall the game plays fine and they are working on making it better.  Personally I would rather play this as is - with intention of it getting better - than to go back to any MMO I have played ... except pre-cu SWG.

Your mentality is exactly what the corporate shills bank on.  They know many people will pay for potential regardless of the pile of crap the company releases.  Congrats!  You've officially agreed to pay Funcom $180 for the next year to beta their game while they get it right.  Get 250,000 like minded individuals, and now you have a company making $45,000,000 a year while their game is in beta.  The company laughs all the way to the bank.

Originally posted by Polarization

Originally posted by Hotnix

Thank you, wasnt trying to take a stab at you was just curious. Ofcourse much of what you stated is obvious, however you seem to put more thought into this then any single poster int his forum, so I was just curious as to if you would play this game if it released with a larger portion of what they pormised

 

The crux of the matter is exactly what proportion of what they have promised will be implemented at launch and when exactly will it be released, I don’t think any one still really knows with any certainty except for the developers I presume.

But no matter what condition the game is in I will of course defiantly play it when it releases, the question is exactly how long will I be compelled to continue doing so due to the various factors that I’m concerned with.

You hit the nail on the head, my friend.  This game is nearly 8 years in development.  Many years of official forums.  They have no official list maintained of what is in game and what isn't in game for people to view.  2/3 of everything listed on these forums the devs could write off as wishful thinking by the fans.  Hell, Tasos has already started striking down content ideas saying that fans either made up or misunderstood.  All we can do is wait and see what the real feature list is when the game launches.

Look no further than AoC.  They had a 250+ developer team and promised the world in that game.  A lot of it got axed.  They hype battle keeps for the last two years.  Now the game has launched and no one can get to making battle keeps, why?  You have to have a stage three city to make a battle keep.  They don't even have stage two cities in the game yet.  Yet, like I said, they pushed battle keeps to the PvP crowd for the past two years.  Now you have a very pissed off AoC community with a bunch of PvPers running around with nothing to do but PvE content because you can't go on to the PvP content until you completed the PvE stuff.  Sweet irony after all the hype and marketing they did with that game because "HEADS WILL ROLL".  It will cost them millions of dollars in subscription fees in the long run.  My question would be, who's head will be first to roll in Olso when the number don't come in as expected?

Stunning development.

Next, they'll announce Star Trek Online and Daron Stinnett will be named the project lead.

Petition to have the trolls removed.  Petition to have the fanbois removed.  Petition to have DFO removed from MMORPG.com

Come on guys.  We are all gamers here.  You can't tell me that we have been reduced this level forum posting in anticipation for a new game.  Instead of bashing on each other, we need to back each other up.  Like it or not, it is the consumer versus the company and if we don't have each other's back, you can rest assured the companies will take advantage of us.

Here is hoping we get something more constructive to post about than petitions to ban people.  Seriously, I expected more from this crown.

Actually, this is a very good move on their part.  It would piss a lot of people off to get a buddy key from a friend and then not be able to find a copy anywhere to keep playing after a 10 day pass.   Then when they got back in, their guild mates are all 80 while they are stuck at 15 or what ever.

 I only say this because EIDOS has done a HORRIBLE job with distribution of copies in NA.  Many department store chains are still waiting for the initial shipment of AoC.

Originally posted by Oriphus

Originally posted by Shannia

Hey Jackdog, I'll miss you around the AoC forums.  By the way, you have one of the best signature pics I have ever seen.  I abolutely love it.

 

Why would you miss Jackdog around the AoC forums Shannia? I thought you said you were leaving the forums...wait...didn't we have this conversation already?? So please, after your dramatic leaving speach you are still posting..please just so i can get this straight again..are you staying on the forums now even though you don't like the game one single bit?

Hey troll, glad to see you care where I post and where I don't.  /wave

Hey Jackdog, I'll miss you around the AoC forums.  By the way, you have one of the best signature pics I have ever seen.  I abolutely love it.