im totally in love with it.

why ?

because its unique

where aion... is asian style and eq/lotr/war/aoc could be considdered western style, tcos is definitly european style. im not sure if people even know that theres a small but high quality comic szene in europe, especially france and belgique.

tcos represents this european comic style for me and creates a beautifull world around it. i just hope its a success and that they can stay true to their art team/style

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by craynlon

Originally posted by noggy1980

I don't think anyone doubts your fairness, honesty or objectivity malickie, I think he is refering to those people who sign up spend a month saying how amazing aoc is and how terrible war is only to disapear and be replaced by someone else. You are right though and his comment was far to broad and encompassed people that it shouldn't have.

 

one of the questions id like to ask over and over again is:
whats wrong with playing aoc a month and having an amazing time ?

id say playing an mmo 1,2 or 3 month then doing something else or trying out another mmo is a perfect healthy way to play games. far healthier imho then beeing addicted to 1 game with 5year old graphics doing repetative gameplay week after week. but freedom for people that like to do that.

imho with the emerging variety of mmos (and mmo hybrid games) we will have a lot of gamers that stick to an mmo less then a year. it doesnt make anyone special that says "hey i played ultima online (or lineage 1) from 1980 and still play it" because for the market to broaden and the games to improve there need to be new games and games with higher tech specs and games picked up by people playing 3h/week opposed to ppl playing 5h/day....

as for the value of a mmo, i think it should go back to be compared to regular games and not to be valued on some mmo internal rating system.

for example if you evaluate the newest tombraider no reviewer would say:
- i will reduce the score by 2 because someone with a 5 year old comp will have troubles playing it
- i played it online with some friends and i dont like how steve behaved
- after 100h of gameplay i got bored

yet if u look at so called reviews of mmo veterans they expect the game to be a game they can waste 5h/day for years in or they play and a pvp server and complain to get ganked

the problem is that the forums are full of so called experts and the people that play games just for fun dont have any kind of platform so the media will drift away from whats a healthy, neutral evaluation of a game towards the voice of a circle of critiques

heh , I doubt if many would call it amazing, unless you mean amazingly boring playing on empty servers. Myself I only have a limited amount of time for leisure activities each day and prefer to spend them on activities I truly enjoy rather than trying to force myself to log in and trudge through another level.

Life is too short to spend time doing less than pleasant activities in my opinion. If I have 3 hours to play games I want to spend it in a quality MMO with a good community and AoC does not even come close to qualifying there.

i had a good time playing my assasin to lvl80.

ok i soloed most of the time because after 4 years of forced grouping and 2nd account buffers of lineage2 i felt good following a storyline and beeing able to solo. i liked that my char wasnt overpowered and that i had to do some sneaking and thinking in my game. i also enjoyed some groups, especially cistern and atztel and some raids in the end. for me aoc was a lot of fun for 2 month, then i was 80 (with a lvl 50alt) and felt there was nothing to see for me any more so i swiched to war (wich ill play till tcos goes live)

bottom line for me is: aoc is a good computer game but maybe (so far) only a below average mmo

ok this is an mmo site but still i feel many people judge aoc solemnly on the mmo part where i must say i had more fun and more and diverse content then for example playing assassins creed on the xbox while i payed almost the same for the game many critics gave stellar ratings to.

for me the danger in overstretching and valuing the mmo part is that our negativity shies away a lot of regular gamers that would have a lot of fun with the game because they didnt expect to get a 40h/week addiction from the game in the first place.

i agree

just give them time and try the game in the free to play zones to see if you like it.
imho its far to early to judge if the game is fun based on that descision.

it also could mean that the encounters are much more strategic and challenging then in other mmos so coordinating 4 people where everyone has to be on his toes and work as a team could as well be more fun then beeing 1 of the dps in the mass of 100 pressing the same key for hours.

Originally posted by noggy1980

I don't think anyone doubts your fairness, honesty or objectivity malickie, I think he is refering to those people who sign up spend a month saying how amazing aoc is and how terrible war is only to disapear and be replaced by someone else. You are right though and his comment was far to broad and encompassed people that it shouldn't have.

one of the questions id like to ask over and over again is:
whats wrong with playing aoc a month and having an amazing time ?

id say playing an mmo 1,2 or 3 month then doing something else or trying out another mmo is a perfect healthy way to play games. far healthier imho then beeing addicted to 1 game with 5year old graphics doing repetative gameplay week after week. but freedom for people that like to do that.

imho with the emerging variety of mmos (and mmo hybrid games) we will have a lot of gamers that stick to an mmo less then a year. it doesnt make anyone special that says "hey i played ultima online (or lineage 1) from 1980 and still play it" because for the market to broaden and the games to improve there need to be new games and games with higher tech specs and games picked up by people playing 3h/week opposed to ppl playing 5h/day....

as for the value of a mmo, i think it should go back to be compared to regular games and not to be valued on some mmo internal rating system.

for example if you evaluate the newest tombraider no reviewer would say:
- i will reduce the score by 2 because someone with a 5 year old comp will have troubles playing it
- i played it online with some friends and i dont like how steve behaved
- after 100h of gameplay i got bored

yet if u look at so called reviews of mmo veterans they expect the game to be a game they can waste 5h/day for years in or they play and a pvp server and complain to get ganked

the problem is that the forums are full of so called experts and the people that play games just for fun dont have any kind of platform so the media will drift away from whats a healthy, neutral evaluation of a game towards the voice of a circle of critiques

 i try it when ymirs pass is live, i alreaddy had alts around 55 when i quit

whats especially of interest to me is the question if they can keep up with other companies like turbine, nc soft or even blizzard to produce something significant in a period of lets say 6month time.

with signifcant i dont mean playing around with some stats or ironing out old bugs but bringing fresh content.

6month of subscription to me is (even after substracting server/support costs) almost the price of a full game so id expect at least a +20-30% of its original game content.

any company that cant manage that is either greedy, dont know their code, bad organised has a to limited player base imho

my advice:

do NOT listen to the community :

- recruit your beta testers from people that play console and singleplayer games
- do not stray away from a clear vision neither by pressure fro marketing/analysts or loudmouth hardcore mmoers
- produce a kick ass game wo dreaming about how much $$$ bliz makes each month

Today id like to discuss how people perceive their character in game and to find out if a tamagochi flavored game would work.

Let me describe first what type of players i encountered:

1. players that view their ingame character as their avatar
coming from pen&paper rpgs the avatar type of character allows the role player to move into the MMO setting and view the character as his vessel with whom he interacts with the MMO-world.
Typically the player becomes the character, talks in character and plays the game as an RPG where, through his character, the spirit of the player becomes a living beeing in that world.

2. players that view their ingame character as a tool
coming from fps and other games these players view their char more as a tool, for example a weapon they move around in the MMO-world.  they invest into that tool by leveling it up and expect it to be more powerfull (like a gun upgrade in shooters) the more they play.

3. the tamagochi experience
a few years back some crazy asian company landed a big hit amongst teens to create a digital pet that you could carry around with you on a keychain. you had some basic means of interacting with that tamagochi creature and had to feed and nurse it from time to time. I think there are tendencies amongs MMO players to see their character a bit like that pet but i think avatar or tool view are more dominant.

making an MMO that steps a bit more towards the tamagochi experience would mean to keep player and ingame-character 2 seperate entities each with their own real and digital life. the player would be like a divine beeing guiding his char when hes online but at time hes offline the character would still have a digital life of its own. accumilation of power (experience/spells/skills) could be divided into powers that the character possesses and those attached to the player/deity. this could lead into possibilities like aging and dying chars where the char would die but some of the power would remain on the player, transferable to the next chosen char.

some questions i would like your opinion on:
- do you think a player would care more or less for the character if its more of a digital pet/ beeing in a virtual world the the players avatar/tool ?
- do you think players would feel uneasy not beeing in controll of the char all the time kowing it would do things of its own at times where the player would be logged out ?
- whats your general feelings towards an approach like this ? do you know of MMOS that alreaddy work like that ?

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by MarlonB

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by craynlon

Originally posted by Tordak

An SW MMO that has more storyline content than all of the previous Bioware titles plus expansions combined.      OMG, Right on!

 

A Conan game that has more storyline content then all the previous conan games...

ah, i remember we had that in aoc

 

it will be interesting to see if bioware presents us a sw universe where we want to live in for a few years or an opulent story that well play 1.5 times.

well id be happy about both but...

 

If funcom had been talented enough to make the other 60 levels the same as the story filled first 20, they might have succeeded. And if they hadn't made every damn player no matter what race/faction have the EXACT same story (Oh, look. EVERYONE is the Chosen One ).

Now look at Bioware. You really think they couldn't make an entire game like the first 20 levels of AoC? Hell, they could make twice as many levels as AoC and fill every one with story. This is what they are good at. If you look at the interview they gave at Gamespot, every class/race/faction a player may choose has it's own story. Everyone is not the Chosen One.

That is just one of many differences between a Bioware mmo and a Funcom one.

 

What happens when you reach the end of the story ? ... that's where all AoC players cancelled their sub.

Like craynlon pointed out, we (at least me and him ) want a world to live in ....

 

 

And why cant you have it? That's where Funcom screwed up and Bioware can run with it ( hopefully ).
 

They said they wanted you to have reasons for doing quests, not just doing them to level.

Let's say I want a badge off an imperial Officer and give you that quest. BUT! I don't dictate how or where you need to get that badge. Do you go kill an Imperial and take his badge? Or do you steal the badge? Do you join a RvR battle and take a badge off a player?

As far as endgame and an open world, you can have all of that and still have story. Who says PvM has to stop because your max level? What about the RvR? What about epic missions that grant perks/achievements/items/etc.? Exploring the entirety of all the planets? Collecting rarities and making a killing on the market? All of these things can be done in an open world AND can extend the endgame for quite awhile until the next added content/booster/expansion pack/etc.

I'm not saying this is what Bioware will do in it's entirety, I'm only saying that if anyone can pull this off, I think they can. And I know for sure they would have made AoC a raving success from the get-go compared to Funcoms feeble attempt.

besides the point that im seemingly one of the few guys that enjoyed conan from 1-80
i just wanted to point out that bioware indeed are great storytellers (probably better then funcom) but from what was my impression reading gamasutra:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20760

they stated:
Ohlen also hinted that the game will be able to be nearly completely soloed -- "If you want to play through your epic story on your own, you can do that" -- but that the developers are going to "encourage" multiplayer.

it is obvious far to early to hype or counterhype anything about the game but from the hardcore mmo community i often get the impression that theres a big resistance against story telling game opposed to sandbox games.

i myselve will be very happy with a storytelling game and in the back of my mind i connect bioware also to neverwinter nights with awesome tools to develope stories/ quests. so im not at all worried about wether ill like the game or not even if its direction would be primarly storytelling and not open ended sadbox.

maybe we will even see my dream version of a story telling game where the dev tools and team are so powerfull that they can keep on telling the story month after month by introducing new quality content as they go. if anyone would be capable of that id say its bioware (based on the fact they have years of experience from nwn 1&2++ in creating tools to produce content)

Originally posted by Tordak

An SW MMO that has more storyline content than all of the previous Bioware titles plus expansions combined.      OMG, Right on!

A Conan game that has more storyline content then all the previous conan games...

ah, i remember we had that in aoc

it will be interesting to see if bioware presents us a sw universe where we want to live in for a few years or an opulent story that well play 1.5 times.

well id be happy about both but...

im very much in favour of hybrids

i think you can combine the 2 but you have to decide whats your fundament/ your basis

imho to make a game percieved as a sandbox game the basis needs to be sandbox. you need a wide open world and tons of tools that allow players to shape it. u need complex crafting/ economics and you need conflicting goals (i.e. the posession of land/castles/resources) to make players and guilds fight for it.

if you have all that then its np to introduce linear quests on top of that.

i believe even in a sandbox events can happen.
monsterhordes can overrun parts of the land introduced by the gms, quests can happen to find some lost treasure. i dont subscribe to the idea that a sandbox ceases to be sandbox if things happen that are not in controll of the player. i dont believe it breaks the box if there are linear quests if they fit into the box.

there also could be dev tools of introducing random linear content:

bad quest: slay the king of the ogres storyline when 200players have to do this individually by talking to questgiver npc and following the same steps

good quest: suddenly and unsuspectingly an npc asks you to gather a group to defend the village against ogres. the village that is targeted is random or a logical choice dependant on the status of the sandbox, the npc asks only a few people, after that the quest wont respawn for month. the way to the ogreking is linear but not the same as bevore (i.e. path thrue a random dungeon)

in short sandbox should not mean that there is no storytelling. it should mean that the storytelling is a lot more unpredictable and less static then in your usual story driven game.

i enjoyed the turn based element

id even go so far that id like to see more games that utile turn based combat especially if turn base would evolve from the current atlantica online style to something more strategical.

if i remember right (omg im getting old) some of the classic games like "shinig force" had a more chess-board appeal to its combat making movement and position rather then simple formation part of the game as well.

maybe im easily impressed but i like the pvp in atlantica when you have to make descisions to win rather then solemnly basing the outcome on gear/class/level (+10%skill/reaction)

well atm i play both war and atlantica and very much enjoy the differences between the 2 games rather then looking for superiority of one game over the other

and i also think that diversity is good for the market. just as you have sportsgames/ adventures/ simulations... in single player games in the future you will have to categorize mmorpgs as well. for me there are "story driven", "action pvp", "strategic", "grinding" mmos alreaddy but im no expert to make firm labels. its just good to see that there are games that have their own character and atlantica is definitly one of them. i just hope they dont mess up the positive image i have of them with a bad concept of item malls or micro payment.

i actually enjoy it as much that id rather see it subscription based then free to play

Originally posted by waveslayer

"I could name at least 7 other MMOs out there that have better PvE BY FAR than WAR... but I won't... because they are common knowledge to anyone who's open-minded enough to stick their head out of their little game-shell and actually do some research before they act as if they know something on a matter they are discussing."
 

 

Please explain to me what makes the PvE in these games so much better, I have played most US MMos that have came out since EQ which I got for christmas of 99, right now I have WAR, WoW and Vanguard on my comp and turned on. All 3 have the same types of quests, all 3 you hit auto attack then various other buttons for styles or whatever the game calls them, all the same thing anyway.

I would really like to know what is so different, some mobs cast ,some melee some to a combination of both, some fight to the death some run when low on health etc , same in all the games I have played. Please tell me what I am missing here that makes WAR so bad in PvE...maybe the mobs in WoW do some kinda song and dance that I just cant get them to do? In LoTRO female mobs to a strip tease? what. what is it???

this is a very personal perspective that may have resulted from mmo burnout so dont take it as general comment:

for me pve in age of conan was better because i got drawn into the story and had to do some pretty tough fights (as assasin doing sneak passages...)
in war i walk into a camp , find all quests and run from red compass area to the next to "work off" my quest

again, this is purely my personal experience and maybe i should have taken more time to read up the lore and stuff but for me the voiceover in conan made the whole immersion thing easier then in war and with that the pve more enjoyable for me

but fear not, ill stick to war a few month more since i enjoy pvp a lot and theres just a lot more meat on the bones then in aoc.

what i find interesting is that the war marketing isnt fokused more on the pvp experience. imho they shouldnt run trailers and ads that look just like any other fantasy mmo but they should try to get the counterstrike/ teamfortress/ ... crowd and place themselve not as another wow but as a multiplayer competitive game.

 the problem is that even with the new changes they dont have the forumlar to keep people busy at lvl 80 like complex trade/ grind/ raid/ siege

for that i fear they have to build up a few things from scratch and merge servers so that competitive content helps to form strong opposing guilds and inter player actions.

if they offer a free month most people would just look at the new content like ymirs pass/ tarantia commons, play that in the free month and after the content is gone leave the game.

one weakness i see in aoc is that it seems extremely expensive to produce the high quality content (that you seee in tortage, but also later in the game) with the current engine/team. that will definitly hinder their ambitions to keep people in game because lots of people will be drawn to aoc by the storytelling (opposed to war or wow where the main factor seems to be pvp and raiding) and will leave again when theres no more story to play.

i know that the plans for the content were made a long time ago but still you dont see anything in their plans to really make the game worthwile after you reached lvl 80 in terms of complex raids. i might be wrong but last time i checked even the raids that are in arent all working.

 in short the road to 80 seems to get better and better but that wont bring back many players that quit the game bored at 80 cause there wasnt that much to do.

im burning to get back to aoc and i hope that after the 3.0 update they bring something exclusively for lvl 80 ppl.

 ill play it for sure, i just hope i get used to the controll scheme

looks like a game with the guts to be more then a labrotary bred wow clone/killer

i voted content as well

ill definitly be back once dx10 and ymirs pass goes life

the problem with aoc is that their game is heavily based on experiencing content and once that runs out it becomes dull. server merger would be my 2nd priority.

i think a healthy community needs at least 20k of players per server (better up to 50k) so that around 4-5k ppl would be online at the same time. community forms bonds and bonds keep the players playing.

as my 3rd priority (wich isnt mentioned) id put a team aside to build the most complex and intriguing trade and craft system with 1000th of recipes common, rare and ultra rare to keep hardcore players busy hunting them.

one issue that hasn't been mentioned here if we talk about aging and thats the ratio on how many hours ingame equals 1h real time

in lineage2 for example, as far as i remember it was 1day ingame = 4h real time meaning that the server time/game time runs 6 times faster then the real time

so lets say your character has his prime adventuring years from 16 to 46 => 30years
at a 6:1 time ratio it would still equal 5years of gaming till the char would retire

with the attention span of todays gamers most even wont play that long and the whole idea would be kind of wasted

so if a char needs to age fast and you want the player to play his son/daughter after roughly a year of gaming you would need to either give the ingame chars a very short lifespan or drastically increase the time flow. for example if you want the character to die of old age after a year of playing you'd need to make 1 day ingame = 20min real time which would disallow some things like weather effects, day/night cycle and so on.

so maybe chars shouldn't die on old age but become battle-weary regardless of age based on the number of adventures/ battles they experienced.

id play it but with a twist:

let me play a lineage
my 1st char would be for example craylon of the house of crows
he would adventure and fight and eventually grow old but some of his legend and wealth would be passed onto his son grold of the house of crows

i think player would feel it a bit harsh when everything they played would be wiped away with the death of their char but there can be a system in place where ´his next char would inherit something.
the heritage shouldnt neccessarily be a lot of power, more in the line of a family trait and a bit of money and fame handed down each generation so that players that play the game from the word go would be the "elder families" who are more famous (or feared)

some more from me on that theme can be found at my blog post:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/craynlon/022008/1279_RIFNG-3-Down-with-Charakter-Immortality

Originally posted by supbro

AoC brought so many new things to table while WAR has brought nothing new. WAR has failed as a large RvR game and has become a scenario grind fest, ala WoW. PvE AoC wins handsdown, the quest are more fun and have personalitly.

AoC also has the most revolutionery combat system in any MMO to date, while WAR is the old turn based one. AOC wins here

Graphically AoC is superior ...in my eyes AoC is the more advanced and better product.

 

Supbro

actually id say atlantica online has the most revolutionery combat system and people tend to forget that theres also ddo and tabula rasa...

but i agree with most of the rest

besides all this discussion and badmouthing on the forum tough id like to emphasise that the question was ... most fun to play today

both companies should have learned by now that the mmo market isnt a "release a game and money comes streaming in" adventure. i wish for both to prepare to fight for their game and improve it over time so that we can reevaluate the situation in a year or 2 from now...

having played both aoc and war id also go for aoc but....

for me aoc was only fun to play while there was new content.
i liked playing aoc 1-80 more then playing war 1-30 but in the end war offers me more content, slower leveling and more to do. thats why im currently only subscribed to war.

bottom line for me:
the fun quality or fun/hour was better in aoc for me personally but the winner of my personal
fun quantity as in how long can you play the game and have fun is war

strangely enough atm i find myselve spending a big portion of my mmo time on atlantica online beta instead of war but that maybe only a "new game rush"

Originally posted by Paragus1

Originally posted by vinceh

 A point I think I'd like to point out though is that you don't notice the "out of range" issue as much in higher tiers since everyone gets slows.

 

One thing that is annoying as a Shadow warrior is that our range has a bug where the icons are red even though you are in range.  You can shoot still with the red icons and they wille ven give you the message, but it still goes off.   This is probably one of the aspects of the class that is annoying in PvP.

i agree, that issue is annoying
also annoying in pve is the teleporting into meele mobs

as a shadow warrior who has some shots take 2 seconds im also often dissapointed that my opponent can run out of sight while my ability builds up