All Posts by openedge1

I have 2 different classes at level 30, and my main at 36. I agree I am not far into the game, but I have PVPed and grouped quite a bit. PVP seems decently balanced, not as bad as some games I have played. But one of the reasons I am playing the game is for PVE, not PVP not everyone has the same interests as you. And as said before, just because I dont log much doesn't mean I dont enjoy the game. Since AoC first came out I only put about 3-4 hours a day in the game, but have enjoyed mostly every minute of it.

  

These pretty much answered my questions.

Thank you for your input.

I think what is highly amusing is no one REALLY understands the video.

Notice how everyone is clueless in the video? Like they don't understand what to do in AoC?

Kinda like the company running it...

Originally posted by MaGicBush

 

Hrm? 13 hours in 4 days is pretty good, I do have a wife and 18 month old son. I work 50 hours a week, and sorry but I dont spend every spare second on a game. I actually like to spend some of my day with my wife and son, because I will not let my relationships goto crap over any game. I like AoC alot, I put in about 4 hours a day through all of that still when they goto sleep.. Just because I dont put 8 hours a day in a game does not mean I dont like it. I like COD4 and play it about 30 minutes a day, does that make me not like it just because I play AoC or tend to my family?

Same here. 9 year old son, wife, home to tend to, 40+ hour work week. Yet, according to your information you could have had roughly 28 hours in game time so far...but, only have 13. Is it because you have hit a road block? No content? Grinding keeping you from logging?

I play about 2 hours each day, and some days I got an extra hour in the morning before work. Last night I put in more for my game of choice due to the weekend.

Why?

Because it makes me feel like logging in.

But, this is not the point. The point is the amount of time you have put into the game has helped you overlook the myriad number of issues. You have rose colored glasses based on a minimal schedule. Give the game more time and the cracks could show...or maybe they already have...thus the reason you have not logged many hours this week.

Do you PvP. Do you feel it is fair? What would a typical battle against a ToS be like...unless you are a ToS. Then of course the over powered class lends itself to a fun PvE experience. What about groups. Tried to be in any. How has that treated you?

My main issue is believing the game is good, when you hardly put any time into it to even know how well it is working...

What level are you? I would be interested in hearing that as well...

Thanks

Originally posted by solareus

Originally posted by Servase

Things are easy to find, maps are gorgeous - it's the lack of content.

 

July 21, 2008 - Book 14

October #, 2008 - Book 15?

November ##., 2008 - Mines of Moria?

January ##, 2008 - Book 2 V2

 

Book 14 will add enough content to keep you playing for 3-7 days. But then what? you go back to being bored as shit until book 15. Then what does book 15 add, same crap as previous books where you will be bored after 3-7days.

Mines of Moria will keep you busy for maybe, 1month, then what, back to being bored lol... Hopefully they add some dungeons in moria...

I dislike how they stated the change from 50 - 60 would be minimal. According to a interview with gamespy, they didn't want you to be to powerful over level 50 content. Probably cuz they won't be adding much at 60, they want you to be doing level 50 shit still.

Curently i'm on book 5 chapter 5 . So your "opinion is pretty much that , your "opinion". IF you want to come up with some new angle on your discussion I will always be able to point out, its your "opinion. Be well !~

I am confused with this answer. Are you saying in the last year (based on your posting history for LOTRO) you have not progressed further than this?

Why is it taking so long? How much time a week do you actually play. How many other games do you play?

How many max level characters do you have (because according to this post...none). You have been adamant that the content is enough to keep you occupied, yet if we average you game time, you maybe spend...30 minutes a day or less playing.

I am really interested to hear why...If you are not bored, I base it totally on the fact you hardly ever log in to even give the game any attention in the first place.

I am really fascinated in why you have not even maxed one character yet.

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Papadam

The options are pretty poor in this poll... pretty big difference between playing 7 hours (very casual) to 21 hours (what I would call normal)

I probably averege 3-4 hours each day.. but it depends on alot of things.. lots of people in my kin play way more than I do...

 

People keep saying "People in my kinship", but I never asked for your "Kinship".

The poll states "How many hours YOU" play

As to poor options...I disagree..

8 Hours a day (you understand the poll is "Per Day") is what I have pushed the poll to.

 8 hours is normal hours for someone with a job. So, if s8omeone is playing over 8 hours a day, then they can just pick the last option. (I would be interested in how many actually play more than 8 hours a day...lol)

 

8 hours a day gaming is normal for people with a job 

I work 8 hours per day, leave for work 45 min early in case of traffic issues, it takes me 30 min to drive home. thats 9 hours and 15 minutes. 3 days a week I go to the gym so there goes another hour and a half to hour and 45 minutes so we are up to 11 hours gone appx. Evening meal usually takes up another hour  or so depending on whether my wife is doing the cooking or I am. Showers and other personal hygiene at least another hour,  now I am up to 13 hours gone. A little quality time with the family watching the news or a movie or hitting the mall or whatever and I have 8 hours left for sleep. The hour or so I do play during the weekdays are on my non work out days.

Weekends are about the only time I can squeeze in 4 or 5 hours straight for gaming and that is when the weather is bad and the wife does not want to do a movie or dinner out.

No, you have taken that out of context.

8 hours a day is someones job.

In so many words if someone can play 8 hours or more a day, they may wish to look at other avenues of living. I did not mean 8 hours a day is normal for someone WITH a job.

Thanks

Originally posted by Papadam

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Papadam

The options are pretty poor in this poll... pretty big difference between playing 7 hours (very casual) to 21 hours (what I would call normal)

I probably averege 3-4 hours each day.. but it depends on alot of things.. lots of people in my kin play way more than I do...

 

People keep saying "People in my kinship", but I never asked for your "Kinship".

The poll states "How many hours YOU" play

As to poor options...I disagree..

8 Hours a day (you understand the poll is "Per Day") is what I have pushed the poll to.

8 hours is normal hours for someone with a job. So, if someone is playing over 8 hours a day, then they can just pick the last option. (I would be interested in how many actually play more than 8 hours a day...lol)

 

Eh ok? So you dont think there is a big difference between playing 1 hour/day and 3 hours/day? Thats 3 times more you know!

1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7+ would be better IMO.. would give a more interesting  result..
 

but since I know what you are looking for it doesnt matter...

We are getting an average.This is all we need.

If for example I look at an average evening for a family of 4. Get home between 5-6pm (this is based on national US averages, Europe may be different). An average of 1 hour to cook a meal, eat about 30-45 minutes. Then entertainment until bedtime may be 1-3 hours depending on how much time they wish to spend with children, or homework, etc. Then a national average for bedtimes is between 9:30 - 11:30.

I think I hit the first mark correctly, then lowered from there. And if someone plays over 8 hours day, well, we should discuss intervention (and note this is weekdays and averages. I can easily play 6-8 hours on the weekend, yet maybe play 2 or 3 hours during the week)

Hope that explains my reasoning

Originally posted by Papadam

The options are pretty poor in this poll... pretty big difference between playing 7 hours (very casual) to 21 hours (what I would call normal)

I probably averege 3-4 hours each day.. but it depends on alot of things.. lots of people in my kin play way more than I do...

People keep saying "People in my kinship", but I never asked for your "Kinship".

The poll states "How many hours YOU" play

As to poor options...I disagree..

8 Hours a day (you understand the poll is "Per Day") is what I have pushed the poll to.

8 hours is normal hours for someone with a job. So, if someone is playing over 8 hours a day, then they can just pick the last option. (I would be interested in how many actually play more than 8 hours a day...lol)

Would like to see what the consensus is...

This is too funny, if anyone remembers Master Chief sucks at Halo 3, you will love this

AoC and the future of SOE

Originally posted by MaGicBush

I am level 36, never played a siege.  I have never once had any kind of out of memory error? And never had a problem with any of my feats..

"And may I ask, did this issue work itself out?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/180706"

Yea that was fixed about 2 days after I posted that.

"Or are you still being forced to play in a lower quality of graphics?"

I have the graphics nearly full.

"I guess people each have their own opinion of flaws....

All I know is DT's are gimped, ToS is king of all classes (still) and combat runs at a snails pace.

Glad you enjoy that type of gaming..."

I enjoy it the pace actually, and I enjoy the mechanics of the game and how everything works. A few bugs here and there, but nothing game breaking to me so I will play as long as I am having fun. Because that is what a game is about, unless that's changed now.

I made a comment on another persons blog on how a persons enjoyment of a game is relative to the actual amount of hours they put in.

For example, I have put in roughly 30 hours this week in Guild Wars, and having a blast. You have put in...13 in AoC? Is it that you do not have enough time? I work 40 hours a week, have a son to take care of, groceries, to bed early..yet, still found time to put in. Because I was really enjoying that game, and it has that much entertainment.

Anyways, this other person's blog said they have not run into any game breaking bugs in AoC, they enjoy the game, and like their class. ok...why?

They play a ToS, the most over powered class in the game, and they play a total of an hour a day.

Lets use LOTRO as another example. People love this game. Why? It was made for the casual player, and if we did a poll on their forums we would probably see a majority play an hour or two a day.

The analogy I used is this. Someone goes to the Dentist and finds out they have no cavities and only need a cleaning with the best tools available. Will take about an hour. Another person comes in, finds out he has an abscess and the Dentist can only use a hacksaw, and it will take hours and hours to do.

You sir have sparkly teeth!! (lol)

July 11th - 25432

July 18th - 22185

Another 3k hours lost from last week.. But, if we use all games, we can see an overall loss due to vacations, etc. But, a majority see maybe a 1k hour loss or less.

Like has been said. This actual weekend may be another wave as scrips run out. Overall it is not pretty.

It is not the total indicator, but trends are trends.

Originally posted by Snorf

What the past year showed tho is that Turbine is trivialising and more trivialising the little challenging content they ever had (laugh) to make it accessable for the core player base they have left. I think more than 50% of LOTRO players play less than 5 houers per week and thats why only a very few tight knitted kinships have established compared to other games.

The above statement applies heavily to todays game market.

Recently I read a blog post by a player of Age of Conan who said he really thinks the game is fun, and has had a blast, and has not seen any issue at all with the game.

How is this possible when we hear such doom and gloom?

This person plays a total of...

TADA -- 5 hours a week.

Then it dawned on me that the player base who feels a game is better in some respects seem to play that game with a minimal amount of time, and usually will play a class that is considered "The best" of the game (which we all wish to have, but should there not be some balance?)

Therefore a game made for that type of player will of course seem more pleasing overall. But, this is not the whole population, and we may never know which is the largest.

If WoW is an indicator for success, you are then guaranteed that the majority of the population has put in more than 5 hours a week, with raid schedules surely taking more than a persons 1 hour a night they have to play. And that maybe some players are looking for an engaging game that keeps them occupied for hours.

Who would be easier to please? One man walks into the Dentist and is told he can just have his teeth cleaned with a super shiny laser. It will take about an hour. The next person comes in and is told he has an abscess and will need to have it removed, but with a dull hacksaw and it will take hours of back and forth over and over cutting.

I think we will know who will be having fun. And LOTRO is an excellent game for the minimal player who does not have a lot of time.

Originally posted by MaGicBush

Originally posted by Bloodlust221

From the post ive read, there has been constant flaming and trolling over AoC, from the time since ive signed up for MMORPG.com ive never experienced this much. but everyone has there opinons and do have a right to stand and speak there mind but they never know when it goes over board. my opinon is that i do not like AoC, i just tried it on a friends account and i was disgusted horribly. From my opinon i think FunCom will be FailCom, and AoC will fall, due to many flaws.

(P.S i am not trying to start trolling or a flamefest so please do keep your fingers locked off the F and other cuss words)

 

Yea, basically the fanboys/AoC players are actually in the game then you have the 20 or so people here actually posting that had some misshap and decided to flame AoC. I take it all with a grain of salt, I honestly dont see many flaws in AoC but whatever.

So, what does the speed of your weapon say now?

Just how fast does a female hit?

And may I ask, did this issue work itself out?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/180706

Or are you still being forced to play in a lower quality of graphics?

I guess people each have their own opinion of flaws....

All I know is DT's are gimped, ToS is king of all classes (still) and combat runs at a snails pace.

Glad you enjoy that type of gaming...

Originally posted by sepher

And for all that opinionated mess, I could care less.

As for Australia's charts; North America and Europe are Age of Conan's biggest audiences. Even so, I'm quite sure its already off of the top 10 if July's numbers were present here as well in North America and Europe.

The thing is though, like with Australia, it'd have been knocked off by Maxis and Blizzard products; which kind of goes along with my whole point that its about the only current PC game selling alongside them.

That's all off topic though, but relevant anyway. Age of Conan sells, and will continue to sell whether you or I like it.

I have an idea. The easiest solution? Why not post a screenshot of your guild list? And even do it during primetime. How large would you say your guild is?How often have the players logged in? Hopefully it is 100+ players (as any lesser guilds really have no chance for Battle Keeps, and you wish to have a Battle Keep...correct?)

I understand your concern over the feelings of posters here on the MMORPG forums (why I do not know, when you clearly stated our opinions mean naught, yet you continue to argue your points like they mean something..)

I have stated before, and will again here. Hard proof works better than conjecture. You stated top selling, yet it has fallen off charts, Xfire shows a massive exodus of players, and many have stated the populations are shrinking, while only you say it seems to not be. Even though bloggers and even more current reviews (which show a downturn in scores also) have stated their dislike of what is happening in the game, the supposed silent majority are...what...playing?

So by all means, show us the proof. I am quite interested.

Originally posted by sepher

 

Note I said CURRENT top seller. A-la they're the only company that's appeared on the NPD charts besides Maxis and Blizzard every week throughout May, into June and we've yet to see how they performed in July.

That's the public information about Funcom that the masses will see, not whatever appears on MMORPG.com forums. So why would they care?

As for why they'd remove something that's existed since Closed Beta...why wouldn't they if it becomes a problem?

Do you play? Are you getting spammed by gold sellers all day? Is server lag an issue? Could the removal of server-wide search functionality help the servers the same way the addition of a cooldown to the Trade Post search does?

Have a theory on why they'd alter Trade Post searching as well? I sure can't find many Flawless Star Rubies for sell lately, does that mean AoC is tanking?

Get real. Anyone who plays and is tired of receiving PMs and mail from gold spammers sees this as a good thing, and not a connection to some amateur info painting a picture counter to what Nielsen paints.

Yet, you would think, based on Funcom's admittance that they wish to see a total of 3k players per server at any given time, they would account for maximum loads on their servers. This should prevent server search spikes.

Yet, no server ever hit this peak during the time before search was removed.

And why would a thread discussing the search tool be blatantly closed on the forums, and the person who created the thread given points toward banning? Because he mentioned server populations? Is that against ToS?

As to gold spammers, do you think they took their time to go through each page, and right click each player to send them a tell through roughly 30 pages of 50 players? No, now Funcom has made the job of the Gold Seller even easier, where they have to concentrate on only 50 players per zone.

Funcom actually made the lives of the spammer much easier by removing the multi search feature.

Searching the Trader is a whole other story. That thing has been buggy for so long, just looks like another bug to me. And the fact no economy exists in the first place...except for gems, which still act buggy at times.

And to place Funcom in the same ranks as Blizzard and Maxis is even funnier. Funcom had 2 months so far of big sales thanks to magazine reviews for the 1-20 game, and as the public becomes more aware of the issues within the game at higher levels, this will not stay a top 10 game for long.

Xfire has proven a downward spiral, and based on forum discussions of empty servers, I do not see anything good coming of this.

But, rose colored glasses help, and I hope they do not break on you, like it has for so many others..

Cracks in AoC

Watered down combat

Finally hit 49, scared of the gaps at 50+

(EDIT: a Note about the sales situation "Australia loses AoC on top 10 chart"...oops)

Originally posted by Ender4

Yeah I agree with that.  I would think a LOT more xfire users play AOC than LOTRO as an example. You have very FPS oriented PvP game compared to an almost completely PvE game.  So you can't really compare xfire data from AOC to that for LOTRO, completely different user base.

 

Agreed...or even Vanguard or EQ2. EQ2 also has a small PvP based an Vanguard...well, PvP = dead server...lol.

Cheers

Originally posted by Ender4

Originally posted by Vicksburg

Bottom reached today.

http://www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/     at 21.700 minutes now

Let's see now. Do some calculations/

With Wow at 449.000 minutes now.

This means Conan is played rougly 20 times less than Wow.

Wow is known to have about 4 to 4.5 million western subscribers (less in summer).

That would mean Conan would have about 200 to 220 K active subscribers. it is a bit low I think for a newlly launched game with 700.000+ units sold.

Comparing with other MMO's it would mean EVE is at about 100 to 120 K in the summer.

The real bummer is LOTRO with hardly over 8300 minutes played... placing it under the 100K mark.

Of course the smaller the number the bigger the sample error.

BUT these ARE sample stats and they show trends !

I don't think xfire is useful for a comparison like this one because not every game is going to attract the same number of xfire players and not every game is going to have people play the same amount per day.  It is at least semi useful for tracking a single game compared to itself and even then the numbers have to be taken with a whole block of salt and not just a grain.
 

It clearly shows AOC is losing players pretty quickly as does a simple server search (which they disabled last week just to hide it).  I'd say they have lost close to  50% of the opening week players at this point.

I think we have noted this before. It is but a sample.

And I think it is a good sample. Why? Xfire has always been geared toward the FPS/PvP crowd (as noted by some of the top games,CoD, Counterstrike, Guild Wars, Silkroad)...all PvP oriented, etc.

And to go from 60k hours to start to a mere 20k is a huge difference. Look at Guild Wars, that game has hardly budged on the Xfire charts, and always performs in the top 10, as well as Warcraft (not WoW)...all competitive games.

AoC advertised itself as a competitive PvP based game, and the Xfire numbers show this was the biggest mistake on their part.

Launching with only half of the PvP intact was the numero uno issue. And everyone knows it.

No, Xfire is proving AoC is NOT a PvP game...thats for sure.

Originally posted by sepher

You guys are being a bit silly to believe the search function was restricted due to amateur analysts. Funcom's the only current top-selling developer for the PC besides Maxis and Blizzard, what would they care about any John Doe from these boards?

And are you not being naive to think it was not removed due to concerns of numbers.

Why have something that has existed since Closed Beta, Open Beta (the one that is still going on actually), until a week after the post I had shown from the person whose thread was locked.

And, why would you think Funcom is a top-selling developer? Where do you get the numbers for that "fact"?

Example: Top 25 PC games of all time - IGN = No Funcom

Top Rated games - Gamespot = No Funcom

But I did find this

Wiki - List of best selling video games

• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (1 million shipped)^[245]
• Deer Hunter (1 million shipped)^[246]

There is AoC...right next to that other awesome game....Deer Hunter...WOOT!

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/190282

Already posted

Originally posted by Loke666

The only thing I have to add is that you should post by your own experience, not someone else, do you really know that it's true? 

You are kidding...right? I can only assume you are playing PvE.  Playing a ToS or PoM. The melee nerfs have all been corroborated by Devs. Multiple users have all corroborated these issues.

I know that people enjoy the game, as I did. But, to turn a blind eye to soo many problems is silly.

Go play a 4-6 hour session, and see the frustration of getting one shotted by bosses, or play a Melee class and realize your one handed weapon is slower than a two handed weapon. Then you get ganked by an invisible player in PvP...if you play PvP that is.

Stick up for the game, but also accept the failings of this company and how they are driving this game into the ground.