All Posts by eric_w66

Originally posted by Zorvan

 

Originally posted by Iijs

Well then, Zorvan, it seems we have a bet.

mmorpg might hand out a couple hundred keys, like they always do, but the vast, vast majority of the 10s of thousands will come from Fileplanet.

Of course, there is a possiblity that AoC's site will continue to draw from their 100k list of signups, but it is still a safe bet Fileplanet will be the No. 1 draw. If Fileplanet does not draw the desired numbers, then and only then, will FC look elsewhere.

Sorry, you lose.

I never lose. It's a trait inherent in all arrogant and stubborn people, of which I apparently am.

 

Will FP have it? More than likely, but not guaranteed. And they definitely won't be the sole place to get it, as many will not pay a FP subscription just for a beta when they can get it elsewhere freely.

Well, FunCom might just let FP have the exclusive (If I was FP and hosting a giant client, I'd want the exclusive to drive up people paying for the subscription, it worked for them with PotBS) to only allow subscribers only (at least at first). That's how PotBS did it until the end of their "closed open beta" where they let anyone in.

WAR is made by EA/Mythic, and well, I have no faith in them to make a good MMORPG. DAOC ruined me for that.

So WAR not having a completely open beta is understandable.

However, we're at a point where client sizes are just too huge to let everyone try to download (I remember competing for games that were only 50mb in size to test and it'd take hours to download). So companies have gone to a "semi-open" beta. Where they still invite tons of people, but you have an upper limit for the most part.

As for most games not having one, uh, well, WAR is the only I know of that isn't going to (and they could very well be doing the same thing AoC is). PotBS had one, LOTRO had one, didn't Vanguard have one? Fury had one.

So now we're quibbling over what "open beta" means. Does it mean a no NDA session of beta where lots more people are allowed in? Or does it mean "Anyone who wants to try it, gets in?"

I still want the NDA to go away sooner rather than later ;). That worried (worries, unless I get a beta slot) me more than the "no open beta" thing anyways.

If I had to bet, I'd guess FunCom will use FilePlanet. If AoC's client is large, and I bet it is, the cost of people downloading it from FunCom would be a major downer, not to mention smash their pipes for a week making everything unplayable ;).

Sure, people hate FilePlanet, but....they have lots of servers to download from with nice speeds. FilePlanet picks up paying subscribers, FunCom avoids a gigantic bandwidth bill....

Indeed, that is good news. I still want the NDA to go away soon though :).

The size of these MMO clients effectively limits these "open" betas anyways. PotBS opened theirs and it wasn't a huge huge crush all at once, since the client was 6GB. They were stressing their servers anyways, and after a bit of that, they opened up 2 more servers and that relieved the overcrowding/lag issues for the open beta (till the end at least).

Perhaps they'll do it like PotBS did. They had their closed beta. Then they had a "fileplanet only stress test" (plus existing beta people), then it went back to closed beta only, then they had another stress test with fileplanet subscribers, then they announced they'd invite everyone from that stress test to the closed beta. Then they closed down the closed beta.... and opened up a closed open beta (I made a joke post on the forums about this very thing). Only existing closed beta people got to play for the first week of closed open beta (had a level cap too), then they added fileplanet subscribers who weren't already in a week later, raised the cap10 levels.... a week later they opened it up to people who used fileplanet (freebie style), etc... it was an "open" beta that was fairly "closed". You had to jump through some hoops to get int. They certainly didn't come close to 100,000 people ;) Max populations I saw on the servers was about 1000. Of course, that game isn't quite the same as a normal MMORPG and open sea overcrowding is an issue there, where most games have people setting off to explore various noob lands and such to keep the crowd levels down.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

When the dust settles, in the next few days some sort fo clarification about the way things will go should happen, at that point some people can put the Kleenex away.

Did you get that supply of sodium thiopental to insure developer truthfulness I sent you?

Tell them to clean up their website too ;) I hate reading out of date stuff from 2 years ago.

Good luck in Oslo.

Originally posted by Orthedos

 

AoC is still being tested.  Funcom has not yet announced anything.  Indeed AC did not get its launch off seamlessly, the same happened to many games including WoW.  AC was however a one time favourite, it was a great game for a while back then.  WoW is still the market favourite today.  So the bad history about a bad launch from AC is not enough to support a doomsday theory on Funcom. "Wait till ... 10 critical bugs"?  That is a bit far fetched a conclusion.  Please don't scarce us, its still too early to worry.

 

I respect the freedom of Funcom to run its business.  I generally understand the need to be cautious in opening the door to closed beta operations.  Open beta is just one of the options available for product QC.  Not necessarily the only option.  One of the post up there has it clearly pinned down.  If Funcom has 100,000 applicants available for CB, they can recruit from that pool, control the quality of CB testers, and still achieve the results of a grand open OB.  After all, what do you want from 100,000+ testers?  Stress test?

As for all those "Funcom is hiding something" conspiracy theories, or "Funcom will screw up" doomsday theories, come on.  Its still everybody's guess at this moment in time.  It can be anything.  Your guess is good as mine, or as bad.

I assume you mean AC = AO ;) Asheron's Call had a decently stable beta (I was in it) and was a fairly popular game ;).

I do want FC to stress the game, and if they do it out of their pool of applicants, great. I want the NDA lifted earlier rather than later however. The NDA is the key to everything here, the fact there is no open beta is of only minor concern to me. Keeping the lid on this long is much more worrying. WoW had a huge open beta with no NDA, but they knew even with the issues they had, that their game was fun (for most people) and the OB stressed their servers and pointed out that huge lootlag bug that would have been crippling if it had been in the release.

As far as 'finding the 10 bugs' bit. I'm a programmer/developer, and heh, its not just MMORPG's that suffer these kinds of things. God knows how many nights I've had to spend at the office feverishly trying to fix something critical days or hours before release of the software (place I worked had deadlines that were externally imposed for most projects (Tax seasons, budget years ending, etc). So it HAD to be finished by Dec 31st or DOOOOM!!! ;)

All of that experience has taught me to be cautious with making promises and skeptical when viewing other people's promises ("I'll have that to you by thursday no problem!" <two months passes> "I'm still working on it, it'll get done soon!").

All this is guessing of course, but at this point,  unless you're in the beta, that's all we can do. Given the dearth of real info coming out, we don't have much else to discuss/argue about AoC at the moment ;)

Originally posted by templarga

 

The NDA has to be lifted. See my other posts. Name me one game that launched with the NDA in place. NDA means you can't disclose information about the game or beta. If the game is released information will be disclosed whether they like it or not. SImple - wait a couple days and find out. THE NDA WILL BE DROPPED BY THE DATE OF RELEASE!

 

Of course it will be dropped from the release version, however, some NDA's still forbid you to talk about the beta and really never expire. I haven't seen one of those lately, but I have seen them.

SW:G held the NDA till 2 days before it released. It was reason #1 I hurriedly canceled my preorders (I was in the beta). That effectively is maintaining it till release (can't get a preorder or its goodies at that point).

1.) 100K apps is still just fluff until they invite them. If they wanted to assuage fears, they could announce that they're adding 10K invites a week for the next 5 weeks (for example). That would cause me and many other people to feel MUCH better about the game and the state of the servers.

2.1) I read in a recent interview about why the Assassin class hadn't gotten a preview (I believe it was the assassin, could have been another), and the reply was it was low on the list of changes to do regarding the merge. If they're still doing that, that means that the testing done on them is minimal at best. See SW:G's droid engineer and creature handler professions for examples. Plus, there is practically no information on several of the classes, and what there is is a year or two old (Druid of the Storm for example). One rumor started by a german report said that there were only 12 classes, not 14. Well, if that's the case, which two got the axe? http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Possible_Class_Changes So, the logical thing is they 'hid' two classes they didn't want people to create and play. Perhaps their new tutorial quest thing wasn't finished at the time, or some such... but most people wouldn't get to play those things in a review session to even get CLOSE to level 20 hehe.

2.2) I know that there are grinders out there who'll hit max level fairly quickly (EQ1, it took MANY months to do heh), but I'm talking about stuff that should be there, like DAOC's dungeons being empty, even the low level ones.

2.3 and 2.4) Reviews after the fact. If you were excited, and wanted to get in on the ground floor, and you pre-ordered.... only to find out the game is horribly broken once you got the game (and are now unable to return it).... not so cool. You're basing your arguments that the NDA will be lifted well before release. I HOPE it is. But from the sound of things, my magic 8-ball (past experience) is pointing towards "Look out!"

Check out the www.esrb.org website, and you can read up on what it really is all about (selling games from retailers).

They don't need an open beta with 100K apps waiting (actually, its probably far more, since the 100K comment was just how many they got over that easter holiday). However they need to INVITE them. If they put enough people into the beta to really stress the servers and lift the NDA well before release, then things will definitely be looking good for AoC, open beta or no. If they don't invite many more people, and keep the lid on till the end...

Originally posted by Jadar

 In any case, I'm betting Funcom regrets putting so much emphasis of DX10.

Heh, I agree.

Even when I heard about DX10 and all the stuff it was about (improvements over DX9), speed was never mentioned as one of reasons to upgrade. It lets you do cooler stuff with water and clouds, etc. But as far as speed went, wasn't much to be gained. Sure, it lets you use programmable GPU's, but.... with the way games went about their business optimizing performance, this was not a step forward in my opinion. 

And of course, it required Vista, which in and of itself, is a big performance hit (amongst other things). 

Originally posted by swainiac

 

Translation: If I can't trial the unfinished game it must be a bad game.

 

Intelligence in that thinking = 0

Of course.

Interestingly enough however, Open Betas are not "unfinished games". They typically occur after a game goes "Gold" and are in fact, the most finished version of the game, more finished than the disc version.

So, lets reword your translation a bit:

"If I can't trial a 'finished' game and the testers aren't allowed to give their opinions freely, it must be a bad game."

SW:G springs to mind.... LOL.

By 'finished' I mean, RELEASED version of the game. I know MMORPG's are never "finished", but there is a state where you say "Ok, we've crammed enough into the game to make it complete even if we never added another single thing to it". That SHOULD be the release version. Bug fixes don't matter. Its finished and balanced skills/classes/content/PvP/items/etc.

Originally posted by Sabradin

 

 

its great you using logic and all

but the fancy boy crowd wants you to use emotion so you may wish to reconsider

Actually, the 'fancy boy crowd' is using logic, and the "yea sayers" are all using emotion.

We rely on past experiences to formulate possible outcomes, and then using logic, determine which are most likely to occur based on those experiences.

All you not so fancy boys are doing is "<covers ears and eyes>LA LA LA ITS GOT TO BE GOOD LA LA LA" hehe....

Stop and think about it. ;)

Originally posted by templarga

Age of Conan is under an NDA. The NDA will be lifted before launch and the information will be made public so people will not the details of the game. Reviews will pour in to gaming sites throughout the world and people will know then if there is something to hide.

We do not know that the NDA will be lifted before release. They've not stated they will, and well, with no open beta...

1. Yep. AO proved that their servers needed to be stress tested better. This is one of the big reasons to hide stuff.

2.1) Incomplete classes. Many games (SW:G) did this. The classes could be improperly balanced, or some skills could be completely out of line. Since they're STILL redoing all the classes after the 'merge' and still finishing some, this is entirely likely to occur.

2.2) Incomplete world. High level zones barren/under popped/broken content/no content. DAOC launched with barely any content (one reason it was so smooth).

2.3) Broken mechanics, such as the combat system still acting wonky, or severe lag due to high numbers of players cause exploits to open up (dupe bugs etc).

2.4) Video performance issues in crowded areas (another big one). Different from server lag, video "lag" is a killer to reviews.

The ESRB rating doesn't matter for this. We're not buying the game from Funcom. A basic age check would get them off the hook legally (Enter your age, etc). And of course, they put  up the "Rating Pending" and "Online Content: Rating subject to change during online play" logos, and they're set.

Waiting till the last weekend to find out your servers have 10 critical and complicated bugs that cause massive problems that will take weeks of recoding to solve (if ever) is a .... poor.... idea. PotBS I'm sure is still feverishly trying to solve their server lag problems they discovered in their two "open" stress tests, and in the open beta. But a month or so isn't much time to solve issues which affect the entire game's operation.

Originally posted by pencilrick

 

Originally posted by Illius

As far as I know, the 20 levels of learning to play are custom to each character class.  You will not be doing the same thing for a Dark Templar as say a Barberian.  They also give you an option to change from night and day and turn it from single to multiplayer whenever you choose.  So unless you plan to roll one class over and over again because of some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder you probably won't see the same stuff.

I suggest you go and really research this and read every word not every third.

 

20 "mandatory" levels of solo play in a MMORPG is "forced" + "linear" + "sucks".  Sort like being forced to watch a movie you didn't really want to watch.  Worse, forced to "be in" a movie you didn't really want to watch.

Everquest 2 did this with their ingame island tutorial and the citizenship class quests, and even though that was all of 7 levels, it sucked.

Linear overly-choreographed gameplay sucks.

Looks like already the Age of Conan is starting off on the wrong foot.  Watch them implement this, get flak for it, and later change this dynamic through a patch.

You need to read the article. ;)

It says you can switch from the single player style to being in the multiplayer world by "sleeping", so you can switch back and forth while you level up during the noob levels.

One of the worrying things about AoC is the myriad of things that are WAY out of date still left on the website. This last change with picking your class at the start is fairly new, so I can forgive that, but some of the stuff about classes and stuff still there are from early 2006 and completely wrong now.

I'm personally happy with this change. While having those choices ahead of you can be something to strive for, learning how to play your class from the start rather than just being a "club wielding brute" for 5 levels and then a "gimped" version of your future class for the next 15 is a better idea.

What they SEEM to want you to do is your "class quest" for the first 20 levels and if THAT is interesting enough, those levels will fly by.

Originally posted by Sabradin

HERE

"Class selection has also been overhauled -- gone are the days of starting as a Commoner and slowly working your way to your final class. You choose your final class from the start, and advance through a special single-player quest series that unlocks new skills for your class. While it's called single-player, you do it all online -- in a nighttime version of Hyboria, whereas the multiplayer version of the game is played out during the day. This "Destiny Quest" as Funcom is calling it, will continue all the way up to level 80; a quest chain that continues throughout the life of your character, unfolding the story of Hyboria and King Conan himself. "

http://www.curse.com/articles/details/4344/

It USE to be the case where you play a commoner at 1-10 then your archtype from 10-20 and then your final class from 20-80.  It use to also be the case that once you hit 10, you would no longer have to do it again, and once you hit your achtype to 20 you no longer had to roll the same archtype to 20.

NOW you start at the beginning like normal with the class of your choice

try to keep up

wheres avery when you need em

Thanks for the link. I knew I'd read it somewhere, but couldn't find it. There's so MUCH old information (even on the age of conan site and forums) that I just kept finding the old way.

Originally posted by dannis

Actually, Illius, I believe you cannot choose Dark Templar or Barbarian until level 20. You start out as a general class until you reach level 5, I think. At level 5 on Tortage you can choose between 4 different player classes: Soldier, Rogue, Priest, and Mage; so there are most likely 4 different class quest series until level 20, after which you pick a specialized class.

I think they ditched that idea Dannis.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

I still stand by my statement that Open Beta's are incomplete games. Every one I have played has not been finished, or I have run into a bug, even right at that late stage. last few come to mind, LotRO, March 30th my B'day I remember I got stuck in a wall deep in a cave not too far from Archet. In Hellgate, I still suffered from what seemed like memory leaks in some places to me with just a few weeks till release, Perfect World more recently in Open Beta right now, when I fly high in some places I hit the invisible wall and get stuck inside it. Plus lots more. Its hard to change my mind when everyone I have found bugs in, bugs that are typical in general beta, not open.

 

PotBS's open beta was the "release" version. Sure there were bugs, I don't mind bugs. Bugs can be fixed. Crashes on the other hand are far more serious. And then there's server crashes and performance. PotBS discovered at the end of beta that they STILL needed to work on their server performance (The auction house went haywire with everyone trying to buy the top of the line ships in the happy fun time end of beta event).

Open beta's in fact are usually "past" the release version on the CD's you get. They're the most complete version of the game available. PotBS's disc is 2 major patches behind IIRC.

Now, I never expect a bug free game in a MMORPG (Single player games I tend to be more critical of). Like I said, bugs can be fixed. Aside from the crashes and server performance, there is another big bugaboo that I often see: Incomplete content such as SW:G (whole professions missing or never been tested), DAOC (empty dungeons, no loot, classes out of whack), WoW (some high level zones empty). High end content not being there right at release isn't a HUGE factor for me (I don't grind fast), but the low level stuff should positively GLEAM with polish in an Open Beta. AoC is worrying me because some classes are still being 'worked on' according to the interviews, and fleshing out abilities with 2 months to go means that there hasn't been much testing of balance, etc. And in a PvP game, that is fairly critical (DAOC anyone?)

SW:G never even got that far. The creature handler and droid engineer hadn't even been added to the game by the time it was released. They just appeared and POOF! Heh.... needless to say, they were broken. Badly.