All Posts by eric_w66

Those pure conflict games are so successful.

Oh wait.

They all fail.

Could be because a) you can never satisfy those types of players b) those players leave the moment the "next big thing in pvp" comes out c) those same players drive everyone else away because of their gaming style (sociopathic, psychopathic) d) those hard core pvp players are a super tiny minority in the MMORPG world.

As AshenTemper's own sig says:

"Without the Player, there is no Game..."

Shadowbane proved that in spades. When you let your playerbase destroy your game and force everyone to stop paying for your game... you have no game.

They'll censor them or put the age verification in front of them. Most likely the former. Simpler, safer legally.

Its more of "protection from lawyers" than it is "protection from puritans".

Public nudity in places like downtown I'm not a fan of. For every person you'd WANT to see naked, there's 100 others that make you wish you'd stabbed out your eyes with a rusty fork.

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Well I think if a game has huge numbers over a long period of time when there are other choices available, that would, to me, indicate that the game is more "fun" than the others.

I still enjoy playing Pong and Freecell :), as many millions do too :)

So if AoC can get 500K people playing and keep playing for a year, that says to me that the game is "fun" and successful, at least "artistically" (financially it can be a different story).

If I'm the only person on a planet that thinks a game is fun.... well... I hope that never happens because it means either I've flaked out, or the rest of the world has, and neither of those options is a good one :).

Apparently, we all have differing opinions of what "twinking" is :).

Twinking isn't PvP or PvE related...

Its just helping a lower level char with higher level goods. 

BUFFING a noobie is not twinking a noobie.

And I see nothing wrong with it.

If your ego is hurt because your level 20 pvp noob got killed by a level 20 pvp twink, well, pvp isn't for you, because there is no such thing as a fair fight in MMORPG pvp outside of the team based arena stuff.

And if you think having the uber gear at level 20 makes PvE pointless, you know WHY people put that gear on them in the first place? To make that stuff easier. Wouldn't make much sense to make it harder now would it? If you'd leveled up once to 80, and want to try a different class out in seiges or raids, leveling through the lower levels tends to become tedious and so you want to speed it up by making it easier for your character (twink) to go through it.

Twinking does more good than harm, because it keeps people playing longer, rather than saying "Ok, I beat the game, don't feel like grinding it twice, /unsub".

I wish games would stop bothering with visible "cloaks". Until the technology can support doing them right, just leave them out.

A cloth "flap" running down ones back is not a "cloak". Its not even a "cape". Its a "flap".

Otherwise, decent video. Can't say I care for the "tower shields" on the ladies at the end. Wouldn't want my char to be a giant walking shield all the time from 3rd person view.

Rifts was probably the most lethal PnP game I've ever played. (L5R) comes close.

Sure, making new chars was always fun (Love the glitterboy...) but having to make new ones every time we played... "ruins the immersion" lol.

Originally posted by Wizardry

 

Who says because you have 72 players its skillfull?who says because a mob hasn't been beaten it's more skill full?you missed two valid points 1 the mob was designed that way with high hitpoints,high defense and a high regen.There is nothing on a raid boss that isn't or can't be done on any mob,just the stats are changed.BTW that takes no skill by any dev to design a boss to be hard to kill,any noob designer could make a boss unbeatable.It's all in the stats.

 

2 I am sure since you sound like you have been playing for a long time?that you are aware a normal   XP party sometimes can take up to an hour to get to your camp add in hours just getting ready.So when your group dies and have to respawn back in home town it's usually called a night,your done.In a raid you have SEVERAL rezzers therefore dying is easy to handle and can easily prolong your fight,i might also add you have several tanks as well.ONe scenario is death game over the other is prolonged after death,you tell me wich is harder?i might also add that it's still the same thing as a normal party only more players ,who really cares?I know many like to think they are special with there large egos ,but RAIDING is nothing at all.

Well, its obvious you've never been on a big raid before. They don't just increase hp and regen and stuff. Often they don't even touch the regen of the boss or the AC. They're easy enough to hit, but might have a lot of hp. Or they might have insane AC, but normal hp... OR all the other things you've apparently never seen. Like AE DOT's that do massive damage, or they call up groups of "adds" every 3 minutes that can wipe out your healers in a flash, or there's a slow mana drain AE that you can't avoid, or the boss is invulnerable except to "bane" weapons, or there's 9 bosses at once, and you have to kill them in a certain order, and if you mess up,  you lose.

Someday, you might see a raid like that if you get into a higher end guild where teamwork and leadership skills are required.

Originally posted by Wizardry

IN nornal grouping ,if you are fighting a VERY hard mob and lose a healer ,your group is dead.In a raid you can have in reality 90% of your raid die and still get credit for the drop or quest/mission whatever the reason was for killing it.So if anything raiding has been stereotyped as being elite,when in reality it's more a noobish setup that any noob can tag along and get credit.

You've never really raided anything difficult then. 72 man EQ1 raids against bosses that have never been beaten on any server? Nothing "noob" about that. Takes far more skill than joe group of 6 just swinging away one mob at a time.

I'm no longer a raider, but I keep seeing this "raiding is easier than grouping" logic, and well, that isn't true.

Originally posted by bobfish

II doubt very much CM could persuade Turbine to do it, not when Lotro makes such a stinking fortune compared to the rest of their games, it was solely responsible for them hitting record profits last year.

The problem is the beancounters in these companies are looking at the profits made from microtransactions and drooling. Smedley said "You'd be suprised how many people spend more than a monthly fee." in one of his recent interviews. That tells me that everyone in the MMO business will be trying to switch to a micropayment system sooner or later (unless there is serious consumer backlash, but there's just far too many people with ADD to hope that will happen).

Originally posted by bobfish

 

Originally posted by eric_w66

Saves me from having to follow the game's development any more. Let it be JGC version 2.0 for all I care now.

10:1 its "free to play"/"microtransaction" model. Want that new ship? That'll be 5 bucks. Want some ammo? 2 bucks...

You're really not very bright are you?

 

DDO and Lotro are subscription based because Turbine want them subscription based.

For all FOUR of Codemasters MMOs the developers NOT Codemasters, are the ones who have decided the payment model for the games that they currently use. Codemasters wanted all four to use subscription based systems cause it's a hell of a lot more profitable, but they couldn't make it work so had to concede to the developers wishes on the two Korean games.

Lotro  will NEVER be free to play with an item shop, and Jumpgate Evolution will be whatever NETDEVIL want it to be.

You didn't read the recent interview with CM's head MMO honcho did you?

Saves me from having to follow the game's development any more. Let it be JGC version 2.0 for all I care now.

10:1 its "free to play"/"microtransaction" model. Want that new ship? That'll be 5 bucks. Want some ammo? 2 bucks...

Good stuff Avery. I hope PvE is as fun as it was in WoW, PvP gets stale for me quick. After you've slain thousands of players online, it just gets old.

"One death is tragedy; a million is a statistic." Hehe... I'm definitely in the "statistic" PvP wise category.

Did they mention how many "group" based dungeons they'd have, and would they be spread across the levels (I know the raids are clumped at the top, though there was brief mention that a level 40ish raid might make into release)? That's where I end up having the most fun (outside of soloing of course). WoW had plenty of these dungeons as well as big raid targets. I gave up hardcore raiding in EQ1 after 2 years of being in an uberguild raiding 7 days a week 6+ hours a day. I don't need another "job" anymore. :D

Originally posted by Kemplar

Regarding your point about forcing people to raid to craft items is really lame to me. Some people don't raid, they don't like it and don't want to do it, yet you're forced to if you want epic items not matter what. Crafting usually takes a long time (though I can't say I know much about AoC crafting) to perfect which usually compensates for time invested raiding for items. For this reason crafted items should be on par with raid items IMO. Forcing you to raid for crafting items pretty much defeats the purpose of crafting the item to begin with. Why make a crafted item with the uber raid gem when you just got a better item raiding for said gem? This is exactly what WoW does and most of the craftable items in that game I find to be useless or inferior. Maybe I'm ignorant but that’s the way it seems to me.

That would defeat the purpose of raiding...

Catch 22 there.... :)

If the best items are crafted, then EVERYONE will have them. "Age of Clones". No thanks.

Originally posted by Shannia

The problem is, hard core gamers will eat this up in a month.  Really hard core players and guild mates will keep players on 24/7 to get to max level and control the border kingdoms in very, very short order (a week is my guess).  Personally, I wish other governments would follow China's lead and limiting account activity to no more than 10 hours a day.  I know it  doesn't stop people who have multiple accounts but at least it forces people to take a break and slows the game down.

 

People who race to max level tend to leave the game anyways when the NEXT MMO comes out so they can repeat the process there and be "first" again. So, WAR and the new WoW expansion will probably siphon off the super hard core types anyways (except the few who are actual conan fans).