I feel like there is a great deal more depth to this game than there is to others, and that is drawing me to it, but I am very concerned about the endgame. In EQI and in WoW, and in almost every game I have seen, the gear, by the time you get to the endgame, is a much larger contributor to your overall power as a character than your player skill or chosen skill tree (or whatever it is called for EQII, I am not sure how it works; I only played the trial and it didn't really get into that I don't think), and that bothers me a great deal.

I have come to understand here that raids are not necessary, but the gear there is better, so my question is this: does the raid gear give players who have it a terrible power advantage over players that do not have it (note, I am not too concerned with PvP, but more on the relative power of characters in general).

I am also concerned with the variety of things that are available to do at the endgame. I don't want to be killing all the time, and it seems like this game has RP and crafting and players housing, and other things aplenty that would be able to keep me interested even when I tire of grinding.

I would be very glad for any information anyone could get me about any of these points.

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Originally posted by DeaconX
YES. Yes they did... D&D should have been the most massive SANDBOX mmo rpg filled with content to allow as much freedom of choice as possible... instead it was developed into something a bad 'dungeon master' might write up where basically the adventure is so restrictive and linear that its like constantly walking into a room with only one door other door than the one you just walked in through... which will of course only lead to another room with one more door and so on...
D&D should have been a living world full of danger even in the city [full pvp, penalties apply so if a thief knifes someone they could end up in a jail etc] streets and quests all over the place... it would have taken much longer to build but it'd have been worth it!
Instead of being a brave new mmo, they went with the safest and lamest approach.. i was disgusted with it :\

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I agree with this completely, and I could not have stated it in a better way. I echo the vehement disgust the Deacon had for this game. I was so incredibly excited for this game, and it was the largest disappointment I have ever had in terms of a media release.

If they can ever get this game out, they will be the richest people in the world.

I'd love one. It sounds like fun. Thank you for doing this.

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Originally posted by snowmonky

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Originally posted by Alchemda

If you've never played a mmo before its great to start on. Easy to get into, decent depth to the design. If you've played other MMO's I personally wouldn't bother, you will soon realize after playing for a month or two that the game, isnt the best thing since sliced butter. It has a name attached to it that everyone knows, and a developer attached to it that everyone knows. I'd try the trial, but before you buy, try other games like EQ2, EVE, LOTR, they all offer trials. After playing them all, decide where you want to go.

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I agree. WoW's popularity is due to its the dumbed-down MMORPG system, which obviously attracts a larger audience. Not only that, but the South Park publicity stunt helped as well. It's not the best MMO, but a good start.

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What is the best MMO?

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Originally posted by Estrus

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Originally posted by Leodious

Bugs in a beta?

Oh no?!

Why do people expect a game to be perfect in beta? Grow up people.

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Reading through the responses in this thread, as well as my own experience, i'd say the overwhelming majority of complaints are about the game design, not the bugs.
Way to single out one comment out of dozens.

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*Gives up on getting some sense out of this thread.*

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Originally posted by Zorvan

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Originally posted by Leodious

Bugs in a beta?

Oh no?!

Why do people expect a game to be perfect in beta? Grow up people.

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Try reading. I'd say there are few, if any, people here complaining about bugs. Flawless programming means nothing when the gameplay is stale and boring.

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Most people I read mentioned getting shot through solid objects. Not only did this rarely happen to me, it is a pretty simple coding problem I imagine and isn't as game breaking as people say.

Bugs in a beta?

Oh no?!

Why do people expect a game to be perfect in beta? Grow up people.

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Originally posted by Xris375

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Originally posted by Leodious

It actually looks pretty cool. I want to believe this is something they are really doing. I find it a litle hard to buy, since the beta isn't out, but it is not totally unheard of to do things in this order.
Normally you hear me criticize people for say Darkfall this and Darkfall that, but this is nice.
Good find, thank you.

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When;
* things are too good to be true
* suddenly trolls are turning positive
* original poster is a 1 post troll with an unbeliveable story (ie that pic is unsearchable in google )
something smells funny.
I call it to be some AoC fan trying to get some DF fanboy to be raving then laught in their face afterwards it being a fake.
Well, hope you don't think you wasted an hour or so out of your life making it. It was pretty nicely done. The only funny thing about it was that it was other AoC fanboys spoiling your fun for you. Or what do you say Leodious ?

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What are you talking about?

It actually looks pretty cool. I want to believe this is something they are really doing. I find it a litle hard to buy, since the beta isn't out, but it is not totally unheard of to do things in this order.

Normally you hear me criticize people for say Darkfall this and Darkfall that, but this is nice.

Good find, thank you.

I cannot believe this is happening. It boggles my mind.

I use MLA for my classes, and I can't think offhand of a professor I work with that uses APA. APA is just...terrible at everything.

Krogan: Please, get a life. You scare me and I am worried about your psychological health. There is never any reason to get this worked up about any game. Ever, at all.

I think we can all agree that by the literal definition it is vaporware, but by that definition it may still be released. Thus, in a sense, we all are right. But really, only the people that always said it was vaporware are right.

I give my solemn word to everyone that if anyone can give me solid evidence that there is even an engine in place for this game at this time I will never post here again. I am sure Questionable would like that; when he first showed up on this site I and several others laughed in his face for having a terrible argument about something or other. I cannot even remember what it was right now. I will add that if he can prove this, I will never mock him and give a retort to his asinine posts.

Come then, ye fanboys! You want us to prove that the game does not exist, but it is impossible to prove a negative. So prove us wrong. Prove that the game has *anything* solid in development. I beg you. If this game was released, I would play as much as I could. It sounds like the perfect game. It just doesn't exist.

Stipulations:

Anecdotes of any kind do not count unless they can be proven somehow.
Image files of any kind do not count as they can be doctored.
Videos do not count for the same reason as above.
Developer comments without backing do not count.
Forum posts unless linking to proof do not count.
Information more than five years old does not count.

EDIT:

Formatting and minor typos.

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Originally posted by turnipz
I think AoC is for those that want to be doing something other than tapping a few keys on their keyboard every once and while and want to use strategy to win. Its also for people who like competition since its the type of game where the better player is guaranteed to win.
War is for people who just like to play casually with friends and have no problem with the lack of interaction or skill it takes to play. Kids, old people, and people with slow reflex or some form of ineptness should like War the best I would think.

I definately dont think theres any counter-argument with these things.

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I agree with you on some level, but you must admit that liking WAR does not mean you are inept. Many people will play just for the IP.

That said, if you cannot decide, I would go AoC. It is supposed to be less like the generic games we have so many of right now. It has a great deal of lore for RPers, but so does WAR, but WAR is not an IP that really lends itself to roleplaying, in my opinion.

If you love PvP and are pretty casual, WAR. If you are hardcore about PvP, AoC, as there is more sense of accomplishment in it, I think. If you are a roleplayer or a more balanced player, like myself (see left) AoC. WAR seems too restricted to current fans are PvPers.

Your simplistic argument with no support makes me giggle.

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Originally posted by checkthis500

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Originally posted by whitedelight

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Originally posted by evil13

You have to ask yourself, what does it add to the game? Sure it is in the books/comics/lore, but in those things, sex (or premise of sex) is used to enchance the storyline and atmosphere of the settings. Does going to an npc (let's say pc's can't have sex with each other for now) payign some coins, having your screen go bloack for a few seconds and getting a buff for it, add anything the the game?
In fallout 2 (my faverite game =p) they didn't have nudity, but there was some off screen sex (implied) and there was a lot of use of drugs/alcohol/sex in the game. It added to the storyline and the setting of the game. If they had to make it a t rated game (I assume it's an m rated game lol) the game wouldn't be as fun as it is.
But in aoc, it just seems like funcom is trying to put in a bunch of things that an m rated game can have but a t rated game can't, even though none of those thigns enchance gameplay in any way. Buckets of blood splashign out of people on every hit doesn't really enchance the game. boobies and naked mobs doesn't really make the game any better, now sex for buff =p how does it enchance the game play?
The only thing aoc gets out of M rating that actually enchances gameplay is ability to cut off lbody parts, but even that is debatable (ie, can you cut off someone's arm, but they still live? or is it reserved for fatalities of srots)

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It is for fatalities, and the reason they are likely doing this isn't for the gameplay aspect, but more or less the lore that the game comes with. How many stories in Conan didn't involve something getting cut off, blood, and sex? You will likely find these in more stories than not. Not everything is about gameplay. Why is there / commands in most games that have nothing to do with gameplay? It just adds something to do, and it can be used and applied in role play situations. I don't know if you have been on the official forums much, but there is an overwhelming amount of people who chose the RP server when the moderators made a poll for it. Role play may be more common in Age of Conan than in other MMORPGs.

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I see what you're saying about the blood, dismemberment, and gore. And I think there should be more of it. Sex being a buff is a little too gimmicky though. It adds zero to the lore and zero to the gameplay experience.
The only reason you would put something like that in is as a gimmick. Dancing plays more of a role than sex as a buff. Being able to pay an NPC to give you some kind of buff is just a silly way to make the game mature. Having it being a hidden easter egg thing (The first level in God of War with the 2 girls comes to mind) would have been really cool and nifty. Making it a buff is meh.
(for lack of a better word.)
If this is how they're going to be using the MAture rating it's disappointing to me, because they could have used it to add more gore into the backgrounds. So far everything is lush and foresty and beautiful. There hasn't been any death or decay shown in any of the videos except for a few hanging bodies and some bodies on the ground with a bit of blood.
This is Conan. I want to see mounds of bodies that are half-decayed and rotting. I want to see finishing moves resulting in NPCs being disemboweled. Finishing moves like you'd see in Manhunt or Punisher. They need to take the environment and throw some rot, death, bodies, and just plain nastiness into it. Forget this paying for sex and virtual boobies crap.

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I agree with this completely. This is a dark world. Make it dark!

I don't think it will be too childlike or "pretty." I wouldn't worry.

I just cannot believe anyone is still debating this. Warhammer came long before Warcraft, so any claim of similarity only shows that Warcraft is using Warhammer as inspiration.

Seriously, people.

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Originally posted by Agricola1
Well even EVE has two live servers one for China and the other for the rest of the world, the reason not to have one big server is massive lag also if the server crashes then your game is AWOL until it's fixed. EVE has problems due to the fact that large fleet battles were encouraged when the playerbase was sub 50k and the peak amount of users was no more than 5k. It was easy to handle, however now the server has reached the limits on what it can handle. When 30k people are online you can't have a large fleet battle, assaulting stations is a mere slideshow and even 20 vs 20 battles ends up lagging out many of the participants.
I used to support the one server for everyone philosophy until EVE seemed to hit a wall and the lag beast set up home on the server. Nowadays I'd prefer the multiple servers philosophy as I prefer smooth gameplay over the benefits of having one world, having one server has benefits for gameplay until there are too many users. I think CCP need to set a cap on their server and open a new one instead of upgrading the current one with little to no effect.

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The cleanest and easiest way to set this up would be the GW way. Instanced combat areas and sharded towns. Everyone can see everyone who is online at any given time, even though they are on many different servers at a time. This wouldn't work for a world PvP based game like EVE, but it is still the only real way to have a single "world" where everyone can interact with everyone else, and not kill the servers. Another possible way that is not quite as clean in the EQ way, zoning. Each zone can be on a different server, or shard the zone and have multiple instances of it at a time, ala GW and their floating shard system in towns. that way the world is one world, but everyone can still interact with everyone, and there can still be world PvP. The only drawback is that the only guarantee you have of being in the same shard as someone else is to party with them, or know where they are.

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Originally posted by WSIMike

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Originally posted by Leodious

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Originally posted by Die_Scream
Did you report him for saying he didn't know what you are talking about? Its called a figure of speech. Man, you've lost it seabass, seriously, way to waste mods time.

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Heh. Don't worry about it. Seabass says stuff like that to me all the time. I don't think he likes me. At any rate, Seabass, it was indeed a figure of speech meaning I can't understand why some people here are talking about the breadth and depth of content being so great when I saw very little, compared to other games. Granted, the game itself isn't bad, I had a good time, and I love LOTR. I can see myself going back to it in a few months. But right now, no.

Alas.

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Well that boils down to personal perspective. You didn't see much in it. Others do. Neither one is right or wrong. It's all subjective.

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I believe that is what I said...

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Originally posted by Die_Scream
Did you report him for saying he didn't know what you are talking about? Its called a figure of speech. Man, you've lost it seabass, seriously, way to waste mods time.

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Heh. Don't worry about it. Seabass says stuff like that to me all the time. I don't think he likes me. At any rate, Seabass, it was indeed a figure of speech meaning I can't understand why some people here are talking about the breadth and depth of content being so great when I saw very little, compared to other games. Granted, the game itself isn't bad, I had a good time, and I love LOTR. I can see myself going back to it in a few months. But right now, no.

Alas.

It's a fact. MMOs, if designed well, are supposed to be addictive. That's how they keep you going. It's a thing with dopamine levels in the brain due to their risk and reward systems. WoW is especially addictive to some people precisely because there is zero risk. Some people prefer an old EQ style thing where you could lose it all if you mess up, and some people don't. I enjoy both styles, but I have been pretty into WoW for a while now. I guess I'm addicted, but for all its shortcomings, I think it's the best out there right now.

*crosses fingers for AoC*

I don't know what the rest of you are talking about. I am a casual gamer, and I didn't even get to the level cap before I was bored to tears.