they did give something back if  i recall it was 3 months in cirty of heroes and 3 months in lineage . which i though was fair enough . i did think they could have tried the rmt model first before they gave up on it or maybe leased it out to a third party company . i only ever played it when it was free at the end while it was nt the best game in the world i thought it had enough potential to survive in a different payment model just as ddo is doing now .

edit there may have be access to the aion beta as well

i found it strange when a friend told me there was a group on facebook trying to save tabula rasa and form a private server . but when i look lo and behold there it was .  even if it did only have 205 members . i do remember years ago the internet had that it called abandonware games which i believe ( maybe wrongly ) were in the public domain and free to download . so at what point does a defunct game go into the public domain ?. i personally cant believe a tabula rasa private server would be legal even though it has been abandoned . but then again facebook is normally quite hot on taking of dodgy groups .

Originally posted by Nebulation

Thanks I think I'm going to buy this. When does the Mirkwood expansion come out? Also how do you buy subscription fees?

you can do it either via paypal or time card or credit card . they also have a life time subscription offer which it roughly equivelent to 14 months game play . i managed to get the offer at half price but it was limited offer . ( they may offer it to you at a reduced price when you first start or around the time of the xpac release ) . if you are going to play come on here and ask which server is best for your area . in europe snowborn is pretty good not sure what its like for the north america servers though .

edit . i think mirkwood is dec 1 st

i would say a definate yes . lotro is nt for everyone . but it is very faithful to the lore of  middle earth . i ve friends in game that have come over from everquest 2 who think its a better game . i cant comment because i ve never played everquest 2 . now is a perfect time to start given theres a digital  expansion pack just about to be released and a thrid boxed expansion coming out in 2010 ( guessing april may sort of time ) . one of the best things about lotro is its community the majority of which are friendly and helpful . people who are used to warcraft might say its boring and it is certainly not as fast paced as that but it does follow a good side story to the events in lord of the rings . i ve yet to try the pvp so i cant comment on that .  and good on you managing to read the silmarillion i ve never managed it myself although i ve read many other tolkien works from farmer giles of ham to the children of hurin .

would nt open voice chat be horrible ? i mean theres so many people with terrible attitudes in wow . at least with vent it tends to be friendly because its normally limited to your guild .

i dont play anymore but one of the best things about wow was getting to know people that played in other countrys . my closest wow friends ended up being from the netherlands , sweeden ,greece and south africa . funnily enough i did nt meet that many of my fellow brits in the game , i m now playing lotro and its inundated with them . lol . in some ways i feel a little sorry for the north american players because they cant have the same diversity of players . maybe im wrong ?

and dont forget the wonen dont look like bridget neilson

Originally posted by Frobner

I have not played Aion and Im not gonna by it until I have played it on free trial.

Still - this trailer is very impressive.  To me it looks very devistating for other Aged MMOS like WOW how much the new games are adding with new tech.  

Aion can only go from strenght to strength with these features.  And I am in no doubt that NSOFT will not be able to implement them.

i think your right . even 5 years ago when i first started playing wow i thought graphically it was a bit outdated compared to the other games i d played now its really starting to show its age . i dont think graphics are the most important thing in a game if the gameplays good mediocre graphics can be acceptable . unfortunatly warcrafts gameplay is far to easy for me these days to be challenging which is why i ve left . not playing aion at the moment because i dont have the time for a regular mmo at the moment but am looking forward to returning early in the new year .

quite suprised at fallen earth and darkfall coming out tops . unfortunatly living in the uk they are also a lot more expensive than other mmos because of the exchange rate a bit like eve which is also a no go for me .

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Xasapis

You still feel threatened by Aion, even now?

*sigh*

 

I care about ST, SW and straight honest mmorpg makers.

Blizzard doesn't need to be cared against the Korean hypers.

And I wonder what an Aion promotion post is doing .... in the general forum anyway.

Actually there's even two of them.

 

plenty of warcraft ones too . i tend to agree Blizzard does nt need to care  its still a very healthy game . actually a second polular mmo out there if anything does the whole genre good . Warcrat wont maintain the numbers at the hight of its popularity over the years to come . the only question is when the decline will begin . i would argue its already begun given Blizzard hav nt released any subscription numbers in nearly a year , zorndorf would disagree and has often quoted third party sources in these forums . in my forum thread whats the second most popular mmo its becomeing quite clear Aion is and boasts roughly 1/4 to a 1/3 of the subs warcraft currently has . i think this could have been better but the release was a little messy . the ques put a lot of people off but plenty of them will return in the new year . Aion is what i predicted it would be a strong alternative to WoW for bored players like myself . Many of its teething troubles are being sorted now and inspite of all the trolling in these forums people the servers are all still busy in europe at least . Its not a WoWkiller but it ll be one of the many games to come over the years that will chip away at WoWs popularity .Its certainly not a 300k subscriber game that zorndorf predicted worldwide it has 3-4 million players now . not bad eh ?

imo there is no such thing as a wow clone . everquest was released years earlier and all these games borrow from each other as they evolve . the only game i would say has even the slightest element of wow clone is runes of magic simply because its been made to look and play like wow . i could be wrong but i think the thing wow brought to fantasy mmorpgs was faction play . which is something even now other games apart from aion are finding hard to get right .

i know what you mean there . i spent three months in the game and i met only a handful of people that did nt have a bad attitude . the odd things is normally in the less popular game the nicer community you get but this has nt happend in aoc .WoW had got a lot worse last time i went back but i still managed to get into a nice guild .

Originally posted by Gigget

If characters can be "stronge" I don't want to play it.  Sounds too overpowred to me.  Besideds, I downloaded the game awhile back, and it was full of viruses.

lol dont you just love people that are not smart enough to overlook a typo and resort to sarcasm.

well i ve taken the bait i never did hate conan theres a bit of fun to be had there and i ve a level 60 tos that i would nt mind playing up . i cant really see myself returning to this game full time because the community was so bad . i think the problem was that without factions pvp gameplay became a gank fest and pushed players into large guilds . but without the pvp conan is very dull so if you play on a pve server you only really get half the game . looking forward to seeing what its like now but i cant help but wonder given the flagging ddo is doing so well under rmt will aoc be next .

lol so am i

If i were to return to wow after the cataclysm i think the goblin would be my race of choice . They always did look like they would be a laugh to play . Wonder if they ll be hated as much as gnomes are . I m still pretty sceptical about cataclysm though it will need to do a lot lot more than offer couple of new races and revamped quests , there would have to be some fundamental changes like putting some real challenge back into the game which its really lacked in recent years .

Generally speaking i feel Aion is going in the right direction . I m not playing at present but i will return to it when i have more time in the new year . I m not concerned about the bots anymore than i was when they inundated WoW in its first couple of years . These problems dont go away overnight and people tend to forget all games have teething problems in thier first months . There has been an awful lot of trolling in these forums about Aion but inspite of all this the game still is very busy . In fact most people i know that have put it on hiatus did it  for one reason thats because in its initial month the que times were too long .

Still its a nice pet and you dont have to pay to get it  lol . But whats the bets that they ll use thier 5 th birthday to introduce RMT mounts ?

We all know WoW can boast players in the millions still but which pay to play mmo comes in second place ( talking world wide numbers here and has to be released in the west ) .

If you ve never played it WoW does offers a decent experiance .  So i would recomend it to the OP if hes looking for a new game . The game does nt suck but its also nowhere near as good as it used to be . The company that run it have brought in numerous changes that have made it a shadow of its former self and much of the community feel that was there in its first few years has gone . If i were you though if you want to give it a try i would certainly do the free trial first then wait for the Cataclysm expansion before buying it . Because people that have given up will proberbly return to it for that in the hope things have improved and you ll have a far more enjoyable time leveling than you will at present because its really difficult to get groups together for the mid level range quests . Oh and if you want to get anywhere in the pvp side of the game play the horde ( in europe ) because the alliance attracts a younger demographic and tends to lose just about everything .