A big problem they had was going 'free to play' and failing to directly mention that free players have incredibly limited access and that paid players can never be downgraded to free play. I got the game completely free and I had no desire to spend any money on the game after getting a taste of what the 'full' experience was actually like.

It's a mediocre game and they just went in with the wrong mindset. No one in their right mind would pay monthly for a game as simple and shallow as it really was.

This would be a fantastic trailer if they were making a saturday morning cartoon instead of a game. Entertaining and pretty, but for F***'s sake, would be fantastic if they spent all that time and money on the game instead of rendering this sort of thing.

Originally posted by Legato89

Eh, I think beta pretty much sums up the feel of the game and what you could expect. Since you got a copy for free you won't really lose anything for trying it out again. There are a bunch of topics on this board (which I started) and on the official board asking what the game is like once you get out of the tutorial. If you decide to try it out again and decide you don't like it, Id be more than willing to take the game off your hands :)

No no no no.... You never judge an MMO by it's beta!  That's such an ill-informed way of looking at the game. Countless patches, updates, tweaks, fixes, and add-ons go into every MMO every month. Playing the beta may be a nice way to get some free play in, but the changes that take place afterwords don't make it a fair metric. Especially if you were the GOOD kind of beta tester who reported glitches, balance issues, and suggestions. These things make a big difference.

I was watching this contest like a hawk.. Guess I'll just have to turn my attention towards the other give away... Or buy the game.

If any of the winners don't want their prizes, I'll gladly accept it in their stead.

Not to shoot down a good discussion, but there's really no debate on whether or not this is an MMO. From what the video showed, 4 player death-match combat is not massive. Multiplayer and online, sure, but it's not massive.

I'm a bit more insulted that they're claiming a game that seems to focus strictly on Arena fighting is a prequel to the deep and lengthy history of a series like Avatar, not that they're saying this browser based bullshit is a MMO.

I'm trying not to jump to too many conclusions and just start spouting off stupid comments about a game I haven't played yet, but being browser-based means the game will be limited, meaning the game will not be able to contain the immense and detailed world that the Avatar IP contains. The combat animations look stiff and unnatural and severely lacking in the martial arts background they created for each bending style... I mean, it's pretty clear that this won't be nearly as good as it could've been.

I love the series - no interest in browser games tho

Nothing to argue against there.

kotaku.com/5029183/nickelodeon-rolls-out-avatar-mmo

Just caught this article on Kotaku a little excited, but after reading deeper in my excitement quickly faded. There's even a video of the Beta version linked in the press release which just kind of made things worse.

The jist of the game appears to be an arena fighter where low quality characters models run and jumpa round and spam one of four attacks that they're allowed to choose from before starting a match. Frankly, it seems more like a weak marketing ploy from the idiots are Nickelodeon who think they can make things that actually appear to be games. I'm a fan of the Avatar tv show and I think that as far as making an MMO goes, Avatar has a ton of great source material that could make for an amazing game if it were put in the right hands.

The game is due out in September, and apparently, Nickelodeon wants to pad it's ratings by re-airing Season 3 of the show with tips and ticks from the games tossed in so there's an incentive to watch. I don't want to get into some anti-corporation tyrade, but this whole thing just bothers me and just goes to show you that Nickelodeon really doesn't know how to treat the best thing that's happened to them in years.

Thoughts? Opinions? Angry Rants?

I beta'd the game, and glitches aside, there wasn't much wrong with it, for what it is.

What it is, is an MMO for younger kids. All of the reading, and grinding and economic elements of some MMOs just aren't kid friendly, and besides, who wants to team with the hyper-active 12 year old who's going to get the whole group killed anyways?

My biggest problem with the game was balance, though. As you go up in level you are automatically given new missions. This stuff is usually for a little bit of gold, or a new weapon or something. Not bad rewards, but the problem is you'll be working on these missions for the next 10 levels to come because the objectives always, ALWAYS suck. You just hit level 2? Well, head to this level 20 island and hunt down 40 of these monstrously huge man-eating fly traps! You hit level 5 and want your voodoo doll? Awesome! Now travel to every island and get 10 random body parts from 40 random creatures! And guess what!? All of them are stronger than you!

That formula continues for a long time. Probably through the rest of the game's content.

I find it interesting that a lot of you have unintentionally taken this discussion in the direction of WoW's balance issue.

my 2 cents on the subject are as follows: If a game has multiple Classes/ Jobs/ Archetypes/ Etc and multiple ways to level and play said Class/ Job/ Archetype/ Etc then each play-style should be able to exploit its strengths over the weakness of another, and vice versa. In other words, there shouldn't be one kind of build that is instantaneously useless against another.

Sure, all classes level the same, but the healer isn't going to be able to solo and that means he has to spend all of his time begging for a group, or sitting in a PvP zone being semi-useful. Despite having something to do, that role blows donkey wang. Who wants to be the guy who is frantically watching over everyone else's asses? Of course, there's probably some rebuttal, like, "At level X you get the ultra uber-nuke spell." That's fine once you get to that level, but until then, you're stuck riding the slow-train to crap-town because every other class gets the readily useful abilities at different intervals.

I've been told time and time again that once you hit max level, or once you hit this certain level, playing the pain in the ass slow-grind class gets all the better, but if the entire play-style revolves around what you're finally going to get later, that means it's a massive design flaw with any game.

Issues of crutches and overpowering is often really an issue of other classes not measuring up at all times. Sure, once you get to a certain point, you may be able to respec yourself into an equally over-powered build but suddenly, you're limiting your playability. For instance, the concept of a PvP build, which means that your character is built for killing other players, and is thus strong in that way only. This means that the big drawback and weakness is that you're not so good for Soloing, or teaming, or raiding.. But that's retarded! That's not a weakness another player can actively exploit, that just means that, yet again, it's a massive design flaw and the game is thus un-fun.

I could probably bitch for a while about this..

Blizzard is certainly doing more with less, huh?

Nothing much in the ways of graphical updates, but everything is still colorful and appealing in some way... *shrug*

Originally posted by Sothorn

And this comes out winter 2008? or 07?

Winter 08. Blizzard just decided to announce it over the summer to whip people into a frenzy of grinding and fandom squealing over a year ahead of time.

Do these screenshots make anyone else's retinas sizzle?

(lol, magic tree nipples.)

I love this column. Every week is sends angry nerds into a frenzy of... Forum posting. HA!

Thing is, though, there's a very valid point here. Consider that we're currently living in an age where part of the populace thinks that videogames can be the next great art form, while others still see videogames as childish entertainment (hence the whole M-rated games controversy).

It's not a bad thing that the little kids get to try the whole online culture thing too, but there's a limit. There are certain developmental milestones a child needs to reach before the internet is an okay place for them to be interacting with other people. Obviously, countless people on the internet, and this site, never reached those milestones, which is why they rely on anonymity to be a complete douche-clown whenever possible.

Well, I'm excited now. The rumors of the Whitewolf MMO has been confirmed, so now we can all sit in trembling anticipation.

I can only hope they eventually use all 6 big venues, though Whitewolf will start with it's golden children, Werewolf and Vampire. In the following years of it's release I can see them release expansion packs for Mage, Promethean (not going to say that will actually work at all), and Changeling. The 6th venues is Mortals, of course, which someone mentioned, should be what your character starts as, no matter what you want to play.

It's going to be really interesting to see how they translate this into a MMO since the World of Darkness is devoid of monsters to grind on and dungeons to loot.. Well, maybe not entirely, but still, there's not going to be any mindless repetitive gameplay.

I loved the article, personally. What I love more is the discussion going on here. We've got people who are insisting this is just flame-bait meant to get everyone up in arms shouting, "RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!" (South Park Style)

Likewise, we've got people who insist they've heard this a million times and replied with snarky commentary about how the author should make his own MMO instead of whining. Lemme just point out how retarded you are for thinking that's a superior counter-argument to a f***ing editorial. This site is dedicated to information about MMORPGs and the industry around them, making a few suggestions and pointing out the flaws is part of the Journalists' job here.

Oh, then we've got the insecure MMO players who suddenly feel a need to justify the countless hours they've spent on a game. Nice try, but seriously, it's escapism, if it makes you happy or if it made you forget the troubles tomorrow may bring then it's not a bad thing, even if it's a subpar game.

Everyone else who agreed, well, you should have. It's not sacreligious to dare ask for a better game or even think of the possibilities that could be. All games have flaws, both in gameplay mechanics and community player-interaction, so don't feel like you've become some sort of untouchable for saying, "Hey, the quest system for WoW sucks. They could do so much more with it."

With CoX's decision to do 3 issues a year we'll be seeing more and more customization appearing. This is one of those things that would've been cool as hell from the start, but I much rather like how they've built up to this. Each free issue builds a little more and makes it a bigger game as it continues.

As always, though, more powersets, more costume pieces, and more areas. More variety will make CoX, which is already very good, even better.

This has some people excited, and I suppose those people also have Lvl 70 characters they've been PvPing with for months now since there's nothing else to do on WoW after you hit 70... Unless you want to attempt to organize the terrible community into a Raid group or something.

However! I still find it hilarious that Blizzard's idea of Character-Customization is... More dances. Yes, I can imagine it now. "Now you can grind you way through the ranks and become the greatest dancer in all of Azeroth with WoW's unique dancing talent tree!"

Ready the popcorn, because this one is going to be hilarious to watch.

One a serious note, though... Blizzard keeps raising the level cap, which means more l00t and gold, which means more Korean and Chinese gold farmers. I don't think they're considering how they can make the play experience better, I think they're just looking for another 3.5 million accounts to pop up so they can boast how popular their game is and in turn, rake in more money.

They've forsaken the millions of lvl 1 characters and pushed the entirety of the worthwhile gameplay to the VERY end, meaning you either sign your soul away for a year to make it worth while, or you just don't play.

That's a very colorful reply there, Cupertino.
However, taking your own post into context, you cut out at least 5 million from China alone.. A bit large, but whatever. That leaves 4 million or so players between the US and the UK/EU regions. Now, none of these numbers are anything unimpressive. It's a world record and a precedent for an online game to garner that much popularity and following, but the interest is rapidly waning.

Sorry if this insults you, but it's kind of like myspace. It's an internet trend that suddenly caught on to every variety of person with internet access and exploded into a massive business upon itself. For a while, all people would talk about is myspace, and how much they use myspace, and how great it is. Eventually, the hype died down though, and it went into it's regular cycles.

Speaking in a business sense, it's summer time. Of course subscriptions will jump up. But, come school time, I can almost guarantee that active subscriptions, by Blizzard's definitions, will plummet again. Now, factor in the whole gold farming crisis. Say Blizzard finally makes a stand on this, and there is legal action. That cuts back a huge chunk of bot accounts, duplicate accounts, and all of the other exploits that surround WoW.

WoW gained popularity, which led to exploitability, which turn, leads to their continued success, as far as the sheer number of subscriptions go.

Now, no one has condemned you for playing, but what I feel a lot of people here are getting at is that Blizzard's success with WoW is mired in a lot of digital sludge, as it were. Good for you if you enjoy the game and all of that, but 9 million subscriptions isn't your accomplishment. We're not going to celebrate something that is potentially rotten to the core.

I'd say the amazing thing here is that people are still subscribing and giving into the hype put out by their 1 WoW addicted friend. I know everyone has that one guy who got them into the game by never shutting up about it and always saying just how awesome it was over and over again.

Then you actually played the game, and it was alright at first... And then you finally realized about a month or two later, "Hey.. this game kind of blows."

The community is shit unless you're in a big guild. Raids never happen unless they're scheduled. Everyone is doing the same thing they do with every blizzard game by looking for that repetitive strategy to spam for every fight. You could go on for a while why WoW is just not as great as the "9 million" people would make you think.

And, as we've seen in previous posts here, Blizzard defines subscribers as anyone who creates an account, more or less. Admittedly, that's a big number, and it's nothing to scoff at. However, of that 9million, how many of those accounts actually have level 70 characters? How many even got to level 30 before quitting? If you trim back all the players that aren't hardcore addicts or gold farmers, you're just left with that one hardcore fanbase that every MMO usually has. No matter what you tell them or how much you try to justify the suck of their game they always have some explaination about how you didn't play long enough for the game to be fun (serious wtf right there) or how you've never done some of the games poorly organized giant events.