Soo, this is how the rabid fanboys from AOC respond to a potential new customer to AOC. Instead of giving help or thoughtful insight to better help their AOC gaming experience, or even words of comfort, they instead decide to reinforce the mindset that the AOC community is the absolute worst in the current MMO community.
We dont have to worry about FC being the cause of the demise of AOC because these rabid fanboys are doing it for them instead.

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Originally posted by Ozmodan
You know you really should have read the last thread before writing this one. 
I mentioned in the last thread that the best live content I have seen in an MMO was the sages in UO.  You let the players do it, if something needs spawned or done outside of what a player can do the GM does it.   You would be amazed at some of the unique events these sages can come up with.  Players participate whether there is a reward or not, don't remember any reward given for any of the sage events I did, but they were sure fun. 
So this article is truely missing the player designer.  You are just wasting your time writing the article if you don't include them.

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Actually, unless i'm mistaken, SWG also does the player designed Events as well. There are numerous ingame tools that can be bought to facilitate these types of events so a GM is not really needed to spawn particular items or NPCs due to the large amount of purchasable Event items.
I think what Steve has focused on was more of a specific company team(LET) and the options that are available to them, in order to better serve the community.
However, your point of using ingame tools to run player run events is, IMHO, an excellent topic in which Steve might want to consider for his next article
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Nice read Steve. However, from what I am getting from this(and I may be WAY off base here) is that cookie-cutter Live Events, by way of new developer tools, may be the way of the future in MMO gaming. It will allow for an increase in Live Events, a decrease in personel from the LET, GM, and Devs, as well as a more structured and less chaotic Event, but at what cost? If all the LET member needs to do is "Copy and Paste" a list of preset commands such as "Run Event 32, Reward 4, and Monsters 6B" then where is the human interaction by the Event team? I do understand that, in theory, these tools will allow the devs to free up some personel from the menial tasks of organizing, setting up, and policing the activities during, as well as Pre and Post, the Event, thus allow more time available for the LET to directly interact with the playerbase. However, do you really think that it will happen like that? Will the game company simply see the streamlining of the Live Events as chance to do more with less? Instead of normally having a LET of 6 to 8 people, will they only use 3 or 4 people instead? Are we headed to an era of Quantity over Quality in the Live Event's arena? I surely hope not as some of my greatest memories of my past MMOs stemmed from my being involved in Live Events and rubbing elbows with the people from behind the scenes, the GM's and Devs of the game.

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Originally posted by crunchyblack

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Originally posted by Daedalus732

Avery, it's time to cut your losses and admit that AoC has failed on a magnitude just shy of Vanguard.
It's shocking to me that anyone not on Funcom's payroll would be defending a game whose major features are still broken more than a year after launch.

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Some of us arnt so anal about games.  Some of us missed launch, and are not holding year long grudges against a game.
Its a fun game, it surprised me, from what i heard about it.  Endgame has been a blast and im not lacking anything to do, theres a lot of stuff to do at endgame.  Epic equipment to get, crafting to skill, resources to gather, pvp levels, seiges, guild towns.
Seems like a lot of you guys are expecting everyone else to feel the same rage as you do about launch, eventhough a lot of what you hated about it has been resolved.

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Crunchyblack, you have to remember that over 900 thousand people paid $50-$100 per AOC box at Launch. These people were mislead as to the actual content of the game as well as it's playability. Personally, I dont care how much AOC has improved or how much it will improve in the future. Whenever a company knowingly lies to me or purposely misleads me in order for them to make a buck then I will cease doing business with that company.
Is there a way for FC to try to make ammends? In my case, the answer is no. There are too many MMOs on the market with much better game play and quite a few MMOs close to release for me to want to go back to a game that has a history of poorly run customer service, shady billing practices, misleading business practices, and a game which have more than it's fair share of bugs. The graphics themselves arent enough for me to return. I play MMOs for the playability of the game not for its pretty graphics.

Why do I keep voicing my opinion about how I feel about FC and AOC? Because that is my right. I have just as much right to tell people my views of the game as anyone else. I have the right to attempt to negativly effect AOC just as you have the right to positively effect AOC. What give's me that right? Well, besides the fact that I live in a country that has won those rights through the many, many sacrifices made by it's soldiers and citizens down through history, I have bought the rights to give my personal opinions of the game when I paid FC $50 for the game itself.
If I had never bought the game and if I had never played the game then I would keep my mouth shut about AOC.
For the 10% of the players(from the original 900K players) that are left playing AOC, I am generally happy that you are enjoying your time in the game. I hope that AOC doesnt close it's doors for many years. I dont like seeing MMOs close down. I was saddened when Tabula Rasa shut down, and I was saddened when Matrix Online shut down as well.
Will I ever stop giving negative perspectives of AOC or FC? Honestly, I doubt it unless FC refunds my $50 that I paid for the game at release.

Alot of MMOs out today are a combination of PvE and PvP. Instancing in a PvP atmosphere is pretty weak, as it limits the amount of players available to play against. So, the only acceptable means of instancing would be PvE.
So, when would PvE environment instancing be acceptable? In my opinion, the only time a game developer should consider using instancing would be to allow every player the opportunity to bypass dungeon congestion due to an over abundance of players in that particular area. Also, some games have Housing. I also like the ability to Instance a complete Housing district, where, in that Housing district each house is non-instanced)versus a non-instanced area where each house IS Instanced.
What areas shouldnt be instanced? Cities and the countryside, and if the game has Zones, these Zones do not need to be instanced. The last game that I played that was heavily instanced was AOC. It had zones which would have different instances created when the original zone reached a certain number of players. When I play a MMO, I want to see everyone who is in my area, not just a percentage of them. Flipping through zone instances is like flipping through the channels of my television. Any game that has zone instancing is a poorly developed game or they are using a poor game engine. A MMO shouldnt have to instance a complete zone kust to make it run smoother.

In my perfect MMO, I would like to see a mostly seamless world with some dungeon instancing. Actually, I like how Vanguard used "Shards" instead of Instancing.

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Originally posted by CyanSword
75% of that list was stuff that not even the devs promised, just stuff people wished would be there. That's not a flaw at their end that's just a personal 'would be nice' list...I could come up with one of those for almost every MMO I have ever played, even WoW.
They have added a ton of new content, fixed a lot of issues and added a lot of great new systems over the last year. They have done the main things people wanted fixed first, including completely re-writing their item and stats system included. Sure it isn't the 'next big thing' that is 'perfect' to everyone, but that game will never exist :p AoC certainly has beaten WAR hands down in post launch additions, and is about even with LOTRO I think (maybe a little behind). Sure, there are lots of things they still could add (like things on your list) but that doesn't mean they havent done a great job with a lot of additions up until now. It's just trolling to only point the stuff they havent done and ignore all the stuff they have done. There are things they havent done that annoy me for sure (like the polish fixes and visual glitches) but I'll mention those at the same time as acknowledging that the game is much improved.

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Yes, the game IS much improved from Launch. However, what that really means is that the game is currently in the state of development where it SHOULD have been at Launch.
It is no different than getting stabbed by a surgeon and then having that surgeon patch you up. Does it make getting stabbed by that surgeon any better just because he patched you up or is that surgeon still in deep shit for stabbing you in the first place?

The creator of a MMO has the responsibility and the duty to set up guidelines and boundries which all of the players need to adhere to. You simply cannot just turn people loose in a game and let them decide how they are going to interact in the community. What if the school system was run like you run AOC? Let the children come to school and act anyway they wish just because the majority of the children there accept it? By judging the way AOC run's it community, when the good kids in the school system have a problem with the disruptive children, the teachers should simply tell the good kids to ignore the disruptive children or just go home because this is the way that the school is run so the good children need to either adapt to the poor behavior or find a different school that is better suited for the good children. In MMOs, a good portion of players want to play the game without being picked on, harrassed, or griefed by disruptive players, just like some students want to go to school to learn without having to deal with disruptive behavior from poorly managed children.

Funcom.....you need to Man-Up and take charge of the community that you created. If the community is currently the way that you want it then that is fine but dont expect the majority of people to continue playing the game once they realize that disruptive behavior ingame is accepted by FC.

Being a penis-wrinkle in global chat in a game/server with open PvP is nothing new to MMOs. It has been going on ever since EQ1. However, I do not see much of that with team based PvP or racial PvP. It seems that structured PvP lures more of the mature crowd who dont talk smack as much as the open PvP crowd. On top of that, when a game has as much gore, butchery, and "boobies" as AOC has, you get the immature crowd subscribing in droves. The PvE crowd in AOC is quite a bit better than the PvP crowd but you still have some idiots in global chat even on those servers. Why? Cause there are still "boobies" on the PvE servers and the pervs who really get off to that stuff dont want to be ganked while they are zooming in on the hawt chick's bodacious tah-tahs.
If a person were to go to the Miss Universe pagent, they are expected to act a certain way or they would be expelled. If that same person went to a wet T-shirt pagent in Florida during spring break, I promise you that he would act completely different.

Adding RMT to a game that already has a set monthly fee used to be taboo, but it seems that more and more MMOs are heading towards this model. Is it a good thing? I think that it will eventually be a nice concept but no one has perfected a decent model yet. Wizard101 has a decent model with the low monthly sub + RMT for better gear and fluff items. DDO is also coming out with their new revamp of the game which seems to be the best model to date. The game is free to play but limited unless you subscribe to the standard monthly fee. With that monthly fee the player also gets a "Monthly Allowance" of RMT coins which the player can then use in the cash shop. However, as a free player, you still have the chance to increase your game content by getting rare drops ingame as well as completing quests. Give the genre another year or two and im betting that companies will tweak the system even more.
MMOs are ever evolving and this seems to be the next stage of MMO evolution.

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Originally posted by ULQQKED
I tried the game again and it was about the same as last year for me. I hit a snag when two players from an 80 guild decided to block the Old Tartanis bridge to Kemi with their mounts. I said I would report them and they said "the GM's don't care" after an hour I got a GM response that said "there are work around"s so we won't do anything." I am done with this game for the last time.

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Assuming that the OP isnt lying, he clearly states that the GM responded with "There are work around's so we won't help you".
That sentence is quite a bit longer than typing "Try Crouching", which would have made more sense as well as being faster to type.

The more this type of situation happens then the worse the game looks to the newer players. Ingame GMs are on the front line of customer service and if they dont care about helping new players then what kind of signals do you think that new players are getting about Funcom.

Very true. The "Miracle Patch" which was released a week or so before Launch actually made the game worse and barely playable. 6 months of beta testing AOC was interesting but at least I was able to run the game. That last beta patch totally FUBAR'ed the game and it is just recently getting back in shape.

Knowingly blocking a players path to prevent that player from enjoying game content is called Griefing. Since these 2 lvl 80 players were not attacking the newer player, indicates that they were not interested in any type of PvP but rather they just wanted to Grief newer players. You shouldnt need to use a "work-around" to deal with Griefers in an MMO. The GM's should have rectified the situation instead of givin these 2 Griefers the indication that what they were doing was ok.
Does the AOC mmo fail? I wouldnt know. Does the AOC community and GM support fail? It certainly is beginning to look like it does. The fact that the AOC players in this thread are making excuses for this poor behavior is a clear indication as to the quality of player that AOC seems to have playing the game.

Do you want entice new players to the game? Well then you might want to be more helpful and sympathic to these players and not act like it was their fault for not knowing all the little workarounds in the game.

It's no wonder that AOC has gone the way of Vanguard.

I can actually see the ingame healing performed by character skills(like First Aid) for minor wounds,usuable items(like injectable Health Repairing nanobots) for moderate wounds, and a medic-droid(for serious wounds) which can be called upon from the same pocket dimension where other MMOs store their mounts/pets.
Some classes most likely will have a different set of healing skills to call upon, like the Jedi using the Force for extra healing and maybe the smuggler for a variety of illegal healing drugs that have adverse effects.
I honestly dont see a specific class dedicated to healing though, not unless it is a playable droid which could fill many roles or a pet class that would let the player utilize a healer droid on multiple players.
Personally im betting on the multiple ways of self healing.

From what I read regarding the art style, Bioware wanted to have the game playable on computers other than the high-end, state of the art computers. The current art-style allows people who have mid range computers the opportunity to play the game without buying a new rig. Personally, the art-style doesnt bother me in the least.
Im pretty sure that Bioware doesnt want their game to be just another pretty niche MMO with good graphics(AOC and Vanguard) which only runs on high end computers but would prefer it to be a main stream title which the majority of MMO players can play with minimal problems.

Now, Bioware is known for it's excellence in story driven games, so I would rather have a company excels in a particular type of game platform to stay true to their strengths. Asking Bioware to develop a game with a style that they are not noted for is complete insanity.

Finally, I have beta tested ALOT of MMOs in the past and the one thing that I can say never changes is the fact the the game's end result is never the same thing that exits beta. What the dev's describe about the game today will more than likely go through some changes during testing. The only way to tell if you are going to like the gameplay is to play the game once it launches and not before.

Will SW:TOR may be total crap but it also may be awesome. I think I will wait until the game launches before I makeup my mind on whether or not the game is good or bad.

I havent played VG in about 8 months but I do have many fond memories from it. I have also played EQ2 and Lineage II as well and I can safely say that VG was a much more enjoyable experience than these other 2 games. Not only is Lineage II a typical asian mmo grind-fest but you also have to contend with the legions of gold farming botters, which if you try to adventure in their farming area they will call other botters in to keep PKing you until you leave. Yes, seamless world but not a fun world.
As to EQ2, it is an OK world but full of Zones and instances and you are also limited to where you can go in each zone as each zones has a fair amount of terrain barriers that gives you the feeling of being herded.
EQ2 and Lineage II never gave me the feel of being in a "Living World" where as VG did.
With VG's chunks I never had to wait longer than 1 or 2 secs between chunks so, for me, the game did seem pretty seamless. WOW isnt seamless in the least and their graphics are horrid(for my taste anyway) but I do understand that if they were any better then many of the current player's computers would be able to run that game.

With that said, VG is what it is, and that is a niche game with a small dedicated playerbase who seem to enjoy the game. Both are owned by SOE but VG has about 6 devs working on it and EQ2 has about 60+ devs on staff. If SOE were to give the 60+ devs to VG and leave only 6 devs on EQ2 then you would see major improvments to VG on a regular basis.

My personal view is that SOE's new top secret fantasy MMO will be ALOT like VG but perhaps with an EQ background.

a big chunk of that 30 gigs is graphic related and not actual playable content.

Looking at the above pices of EQ2 and VG, I would have to say that the VG graphics are far superior to EQ2 graphics.
Now that SOE owns VG, I would say that if they decide to make an EQIII MMO then they would mostly model it after VG and then add in some components from EQ1 and EQ2.
I would like to see a world similar to VG in which it is semi-seamless. VG has "Chunks" which, IMO, makes it not quite seamless. However, VG doesnt allow for instances and I think that in todays market, a few Instances are required.

When are the obsessed type fans of AOC finally going to understand that when they post misleading information like the OP generally does, that it is actually harming AOC's reputation more and more each time.
Honestly, 99% of the people who come to this website are people who are not MMO newbies and when they start reading threads that are essentially viral marketing, follow by additional posts by others players that contradict what the OP wrote, this throws up a red flag. Who in their right mind would want to buy a game that is surrounded by so much drama and stress? Who would want to pay a monthly fee for a game that has some obsessed players who are willing to misconstrue the facts about a game just to get more players in the game? The answer is no one.
Here is some advice, play the game that you like(AOC) and if you feel the need to post why YOU like the game and how YOU feel the game is doing, that is fine but do write crap like "AOC is the 3rd best selling MMO so everyone come play it". Most people are tired of reading that crap and IMO it is even more iritating than reading about the SWG vets constantly complaining about how SOE ruined that game.

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Originally posted by Drakkhen

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Originally posted by catsaad

well i have beta tested wow ,aoc ,warhammer online .none of the games had any restriction to play in beta . the only point i am making is if people in china and korea are playing the content upto lvl 60 and they allowed them to play the whole content even in beta of korea and china?? why not here?? what are they afraid of??if they wont test it .they would not know if there are performance issues and bugs .how will they correct it at launch?? will not the customers suffer who buy the game at launch .give a thought to my point with cool mind .and then tell me .i will agree with whatever argument you bring up next .

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Hmm ...
I beta tested both AoC and WAR and I seem to recall them capping at lvl 20. If I would have been able to get out of Tortage in beta I highly doubt I would have bought 2 CEs, 1 SE, 3 Zboard keysets, a new PC and several upgrades for 2 other PCs.
Huge difference here though is that AION has been released for some time in Korea, and has undergone all beta testing and even some updates.  So, by limiting us to the first 10 to 20 levels they are piling players into the same zones to make sure the servers can handle it. Also, they are working on translations which can take some time, as they not only need to translate but make it comprehensible to the western audience. In other words we are testing the localization as well as stressing the servers.

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I am not a big supporter of AOC in the least, however regarding AOC Beta, there was no restriction on levels at all for the full time closed beta testers. With that said, FC did open up a few weekends just like Aion is doing and that short term server was restricted to lvl 15 or so. FC knew that the game post-Tortage wasnt ready for release thus the lvl restriction for those people not in the full time closed beta.
As for Aion, its similar to AOC in that it is a pretty game but the actual depth of the content is nothing spectacular. Standard MMO but with added occasional flying option. The game is just a year old though so give it a few more years to become better tweaked and added content. IMO Aion is nothing new for the MMO market but it does utilize the tried-and-true platform that has been the base for all of the successful western style MMOs.

I have to agree with the general concensus here in saying that the OP was at fault. I am not a big fan of Funcom but when someone waits until the absolute last minute before cancelling their subscription, they get what they deserve. For the vast majority of MMOs out there, you are asked to cancel your subscription a minimum of 7 days prior to the monthly renewal date in order to be sure that you are not billed for an additional month.
To the OP, sorry that you got stuck with paying for another month of AOC but I hope the lesson is learned :(