Well, the good news for Rift is that they still have high pop servers (I think only one in NA and like 3 in EU), but the bad news is they have veteran rewards. 

Originally posted by Judasace

Good luck with that. Corporations own the government. They can take what they want, when they want, and when they mess up, it's our job as citizens to bail them out. If the courts and our "representatives" aren't going to hold them accountable for destroying the economy and defrauding people out of billions, I don't think they give a $#!7 about your virtual sword.

Lobbyists own the government. Most gaming companies don't have those...

Originally posted by elocke

Originally posted by Eyrothath

Originally posted by ErifNevow

I beilive that they complain because of the fact that it was "dumbed down" so to speak. From what I understand, WoW was not always like this.

 

Also, in regards to leveling: I believe that leveling is part of the MMO, and should in fact be challenging. I think that early leveling should be larning your class, and late leveling being utilizing your class, mastering it I should say. But that's just me.

Not necessarily.. LEVELING can be a root of all evil in MMORPG's, character progession is fine but leveling and classes in a MMORPG from level 0-90 or w/e, has been shown to take away much player driven content in a MMORPG..  EVE is an example of what to do in terms of character progression..

I completely disagree with that.  EVE's style of logging in picking a skill to learn and then waiting days to months or longer....really?  sounds like it's a side note and no true character progression is happening except passage of time.  If that type of system is in conjuction with a "skill up" system then it wouldn't be so bad, but...in EVE, it's not.  For example, in EVE, say you put a skill in the queue to learn how to fly the next type of ship.  Ok that makes sense.  However, while waiting on that, you should be rewarded for whatever you are doing in the meantime.  Say mining.  You should get skillups in mining while you mine.  Or skillups in space combat if you are fighting pve/pvp enemies.  But that's about EVE and a whole other discussion.

EVE doesn't limit how you play, but just what marginal increases you should get. If you had never mined in your life, yeah it's going to take a month or so to get a nice ship and nice yield. However, the skills that take forever are V skills. Getting a givens kill I-IV doesn't take long at all, and it's really a gross exaggeration to say all skills take "days or months". 

An example I can give you, as an industrial hauler you can get Minamatar Mammoth in less than a week which can effectively haul over 25km3 or just nearly a jetcan. However, the next best hauler is the Iteron Mark V which takes a whole other set of skills, but that takes a month or more to get to. Depending on how serious of the endeaver determines which skills you go after.

EVE has the best character progression in my opinion, because it relies on good management of your skills and knowledge of the game, instead of the game holding your hand and just giving you the skills by slaying goblins. On the part about "leveling mining by mining".. I mean, EVE is actually better in that regard. You don't have to sit around mining Veldspar to get to Scordite, and so on and so forth. If you get Mining II that's an additional 5% yield on ANY ore you mine. In WoW, if you get Artisan Mining, it just lets you mine Thorium and Truesilver...

Originally posted by wojtekpl

Originally posted by luro16

This idea that GW2 is going to save mmos, or do as well as wow is silly fanboy muttering.

GW2 will in no way cvompete with wow or TOR, it will not have as much content, as frequent updates, as much advertising, because it doesn't draw in as much money because it doesn't have a sub fee AND it isn't being put out by EA or Activision.

It doesn't matter if it is a better game, it doesn't matter if you come too mmorpg and tell people it's better, it doesn't have Star Wars in it's name, it doesn't have EA pushing it with the stated intention of competiting with WoW, it will do nothing for the genre as a whole.

And feel free to tell me how wrong i am, i will simply wait until it comes out and sells the same as Rift, and then drops off into a niche game.

 

1) GW2 does not compete with WoW or TOR but WoW and TOR compete with GW2. IF you don't know it maybe you should go to school. Many people have limited ammount of time and they will probably pick only one game even if they can afford 2. So in case when they choose GW2 TOR and WoW loses potential client, whereas GW2 only needs to sell game to be successful.

2) Activision didn't put out WoW. It is entirely done by Blizzard without any interference from Activision. You are clueless.

3) Many people don't like Star Wars, i will pick GW2 universum any day of the week over Star Wars. Also EA is generally seen as "Crap" so that isn't an argument. On the other side GW2 is being published by NCSoft but you are too ignorant to even know what that is. Also ArenaNet is was made by 3 blizzard people where 1 - Jeff Strain - was lead programmer for WoW. Again, you are clueless.

4) Yes, you are wrong, so wrong that you cannot even imagine it. For the sake of saving your face you should really stop posting silly posts without any knowledge.

Activision and Blizzard -merged-. You think Activision had nothing to do with the past two expansions..?

After playing a single-player game with a linear story-mode and a non-changing world I would disagree. Wait, what?

Originally posted by akiraclass

My 5 cents worth....

As a 6 year veteran of EVE, with 3 accounts, i can safely say the direction Incarna has taken the game does worry me....  However, at this moment it dosent impact on my gameplay.  (I dont need a monocle, im just to sexy)...  But, i thnk if further expansions branch off into pay for win areas then thats me done, all accounts will be closed....

 

And that will be a sad day

 

Incarna has introduced some flair, but nothing more. I don't think CCP is going to radically change the game to pay to win, because frankly, they will lose too many accounts that way. I am not worried, at all.

Originally posted by katasteel

Originally posted by luciusETRUR

Originally posted by katasteel

Good luck pirating it now, since you need to be logged into the bnet servers to play.

Just like you need to be logged into Steam to install Steam-exclusive games, right? Ignorance.

 lol, the character data is stored on the server (like an mmo) unlike steam.

Good luck though!

Alright, if you want to think it won't happen, that's cool. I don't really care, either way. I have no intentions of playing the game, but if that IS the case.. Blizzard is making a big mistake.

Originally posted by UrzaElent

Originally posted by darlok6666

Originally posted by heerobya

Anyone upset over having to play online needs to grow up and get with the times.

It's not some crazy effort to make higher profits, it's a reasonable effort to prevent revenue loss due to piracy.

Different sides of the same coin, I know, but pay for your games - better services, better products.

 

Not allowing mods? Well, this is hit or miss IMO. While an active mod community can be a huge boost to the popularity of a game, it can and does contribute to cheating and hacking.

From a design perspective, mods both added a lot to WoW and completely ruined WoW at the same time.

Gearscore/Deadly Boss Mods/DPS meters completely changed the game for the worse. Even something like Quest Helper (which was eventually rolled into the official UI like many other popular mods) also completely killed off any sense of exploration and adventure.

You pay for convenience... the price is the destruction of the "world" feeling and accentuation of the "min/max" "power level" mentality that ruins the social and community based fun/interaction.

 

As for the real life transactions... well, if people are going to illegally sell their virtual goods for real world cash, which they will without a doubt, might as well legalize and control it so transactions are secure, safe, and contribute to the over-all health and prosperity of the game.

People who would "pay to win" buying virtual goods from illegal third parties are doing NOTHING to help the game as a whole or the community, just helping themselves at the expense of the player base and studio.

It makes sense.

 

Take off the blood-red tinted glasses, think about this stuff in a realistic and logical fashion, and it makes sense.

 Obviously someone who never understood the power of mod builder creativity.  Take a look at the NWN copmmunity.  D3 is a single player campaign that is suppose to be moddified by the players if they want, especially since the best content comes from players.  And really... who gives a rat's ass if some dweeb is pathetic enough to waste real cash on comp codes?  It's their money and if they want to throw a million dollars into the river then by law they have that right.

Well back to the OP, well this was a kick in the nuts.  Was drooling over D3 but after this fiasco... fuck this shit.  Blizz keeps on doing grievous error after error after error.  I'm fed up with em now, might not even buy the continuations of SC2 now because of this. I am done with WoW, been done, but was patiently waiting on D3 and continuations of SC2 but after this I'm through with Blizzard.  Was gonna try out titan but after this... doubt it.  Blizzard has truely become that loathsome, self serving, money grubbing corperation now in my eyes.

Nice job Blizz on losing revenue as I can only see people be persuaded NOT to buy your product instead of buying it.

 I just love post like this. Well bro, you have the freedom to choose/ not choose to play any game you wish. Just sad/funny how some people think their rants matter. For every Blizz hating poster on these forums that say they are done with Blizz, there is gonna be millions waiting to buy their games. Why? Cause they have some of the most well polished games in the world. Pretty sure Blizz can survive a few thousand forum posters not buying their games when there will be millions waiting in line to. As for "Blizz keeps on doing grievous error after error after error" remark, lol. For a company that has broken sales records with just about every game they have released in what, the past decade, and makes more money than probably any of us will ever see, well, I wish my mistakes were that fruitful to say the least.

Who cares how much money they make or I make? Sales don't exactly mean the best game ever. Civilization probably sells more copies than Europa Universalis III, does that make it a better title? Blizzard was a different company pre-2006,  and if you want to say they are the same company pre-merger than you are nothing more than blinded by faith.

Originally posted by katasteel

Good luck pirating it now, since you need to be logged into the bnet servers to play.

Just like you need to be logged into Steam to install Steam-exclusive games, right? Ignorance.

Originally posted by heerobya

Anyone upset over having to play online needs to grow up and get with the times.

It's not some crazy effort to make higher profits, it's a reasonable effort to prevent revenue loss due to piracy.

Different sides of the same coin, I know, but pay for your games - better services, better products.

 

Not allowing mods? Well, this is hit or miss IMO. While an active mod community can be a huge boost to the popularity of a game, it can and does contribute to cheating and hacking.

From a design perspective, mods both added a lot to WoW and completely ruined WoW at the same time.

Gearscore/Deadly Boss Mods/DPS meters completely changed the game for the worse. Even something like Quest Helper (which was eventually rolled into the official UI like many other popular mods) also completely killed off any sense of exploration and adventure.

You pay for convenience... the price is the destruction of the "world" feeling and accentuation of the "min/max" "power level" mentality that ruins the social and community based fun/interaction.

 

As for the real life transactions... well, if people are going to illegally sell their virtual goods for real world cash, which they will without a doubt, might as well legalize and control it so transactions are secure, safe, and contribute to the over-all health and prosperity of the game.

People who would "pay to win" buying virtual goods from illegal third parties are doing NOTHING to help the game as a whole or the community, just helping themselves at the expense of the player base and studio.

It makes sense.

 

Take off the blood-red tinted glasses, think about this stuff in a realistic and logical fashion, and it makes sense.

Really? Piracy? Piracy is NOT an issue. Every time DRM gets put into a game pirates get around it, and the losers are those who pay for the game. You think they can't make it so you can make single-player games on a pirated copy? You got another thing coming.

Companies really don't lose a whole lot of money from piracy either, most pirates wouldn't bother buying the game if a pirated version wasn't available and for smaller companies (so obv. not Blizzard) benefit from piracy. I know for a fact, I would have never played a Paradox Interactive title if it wasn't for piracy. Thanks to piracy, I took some of their games for a test run and have bought plenty of their games.

Mods are fantastic to a game that is supposedly a single-player game with lobby-based multiplayer. Blizzard doesn't want D3 to be that, but that's what made Diablo so popular. It's a shame really, because they aren't Blizzard anymore, just use the name.

Torchlight 2 will be better, I am almost certain of that.

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

Originally posted by Palebane

Originally posted by czekoskwigel
Longevity is definitely a big concern of mine. With no sub fee, how much work will they be putting in to new content? Will we just have mini-expansions to purchase every few months to make up for it?

 Team Fortress 2. Buy to play (now free to play) multiplayer game, constant updates for years. It really depends on the developers and the support of the players, in my opinion.

 

The updates to TF2 are absolutely miniscule in comparison to what an update for an MMORPG would need to be in order to keep things alive. How many paid expansions has GW1 had? Could be a good indicate of what is in store for us.

Actually.. Guild Wars has 3 stand-alone games and an expansion to Prophecies (classic Guild Wars). So.. they had one.

Originally posted by Eikorn

I tried AoC, but it did not feel "right", in any way.So i skipped it just after the tutorial.

I also tried GW - but that game cannot get me hooked either for some reason.

Rift and WoW are still the best MMORPGS that I have played, and that by far. Too bad both of them are focused on raiding..

Aion is a raid game also, no?

Best polished games, maybe.. that doesn't neccesarily make them the best MMOGs.

Originally posted by toodlepip123

Originally posted by Asgrim

Try Darkfall. No raids and you can just about always find a good fight. The game isn't too focused on equipment, but player skill is important!

But its an abysmal game. Theyre even wiping every single thing any character has ever done. Rendering any time youve spent playing it, null and void.   Think, would you like to be associated with a developer that releases a broken and buggy game, charges you more than any other developer for the intial game and sub, when the game is no more than a paid alpha test.

Uhhhh... wait, where do you read that? They never said that they were 100% wiping, they said it's in discussions and it might happen, but no where have they said it WILL happen. Misinformation is the worst evil of forums.

The whole casual argument can be annoying. I like the way EVE and Darkfall are setup, whereas it'll take longer to be viable as a casual player, but it will happen if you put in the time and the game is fun. I'm not casual and I don't pretend to be, but you can be. It's up to your mind-frame.. and nothing more.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Mass Effect is one of my favorite games, I absolutely love it but as a sandbox it just doesn't have the same appeal. It's like getting rid of free roam in GTA or Red dead redemption and making it fully linear, your taking away the best part.

Uh... that's like taking the movies out of Star Wars.. revise your statements.

F2P has taken over because of how saturated the market is with new players that weren't here seven years ago, and the sheer amount of MMOGs that exist now. It's the only two factors that are really relevant.

Originally posted by artemisentr4

Originally posted by yodablaze

I think I've played ALL of Bioware's games (Jade Empire is also a title that went unrecognized and deserves a sequel).

Bioware does an amazing job with telling stories and also at game design as well.

I don't want to sound like a stinker but here it is...

Story isn't EVERYTHING. It will help the game a lot but a true RPG experience is in the freedom of experience and experimentation. Some of the best aspects of role playing is telling or creating the story yourself. True brilliance is providing the player with enough tools in their world (sandbox) to allow players to shape their unique experience. The story of course helps the content and experience move along, but relying on story to make this title a win spells epic  F-A-I-L. Tor will need more than story to make this game a win so don't bet on story alone.

 But that is from a sandbox players perspective. So yes, in the eyes of a sandbox player, the game may fail.

 

From my perspective, it is a different story. I could not play EVE more than about 2 hours without being board out of my mind. Darkfall was fun for a month or so with the FPS style and PvP, but political crap and building cities is meaingless to me in a game. Player stories are more of I sold X to Y to help Z. Or we zerged guild X, that was so cool. Or I havested for 2 hours and lost everything from a ganker. I hate that type of game play with a passion. It is 100% meaningless to me as a way to play a game.

 

I don't think sandbox games shouldn't exist. It is great for those who like that type of play. I would like to see some sandbox features in TOR as options, or any themepark really. Plenty of social areas for RP. A lot of exploration with reasons for it attached to what you find. Or a PvP planet with bases that can be controlled and are persistant on each server. Or player controlled areas in space for space battles. Actual crafting where items can be on par with everything else in the game to create an economy.

 

But player story only gameplay would keep someone like me from even looking at the game. So I for one am happy as hell to have a BW RPG based on story in a MMO where I can play with other like minded gamers. A story with choice attached to every dialogue sequense that effects my own personal story and others in multi-player dialogue.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you meant to quote me. So Here we go:

EVE is definitely a boring game when you first get started, and that's the biggest drawback it has. It really takes a couple months to get your feet on the ground before it becomes any fun, at all. You need to find a good corporation to help you out or you're just going to quit, because it isn't fun at all.

Darkfall has it's own problems (mostly, the size of the dev team) and you come up with such fantastic things as "I lose stuff I harvested for hours", well that actually is your own problem. In games with full loot.. typically you have a bank that's at least localized, and there are options either to "haul" or you just run back to bank. If you decide it's not worth making the way back, that's the risk you take. There are ways to prevent losing hours of harvestable goods. That's a lesson not just with gathering but the entire game in general.

Building cities and politics is meaningless? It brings out some of the most fun, I love listening to stories of EU launch of Darkfall or my friends who PvP in nullsec.. they do make stories. It is great fun and it adds to the gameplay. Of course, it isn't for everyone that's why themeparks exist. However, you're arguments that they are "boring" or "harsh" are trivial and these games aren't meant to be soloed so don't expect companies to cater to solo play.

Originally posted by zeroTonin

The story is one of the reasons why I look forward to trying this game, in alot of other mmo's the grind to end-game became tiresome and boring and more of a race to hit cap than anything. Actually being able to enjoy the road to cap would be nice, wether Bioware pulled this off in SWTOR, thinking of the multiplayer aspect and so forth is yet to be seen.

You think SW:TOR isn't going to be a rush to endgame? In every MMO you can take your time, no one is forcing you. I met a guy on WoW, and this was in Cataclysm.. that had been playing since classic and had no idea what a raid was and all he did was roleplay/explore and do quests. He just really enjoyed the game, the story, the lore, etc.

SW:TOR is going to be an endgame-first game. The question is, is the endgame linear? I think we all know the answer.

Story-driven content is nice and dandy but it leaves the playerbase to be somewhat like spectators. I like player-driven stories.. the ones you see in EVE, Darkfall, old SWG, etc. Story-driven isn't new, it's just BioWare's fortee in their previous titles. To me at least, MMOs are meant to be worlds you take part in, that you yourself change. That the players are something more than just pawns of the developers, but are themselves pioneers of a new world.

To each their own, but multiplayer RPGs are not what I am after. I am for MMOGs..

Originally posted by Castillle

Originally posted by luciusETRUR

Interesting idea, but I would never play an MMO with no character progression. I wouldn't feel like it was MY character. I don't play to just raid or PvP or whatever. I play to immerse myself in a world as character.

Exactly! Thas why I thoughted about removing character progression! So that people can get in the game, finish the tutorials, then know everything they can possibly do n be able to do them n stuff!   Or would you think having like...set ranks of progression be better but only giving extremely little bonuses n stuff? 

 

For me, I like to always be progressing. I don't like the idea of level caps, so if I were to remove level caps and have no progression. Wouldn't that just be like Counter-Strike with dungeons?