All Posts by Recant

While you're twisting my words into the bleakest cynicism possible, why don't we just lump everything into to just "PvP and PvE"?   There!  Now you can only PvP or PvE in WoW and THATS IT!!1   While we're at it, lets just categorize everything into "gameplay".   Yeah!  That'll stick it to the man.  While we're doing that, lets categorize all computer games into...

Ahem.  Ridiculous isn't it?

You can arbitrarily categorize things that are different to suit your bitter criticisms of WoW, but that does not change the fact that the game offers the player lots of different things to do at level 70.  Lets look at your woefully inadequate arguments though, just for fun:

If you don't have time to join even a casual raiding guild, then you should not be playing MMORPGs.  There are literally thousands of raiding guilds that raid just on the weekend, for example.  There are some that raid every day, and there are some that raid every other day.

Failing to find a guild or lead a guild that meets your schedule is fault on the players part.

I'll skip over hilarious attempt at "grouping" everything into PvP, because I've already pointed out how ludicrous this sentiment is. 

"More instancing".   Yeah, done one dungeon, done em all.. right?   What level did you get to again?

Faction grinding?  Just like level grinding, and wealth grinding, and ranking grinding.  Grinding is a word that people who are unable to articulate themselves properly use to condemn a part of a game mechanic without realizing that every single game on the planet features repetition.

While faction grinding features repetition I challenge you to mention a game where the faction elements of that game has more diversity than WoW has to offer.  When you're grinding faction in WoW you're also doing many interesting quests such as flying mount races, bombing runs, daily quests and dungeons etc.

Maxing tradeskills before 70 is not the norm, not at all, particularly for the more expensive tradeskills.  Perhaps if this is your 2nd or 3rd character on the server, you can afford to do so.

You're obviously not going to be able to lead a guild if you cannot set a schedule for yourself.

Your arguments present no suitable counter-arguments, not even anectodal evidence to why WoW offers players less to do at the end game than other games.  Your post therefore only serves as a diatribe about why you apparrently dislike WoW but are unable to give any reasonable explanation as to why. 

At best you are just a troll, and at worst... well, I wouldn't attempt to persue a career where debating is a key skill.   Mind you, politics might be an option :p  (my turn to be cynical!)

There's plenty of things to do at 70:

1)  Join a raiding guild and progress through the end-game storyline.

2)  Arena PvP ladder.

3)  Daily PvE solo quests.

4)  Daily PvP Battleground.

5)  Daily PvP World PvP objective quests.

6)  Daily normal instances until you progress to the daily heroic instances.

7)  Attain good faction with one of two factions that give you a Netherdrake mount or the Wryrm thingy, I forget what it's called.

8)  Max out tradeskills.

9)  Lead your own guild.

10)  Meet other people, make friends, help them out.

11)  Farm tradeskill items for profit.

12)  Max out Scryers or Aldor faction - each faction provides quests and various ways to do this.

13)  Do all four battlegrounds for the PvP rewards.

14)  Duel outside the cities.

15)  Use your imagination,  I just reeled these off the top of my head.   There's no shortage of things to do at level 70 in WoW, only a shortage of imagination or initiative to go and find out what's actually out there.

If you've done all of that, then you've been playing games for too long to be considered healthy, and you should probably find some friends in real life.  That's not meant to be an insult, but proper advice, because attaining all of those things in WoW takes significant time and I've never met any character that has done them all yet maintains some kind of a real life.

The trap people fall into is that they assume because WoW is accessible and well designed, that you don't have to put any kind of thought or energy into maximizing the games enjoyment.  People from EvE will tell you that YOU have to make the game what it is, you have to join a decent corp, you have to make use of the sandbox.   People say the same about Everquest.

The mistake people make is that they don't think that WoW is a sandbox.  It is every bit a sandbox as those other MMORPGs, you're not forced to do anything, you're just given more toys.   Would removing all of the faction objectives, rewards, and stuff like that make things more sandboxy for those guys?  Yes it would, but that is precisely the reason why WoW is reviewed better than those games, and a great contributor to it's success.

Finally, if you are not enjoying the game at 70, then perhaps you picked a class that you simply do not enjoy - as much as you would find another class.  The key to enjoying the end game for long periods in WoW is having the class that fits your playstyle the best.   The difference between a hunter and priest at end game is absolutely massive, for example.  Your roles change, how people depend on your changes, the type of thing you do in groups changes, and obviously, you need to pick a spec to match your playstyle too.

EQ2 offers similar kind of 'cheating' with it's EQ2Map UI mod, in fact you can download maps and quick levelling guides for most MMORPGs out there today.  Saying it's "kiddy friendly" for that reason is a little weak, but I suppose playing PC games a primarily a kids activity right?  Bzzzt... wrong answer.   :p

This might be stating the obvious, but the higher population PvP realms have the most active world PvP.  I'm on a PvE realm at the moment to play with some friends, but I do have characters on PvP realms, particularly Burning Steppes EU (you didn't mention which region you play).  I don't think BS was the most active realm but I don't have any complaints.

Also you need to take into account the Alliance to Horde ratio, because this will affect how often you will meet opponents.  There are various sites around the net which try to monitor realm populations so a quick google search will help you here.  I prefer to play Horde because we're usually outnumbered, but that depends on the realm you choose and what you like.

While levelling you will frequently meet the opposite faction and this is where most people get annoyed with WoW PvP because they get attacked while they are levelling.  This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in PvP in games like EQ / Vanguard etc, so I really don't see this as a bad thing.  The fun part is about getting revenge or ganging up on gankers to force them away.  If people are upset about getting attacked while trying to complete a quest, they should not be on a PvP realm.

The most fun aspects of World PvP are when you hit level 70.  You will need primals at level 70, and due to their cost, you're going to need to farm them.  The elemental farming grounds are frequent hot-spots for PvP action, but it's very random.  Sometimes Alliance will control an entire area, like the fire elemental place in high up in the moutains in Nagrand, other times it will be horde.

Sometimes Alliance and Horde will even cooperate to farm primals, but this truce usually doesn't last very long when someone else comes along and disrupts the balance.  Someone like me :P

To me this is the most enticing aspects about a PvP server, as farming shouldn't just be a guarranteed thing, there should be an element of risk.  And while there are no permanent penalties for getting killed in world PvP, you lose time, and chances are you're not too happy about being defeated.

More fun at 70 in World PvP is capturing the Outland PvP objectives.  Outland is very, very active at the moment and the PvP areas in Terrokar forest give a lot of players benefits.  Every 6 hours the spirit towers in Terrokkar become capturable, the winning side then becomes the only faction that wins spirit shards from the dungeon bosses, as well as a 5% damage buff, I think.

Fighting in Hellfire grants you marks which you can turn in for PvP gems.   There's a similar mechanic for Halaa in Nagrand - though you usually have to organize help for this, because people tend to hit this area very fast in groups, leading to some very funny fights. 

For those who say world PvP is pointless, I would argue that playing games in general is pointless.  The rewards come from playing the game itself.  And while not everyone's cup of tea, simply Google some WoW PvP videos from the areas I mentioned and I think you'll find that more than enough people are enjoying WoW's world PvP for what it is.

How can you miss the boats, when the boats don't even work now :P  Just Gnome Translocators because they don't have programmers clever enough to fix them.

I've not played EQ for years.  I used to feel like I was falling behind if I hadn't logged on for a couple of days, I can't imagine how detatched from the rest of the players I would be now.   Still, I've got some spare time, I might give the old girl a-good-seeing-to for old times sake. 

Firiona's breasts must be starting to sag a bit now.

At risk at being labelled as a WoW fanboy....  (Over ten million subs btw!!) , I think you should change your WoW fanboy / Hater category to a more generic hater/fanboy category, because there are certainly a fair amount of each for all games, particularly EvE / AoC / WAR / AoC etc, who are as passionate about their games as WoW 'fanboys' are.  This could even be considered a slight against WoW players, since you've singled us out.

But I won't hold it against you :p

I'm playing AoC now but will probably be done with it long before WOTLK hits the stores.  My opinion may change if Battlekeeps and City building turn out to be what I dare to hope they could be.  The heavily-instanced nature of AoC is probably the biggest downfall of what otherwise is a pretty good game.

I would have to say the art direction in this game is beyond a doubt, the best we've seen for a long time.  I've long thought that having realistic graphics in a game makes it feel too plastic, too vapid - too much like the game devs were trying too hard to be technically clever instead of artistically adept. 

AoC manages to combine realism with art,  and the result feels aesthetically pleasing and a pleasure to be in.  It's has some of the most immersive locales for any RPG to date.  Now I hate the instancing, but ignoring that, the sound and visuals of this game are perhaps truly 'next gen'.

Originally posted by morpin

Originally posted by Raltar

 

Originally posted by Recant

 If I were Conan I'd order this game destroyed.   5 years they took to build this... it's Vanguard 2.0... only instead of anything resembling progress, gone is the seamless world, replaced with arbitrary instances and piss-poor game design.

Failed.

I'm gald to see that atleast a few other people feel the same way I do about this game.

 

I played in the closed beta and saw even then that the basic premise behind this game was flawed. The highly vaunted combat system seemed boring to me, leveling was tedious and the supposedly great storyline and NPC interaction didn't impress me either.

I tried to warn people about the game but everyone just accused me of being an AoC hater and quoted stuff off the AoC website about how awsome the game was going to be. Pffft. Morons. I hope they enjoy their crappy Vanguard clone.

Not a Vanguard clone. Vanguard has no instances.

I was wrong to compare it to Vanguard, although the visual style in some places is very similar - both use speedtree - making the trees look almost identical in both games - both have a certain sharpness about their graphics.  I would have to say though, that what AoC loses in instancing, it makes up for in art direction - it cannot be faulted, it's a very beautiful game.

Originally posted by WiccanCircle

 

Originally posted by Skeeterxi

WiccanCircle no offense but I don't think you have a damn clue what the hell people are talking about when they say instance. If your playing aoc no matter what zone your in, you are in an instance. Each zone spawns a copy of itself after it reaches a player limit, so saying you havn't instanced since whenever is false, no matter where you are at you are instance, Instance does not = load screen. For example if your in totrtage you can click the triangle and click select instance a list would pop up w/ tortage 1 2 3 4 alpha, blah blah list. Most people don't mind zones, the fact every zone spawns tons of copies of itself and you can port tortage 1 to tortage 30 is ridiculous, its like this for every zone, and breaks immersion for people. If I'm getting ganked and harassed by someone on pvp server, np I will just port to the alternate dimension #15 and prob never see that player again, problem solved. Jesus christ how can people not understand this.

Duh.  I have a complete understanding of the difference between a zone and an instance.  But the attacks are carefully using these two words interchangeably to discredit this game.  People that have not played this are thinking it is something that it is not.

 

And since people here and on other boards are using the two interchangeably in order to attack the game.  So will I in order to defend it.  Anyone at all that I see playing in my zone I will continue to see playing in my zone until I or they leave it.  Period.  Nobody disappears and reappears elsewhere.  Nobody that is in my team ever goes in to another instance unless THEY do it to themselves by clicking it.  You want to play in the same instance as your team?  Super, fabulous, great because unless you make a dumb choice to purposefully remove yourself from that instance you do!  It is no different than somebody on my team leaving this server and going to another server by CHOICE.

It is the kidiots in PvP that are having an issue with this.  And here I thought they wanted no-rule Pvp?

Getting some dork kid to instance-jump during pvp is not something over 90% of the poplation of this game care one wit about.  PvP is stupid at its core, no consequent FFA PvP is even more stupid, and having the ability to "Beam Me Up, Scotty" to another dimention is just another part of the stupidity that 90% of the MMO market stay away from anyhow.  That little insignificant aspect of the silly pvp part of this toy doesn't damage the entire game one bit.  It is part of the penance you PvP servers have to pay for F-ing up the archery range in this game.

As for breaking immersion... how many people do you want to have standing around hunting the exact same critter you are?  Haven't people been crying rivers over camping?  Kill stealing?  There are volumes writen about this whine.  So now you want Kill Stealing and hours and hours of Camping back in your game?  Make up your minds.

Besides, this all comes down to a simple fact.  We would not have to deal with instancing nearly as much if more of the loser population would upgrade their WoW-playing, Toaster Oven level computers.  Perhaps when all the subscribers with crappy computers finally shut up and go back to Candyland WoW we can start to center this game around better equipment which are better able to handle the intense level of graphics and non-autoattack mode of combat.

The point of this thread was to discredit the claims of people who said that instancing only applied to the 1-20 game.  It was misleading.  I wasn't really concerned about zoning, but obviously the two are intertwined.

To some, like yourself, this is obviously not an issue.  But to many, like myself, instancing is a deal breaker because it simply doesn't exist to the extent it does in other games.

You can call WoW names if it makes you feel better, but for people who are used to a seamless and non-instanced open world, AoC can appear like a step backward.  Obviously, this is a complete personal preference.

Blaming people's PCs is also an easy excuse, the game obviously isn't optimised that well - it's not making best use of resources for the results we're getting on screen. Not all 3D engines are born equal, and even games that use the same engine can be brought to a halt with inefficient world design.  Still, it's better than some games.

I'm just letting people know.  Everything is instanced - even the cities have multiple copies of themselves running.  But just like Counterstrike players don't care what is happening on another server, if you ignore the fact the guy you met earlier is actually where you are now, but you cant see him, because he's in an alternative reality, AoC provides entertainment for those who are forgiving.

Even though I personally prefer WoW by a long margain,  I have no problem recommending AoC to a newcomer because :

1) It's new.  Brand new.  A new MMORPG has a certain energy you just can't find in older games.  A true fresh start.

2) The combat is actually better than WoW.  Not to say that WoW's combat is as bad as people on these forums claim it is, both games have excellent combat systems, but AoC manages to combine satisfying and interesting combat that while not particularly ground-breaking, is just right.

But only if you have a decent rig, anything less than a 7800GT and you're in for some pain imo.  You'll get far better mileage out of WoW with a mid-range system, and obviously, it's popular for a few reasons so you can't go wrong.

Does WAR make use of instancing, and if so, to what degree?

So for example, WoW instances dungeons and battlegrounds, but open world is never instanced, regardless of how many players are in one area.

Games like EQ2 and AoC instance every area of the game, dynamically adding new instances as more people are in that area - and providing options to switch between instances so you can get into the 'right' instance with your friends.

I've decided that instancing is a deal-breaker for me now, so I'm interested to see how this game will handle the typical MMO problem of coping with large numbers of players in one area.

You mean sharp-shooter one right, the one with Bow speciality? 

I'm going the Waylayer route - crossbows - because you get grenades.

Yes, grenades - not kidding.

Originally posted by summitus

 

Originally posted by hyperpotato

Some of the people that have reviewed this game have to be the most idiotic people on planet earth. Poeple saying it's more f a singleplayer game than multiplayer? People sayingthat the game is too linear? THEY are the dumbasses that didn't even bother to get past the freakin tutorial. Glad those kinds of people won't be playing this game, and I suspect this is what the devs aimed to do, tell the idiots to just piss off.

And people saying the community is bad? It's by far the best community I've ever seen in an MMO, ever.

Where's a minigun when you need one eh?

I totally agree about the community, I 've played on a couple of servers now and everyone really freindly and lovin the game and so so helpful, TBH the negative stuff I've heard in game is about Graphic's Cards etc and couple of people not liking some of the Classes in the game.

 

There a quite a peeps worried if the game will become infested wit WoW kiddies, but thats understandable, after all it is a Mature game and they want it to stay that way I guess .

Actually the majority of players there have played WoW, it's a hot topic of conversation pretty much wherever you go :p

Originally posted by kitsunegirl

 

Originally posted by Recant

If I were Conan I'd order this game destroyed.   5 years they took to build this... it's Vanguard 2.0... only instead of anything resembling progress, gone is the seamless world, replaced with arbitrary instances and piss-poor game design.

Failed.

Finally... LOL someone compared it... I knew it was going to happen some time. Some idiot tried to compare this game to Vanguard. lmao @ the tool.

 

Ahh... there, I feel better. Im sorry, I know Im feeding the troll. *wipes her eyes* Atleast he got the terms zones and instance right...

Yes, how "retarded" of me to compare two medieval fantasy online roleplaying games with each other.  How absurd of me to even consider it :p 

The gore is well done.  Get a fatality with an arrow combo and watch the blood spurt out as your enemy eventually keels over.

Decapitations need more blood imo, but then I'm not an expert in such things :P

Originally posted by TrexorJd

Originally posted by 3on1

to all the people who complain the game is linear: Why is it gamebreaking that u cant spend a lot of time on wandering around/exploring doing absolutely nothing useful?? dont u all get bored fast enough with just walking around looking at the gameworld that u want to quest or lvl and thats where linear worlds speed things up for you... no more walking in the middle of nowhere having to run endlessy to some mission or city

Dont quote me on this but im pretty sure 1 of the M's in MMORPG stands for MASSIVE.

Originally posted by Zhauric

Heh sorry. Played Vanguard and the graphics don't even compare to AoC's at this point. It's definitely an improved game since it launched (Meaning Vanguard) but let's not exaggerate. The one thing no one denies in regards to AoC is it's graphics. Even those who do not like the game. As for the point of the thread, please browse the forum here. It has already been proven that the 48 per zone is just something pulled by those who wish to troll and throw out incorrect information. The 48 is only in regards to siege warfare right now which is at 48 vs 48. I don't think anyone has a hard number of how many can be in an instance at a time at this point. If someone does hopefully they can give you your answer.

Oh and the poster who was comparing EQ2 and AoC's zones saying you have to zone all the time AoC obviously has not played that far. It is said by many that the zones actually drop the higher you go. Also that the areas are very vast which is a contradiction to you saying they are small. Since most opinion says different than you, you may wish to level further. So far I would say the two games actually compare very well when it comes to the instances. It is nothing any where near Guildwars which I have also played.

And lastly....I could care less if a game does enough to be called an MMO by the public/gaming community. I play for enjoyment, not for a game genre or classification. If you enjoy the game then play it. If you don't you simply move on. Sitting around and trying to classify it is a bit besides the point. Good luck with whatever game you enjoy.

Wildlands,  AoC's first "open world" zone, is actually smaller than Antonica in EQ2.   Both are instanced though, EQ2 instances at 100, the number for AoC seems to be a lot less.

Originally posted by Malvolentia

Another WoW fanboi doesn't want to give up his 3 70s for a superior game.

I'm sorry, but your analysis is not correct. Armchair psychologists have been trying to pin me down for a while now.  Lets see, I've been called:

EQ fanboy

EQ2 fanboy

WoW fanboy

Vanguard fanboy

PvE carebare

PvP ganker

Immature.

"too old to play games"

"fanboy"

"hater"

"loser"

"liar"

"troll"

Among others.

Yet noone has discovered my true motivations.  Perhaps it's because they're using internet posts as a method of establishing somebody's motivations, intentions, likes, loves, dislikes..  if such a thing were possible, people would be very boring indeed.

Yet despite all of this nothing changes the fact I am sitting in multiple instances a single 'open world zone' in AoC-'s so called "open world", despite ferocious claims to the contrary.  I give people the facts, and they hate me for it.  Perhaps I should go along with this grand lie to introduce more people to a world that's heavily instanced when we have told them it isn't?   One might have something to say about my motivations then, don't you think?

Think about that one for a minute.