Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

This shouldn't be your youth unless you are currently about 8-13.

I think he's referring to the makeover old cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory got - like this: flickr.com/photos/rhcooper/912750096/. I have mixed feelings about it myself, but the game was pretty fun to play...casually. I am impressed with the family plan pricing for unlimited access - very competitive.

Edit: read the caption under the first picture I posted - that's just not healthy...

I remember these guys - talk about a blast from the past. They would've had more luck going after Linden Lab or even Multiverse - the people who were supposed to make the Firefly MMO, but NCSoft? I think this is one of the few times where they're getting a bad rap. To go a little aluminum foil hat for a moment, I noticed that Sony is (or was) one of their clients. Wonder if Sony put them up to this to force NCSoft into wasting their already dwindling profits on legal fees? Eliminate some competition through a small cold war?

a mac version? wow, that's a heck of an announcement.

Nice and accurate review. I tried this out in beta as a slight diversion, and found myself playing more than I thought I would as well. In fact, I almost decided that I would subscribe when it came out and started finding and submitting all the bugs I could find to make it a subscribe-worthy game. In the end, I decided it wasn't quite the game for me, but as a kid-friendly game, it's surprisingly good.

I understand what you're getting at toord, but the fact remains is that those dwindling numbers probably aren't going to increase anytime soon. The game was certainly designed around grouping, but it was also designed with the assumption that more people would be playing than there currently are. As such, some adjustments have to be made so that any potential new players aren't run off by the current issues with grouping. When I started playing again, I ran into that issue: trying to find groups for lowbie quests was frustratingly hard, and even when people were nice enough to help out, they were almost always veterans. Usually, that meant they were more interested in speeding through the quest which, of course, ruins the experience for someone going through the first time. So judging from the way hirelings are set up, it seems to me that they took a fairly good look at the way grouping is playing out. 1 hireling can make a big difference when you have only 1 other person in the area doing the same quests as you. On the other hand, the 12 man instances which still have a fair amount of LFMs up can't use hirelings at all which elliminates the worry about grouping going down the toilet there. In addition, I don't care how well the hirelings are implemented, they will never be coded well enough to be chosen over a human player. I've been playing Guild Wars since it launched, and despite the fact that I love the henchmen, I'll drop them in a heartbeat if there are players out to do the same thing I'm trying to do. So I don't think the hirelings will have the negative impact you think they will, but of course, that's just my opinion. All we can do is wait and see what happens.

Thanks for the replies everyone. After reading your response icon, I went over to playonline and reread the update notes on the feature. Your assessment is indeed correct (I must've been pretty sleepy to not get that from it ). Unfortunately, dice rolling on the leveling wave was something I was hoping to avoid. I think I'll hold off on resubcribing. Thanks again for your responses.

Wow, this was a great read! I don't play CoH anymore, but even I found this informative. Perhaps MMORPG.com should look into making this a series of articles for each game that has a correspondent.

Greetings everyone,

    I've had a love-hate relationship with FFXI since launch. Without going into detail, I'll say I've been through quite a few accounts and resubscriptions over the years. Recently, I've heard about this "Level Sync" system that's been released intending to make it easier to find groups. I just wanted to get the point of view of any new players that happen to have joined since its launch. Has this system made it easier to find groups? As an addendum, I'm also trying to get my girlfriend to play. Her sticking point has always been the grind. So,  with the slight increase to experience from decent and easy mobs, is it a bit easier to level? Thanks in advance!

Wow....Tad Williams, huh? Well, here's hoping your first forray into the MMO race (and aparrently the video game race as a whole as well: http://games.ign.com/objects/142/14286038.html) is successful. The screens look awesome and the Otherland universe opens this game up to being more than just your cookie cutter MMO. Let's hope they try to capture that spirit (you can't get much more diverse than the set of main characters in the books) And not try to eliminate it for some middle of the road focus group friendly boredom.

I choked on the meat grape leaf I was eating when I saw this! I caught on to this game when it was going through its last death throws, with the previous developer. I'm glad I'll finally get to enjoy this game the way it should be played soon! Congrats to all the hardcore fans. You guys have had your IP revived twice - not even the Firefly or Jericho fans can brag about that

I'm inclined to disagree. I've always enjoyed when an MMO creates a complex lore behind their game. It provides more immersion than the standard "this country/race is at war with this country/race - ROUND 1! FIGHT!". I find it especially refreshing when they apply scientific methods to the magic in their worlds, it makes it that much more engrossing

I've thought of this as well, but it usually stops at just the initial thought due to one issue... I'm a gamer and I love all my fellow gamers, but when it comes to the arsenal a union uses to get the seriousness of a situation across to a corporate entity (i.e. striking), I don't see us having the empathy let alone the solidarity to care about another gamer's plight enough to not buy a game or continue to subscribe to a particular MMO as long as we're having fun. Glad someone actually thought it through - made for an interesting read.

Originally posted by aleos
How is this racial profiling? i see nothing in this read that comes even close to how this could be racial. Therfor because you do. you my friend are racist yourself.

I don't think the editor of this particular article meant "racial profiling" in the way it's generally used now. I think they were using the phrase with the literal meaning of a profile on the races of Requiem - though now that I think about it the info on races in games does tend to lump all members under particular tendencies and traits - I guess the more popular definition can be used here as well

It is from ignorance that mankind must be saved...

(Puts Mosrael back into his bandolier)

I just stumbled across this game while looking up something totally unrelated (think it might have been who holds the current higher Donkey Kong score ). It's a fun game - the artwork is interesting, and the dialog and dialog choices are translated MUCH MUCH better than Dofus. I can only hope they will have a F2P basic package and an enhanced subscription package, because I don't think anyone will pay 12.99 for it . Also some widescreen support or at least an option to put the game into windowed mode would be especially nice. Here's hoping they survive...

Had to check the date to make sure I hadn't traveled back to 2005

It's not in yet - it comes with the upcoming update called Book 13: Doom of the Last King. Read more here:

http://www.lotro.com/book13

Edit: Strike that - apparently it IS live now. My client is currently updating :-) Subscribe and enjoy your fishing :-)

Originally posted by Sam123jo0123

Honey, let's get our son that world of warcraft game we saw on TV - maybe he can do it while studying for school.

Hahaha that and "Mom and Dad - remember when I asked for a computer to play games on for christmas and you got me that HP Pavilion from Wal-Mart? Well, I can't really play anything with my integrated Intel video card - except for this one..." *holds up World of Warcraft  Battle Chest box.

Is this that game that was cheating everyone out of their money? So many MMOs! They merge together on me sometimes!

Originally posted by Daffid011

 

Originally posted by jaix

 

Originally posted by Daffid011

 

Originally posted by dodsfall

 

Originally posted by Cabe2323

So if a company came out and offered free Whoppers that were cooked faster and didn't have any pickles, Burger King shouldn't claim they lost business because if people wanted the real whoppers they would be paying for them? 

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.  Of course piracy and private servers are hurting the Software industry and they should be shut down.  It is illegal and it costs the people that designed the software hard earned money. 

 

 

I don't think a company could stay in business very long offering enough free whoppers to hurt Burger King's sales.  Someone has to buy the cow meat.

 

The unspoken part of this analogy is that the hamburger meat (in this case the software) would be stolen directly from Burger King so there is no overhead.

 

 

 

 

 

So, what if I purchased this Whopper meat FROM Burger King? I've got a L2 preorder box and main game sitting on my bookshelf right now. They've been sitting there since 2004. I bought it when it first came out, but the game quickly fell out of favor due to most of the gripes others have (minus the grinding - I was coming from FFXI ). Now, how would you feel if you bought a Whopper patty from Burger King, but could only eat it if you rented a part of the store every month? I'm sure if other industries adopted the practices of the MMO industry, you wouldn't be too pleased.

I would tell you that comparing MMOs to hamburgers doesn't make much sense which is why most analogies fail, because they don't accurately represent all the finer points of what is being discussed.

 

 

 

Haha, we've already established that it's a pretty bad analogy (even the original poster of the analogy acknowledged it), but it's been the one used for the length of the thread, so we have to make do with it

And to bubu_3k - that's the issue being discussed - why should it be wrong to play on a private server when you choose to forgo any expansions or the other benefits of live servers, and remove the overhead of maintaining YOUR character? "You know what you're getting yourself into," goes only so far and I don't know if it can go as far as it does for the MMO industry.