Originally posted by Dravok

So is it worth getting the game.  It's been two months and I don't know if I should start it or play WoW or WAR when it comes out.  I'm a casual gamer who will play a couple of hours a night.

P.S.  i am also building a rig because mine is over 5 years old.  I am going with the specs listed on this link:

 

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15009/4

Should I keep the HD4850 or go with the HD4870 and will the power supply and case keep it running smoothly and cooled?

Is 1-2 months of fun worth $50 - $65 for you?  As an extremely casual player, that's about how long it will take you to get to around level 40, which is where the game goes downhill fast.  So you should get a good bit of fun during that time.

On the other hand, you already mentioned WoW which is simplistic, but also a lot of fun for months of play.  With your availabilty you'd be looking at a good year or two before you ran out of content.  Vanguard is another good option, with much more depth than either AoC or WoW.

Ok, let's objectively compare WoW and AoC as far as launch went.

Yes, AoC has more end-game content than WoW did at launch.  Yes, AoC has had less server down-time.  (Ellingson has claimed no unscheduled server down-time, but that's a crock.)

That's the good news.  The bad news is that in AoC, most of the end-game content had never even been beta tested.  Crafting?  Not in beta.  Massive PvP?  Not in beta.  Raids?  Most of them not in beta.  The results are obvious, because almost all of this stuff is badly bugged or completely broken even now, two months after launch.

To make matters worse, AoC gets you to end game faster than any other game I've ever played.  This was a design decision on Funcom's part.  They have specifically stated that they want people to blast through the levels so that they could get to "all the amazing" end-game content (that was never tested). 

In WoW, I was part of the largest guild on our server.  It took over three months for our first member to reach level 60.  By that point, WoW was already starting to patch in things like Molten Core and Onyxia.  Yes, there were bugs with both of those, and Onyxia especially took a long time to get working right.  That did hurt a few guilds that power leveled through the game, but it wasn't until about six months after launch before our guild had enough level 60 members to start raiding.  By that point, even more end-game content was being patched in, and the earliest stuff was well polished.  Most guilds never even saw the raid content until it had been out for a while.

In AoC, I was part of what for a while was the largest guild on our server.  It still might be, for all I know.  (I haven't logged in for a month.)  We got our first max-level character in 3 weeks.  By the end of a month, we had almost a dozen.  But where AoC differs from WoW is that those players have arrived and grown bored because there's no working content for them.

People can say all they want that AoC has more end-game content than WoW did at launch, but that's meaningless if said content isn't in a playable state.  Funcom really dropped the ball here with what amounts to a terrible design decision.  You can't speed players to max level and then leave them spinning their wheels with broken content.  But Funcom has tried to do exactly that.

 Oh, and as for all that server downtime that WoW experienced early on?  They handed out a good two weeks of free game play by the time all was said and done.  They were honest and fair about the matter.  Funcom still claims that they haven't had any downtime to speak of, and that none of it was unscheduled.  Who's kidding whom?

Originally posted by dougmysticey

Originally posted by Thunderous

AoC doesn't feel like an MMO, it feels like a single player RPG.  I was really looking forward to AoC when I started reading the development talk years ago.  It was different and it appealed to a much more hard-core crowd of players.

The problem is that during development so much of the hard-core was lost and it will probably never recover.

I played AoC for a month, go to level 44, had some fun.  I think all developers learned a big lesson from Tortage.  Having a major beginning zone like that with such a linear progression simply keeps a lot of players bored with their toons from re-rolling a new one.  I know that there is no way in heck I would go through the Tortage questing again.

This game is WAY too linear.  There is no openness, there is no real decision to be made, there is so little freedom and it is so simple that it only kept me for a month.  This game is actually more restrictive than WoW.  Sad as that it, it's true.

AoC was a great idea, Funcom really messed up the implementation.  I don't think this game will ever see better days again. 

 

The days of Sanbox games are dead but AOC is a lot more open after Tortage. I am doing all of the MMO stuff that is normal. Grouping, farming, questing, etc. It feels as much if not more of an MMO than Guild Wars. Some of the Zones are absolutely huge too. different strokes I guess but it feels just like an MMO to me.

I would say that AoC is a little more open after Tortage.  You now get three zones to explore instead of one.  The catch, though, is that you really have to do all the content in all three of those zones if you want to avoid massive grind later on.  (Instead, you get moderate grind.) 

The farther you progress in the game, the more linear it becomes.  After those first three zones, the order then goes:  Fields of the Dead, Noble District, E. Mountains, Atzel's Approach, Kheshatta.  There's a little bouncing around between them, but not much.

Compare that to something like Vanguard where there are about a dozen starting areas, each filled with quests.  I believe that it's actually possible to level a half dozen characters at least halfway through the game without ever repeating a quest.  You can solo, play with a couple friends, or play with full groups -- there's ample content for all three play styles.  The world is vast and open, with intriguing things on the horizon in just about all directions -- things that you can actually get to.  In short, Vanguard does provide much more of a sandbox experience than most of the other games on the market while still providing quests to help make sure that you encounter content that's appropriate to your level. 

If a game were to provide the best of AoC (combat system, massive PvP (assuming they get it working), etc.) with the best of Vanguard, it would be virtually unstoppable.

The fundamental flaw with AoC is that it was specifically designed to level you to 80 as quickly as possible (as stated by Ellingson in one of his recent video interviews), but then provides you with very little that's not broken once you get there.

Crafting was never beta tested, and has huge problems with the design itself.  It'll never sustain any kind of an economy without major overhauling.

Guild cities are an achievement to build, for sure.  But that's done through mind-numbing hours of harvesting.  Then once your guild has finished the tier 3 city, what's left?  It's built and will never have to be built again.

Raiding is badly bugged, and most of it wasn't beta tested.  On top of that, it doesn't require a whole lot of strategy.  Most raid bosses are variations of the "tank and spank" style.

Massive PvP is anything but massive.  Again, it's a feature that wasn't beta tested.  For performance reasons they cut the size of the "armies" by about 7/8.  Your guild's battle keep can only be attacked for a 1 1/2 hour window.  Once that's over, you have 15 minutes to set a new time frame if you want.  Whether you set a new time or not, the game randomly picks one of the next three days for your next battle.  There are bugs galore, and little real motivation for guilds to even bother.

Anyway, people are rocketing to max level because that's how the game was designed, then justifiably unhappy when they get bored due to the lack of functional content at that point.  So many people are leaving.  In fact, the exodus is so dramatic that Funcom is hiding the true populations of the servers.  They ALL say "medium" load no matter what time of day or day of week you log in.  Once logged in, the in-game search feature is disabled so that you can't get a count of who's on.  Many guilds have dissolved due to their memberships leaving the game, and the ones that are thriving at this point are doing so by absorbing holdovers from disbanded guilds in order to make up for their own lost numbers. 

For the game to survive at this point, Funcom needs to finally release the long overdue PvP system.  They need to fix the many nasty bugs that cripple their high end content.  They need to introduce a lot more content.  And they need to merge servers so that players actually have enough people to compete with.  Frankly, there's no way that this can happen before Warhammer, which is going to pull even more subscribers away.  Then there's Wrath of the Lich King, which is guaranteed to suck even more away.  Followed by the likes of Aion, Stargate Worlds, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, and others that are due just in the first quarter of next year.

The bottom line is that you only get one chance to make a first impresssion, and Funcom has flubbed their golden opportunity.  Honestly, they're now in Vanguard territory.  They appear to be putting all of their hopes now into the upcoming paid expansion, which I anticipate that they'll advertise as a big "come back to AoC" event and a "grand re-launch" of the game.

How hard is it to understand the concept that there are two parties involved in the development of a game:

1. The Developer.  This company is putting its heart and soul into the game.  They want it to release with every feature they ever promised and they want those features to be as great as envisioned.  They're the ones that talk to the community and build the hype about the game, because they love it so much.
2. The Publisher.  This company is paying the bills.  They want the game to be a success because they want to make money.  But they also are not willing to keep funding development forever.  Especially with an MMO which -- as so many people like to point out -- is never actually finished.

Completion dates are estimated by the developer.  Release dates are set by the publisher.  The publisher is usually willing to push the date back once or twice, but they have their whole marketing campaign to think about.  They also don't work with just one game.  They have to make sure that the position for X game doesn't conflict with the positions for Y and Z games, which are also in the works.  In fact, they may even be counting on the profits from X to drive development funding for Y and Z.

Eventually, the publisher delivers an ultimatum to the developers:  Release on this date, no matter what it takes.

Now put yourself in the position of the developer, having just been handed such a verdict.  You want the game to be complete, but you know that you can't do everything by the date given.  You also cannot afford to have the publisher pull the plug.  So what do you do?  I think that for any reasonable person, the answer is going to be pretty obvious and not very different from what Mythic is doing.

The bottom line is that the publisher is the company that holds all the cards.  From the moment that  a developer signs with one, it's the publisher that has the final say.  They're the ones putting up the money that pays for the developers to make the game.  No publisher means no game.

Vanguard is a great case study in this.  Their original publisher pulled out, and Sigil floundered something fierce.  For a while, it was in doubt as to whether the game would ever launch at all.  They got lucky to find a new publisher with Sony, but that publisher was also somewhat hostile -- after all, Sigil was removed from the game a few months after launch.  (All told, I think Sony made the right calls there, but that's another story.)

So stop making such a big stink with Mythic.  Their hands are tied at this point.  They just happen to be the easy targets because if you look again at my 1 and 2 above you can see how Mythic is the company that has faces we know and voices we've listened to.  The publisher is a shadow in the background.  But it's the publisher that ultimately made the call to release now and delay what has to be delayed in order to achieve that date.

Originally posted by grimfall

Although I like the general tone and idea of the article, I do have to take exception to this:

Mark has said that the four capital cities and four classes were cut because they weren't enough fun or on par with Mythic's expectations and standards. Shouldn't we, as gamers, applaud the move rather than shun it and play something that the game's developer's feel just isn't up to snuff?

Why couldn't Mythic spend the time (aka money) to make these cities and other classes fun? It comes off quite fanboyish.

They are still going to take the time and spend the money to make the cities fun.  They just aren't going to do so before launch. 

The reason they aren't going to do so before launch is undoubtedly very simple:  Mr. Publisher.  The publisher is the company that's putting up the money, and when the publisher gives you a final launch date, you have no choice but to do whatever it takes to make the launch happen.  If that means temporarily cutting some content in order to ensure that the rest is up to snuff, then that's what you do.

Regarding the cutting of certain classes, there are two points I'd like to make.  First, by all accounts they may have cut the classes but they also took the best features from those classes and rolled them into the other classes that will remain.  So in effect, very little has been lost.  Instead, the content that will be in game is going to be that much stronger.  Sounds like a good thing to me.

What's more, AoC did exactly the same thing prior to launch with some of their classes, and didn't get nearly the vilification for it that Mythic is receiving.  Come on.  Double standards, anyone?

My second point is that both AoC and WAR are designed as games that get you VERY quickly to the end-game content.  Unfortunately, AoC chose to release a game where the majority of that content hadn't even been beta tested.  As a result, players were put on rails to reach the end-game, only to discover that there was precious little to do once you get there (because most of it is broken) and that what isn't broken just isn't that interesting or exciting.  WAR seems to have learned from AoC on this count.  They're scaling back on overall quantity of end-game content that will be in at launch in order to ensure that what IS there gets properly tested and is lots of fun.  This is a smart move.

A game can launch with a moderate amount of great content.  If that content is engaging and entertaining in a sustainable manner, then players will get hooked and will continue to play while the devs patch in more content to expand things even farther.  On the other hand, a game can launch with tons of content, but it's mostly broken or just not terribly exciting.  If that happens, game quickly loses subscribers and many of them will never return even after the devs get it all sorted out.  Especially not in today's market with so many strong alternatives getting ready to launch.

Look at Vanguard.  Today it has matured into a very good game.  (This coming from someone who absolutely loathed it at launch and quit within an afternoon.)  Yet the vast majority of players will never check it out because they also hated it at launch or they heard from their friends how much it sucked.  Age of Conan is rapidly heading into that same territory.  In fact, here at MMORPG.com its score is in a free fall.  It launched at 8.7, making it the strongest game on the market.  But just two months later it's down to 7.75 -- equal to DDO and a full 40 games lower than Vanguard.

The bottom line is that while Mythic's decision may not have been a popular one, it was certainly the right one for the longevity of the game.  It's a recipe for growth, rather than for shrinkage.  Yes, many players who were looking forward to WAR may no longer get it at launch.  But those same people are far more likley to come check the game out down the road than they would be to come back to it if their chosen class or city had been in at launch, yet sucked.

I think we're also forgetting just how easy it is to be armchair quarterbacks.  Right now, only the devs know the full story regarding every feature in the game.  Only the beta testers have any real experience with what gameplay is actually like.  Until the game launches, the rest of us are only on the outside, looking in.  It's the height of ego to think we know better than those who are actually involved with the game.  If Mythic says that they cut certain classes because the beta testers weren't having fun with them, why would I believe that I personally would have any more fun with the class if it went live?  Wouldn't I be just as likely to dislike the class, and the game by extension?  You betcha!

Originally posted by Brynn

This thread is 99% negative. While I agree with many points, I find most are overstated. If there are 700k people still playing, most likely less by now, they must be trying to enjoy the game. For some, it's something to do until Fall when more games are released.

Where do you get the idea that they have 700K still playing?  They've only ever announced that 700K copies activated their accounts.  Funcom has never released any figures about how many players continued their subscription past the first free month.  Nor have they stated how many people canceled before this week's billing (like I did).

My guild is the largest and most active on our server.  We were the first to put up a battlekeep.  We're progressing well through the raid content.  Yet less than 50% of the member count has logged into the game in the last seven days.  Xfire statistics also show about a 50% drop in player activity since the game launched.

Yes, 700K copies were sold.  But that does not equal 700K current subscribers.  350K is a more reasonable figure, which is still a good number.  Only six years ago, anything over 100K was considered a "hit" game.  But AoC has already seen its best days.  They have a long road ahead of them with tons of fixes and new content to put out before they're going to have even a chance of winning old players back or new subscribers over.   Given that there are several major releases coming up in the next few months from other companies (Wrath of the Lich King, Stargate Worlds, Warhammer, etc.), it's very unlikely that AoC will ever see that 700K mark again. 

Their marketing wizards are most likely going to continue to spout "copies sold" numbers and spin that as continued growth of the game.  Don't be fooled.  As I said, "copies sold" is always larger than "current subscribers".  It's the latter figure that really matters; if the figure is growing, the game is doing well.  If the figure is shrinking, the game is hurting.  For AoC, the figure is currently shrinking.

And by the way... if a thread about the state of the game is "99% negative" as you say on a forum that is not in any way affiliated with Funcom, doesn't that tell you something about the way that the general public views the game?  For that matter, look at AoC's ratings here at MMORPG.com.  They start out shining, but have steadily declined since the game launched.  Now they are every bit as negative as this thread.

Yes, some people still love the game.  Others see its potential and hope it'll be reached.  Others (like me) see its potential, but doubt it'll ever be realized thanks to the holes that Funcom has dug for itself by foisting a beta off on the paying public.  And yes, some hate the game.  Most really wanted to like it, but found themselves disenchanted for one reason or other.

From the game developers:  “'The speed of levelling is conforming to our expectations,' said Erling.   'The game design is targeted at getting players to the level 80 end game of siege warfare, city capture and city building.  The objective during the journey to the end game is for the player to understand their character, to relate to it and to learn it.  Funcom doesn't believe in making a player grind in the lower levels or make levelling hard and slow.'"

In point of fact, AoC has the fastest leveling pace of any major MMO on the market.  It takes about 120 hours played to reach maximum level.  The previous king of fast leveling, World of Warcraft, requires about 360 hours.  Now Funcom is telling us that this speed is by design.  So what is there to do when you get there?  City building is out if you join an established guild.  They will mostly have their cities built by this point.  Especially the large guilds.  But if you are part of a smaller guild, you can look forward to many, many hours spent harvesting resource nodes as part of the level 80 "content".  Yeah, that's a lot of fun!  Not.  As for siege warfare and city capture, those features still don't work right.  It's an endless parade of bugs.  Even if/when they do get it working right, it's still not going to be the massive 200 vs. 200 PvP battles that were promised.  In order to allow a mere 36 per side, they had to cut visibility in the battle keep zones so much that you can't see the outer walls from the top of the keep.  To date, no guild has successfully captured a battle keep.  Not because it's so difficult, but because bugs make it impossible.  Even if the defenders fail to show up for the fight (which isn't uncommon given that these battles have to take place during odd hours, and can only happen once every 3 days), the battle keep still can't be taken by the attackers.

As for the statement that "Funcom doesn't believe in making a player grind in the lower levels or make levelling hard and slow," let's look at the facts:  Once you pass level 50, content quickly starts to evaporate.  By the 60's, it's almost entirely gone.  Your life at that point consists of repeatedly running the four "villas" quests and AoE grinding for experience.  Once you do hit a milestone where new content opens up, that content is exhausted well before you reach the next milestone. 

The game looks great, but its "epic draw distances" that were advertised are considerably less vast than Vanguard (once fog is disabled) -- and Vanguard does it without instancing.  AoC is VERY heavily instanced in order to make the pretty graphics possible and allow a port to the Xbox 360.  Also, the box states that the game supports DirectX 10, but lies.  The devs still give no word on when that will actually make it into the game, despite the false advertising of the box.  And as for the Xbox 360 version, that has been pulled from online resellers like Amazon and Gamestop.  They used to list it, but no more.  The developers originally planned on it launching in September of this year.  It has now been pushed back to "late 2009."  I wonder if that's in real time, or Funcom time.  These are, after all, the people who promised the new PvP rules by "late June, or the very beginning of July" -- changes that have yet to actually materialize.

In the final analysis, this game starts strong but quickly fizzles.  It blasts you through the early levels, then leaves nothing to do once you reach your destination.  Crafting is decidedly lackluster, the economy is a shambles, and almost all end-game content is broken.  Players are abandoning the game in droves, while many others hang on simply because there's nothing else until this fall's batch of new MMO's hit the market.  Calls are constantly going out for server mergers.  Customer service is terrible.  (Consider how the developers are pleased that support is now to a point where most requests are handled in "only" one day.  Of course, that's partly because there are now far fewer players even asking for support.  The rest have left, or have learned not to bother.)  The forums are on heavy moderation lockdown.  Posts of dissatisfaction are quickly labeled as "troll bait" and locked.  Put it all together, and you have a game that's going nowhere fast.  My recommendation is to skip it entirely.  Alternatively, buy it and play the free month.  You'll see most of the content in that time, anyway.
 

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Originally posted by Ozmodan

Lately I have to wonder what is it about the 2nd "M" in MMORPG that developers don't get? Mutliplayer does not mean that complete solo play!
You know when you put in mostly solo play you satisfy the kids and turn off everyone else. Problem with kids is they have a very short attention span, hence most subscriptions last only a short time.
Without significant multiplayer features, games like this die on the vine very fast. I am suprised the people funding this have not pointed out that error to the developement team, seems to me you should always examine the problems encounted by previous games and attempt to alleviate them....not compound them.

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Respectfully, I have to disagree. I am 38 years old and play a lot of MMO's. My gaming friends are also in their 30's. We play a considerable amount together, but we also all have individual lives and commitments that prevent us from grouping. So we play grouped or solo depending upon the day.

DDO is a game that really focused heavily on grouping. If your argument held true, then DDO would be a phenomenally successful game. Yet despite having great graphics and compelling dungeon adventures, it's only a mediocre success at best. My friends and I stopped playing it because grouping was the only choice that we had, and when we couldn't group up we had no choice but to play something else. There just wasn't any solo content available in DDO with which to occupy our time until our friends came on.

If you have one game that focuses exclusively on group content and another that offers both options, where will you spend your monthly subscription fee? You'll naturally spend it where you can play whenever you want to. DDO learned this the hard way, and has slowly been introducing more solo content to the game.

As a mature player, I want BOTH kinds of play. I want compelling content that I can enjoy with friends, as well as equally compelling content that I can experience when those friends aren't available. The "join a big guild" argument just doesn't hold water, in part because of the fact that we're mature players. We have developed a core group of solid friends that we work well together with. We don't like all the politics and cliques that form with big guilds. So we -- and many other mature players just like us -- will naturally gravitate toward games that cater to both solo and group playstyles.

That being said, I'm not too sure about the use of instancing as it's described here. If the game world has as much space as the real world, yet that space is heavily instanced, it seems to me that the result would be a very dead world. It will be necessary to learn more about this aspect of the game as the devs make that info available. For now, I'm withholding my verdict.