"It seems like customer support in the game is pretty awful."

I'd go from 'prety awful' to near non existant.

The forums are irrelevant as no one from NCsoft ever posts there, new posts in a thread dont bump the thread to the top, and the only moderation is in the form of deleted posts.

They have either no GMs in-game or they have the worst GMs ever.
Every public chat channel is full to the brim with gold spammers and the various good grinding spots are full of Bots.
Im pretty sure I saw something when looking for in game support that they dont work after 5pm UK time and not at all on weekends.

My sub is frozen now and will remain so until the company gets its act togther.

Originally posted by FastTx

I'm satisfied with their responses. It's absolutely ignorant to pick a server you are going to play before they are up and expect to play on that server with no queue's. There are servers with no queue's, why not play on them? These queue's won't last forever and NCSoft is actually being responsible about this. The customer is not always right, if they give in it will hurt them down the road, and us players down the road when the Abyss is deserted because all the gamehoppers left.

Im sorry you but are very wrong.

There are NO servers with low pops in Europe at all anymore. Even the FRA and GER servers would not permit us to join the queue last night (sunday). Repeated spam-clicking on my server Gorgos would get me into the queue after nearly 5 min of clicking only to be greated with a 2hr+ queue that I would get DC'd from after 5 min.

Your argument seems to be that catering to those of us who want to play but cant will only hurt the experiance of players like you who have no problems logging into a game at lunch time. What a hugely obnoxious and selfish standpoint. We paid the same as you and expect the same quality of service.

You dropped the term 'Game hopper' in your comment too... nice. So you do believe a company should sell the game to everyone it can but only provide service to its self appointed elite customers like yourself?
You believe NCSOFT doesnt want WOW like success and intenionally designed a game to fit a small number of privedged gamers? and you applaud this?

I think you need to get out more.

"We are hoping to introduce character transfers in a couple of months’ time."

are you kidding me?!

a couple of months? my server is currently over populated by over 3000 accounts. I can't even join any queues.

Im not starting again just for the same problem on a new server.

I originally rolled an Assassin on Perento that I had to abandon and move to Gorgos.

Not doing that again.

last night ALL of the european servers we so full they would not even permit me to queue.

and I do mean ALL. I even tried to login to the french and german servers.

My server Gorgos has my lvl 18 Gladiator which i was really enjoying playing. The only reason I was able to get him that far was that ive been off work most of last week with the Flu.

There are currently 5 ENG servers, nowhere near enough.

Unless many more servers are added, with the option to free transfer, I cant see myself being able to play Aion in the evenings now that im back at work.

If I cant play, I wont pay.

Simple.

I hope they sort it out. I'd was starting to get into the game, considering finding a legion to join etc.

guess i'll wait and see.

Originally posted by rmk70

Clearly theperson who wrote this up has little to no clue about what they are talking about. The DK changes were slight balances for broken OP builds, a few tweaks for tanking, and a minor change some PvP survivability.

 

Overhaul, not even close. Minor changes, yes.

 

The MMORPG writers really need to do their research or at least take some time to experience what they are commenting on. It's getting kind of sad.

Funny how the terms 'broken' and 'overpowered' are only ever thrown about when people refer to classes other than what they prefer to play themselves.

I'll tell you what's sad.

sweaping changes to what is still the premier PVE game around because of hysterical teens crying about PVP. It's sad that what was billed as a 'hero class' is quickly being watered down towards irrelevancy. Pretty much the only 'Heroic' thing left is the 55 level boost on character creation and the stupid 1 DK per server rule.

Rather than design a system that works and stick to their guns, blizzard just rotate their nerf bat around so we get this constant - you're OP! /  NO U!!  / You are!! / nope its you again blah blah...
 

Really cant wait for a game with the courage to do away with classes and just let people do what feels natural right out of the box. when anyone at any time can tank dps or heal we really will be 'bringing the player and not the class' as blizzards reps are so fond of saying.

Originally posted by Ravanos

so in other words you have to mass pull entire areas of mobs in order to get the same amount of xp per hour as a soloer can in about a 5th of the kills.

wouldnt worry about that, at later levels you wont be grinding many mobs per hour as...

- on the pvp servers you'll likely just end up as free pvp kills to a large guild boosting their mates through the area or just the general asshat-griefers.

at least that was the way it was when i stopped my sub awhile back.

feel free to correct me :)

yeah, this questline has to be the real highlight of the expansion for me. Probably one of the major highlights of playing wow over the years.

It really makes you feel like you are a part of unfolding events, in contrast to the old 'Marshall Windsor' quest line that leads up to Onyxia's lair - has you going off to kill onyxia, mounting her head on the gates of Stormwind then walking up to the throne room to see her standing there as if nothing ever happen :/

The aftermath of the wrathgate quest can be seen everytime you pass Fordragon Hold (but only by those who have done the quest... ). 

pure awesome-sauce.

Originally posted by Wolpertinger

 

But the developers obviously didnt have a choice. They wouldnt have given up on such an important market. I guess they had to cede them to Acclaim if they wanted a publishing contract for the US at all.

 

yes they did.

Launch 1st in europe.
with a focused European launch they could focus on quality of service to European players. Then building on the european success, publishers interested in running the game in the US, Asia  etc would surley appear...

Aion is released in Korea already (is that right?), the western version will follow later.

Whats so difficult here?

why are European MMO devs committing game publishing suicide these days - Funcom releasing half a game, Spellborn Devs crippling themselves with prohibitive restrictions on server choice based on a skewed vision of european MMO demographics...

Whats next?

a [insert random EU country] MMO that can only be played under a full moon at winter solstace, with a susbcription model based on the bartering of livestock?

Isn't MMO development hard enough without these guys constantly screwing themselves (and thier potential customers) over?

/facepalm

Originally posted by daylight01

Originally posted by Delanor

It is too soon to make any conclusions based on the little we know. How IP blocking will affect us is still unknown. It is also not know what consequences IP blocking will have. It is not certain whether Europe will be split up for us players.

But even when they decide to split the European community in two, we will not know how that will work out.

I have ordered the game and am gonna play it  for at  least 3 months just because the game is that good and worth it and deserves my money. Whether I will keep playing beyond that depends on many things still unknown.

 

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=71406

 

spain and Italy etc will play on Acclaim run servers along with the UK and US just as I thought,the 11 other european countries will be on other servers.

Bye bye spellborn.

I agree.

If it's not the death of the game, its a severe crippling of its potential before it even had a release...

It's dead to me though (Northern Irish - United Kingdom IP address :/ )
it's dead to the rest of my guild, my fellow europeans who will just keep playing WOW / WAR with each other rather than be bothered with this ass-hattery approach to game publishing.

shame.

I really wanted to give it a go, love the art direction.

Thankyou Acclaim for your blatant greed and gross misunderstanding of european MMO demographics.

This is such Bull **** tbh.

I was fairly new to MMO's when wow came out, but since then ive played with the same great bunch of guys through WoW, AoC, WAR and back to WoW with WotLK's release...

Im Irish (though from Northern Ireland which means my IP is a UK one :/ ).
I play with other Irish guys, English, Scots, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, Danish and a few more Euro nationalities.

So, to play Spellborn I have to play on a server with guys from different timezones, so they are in bed when i log in and vice versa...(no harm to the Yanks /hug :P )... my non UK guildmates are effectively BANNED from playing with me and and I with them due to stupid greed and jealously guarded split publishing rights?

All of this when in the past few months we've just seen the the launch of some of the most accomplished and excellent games in the history of the medium...

Do they want me to play their game?
guess not.

and so I wont.
I'll stick with wow, and my friends of the past few years.

shame. because I think we are all losing out.

IP banning UK players from EU clients will NOT translate to increased revenue for Acclaim.
It WILL mean less people playing the game in general.

someone really screwed the pooch here.
 

"MMORPG.com:

There are those who say that this is all too little, too late for Age of Conan. Can you speak to that?
Craig Morrison:

There will always be the merchants of doom!..."

erm, how about you answer the bloody question you were asked rather than wax lyrical about your dream MMO. Personally I feel insulted that you lay at my feet, the responsibility for this game not measuring up to its promise, with my unfeasibly high expections.

Dont know about the rest of you... but I expected it to do exactly what it said on the box. Was that too much to ask? Am I a merchant of Doom when I say that Funcom has a massive Credibility deficit to recover before I will ever cross their palms with my silver again?

fair enough...

DOOM! DOOM!

GET YOUR DOOM RIGHT HERE!!

WTS DOOM GOING CHEAP PST!!

Originally posted by Blurr

I've actually found it incredibly hard to get lower level fragments when I was in tier 1 areas. The magic items usually gave me essences but no fragments. This is causing me a problem now where I have no low level fragments to raise my skill and I'm only getting tier 2 equipment to salvage.

Perhaps a trip to the AH or a lower level tier might help.

same here.

my talisman skill is a lofty '10' or so.
my salvaging is a fair bit higher but im in Teir 2 now (lvl 13 DoK) and getting the 'you dont have sufficient skill to salvage this; messages.

I guess the only option for now is to repeat run the low lvl PQs and salvage the green gear from the loot bags.

Can anyone tell me if you get 'chickened' for healing lowbies in PVE on a 'Core' server? the way opposing factions do in RVR if they try to go ganking?

if you do then this will make things problematic.

Originally posted by Soultice

I am having fun and to me that is all that matters. 

I couldn't put it any better than that tbh.
Same goes for me, I was gonna hold off on buying this (I was a launch day player of AoC :S )

But I took a chance, and have been playing since friday.
and like Soultice said above: "I am having fun and to me that is all that matters".

Originally posted by Frey

WARHAMMER ONLINE is coming out this Thursday 18th Sept 2008!  Savour your remaining days WoW, you have kept the seat warm for WAR...

But do not worry World of Warcraft, you will not disappear into oblivion...  You will merely become just another face in the crowd.

Take care everyone! 

SUBMIT to WAR!! :)

...just... lol.

on a side note, I hope WAR does well, competion breeds creativity.
good luck to Paul barnett etc, ill check in awhile after launch (you can thank funcom for that).

as if Warhammer launching at the end of this week wasn't bad enough for FC...

check the World of Warcraft home page. do it now...

Bet Erling Elingson etc feel like someone just shat in their cornflakes lol.

---

for the lazy peeps here:

Wrath of the Lich King has just been given an Official release date by Blizzard:

13th of November 2008.

how many of those "400k" subs do you reckon will still be around when Wotlk goes live... and whats worse, the xpac's pre-patch including new talents, haircuts, and the new proffesion will presumably go live very soon - they are on the PTR now.

Remember remember the 13th of November
Warcraft, Level 80 and and what not.
I see no reason why Deathknights and Lich kings
Should ever be forgot...

hehe...
sorry Erling but here's where most of us will be when you get your pvp patch sorted:

Wrath of the Lich King Invades Stores November 13

In the frozen wastes of the north, the Lich King Arthas Menethil rallies his undead army and schemes to bring an end to all life on Azeroth -- and in a couple of months, you’ll begin your epic journey into Northrend to confront the Lich King and his minions yourself. Blizzard Entertainment’s second expansion to World of Warcraft -- Wrath of the Lich King -- will be in stores on November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and on November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18, and the launch timing for China will be announced at a later date. For more information, read the press release or visit the Wrath of the Lich King website.

Wrath of the Lich King will be available in both a standard edition and a special Collector’s Edition (in select areas). The Collector’s Edition will contain an art book, behind-the-scenes DVD, exclusive in-game pet, and more. For pictures and a complete list of contents, check out the Collector’s Edition page.

Retailers in Europe are currently taking pre-orders for the game. Reserve your copy now!

announcement timed just before WAR goes on release... harsh. lol.

Also gotta wonder how many of AoC's "400k" (lol?) suscribers will be left on 14th of November.

Personally I hope they all stay afloat - competition is good... but damned if i wont be rolling deathknight in November hehe.

"only those people who took these problems for what they were or who were able to register their disappointment/unhappiness/complaints without resorting to foul language, threats, etc. can hold their heads up high.

Oh what a night…

Mark"

He has the right of it.

Anonymity + Audience = A$$hole

this is true in about 95% of what I read online in forums tbh.

Im a developer myself - on a smaller scale atm.

It's a wonder that any developers bother to engage with their games' 'Community' at all given the sort of bile and vitriol they deal with when the shit hits the fan.

pretty soon all you'll hear about games will be sterile PR statements.

I can emphasise with pretty much everyone in this thread tbh.

Before The Burning Crusade came out I was in one of the Top raiding guilds on my server - Source of Strength, on Turalyon. That guild collapsed due to the effort and time required by its members to maintain 'pve progress' in AQ 40 and then Naxramass.

The same fate awaited my next guild DrAmA, the GM took some time off for Medical reasons, the then Main Tank left to join another guild that would keep him in epics and some others followed suit, breaking the back of our raid team while we were trying to crack SSC and tempest Keep.

Since then most of us that enjoyed playing together have banded together and stick to heroics, 10 man raids, leveling alts and messing about in the Battlegrounds to keep entertained until the new expansion.

(we tried to migrate our guild to Age of Conan... dont think I need to elaborate on how that turned out).

None of us want to get back into the sort of time and life commitment to a computer game that we sacrificed in the past, really whats the payback of that kind of effort? epeen? prettier pixels? bigger stats?
Hence none of us will ever see the inside of Black temple, Mount Hyjal, Sunwell Plateau etc...

The new 10 man / 25 man versions of the wotlk dungeons etc is a really big factor in the appaeal of continuing with Warcraft for me and many of my friends. we can experiance the content and have fun while the epeen-brigade still get to feel like they are superior, strutting around Ironforge in off peak hours in their 'Purples'...

everyone's a winner hehe.

Play.com are listing it as 4th of November...

not that that's in anyway a full confirmation... It would mean that we should get the new pre-xpac patch sooner rather than later though.

will have to wait and see ^^

(wtb replacement for my NE Rogue's fruity pony tail heh. - wish the barber shop would let us take Undead styles... 'Dodger' would look sick with that Undead mohawk :P )