I would personally like to thank every beta tester who "bad-mouthed" the game, i.e., told the truth.

They saved me from wasting my money on the stupid thing; they kept shyster Garriott from cashing in on his name with a poorly designed, underdeveloped game; and, as a side effect of all this, they may have moved the entire genre one small degree in a better direction.

Kudos to you, beta dudes!

Originally posted by patri0tz  

Hehe, the irony in damian7's use of the term subpar in his arguments is amusing.  If the majority of MMO's are released playable but with bugs and lack of polish, that means the par is playable with bugs and lack of polish.

By gaming industry standards, you're right, a lot of games ARE released buggy and unpolished.  In other words, subpar as video games.

Just because the MMO genre is plagued by a lack of professionalism doesn't mean we should lower the bar on the whole industry.  It does mean MMO publishers need to wake up and acknowledge that the special nature of their product requires more development and testing time than a regular game.

It's okay, though.  There will always be devs and publishers who do put forth professsional material, and these polished products will NEVER FAIL to bring in more money than half-assed ones.  So the cheap and the greedy will go unrewarded in the end.

Some people are driven by the desire to be "better" than everyone around them.

Exactly ONE such person can experience happiness at any given time.

The rest will spend a lot of time writing lunatic rants on Internet forums about how many guns and/or musical instruments they have touuched in their lifetime.

You can expect the first server consolidations to take place about 3 to 4 months after launch.

Originally posted by cthornett

Tabula Rasa is running at around the 150,000 user mark, which is steady. I doubt it made much of a difference, but it certainly hasn't hurt the company.

MMOGChart.com says it never reached 150,000, and furthermore it is now well below 100,000.

WoW is anything but fast food.

Fast food is made quickly and cheaply, with little care given to ingredients, preparation, or presentation.

WoW took YEARS to make, cost MILLIONS of dollars to develop, and came out as a very polished, cohesive, brilliantly integrated, highly professional product.

Very few MMOGs can claim any of that.

Furthermore, when you go to a fast food joint, your options are extremely limited.

When you play WoW, there are many, many different things you can do.  WoW has some of the best PvE around, tons of well-written quests, a huge amount of highly consistent lore, a nicely developed crafting system, many different kinds of PvP, and a very large world to explore.

Most MMOs don't manage to do quite as many things nearly so well.  Some other games may emphasize different areas that you personally prefer, but such games tend to fall flat in most other categories.

WoW is indeed streamlined, but it is NOT "dumbed down."  The game has aspects that are easy, certainly, because OF COURSE they want it to be accessible to as many people as possible, but it has numerous aspects that require a decent amount of skill to master.  If you  disagree with this, I suspect you haven't actually played the game past level 15.

I really don't underestand all the hostility.

There is room for both types of people in any game, and room for both types of content.

In WoW, I would never consider trying to join a raid.  I would hate it, and the raiders would be annoyed at having me there.  I don't want to do what it takes to be there, and I don't want to do the things you have to do once you're in.

Knowing this, I keep my distance.  I'll stick to my 5-man instances, tyvm.

Likewise, I don't have to worry about loot-crazed maniacs trying to join my humble 5-man teams.  They know they won't get anything out of it, so they don't waste their time.

So if you're getting pissed off about the "elitism" of raid groups, you might want to think about the logic of your actions.  That uber purple drop might look tasty, but do you really need it?  Not if you're a casual player.

Likewise, if you're a raider complaining about how n00bs are forcing developers to "dumb down" your games, get over yourself.  These games couldn't exist at all without those n00bs paying the bills, so enjoy what you've got.  If you've done everything and are geting bored, maybe it's time to dominate another game or (*gasp*) get a life.

The good news, damian7, is that while there are a few people who don't mind wasting their money out of some weird idealistic loyalty, the majority of gamers won't put up with it.  Games that suck tend to fail.  Period.  And this is becoming more true as the industry matures.

The trick is in being able to weed out the opinions of idealistic fanbois when you are making your own purchasing decision, but it's not all that hard as their arguments are invariably taken directly from the companies' own PR machines.

Originally posted by Czzarre

The whole issue is based on their ability to turn a profit by having 250K subscriptions.

I think thats not High risk at all. I know the gaming culture, I know the current gaming climate. If all the company needs is 250K subscriptions...

I would put money on that bet!

LoTRO couldn't do it.  CoH couldn't.  EQ2 briefly spiked over the mark, but quickly fell off again.  Most of the recent releases haven't even come close.

And these titles are moderately successful.  If Funcom is such an unhealthy company that it is banking on AoC to be MORE than successful, your bet is a very bad one indeed.

This argument is beyond pointless, as no two people seem to have the same definition of "hardcore."

As I read this thread, there were at least three posts where I ended up scratching my head and wondering, "What the heck does this person even think 'hardcore' means?"

Some people think it has to do with the amount of time you spend playing.

Some people think it has to do with how experienced or skilled a gamer you are.

Some people think it has to do with PvP or open-ended play or player choice or classed-vs-classes character development.

Some people even think "twitch" combat is somehow more hardcore than more traditional MMOG combat.

None of these people are right, because the term "hardcore" is utterly meaningless.

What  I'm saying is, if you want to ask a question or make a point, try to be more precise in your terminology rather than falling back on the crutch of these vapid buzzwords.

I voted neither, but of the two, WAR will beat AoC by a huge margin.

In games like CoH and LoTRO, where heals are available to many classes, the trinity thing is not such an issue.

The root of the problem is in coming up with interesting and creative classes without getting too weird.

Originally posted by findarato

Horizons never claimed to have an older build pushed to beta testers, nor did they promise anything.  They focused on crafting a city building, along with multi class/schooling .  That game failed because they forgot to put any PVE/PVP into the game, and the high end was empty, not just missing, it was there, but it was empty.

Maybe your Horizons memory is fading, as you seem not to know that PvP was removed from the design YEARS before launch.  Furthermore, most people never made it to the "high end" to find out how empty it was.

RP rules are never enforced.  You're dreaming if you think that's going to happen.

Naming rules are only enforced if the name is outright racist or profane.

Of course, the fewer subscribers a game has, the more time the GM staff has to police these things.  For a while.  Then they have to lay off the GMs.

Originally posted by Horniak

 

Originally posted by Hexxeity

I know for a FACT that the people at Artifact Entertainment used exactly the same lies just before the release of Horizons, and Sigil did the same with Vanguard.

And under-funded studios will keep telling the same lies about their half-assed games for as long as their fanbois keep believing them.

 

And these haters just keep coming. Wait and see, you may be right, you may be wrong, but saying these things without anything to back it up is just lame. Only blizzard that got the real money nowdays, so when you say underfunded, you mean everyone except blizzard?

And no, Blizzard is not the only adequately funded game studio around.  Cryptic did just fine with CoH.  SOE is not underfunded (just very poorly directed).  There are many developers who are capable of making a good game.  Funcom just hasn't proven to be one of them.

I'm not even a hater.  I don't know a thing about what AoC is really like.  I never claimed to.  I was just making the point that this line being spun by Funcom sounds very familiar and makes me very skeptical, regardless of ANY claims made by haters OR fanbois.

I do think it's a decent game in many ways.  I love the atmosphere and the world in general.  And since I got my character well past level 30, I think it's fair to say I gave the game a chance.

But I have to say, from a gameplay perspective, other games are just easier to enjoy.  I don't want to have to "be patient" when I'm playing a video game.  It just doesn't make any sense to me.  I have to "be patient" all day long at work.  When I'm paying to play a game, I don't want to have to put quite so much effort into FORCING the game to let me have a good time.

If your game comes with the disclaimer, "We know this part is boring, and these other things are awful, BUT ..."  Well, maybe you need to reconsider whether you have a game or a torture device in a pretty setting.

I know for a FACT that the people at Artifact Entertainment used exactly the same lies just before the release of Horizons, and Sigil did the same with Vanguard.

And under-funded studios will keep telling the same lies about their half-assed games for as long as their fanbois keep believing them.

Hater-haters -- that is, people who ruthlessly attack anyone who posts a negative opinion -- are far more annoying than regular fanbois or regular haters.

Negative opinions are perfectly valid, and -- as long as they are backed up by specifics -- are an important part of why people visit this site.  You want to hear the good AND the bad before you make your decisions.

If you like the game, fine.  State your case and be done.  Same if you don't like it.

Correcting factual errors is one thing, but all the rest of this flaming crap is just a bunch of stupid, stupid drama.

I assumed it would be a release date for StarCraft II.

Having to rely on other players for content is pretty much my worst nightmare.

Seriously, have you ever talked to a random stranger in an MMOG?

There are SOME players who are capable of making a game interesting and enjoyable for others.  Statisticians call these people "outliers."