Here is one for you Sanya:

We made some changes to the Trials of Atlantis abilities.

Translated: We know we screwed up by making the abilities acquired by the long quest chain extremely overpowered, but you seriously can't expect us to significantly nerf them for those few that have completed it.

(As the playerbase exits stage left)

Well sorry Ripper, this is another FPS game with zero MMO qualities.  Personally I deleted it off my system after fooling with it for a day.  

Not a very good article Ripper, you can do better.

This game is NOT f2p in any shape or form.  It has a trial mode, but you are severely limited in what you can do.  If you can't get your facts straight, why makes us suffer with a poor review?  Just because some marketing type is mouthing f2p, it is quite obvious it is not.

Did not like the pvp aspect of it.  Classes are very unbalanced and like someone said above, since you can't respec(at least it was not available when I played it), you can be stuck with a bad build if you are not careful.

This game could be very good, but in it's present state anything over a 6 rating is laughable.  This game is a work in progress.

Yuck, Java is not a language that you want to write games in.  I wish them luck, but I won't touch it.

Expect to drop significant funds to play this game, it is most certainly not free.

This game could have been so good with a better developer..

Originally posted by Kyleran

Well, I'm currently playing SWTOR, and I haven't seen anything in 1.2 that will likely sway me to stay or go, not even the legacy system. (but I don't know all that much about it)

I have a level 43 heal spec'd Commando now, so I figure I'll try making an alt that either tanks or dps's to see if playing a different story line is all that fun.

My guild raids 2 times a week, I might join them if they have some openings, and it appears I'll be encouraged to run daily quests for money and to hang with the other folks.

But there are no miracle patches, (closest was AOC's right before launch) and in the end if you don't enjoy the game pretty much as it is right now, 1.2 isn't likely to open up a whole new world of fun and excitement for you.

 

This.

What is with all the mod edits?

OH great so we are going to have a mix of writers from sci-fi and desperate housewives?  That sounds like a winner of a combination.

Hope at least the MMO is decent.

"a ton of new content"?  

1.2 has a lot of new content, but not close to a ton of it.  If you raid or pvp, you are getting help in 1.2, other than that not so much. 

Really did not understand the point of a guild leader summit so early in the games life cycle.  

I wish those that like this game continued fun, but I do not think the patch is going to bring a lot of players back.

Originally posted by bigsmiff

Originally posted by rygard49

I don't think it's ever a bad idea for a game, or any product for that matter, to offer a free trial. There are a lot of people with a healthy amount of skepticism who simply will not pay for something they're unsure they'll enjoy. A free trial alleviates that issue and gives the company an opportunity to increase sales.

Is this a tactic born of desperation? I don't think so. I just read a post that they have 1.7 million active subs.

 

How dare you bring sound logic to this forum!

I agree with you by the way

Depends how sound the logic is.  EA did not say at what point in time they had 1.7 million active subs.  My guess is they have less than that now.  Probably not desparation at this point, but I'll bet that the number of people buying the game now has dried up to a trickle.

Retention is going to be a problem soon unless they add a lot of new content.  I stil think that they will be merging servers before the end of the year if not sooner.

It is a pretty big download, not sure I want to do that for only 4 days of play.

Originally posted by NameWasTaken

Meh... I am sure there are a dozen "Asian grinder" MMO's in the works, to replace this one. The Asian's need to focus less on aesthetics (Boobies), and more on game play (Not Grinding).

 

Exactly!

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

You can believe what you like, everyone knows that has played FFA PVP for any significant time it just does not work well.   Just look at Darkfall and MO, I consider both failures as they can't even hold the attention of the pvp crowd.  It does bring out some of the worst kind of people along with the good ones.  It only takes a few bad ones to ruin it for the majority.    Banding together is a myth.  By the time you have your group together the bad guys are gone.  

UO had to actually ban entire guilds because they were such jerks.  There is always someone willing to push the limits.

Take for example Eve, they have addressed FFA PVP by only allowing it in specific areas.  Their design has holes in it, but it works for the most part.   UO was a much better game when they added the non pvp area Trammel.   You still had to go to Felucca for the better things in the game, but could play unmolested by pvpers if you so chose.

So it resolves itself down to consequences without penalizing those that actually just want to teach a pest a lesson.   They have to be there to make people think twice about hassling others.  I have not seen any rulesets yet that have been successful, hence FFA PVP still ends up being a huge deterrent to having a large population to support a game.  Eve comes close, yet it still has major issues.

So lumping FFA PVP and sandbox is a bad idea because when you do, you will cause a major limit to your possible playerbase, hence why the avoidence by major labels from making sandbox games.

Stupid title.  Soloers are well known destroyers of MMO's.  

Why do you think all the latest games are boing to tears, everything is soloable.

If you can't figure that out, I feel sorry for you.

Just don't understand how anyone can consider a gender locked game to be anything to get excited about.  This game just blends in with all the other bad f2p games out of the east.

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Just chiming in to say that Garrett doesn't get excited about every game very easily, and he's just as skeptical of browser games... but he called me after his appointment and pretty much squealed like a fanboy for an hour about how great this looked and how much ArtPlant (the devs) "get it".  

I'd be cautiously optimistic honestly.

Wait a minute, it is a f2p pvp game.  Now if the devs get it there won't be anything in the item shop that effects pvp, oh wait, it is Bigpoint...that will never happen.  This game has pay-to-win written all over it.  How can anyone be optimistic with that scenario?

I'd love to see a decent sandbox game make it, but it is all about the bigger wallet in pay-to-win games.  So unless something earth shattering happens, like Bigpoint making the item shop strictly fluff, don't have much hope for this game.

Originally posted by Nephaerius

To the posters above it's not like these guys have never made a game before.  They may not be the most experienced people in the world, but this isn't their first rodeo either.  By the same token Paradox Interactive has a decent reputation as a studio.  While they may not be a studio widely known to MMO players Paradox brought you Mount and Blade, Majesty, Magicka, etc. and those are only recent titles.  Here's a link to the studio's over 100 titles either already released or currently in development. 

http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games

@Denambren - The game is about game play not graphics.  It's an actual player run sandbox.  It's not lack of effort it's an art style and also means that the game can be played on a wide range of PC's.  If they were hoping to "cash in" they probably wouldn't make an MMO focused on features like crafting and include permadeath. 

 

That is the point, the game play.  The gameplay mechanics they have published just do not make any sense when you consider human nature and how the game playing public reacts to them.

The roleplayers and builders will be gone within a month or two.  Once they are gone you have very few groups who will stick around long.

Makes no difference they have published games before, they are acting completely clueless with this game design.

Cracks me up, some of you trying to portray critics as haters.  I wonder when it will get it through your dense skulls that the critics don't hate the game, just don't particularly care for it either.

Like every other publisher, EA lies like the best of them.   If you believe their numbers you have bigger issues to resolve.

I can guarentee they will be merging servers before years end.  Just not enough content to keep people playing.

These kids making this game are just lost.  I just do not see this game attracting anyone, but a few players who are looking for something very different.  

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by SlaverHound

To use your own metaphor - if you are going to fix a leaking sink the first thing you'd do is remove all the crap that will get in your way

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Yep, and ship tress nor pipes in whole building are anything like that.

That was my point, ship trees do not hold them back from fixing the game nor they help the fix in any meaningful way.

If we would agree that the most painful balance issue are projectiles and hybrids, I would like to know how ship tree changes are going to fix it.

Nothing wrong with projectiles, just your perception about them.  Hybrids are much better than they used to be, though they are secondary weapons for those racial's that use them hence they won't be at the same level as basic racial abilities as they are not the primary weapons for that race.

First off, many of you confuse sandbox with open world pvp.  A sandbox game does not need open world pvp to be a sandbox game.  SWG is proof of that.

Secondly if you have open world pvp you better have significant consequences built into it to prevent it from being a gank fest.  Notice the very sparse populations of Darkfall and MO, none have consequences to any degree.  Anyone saying the game population can police it does not understand the genre at all, just does not work that way.

Thirdly, UO was enhanced by Trammel.  Very few left the game when it was added and many joined.  Personally thought that those that left missed out on a much better game.

Lastly, if they make this a f2p as I suspect, you can write this game off too, most of us won't touch a pay-to-win game.