I just might be the only one in .. the world.. that did not have any problems with Anarchy when that launch. Not only could i log in with no problem, but i never crash either.

WoW had me waiting a bit a few times,

Aion was never a problem, a bit boring game, no new innovation i mean at all, but no problems either.

SWG nah.. didnt have problem there at all, remembering a very good experience until i ran out of content.

Age of Conan... nope no problmes, ran pretty well, was lack of content of course, but no technical problems to speak of

then i bought, yeah i know.. Fifa Manager 10... omg, crashed in the main menu, couldnt save the game, crashes very often during gameplay.

Conclusion: It is my experience that MMO's are a lot better quality assured than standalone games. The customer amounts is about the same, but a lot more effort is put into making the MMO work.

regarding Offensive names

Why not add this to the parent control features of a game. This way the individual parents could decide what is allowed or not. No matter how we turn it around, each parent has different standards anyways.

In my language the word "Reanim" means rape. What action will you do for me to not see that name on these servers?

That are very good ideas however there is one drawback to more intelligent AI's and that is the computational requirements. You should think that with the computers we have today that shouldnt be a problem, but if you multiply with the amount of entities that lives on a server, both players, grass, orcs and so on, it becomes a significant problem and has been the reason why MMOs so far has not attempted this.

Another reason is that qualified AI programmers are not available, there just isnt many people who can figure out how to make a good AI, even though it seems simple, it is a complicated task in a 3D world. Yes simple things as if the sun is up, the grass grows, but developers think of AI as being a little more challenging and it is going to take some time before anyone improves on the "15 year" old stand-around-till-i-get-shot AI.

OMG 100,000 users, what happened to this game in the last 6 months? I have confirmed from personal contacts to management level  insiders that 6 months ago Runescape had 5,5 million users and 1,1 million subscribers.

Where did you get those 100,000 from?

Originally posted by paulscott

Wurmonline - Game I played for the longest the only real mmo "GAME" that is eligiable for this sites requirements(the whole graphical thing that is still a fully player controlled world.   It even puts EvE and Darkfall to shame after you look at aspects like being able to build your house/town/outpost anywhere(literally) on the map amoung a few other touches.

Guildwars - A class based game where it actually made sense to go class based.   This should be a staple for ANY mmo or even gamer.

Runescape - what can I say I'm not the UO hardcore guy I started on this game when I was a kid.   It has some interesting design decisions in that permemently altered how I was going to play MMOs(for great sandbox) from those decisions in the game. 

Mabinogi - sillily enough what I'm playing now.  Biggest laugh in the face to wester MMO developers because an Asian F2P low quality grind endgameless budgetless bad graphic sadist maoistic game gets away from the holy trinity when the best aspect of the game is raiding, while they(our developers) can't imagine a game that is otherwise(holy trinity).

Right PaulScott... I just lost all faith in you, Mabinogi? seriously? WurmOnline? Could you pick worse games? Even The Matrix (which is otherwise the worst MMO game ever published), beats these games.

It is without a doubt the lacking interface that prevents other producers making MMO's for the consoles. We have found a way, but are still investigating the market potential. We are working on a game that will be released for Wii, XBox and possibly PS3 as well. It is easy for the Wii, but we are considering delivering the XBox and PS3 version together with a new interface, a virtual glove, that will make players able to be part of the action. The game will be ftp (free to play). We will see how that goes.

Both Warhammer and AoC has done some overhauling and for what they present has become quite good games now and worth a try. You will have to like their special kind of fun though, but if you like WoW and Lotro, chances are you will be entertained by those two as well.

For some, this is "just a game", but scaringly enough for the most part, MMO's is a lifestyle.

Similar graphics has actually been done before in other games like Lost Empire and Eve is not totally far off either, so I would think this could be an in-game screenshot.

Originally posted by Reklaw

Originally posted by Mitara

I have recently discovered two new paths of our favourite company to hate, funcom.

First of all they have hired a new game designer, Rasmus Hahr, said to be a genious, having been part of the development of another game that was nominated best game of the year. He is now a game designer on the Secret World franchise.

Funcom also recently decided to use the Unity engine to create their new casual MMO's. The Unity is a great new engine that is very easy to get results with.

So its not exactly quiet the Funcom lab. What do you think, do they have a future?

You hate it that they hired a new game designer, one  that had a former game be nominated best game of the year?
You also hate it that they taken the Unity engine for their new casual MMO´s?

 

Serious do we even have GAMERS on this forum?

 

I think you completely missed the point, Im not hating Funcom trying to fix their problems. I think its a good thing. Better try and fail that not trying at all.

I am also convinced that when Funcom does release the new AO graphics engine, that game will be able to offer many players a good experience. Its a strange game, but its not all that bad.

I supplyed you with 2 reasons I have been given by current investors, only to see people like Shadowmage, curring my post down. I do understand, its very clear from the wording shadowmage is using, that he is on some kind of crusade against Funcom. I cant blame him for not liking Funcom, I dont like them much either. I can blame him for not being serious...

Originally posted by Dosska

Yeah I think you have a good point with the immersion features.  One thing about WoW that seems lacking in most other games is the attention to small details that enhance a sense of immersion, like the background noises or the NPC scenarios you encounter throughout the game world.  Small things like that don't seem like much but I think they make the game world more alive and subtly but greatly increase the sense of immersion.   Most of the time in WoW I don't really think about it, but when I play a game that doesn't have the same level of detail I definitely feel the lack.  The character customization in WoW, however, could be a lot better.  SWG has the best character creation I've seen in any MMO and I wish other MMO's would aspire to the same level.  It was the only game I've ever played where I was able to actually make a character that  looked like me.

Uh, the horror! How can you possibly want more copies of you??

I have recently discovered two new paths of our favourite company to hate, funcom.

First of all they have hired a new game designer, Rasmus Hahr, said to be a genious, having been part of the development of another game that was nominated best game of the year. He is now a game designer on the Secret World franchise.

Funcom also recently decided to use the Unity engine to create their new casual MMO's. The Unity is a great new engine that is very easy to get results with.

So its not exactly quiet the Funcom lab. What do you think, do they have a future?

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Well MMOs are no longer limited to the nerdy niche that inhabited them earlier, now more regular gamers play them, most of which have no desire to play the game to make friends.

I don't think newer MMOs are easier though, since there was nothing really hard about the older ones they just forced you to group to do anything in a timely manner and even then took forever to go places and level.  But going back to the group heavy focus won't make the communities like ye olde MMOs because there is no going back.  Your best bet is to find a really niche game, like Ryzom, which is unknown and unappealing to a wider audience, if you like the game then you will probably like the community because it is comprised of people who think like you.

I don't think WoW has a bad community, it just has a particular style, particularly for those people that like Chuck Norris jokes and visit 4chan.  Exclusion makes the best communities, when people that all think similarly get together to do something they tend to enjoy themselves more. 

 

OMG blasphemy... whats wrong with Chuck Norris jokes?h Ok, I guess he is a little old now, and most people have turned towards either Britney Spear jokes or Paris Hilton.. she is a joke in herself, but... dont you dare talk badly about our hero Chuck Norris !!

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by zymurgeist 

AoC already paid most of it's production cost back in box sales, which were massive considering the state of the game. You'd be surprised how cheap an MMO is to run once initial development is complete. It means less content will be added at a slower pace. I doesn't mean it will be buggier.

That brings up a good point, if they lost 25 or 30 million this year with the massive box sales AoC had. Now that the games population is in the basement, how the hell are they going to survive the coming year? Trying to develop Secret World and while they are keeping AoC on life support and get it launched in 2 or 3 other countries while developing a version for the 360.

All I can say is they have a full plate and I would not want to be in their shoes.

Funcom is actually working very much so on The Secret World, up to 80 people on that project now. They recently hired an upcoming game designer, said to be a little of a genious in what he does (Rasmus Hahr) and there are certainly high hopes for this title. Rasmus Hahr had a foot in the door in another singleplayer project called Lost Empire that was nominated twice as ""Best game of the year". That game didnt do overly good, but I did see reviews going up to 9.3 of 10, so I do have hopes for this Secret Worlds of thiers.

They are also working with 20 men teams on coming casual MMO titles based on the Unity engine, expecting to launch their first already in 2009.

So yes, AoC with 100K subscribers is bad, but that doesnt stop them from creating new and hopefully better and more succesful games.

The current status of Funcom surely is not good, but there is hope for the future.

Yes, AoC, did lack contents and its playing fields was limited in size and innovation. The game became unpopular mostly though, because people expected more. When you come from WoW that has been build up by frequently added contents throughout many years, and then you meet a new game with 1/10 of that in contents, the mood has to be disappointment.

For a newcomer to MMO, AoC is beliieve it or not, an amazing experience, its generally agreed that it is the best looking MMO on the market, and yes, when you are an experience MMO gamer, you go through the contents very fast, but for the newcomer, that isnt so, and it takes a little time before they start to think "where do I go to level up".

So while AoC steadily becomes better and better, there is no doubt it needs to, to keep even the barely 100K subscriber they have now. But why wouldnt they do what they can?

Funcom has new things up the sleeve as well. They recently hired a genious game designer (Rasmus Hahr), a bit of a scoop for Funcom, since he is really good. He is working on the comng mmo title The Secret World, so that game does have a chance.

They are also working on several casual MMO's, which actually is a much much bigger market, than the quality client MMO market is. They chose to use the Unity engine for this, which is a huge scoop, since thats probably the best engine out there right now for casual MMO's and a very fast one to develop in, meaning they just might be ready  to launch their next mmo already in 2009.

Those two things, would get an investor hopeful, the hiring of Rasmus and the use of the right developing tool, Unity, making them able to launch something in 2009.

In the last 2 years, we have seen computer prices drop tremendously, in my country more than 70% has been cut off. This is the way of the world of course, question is, how will this affect upcoming MMO's. With Intel's Larabee coming out soon, will developers aim for higher-end computer in the future?.

>Add some military style to it and ill tell my wife to have your babies.

We are working on a Blade Runner styled MMO.. Is she pretty?

I must say I respect the Koreans and their love for MMO's. Having one country's playing population being bigger than the entire european playing population is huge.

I am still wondering why there are like 10 times as many english MMO players, than german players or french players.

What makes those countries so different?

As for the games

AoC is not that bad a game, its the best looking game, but granted not as good as WoW
War is fair, but somehow pretty boring, just like EVE imho.
 

We can only hope the future will launch better games