All Posts by MChavez

Originally posted by Suvroc

Man, that is so disheartening.

Will people ever stop rushing through a game and try living in a simulated environment based on a work of fiction?

In other words, will people ever stop and smell the virtual roses?

This is why I gave up on MMOs and went back to Second Life. I'm sorry but I've seen it in every MMO I've been in since the release of WoW.  This genre of games has been taken over by lazy ass gamers.

When it comes right down to it, any smart gamer will wait for a trial or word of mouth. All of you who are so eagerly anticipating this or any other game, doing the pre-order dance, etc - don't come back here freaking complaining if the game sucks.

Wow, to the OP, your post was incredible. You're right on the money with your review of Second Life as I have had very similar circumstances although didn't take my time in Second Life as far as you did. However, after yet another round of playing the standard MMOs, I am now asking myself again, what do I want? A game or virtual world? The more and more I keep spinning my wheels pointlessly playing one MMO after another or retrying the same MMOs I've tried a million times hoping for something different, the more I realize I sorely need something more out of my online existence. I want so much more than just a game.

Today I went back to Second Life after trying out Entropia Universe. I thought EU might be the pick for me since it combined a game with a virtual world, but from all the research I've done, the costs to get into EU is too much up front. I think it is a tad arrogant of Mind Ark to give nothing to the new user, not even one freebie area, and expect them to pay for every thing up front.

So I said to myself let me take a look at Second Life again. As soon as I got into the world, I saw one of my old friends online. She told me she had become a DJ and was spinning a live set. I went to the club, started listening to the music again and all the memories I had from my first experience with SL came flooding back. I realized then that this is the virtual world for me.

So here's hoping this time around I take my time and appreciate the virtual world around me as opposed to wanting to "conquer rome in one day." I think I've finally got it out of my system that need to experience Gygaxian/MUDD games that now dominate the MMO industry. Rather than sit around all day killing fake crap, I can use Second Life and refocus on my own creative passions and interests....something I had ran away from quite recently but maybe now SL will help bring it back into my life.

Anyway, I babble. Good post.

Why is this creepy? If you put human beings together, they will interact with each other. Why should that interaction not include marriage and love and all that other crap! Let it be. This is th 21st century. This is the intarwebs. Let people fornicate as best they know how be in in real life or virtual.

I, myself, have been using online sources since the early 90s with BBSes to meet those of the opposite sex. Yeah, I'm very shy in real life. Not one to go to bars or clubs and "hook up" - but online environments provide me with the perfect medium to meet and talk to the opposite sex. I have met women from BBSes, Myspace, WoW, Second Life, Yahoo Instant Messenger. I have met most of them and carried on relationships with them in real life as well.

It's all good. These kinds of activities make an MMO game more healthy and brings more variety of people into the game. Come on, we don't want our MMOs full of guys who just want to uber up 24/7. Companies that provide more social aspects to their games are the ones who get the female players. The more female players, the better chance I have at finding myself a lifelong MMO/gamer addicted female life partner!!! :)

Yeah, I've been to Lil Mos Eisely and other Star Wars communities within SL (and there are many and I spent way too much money). While there isn't much game mechanics to speak of, it is still great to be able to dress up as the part and RP with other Star Wars/Sci Fi enthusiasts.

I've decided to try Entropia. I am intrigued by the concept and utterly bored with everything the MMO industry has to offer. My best experiences so far have been EVE Online, Second Life and Vanguard. The latter only because of its vast world. It seems to me that Entropia somewhat combines all three. It has the real money economy just like Second Life. It is player controlled just like EVE. And it is freaking huge just like EVE/SL/VG.

I'm probably not going to invest real world money for one or two months and take my time learning the ropes. I sort of want to prove to myself that I can become somewhat established without having to resort to cash. I also want to see if this game is truly for me. When I first went to SL (only using this as a comparison because it too has a real world economy), I sort of went crazy spending money on virtual items and land only to realize, in the end, SL wasn't for me.

My gaming style is changing and while I am an addicted gamer, I need something real in my gaming experience. Second Life came the closest, but SL is not a game, it is a creative/social experience. I want to be involved in a serious gaming oriented online virtual world, not just a simple level up go raid/PvP game.

So, anyway, I'm checking it out as of last night. There's nothing like Second Life's freebie areas, but there were a couple of players offering free items in exchange for doing TP runs. I mostly ran around the surrounding areas of the starting city trying to collect Sweat. I walked around for a bit and found some fruit. I eventually found the TP and there were a lot of people just hanging around. So, feeling tired, I hung out there watching chat until I had to go to bed.

Originally posted by Deathstrike2

The game is actually pretty good.  I had fun with it, and just recently jumped to LOTRO.  My problem wasn't with the gameplay at all.  I had a lot of fun playing it.  My problem was with the dev team or rather, the lack of it.  Their team is very small (too small in my opinion) and it shows badly.  Their patches usually break as much as they fix, and then they end up having to patch their patches -- sometimes repeatedly.  Most things on the player's wish lists will never see the light of day (my opinion) because their team just doesn't have the resources to make it happen.  Read the official dev posts in response to many player questions.  You'll start to see a trend of "we don't have the ability or  time" type responses.  Also Silius, the lead dev, isn't a very good communicator (again, my opinion).  He allows himself to be dragged into arguments and he sometimes even flames back on the open forums. 

In the end, it was becoming pretty clear that SOE has no plans to grow this game.  There's no current plans for a paid expansion, free expansions come out kind of slowly, and there's so much still broken in the game that the dev team just can't possibly fix the game and release new reliable content at the same time.

Anywho, that's how I see it.  I'll keep my eye on the game for a while, but unless the team is beefed up A LOT, I doubt I'll return anytime soon.

 

Whether or not SOE does anything to this game in the future is a moot point for me. However, I do think there is some hope for SOE. If subs keep rising, I'm sure they'll put more development into the game. There is a newbie island in development for trials. An expansion just might come out for this game but it'll most likely be another year away.

SOE is in a tight position here with this game. They can do many things to make the game much better, but, if they wait too long, this game will go the route of the likes of Matrix Online and simply be forgotten about by the players as more and more new/fantasy based MMOs come out.

I'm basically playing VG until a true sandbox fantasy MMO comes out. AoC and WAR won't be the ones so I'll most likely be playing Vanguard until the likes of Darkfall or Mortal Online ever see the light of day.

As Kassiah said, you must log into the original account. I recently resubscribed with my original username and all I had to do was reactivate the subscription by paying only the monthly fee.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Aventurine doesn't need to clear up any rumors, they are free to develop (or not) the game as they please.

 

I just don't understand why so many people don't get this point. I think it boils down to the false assumption that the customer is king. All these little self-appointed kings and queens who think just because they pay $15/month to play a game that they can shit all over anything they want to when things don't go the way they want them to. Why so much vitriol against a game that hasn't even been released yet? Why so much anger? It seems like people have taken their disappointment towards other games and are dumping it on unreleased games like Darkfall because Adventurine will do NOTHING to placate their cynicism. It really is stupid to get so hyped up over an unreleased game whether one is for or against it. And I applause Aventurine for not giving in to these people.

Originally posted by Anofalye

The graphics?

 

I am not an artist, and my opinion is worth what it is worth.

 

But on graphics, my answer would just be to link you this video.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDqVXNOlccU

Yep, the video says it all. Nuff said. I just want to add to my previous post that ANYONE can take ANY MMO and make criticisms against various aspects of the graphics. Not every MMO is going to be 100% perfect or 100% visually pleasing to everyone.

Originally posted by Ascension08

Ah well, if you want a nice landscape go look at a painting. I do like landscape graphics being nice but only if the character models/animations can match. Otherwise it seems out of place. I've only seen this game and have never played it, but was surprised to read about the bad spell animations and little graphic things that make the game feel alive. Heard this game was supposed to have demanding requirements, but maybe I was wrong lol.

Well, the overall problem with Vanguard is that there is a lack of continuity in almost all aspects of the game. This game is demanding of system requirements and often times I look around the landscape and wonder why? Anyone can easily fire up LotRO and find themselves in a graphically cohesive and beautiful world that runs fairly well on most WoW capable machines. While Vanguard doesn't always get every spell effect (Force Barrier spell for Sorcs come to mind) right, or every character animation right, there is still much to be said about how beautiful the world is.

It might not be 100% perfect but I tend to prefer Vanguard's graphics over any other MMO today. For better or worse, they are the most realistic of any game out there today (minus the glossy effect of armor and rocks).

Originally posted by Cochran1

Wow, thats alot of gold farmers

Someone just had to say it.....

Originally posted by mmonkeyboy

This game is rated "AI", meaning only AI gets to play.  (Or at least that's what I gathered from the latest dev journal.)

 

  good one ;)

You might want to head on over to virginworlds.com and listen to both podcasts: The Drone Bay and Warp Drive Active, especially the latter because they tend to focus on current news. WDA will give you a good picture of the political landscape of the game and they keep talking about how BoB are being squeezed in all directions. As a previous poster said, nobody will ever own EVE. Once a corp. gets big enough, you better bet that some other group will come up and do what they can to topple the corp. at the top and this seems to be what has been happening in EVE for awhile now.

Of course, I wouldn't personally know anything. I'm just some solo miner trying to do his best to stay alive.

Being a major fan of Tolkien, I tried really hard to get into LotRO. I managed about five separate attempts but never got a character over level 25.

I suppose my gripe with LotRO is my gripe with most MMOs today: too linear, too theme parkish for me.

The graphics in LotRO are very beautiful. However, the world itself is too "animatronic" for my tastes. I feel like I'm standing in a line waiting to get on a ride at Disneyland. It would be nice if an MMO came along that didn't have it's NPCs either just stand there or stand there performing very limited animations ad infinitum. I want more like NPCs ala Oblivion. I really wanted a more living/breathing world of Middle Earth, not just beautifully rendered landscapes and towns that are as lifeless as any MMO on the market today.

I'm tired of fantasy MMOs who expect players to commit wilderness genocide. Again, LotRO is fairly typical in that once a player leaves the safety of a town, he is bombarded with mobs strategically spread out upon the landscape.  I felt this killed immersion for me because nowhere in the books were people simply outright slaying bears and wolves and other creatures, who, if met in the woods, would most likely leave you alone. But, games like LotRO forces a player to kill, kill, kill, kill. If anything, the books were about saving nature, not going out and slaying all the creatures.

LotRO is no different than WoW or any other fantasy based MMO on the market today. I would have preferred a true virtual world of Middle Earth where the players have control over the world. I would have preferred a good vs. bad side with players choosing sides and competing against each other over control of land and resources. I'm god damn tired of these "hold my hand" quest style MMOs. I want something real, like EVE Online, for my fantasy based MMO.

Now, if you don't mind the theme park zones, don't mind leveling up characters, don't mind instancing taken too far (can't stand having to instance into every building - and people have the nerve to complain about 1-2 second chunking in Vanguard) and prefer a game over a virtual world, then, by all means, play LotRO. If you enjoyed Wow (and I did for a time) and want more of that same experience (without all the raid/PvP blah blah blah), then LotRO is the game for you. However, if you want a deeper experience, tired of the level concept, move on. This game is not for you.

Ha! Considering most fantasy MMOs cater to wimpy types and carebears, I can wait forever for either DF or Mortal Online to come out. I salivate at knowing that there will finally be MMO games that truly separate real players from wimpy ass carebears who think every MMO should be like WoW or LotRO. May they forever roast in hell!!!!

I downloaded the game. For an asian MMO, I gotta say THANKS for providing WASD and point and click control. See, I knew it wasn't a difficult thing to do. Now if only other asian MMOs would follow the same route. However, once I went into the first city and saw the player made shops as little floating cats (I think), I left the game.

I simply don't like a gaming world where each city is cluttered with player owned shops. At the very least, make them look like little stalls. Why fat looking cats that just float there? Why have them all over the place? Talk about killing immersion. It is just like any other asian F2P mmo. Go to a city and see dozens upon dozens of people sitting there "selling" items. Are these people real or bots? Why are asians so content to play along side with bots?

Asians seem to be more accepting of games and fantasy unlike us here in the West. But, how come we take our fantasy more seriously than they do? They spend all this time creating these worlds and then fuck them up with such un-immersive features like: anime art style, bots, point/click movement, littering cities with player shops, and over-the-top combat animations (sorry, I don't want to feel like I'm playing Street Fighter in my MMO).

Nah, I think it is impossible for a player to do what they did in the South Park WoW episode. I thought that part of the episode was the weakest. As if any developer would be powerless against a player gone wild. Yeah right. Still, was a freaking funny episode!!