Well, Blizz made Wow a bit easier bacause a lot of their customers asked for it. Some of it's players are really young kids and Wow is aiming for all players, you can't really blame Blizz for giving most of their customers what they want.

But try something a bit harder then. Guildwars is worth a try, made by the first development team on Wow (they made Warcraft 3 also) and without a monthly fees. It will also run fine on a bit older computers, particulary the first campaign is fun and you can run it in hardmode (Strain also made Nightmare and Hell levels for Diablo, hard mode is friggin' hard). Awesome arenamode PvP based on skill, not gear. And you can make a max lvl only PvP char from the start if you want to.

EQ2 is also a bit harder than Wow and very fun if you like grouping, it is not a good game for solo play however. Just play on a Us server (you can chose region there) even if you are from EU, the EU servers are laggy and underpopulated. It is closer to Wow than Guildwars, GW feels closer to Diablo than Wow. EQ2s PvP suck big time however.

Originally posted by Bhoogren

WOW made several major mistakes, IMHO.

---Twinks. Twinks make level 70 BG's suck. players with major level armor and weapons can run into a crowd of fairly new 70's and mow them down like level 65 NPC drink sellers.

--The new Honor systems is such that  fight for an hour against a crowd of honor starving twinks and leave with 25 points of honor.

It use to be if you put in a decent effort and your team lost there was 200 or 300 points Honor to their 500 or 600..

The other night I was in the upper reaches of my faction's stats and leave with 20 to 30 points for 3 games straight. Yes we were facing a mob of twinks. 

---This means the time spent versus honor gained  to gain competitive Armor has been raised astronomically.

Listen, only MMO that have no twinks are Guildwars because it's system. It is not possible to make a game like Wow and not get them, all the devs can do is lessen the impact on them.

If you want a game where your skill is a lot more important than the gear, games like Wow and EQ2 is the wrong way to go. On the other hand Raiding in one of these games is kinda pointless. In guildwars you just get a bit cooler looking armour for the hardest instances, even though the green weapons are slightly better than the rest.

Some games like AoC try to balance between gear and skill, but the RAID community in Wow would probably be very upset about something like that.

Any game must have a certain % of how much a tougher you get and how much more damage you make, and the higher that is the easier it is to make a twink. But the PvE crowd usually like it and Wow are trying to make everyone happy so either you live with it or start playing a game with less gear dependence.

Bioware uses a guy in a motion suit for poses and animations so you might not like how people stand but it is the way real humans stand. As for the rest, the game is still in early alpha so relax until it is closer to launch. Stuff like the humans face can as well e under work.

Originally posted by Gus5000

Soon we will know if they are allowing more people or it is BS. I guess the leakers will undersand this very easy and will let us know. So be patient for about 4 days when the first waves of the testers will start playing.

Sure but one thing worries me: They said the "free trial" started now but the NDA is still in effect. That can't be a good sign. When you give away a free trial to stress-test a fininshed product there should not be any need for a NDA.

So is the game still unfinnished or what is Tasos game?

And to me at least it seems like they are inviting people but just a few hundred when they were talking about thousands and hundreds of thousands, and if the game launches in time and they keep getting players in this slow most people will not get the free trial, only a few selected will.

No, this is not looking good at all right now, it is not something final about the game but it seems to me that Tasos either have something to hide, are full of BS or that something is wrong with the game. I hope I am wrong and we get an anouncement today that 10K players or more get's in this weekend.

Originally posted by Axxar

I believe they said they were either the fastest selling or the second fastest selling. Meaning they believed WoW possibly sold faster at their launch, but weren't sure. Perhaps the exact numbers weren't available.

That really doesn't matter. What you want is the biggest percentage of players that continue to play, that is what made Wow so big. And while WAR isn't the worst game there (I think that was Vanguard) it still can get much improvement there.

I rather sell 100K boxes and have all players to continue than 1 million and have 20% continue myself, in the long run the one who keep most of it's player will win.

Originally posted by warror

Yes War is the second biggest pay to play MMO after Wow. But yes it does have too many servers. There is over 200k people playing War on a regular basis (a huge population for most MMOs if you don't count wow) but it doesn't feel like it because there is way too many servers.

Hardly. In the X-fire statistic the list is:

1. Wow

2. Guildwars

3. Eve.

4. WAR

While X-fire isn't that reliable both WAR and Guildwars do have significent higher numbers, and Guildwars have sold 5 times as many games as WAR. So we have both more boxes sold and a lot more X-fire users, you have any figures to back your statistic up?

WAR can have any number of players between 150K-350K, we really don't know that but we do know that they are at least stll losing players using X-fire, not that many but they are still going down. We also know that Eve have one server while Guildwars have 5 or so. WAR have a lot of servers both in US and EU, and WAR is one of those games that really need as many players as possible on a server to max out the fun.

So I agree with OP, WAR should close down some more servers, playing on anything but the ones with highest population decreases the fun.

And no I am not saying WAR is a bad game or dying but all statistic and numbers we have say that it is not the second biggest western MMO, don't missunderstand me. And at least some of the EU servers could have a lot of more players on them, dunno what is happening in US. And to max the numbers of players on a server should lessen the numbers of players quiting, or at least I hope so.

Originally posted by Slovenc

 for the last and i mean realy last time xfire and igoogle arent accurate maybe its on the rise there but it could still be at a stalmate or decreasing the only way u can know for sure iis if funcome releases a how many players are subbed list

It is worthless to compare between games but you can see trends in the same game with it. Anytime a new expansion releases it goes up, anytime a game closes down servers for several hours they drop a little. Look on the big gap on AoC when the server was down for the merge. Don't trust the exact % but if it moves 5% or more I would say we got a raise.

Also AoCs forum have more new and returning players than earlier so the game is gaining some players, how many and how many the game have now is still a question but it is still good news.

Well, you can't really expect one update to fix RvR and turn it from "meh" to fun, these things takes time.

But the game can still be turned around and Mythic is kinda in a tight spot, EA is cutting down and if WAR doesn't turn around they will not be able to do another big game like it ever.

So the final word isn't in yet but it will take a lot of work still.

Originally posted by banthis

...this thread astounds me honestly...seriously......EA is letting go of 1,000 people world wide...Mythic's lay offs dont' even cover a quarter of those numbers and none of them are developers...people are really making this out to be bigger than it is.   If Mythic was really hurting EA they'd let go of some of the higher paying people along with the others.   

btw maybe Jon needs to read Gamasutra more...it sheds better light then tabloid gaming news sites and forum posters with wild speculations and hater aid.

just for reference I am not a over zealous fan boi etc...i cancelled my account at the beginning of the year. 

Well, it is not good news, but it could of course be worse.

But I wish they actually gave us numbers of subs also, both WAR and AoC was very open with the numbers at first but as soon as the subs started to drop things started to be very quit about any numbers. Keeping their mouths now only leads to speculation that it is actually a lot worse than the current numbers (or so I hope).

But right now, it isn't Mythic that is in trouble, it is EA. The cuts Mythic got was acceptable but it will still makes things more difficult for them. It is no big problem now but it is likely we see another EA cut this summer or so, it seems like 2009 will be a black year for most companies. So if  WAR wont start gaining players again this summer it might be time to worry.

Originally posted by Ravanos

you TECHNICALLY can but good luck finding anyone who will go into an arena with you. unless you get into a guild that has dueling nights. those are always fun unless you have to fight the main raid tank LOL

A duel while you wait for someone to show up isn't that unusual. The arena is a really empty place though.

Originally posted by Cryptor

lol I could not disagree more.  I played all pay-to-play mmorpgs out there and I honestly cannot think of any that are better than Wahammer.  Loving it.

Meaningful RvR & PvP with player drops and xp.  Really well done scenarios.   Fantastic dungeons, and more of them then any other mmorpg at release.  I could go on and on.

The rest of the game released with less than 5 real dungeons? Now you are just making things up. But WAR have never tried to be a good PvE game anyways.

Personally I am dissapointed in WAR, and not for the same reasons as the rest of the people here. I am a big fan of the world and the Warhammer RPG game but Mythics world is a lot more shallow than even the tabletop, and using a level based system really goes against everything Warhammer stands for.

If they made it into any other world I'd say it was a good game but they just didn't give us the mix between horror and dark humour that is Warhammers trademark.

As for the "meaningful" RvR I seen better, in Daoc for one game. It is not a bad game in my book but Mythic didn't really succed with the feeling of GWs games.

But taste differs of course, still not one of all my Warhammer fan friends are playing the game anymore, and they spent many years playing the pen and paper RPG and the tabletop. I played the RPG for 18 years myself.

Wow, more TCG is just what SOE needs... Not. They should focus on making MMOs instead. But I guess TDC are cheap to make and can generate a lot of money.

Still, they have already 2 of those already and to be honest, SOE worst MMO is tons better then them put together.

Well, it is kinda the curse with a level based system. Animals like Wolves and bears can kill a skilled warrior but it is not likely, particulary with the wolfs (I live in Sweden, we have wolfs but the only "known" case about a wolf killing a human is 200 years ago, was a kid and the story might not even be true).

So to make animals like that to have the chanse you must give them levels too. A level based system really doesn't work with the true Tolkien lore (and BTW, how many spells did anyone ever cast in the books? Not many). But LOTRO is just a game, it doesn't really try to make Tolkiens world exactly as it is in the books, just close enough to be fun.

But I still wish they made the game skill based like many RPGs instead of level based, but it is kinda too late now. But you will see stuff like this in any level based game. In a skill based game you can be killed by something wimpy, it is just not likely. In LOTRO a lvl 50 will never get killed by a lvl 1 ever.

Pen and paper games have given us both fast paced simple games like D&D and more realistic skill based games like Runequest, Warhammer and ARS magica. As good as all MMOs are unfortunatly usually based on D&D so you just have to live with that for now. In the future we might see more realistic systems in MMOs, and more diversed ones. But whatever system you would prefer is up to you. But diversity is good, D&D was first but that doesn't make it the best.

And please note that there is a difference between "sandbox" games and "skill based" games. A sandbox is a game where the players do most things themselves without to much NPCs while a skill based game is a game where youre character can get better at stuff but he wont get a lot tougher for that even though he gets harder to hit, the HP usually stays the same or close to the same. In the real world a experienced swordfighter can't defeat loads of enemys alone even if they are untrained.

Don't you think you over reacting a bit now?

If you really want to play TFU that much you should just consider getting a console, some very good games (like the Soulcalibur games for one) doesn't really work on a PC. In other cases they are made to PC later. If you really want to play it that much, get a PS3 or X-box.

If you really want to play TOR but don't, then you are punishing yourself more than LA.

Originally posted by Midnitte

 

Sounds like Hellgate, doomed to fail imo. All the people there are no longer working on whatever game they were, for good reason?

 

The rest of the Diablo team made Guildwars and it sold well, so it doesn't prove anything.

And there are way more reasons possible than they were fired, maybe Blizzard payed too low salery, maybe it was the same reason that the Arenanet crew quited (Strain was the first lead programmer on Wow):  Blizz forced them to do everything exactly their way. Maybe they had a great idea and Blizz didn't want to publish it.

Of course the game might suck but your reason why it will is just as bad as OPs reasons why it will be the next great game. We just don't know.

It will be worth to look into the game once we know more about it, next Wow, next TR or something in between, only time can tell.

Wow, this is like the mess between protestant and catholics...

DF and MO fans want almost exactly the same thing so why fight? (I have the same question of many religious groups too, why fight when 90% of you values are the same)?

Besides if one of the game actually sucks then hopefully the other delivers.

And yes I am not impressed of what I seen so far of DF, which is almost nothing. But that doesn't really mean anything, we will all know soon if the game deliver or not so just wait with the flame war until that open beta start, ok?

I play on Crom. I did experienced lagg yesterday (havn't played today, been busy). Nothing else however, everything else seemed to work fine at least for me.

But I did expect some kind of problems, there always is with these kind of things, it is not something you can really try on a test server and Crom is really full now...

But hopefully it will be sorted out soon, it is not something I worry about at least, the game needed the merge.

What GFX card do you have?

To me it sounds like you have a too small power supply for the GFX card. 250W was enough for a 3x86 but I can't believe you could even start the computer. 350W is a little better but it all depends on the GFX card, my card demands 600W (it's a GTX 280 so it's a bit extreme however).

My first guess would be that the problem was the SATA cable but it seems like you replaced it. It would be unlikely that the MB was the problem even though it would have been a good idea to change from SATA 1 to SATA 2 just for test.

But to me it just sounds like it wont get enough power. Can you give us allt the hardware you have on it or post a Dxdiag? (Start->run->write "dxdiag" and chose to save it as a text file or copy out the hardware stats and paste them in here).

Originally posted by Fors

I really want to play a ranger, I dont PVP much at all so I am rolling on a PVE server, but from what ive read..a ranger isnt really needed at all for end game raids and such, and I want to raid when I get max lvl, I dont want to lvl a class up to find out that im not wanted in end game.

Not true. Rangers do make a load of DPS on a single target, together with it's CC rangers are popular in any group. It is a rare thing if someone out DPS my ranger.

However Rangers are hard to play, a good ranger is worth his (or her) weight in gold but a bad one is kinda useless.

But there are some really good rangers RAIDing so don't you worry about that part. Or you could play a few level first, join a guild and ask if they prefer you to make an alt to another class.

The 2 most popular RAID classes however are POM and Guardian, they are needed in any end game however. If you truly want it easy to find a group you could make a POM. But I think you should play the class you really want, as long as you find a good guild you will get opportunitys enough to RAID

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Yep. I agree.
 

Now for those doing the campaigning of Wow hate these days: Wow just passed its point of no return.

I think they passed it somewhere at the end of 2007. No matter what comes out, the mainstream is Wow now and nothing is stopping the juggernaut, because ...

... it is now out of the hands of MMORPG players. (and glad I am).

Not one guild, not 100 guilds, not a 1000 guilds will stop the world juggernaut in future years.

The best PvP-er in Wow arena can say he's the best of 200 K battlegroup players. No guild will leave the juggernaut because there is nothing of honor besides the juggernaut.

A guy not playing Wow only loses out these days and it will become even more dominant in the future because Wow has left the PC video game department.

Basic Wow chest outsold THE PC game hit of 2008 by a wide margin (Fall out). The 4 year old game broke out of the short cut PC market and is only starting NOW to get those starting players....

...while the so called "hardcore" will always come back each time Blizzard makes a "cough", be it through Wow2, an expansion and mostly by just yelling "content patch".

Hence the locked servers as everyone always returning to it somewhere in their lives.

And for ONCE, look beyond your own locked up very personal views which have NOTHING to do with marketing a product past 10 millions paying subscribers.

Well, there is one thing that sooner or later kills all computer games: Time. Sooner or later any game will be too old to keep more than a few fans.

This have happened to all games in history and will happen to Wow also. But 'I hardly doubt that it will be a fast process like a Exodus, it will takes years.

Still if you think Wow always will be the greatest game and expect people to play it in 20 years you are delusional. Mention one 15 year old game than anyone 'cept a few retro people are playng.

Diablo, Half life, Quake 2, Total annhilation, Rad alert, Baldurs gate and many other old games were great but time moves on and the computers get a lot better all the time.

We will soon see games with seasons, like it start snowing and the snow actually turns the landscape into a winter landscape. We will see graphics that looks like a real movie, Bioware are usingmotions suits on real people to get their animations look right in their upcoming game... And further away into the future we will see innovation we cant even dream of. Just download a Amiga or 64 emulator and compare those games to moder games in all ways. This is a process that continues.

The future will be great for gamers but Wow will fade away like all other game of the past present and future. But sooner or later Blizz will make a Wow 2.