People who say "The customer is always right" are the kinds of people who don't know how to tell the customer to f*** off politely.

Seriously, you cant say "The customer is always right" in any situation you are actually dealing with more than 1 customer. That statement had to have been invented by a genius manager who needed to keep his gang of peons to turn a profit rather than screw him over.

Developers are a group of creative folk with a vision for the game they think is great. Then that vision gets skewed by money. Plain and simple. You have investors, producers and marketing that change things before the players see it. The developers are not the guys in charge. Whoever supplies the money is in charge and that isn't the customer. The customer supplies the money suppliers with money.

Community managers are just gears in the machine trying to work with the players and companies to exchange information.

Why do people say "free 2 play like Guild Wars" or "Guildwars is an MMO"?

Guild Wars are the first to claim they are NOT an MMO and they are NOT free to play. They have a box cost. You cannot play the game without paying something.

F2P are PWI or Runescape.

Heh.... Funny people and their clouded thoughts.
Wow is a good game.
Walmart is a good store.
McDonalds is a good restaurant.

These things can not be denied. Does it make them excellent? No. But they are good. They each are considered the best in their field business wise.

And I would say that most of the people I know that have quit WoW are reminiscent or nostalgic. They may be bitter and spiteful of the game, but you can always get them in a conversation about the "good times" and see that they enjoyed it.

EvE is freaking complex and expansive. I would say its not worth the effort to play the game unless you can invest a good chunk of time per day into it for the first 2 months. After that you can start to get away with less time.

If you want some good MMO suggestions, I would suggest explaining what you like in an MMO. I haven't been able to find a game like pre-Trammel UO. And I don’t think one will ever exist. One of the reasons it was so good is the community was so good. Now you have children and groups of people who intentionally or not try to destroy games and exploit them.
 

1st things 1st, BigMango... You dont have to pay for this game. You cant possibly make an arguement about Devs releasing an unfinished game untill the game is actually released. If you flame about it unfinished games that are in beta, you just sound dumb. Not only that, but if everything they told you is going to be there on release is there, then you know what to expect from the game.

These are not hard concepts to grasp.

If you want to derail a thread(yes, you did. OP posted what he likes) and talk about what you dont  like, then at least have correct info or try to look it up. The reasons Avatars cant jump is based of the game engine they choose. They mentioned they wanted to add it, but didnt place avatar jumping as high a priority as the rest of the game.

To correct Linna, PC graphics have always been better. In games gets fuzzy since its about development and taste. But the television screens have been following PC monitors in technology for a while now. 1080p HD is still lower res than most LCD screens.

I also want to restate what Linna mentioned about SOE. They sell you the box and the subs, the rest is FLS. They are not releasing the game, FLS is. SOE cant make the game change like Vanguard did since they have entirely different contracts.

I havent played POTBS, but only because I dont have a comp that can run it(no home comp, just work). When I do get my home one running again, I will pick this game up. If I knew nothing of the game, the title alone(depicting naval combat) is worth 50 bucks.

I'd pay extra per month to be able to chat with devs on a regular basis. 'specially ones from games I want like this.

hawkeye74, looked at your sig and see you love Star Wars. Shame G&H or STO wont be making it to launch.

To me... SOE's mistake with SWG is hard to ignore since I was directly hit by it. I dont care about Vanguard or EQ. I was always a UO guy anyway. Even owned a boat in that game too.

A company that can ignore a playerbase and not even bat an eyelash at losing 75% sub base doesnt scream "trustworthy quality game makers". So of course people are hesitant to deal business with them. The whole problems with the pre-order didnt help either.

I feel bad for the people that get hosed by the deal. A promise was made to them, they took the offer and paid for it, and now its being broken.

Bad business IMO about the QA for SOE.

What I wouldnt give for being a fly on the wall of FLS though. I can imagine comments being made when that news was heard.

If anything(I hope it doesnt happen) goes wrong with release, I am almost willing to bet at least 1 guy at FLS who reads this forum will either say or think "Agricola was right."

Originally posted by Gyrus

 

Originally posted by NightCloak

...

And whats up with this stuff about the pre-order boxes coming w/o CDs and keys? Is there an official source of this or just a rumor spread by SOE haters...

These two threads tell the story:

 

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35940

(Start about post # 88 {By Rev} if you like)

 

And this one

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34848

 

Just posted so you know this is not rumor and SOE bashing - it's established fact.

 

And the initial Pre-Order release also included a misprint in the boxes

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35350

 

Thanks. Looked around a little at first but mostly for news releases and not forums. Clears that up.

Shoulda looked harder before opening my mouth.

I'm pretty sure budget has a lot to do with this. FLS didnt partner with SOE untill recently. And before that, they were sole controllers of POTBS. They likely didnt market thier product since they may not have had the funding or the projected budget to do it. Its a choice of bringing a CM aboard and try using word of mouth marketing, which they have been doing vs magazine and online ads. 

I'm very sure FLS people thought about it before they got thier hands dirty with SOE.

And whats up with this stuff about the pre-order boxes coming w/o CDs and keys? Is there an official source of this or just a rumor spread by SOE haters(I played SWG pre-CU started pub 5 and was scorned myself)?

Not quite like Guild Wars. GW there is no open areas or persistant. Everything is instanced.

Here there will be a persistant overland map. And Ports are persistant(meaning there arnt multiple instances of them like districts). Battles will be instances viewable on the main map as well if you are near enough.

I kinda like instances... Less annoyance of griefers and less chance of areas being swamped and waiting 20 min just to finish quests since everyone and thier mother is doing the same thing.

Think. Filter. Speak.

Remember that and you will go far.

The way MMO's go is not about the Developers actually. Its all about the marketing. Generally Devs get a game thought of and designed. They start working on it and the idea gets better and better. They think of more cool stuff and add more. They keep working and creating a work of art. Then comes the publisher and says "Get this game in peoples hands because we want money." and the Devs have to rush out a product too early.

Almost all MMOs come out in unfinished states. They almost always release in what would be considered unacceptable if it were on a single-player console system. Thats 0% dev fault. Read devlogs and reviews on devs that worked on past games. They always say "we had a million ideas but we didnt have time..."

Publishers want to make money so they stop funding at a certain point and that stop causes the game out early.

Dont bash the people who agree that the games arnt perfect. I bet there are 100's of coders out there pissed off at thier bosses for being told to release a game before they finished this or that.

Your "perfect" MMO only exists if you dump insane amounts of money into it before its released. Not a risk many want to make.

Give me all the xpacs up from JTL for free + 12 months free subs and I will come back.

Sorry I didn't bother to research the actual game. I am not that interested in Conan. However, you posted on an MMO site containing the same name as a hyped up and comming MMO. So it is your err that leads to misdirection.

I commented on the game since it is nothing new for one came to take from another. Its just pointless to call them out on that since then you have a lot of calling out to do. Practically every fantasy based MMO has roots that lead to JRR Tolkiens works.

Take a step back from the gaming world and look at the big picture. There are large corporations that take eachothers ideas all the time. Take Coke and Pepsi for example. Sierra Mist and Sprite. Mountain Dew and Mellow Yellow. Lime or lemon flavors. If you can take someone elses idea and improve on it and it puts money in your pocket, you do it.

Well... Everything you listed is in at least 1 other game other than GoW. None of that is new or innovative for games and if they rip it off and do a better job than the original, kudos to them. What do you think WoW is? Its not an innovative MMO, it just takes good ideas and makes them better.

On the official forums/devlogs, I believe they said roughly 1/3 of the game map can be a PvP area at any given time. But with how the game works, every couple of days the PvP areas can change.

Heh... I dont know why so many people are concerned with the NDA. Anything on the forums or discussed publically through any means is not covered by the NDA which means you can talk about the game even if you are under the NDA. Just talk about what is already public.

The game will be instanced. Like Guild Wars where only towns are public and multiple "districts"? No. Towns are an instance from the travel map, or vice versa. And then individual battles are. I believe somewhere in the forums it had mentioned that if you are part of a group, one of your group members can be placed into an instanced battle without you, that you can go ahead and join.

As PvP is concerned, there was a devlog that explained that if you were going into a fight with someone, you will be able to see everyone else within range that can join that fight as well. So instances dont always mean private or uninterruptable. However, for the most part, they will be.

And all that is info from forums/devlogs/site and none from playing the game where the NDA covers.

I think the game looks cool. I hyped it to my friends before I knew a beta existed. Hell, I heard about it from a cousin and hyped it before I visited the site. I just like pirate games and wooden warships.

The game will be good and fun. But thats for you to decide. I know I will play it. But thats because just the reviews sold me.

If you want to know about the game, get into the beta. Because there is an NDA, it may be difficult to garner specific info about gameplay other than officially released video/responses.

What does help is reading devlogs and checking forums out. Also the news releases give a lot out. It may not paint the best picture, but it gives you more than what people sealed by NDA can.

If you want to compare any game to Eve, you have to really be more specific. One thing about Eve that makes it hard to compare is how unique it is. So as far as the PvP, it wont be as open. Eve allows PvP anywhere anytime. It has Concord that come school you if you aggress in high sec, but POTBS wont allow you to attack outside the PvP zones.

The economy is going to be similiar IMO. Not as good at start, but thats due to the fact that Eve has had a long time to mature and POTBS will start out with nothing. So I imagine that down the road POTBS will consider bringing an economist onboard like Eve did, but it wont need to untill the economy really starts booming.

The AH system they use in POTBS isnt as complicated as Eve's own, but if you read up on it, the game looks to be just as sandbox style in its own way. You will have guilds attempting to conquer the world in this game and some just might do it. Where Eve is too large of a single world to accomplish that.

As I see it, the two are similiar in some aspects, but you cant really compare them side-by-side. Its more of a playstyle/preference differences that will be a factor.