Originally posted by Stradden

Read the whole thing here.

Broken link. :|

@woody1974:

There's a new intending-to-be-heavyweight contender about to stomp its way into the MMO scene and you expect any less from any business-savvy company? If so, you have no idea how the whole "business thing" works. They're in it to make money, they're exceptionally good at it and that's really all there is to it. They're not attempting to "cover losses;" they're "covering their bases." There's nothing desperate about it.

In short: it's called "intelligent marketing and business-sense." Blizz has a proven track-record of building up its player-base numbers on a continuous basis - there's a reason WoW is the scale that everything else aspires towards or measures itself by and that's the whole "almost 11 million subscribers and a globally expanding market" thing. This is just another step on the way to keeping their game racking in copious amounts of revenue in the face of opposition (and by opposition, I mean WAR - in the short-term, anyway; AoC managed to royally screw their own pooch with all their underhanded nonsense and is nowhere even remotely close to a threat, any more). For a business, that's the bottom line, though, isn't it? Profit - and plenty of it.

As for the triple-xp thing: I can't say I'm surprised by it nor do I think I'll mind it (to each their own, yadda yadda). From a far-too-frequently server-hopped-to-follow-friends point of view, there is nothing I find more mind-numbing than joining friends on another server just to have to slog through those first 60+ levels again, if I have to do it on my own, even with - if I'm lucky - an occasional instance boost/powerlevel-run for shiny new equipment (that beats the frequently badly itemised quest rewards) and that all-important extra xp. I altaholically capped my character-limits on both sides of the Pond, long ago, and have more 70s (that I now don't play because people moved on) than I'd like to admit to.... but just because I know how to level a character to 70 in a couple of weeks, or so, doesn't mean I want to do it (really quick way to burn yourself out, for one), nor would I want my friends-who-want-to-join-me-at-endgame-right-now to have to do it, either (if they didn't want to).

For a "recruit-a-friend" drive, the x3 bonus makes perfect sense... and even if I do think people will "abuse" the system to gain the new mounts, it's their money, right? If they want to spend that much on Virtual Shinies, who are we to be bothered or offended by it? You spend your shinies on beer or TCGs; someone else spends their parents' shinies on temporary, whimsical abilities for their Korean grindfest of choice; I spend mine on games, munchies and my SO; these new people will spend it on a zhevra mount. Who cares?

Besides, I think a zhevra mount sounds kinda cool. :P Now... back under that bridge of yours...

Originally posted by damian7

what is odd, is that blizzard is STILL acknowledging that 1% (or possibly less and it was rounded up?) of the playerbase engages in raids.  yet, they still are adding larger (25man) raids...

why?

...because they're tailoring the raids for 10- and 25-man groups, in the same dungeon. That opens up "raiding" to the unwashed, non-hardcore masses, much like Karazhan and (arguably) Zul'Aman did, and dumps that prior 1% in with an even larger proportion of generic players.

I can see why Bliz are doing it this way but, personally, I liked being in a guild that was able to 1-shot Nefarian and frequently even C'thun (pre-TBC obviously), putting us that much higher up the food chain than the folks with a lack of skill or lack of co-ordination and leadership; back when wearing certain guild-tags was a badge of accomplishment and even pride, of sorts, and the equipment was visibly different - not this pathetic new excuse of "set B and set C are just set A re-coloured" rubbish.

Now any muppet can wander into Zul'Aman and Black Temple with a pre-written guide and some arguably competent buddies or grind themselves to oblivion (using one of the various exploits, if they care to) for the latest broken-resilience-stat arena gear and be right on par with the skilled PvE folk who could actually kill Vashj and Kael'thas for their vials before Bliz removed the attunement requirement (they were called the Guild-Breaker Bosses for a reason).

Sure, the last couple of paragraphs may sound elitist but I had more alts in non-hardcore guilds than I did mains and just see it as Bliz removing some peoples' ability to shine and prove that they are, in fact, capable of out-performing your normal, everyday player; I had almost as much fun searching out quality players in those alt guilds as I did taking down the end-game bosses.

For me, the more Bliz dumb the game down, the less fun the game becomes. If there's nothing challenging left to do, then what's the point?

The downside of being the minority, I suppose.

...and so much for me not ranting. Heh.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

...you have to find all the instances where it should be added, then test it vigorously to make sure it does not effect anything else...

Alternatively, they could test it that vigorously in the first place, so that it isn't buggy when they release the feature.

*blink*

Why is everyone staring at me, like that? Oh... wait... okay, yeah... I know... wishful thinking. *sigh* How terrible of me, expecting - or hoping for - continual levels of competence from a group of MMO developers.

It might happen, though, y'know? I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime, but hey... I'm nothing if not a pessimistic optimist. Heh.

Originally posted by Szark 

Read more here.

Dead link. :)

Is the site ever going to let you guys post a working link at the same time as your news post?
Or are you forever restricted to looking daft due to half-assed back-end coding? (if another staffy's post is anything to go by) :P

Nothing personal, Szark... I just think it's well past time to beat your lazy coders with a Big(ger) Stick™. IMHO. ;P

Given that NCSoft have offices that serve Europe, a US-only competition is little more than the usual "we don't care" bird-flip that most of their customers are already used to.

Congrat's on staying true-to-form, NCSoft. Heh.

Originally posted by PoopyStuff

"...except when their fleets meet, for some reason their modules don't activate, and they lose connection from their ship"

ROFL! So true. =)

Originally posted by Draccan

Necro now completely broken. They nerfed the weakest class to death.. insane..

You'd think FC would've learned how not to "balance", after AO. Wishful thinking as, obviously, they've learned nothing.

Then again, same goes for their (lack of) customer support and their (seemingly non-existant) QA dept.

"So much potential ruined by greed, shortsightedness and stupidity" should be the standard motto of MMOs, I swear.

I just hope the other up-and-coming heavyweights learn from FC's screw-ups. Of about three-score friends that signed up for AoC EA.... 2 are still playing but are now bored (mostly due to all their friends cancelling and their guilds being ghost towns); the rest cancelled their subs before the free days were up and re-subbed to WoW.

More significantly, perhaps, is that none of my PvP friends renewed their sub. None! That speaks volumes, all by itself.

Someone want to wake me up when it finally comes out of beta? I figure I'll get a good, long sleep, at this rate.

Originally posted by silverreign

no game is "polished" at launch. 

They should be. No exceptions. Launch is supposed to be "we're out of beta, we've fixed all our bugs and the game works as we intend it to!". In the case of AoC, that's not the situation. It should be polished. It should be ready to play without the insane number of bugs that are still in it (even before end-game, not that that's the point).

That they've released "more polished than other companies have in the past" is entirely besides the point. It's not polished and it should be. Period.

Originally posted by silverreign

as far as being "finished" at launch, no mmo is EVER finished. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK UPDATES AND EXPANSIONS ARE?!  

This, at least, I agree with. Updates should always happen, to address issues that will, undoubtedly, crop up and bite you. Expansions are (almost *grin*) always something to look forward to.

However, until players start actively complaining about (and refusing to pay for) the release of beta-quality games, ass-backwards developers (or their tight-fisted distributors) will keep giving us this beta-quality rubbish. The next game to be released could be the WoW-breaking, most awesome, mind-destroyingly beautiful game to ever hit the market, with a crafting system to make even ex-SWG players cry tears of joy.... but if it's a buggy piece of crap, I'm still not going to play it. I don't pay to play beta; I pay to play release-quality games.

Now, don't get me wrong: personally, I love what AoC tries to be.
I want to play it! Really! I would happily give them my money each month for what AoC tries to be.

But.... (and it's a huge but...)

There are just way too many bugs and horridly thought-out mechanics and issues for me to play without grinding my teeth; crafting is waste of time and effort, the resource system is horrendous, itemization is beyond chronic (my necro has had two level 10 greens way past level 40 simply because nothing better has dropped or appeared on the Trader), player cities are horrendously buggy (no npcs meaning buildings are useless, falling through buildings' internals, etc), quests are buggy all over the place (even in some of the first zones you get to after leaving Tortage), you can lock yourself out of - or just utterly bug out - gathering and tradeskills if you have something as simple as a full quest log (known about since early access but nothing done about it)... the last being even worse because there's nothing you can do to drop or reset those tradeskills and GMs actively say "they can't help you because they're only allowed to help fix Destiny Quests". Yes. Really.

The combat system may rock and the lore may be great; the environments may be nothing short of jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring; those don't, however, make the sour taste in my mouth go away, when I run head-first into yet another bugged quest.

When they fix their slew of problems, I'll be one of the first to sign back up, again. I'm fairly sure that my few dozen friends who have also cancelled their accounts (after trying to play through these issues) will do the same.

We just refuse to pay to play a beta... and regardless of what the mindless fanbois attempt to tell you, it most definitely still is in beta and, at this rate, will still be for quite some time.

I wish FunCom the best of luck in their striving to get the game into a release state, though. I don't feel cheated (more than with any other MMO release)... just extremely disappointed.

I console myself with this thought: at least it wasn't another AO release. :P
One of those is enough to last me the rest of my gaming lifetime. Heh.

Originally posted by Cetra

Funcom is good at sweet talking. Thats all about it. Age of conan is build up to be a pvp game and only  now funcom realized the current system is flawed and need an overhaul? I'm not going to wait like a naive kid.

People praising this game are normally all still under level40. Wait till they see the real thing.

They've been pretty good at delivering thus far. Sure, I'm entirely disgusted with what they're trying to call a crafting system, based on the concept glimpses we saw back near the start of development, and with how half-assed their guild city status still is but that's about it.

As for under 40? I have 3 chars over 40, one of which is over 50, and I'm finding no lack of content. Not as much content as under 40, sure, but when I'm still having extreme trouble with there being more quests than I can fit in my questlog? Argh! Heh. Anyways... for every one of you people that bitch and whine about lack of content, on these forums, I've spoken to a player that says they're having a whale of a time, more than just a few of which are all the way to mid 70s. That doesn't scream "lack of content"; it screams "you're too single-minded about wanting to bitch about something and just can't be bothered looking around for more stuff to do". :P

Originally posted by jedibeck16

Personally, I have become very discouraged with all the negativity surrounding this game.  It seems like the nay-sayers far outweigh those that are optimistic about the game's future, and it is hard for me not to get discouraged with AoC after reading these kinds of posts.  It sure would be nice if people would state their opinion, while at the same time valuing the fact that there are other players that are enjoying it, and not bashing them for their support of the product.

Every game, without fail, has had people spewing out negativity in spade-loads, when they find things don't match their perfect little vision 110%. I'd guess that more than half of it's just disgruntled (and annoying) little pessimists that want to find something to complain about, so they can look like they know what they're talking about alongside all the other whiners. No biggie, though... World of Warhammer will be out, soon enough. :P

The nay-sayers always look like they outnumber the optimists, though. Keep in mind that all the optimists you're looking for probably aren't reading or posting on the forums; they're actually playing the game!

That said, the game's definitely not without its "issues" - what game isn't, even 5 years after launch, assuming they haven't actually died by then? - but overall, I've found AoC to be the smoothest launch I've ever been involved in (and I've been around since pre-OSI/UO days). Even with the bugs, I'm still having heaps of fun! That, in my opinion, is what counts: it's fun! When it stops being fun then the solution is glaringly simple: I'll stop playing it. Right now, the game is, in fact, extremely playable and, so long as you avoid the couple of game-breakers, you'll be fine (those being gemmed items causing client crashes [already fixed on PTR] and, for us crafting nuts, having a full quest log when trying to learn a craft bugs out the craft [personally never had a problem with it]).

True, they do need beaten to death, several times, with what they're trying to call a crafting system but my biggest gripe, by far, is that my system is a heap of steaming monkey poo that needs upgraded... and that's not Funcom's fault, at all! Argh!

Of course, the day I find a fun PvE/PvP game with a crafting system akin to SWG's is the day I uninstall all my other games and play that one. Still not found another game that I found as much fun as SWG pre-CU and that makes me sad. Ho hum.

Originally posted by Kenze

gosh darn it! I blame the Nipples!

Sheesh!

Eh. Par for the course with MMOs. Funcom are no different to any other company, in this regard.

Which is to say: they're all utterly inept at keeping to "promised times and dates", even when they've given themselves weeks (or even months) to prepare.

I'm not happy but I'm sure as heck not surprised Honestly, if we even get to log in, at all, on the 17th, I'll be appeased.

Meanwhile... I'll just sit on vent and complain some more. Heh.

Given all the hassle over the special mounts, etc. with the CE edition, via Game, there's no way I'm paying them more cash to get in early during the "final bugfix period".

If it's actually playable on launch, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Originally posted by Obraik

Tweaks and bug fixes that aren't directly related to the Chapter are now under their new Game Update scheme and happen every 3 weeks.

3 weeks? Consistantly? From SoE? Yeah, right; I'll believe that when I see it. Remove the space-and-letters " fixe" from that statement and I'm much more likely to agree.

Though it matters very little, since I'm long past given up re-trying the NGE every single chapter, to see if it's worth playing, again. I just can't get past that almost non-existant, dying (false) hope that pre-CU might, somehow, from a galaxy far, far away, return to be played. Level-based class-restricted progression doesn't, and never did, fit with SWG. Leave those to the still-successful MMOGs, eh? *beats the long-dead horse some more* Copy-cat, concept-destroying developers be damned.