All i regret is buying a game I don't like which is basically saying make another....

I'm about to download it but I'm wondering if I can carry a subscription on that account after I finished the trial or do I have to buy the game once it's ended?

I don't want another SWG mmorpg and here's why;

1. It'll be for consoles
2. Everyone will be a Jedi

The only Star Wars I want to play in again is one where I can play my own hero like in SWG.

Originally posted by harvest151

LOL, here's a tip. Never ever ever judge a beta games graphics and design. I think you're gonna be in for a pleasant suprose when open beta rolls out. Thats all I'm really allowed to say...

Well if they're realsing these horrible videos and screenshots then why can't I judge them? That's the whole point of releasing them to get people excited over the game and I worry if this is all they can do then it's abit sad.

I love the Warhammer universe but there has yet to be a good Warhammer game and I know poeple will say Dawn of War but I hated that game cuase it has too many races and not enough detail.

It's not a bad game but I'm soooo bored of the same old mmorpgs and AOC takes a step back rather than a step forward.

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

Originally posted by highblur

UO..

I was a simple lumberjack and carpenter, making whatever fetched me a good price.  After quite sometime I had gathered enough money to purchase a boat where I would fish out in the sea and dock in town to sell some fresh sushi I had made.  It was amazing just fishing and making food for people.  Of course I was 13 or so, but I felt like I was contributing and there were no restrictions to what I could do.  No parents to observe and criticize my experiments in social situations and life lessions.  Truely free.

 

Funny thing is, today I make Sushi O_o

I've heard about this type of gameplay in some of the earlier games. AS some friends and I have discussed, it sounds like a job. I already have a job. Why would anyone want another job. One where you pay to have it! But apparently people want this!

 

I'm starting to think this whole "sandbox" thing is just a way for people to log in and talk with other people while they do busy work.

This is probably why games such as  WoW are so popular. When I've described the gameplay of online games where people  grind away or toil at online vocations to the people I know, they cringe at such a waste of time.

This is why I think you will not see a sandbox game for quite a while. The average person wants to do something. They want to adventure. Quests are part of that. However, I am in agreement that a game should not force you to do quests.

I also have to disagree with Torak's assertiion that you have to do quests in LOTRO. There are very few quests you "have to do". Quite frankly the only one that I can think of that you have to do is one of the class quests and the quest that gets you by the guardian statues in Angmar.

Other than that, I'm 50 and don't do quests as I've just been exploring and having fun. True there are the book quests which I do want to do but haven't felt too compelled to get them done as there are other things I want to do in game.

It all depends on what you like because for me playing a mmorpg should all be about the community talking to eachother and grouping with strangers and getting to know them. You don't get this in the WOW's of today because everyone wants it now and want to solo because it's faster. I remember in SWG you'd have to wait for other people to kill a certain mob first and because the community was so great and mature we'd all chat and take our turns and it's them times when you have fun.

I used to love waiting at the starport for 10 mins because you'd get dueling with people and I loved the death pen because you had to go search for entertainers and doctors to heal your wounds, it was all very social.

Also the great thing about it is your character feels unique from everyone elses because you get to pick and chose your skills and decided to go down different paths all the time. You wern't just locked into one class and were the same as everyother class out there, you were your own and it felt special.

I loved how you'd go into your player cities and buy off other peoples own shops instead of now buying off a AH everyone uses, I loved having to search for the best items and made it more of a challenge. I loved how you could go into your own player house in real time and invite people in without a loading screen.

They wont ever make a SWG game again and it's sad because around November 2003 before all the Jedi and JTLS expansion it was the best mmorpg ever made with great potential.

Sandbox is where you create your own content and really I wouldn't call them sandbox games, that's more of like a Garrys mod or LBP thing.

See the differences are all in the level system vs the skillbased system which with a skill based system you have freedom to pick and choose what you want and the world isn't a linear level based progression. Where as a skillbased like what SWG was is where you can go anywhere and it's a big open free world.

Looking at all the screenshots theres no fantastic architecture going on and no breathtaking moments in them. I know all I've seen so far is videos and screenshots but atleast in other mmorpgs I've seen there is some fantastic stuff going on in like WOW and even Age of Conan. With WAR however it just ends up looking like a cartoony version of EQ2 where theres this big open space and they've stuck some pregenerated crap to fill up the space and theres hardly any detail to the world. It's not that it even looks darks and gritty like the CG trailer which is how I wish'd it looked but it's just drab and barren and miserable, kinda world it looks like I wont have fun playing in because it just is soooo boring.

I'm only playing the free month because to me the game like I said came 5 years too late and feels like more of the same and somehow just isn't as fun as WOW and all the loading times piss me off.

I played AOC for a week or so now and the game is fine like nothing major wrong with it and alot better than most mmorpgs out there. The only problem I'm finding with it is the lore just doesn't interest me and the races are all human and the classes arn't anything special to keep me wanting to play it, I don't feel attached to my character to overcome the flaws like with SWG when I played that game after the CU only because of my character.

The main problem is though I've played it all before 100 times in the past and if the game was released 5 years ago then great, however it feels like abit of a step back for me because it is not seemless and the loading screens are making me fedup. It's not like you spend ages in one zone tooo because the quests are easy and i'm constantly darting in and out of loadign screens. I wouln't mind them if they are HL style but they're not and take you away from the immersion.

So when the month is up I wont be playing anymore and not because it's bad but because I just get the feeling of "been there, done that" and while I'd enjoy that feeling in say SWG pre cu, I just grow tired of old mechanics like zoning and levels and kill questing etc etc. I will add too that the combat isn't good and other games do much better combat like WOW.

Erm WAR didn't invent this and tbh what's wrong with taking good ideas from other games and putting them in yours? WAR wouldn't even exist if you wern't allowed to do this and nore would any of the great games.

Vanguard had the vision but LOTRO is just a much better game, it may lack inovation but so did Vanguard in the end. To me though Vanguard is the worst launched modern day mmorpg and DnL don't count cause noone seriously cared about that game it looked like crap before launch.

When WOW launched I remember the server problems lasting 1 week but the game was very polished.

I remember in 2004 when I got in family and friends beta as SOE calls it, at this time I had been following it for years mainly because I loved the style of the graphics in the E3's been shown in 2002 and 2003. Then I got into the beta and quickly realized the armor doesn't look anywhere near as good as what was shown at E3 and the character models don't look as good too which was weird and the game just lacked the massive open world atmosphere of the E3 demos. This was probably because of all the loading screens I had to enter and really it was putting me off the game because I wished it was seemless.

However I made my first character and the IOR was fantastic and the boat scene just amazed me too, I wish'd the boat would have sailed up to the island instead of load upto it but oh well. It was sooo detailed and nicely made and a great tutorial for a first run but I'd soon realise that only having one starting area for everyone would soon get boring.

I had a real time picking out a class because there was 16 or something of them and not one of them stood out to me, you only had 4 classes until 20 and you had to be well into your 30's before you knew you made a mistake and by that point you just thought to yourself "I can't be bothered to play again" lol. I think what WOW did soo well with what EQ2 failed at was the classes.... I really think it's a case of less is more. So yeah in the beta I just didn't have fun with any class and found them to be very uninteresting.

I got to Qeynos and the city took my breathe away and all the quests there were fantastic and so was having player housing and all the little areas around Qeynos like the bogs and the mini forest thing in the city and the castle one were all nicely detailed and well made and fun.

Then where the game suddenly got real shit was when you had to go out to Antonica and at that time there was a a boat running from Antonica to TS which I really liked but when you got higher up there were no boats and that disappointed me because I hate all the clicking on bells to suddenly teleport me, rather it be immersive. That sums up EQ2 though because they were going for immersion and they totally lost out because of how instanced it was where as WOW did a better job at immersion because it was seemless.

Anyways Antonica was soooooooo boring because it wasn't very detail, most of it was empty and bland looking and the quests just wern't fun. I wish Antonica was more like the mini forest in the Qeynos city, like that detailed and packed with fun.

So I rolled to Freeport because Antonica bored me and went to Freeport and I have to say the slums didn't spell out evil to me, they just looked horrible and freeport seemed to have lost the feel of the E3 build which to me looked like more of a city in the desert which was nicer with palm trees. Anyways Freeport seemed like the devs left it to last as a afterthought. Anyways I stuck to it and qucikly got to the Commonlands and again it lost the great look of the E3 build.

I loved CL though because it just had a real nice feel to it and by this time beta was getting packed with Antonica having like 6 instances and lag spikes of like 5 mins quite often. CL on the other hand was lag free because noone wanted to go to freeport really but there was still alot of players there. I was always getting into full groups and doing group content of what EQ2 was about and there was soooo much more risk involved then which made it really fun. One thing I will always remember is camping out in CL with my group and the sun was setting and doing all these fantastic quests around these ruins and then this big bird came with bad animations and killed us all lol.

Then I got into Nek and suddenly the game turned shit agai, the land was boring and uninteresting and the detailed level seemed to have gone and the graphics looked horrible too. So I decided to run to TS and it was even worse because it was like a more empty version of Antonica.

After this point I decided to stop the beta because SOE were shipping the game and the game was very unfinished, there was nothing like a email system in the game and generally just missing alot and we all thought some things needed to be changed and the game needed PVP before release. As usual SOE didn't listne to people in beta about the game being unfinished and just like SWG and PS mmorpgs only get one chance at a first impression and because it was buggy as hell it would have a low population and slowly die.

Unlucky for EQ2 and much better and polished mmorpg with good PVP and a seemless world and a very well made world came along and drew all of us players away from EQ2 when it launched in 2005 for us europeons. I'll always remember running the dead Mines with my mates because the horde rogues would come over and pick us off outside the instance and was really fun having fights with them which is something all other mmorpgs missed for me upto that point, having 2 sides fight like that in PVP. That instance though was soooooooo amazing and i've been playing mmorpgs since the 90's but I'll be honest I've never really done a group instance, specially on that scale and for that low level. WOW just blew me away like that and no wonder it was successful because it got everything right but character customization and crafting + no player housing.

I remember all the EQ2 crowd saying things like the WOW community is kiddy and immature but everyone I knew was into their 20's and 30's playing the game and having fun. I just looked at it as the EQ2 community is being the immature one for saying this and you know atleast we had a community to gorup with lol.

I bought EQ2 anyways in Nov 2004 after launch and the population seemed to die very quickly on the game and by Dec 2004 hardly anyone was playing because of WOW I guess. I look at the new EQ stats thing and what shocks me is on my server I'm in the top 10 or 20 for fastest levelers at that time and I'm like int he top 10ish for first people to get to level 20 on my server. I'm thinking no wonder why I don't get any groups because theres noone to group with!

Anyways I had alot of fun with EQ2 in beta and having groups constantly in CL and loved playing through the cities and that. What killed EQ2 for me though.......

Not being able to find groups for any of the content and I spose now it's even harder to get low level groups. Really noone wants to play a mmorpg all alone solo'ing though the game because I play for the group content which is what I have the most fun with. I remember grouping up in the Venekor Instance, devs in beta would fast track people to tets out higher content. Anyways that instance was fantastic and I loved Venekor but abit of a shame he didn't do all the kool stuff like talk from the preview trailer.

What EQ2 needs to do to get people like me back?

- Get rid of loading screens and clicking on gates and bells or w/e and replace it with like a Half-Life type of thing where when you can see the other side but you hit the loading screen and it keeps you in game but just says loading. So like say you're in Freeport and running up to the main gate to go to the CL, you'd be able to see the CL and a open gate instead of a shut one and when you go to walk through it, it keeps you in game but just saying loading.

- Get rid of bells and make the use of boats like in WOW to keep you in the game and I don't mind a loading period between hand but it just keeps the immersion of sailing upto and island. Like what used to be in the beta betweenAntonica and TS before they removed it for clicking on a door at the end which was really shitty lol.

- Ditch auto facing (not sure if it's still in the game) 

- Redo all of the characters and make them look good because right now some look good and others just look terrible.

- Gives classes more personality in the game, reduce the number of them and just make each one unique instead of having lots of boring classes.

- Redo Antonica, TS and Nek to give them more detail and more fun.

- Remove levels so it opens up the world and new players can group with veterans and everyone can do all the content and makes it fun. Sorta like a Mix between SWG and WOW's talent tree system so say like instead of level progression you gain XP but like say the way you advance your character could just be unlocking new abilities like when you unlock new abilities in WOW's talent tree system. Everyone would have the same health like in SWG so it lets you play with everyone from the start but the differences are in the abilities instead of the stats.

English isn't my first language so I hope this makes sense.