Originally posted by Lence

On the flip side, it should be noted that the price of Funcom stock had been fairly steady, around $25, for several months prior to March of this year. A sharp increase in price coincided with the release of X-Play pre-order statistics for AoC about two months before boxes hit the shelves. That was followed by a distinct downturn just a few weeks after the game's drop date and the slide has continued since, returning it back to familiar price territory just this past week.

That paragraph is important to note. Although I do agree that it does not look good for Funcom, falling stocks makes investors worry until the stock completely collapses and buttoms out. Can't really say I'm sad to see this though....

Sigh, why even bother with this poll. Of course WoW is going to have the most subs by the end of the year and most likely will continue to do so until Blizz releases it's next mmo (kind of funny that the WoW killer will most likely come from Blizzard).

With that said I will agree with most posters in this thread. WAR will do fine and will probably be considered a success if they hit a million. Which I think is a fair prediction. As for the rest of the MMOs in that poll, they won't even come close. Some of them I don't even recongize. And as for Darkfall, that won't even come close to the numbers of WoW or even WAR. Darkfall will, if it ever releases, be a niche game with what I believe will be a strong close knit community.

Originally posted by RKStephens

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

PRoblem with this is.... I doubt your turbine... which means you cant sell this or charge a monthly fee, so you would have to be free to play..

Being free to play means limited resources, lots of garbage people as the hackers and banned people can just come right back in. UCMing and speedhacks were pretty common in AC1 where if you were banned you had to buy a new account... on a private server thats free to play it would be rampant.

 

You are absolutely correct. I do not come from Turbine.

Don't be so sure about the available resources however. The new game is being backed up by an old fan of Asherons Call who has more money then he will ever be able to spend. I am not going to go into it, but he has had a rather unfortunate series of life events in the past year.

His dream is to bring back one of the best games he states he has ever played. I will say that there is easily over 500 million dollars accessible if needed to bring this to life, and that he has already stated that his cost will not matter, as long as this project is done correctly.

The game will be done correctly, and it will be done in as short a time span as possible. We already have a strong team of some of the best coders, developers, and managers working together and they are being paid not by the hour, but by the overall quality of the finished product with bonuses given if the game is completed before the goal date set. So, just as any employee that wants to make money, their goals of time and quality are of major importance to them.

Not only will this game be free to play, and free to download, it will also be free of hackers and cheaters who try to use 3rd party programs such as UCMers and buff bot tools etc.

Members of our team include people who have brought to you the original Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Diablo II, and Halo.

Oh. I would also like to mention that this game will have perma death of characters. Perma death happens to any character who is caught cheating or hacking in any way, shape or form. Failing to "not know" will not be excusable since they will be in big letters that must be accepted in terms and conditions prior to playing. (For example, to get through the terms and conditions, a one or two sentence explanation and example will be shown on the screen that you will have to read and accept. There will be over 20 "accepts" needed to begin creation of your first character. Any new characters made will need to go through the same process)

 

 

Sandbox + Free to play = my full support. Now I've never played AC (a little before my MMO time) but I have been a long time Eve player and support of all MMOs that have a sandbox theme. AC sounds like my perfect MMO I never had a chance to play. Huge fan of deciding how you want to play the game. And that Karma system sounds like a nice way to stem the constant greifers but still keep the world a harsh place. Big fan of that.

If you have a website or any other infomation (forums, blogs what have you) please keep us updated. I would very much like to support an MMO company that wants to revolutionize the currently bland MMO market place.

1) WoW, was definitely the most fun I had until the very end. End game bored me.

2) Eve, no other MMO can compare to Eve.

3) EQ, the classic

4) LotRO, family friendly, story driven and just overall fun to play.

5) WAR, yes I know it's still in beta :)

1) AoC, gets my top spot because I felt mislead.

2) SWG, after the whole Jedi mess

3) Vanguard, I haven't played it over a year so my opinion might change if I were to pick it up today.

4) Pirates of the Burning Sea, massive dissapointment

5) Don't have a 5th one....but if I had to choose a game I wasn't apart of I would have to go with Matrix Online. Game looked like crap.

*Should mention that both Pirates and Vanguard are games I might try again in the future. Both I think needed a bit more time in development. AOC on the other hand can die a horrible death.

I love Eve's skill based system. I think its great that you get to choose many different roles, you are not stuck to what the developers wanted. Again it gets back to the whole sandbox feel that I wish was the direction for mmos (thanks WoW!).

For me I would like to see a game that uses a combination of Eve's system and skill systems like AC. If ever in the future I were to create a MMO (don't count on it) I would use a sort of hybrid system. It would have an Eve-like skilling system in the sense that you choose a specific skill as your primary. This skill will increase slightly overtime (all skills would have something similar to Eve's skill lvls). I think this would be beneficial to more casual players because you don't have to quit your job to keep up. With that in mind, players in game would recieve both general skill point xp and specific skill point xp. General would work very similar to how people obtain xp in mmos today. General activies such as killing monsters or the such. Specific xp would target a very specific area of skills. So killing monsters not only would you recieve a slight general xp bonus but you would also recieve a larger "fighting" skill bonus. So this system allows for a player to have multiple roles, but that playing a "jack of all trades" is not necessarily the most powerful thing to do.

Now how this sytem would work in a game setting is not something I know will work. I think with some imagination it could work for an avatar based game but again it would require a bit of genious dev work to make sure it is all balanced and systems are in the game from the start to make sure there isn't imbalances in the different skills (In Eve most people agree that there is no single combination of skills that makes you overpowered). I think it would work much easier in a game that has your avatar controlling something, like Eve's space ships, but that avatar combat is not completely out of the question.

I'd say World of Warcraft. It has the best of both PvE and PvP compared to the other two games (yes I consider WoW's pvp better than aoc). Despite what a lot of people will say WoW is the better mmo out of the 3 and I have no doubt in my mind you will enjoy playing it. Especially since their next expansion is coming out very soon. Granted my opinion might be a bit skewed since I haven't actually played wow in almost a year and half. But I doubt much has changed.

I will however say a little about the other two. Lord of the Rings Online was a blast for me. Being a LotR fan I fell in love with the game. It gave me the chance to play out some of the more unknown aspects of Middle Earth and still have the Lord of the Rings feel. With that said, the PvE is great, the PvP is not. I could never get into their PvP system (which is actually entitled Monster Play) just didn't cut it for me. And I found that I eventually got burnt out with the whole game. I got tired of playing and evetually cancelled my account out of boredom (played for about 5 months total). It took me 2 years to get tired of WoW.

AoC was by far the biggest let down since Vanguard. People might fight me over this but I have played a number of mmos in my lifetime and none of them have made me lose interest in less than two weeks. The game has tremendous graphics and promises to be a more PvP centric game with battle keeps. However, thanks to many many game bugs the game (even currently) is completely broken. Each patch has brought with it more and more bugs, customer service is one of the worst I have ever seen in a game, class nerfs to outrageous levels and probably my biggest beef of them all: not having content that was promised or is implented in a terrible way. Stay well away from AoC, and don't buy into Funcom's hype.

If I were you though, I would wait for what I consider the best mmo since World of Warcraft. Warhammer Online will deliver on both aspects you are looking for. It's Public Quest system and other world events will keep the PvE side of you interested. While it's keep battles and RvR missions (RvR stands for Realm vs Realm aka PvP :P ) will keep your PvP side interested. Warhammer seems to be promising just what you are looking for. I have high hopes for the game and it is rumored to be released within the next few months.