Originally posted by Arhodus

 http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6339/dfloadcw7.jpg

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6339/dfloadcw7.jpg HITTING THE SPACE BAR MAKES IT A CLICKABLE LINK. 

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

Originally posted by ruslans

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

Originally posted by Yucko55

Originally posted by ruslans

 

 

I believe that experience of the people currently working there reflects the real situation better. It does not necessarily mean that ex-devs all lie, of course.

I am sure that Gaute, when telling this "wine vs McDonalds" thing, did not lie at all. That's the way he wanted it to be, and he believed it could be done...

 

 

I don't think that this discussion is or should only be about how things are at Funcom now at this moment. I'll use an extreme example to prove my point: If an unknown serial killer has murdered 100 people in the past, but has stopped his killing for the time being. Then we discover who the killer really is, should we then just forget about those people he killed and not hold him accountable for it because he is not killing any longer? This is ofcouse put on the edge, but the point is the same. They have weakened many peoples health, etc, and I do feel that the people responsible for mistreating their workers should be held accountable for their actions, or else things will get back to normal after a while.

I am sure that Gaute wanted to believe that "wine vs McDonals" thing aswell, but that was a rather misleading example. There's been many things the Funcom management have said and are still saying that are plain out lies. A couple examples: 1. Kjetil says there is not and have very rarely been worked any overtime at Funcom, because Funcom can not afford to pay it. (He can't say that Funcom employees are working overtime, since they do not follow Norwegian law and pay their workers accordingly.) Just call him yourself and check. 2. They knew DX10 would not be ready for launch and yet it's written on the box. (This is also not legal in most countries.)  3. Watch any video interview with Erling Ellingsen and I bet you get lots of new lies on the list for each interview.

And then you have this Xbox 360 thing that I saw CEO Trond Arne Aas was pimping on gamesindustry.biz... how will they manage to make AoC run with the Xbox' 512mb of shared memory? (Those megabytes are shared between the system RAM and video memory.) To make AoC run smooth with OK graphics I need 4gigs of system RAM alone and 512mb on my video card. To make AoC run OK with OK graphics I need 2 gigs of system RAM and 256mb on my video card, which is still waaaay too much for the Xbox to handle. I guess it is possible with texture streaming technologies IF you reduce the texture resolutions by A LOT aswell. ( I know that windows take up RAM resources aswell, but it's far from the 1,7gb or so they need to free up.) Now THIS is speculations though, and I am one of those who think anything is possible, but if I am to use my experience with Funcom as a company chances are BIG that this is just more HYPE and\or LIES.

 

Look dude, the guy with the Mohawk was not allowed to work on AoC, then he got angry, started the whine and FC called him into HR office. "Look Mr Mohawk, you are not a good programmer, you are neither producing very much artistic material, and all in all you seems not that happy anymore. Perhaps you should take the retirement package and do something that works etter for you". Now, tell me what is wrong about firing useless employees. Doing hightech development is not for everyone. It is crucial that FC get ridd of rotten apples like that Mohawk guy. And I think we all can see the performance increase in AoCs devteam after FC cleaned a few desks back in September.

 

Please, stop telling the crap about the person you don't know.

 

 

 

You are right I don't know hims as probably you also don't. What I do know though is all those "facts" posted about this in a public forums over the last week. I have read all on this and what I gathered was that the guy had performance issues, grew into the role of the "pain in the butt employee" and finally FC sacked him. And another thing, I was allowed to produce my own opinions on this case the moment the guy himself brought his employment issues out in public. I am not badmouthing anyone here, I just simply discuss a public pice of information. I belive the guy was sacked due to performance issues!  

Unless you can prove this, he has a good case of Liable on ya there Cobra.  You cant make claims such as these with out support and in some countries you can not ever make claims like this.  Furthermore if you are attached to the company and making these claims, you are leaving them open to litigation... Enjoy your viral marketing.

Originally posted by ranghar

When I asked why my account was banned I got this response. I am not happy about being accused of 'fraud'. This is a pretty horrible experience so far. I was planning on going back and giving AoC another try, but after all of this...I don't think I want to deal with them anymore.

"The account in question was permanently closed because it was created
with a preorder key that we received a chargeback on through Asknet.
This means that the purchase transaction for the preorder that created
the account was reported as fraudulent and the transaction forcibly
reversed.
Kind Regards,
GM Genieva"

I didn't issue a chargeback asknet canceled my order because I was unable to play due to a delayed shipment. So I went and bought the game at best buy and entered that cd key to play the game, but since my order had been canceled the preorder key was stuck on the account and I couldn't have removed it had I wanted to. Here are the emails from asknet to prove that. I don't see how this situation could be confused as being 'fradulent'.

--------------------------------------------------------
Customer (Ranghar) 08/06/2008 04.12 AM
I have been waiting for the arrival of my game for awhile now. Is there a problem with the order? I haven't been contacted and I am just curious. My prelaunch time is up and I haven't recieved my game so I am unable to play. If there was a problem with the order please let me know so I can purchase the game elsewhere. If it has been shipped that would also be great to know. I would like to play but I do not want to have two copies of the game.
--------------------------------------------------------
Response (VR-Erick Nielsen) 10/06/2008 12.37 AM
Dear Ryan,

Thank you for contacting Asknet Customer Service Center.

Nothing is wrong with the order, Funcom actually was late getting us the game to ship out. I dont have a solid delivery date at this time so we are offering to cancel orders for people so they can purchase elsewhere and get online quicker. Let me know what you would like to do.

Kind regards,
Customer Service, asknet AG
--------------------------------------------------------
Customer (Ranghar) 10/06/2008 12.39 AM
Yes, please cancel the order. I would like to get to play asap. I will just pick the game up at a local store.
Thanks for the response.
---------------------------------------------------------
Response (VR-Erick Nielsen) 10/06/2008 12.45 AM
Dear Ryan,

Thank you for contacting Asknet Customer Service Center.

All taken care of for you Ryan. Please expect a 5-7 day window for your card to be reissued its money.

Kind regards,
Customer Service, asknet AG

Funcom did you a favor.  Take this as an omen and dont play this game, it will only leave you disappointed in the end.  It did me.  Thats my personal opinion.
 

Compared to AoC - This game will be better. IMHO... AoC has lowered so many peoples expectations that they can hardly BE disappointed at this point. If you played AoC and left in disgust, pretty much any game, even hello kitty online will be a breath of fresh air.

I am a little suspicious, but I want this game to rock and I want it to come out.... So Im just holding onto hope... After the DISAPPOINTMENT that was AoC, Darkfall wont bother me in the least, no matter what happens.

I think this poll is being read in different ways by each person here.  What if it was A:) Free to Download and 10$/month to play the beta? Or even a flat fee 25$ and you get the first three months free? Something like that...?

Whats more shocking than Funcom doing nothing to assist your guild after that moron kicked/disbanded you, the fact that this has happened before and they gave that guild 550,000 resources with which to construct a T3 city/battlekeep. The guild in question lost I think 134k in resources and was effectively rewarded with a full t3 city. This kind of all over the board responses to identical issues is more boggling than anything.

This doesnt look good. No fanboi posts so far. Interesting. Its unspinable perhaps?

Originally posted by Greyhooff

Originally posted by hobo9766

$3.12 a share today and falling. You get where this is going.

 

It went up a bit, it's at 3.15 now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

FUNCOM
(Oslo: FUNCOM.OL / ISIN NL0000062461)
Last Trade: 3.15
Trade Time: 9:15am
Change: Down 0.03 (0.94%)
Prev Close: 3.18
Open: 3.50
Bid: 3.04
Ask: 3.45
1y Target Est: 3.41
Day's Range: 3.15 - 3.50
52wk Range: 3.48 - 55.50
Volume: 25,019
Avg Vol (3m): 320,033
Market Cap: 132.03M
P/E (ttm): 78.75 x
EPS (ttm): 0.04
Div & Yield: N/A (N/A)
FUNCOM (FUNCOM.OL)

 

Last Trade is less than Previous Close Price. So up is relative to 3.12 but still down on the day.
 

Originally posted by medafor

i wanted to know where the game stands now from someone who plays, got some questions:

are  the item and gear values  still  retarded. like 0.2 armor, and stuff. and does all the gear still look the same, have they added more variety to the gear.

is the endgame implemented yet?

I had a necro cleared levels 1-30 using only one nuke move. have they made it more balanced/challeging?

are the servers ghost?

My server was a ghost town when I returned this weekend. Thats about all I can say. Endgame doesnt matter much on a ghost town of a server, IMHO.  I tried for 3 hours to find a group to do anything at all.  Never was able to find one.

Well they just started with the Russian Push over at Blizzard Azrile.  Looks like from what Avery posted it happened in August, so you not knowing about that wouldnt be that unheard of, would it? I certainly didnt.  I dont track MMO's that I left of my own accord.  When an MMO runs me off because 1:) Its got more technical issues than a Yugo and plays like one of those drives then add in 2:) Forum treatment, when I actually tried to get a few answers fromt he developers. Pretending your customers dont exist and that their issues arent valid is not the way I would handle the game.... But it does belong to Funcom and I hope noone else ever has to deal with that sort of company.

Originally posted by Guintu

Originally posted by Polikarpov

I have to admit I don't know much about what happens to MMO's when they are sold so that's why I'm asking.

I believe the standard policy is to buy a game and have a skeleton crew of 3-5 people to run it, trying to milk it as much as possible to get some profit.

But has there been a situation where a company that bought an MMO actually tried to improve it and invested a lot of money into it? And if there has, were they successful?

I think most people hate FC even more than the game so maybe if some other company bought FC, people might come back. Also if they got rid of those incompetent FC devs (the worst ones at least), hired some real professionals, took the servers down for a year, and added tons of new content and features, it could make AoC a totally different game.

With the current situation, I doubt any other company wants to buy AoC and keep developing it, but who knows, it might happen.

 

I don't know where you're getting your news from or if you're just making it up but I don't see any article that AoC s being sold.  I Googled it, looked on Funcoms site and on AoC site and their is NO news. If you're just doing hypotheticles then don't post it here.  If its not happening then why are you even thinking it and why should we care?

I missed where the op said he read anything that indicated AoC was being sold. I think his post is pretty clear so the question arises, what are you talking about ?

EDIT: I do think that its not out of the ballpark, so to speak, to begin considering this option. vanguard ring any bells? It got itself into a similar situation and was sold.  I dont think you or anyone else has the right to say what someone should post... Its obvious you dont like that he posted this topic, but I dont think he is breaking the forum rules.

Originally posted by BearShammy

Originally posted by Polikarpov

Originally posted by BearShammy

Well, I think this was his goodbyepost really. Probably not the only AoC fan driven off these boards due to abuse and other nonsens from juveniles with FailCom logo.

 

Don't worry he'll be back. But probably with a different name and different personality. Pezzbomb was "new subscriber who loved AoC more than any game ever!". Next we'll probably see a "veteran MMO player who thinks AoC is the best game ever and who just joined forums". He will tell us how much the game has improved since launch and how it's a complitely different game now.

 

Yes in the same way lumache would be banned and just come back with another set of BS posting profiles. lol.. I am giving the guy a bump because AoC is a very good game. 10/10 you can't obviously take serious, but AoC is certainly up there. I easily give it a 8/10.

So he slams a guy not even posting for over a week and closes with the game is an 8/10! Viral Marketing at its finest - kick the people he doesnt like and then pump the game!

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by Azrile

iritating..  They allowed people to exploit the system for two weeks, now they are going to fix it without consequences.

 

Sorry Azrile but this is a fix for the last update which came 6 days back. They wanted more info from this past weekends playtime. The same hotfix many people were saying would come 1-2-6 months away...

 

Sorry, I said 2 weeks and it's only been 6 days.  The fact is that players have been massively exploiting the bugs, and the honest players are getting screwed again because they didn't exploit.   It's exactly the same situation as happened with 'fight club'.. if you didn't abuse the system, you got left behind.

Youo gotta give him this one Avery, he is 100% correct here.

Originally posted by Camthylion

What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

I say great, bring it on. After the UTTER FAILURE of Age of Conan, I hunger for something new.

Originally posted by gracefield

Originally posted by courtsdad

Originally posted by ackmhed

Originally posted by courtsdad

Originally posted by orzo

Originally posted by gracefield

I'm sure all the families who depend on a salary from Funcom will be delighted to know that...

 

I just hope you vote your interests this coming election gracefield.  I mean it wasnt the employees fault that are being laid off in droves now, that FORD and GM and Chrysler decided to keep building hummers and trucks large enough to haul 4 CY of dirt at a time.  Those companies made the choices at the top and they are still making nice salaries and deciding whom to lay off due to their inept production decisions.  This is no different for funcom.

 

Not to go down that road but the unions get to share a lot of the blame. Not that the unions= employess as they are corrupt as the day is long BUT many employees milked the system and their jobs went elsewhere as they were part of unions that milked the companies..

 

However none of those issues apply to what happened at FC. The average employee is not to blame in the least.

Ford, GM and Chrysler had almost a ten-year period of record profits and skyrocketing sales of some of their most profitable companies (ie. SUV's and large pick-ups) in their history. God-forbid they actually share some of those profits with the people that actually build their cars. This is the kind of thinking that got us into this entire mess. The middle-class has always been the back-bone of our country, and unions were the driving force that payed it's due in blood that created our middle-class.

The only employees milking the system were the high-end CEO's and upper-management. Instead of thinking forward, like Toyota did with their Prius, they kept redesigning the grill on their gas-guzzling behemoths and expected to keep raking in the profits.

 

while I agree with the thinking ahead it is kind of hard to quote records related to SUV's and then knock them for not developing a prius.

And no my friend I am sorry but upper management is not the only bad guy here. I grew up in the rust belt, watched the steel mills, auto makers and other manufacturing go bye bye and the unions were a big culprit.

Don't beleive me? Compare cars made in the US and then ask yourself why the big 3 have so much overhead. The unions have/had their place but then as is typical some power/money hungry scumbag got in there and used the workers.

Far too many workers have the "you owe me because you cant make the product without me" attitude and yet at every turn do everything they can to bleed the company dry with no thought of the future. way too many union members stand around with their hand out even when the company is in trouble and then wonder why their jobs go overseas.

You provide the perfect example as you seem angry because they didnt share their profits even though the union workers in those plants have some of the best blue color jobs in the country and yet you think they should get more.

And please dont get me wrong I am not saying that the companies are in the right 100% either. As in most things the truth is somewhere in between. Unfortunately most management has never spent time as  a "grunt" and most average union workers have no idea what goes  on in management.

Anyway we'll agree to disagree but as I said if there was more understanding between the sides then they might be more successful.

 

I don't know now this got so far off beam, but the point I was trying to make was simply that all these people who rant on forums about wanting to see companies go bust, sometimes forget that they have crossed from games into RL and that real families will suffer when companies go bust.

A bad game is a bad game, I know that, and no-one should be expected to pay for rubbish. I just think that delighting in the notion of someone else's financial hardship is a bit much.

 

By the way, Orzo, I'd love to vote in your forthcoming election - do they let you vote if you live in Ireland?

Not sure, you live there, you tell me?

Wait - when the free trial is given out there will be something worth at least trying. Wait is all I can say.

Originally posted by xpiher

 
 

---

Originally posted by Sinsation
 
Hey Fanboi, you want constructive? How about Funcom introducing a patch that doesn't involve bugs allowing lowbies to endlessly grief 80's by turning regular PvP'ers into murderers. The Consequence system is broken and being exploited to maximum effect.
All the lowbie griefers have to do is run into some AoE or swinging swords in Kheshatta (or anywhere) and you collect murder points like flies on shit. By the way, the 'Free Prey' mechanic that is supposed to flag lowbies that enter a zone too high for them is broken too, it's non existent. Not only that but griefer guilds or groups get a lowbie buddy to join their group then apprentice them to 79, if you attack him, BAM murder points without realizing what's happening.
So essentially any lower level player can just start attacking a level 80 at anytime, and there's not a damn thing the 80 can do about without getting screwed.
To put all this in perspective, when you become a murderer the guards pretty much one or two shot you on sight. You can't use the caravan guides (that take you to different areas) leaving you helpless in the zone unless you Path out (hearthstone). If your Path of Asura is on cooldown you have to talk to a black market guy who charges you 15 silver (which is a lot) every time you want to travel somewhere.
So basically you can't PvP at all without this massive consequence that pretty much nerfs you into nothing, forcing you to just log your character and bake some cookies or something. On the official forums there are scores of posts from people saying they don't even want to log in anymore because the fun in PvP is completely ruined. Oh and rezpads, they changed it so your Shield Of The Risen (invulnerability) is constant while you remain standing on a pad. Which is all fine and good, until someone attacks you and your items with reactive damage hit the assailant dispelling the shield and open you up to a free rez camp.
So let's talk some PvE then, they 'fixed' the OOC chat so everyone in the same ZONE can see what you say but it's no longer global. So forget trying to get a group for anything, it's hard enough as it is with the ghost town servers. The player search is broken, the LFG search is broken, the looking for guild search is broken. The raid lockout prevents decent raiding, if you happen to die on the boss fight you're screwed out of a chance for an item. They also took out the choice to rez at a rezpad of your choice. So when you die it chooses one further away from where you need to get back to. All this if you can even find enough people to raid with, yes that's including hitting up your allied guilds.
Speaking of allied guilds. When you wanna help an allied guild do a siege you have to leave your guild and join theirs, log and relog or rezone just to get raid chat to actually work, then you better get an invite back into your guild right away after the siege is done. If you just log for the night and quit the allied guild, when you come back on you have no way to search for any guildmates online to get an invite back in. Unless they're on your friends list, which they wouldnt' be because when you're in the guild you just rely on the guild list that you no longer have because you had to QUIT your goddamn guild just to join a siege.
Oh and then there's all the angry Guardians and melee characters alike that are pissed about massive damage nerfs. Apparently white hits do just about as much damage in the same amount of time as it takes to get a combo off now. Combos which have been reduced to 1 or 2 key presses. Talking about screwing their own self praised revolutionary combat system.
After this patch I called it quits on the game after waiting for a patch for about a month and a half to actually fix stuff (even MINOR stuff, which consequently are still not fixed) and this is what we get. Funcom is a useless tit that couldn't fix a bug or put out a productive patch to save their own child from starvation.
How's that for constructive?
But, if you're enjoying the game... dude by all means keep at it. But singing it's praises like you are is bound to give people unsatisfiable expectations.

 

---

 

 
A  couple of comments.

You don't have to leave guild to join a siege or help an ally. The group leaders have to be in the guild that are actually doing the siege. The only reason a person should leave and join a guild is if they want the buffs. My guild, Immortal, PI, OG, Addiction (i think) and Reincarnation have all done this.
 
There are workarounds to the murder system. The smuggler camps allow you to travel to different zones for a fee.

The two things wrong with the murder system: Free pray doesn't always get triggered when a player gets attack by another and 2 being apped doesn't trigger free pray either. The latter is something that probably not even thought of to be an issue. Everyone on test is level 80 after all.

OOC: I agree there isn't an easy way to form groups. They do  need to add a global chat system, but I think they should build it from scratch since OOC, due to the fact that its designed for RP and is currently in the state it was originally, never worked correctly.

Everyone on test is level 80 afterall??? WHY? What the hell? Who thunk of that? They should have internally tested this and discovered this stuff before they released this patch.... I mean dude this is pretty core stuff to be overlooking............................... Funcom. Bow your head in shame, and then pick them back up and hire some professional testers!
 

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by megafluxmega

avery...you need to give up.

you are like those fools that refused to see disco as dead (or punk for that matter). take off the helmet and the cape. the hype is gone and the world knows its a POS.  every time someone posts about it being a POS you dont need to go swooping into the threads and filling them with pseudo-facts to dispute it. it just cant be healthy, nomatter how much they are paying you the game is over. no amount of "future" can stop what is already reality.

i feel bad for ya man, but you pretending its fun isnt really fooling anyone.

 

No offence but at least I can bring something constructive to the table in an honest way. I mean it's a news item. Your opinion, nor mine is the be all or end all.  Your profile says your a 46 yr old female and one of your posts says you like to look at hooker's ass' - sorry can't take you seriously. Thanks for showing an interest in the game though :)

I am paying to play a game I enjoy nothing more to it.

So rather than respond to the meat of this thread, you attack this guy on a personal level? Way to troll out. MODERATORS?

Originally posted by Ginni

Nah, basically the deal is that developers like to talk about the features and they hope that they get implemented. And sometimes it just doesn't make it because they bump into obstacles and the realize this or that might not work or that it actually ruins the fun factor or the core design is being ignored.

So either a person understand all of these things I fail to mention or they don't. I understand it but it is a big task explaining it to each invididual person.

Therefore one should obviously read up on the features but also remind themself that they would like to implement this and that, that they are trying to add it and make it work but that it might not be in the final game.

It is the ability to understand the difference between, trying to make something and actually getting it done and regardless of how many games a company have done, there is always a new problem and often the same problem for many different reason which I will not point out in this discussion, just take my word for it.

Making a game and especially an MMO is like like coming up with a new recipe for a new dish for a new food restaurant. The cook is talking about what he would like to have in the dish and it should taste like this and that but then it comes down to actually doing it. And this is what I want people to understand.

When most developers advertise their game it's just that, advertisement and creating hype, their challenge is actually delivering it. What developers talk about are often what THEY want in the game but to their disappointment as we all know, it is easier to wish for a feature then succesfully implement.

Often because of outside influence, desicion or lack of money or technology and many many other factors that comes into creating a game and especially mmo.

Basically as a player one need to be in a mental state where you say "I like those features but I realize they might not deliver all or half of this, but I will try the game and see if iy offers something that I might like". Do you understand what I mean? People should think positive and not just negative which is hard, but if one try it is very possible to do just that.

Often times when I have tried making a game and we write down what we want and everything that goes into the planning phase, I have yet to hit a home run where I didn't run into a issue, a problem for whatever reason that stopped the production of a feature.

And you know, sometimes people aren't just ready. Sometimes players think they know what they want and mostly they don't, we don't, I don't.

Anyway, it is a very deep topic where no one is right or wrong. It is a matter of experience, understanding and a persons ability to understand someones elses story,situation and problem.

I do not thinkg anyone is wrong in the matter nor do I feel I am correct. I am just stating from both a professional and personal point of view that it is easy to watch someone get bullied then stop it. The same goes for judging based on ones own experience as a customer, which we are all entitled to do.

It is just that most people refuse to understand the whole deal as they are emotional and angry about something.

But let us not forget that there is more to the whole picture then just you and me. :)

Thank you for reading my post

Well I for one am angry that game launched in such bad shape and then rather than admit it funcom chose to ban people from their forums and alienate so many people that the CORE of the game really ceases to function when the population is as bad as it is now. Making your customers frustrated and angry wasnt the smartest thing Ive ever seen a game company do to where relations are concerned.

I mean on one hand they were trying to hide it and on the other they released more bugs every patch for a while.  I had planned on making this game my new MMO home. Now its Ryzom for the time being.