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Age of Conan - E3 Update
MMORPG.com's Carolyn koh was at E3. While there, Carolyn caught up with Erling Ellingson of Funcom and Rick Reyonlds of Eidos to talk about the future of the game.
Although Eidos was not showing Age of Conan at E3 this year, Product Manager, Erling Ellingson of Funcom and Rick Reynolds, Sr. Marketing Manager of Eidos were on hand to talk about it.
“We've got our roadmap of patches already out,” said Erling. “And we are working on a holiday version of the game box,” added Rick. The holiday version is just a box which will be fun to give as a gift. We looked at the various versions of Age of Conan boxes that was being shown behind glass as we walked into the Eidos meeting room. Nothing has been decided as to what the holiday premium will be, if it will be a fun piece of equipment or bling, but “If you have any ideas,” said Rick, “I'd love to hear them!”
“We were tremendously pleased with server performance during launch week,” Erling informed me. “We kept bracing for what we thought was inevitable – the server crash,” admitted Rick, “but it never happened.” At present time, I was told that 700,000 accounts were registered, logged in and characters created. Far exceeding their expectations for the game.
Erling boasted that Age of Conan probably had the largest live team around at this time as the entire team is still working on the game. Erling was also pleased to say that their customer service team has been growing by leaps and bounds and are solving almost 100% of all petitions in a day.
I asked about the large number of people that have already reached level 80:
“The speed of levelling is conforming to our expectations,” said Erling. The game design is targeted at getting players to the level 80 end game of siege warfare, city capture and city building. The objective during the journey to the end game is for the player to understand their character, to relate to it and to learn it. Funcom doesn't believe in making a player grind in the lower levels or make levelling hard and slow. To wit, the apprentice system works that way as well. The apprentice is brought up to one level below the “master” and the low level player gets a taste of the world of high level play.
“We've been very pleased with how the Apprentice program is working,” said Rick. “I level slowly and it's a lot of fun to have my healer asked to join a high level group.” The apprentices' Hit points, mana and skills are buffed. That is to say that his ratio of effectiveness is raised to the extent required to be useful in the group. In most cases, the XP the apprentice gains from a high level group is also much better. But one of the main advantages of being apprenticed are the valuable drops.
Erling also gave me an update on the PvP game. The interest of players in the PvP game has also been more than expected with a majority of players on their PvP servers. New PvP XP levels will be introduced and vendors will sell equipment that require certain PvP levels to equip, and the Fugitive system will be implemented. There will be consequences for players who do undesirable actions in PvP such as corpse/spawn point camping and newbie ganking will gain “fugitive” points. A player reaching fugitive status will be be labeled as such. Other players killing this “Fugitive” will not himself earn “fugitive” points and the Fugitive will drop one lootable item.
In the content update to come, players will enjoy a new 55+ zone, Ymir's pass in Cimmeria with new architecture and graphics, a new dungeon, Thunderfalls and a high level dungeon, House of Crom. A major makeover for the UI is expected and of course many new quests. Both Erling and Rick agreed that the 55 – 60 game needs more content.
“Players constantly surprise us,” said Rick. “We found that they were doing things in their 40s that we didn't expect them to tackle until their 50s, hence we have a need to concentrate development in the 55 – 60 content right now.”
The majority of players at this time also seem to be concentrated in the 55 – 60 spread. Erling reiterated that the original AoC team has not been moved to other projects and they are busy focusing on implementing suggestions and fixing bugs and issues brought to their attention by the players.
“We are also focusing on improving community relations and getting information out to our players,” said Erling. Players can expect regular development news, website updates and forum postings. Funcom is also staffing up their community teams. Erling also revealed that they are beginning to break out the team into working on a future expansion.
As we were wrapping up, Rick looked over to Erhling and asked “Did you tell her about Kingship?” The flood gates were opened slightly and I stuck my foot square in. Kingship is a future system whereby guilds can form alliances and can capture and build legendary battlekeeps. These battlekeeps are connected to the major cities and this will be epic warfare indeed. Major improvements to the graphics engine are being made to allow many more players on battlefields. How many is “many more” I wanted to know, and “hundreds” was the response.
Diplomacy will matter in Age of Conan, especially when alliances are built. Currently Guild cities and trading posts are open to anyone unless the guild takes the effort to build walls and a gate that only allows guild members in. In the future, a third option will be available one which allows alliance guilds to enter.
It took some tricky questioning before I received an answer to “Why is the future system named Kingship?” beyond the “That's a good question!” type answer, Alliance leaders will have certain benefits while the alliance is in place. Beyond that, I could not pry anything further out of Erling or Rick,
One last note to close this out this interview of current status and future plans in AoC, players can expect the Xbox360 version of the game to launch in late 2009. Console players will be given a choice of whether to play on a co-mingled server or on a platform specific server. So, that's the update from E3, which shows quite an optimistic future for Age of Conan. According to them, they have surpassed all of their expectations in terms of subscriber numbers and have many things in the pipeline planned.
wtf a holiday edition?!? how lame
Lol yeah, what I thought too.
some pretty interesting info in there I must say it has excited me a bit. The holiday edition may be cool depending on what it comes with. (in game bonuses or cool swag.)
anyways great story and very informative looking forward to this kingship thing.
They throw that poorly designed bug ridden broken game out there and then have the nerve to say we have some more for you.
There was a lot of 'It will have' & 'They will get' in there which of course directly translated means 'it doesn't have' & 'they aint got it yet'. But hey, that don't matter the people who haven't bought it yet can look forward to christmas conan and his fluffy santa suit, these guys really need to get a clue.
Would love to see how many subscribers fell off after the 1st month.
I know I was one of them, lack of communication and game stability.
How about fixing all the bugs for a Holiday Edition.
Exactly my thoughts. But you can't deny the effectiveness of the overhype system. They ignore everything that is happening, they make up their own "facts" and keep the hype going!
One poster is already hyped and dying to preorder whatever they want to sell lol.
I had to laugh when I read that you could enter a guilds city if they had no walls or gates, well if you tried to enter any other guilds city you will find yourself at the end of the city guards sword and running back to reclaim your gravestone. Not too sure they really intended the guards to be aggro to non guildies.
Exactly my thoughts. But you can't deny the effectiveness of the overhype system. They ignore everything that is happening, they make up their own "facts" and keep the hype going!
One poster is already hyped and dying to preorder whatever they want to sell lol.
Looks like they got their lessons from the US government.
From the game developers: “'The speed of levelling is conforming to our expectations,' said Erling. 'The game design is targeted at getting players to the level 80 end game of siege warfare, city capture and city building. The objective during the journey to the end game is for the player to understand their character, to relate to it and to learn it. Funcom doesn't believe in making a player grind in the lower levels or make levelling hard and slow.'"
In point of fact, AoC has the fastest leveling pace of any major MMO on the market. It takes about 120 hours played to reach maximum level. The previous king of fast leveling, World of Warcraft, requires about 360 hours. Now Funcom is telling us that this speed is by design. So what is there to do when you get there? City building is out if you join an established guild. They will mostly have their cities built by this point. Especially the large guilds. But if you are part of a smaller guild, you can look forward to many, many hours spent harvesting resource nodes as part of the level 80 "content". Yeah, that's a lot of fun! Not. As for siege warfare and city capture, those features still don't work right. It's an endless parade of bugs. Even if/when they do get it working right, it's still not going to be the massive 200 vs. 200 PvP battles that were promised. In order to allow a mere 36 per side, they had to cut visibility in the battle keep zones so much that you can't see the outer walls from the top of the keep. To date, no guild has successfully captured a battle keep. Not because it's so difficult, but because bugs make it impossible. Even if the defenders fail to show up for the fight (which isn't uncommon given that these battles have to take place during odd hours, and can only happen once every 3 days), the battle keep still can't be taken by the attackers.
As for the statement that "Funcom doesn't believe in making a player grind in the lower levels or make levelling hard and slow," let's look at the facts: Once you pass level 50, content quickly starts to evaporate. By the 60's, it's almost entirely gone. Your life at that point consists of repeatedly running the four "villas" quests and AoE grinding for experience. Once you do hit a milestone where new content opens up, that content is exhausted well before you reach the next milestone.
The game looks great, but its "epic draw distances" that were advertised are considerably less vast than Vanguard (once fog is disabled) -- and Vanguard does it without instancing. AoC is VERY heavily instanced in order to make the pretty graphics possible and allow a port to the Xbox 360. Also, the box states that the game supports DirectX 10, but lies. The devs still give no word on when that will actually make it into the game, despite the false advertising of the box. And as for the Xbox 360 version, that has been pulled from online resellers like Amazon and Gamestop. They used to list it, but no more. The developers originally planned on it launching in September of this year. It has now been pushed back to "late 2009." I wonder if that's in real time, or Funcom time. These are, after all, the people who promised the new PvP rules by "late June, or the very beginning of July" -- changes that have yet to actually materialize.
In the final analysis, this game starts strong but quickly fizzles. It blasts you through the early levels, then leaves nothing to do once you reach your destination. Crafting is decidedly lackluster, the economy is a shambles, and almost all end-game content is broken. Players are abandoning the game in droves, while many others hang on simply because there's nothing else until this fall's batch of new MMO's hit the market. Calls are constantly going out for server mergers. Customer service is terrible. (Consider how the developers are pleased that support is now to a point where most requests are handled in "only" one day. Of course, that's partly because there are now far fewer players even asking for support. The rest have left, or have learned not to bother.) The forums are on heavy moderation lockdown. Posts of dissatisfaction are quickly labeled as "troll bait" and locked. Put it all together, and you have a game that's going nowhere fast. My recommendation is to skip it entirely. Alternatively, buy it and play the free month. You'll see most of the content in that time, anyway.
Only 3 more feet to go to get 6 feet under . Holiday pack to pay for fixes ? this is a new low for any gaming company.
at this point they must believe they are gaming developer gods and the game community / forums / critics are all retarded.
Nothing is funnier then watching egos parish ala Sigil.
The 30 days included with the game are well worth 35€. Then it's up to you if you wanna keep playing/paying or not.
I've purchased single player games that either are not worth the 50/60€ they cost just because they are plain bad or some other games that are good but they have so few content that I can finish them in a single day like CoD4 which is a really nice game but provided game content only for a day.
All the other stuff was kind of "blah blah blah more promises blah blah blah" but I read they're going to revamp the UI. Hmm, really? Perhaps make it more WoW-like?
This could be a good game in about a year or so, at the present it is not one at all.
I still don't understand why they thought that leveling to 80 in such a fast time is a good thing, like previous posters mentioned most of the things you can do at 80 are broken and there are not that many things to do at present.
Fast leveling is only good if the end game is there and working which is not even close at present.
After waiting almost 7 days for a stuck character petition, I am glad they are actually improving that, but then, there are a lot less players on the servers now too.
Funcom has a long way to go for this to be a good game, lets hope the initial funding they got from selling all those boxes gets them there.
I don't think the holiday edition will be a big seller, as War will be out and everyone will be trying out the new game on the block.
Well I wish them luck, they will certainly need it.
I want what these guys are smoking...
Is Funcom located in Amsterdam by chance?
So much smoke being blown...
How about lack of content? I don't care about communication. That shit happens with every developer and games stability for me was good.
Unfortunately, the 30 days game time, so graciously included with the games purchase, is worth exactly the same as one months subscription fee (~15€). In fact, that box and all the goodies inside it, is only really worth the same 15€. It's not like it has any value outside of it's use with a game subscription. In essence you're paying an outrageous markup on your first month of play time. (What you're really doing is paying off Funcom's debt to Eidos.)
Erling is a lier. This guy is painting a different picture than what is actually going on. If they really wanted players getting to 80 easily they wouldn't have implemented changes like taking away xp for gray quests (which they re-enabled after an uproar from the player base) or changing how much XP the Villa quests (repeatable quests to grind) give you. They have made mobs more difficult to kill and they almost doubled the xp needed from 70 to 80.
LOL. They promised to revamp the UI back in may. Now it's almost end of july and they just put out this Revamp UI promise as NEW news
Mark my words, next month they going to promiss (again) to start adding more armor sets (like they promised back in may). LOL!
Seems like FAILcom is running out of things to promiss, so they hope the people are stupid enough to have forgotten the old promisses and fall for it AGAIN
For the FIRST TIME EVER! I agree with all but one of you (the one who is looking forward to the lame gift box). This game is broken! dont waste your time.
yeah thats why 9 month later I still play COD 4 for at least an hour an day. So much for 1 day's content.
I would rather have a cactus rammed down my 1 eyed purple headed dragon than pay 1p for Conan
aoc is dead, some ppl think it needs time to get fixed, but personnaly i dont think this game is going to be....
2mounth ago we were 50-80 gamer loged per night in our ally, and 1month ago barely half of that, since 2weeks ago 2-5....only casuals can stand staying on aoc, hardcore gamers just left, and most of them arn't coming back, and personnaly i dont like games with casuals community, hardcore gamers and competition come hand in hand....reminds me of vanguard.
i wish one thing, that another company buy aoc from funcom.
and well now waiting for aion, i stick with ncsoft.
OMG just *look* and who she (Carolyn Koh) spoke with! She was @ E3 and spoke with *cough* the FunCom AoC Product Manager and the *cough* Eidos' marketing guy!
These two are very likely the guys who were most responsible for most, if not all that sizzle in AoC's pre-release hype -- tons of broken promises and when they did deliver the game there was very little steak -- AoC went live with a Closed Beta product, which even today, in it's third month after the game went live, we still have not seen a release quality product.
Mr. Erling tell Ms. Koh that AoC "probably has the largest live team around at this time as the entire team is still working on the game"... I said "*HELL YOU'D BETTER BE! THE GAME IS STILL BETA QUALITY!*" ... but then later on in the article, they tell Ms. Koh they are breaking some people away from AoC to work on the Expansion -- Expansion?!!? Focus on the beta game you have now please -- get it to release quality ASAP, and only then pull people out ok? LOL!
I'll give FunCom credit for one thing these guys mentioned -- bravo to FunCom on tghe CSAs -- Customer Service has improved tremendously and are closing the gap/almost up to par with Turbine.
I am currently playing and enjoying AoC, the future looks promising..keep up the good work Funcom!!, you got alot of support from majority of the gamers...
dang late 2009 for xbox edition? i read as mid 2010 lol. kotor mmo might be out for xbox too in that timeframe. ill play the one thats more fun.
I'm so happy for them that the game beat their expectations. apparently their expectations wern't to high.
I just want to my pets to be able to attack! The last patch made my pets useless (17 July). Forget the new content, just fix the game!!
Actually, the best 'hardcore' games were co-op games, so what you you gotta say about that?
Your reference to VG is pointless and desperate.
All thta Liz said, but also... add some frikin content!
What EQ2 achieved in the same technical space at time of release made this game just embarrasing.
AoC is a case study of style over substance. Avoid at all costs.
i'd rather get a lump of coal
This thread is 99% negative. While I agree with many points, I find most are overstated. If there are 700k people still playing, most likely less by now, they must be trying to enjoy the game. For some, it's something to do until Fall when more games are released.
“Players constantly surprise us,” said Rick. “We found that they were doing things in their 40s that we didn't expect them to tackle until their 50s, hence we have a need to concentrate development in the 55 – 60 content right now.”
Haha, wtf is he thinking? You can level from 1-80 in 2 weeks! Oh and don't say funcom have those promises and will fix things soon, they develop this game for 5 years and is still POS beta broken game.
Where do you get the idea that they have 700K still playing? They've only ever announced that 700K copies activated their accounts. Funcom has never released any figures about how many players continued their subscription past the first free month. Nor have they stated how many people canceled before this week's billing (like I did).
My guild is the largest and most active on our server. We were the first to put up a battlekeep. We're progressing well through the raid content. Yet less than 50% of the member count has logged into the game in the last seven days. Xfire statistics also show about a 50% drop in player activity since the game launched.
Yes, 700K copies were sold. But that does not equal 700K current subscribers. 350K is a more reasonable figure, which is still a good number. Only six years ago, anything over 100K was considered a "hit" game. But AoC has already seen its best days. They have a long road ahead of them with tons of fixes and new content to put out before they're going to have even a chance of winning old players back or new subscribers over. Given that there are several major releases coming up in the next few months from other companies (Wrath of the Lich King, Stargate Worlds, Warhammer, etc.), it's very unlikely that AoC will ever see that 700K mark again.
Their marketing wizards are most likely going to continue to spout "copies sold" numbers and spin that as continued growth of the game. Don't be fooled. As I said, "copies sold" is always larger than "current subscribers". It's the latter figure that really matters; if the figure is growing, the game is doing well. If the figure is shrinking, the game is hurting. For AoC, the figure is currently shrinking.
And by the way... if a thread about the state of the game is "99% negative" as you say on a forum that is not in any way affiliated with Funcom, doesn't that tell you something about the way that the general public views the game? For that matter, look at AoC's ratings here at MMORPG.com. They start out shining, but have steadily declined since the game launched. Now they are every bit as negative as this thread.
Yes, some people still love the game. Others see its potential and hope it'll be reached. Others (like me) see its potential, but doubt it'll ever be realized thanks to the holes that Funcom has dug for itself by foisting a beta off on the paying public. And yes, some hate the game. Most really wanted to like it, but found themselves disenchanted for one reason or other.
Did you notice I said IF, and MOST LIKELY LESS BY NOW. I have no idea how many are playing now.
Also, I said much was overstated, perhaps with good reason for the indiviuals who were disappointed. I see the game as enjoyable to a certain extent, perhaps it will even improve to the point of being an enjoyable game overall. There are some good plans. I just see no reason to be 100% negative. I do agree Conan was released before finished. We in the beta told them so.
Btw, I'm on the Testserver now.
OH HAI!!
U Still PlaYin!?
OhHAI!
U Can HAZ HOLAIDA+Z!!!
Seriously, this released leik galaxies. with rules.
%$@! em...
Test Center. God bless test center(z). right, they nerfed that too...
if i finance the developement of a game
may i ask some part of the funcom/eidos compagny (with my game box when i buy it) and the right to use the code source of the game too ? no ? at this level of dev i think it s the case no ?
in the next "future of aoc" interview they will be talking about how they decided to make it F2P
Didn't any of you notice the part that said Eidos isn't showcasing Age of Conan in their stand at E3.
Appearently Eidos is trying to distantiate themselves from Age of Conan already and know more then most of us.
If Age of Conan is such a success, then Eidos would have been proud in Showcasing the product they distribute isn't.
Says enough really (and sadly).
Dear Erling and RIck (open letter )
We want to see some major improvment in terms of bugs and server side lag spikes in crowded areas , pvp and at raid content. There is no way you can PvP or raid decently in a lag - spiked enviroment, please devs there.
Lack of content in the 55-60 area is not an issue, there are ways to bypass it (villas, apprentiship etc). Lack of good in game communication is crucial issue where you fail. I hope you dont expect in your recent query to get a good score there.
Unfortunately a bunch of rl friends are going to leave the game before trying the 80 lvl experience. I shall stay and hopefully i will be rewarded for my resilience.
Ah two more things
Less braging, more work.
I dont want to hear for an expansion again as long as you have ziliions of things to solve.
Cheers!
Mhm, certainly makes sense to me. Hell, Microsoft was quick to rub it in Sony's face that they got the NA PS3 Exclusivity out the window and now are releasing FFXII on the 360. So honestly, if the game was doing so well, I think Eidos would of been prancing around and bragging about it. But they arent.
Hmm... just thought of this...
Perhaps... Funcom, is the Uwe Bole of MMOs?
Ever heard of The Sims?
Your "an all time low" has already been done, and been proven to sell well. And anyways, the "holiday edition" is just gonna be a new box cover with an added extra item, some of you are reading waaay too much into it.
In a quirky kinda way I wasn't in the least bit surprised that funcom was hard at work on Christmas retail boxes.
Funcom just never ever stops shooting itself in the foot. Furthermore as mentioned earlier, they're at E3 of all places and no game showcased. Bang the other foot just been hit.
haha 700k? Yeah sure. not me or 5 of my friends played after the first free month. Having read the US and EU forum + this forum pretty much every day I can tell you that theres a lot of people that've left
I would actually play then
yup, me too.
"Xbox360 version of the game to launch in late 2009"
...same time as the rest of the content that should have been there at PC launch?
/bitter ex-customer off
/sigh.
Mhm, certainly makes sense to me. Hell, Microsoft was quick to rub it in Sony's face that they got the NA PS3 Exclusivity out the window and now are releasing FFXII on the 360. So honestly, if the game was doing so well, I think Eidos would of been prancing around and bragging about it. But they arent.
Hmm... just thought of this...
Perhaps... Funcom, is the Uwe Bole of MMOs?
nah. most people would agree (i hope) that 'The longest journey' and 'Dreamfall' are two of the best story focused games ever. They should just just slap the AoC dev managers aroung the face a bit with an angry sea bass... then work exclusively on 'Ragnar Tornquists' games.
I really had high hopes for AOC.
The bugs,lag,broken quests,detracted from each and every day's play.Finally,I decided that if I was going to play a broken game,I'd play a beta(for free).
well, I did.
It was so full of bugs and empty of contents I couldnt keep paying another month. Maybe ill go back to AoC for christmas...
I love how people knock the game who never even played the game, experienced cities, and the whole game experience, feel they know enough to knock the game.
Believe it or not, AOC is a great fun game. Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but you really make yourself look like an idiot by your posts.
The amusing thing is though, there are plenty of monkeys out there who are still paying for the game.
It really makes me LOL.
So let's look at it this way, a game is an entertainment expense. MMO's in general (yes there are a few free to plays) cost 15 bucks on average per month to play. The upfront cost of a game is $50 give or take a little depending on if you purchase CE or not. The majority of the time, the first 30 days are free.
So let's see a little economics based on a 6 month sub:
Month 1 cost: $50
6 Months of sub Cost: $90
Total: $140
Now compare to those who buy new games at least every month because they either finish it or get bored. $50 a clip x 7 months: $350 total spent. Assuming the games have a multiplayer component they are shooting for they too will be on line, so we can't forget that fee.
Add in their internet fee which averages $43/month for 7 months: $301
MMO: $441 total or averaging $63/month
Reg Game: $651 total or averging $91/month
If people find enjoyment in the game they play, they don't mind paying. Just because you didn't find it enjoyable and stop playing a game does not make someone who does enjoy it an idiot. I for one am enjoying the game. I don't play much during the week, maybe an hour a night; 2 if I am lucky enough. And the weekends I can usually get in close to 5 hours a day. I take my time playing an MMO, its steady, it isn't linear, and I find it challenging. Do I get frustrated at FunCom bugs? You better believe I do, however, the game gives me 99% enjoyment and 1% frustration and that is how I rate my play time.
by your odd logic... you have to include a fee for internet use for thhe MMO as well...
which would put MMO at $741, or roughly $103/month
I was evaluating the cost of entertainment per month for a MMO gamer and a gamer in general. Unless you live with your parents... people pay for their internet access either FiOS or Cable or Dial up, either way you have to pay. And I included the internet fee for the MMO, your math is incorrect.
Sorry friend,I played the game. Just like any other product I purchase,if it's defective,I dont keep it(or in this case,continue to play it).
ahh sorry, I was half-awake when I read the post, just looked through and noticed that lol
but, I still doubt an average person would buy a new game that frequently though
when i'm not playing a MMO, I tend to go buy games every 2 to 3 weeks to sate my appetite for something new, considering most other games are linear and it isn't all that difficult to master teh same technique over and over till u reach teh end. I find it ridiculous and go back to find the MMO that will keep me going.
ouch late 2009, so glad I didn't wait up for the xbow version. (previously early 08)
I see lots of conflicting opinions (big surprise) with some defending the game in spite of the majority of negative posts.
I don't pay much attention to opinion or PR spin from Funcom lackeys. People have already pointed out this game was NOT at E3. Why? It was just released, you'd think Eidos would be showing it off.
That says more to me than any hype or forum opinions.
Ever heard of The Sims?
Your "an all time low" has already been done, and been proven to sell well. And anyways, the "holiday edition" is just gonna be a new box cover with an added extra item, some of you are reading waaay too much into it.
The Sims is one of the all time highest selling video game franchises, when did Maxis come out with holiday packs to fix a broken game they released which I'm pretty sure Solareus is trying to say.
for the record when EA bought Maxis they signed Maxis to a deal to make some umpteen games as well as expansions which is why the Sims have so many expansion packs, and I hate to tell you if Funcom had half the level of standard Maxis and EA both show AoC wouldn't be such a mirror image of the other revolutionary but now F2P game they released.
I can totally respect your opinion as stated but what you also have to realize is that it seems based mostly off of the time you have spent in game, I think a vast majority of MMO players when we have a game we are really into we spend alot more time playing it than you seem to when most people burn through the content say 100 times faster than you and encounter the bugs a 100 times more than you just amplify obviously your annoyance times 100 and see what you get.
Also in an earlier post someone eluded to people trashing the game who haven't played it I am one of those people but what I take solice in is the fact that through my experience dealing with mmos the difficlty apperent in making them and th all or nothing nature of them I had a very good suspision this would happen. You may in fact like the game but you cannot deny many have praised and defended the game that are not happy with the outcome of the experience they had and even more who just tried a game with no preconceived notion and quit with a bad taste in their mouth, I for one see great value in keeping current in topics like this because I think the most important thing in mmos is for consumers to demand the production values exhibited by Blizzard in WoW or Turbine in LOTRO and stop accepting the treatment of companies like SOE with SWG Sigil with Vanguard and Funcom with this game.
'Nuff Said
I would like to point out where we've seen all of this before - Hellgate London. Does anyone else remember the massive hype machine, the jaw dropping graphics, the team that brought you diablo 2?!?!? \
Yeah me neither, it wsa all hidden by god awful glitches and stability problems, tunnel after tunnel after fucking tunnel, not really an MMO at all since you only had your little area, terrible quests, no endgame...sound familiar?
I'm so glad I don't buy into hype anymore. I actually went out and got guild wars after playing hellgate london because it was a better game. So many of my amer friends made fun of me for ditching HG at first but within a month we all went to guild wars, WoW, or FPSes because the game was that bad. Now most AoC players will probably go to competitors the game is so bad. People aren't playing because they have nothing better to do, they're playing because they have false hope, kinda like the hellgate subscribers. Now look at what happened - the game is dead. I can't even access the servers anymore, subscrber content is halted, the lifetime subscrubrs got screwed royally...I see it all happening again with AoC.
Sorry friend,I played the game. Just like any other product I purchase,if it's defective,I dont keep it(or in this case,continue to play it).
I played closed beta and stayed with the game until QA turned off the beta servers and initiated the "TestLive" server a couple weeks or so ago and still play a character on my son's account every few days for a bit just to see if FunCom's making any progress toward providing a release quality product.
I was in there, fighting until the end to try to help AoC reach release quality. It didn't happen. AoC remains a closed beta product and IMHO, it will remain beta quality for quite some time - release quality is at least 3-6 months away. I like the game - I hope it gets to release quality soon and if so, I might get a game account.
I find it funny how Melwe, quoted above, dismisses and disses the vast majority of the MMO player community, including most of the people who posted here, who think like Cruzin and me.
Now really, Melwe -- who looks like idiots?
Please, there are no idiots here, just posters with opinions. Some are too strong, I think, but to each his/her own.
I played closed beta and stayed with the game until QA turned off the beta servers and initiated the "TestLive" server a couple weeks or so ago and still play a character on my son's account every few days for a bit just to see if FunCom's making any progress toward providing a release quality product.
I was in there, fighting until the end to try to help AoC reach release quality. It didn't happen. AoC remains a closed beta product and IMHO, it will remain beta quality for quite some time - release quality is at least 3-6 months away. I like the game - I hope it gets to release quality soon and if so, I might get a game account.
I find it funny how Melwe, quoted above, dismisses and disses the vast majority of the MMO player community, including most of the people who posted here, who think like Cruzin and me.
Now really, Melwe -- who looks like idiots?
I point out the idiots who claim 'omg no walls on cities and anyone can walk into them?' Not people who have an opinion on the game. I should of been more specific, but I get involved in so many of these posts where people don't write the reasons why they feel the game is bad and just drop a bomb and run!
90% of the negative posts make no sense, there is a thing called constructive criticism rather than the 'failcom released a bad game!'