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Age of Conan Correspondent - The PvP System
MMORPG.com Age of Conan Correspondent Chris Carlis files this report on the upcoming PvP system for Age of Conan.
When we all saw the videos for Age of Conan, we were all motivated by the decapitations and fatalities that we saw. Then we saw all of the different siege warfare scenes that really got our blood flowing. And I know I’m not alone when I say that I was hell of excited about it. Age of Conan promised us lots of blood, gore and an active, fun playing system. Well it delivered most of all of it. Currently there are still some problems with the siege system, and there are some small imbalances in the classes. But in the coming weeks and months we expect to see huge game improvements including the PvP levels being enabled and the murder system. In this article I will briefly go over these new enhancements and what I think that they mean to players.
First, we will be covering the new PvP system. This is a system that was active in beta, but was not turned on when the game was released. Since then, the players have been begging and pleading with the developers to turn it on to give us some sort of content besides raiding at the end game and now, it seems like these changes are finally coming.
Let’s go over the PvP system
There will be ten PvP levels. The way you gain experience is (obviously) by killing other players. Players of the same level range as you will yield 100 experience. PvP doesn’t come without some kind of price, however. Every time you fall in PvP, you will lose some points that you worked so hard to gain. And remember, this number is static; it doesn’t matter if a level 1 or a level 80 killed you, you lose the same amount of experience. You don’t have to worry about losing levels though; getting killed in PvP won’t de-level you. There are also safeties in place so that people can’t exploit the system. For example, there is a set number of times a person may kill you and still yield PvP experience. It is unknown at this time if this is based on an hour timer, or a twelve hour timer (or some other system). Also, you receive normal, PvE experience for every PvP kill you get. The way this works is you get 10% of what you would have gotten if you would have killed a monster of the same level, but you will always get a minimum of 1 experience. This will do something that a game hasn’t done in a while; allow people to take a break from the seemingly endless grinding and PvE mission running to go out and PvP, and they will still gain experience for it. I doubt that there will be anybody who solely levels a player off of PvPing alone (it would take significantly longer), but it would be an interesting challenge to try and do it. Now once you have killed tons of players, and have gotten your PvP level up, you can buy gear from the PvP vendors. From things that I have come across and read, the gear that you acquire from PvP combat will be superior to things that you get from doing any kind of PvE content, after all it should be, killing a player is much harder than killing NPCs after all.
Age of Conan PvP gear looks amazing. I’ve seen some pictures of it, and I viewed it in beta. It will look a lot hotter than what you are currently wearing. This will be a huge improvement to the current PvP system in place in Age of Conan right now. Building up and maintaining your PvP level will bring a whole other aspect to the game. It is unknown at this time whether or not there will be a system in place where you will actually loose PvP levels if you don’t PvP for some time, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye on it and let you all know when more information is made available.
Good Grief
Now with most of the population of this game playing on PvP servers, there is a lot of unfair griefing going on. As a result, the players have asked the developers to do something about it, so they came up with the murder system. What you read after this may not seem all that appealing, but look on the bright side: at least they didn’t implement the prison system… that would have been much worse.
Under this system, players are flagged in three different ways: innocent, criminal, and murderer. If you are a criminal or murderer you will have an icon in your status that lets everybody else know that you gank people.
However, if you are marked innocent, nobody can perform a hostile action on you without being flagged as a criminal, unless they are marked criminal or murderer. Now the way you start this all off: if you perform any hostile act toward a person, you will be flagged as a criminal for five minutes. If you attack anybody after that, your criminal status automatically refreshes itself. If you attack a criminal/murderer you will not be flagged as a criminal, so all of the law abiding bringers of justice can deliver it!
To become a murderer, you have to have killed enough players to accumulate 100 or more murder points. Killing players that are below your level range will result in those points coming much, much faster. Your murder score is capped at 1750 points, and for every real life hour that passes, it is reduced by one point. For example: if you are capped on murder points, you would have to wait nearly 73 days for your murderer status to go away. If you die in PvP and lose PvP experience, you will lose 3 murder points. Also, killing mobs that yield experience will reduce your murder score by 1 point, per 1% of your level worth of XP, so if you kill enough mobs to complete a level, that’s minus 100 points of your murder score.
At this time I don’t see any real benefit to being a murderer, the only things that come with it are negatives, you can’t interact with traders or vendors, and you are attacked by guards on sight. If you die while flagged as a murderer the following will happen: You lose 100% PvP experience, the person killing you gains 100% PvP experience, and you have a 100% chance to drop one of your items. Also, any player interacting with a murderer is automatically flagged as a criminal. If you are in a group with a murderer you are also automatically flagged as a criminal, and if anybody in a group kills an innocent, the entire groups is flagged as criminal, and this effect of course takes the standard five minutes to wear off, as a normal criminal flag. This will add a lot of new aspects of play into the game, especially in the role playing sector. You may end up with large guilds full of murderers running around, committing mass murders on low level players everywhere. However, I’m not sure how the system will work if you are attacked by guards every where you go, and the game being as highly instanced as it is, how will somebody get form point A to point B without getting ganked ruthlessly by angry players and pissed off NPCs!
Now we can’t forget about all of the bug fixes that are coming down the pipeline either. The developers have promised to fix a lot of the siege issues that we all have been having. You know the ones I’m talking about, not being able to do any damage to the battle keep, temple, or trade post, expect these fixes to be incoming within the next month. They also mentioned memory leak fixes, like the ones that make your map turn grey for no reason. It’s pretty apparent that Funcom is working very hard to bring us a more polished game than what we currently have.
I have, of course, been reading all of the different forums and reactions to this new system, and the response of the player base is really, really mixed. Some people are rejoicing because they believe that it will help cut down on the meaningless ganking. I think it will, but I’m not sure how many people will really care. From the looks of it people are already trying to find ways to exploit the system to get their PvP ranks up quickly without achieving any kind of murder rating. Others hate it, because there truly is no benefit to being a murderer.
Hopefully in the future, the developers will bless us with some type of special armor, or weapons that are only available to murderers and that could be the item that we drop when we die. The bottom line is it’s adding content to the game that many players have been crying for ever since the game was released. You can, of course, expect to see the system tweaked over the next few months to a more appealing system for both sides of the argument. But it seems like a good start. The developers at Funcom are also working on improvements and fixes to the siege system so hopefully within the next month we’ll be looking at playing around with more endgame content that we all have been waiting for.
From day one this game has shown an extreme amount of promise, we can only hope that the developers will continue to push out patches every week that will help us achieve a great game.
lol no matter how bad a game is, the editors of this site never gives a negative review.
As it stands, That new pvp system is more carebearish than WoW. Atleast in WoW people
dont get penalised for pvp and ganking.
Right.
This review should come with a disclaimer: Please note we are receiving tons of advertisement money from Funcom so this is not completely objective.
Could mmorpg.com write scathing reviews (if deserved, which it is) about AoC? Sure, but they would lose money, so in effect, no they can't. So why even write reviews if the outcome is fixed?
It makes no sense..
What part of this article did you think was a review? I think you might be a little bit confused but this was clearly listed as an article about the PvP system.
Also, the writer of this article isn't an editor.
The writer's job in this case was to talk about the upcoming PvP system. Whether you personally like it or not, there are people who are following and playing and even liking this game.
Right.
This review should come with a disclaimer: Please note we are receiving tons of advertisement money from Funcom so this is not completely objective.
Could mmorpg.com write scathing reviews (if deserved, which it is) about AoC? Sure, but they would lose money, so in effect, no they can't. So why even write reviews if the outcome is fixed?
It makes no sense..
Actually, any advertising that we get from Funcom has no berring on what we write about it. I have explained many times the reason that this doesn't make sense, especially from a business perspective. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. It's a knee-jerk accusation that clearly isn't too well thought-out.
The correspondent program is designed to appeal to players of the individual games who are playing the games. As such, the correspondents are people who actually play and enjoy the game so it shouldn't be a surprise when their articles reflect that.
No review outcome is fixed. I am also curious what part of this article you thought was a review? I didn't see the review tag on the article and I didn't see a score. You can camplain about bias in a review if you want (although, just to point out the fact that reviews are opinion-based by definition so bias doesn't really work there either), but this wasn't a review. Just saying is all.
Right.
This review should come with a disclaimer: Please note we are receiving tons of advertisement money from Funcom so this is not completely objective.
Could mmorpg.com write scathing reviews (if deserved, which it is) about AoC? Sure, but they would lose money, so in effect, no they can't. So why even write reviews if the outcome is fixed?
It makes no sense..
a) It's not a review.
b) Do you know what a game correspondent is? They are not part of the staff, they are not paid, they are just assigned to a game (which they are fond of) and write articles about them. It's just a fan of the game, he has nothing to do with the staff.
c) You seriously need to lose the tinfoil hat. The reason the article was written like this is because it was written by a fan (which is better than the haters writing articles about AOC). Sorry it didn't have enough hate for you.
d) If you read articles in here before, you would recall "The Anatomy OF A Launch Part I" and there was a part two. This talked about Funcom's poor launch and how they handled certain things poorly.
The staff isn't getting paid...hell, game correspondents aren't even part of the staff at all...just fans who love writing.
It's funny when people who obviously have had no writing or authorship experience respond to something they know nothing about.
The correspondent's article was not a review of the game; it was an informational piece about the upcoming pvp system. Therefore, things like launch issues and bugs deserved no more than a passing comment. Further, the author would have been simply stating the obvious and a short and sweet piece would have become a length exposition.
I will be the first to admit that Age of Conan has problems. I will also be the first to admit that Funcom has lied and verges on some seriously ethical concerns as well. However, with that said, you (the tin-foil hat brigade) really need to relax. Every piece of information is not a lie nor does every word written about the game have to be negative.
I think the author did a great job and I can clearly tell that the article is meant to be an informative piece about the upcoming system for pvp. Kudos to the author for writing an informative piece (I learned something - which is the basis of journalism) and kudos to MMORPG.com for using correspondents to cover multiple aspects of the games.
When FC has lied to you..cheated you...scammed you...who cares anything about what they say.
Which is fine and a totally understandable opinion... But if that's the case and you don't care about what they're saying... don't read it. Just a thought.
What a crock of crap, PvP system nearly all in!!!!! what flaming PvP.
Our guild headed into the much heralded Border Kingdoms and me encoutered NOTHING for absolutely ages then out of the blue we meet 2 other chars who then tell us they had been in and out of the BK for a week and we where the first ppl they had met also.
We had a little to and fro battles but basically it was more exciting watching paint dry, absolutely no point no reward and no fun to be had.
The PvP system as it is is going to let the game down terribly, I'm still playing but I'm ognoring the PvP element because atm it just does not work as it was advertised.
LOL! I had this vision of a bunch of weapon clad warriors standing around shuffling their feet in the dirt, kicking rocks, scanning the horizon for enemies to defeat, caravans to pillage...ANYTHING.
"What's that! Dust rising out of the valley. Hide yourselves and prepare for ambush!"
Moments later two weary travellers ride up on their mounts. Seeing them as little threat the seasoned warriors emerge from the brush.
"You look to be travel weary and have seen much. What news of the Border Kingdoms? Is the enemy at hand? Our daggers thirst for blood and our purses are empty!"
"We ain't seen Jack or shit! We were lost."
This new PvP ganking system thing they want to put in sounds awful. Did they even mention anything for the cultural PvP server?
I agree with most of what you say.
I, too, am highly disappointed with FunCom's inability to ethically deal with the publics -- the fan sites like MMORPG, TTH, Warcry, the player community, etc. It's truly sad that much of the media continues to believe their empty hype and what's even more sad is that not many players do anymore. Marshall McLuhan was right, the medium is the message. And Mr. Wood, what angers most of the folks who are labeled as "tin hats" is that too many fan sites and the press were too eager to enjoy the bennies FunCom provided (and still provides) to the media, but to actually truthfully expose FunCom's lies and AoC as it truly is, warts and all? Not so much.
The truly sad thing is here's a guy who loves the game who took the time to write an informative article peppered with pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams about AoC actually reaching released quality "soon" and delivering on it's promises "soon." I hate to break this to him but I, too, have played this game for a long time and until FunCom offers players a release quality product, i refuse to pay FunCom to continue testing their closed beta game. I have a character on my son's account that I log in to play a bit now and then.
I love the game, I'm just waiting and hoping for a release quality product. That will happen "soon," depending on your definition of "soon" ... my definition? At least 3-6 months. And guess what -- with all the great MMOs/paid expansions coming out this Fall, if FunCom can't actually deliver a release quality product "sooner" than later, AoC subscriptions will continue to drop toward nothingness and AoC will be relegated to the bargain bin at your local Gamestop, right on top of Shadowbane.
Well I like the new system, and I'm sure alot of others do too.
Actually, any advertising that we get from Funcom has no berring on what we write about it. I have explained many times the reason that this doesn't make sense, especially from a business perspective. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. It's a knee-jerk accusation that clearly isn't too well thought-out.
The correspondent program is designed to appeal to players of the individual games who are playing the games. As such, the correspondents are people who actually play and enjoy the game so it shouldn't be a surprise when their articles reflect that.
No review outcome is fixed. I am also curious what part of this article you thought was a review? I didn't see the review tag on the article and I didn't see a score. You can camplain about bias in a review if you want (although, just to point out the fact that reviews are opinion-based by definition so bias doesn't really work there either), but this wasn't a review. Just saying is all.
i was thinking along the same lines as Drakkan as i read this article - i had no idea that "correspondents" were actually what most people on this site considers to be "fanbois" - i guess i was suppose to read something about this somewhere on this site
now that that is cleared up.........
i will now read these "news" items with the view that they are the site fillers that they are
Actually, any advertising that we get from Funcom has no berring on what we write about it. I have explained many times the reason that this doesn't make sense, especially from a business perspective. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. It's a knee-jerk accusation that clearly isn't too well thought-out.
The correspondent program is designed to appeal to players of the individual games who are playing the games. As such, the correspondents are people who actually play and enjoy the game so it shouldn't be a surprise when their articles reflect that.
No review outcome is fixed. I am also curious what part of this article you thought was a review? I didn't see the review tag on the article and I didn't see a score. You can camplain about bias in a review if you want (although, just to point out the fact that reviews are opinion-based by definition so bias doesn't really work there either), but this wasn't a review. Just saying is all.
i was thinking along the same lines as Drakkan as i read this article - i had no idea that "correspondents" were actually what most people on this site considers to be "fanbois" - i guess i was suppose to read something about this somewhere on this site
now that that is cleared up.........
i will now read these "news" items with the view that they are the site fillers that they are
Ugh...they aren't site fillers, they are useful articles. They also have correspondents for LOTRO, ROSE Online, etc. Even I went out for a position as one.
There's nothing wrong with these articles. They inform the staff of news updates, and they write articles about the game of choice. This was an article explaining the future (possible) PvP of AOC, and it was informing and a pretty good read. This is no "site filler" but a good way of keeping the community updates with all of the different MMOs. I appluad the staff for this brilliant idea, so we could see updates from more games more often.
I don't see people complaining like this on other threads....God, you AOC people just attack anything possible, don't you?
I am starting not to like this site. this is the most crapy and broken game i have yet to play, yet they never say anything negetive. its to late to make up for the lack that this game has. so take a year, take two years to fix, but your not going to do it with my money
It may be that we attack so readily because of the dept of our wounds. I waited for this game for years, my anticipation only building with all the information from funcom. I am still playing. On an alt. Not much for my level 80 to do. If I complain sometimes, it is only because my bitterness runs deep. I feel like a little girl who was promised a pony and given a goat. :-)
i really don't have a lot of confidence in anything having to do with ranking based on pvp kills. the kills to deaths counts have been horribly off. an example was when i took an alt into white sands last week and my group of two began defending itself against a lvl 20 ganking lowbies. we were killed several times but also were able to kill the lvl 20 many times. i was curious just how many times so i opened up the pvp window to check. my kills to deaths record was 0 : 8. the only time i've gotten credit for a kill is when i've killed a player by myself.
casters in mass pvp (seiges) rack up 100's of kills while other archetypes get single digit totals. bleh...
why would i put any stock or any hopes of being happy with a game this horribly executed. so sad funcom, y'all broke my heart with this game.
For me AoC is dead . But i hope the best for the mmo players still in it .
"Currently there are still some problems with the siege system"
Look I really like the game ( 80 PoM) and am starting to raid, but to say "SOME" problems with siege is like saying, "The Titanic had SOME problems with water!"
Siege warfare is practically unplayable with the atrocious lag/framerates. For example, you try to move forward and 5 seconds later (no joke) you end up "somewhere". I think in time they will fix this and as I said I like the game, but that was a pretty darn poor reviewer imo.
Pook
i was thinking along the same lines as Drakkan as i read this article - i had no idea that "correspondents" were actually what most people on this site considers to be "fanbois" - i guess i was suppose to read something about this somewhere on this site
now that that is cleared up.........
i will now read these "news" items with the view that they are the site fillers that they are
Ugh...they aren't site fillers, they are useful articles. They also have correspondents for LOTRO, ROSE Online, etc. Even I went out for a position as one.
There's nothing wrong with these articles. They inform the staff of news updates, and they write articles about the game of choice. This was an article explaining the future (possible) PvP of AOC, and it was informing and a pretty good read. This is no "site filler" but a good way of keeping the community updates with all of the different MMOs. I appluad the staff for this brilliant idea, so we could see updates from more games more often.
I don't see people complaining like this on other threads....God, you AOC people just attack anything possible, don't you?
i am not an "AOC people"
i read this article because of its title and all the complaints i have read about AOC pvp - figuring that this update would take care of some those complaints - whether it does or doesn't i don't know
this issue was that this "correspondent" (and who doesn't associate correspondent with news reporter) didn't seem to really know about the issues that players are/were having with AOC pvp
then upon further reading of the comments on the article i found that, according to this website, a "correspondent" is a fan of a given game that would natually be giving biased views/reviews of said game
i would think a better title for these types of articles would be "fan mail from AOC, LOTRO, WOW or........."
lol go Stradden
anyway good article. i look forward to the changes
I started to hate this site too, review or whatever they call is so one sided. That is fine, but if anyone want to discuss how flawed that review/whatever they call, they started to ban people.
You have been issued a temporary ban by one of our moderators.
Category: Spam
Span: 07/31/2008 - 08/01/2008 [1 days]
Reason: MMORPG.com does not permit spam posts or threads on our forums. Spam posting includes repeated or nonsensical posts that disrupt the forum.
Ban me for Spam???? I only got one post and it stated what I see those flaws in the orginal post like others. At least ban me for something else like disagree with OP, or flaming the company. Guess I was the first one to reply and take the hit.
edit: oh I created this acct just to warn others, no more bashing OP and love Funcom or you will get ban lol too
lol...Tinfoil hat.
I started to hate this site too, review or whatever they call is so one sided. That is fine, but if anyone want to discuss how flawed that review/whatever they call, they started to ban people.
You have been issued a temporary ban by one of our moderators.
Category: Spam
Span: 07/31/2008 - 08/01/2008 [1 days]
Reason: MMORPG.com does not permit spam posts or threads on our forums. Spam posting includes repeated or nonsensical posts that disrupt the forum.
Ban me for Spam???? I only got one post and it stated what I see those flaws in the orginal post like others. At least ban me for something else like disagree with OP, or flaming the company. Guess I was the first one to reply and take the hit.
edit: oh I created this acct just to warn others, no more bashing OP and love Funcom or you will get ban lol too
Yeah, that's probably what happened. In order to silence you, a moderator went out of his or her way to give you a temp ban for a whole day. Long-term silencing.
We do have an appeals process, just so you know. You can complain to community@mmorpg.com. Our Community Manager Richard will be happy to look into this for you.
i was thinking along the same lines as Drakkan as i read this article - i had no idea that "correspondents" were actually what most people on this site considers to be "fanbois" - i guess i was suppose to read something about this somewhere on this site
now that that is cleared up.........
i will now read these "news" items with the view that they are the site fillers that they are
Ugh...they aren't site fillers, they are useful articles. They also have correspondents for LOTRO, ROSE Online, etc. Even I went out for a position as one.
There's nothing wrong with these articles. They inform the staff of news updates, and they write articles about the game of choice. This was an article explaining the future (possible) PvP of AOC, and it was informing and a pretty good read. This is no "site filler" but a good way of keeping the community updates with all of the different MMOs. I appluad the staff for this brilliant idea, so we could see updates from more games more often.
I don't see people complaining like this on other threads....God, you AOC people just attack anything possible, don't you?
i am not an "AOC people"
i read this article because of its title and all the complaints i have read about AOC pvp - figuring that this update would take care of some those complaints - whether it does or doesn't i don't know
this issue was that this "correspondent" (and who doesn't associate correspondent with news reporter) didn't seem to really know about the issues that players are/were having with AOC pvp
then upon further reading of the comments on the article i found that, according to this website, a "correspondent" is a fan of a given game that would natually be giving biased views/reviews of said game
i would think a better title for these types of articles would be "fan mail from AOC, LOTRO, WOW or........."
WAs the article a little soft? I suppose. BUT, he was stating Funcom's future ideas (whether or not they will happen) and how they plan to fix the problems.
Correspondents can write articls, explain different things about the game, give reviews of the game, etc.
After reading this "new" idea to deal with level 80s hitting on lowly level 1-20s, its actually giving these gankers what they want, the ability to show how pathetic they really are.
Why didnt the devs implement the Prison system? or a new system where players are actually BANNED from playing the game depending on their murder score?
Say, ganker guild a, just goes around ganking new players, rather than stopping them trading (which they wont really care about anyway) or entering towns, why not ban them for a set period of time.
Example..
Gankers guild a, goes around for first week and kills 100 level 10-20's, they amass 1750 points each.
So 10% of that is 1.7 days.
Now the whole of Gankers guild A, are in jail and Cant do jack, actually there banned from playing their characters.
Im sure this will get the message across to fight fair.
But alas, i as many other X-AOC players (got an ati card you see) will not be coming back for this system thats on the Horizon
at the risk of beating a horse on its last breath......
we already have a place for nonprofessionals (or at least unpaid staff) to do reviews and post update information - it's called the forums
i don't see these articles as anything more than an Original Posting on a particular games forum
just my opionion of course (and we all seem to have one of those don't we)
Good post, does a good job on the upcoming update to the pvp system. Anyone know when it goes live?
As to the Siege system, well, lets be kind and just say it is not working at this time. Siege was one of those things that they knew was broken at release and would get to later, just that how later it will be no one knows.
i have waited for aoc 2 years, and i played 2months after the release.
the pvp system from what iv read about, it's just the basics of lineage2, neutral = white ; criminal = purple ; murderer = red , even adding this to aoc the game isnt going to be more fun, yes ffa would be a litle bit better, but not enough, i didnt like the battle grounds, nor the sieges, seriously whats left ? flag mini-games ?
i just find the pvp in aoc frustrating because of the lag, and more importantly not fun for so many reasons, funcom can always try to update their game, fanboys can always try to be patient, but in the end, i see no real happy ending for this game, so either they are incompetent becuz i see so many patch went wrong, some bugs really weird makes you wonder if their dev team have real experience in games dev, or just maybe they dont have enough people, either way funcom is loosin players evey day, they are loosing money for investment, and this is not gonna make it easier for them to fix the game.
solutions :
1-fix the game fast, and try to rebuild aoc reputation ( not gonna happen )
2-try to launch an addon as soon as possible, to remake some money to keep up with the costs ( probably whats going to happen)
3-find a buyer for the game like vanguard did ( still need to find a corp crazy enough )
conclusion :
age of conan is dead !
And yet again we see that FFA-style PvP is a failure and unable to keep a MMMORPG profitable.
How many of these failures will it take to shut up the ones always whining for a FFA PvP MMORPGs claiming it would be so popular.
Learn 2 History.
Oh you mean like the PvP system that should have been in the game at launch?
Yeah, that's probably what happened. In order to silence you, a moderator went out of his or her way to give you a temp ban for a whole day. Long-term silencing.
We do have an appeals process, just so you know. You can complain to community@mmorpg.com. Our Community Manager Richard will be happy to look into this for you.
I must agree with Jon here...i have been talking to Richard who spent MANY emails helping me understand my ban then lifted it, due to my post being borderline. He emailed me many times just chatting, he really is a nice guy.
Actually, any advertising that we get from Funcom has no berring on what we write about it. I have explained many times the reason that this doesn't make sense, especially from a business perspective. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. It's a knee-jerk accusation that clearly isn't too well thought-out.
The correspondent program is designed to appeal to players of the individual games who are playing the games. As such, the correspondents are people who actually play and enjoy the game so it shouldn't be a surprise when their articles reflect that.
No review outcome is fixed. I am also curious what part of this article you thought was a review? I didn't see the review tag on the article and I didn't see a score. You can camplain about bias in a review if you want (although, just to point out the fact that reviews are opinion-based by definition so bias doesn't really work there either), but this wasn't a review. Just saying is all.
I'd like to add something.
I liked the article, except for one thing:
"there are some small imbalances in the classes"
Sorry, but that is incorrect. I won't push it down your throat that "if you played the game you'd know." But rather, if you have been at level 80 and fight other classes 1v1, 3v3, 5v5, and did the mini-games in there... You'd see that there is more than a minor imbalance. When it comes down to it, no bullshit, it's whoever has the most Tempest of Set's on their team WINS. In the event that either team doesn't have a ToS then whoever has the other priest classes wins. :P
Assuming everyone is of equal skill, 2 Rangers, 2 Assassins, 1 Dark Templar cannot take on 1 Herald of Xotli and 1 Tempest of Set. (Note: HoX isn't the overpowered one, they are just glass-cannons, and quite powerful ones at that. I should know, I played one before I uninstalled.)
And yet again we see what happens to a pvp FFA game when they listen to carebears too afraid to die in a video game and get their fweewings huwrt. Instead of working on the siege system and polishing it up they spent waaay too much time working on stupid raids, quests, levels and other pve crapolla that they original design did not have. In fact the original had a much better system of pvp but the crybaby carebears didn't like that it took skill to do it and instead they wanted the dumb down version we have now.
The only problem with pvp in mmo's is carebears that want to pve. Instead of having the stones to just kick these girly men to the curb and tell them to go play another pve game they listen to them and everything gets messed up. Even in games that separate pve and pvp the pve carebears come over and then cry when they die. ewww I was gank'd.
Learn 2 history
as for a MMO site to actually give a score a game deserves? Or put a game on blast for being a POS? LMAO!! never happen. If your looking for the consumer reports of the MMO world.. hasn't happen... yet...
Too little way Late. Why wasn't this implemented at launch? Another failure to this over hype piece of garbage. I am a happy canceled since I left this buggy game a month ago. Please Jumpgate, Aion, and WAR make my year. i am tired of these new MMO's being so bad.
All the other comments aside, i am a bit confused as to the purpose of this article.
Essentially it sums up the recent press and forum news releases from Funcom, added with a few (not always relevant) opinions. It does not tell me anything new or interesting about the up and coming PvP changes. It does not even give me a proper time line as to when to expect that (so i have to consult the official forums anyway if i want to know, where i find all this info regardless).
On top of that it is clearly written by someone with little to no journalistic experience - sentence structure and catch phrases make me want to gauge my eyes out.
In short - i think i'll stay clear of correspondent's posts in the future and get my news straight from the source. At least it's less diluted.
I guess I'll add my name to the list of folks here left with a bitter taste in their mouths by Funcom.
When you have the temerity to print features on the back of the box and then leave them out at launch... with a 'ship it and patch it later' attitude (and i mean crucial content like the pvp system and gear, the level 60+ pve content etc, DX10 support)...
that's showing nothing less than contempt for the customer base.
I do have the capacity to listen to other peoples views though, I'm not about to throw grief at the OP for daring to like a game I've past all reasonable milestones of patience with. Good for him, I'm happy that he's happy etc.
I think the hostility from the so called 'tin foil hat brigade' basically comes down to exasperation that others are happily indulging on the AoC marketing spin and still remain hopeful that change is on the horizon - a bit like an abused spouse (imo).
It's time to live and let live guys.
"Be Excellent to one another" etc
:P
It is solely based on funcoms promises. Everybody who tried Age of Conan knows how much their promises are worth.
Things advertised on the box of the game are still not there...
LOL!
Mate the problem is not the FFA, its how it is implemented. In AoC you die, respawn at the resspoint and thats it. FFA without consequences for the one dying and benefit for the one killing is not much fun. Its like playing poker without the money.
The hardcore players I know that still enjoy it in AoC do it for the pure purpose to claim a certain spot in the world and to make noone passing that without their permition. But that is only a motivation of very few people out there.
If you give the people FFA you have to give them a few other things to make it worth while. Being loot, claimable territory, resources or what ever it will be, but giving them nothing makes FFA or PvP in general pretty useless. So what you said is just, sorry to be that harsh - plain bullshit :-)
And to learn from history would bring up the knowledge that most MMOs with FFA had a similar problem like AoC so it just proves that it was always poorly implemented and doesnt say that the concept of FFA-PvP is flawed. Look at EvE which offers FFA-PvP and the game runs pretty good and proves that its a matter of how you implement FFA-PvP and not a question if it would be popular.
All I can say is, I'm glad I quit the game, lol. The new PvP system looks great on paper so to speak, but my honest opinion, it's still just as pointless as WoWs PvP.
AoC just sucks. The problem is I am seeing a bunch of games I thought I'd enjoy going down the same path. Action MMO's are going to suck I don't see why developers can't see this. Maybe if they didn't listen to the whiners complaining about class balance and skill > time invested, and really made it so that being a high level meant that entire towns would clear out as soon as you came in view, then you'd have an awesome Action MMORPG. All that .02% increase stuff is dull as crap. When I go up a level I want to feel it surging through my veins like electricity, not like a slight tingle in my left testicle.
I quit AoC about 2 weeks after release. You know what I found funny about this?
That:
A) The PvP system STILL wasn't turned on, and:
B) I got an email yesterday from Funcom stating that my Buddy Key is now activated.
Funcom intentionally kept the Buddy Keys inactive so you couldn't invite someone in for a test run, until the new content patch was coming down the pipe and there was talk of PvP being turned on. Just makes me think, "MMO Business As Usual".
Damn skippy, i feel the same way
Yeah, that's probably what happened. In order to silence you, a moderator went out of his or her way to give you a temp ban for a whole day. Long-term silencing.
We do have an appeals process, just so you know. You can complain to community@mmorpg.com. Our Community Manager Richard will be happy to look into this for you.
As far as I can tell the appeals process doesn't work especially if you have no idea who's being a jerk against you. I finally had to create a new account to escape the Mods that were constantly harrrassing my account with 7 and 14 day bans (made this account after the bans were over btw) for stuff I didn't even do. I miss that account I had a fairly decent reputation with it but I refuse to log on under that name until I'm sure those mods have moved on to another subject. Its like stating examples and sarcasm suddenly became a crime which is ridiculous. I don't need either to flame people to get a ban but I was suddenly being banned for flames that were non existant. I even sent multiple complaints in and got nothing back on them so to be honest maybe you should train your mods in how to read sarcasm and understand that stating something as an example in a general term isn't a flame.
There should be a rule against silencing posters just because you dont like them.
on semi topic. THe new PvP laws are similiar to what UO did..and they didn't work. People who want to gank could careless about being flagged or out lawed they always find a way to survive. They live off their prey...it'll be interesting to see how little gankign gets stopped by these laws.
Ok, if you say that you were being ignored by the Community Manager, I would be happy to look into that for you (as is my job as Manager of the site). If you provide me with your prior screen name, the dates you sent your multiple complaints and if you have them, copies of said emails.
I eagerly await your report.
P.S.: Reading the tone of your post, it isn't hard to see why you might have been cited for flaming: "maybe you should train your mods in how to read sarcasm and understand that stating something as an example in a general term isn't a flame."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that comments like these probably aren't the best way to have your complaints heard. It's hard to take someone seriously who says they were falsely accused of flaming when they use that compaint to insult you. I'm just sayin is all.
You seem to think the mods are secretly out to get you. I can assure you that of our nearly 900,000 members, they probably aren't singling you out.
i liked it, whoever the author is needs to ignore the comments in this thread and continue writing. AOC was released 2 months ago and it was an overhyped game (lesson for future games) that didnt deliver on the FIRST day of release (didnt surprise me). Keep writing and sooner or later the trolls will leave. Lol they say they were scammed and cheated, but thats BS. You havent been scammed or cheated unless you were in the SWG pre-cu. A bad release is hardly a scam/cheat.
EDIT: it really wasnt a bad game imo, up to level 50. After that though it kinda died off for me, although i understood it was still a young game, i wasnt scarred. And i do plan on returning in a month or 2
shadowbane is one of the more beloved games of all time afaik. so...you kinda have no point imo
And yet again we see what happens to a pvp FFA game when they listen to carebears too afraid to die in a video game and get their fweewings huwrt. Instead of working on the siege system and polishing it up they spent waaay too much time working on stupid raids, quests, levels and other pve crapolla that they original design did not have. In fact the original had a much better system of pvp but the crybaby carebears didn't like that it took skill to do it and instead they wanted the dumb down version we have now.
The only problem with pvp in mmo's is carebears that want to pve. Instead of having the stones to just kick these girly men to the curb and tell them to go play another pve game they listen to them and everything gets messed up. Even in games that separate pve and pvp the pve carebears come over and then cry when they die. ewww I was gank'd.
Learn 2 history
as for a MMO site to actually give a score a game deserves? Or put a game on blast for being a POS? LMAO!! never happen. If your looking for the consumer reports of the MMO world.. hasn't happen... yet...
Kraenee..umm (hehe cranium, I like it!) ... anyway, here's the bottom line, okay?
PvP games, without a solid PvE, historically, have failed. To succeed (read "make money") some MMOs that have a solid PvP system are those that have necessarily ameliorated their game's PvP aspects awhile incorporating a strong, solid PvE base as a recipe for success.
Examples of successful games with PvP include Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage II, World of Warcraft, EVE Online and the much-anticipated Warhammer Online.
Virtually every single "all, FFA PvP" MMO has failed, including a game that arguably has the best PvP system ever, Shadowbane.
Blame it on carebears, your dog, or whatever, FFA PvP is a recipe for disaster.
But cheer up, late 2008 & 2009 will bring a number of quality MMOs even diehard PvP players will love. Hey, who knows, Age of Conan is still in beta, it may get it right too :)
Yeah, that's probably what happened. In order to silence you, a moderator went out of his or her way to give you a temp ban for a whole day. Long-term silencing.
We do have an appeals process, just so you know. You can complain to community@mmorpg.com. Our Community Manager Richard will be happy to look into this for you.
As far as I can tell the appeals process doesn't work especially if you have no idea who's being a jerk against you. I finally had to create a new account to escape the Mods that were constantly harrrassing my account with 7 and 14 day bans (made this account after the bans were over btw) for stuff I didn't even do. I miss that account I had a fairly decent reputation with it but I refuse to log on under that name until I'm sure those mods have moved on to another subject. Its like stating examples and sarcasm suddenly became a crime which is ridiculous. I don't need either to flame people to get a ban but I was suddenly being banned for flames that were non existant. I even sent multiple complaints in and got nothing back on them so to be honest maybe you should train your mods in how to read sarcasm and understand that stating something as an example in a general term isn't a flame.
There should be a rule against silencing posters just because you dont like them.
on semi topic. THe new PvP laws are similiar to what UO did..and they didn't work. People who want to gank could careless about being flagged or out lawed they always find a way to survive. They live off their prey...it'll be interesting to see how little gankign gets stopped by these laws.
I answer any email sent to community@mmorpg.com that actually expresses an issue or asks a question or wants me to investigate a ban/warning, etc. If however you feel the need to just email to curse someone out about being banned, I don't bother wasting my time with it.
Given the number of forums and posters on this site, TRUST me the small pool of mods we have don't spend their time going around LOOKING for people to harass and take action against. We rely on users reporting problem posts and bringing them to our attention. So if some of your posts had actions taken against them, that means some other user took offense to something you posted and reported you.
But please, by all means, if you'd like me to look into something for you, drop me an email. :)
ie: "On this Commercial web site which is sustained by Advertising Revenue...
Advertising Revenue in fact... has... no... influence." *jaw drops to table*
wow.
If you really believe that then let me congratulate you on being only the 2nd person in History to be incorruptible and beyond reproach.
Again, the Director of Marketing took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down to me and write a favorable review."
Jon said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the general discussion, and serve only the unpaid readership."
Then the Director of Marketing left him, and angels came and attended him.
-Matthew 4: 8-11 massively revised edition
Actually shadowbane being a very open ffa pvp game was a great concept and many people played that game. The reason it failed was because the developers couldn't get over the hurdles that made that game basically unplayable at times. From large lag to more, there were allot of reason why shadowbane failed, but it had nothing to do with the game being ffa pvp.
As far as this article goes, I think the writer did an excellent job reporting on what he has read and understands from upcoming patches coming out concerning pvp. Now everyone has an opinion on things, some will like it some will not, but this article wasn't bias. I don't even see it, he wrote in a positive light that the game could actually get better if these things are implemented and from his perspective it looks good. If you don't agree with that then so be it, but don't tell the guy he is clueless when he is writing very openly about it.
While there is no argument that AOC bombed on launch, people are still playing it. Like it or not they will continue to play it and as they have the right to say they like the game you have the right to say you don't. All the correspondents and articles that have come out of this site have been darn good for the many years I have been a member and if you can find better, well you know what to do.
While I don't agree with the writer 100% on things, I do believe he did his best and wrote one heck of an article on things to come, allot of which I was clueless on so bravo for informing those not actually following the game anymore.
ie: "On this Commercial web site which is sustained by Advertising Revenue...
Advertising Revenue in fact... has... no... influence." *jaw drops to table*
wow.
If you really believe that then let me congratulate you on being only the 2nd person in History to be incorruptible and beyond reproach.
Again, the Director of Marketing took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down to me and write a favorable review."
Jon said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the general discussion, and serve only the unpaid readership."
Then the Director of Marketing left him, and angels came and attended him.
-Matthew 4: 8-11 massively revised edition
While I laughed at your second part of this (well done btw) it is sad that you beleive everyone in business is corrupt. If that is the world you live in then it is a sad one indeed.
Personally I think AoC should be removed from this website, why drag MMORPG.com through the dirt with these "lite" articles about a game that has pretty much shows up everything an mmo company shouldnt do.
Whether you are a fan or not, you cant deny the lack of professionalism shown by Funcom. Everytime I read an article about AoC, I just want to scream. Its like writing an article about a cars stereo system in a brand new car when the car itself doesnt even run properly. "Oh hey guys this car has a @#(*$@#$ great stereo system, I mean, it doesnt run very well, and a bunch of the options they promised me when I bought it may not be there, but hey, have you heard about the stereosystem it has?
P.S. If you are running low on feces to bag up and set aflame on someones doorstep, I encourage you to substitute AoC. I definately would rather have burning feces on the bottom of my shoe by comparsion.
(No animals were harmed in the making of this post, just fanbois.)
Like we used to say in starcraft "GG NO RE FAILCOM". AGe of conan is dead and it will get burried this fall, when games like warhammer, aion or wotlk will tear it apart.
RIP AGE OF LOLAN
"Actually shadowbane being a very open ffa pvp game was a great concept and many people played that game. The reason it failed was because the developers couldn't get over the hurdles that made that game basically unplayable at times. From large lag to more, there were allot of reason why shadowbane failed, but it had nothing to do with the game being ffa pvp."
Ah, to say that the above statement is preposterous just does not do it justice. True, Shadowbane had it's problems. But the real reason most players left was primarily the ffa pvp. that is pretty obivous to anyone who played the game. You just cannot have ffa-pvp without consequences. Shadowbane is direct proof of that. That is exactly why Funcom is making changes to pvp.
When I read that it dawned on me that my EXTREMELY MILD poking of fun at AoC the other day must have gotten under Avery's skin (or one of his minions) and that would explain what happened.
It seemed so odd to me that with all the people calling each other retards and asshats and other worse things every day that action would be taken against such an innocuous posting as mine.
You might want to tell your mods to actually look at posts and think about how it stacks up in proportion to all the other stuff that goes on on this site before they take action.
The problem with Funcom's "new" PvP solution is that, unlike other games you flag in, in this one you don't really lose anything when you die unless you are flagged.
In Lineage II you would lose a pretty substantial amount of XP (5% but that's big in the game) and have a small small chance of dropping an item.
In Ultima Online you would drop your entire bags contents.
However, in Age of Conan what do you lose? A small amount of PvP XP? The game was not set up to be made into this kind of game and in turn the PvP patch may even be for the worse then the better. The gear / levels / ect. all sound great but the flagging system needs work.
I played an 80 ToS and then even a 78 HoX (its easy to level just boring) in hopes that more content would be added or that the bugs and crashes would be fixed. I was willing to overlook all of the bugs, crashes, memory leak errors, server disconnects and such purely in hope that I would be getting all of this awesome content "soon".
Funcom has failed to deliver and are paying hard for it.
heh heh I got banned for making a crack about Avery too. Interesting that not a few posts before someone called me a lot worse things than the one crack I made, and which one of us got banned?
Go figure.
the pvp write-up is one thing - fact is that this system was promised to hit server over 1 month ago.
people are still waiting for it - it's just an other piece of bull that lines up in a long queue coming from FunCom.
The bottom line with this PVP Murder system is that it doesn't belong on the PVP servers, but would be fine on the PVE servers. The PVP servers were supposed to be harsher places where a player, or their guild, dealt out player justice. This murder system is going to kill off world PVP on the PVP servers, sieges don't work worth a crap, and there's no point to arena PVP.
I've never seen a PVP server get slapped with a ruleset like this, but I certainly predict that within a month it will kill off most of the dwindling populations on those servers.
[quote]the gear that you acquire from PvP combat will be superior to things that you get from doing any kind of PvE content, after all it should be, killing a player is much harder than killing NPCs after all.
[/quote]
Ok... if you guys are going to claim to be a "news" site and have "correspondents" then you HAVE to not allow them to write with personal inflection like this... it's not news, it's complete opinion.
Imagine the nightly news if the anchor put in a backhanded comment based on their opinion every so often... they'd lose credibility as a reporter.
So, yeah....