PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:Free | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:Free
Desktop Client | System Req:
Dreamlords: Resurrection Review: Age of Conan Review - Edit
6
Mediocre
| Pros |
  
|
 1-20 Quest Content Divergent Combat System Production Values (graphics and sound) |
| Cons |
  
|
 Grind-Heavy Mid to High Level Progression Lack of PVP Risk/Reward Neanderthal Player Base Post-20 Quest Content Under-Developed Crafting, Social Games |
All that said, combat and questing is where Age of Conan lives and dies, literally, and it is a bit deflating that the much-hyped system doesn't clean your house, baby-sit your kids, and cook you a giant filet mignon dinner given some of the traditional genre features that Funcom opted to overlook in favor of focusing development time on simply sticking the pointy end into the other man.
You'll start out by selecting one of twelve classes, most of which are fairly flexible hybrids in terms of traditional genre/class roles, though some are certainly more proficient at aspects of gameplay than others (good luck trying solo PVP with your Dark Templar, for example). Advancement follows the traditional class-based model, with skills gained at certain level thresholds, and some token variety thrown in in the form of feat trees. Ostensibly a way for players to differentiate their gameplay experience, the trees offer two ways to play your class (assassins can choose the PVE-centric Lotus build or the PVP-effective Corruption build, with a few mix and match skill choices in both). There are limited choices for playing effectively, however, and, as in all class-based games, there's a preferred build and the rest of the builds, leaving player choice as something of an illusion.
The game's starting area, the pirate-infested coastal village of Tortage, is jam-packed with quest content and a couple of introductory dungeons (the Underhalls and White Sands, both of which are open PVP areas depending on your choice of server), providing the new player with ample opportunities to get used to the newfangled button-mashing before taking their first steps into the larger world.
;)
The narrative quests, despite being an extremely unoriginal riff on the tired 'chosen one' motif, feature high quality voice acting and cinematics that make use of the in-game engine to great effect. The writing is frequently humorous, unabashedly aimed at a mature audience, and a cut above the usual MMORPG quest fare (try not to chuckle when the scantily clad madame of an establishment known as 'The Bearded Clam' asks for your assistance). The only shame is that the immersion party ends when you leave the starting area around level 20, as Funcom's quest content devolves rapidly, settling into the familiar 'kill 20 rats/barbarians/quest designers' model that we've been rolling our eyes at for the past decade. By the time you actually get around to meeting King Conan himself and shooting the breeze in his palatial Aquilonian throne room, you're level 60 and have more than likely completely forgotten about the story content that tapered off 40 levels prior. You're also not likely to care that he sends you off on a series of NPC kill quests that effectively relegate you to the status of a coffee-fetching intern in a loincloth.
Depending on your racial choice at character creation, you'll be shipped off to your corresponding homeland after making the streets of Tortage run red with the blood of your enemies and getting a feel for the divergent combat. Stygians find themselves newly arrived on the docks of snake-infested Khemi, Cimmerians in the beautifully rendered highlands of, crazily enough, Cimmeria, and Aquilonians return home to the sprawling capital city of Tarantia. Level-specific content is fairly similar regardless of racial area, though the Tarantia Noble District and the majestically realized Fields of the Dead seem a wee bit larger and generally more fun than their counterparts.
Progression in Age of Conan slows a bit as you reach mid-level (80 being the current cap) and whether its a result of Funcom abandoning the narrative prevalent in Tortage or a general lack of quests that necessitates monotonous mob grinding, it feels suspiciously like the developers decided to meet their launch deadline fully aware that the starting areas were finished and not necessarily representative of the rest of the game.
Through it all though, the combat remains interesting, if not exactly the genre-defining revolution that Funcom's marketing folks would have you believe. Melee combat can be broken down into the good (block and dodging systems with tangible effects on survivability), and the bad (balance issues regarding players in heavy armor, as well as various dupes, bugs, and exploits that have skewed the playing field).
Spellcasters don't fare quite as well as melee types in terms of interesting combat, as the system basically boils down to a button press per attack/swing, leaving casters with the same mechanic seen in MMORPGs since the beginning of time. The need to lock onto a particular target is lessened just as it is for melee players, but aside from nice AoE grinding capabilities, folks that choose a spellcasting class will likely wonder what all the fuss is about in regard to the combat system.
Terrain and tactics have their part to play in Age of Conan's combat, conspiring with the novelty of the melee game to ward off boredom during the mid to high level progression grind. Collision detection is also a factor, opening up the possibility of choke points and other strategic maneuvers, and the game's stealth mechanic is a breath of fresh air when compared with the deified rogue abilities in other games. Every class can stealth in Age of Conan (though assassins can do it indefinitely and also move quickly while cloaked), and whether or not you're visible is a complex equation that takes into account your armor type, the lighting and terrain conditions, and the perception skills of opposing players and AI mobs. It is entirely possible for a level 70 assassin (in cloth armor) to sneak up behind a plate-armored level 80 guardian and get off a highly effective surprise attack. It is also impossible for said assassin to then disappear in the midst of combat, so he'd best be sure to dispense with a good portion of the target's health bar with his first strike; otherwise he's liable to find himself on the wrong end of a decapitation.
;)
At the end of the day, the combat system is just different enough to be fun, but its not quite as revolutionary as Funcom's hype machine claims, since it ultimately boils down to clicking the right buttons (only this time there are many more of them in sequence instead of the traditional snare/DoT/ranged/melee routine we've all done ad nauseam).
PVP
Age of Conan's player versus player system is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, should you roll on a free-for-all server; you'll likely appreciate the constant state of worry that seems to hang like a damp shroud over your every move. Aside from Tortage and a few areas of the capital cities, you can expect death at every turn, and due to the aforementioned trigger-happy player base, that is precisely what you'll get unless you roll with a large group or stick to the shadows.
While this can and does add immersion in regards to the brutality and lawlessness present in portions of Howard's world, the mechanical implementation leaves much to be desired. Even with the very recent addition of PVP gear and experience points, the question remains as to whether it is worth the hassle, since there is effectively no consequences for killing another player. Griefing, while impossible to define objectively, does exist, both in the form of spawn-camping and level disparities, and the current system does nothing to address either issue.
As with crafting, Funcom is in the process of developing a solution (in the form of the hotly debated notoriety system as well as the murderer-friendly ‘Shady Camps' currently in testing). However, due to the volatile nature of testing servers and the fact that many systems undergo drastic changes before making it onto the public shards, the current state of the live game's PVP component can only be described as severely lacking, and curiously ham-handed for a title that markets itself as PVP-centric.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, Age of Conan has a mountain of potential, and while the same can be said of many other MMORPG also-rans, Funcom does have experience in righting the ship and building a successful product following a less-than-stellar launch. Were it not for a rather lengthy list of standard feature omissions (some of which are already being rectified) and a whiney player base that inexplicably expects MMORPG combat to approximate skill-based FPS titles, the game would be a pleasant time. Chances are that it will be a fairly solid title in the near future, and as it stands right now, it’s worth a look if you're tired of traditional combat systems and into dark fantasy.
Nice review, but what is with the constant jabs at the player base? I mean, no disrespect, but it could be you, not them, that’s the problem. I mean, shall we start including opinions on the player base of all games in official MMORPG.com Reviews? They would just about all read the same way. Do the writers here know about this thing called the internet? Its almost a pointless thing to include, as every single person will have a different experience. 9 times out of 10, most people that say "This community sucks", walked in and started pissing on the drapes.
As far as PvP consequences go, the system is on the test server. I understand you can’t review what you have not played on live. But it’s on the way, and I hope for all those that are not playing, you amend or re-review the game when it goes live.
Why didn't john do this review, seems every review on this site now is done by someone else, makes it hard to gauge anything in the articles. Review from internet user #36579241 is about as useful as an official review as the 5 threads in the games forums by the same title.
The observations on the player base are just that, my observations. Some will agree, some won't, but reviews are, by nature, opinion pieces, and I don't have any interest in watering down my perceptions to make them more palatable for folks that have thin skin.
I still play AoC on a PvE server and really don't have any issues with the player base. Most of them seem pretty decent.
The writers experience which apparantly comes from a PvP server is pretty much echoed in the AoC forums as screams of ganking, griefing, and OP threads. The new system being implemented in the upcoming patch supposedly will negate some of those complaints but...well you can't please everyone so I'm sure it will continue to a hopefully lesser amount.
I like the game but there are still many lag issues and some broken quests which have stayed broken through all the updates. Personally I'm sticking around until patch 3.0 comes out and if many of the same problems exist then time to move on.
Uh, yeah. That’s what I said. The problem was, you simply sounded bitter. Especially with the "Ganking" comments and the slurs used to generalize the player base.
To be honest, sounds like you rolled on an open PvP server, and found out that YOU, have thin skin.
To be brutaly honest, he was spot on about the AoC playerbase. Read the the tech forums, AoC players tend to go into "attack mode" when people ask honest questions about problems they are experiencing, I mentioned it several times in the AoC forums myself, The AoC community is infested with the "bully mentality". I believe that as long as AoC is around, other games will benefit from the fact that the worst of the worst are playing AoC, and not ganking/griefing in the others.
And anonymous reviews are just as meaningful as reviews done by anyone else. Just because you don't know him doesn't mean that he doesn't know what he is talking about.
The 6 rating is about right. I would have put more emphasis on the technical faults as opposed to the community though, but if that was the reviewers experience I think it is a legitimate observation.
Graphics they got right. One day in White Sands I just stopped and admired my male avatar's physique. With shader 3.0, the anatomy is so good...far and away better than any other mmo. The fact that my avatar looked pretty much like every other character in my class was a major draw back though. Also, although there were customization sliders, I could really only come up with one male and one female that I was happy with. Everything else I created looked ugly to me.
I liked the fact that the females could go topless, although I always stayed covered up. The ability to look at your toons breasts is unnecessary, but occasionally gratifying from the male perspective. Also, it is a statement that this is a mature game and there may be some things here that you won't get in other games. It puts you on notice...
The decapitations and dismemberments rock. I love them. Arterial spray for the win.
The combat system as I experienced it was a mixed bag though. At first it is fun and adds a layer intriguing complexity to the game. Later, I started to wonder why I had to hit 3 or 4 keys in AOC to execute the same type of attack in other games that would require only 1 key. And executing 3 actions could require 12 key strokes. And if you lag and the game doesn't register one of your key strokes correctly then you don't execute the move. In the end I thought it was an interesting idea, but it fails in it's execution, atleast for me. I would rather have standard mmo combat over this system.
Music was amazing. Loved it. Probably the best music in an mmo. And the level 1 to 20 Tortage quest givers that talk really added immersion for me.
After graphics, boobs, decapitation, dismemberment and a terrific sound track, the game goes down hill though. Too many zones with loading screens for me. It felt claustrophobic and ruined immersion for me as well. And in one zone I was in there were 23 copies. I did not like that at all. It is a huge, huge negative for me to have multiple copies of a single zone. It's not the first time I have experienced this game mechanic in an mmo, but I hope it is the last. Probably not though.
Technically the game failed in a big way for me. I have a decent rig, but apparently the game did not like ATI in the beginning. Not sure if this has been rectified or not, but there are really two main graphics card companies out right now, Nvidia and ATI. An mmo today can not develop for one and give the middle finger to everyone else who choosed the other. It's just stupid from a business model perspective, and it's infuriating and gamebreaking to anyone who purchased the wrong brand. The performance ranged from acceptable to abysmal, and that was the end for me. They did not fix the ATI problems in the first free month, or extend my time or even offer me a free trial once the issues were resolved.
My second biggest gripe, besides its technical failings, would be Funcom itself. They lie. They ignore. They spin. They deny. They ban with gleeful abandon. A horrible, horrible company that should be avoided. Their disdain of the player base is puzzling on the one hand, as they are a company trying to make money, but understandable on the other hand because criticism of this debacle has been vociferous.
6/10 is probably a fair score. Maybe they can turn it around some day, but basic game design decisions, in my opinion, are fundamentally flawed, which paints a dim future for this game. I hope for the sake of their stock holders I am wrong.
To be brutaly honest, he was spot on about the AoC playerbase. Read the the tech forums, AoC players tend to go into "attack mode" when people ask honest questions about problems they are experiencing, I mentioned it several times in the AoC forums myself, The AoC community is infested with the "bully mentality". I believe that as long as AoC is around, other games will benefit from the fact that the worst of the worst are playing AoC, and not ganking/griefing in the others.
Part of my point was that this can be found anywhere. It’s the internets. And this will always be a matter of perspective. Instead of realizing this, generalizations and blanket name calling ensued.
Becouse someone died in PvP.
Completely agree on the observations regarding the playerbase.
Can hardly be bothered with the official forums anymore, as it's just a waste of time. And the trigger happiness, you only have to take a walk in Connall's or Fields of the Dead to get yourself stun-killed by a couple of level 80s :P
That said, though, the RP I get in AoC makes more than enough up for it, and I just can't be bothered to waste neither energy nor time on getting annoyed with it :)
[EDIT] Oh, and... Did you feel somehow trodden on some sore toes there, Mr. Bloodworth? :)
apparently the article says that theres something inherently wrong with the game that brings a certain type of unique whineyness from its player base
could it be the game sucks?
Nope. Try reading, and understanding, what i am talking about.
Also, its has been my experoiance that the RP PvP servers are much better, less random ganking.
Part of my point was that this can be found anywhere. It’s the internets. And this will always be a matter of perspective. Instead of realizing this, generalizations and blanket name calling ensued.
Becouse someone died in PvP.
It has nothing to do with losing in PVP. I'm currently enjoying Warhammer, and dying much more frequently than my opponents, let me assure you.
I always take the player base into account when I review games, it is a large part of the experience of an MMO. Its your prerogative to think that unimportant, but don't presume to know the rationale behind my decisions. Your generalization that the kind of behavior commonplace on the AoC forums, and to some extent, in game, is excusable because 'its the internet' is no more valid than my hypothesis that it detracts from the game.
Jef has actually done a couple of reviews for us now and has written a number of articles as well. Quite frankly, Jef has the experience in-game and I don't. It'd be totally irresponsible for me to review a game like this without having played it for the numerous hours that Jef did.
I have complete confidence in Jef's abilities as a reviewer :)
Part of my point was that this can be found anywhere. It’s the internets. And this will always be a matter of perspective. Instead of realizing this, generalizations and blanket name calling ensued.
Becouse someone died in PvP.
It has nothing to do with losing in PVP. I'm currently enjoying Warhammer, and dying much more frequently than my opponents, let me assure you.
I always take the player base into account when I review games, it is a large part of the experience of an MMO. Its your prerogative to think that unimportant, but don't presume to know the rationale behind my decisions. Your generalization that the kind of behavior commonplace on the AoC forums, and to some extent, in game, is excusable because 'its the internet' is no more valid than my hypothesis that it detracts from the game.
Good. Then we do understand each other. All I can say to you at this point is welcome to the internets and online gaming. This behavior can be found in every, single game, some more than others. I also, never said it was excusable, I said it was expected. Especially in a PvP game.
Jef has actually done a couple of reviews for us now and has written a number of articles as well. Quite frankly, Jef has the experience in-game and I don't. It'd be totally irresponsible for me to review a game like this without having played it for the numerous hours that Jef did.
I have complete confidence in Jef's abilities as a reviewer :)
I enjoyed his review, except for the jabs at the community. I would have brought it up, regardless of the title.
Ok guys, let's let it sit then, Otherwise this is just derailing any other conversation about the review :)
A pretty reasonable summary of what a lot of other posts have been saying for months. Once again the game gets high marks for graphics. AoC was, for myself, a shining example of why graphics don't make a game. I played the first month plus one additional month and decided that there just wasn't enough game play. Sure is pretty though.
As far as the users go I don't think they're any different than the community in any other MMO. They're certainly vocal but if you've ever paid for an MMO you've earned the right to let people know what you think. As far as whiney goes, well that's a matter of opinion naturally. I still say they have a right to whine and you have the right to whine about them as you've done.
I hope they continue to improve the game. In another 4-6 months it may be worth coming back and re-evaluating.
The observations on the player base are just that, my observations. Some will agree, some won't, but reviews are, by nature, opinion pieces, and I don't have any interest in watering down my perceptions to make them more palatable for folks that have thin skin.
I agree with you, its one of the reasons I left the game. As for some of the responses youve had here Jef, most of these people like to sit on the sidelines attacking posters and never making much of a stand on anything. Theres some sort of pleasure iin being the middle of the road guy that can attack every poster while claiming not to play the game but then attacking those that dont play any longer.
My trial ends in two days but I've past level 20 and still having great quest content. I havn't come across the bad whiney playerbase that you have but maybe because I don't browse game forums after the whole SWG thing. I don't come across the problems everyone else does but maybe thats because I just don't care about PVP balance and i'm not hardcore into the game so not picking at everything little thing. I think Age of Conan is ALOT better than WAR and Vanguard and all the shitty mmorpgs that have come out since WOW. It's just the zoning that has really killed the game for me, if the world was built like WOW's then I'd like the game but loading screens... I hate them, it killed EQ2 too.
The two things I hope future mmorpgs take from AoC are...
- Character customization depth
- The directional combat system where you arn't just standing there auto attacking but having to attack yourself, it makes you feel much more engaged in combat and just mroe satisfying. Though don't take the combo system because it doesn't work in EQ2 it doesn't work in WAR and it don't work in AoC, stick to the WOW system of every spell is it's own.
Yeah that is exactly what I did as well. 2 months was enough. The reviewer talks about how player's characters and classes look the same at various levels from one another and I think that is right. But also one of the problems I had with the game is that my guy never looked any different himself! I basically looked the same at 10 as I did at 40 and that just doesn't sit well with me. I don't think that is much fun. I'm not a loot whore but... I am a looks whore. Give me some diversity and I will be happy. I felt the game was sorely lacking in that regards.
The culture armor looks really nice but.... unless I am missing something about its implementation won't everyone continue to look alike once they have it? I mean is it customizable? I remember seeing a dev video before the game came out of what looked liked hundreds of models in rows with all the various gear you could get and that spin guy was talking about all the combinations you could have to look unique. What the heck ever happened to that? Lol, and how sad it is that I have to refer to that guy as the “spin guy”. I typed that without even thinking, lol.
That lack of character "uniqueness" and the grind I seemed to be entering as the quests dried up were the reasons I left.
Will I give it a try in the future? Probably not. I did go back to AO once it was more "fixed" and I had a great time. So I think the author was right when he said they have a history of cleaning up their mess. But AoC is an entirely different beast. What all can you do in AoC? I mean how many systems are there to alter and enhance? Alot? Not when compared to AO. AO was broken out of the box but even on day one the base was there and it was alot more diverse than what is present in AoC. Besides graphics and a "different" combat system I don't see AoC offering up anything that current MMOs don’t already offer out of the box. Just my opinion of course.
That was honestly the way I took it as well.
I am certainly not a hardcore PvP player, but I have to say that if you rolled on an open-PvP server, you had to have known that you would spend a good deal of your time faceplanting for absolutely no other reason than that other player wanted to kill you.
For my part, while I attempt to give other players the benefit of the doubt, I'm not nearly naive enough to think that they aren't actively planning the best method to kill me. As a result, I've pretty much developed the "red is dead" mentality as well.
Complaints about ganking, griefing, or what is otherwise considered "unacceptable" PvP behaviour, in my opinion, are more than a little silly. It's like buying Coca Cola and complaining that it doesn't taste enough like Pepsi.
Getting ganked sucks, yes... but it's one of the facts of most PvP games.
Otherwise, good review though.
Nice review!
I liked a lot the following ;)
"you're still going to lag like a drunken wooly mammoth"
"otherwise he's liable to find himself on the wrong end of a decapitation."
I'd say there is a lack of socialization in AoC, but is it worse than the actual trend? I don't think so.
Also there where hints but as the game is turning to a geared game character customization will suffer. Everyone will wear the same set.
I agree crafting is a deception and adding a few recipe won't fix it.
Lastly, too bad they didn't take a real console combo system. Reminds me of the NGE. They made a pseudo FPS combat system and it failed.
My advise when you do something do it 100%, half way is always at least half failure.
The observations on the player base are just that, my observations. Some will agree, some won't, but reviews are, by nature, opinion pieces, and I don't have any interest in watering down my perceptions to make them more palatable for folks that have thin skin.
I don't think it's necessarily an issue of having thin skin, it's more about professionalism. I'm not really used to being called a neanderthal in a review given by a legitimate site. It's quite uncommon to be attacked in a review period actually.
Personally I agree there are bad apples, but that's true of every community. I didn't notice much difference in AOC compared to other games I've played.
Well in my opinion this review is a joke as almost all reviews made in every magazine and on every major website last 5-6 years. All it does, is trying to appeal the majority of the people here, that felt to AoC hype before release, so it gets favourable feedback from the community. This review is just the reflection of the state of the AoC-forums on this website. It's a coward article hiding behind the community.
Naah, I don't think so. Companies pay to put their ads on game sites, where as it costs nothing to subscribe to mmorpg.com. If there was going to be a bias I would be suspicious the other way.
It was a fair review.
I don't think it's necessarily an issue of having thin skin, it's more about professionalism. I'm not really used to being called a neanderthal in a review given by a legitimate site. It's quite uncommon to be attacked in a review period actually.
Personally I agree there are bad apples, but that's true of every community. I didn't notice much difference in AOC compared to other games I've played.
He didn't name anyone personally; he was talking about his experience with the community in general. It's a subjective call and he made it.
I've paid for gamer mags that had horrible, crappy reviews. And in many of the reviews they mention the community. And I paid money for those reviews! This review was free. And good writing.
I agree with you, its one of the reasons I left the game. As for some of the responses youve had here Jef, most of these people like to sit on the sidelines attacking posters and never making much of a stand on anything. Theres some sort of pleasure iin being the middle of the road guy that can attack every poster while claiming not to play the game but then attacking those that dont play any longer.
This isn't politics.
Seriously? Did someone just accuse us of writing a review to appease our community? REALLY? I mean seriously, it really doesn't matter what we write in our reviews, I guess we're just ALWAYS going to get this kind of statement. More often than not, it's "you're trying to sppease sdvertisers" now it "you're trying to appease your community". Ya know what? Reviews are just one person's opinion of a game. That's it. There's no freaking hidden agenda. Seriously. Deal with it. That seem like something I'm saying to get favorable feedback?
There's no cowardice here, friend. I hate to break it to you.
I don't think it's necessarily an issue of having thin skin, it's more about professionalism. I'm not really used to being called a neanderthal in a review given by a legitimate site. It's quite uncommon to be attacked in a review period actually.
Personally I agree there are bad apples, but that's true of every community. I didn't notice much difference in AOC compared to other games I've played.
He didn't name anyone personally; he was talking about his experience with the community in general. It's a subjective call and he made it.
I've paid for gamer mags that had horrible, crappy reviews. And in many of the reviews they mention the community. And I paid money for those reviews! This review was free. And good writing.
I didn't say he called me out personally, I was referring to his bullet point of calling a whole community "neanderthal". After that I didn't even bother reading the review, though I do agree with the final score given.
If he had shown more tact and simply said the community element was weak, I wouldn't have made such an observation or overlooked his writing.
A good review and accurate opinion for most of the AOC community
The only aspect of the article I disagree with is the score ,I would give it 5/10
Typical MMORPG.COM review here. How can you expect a fair and honest review when in one hand you get money from them and on the other review their game.
Fact is, this game blows major. The only good thing is the 1-20 game period. How can you get a passable rate (6/10) when the game is nothing but a grind past 20.
Seriously? Did someone just accuse us of writing a review to appease our community? REALLY? I mean seriously, it really doesn't matter what we write in our reviews, I guess we're just ALWAYS going to get this kind of statement. More often than not, it's "you're trying to sppease sdvertisers" now it "you're trying to appease your community". Ya know what? Reviews are just one person's opinion of a game. That's it. There's no freaking hidden agenda. Seriously. Deal with it. That seem like something I'm saying to get favorable feedback?
There's no cowardice here, friend. I hate to break it to you.
Your article pretends to be an objective review. It doesn't state "in my opinion, the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots..." It says let me paraphrase: the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots. Most of the things you criticise can be criticized in almost every game, depends on what approach you have towards the game. I'm not saying AoC is a good game, the game has great atmosphere for me and otherwise it's an overhyped mess. But the reasons why I dislike it differ from yours and most of the things you dislike I actually enjoy. Review should be informative. I don't want to read your personal opinions, I want information.
Spot on, I got all that just from the first 15 minutes of playing, I really feel for people who have toplay over 500 hours to realize this review , is the best source to understanding AoC.
Seriously? Did someone just accuse us of writing a review to appease our community? REALLY? I mean seriously, it really doesn't matter what we write in our reviews, I guess we're just ALWAYS going to get this kind of statement. More often than not, it's "you're trying to sppease sdvertisers" now it "you're trying to appease your community". Ya know what? Reviews are just one person's opinion of a game. That's it. There's no freaking hidden agenda. Seriously. Deal with it. That seem like something I'm saying to get favorable feedback?
There's no cowardice here, friend. I hate to break it to you.
Your article pretends to be an objective review. It doesn't state "in my opinion, the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots..." It says let me paraphrase: the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots. Most of the things you criticise can be criticized in almost every game, depends on what approach you have towards the game. I'm not saying AoC is a good game, the game has great atmosphere for me and otherwise it's an overhyped mess. But the reasons why I dislike it differ from yours and most of the things you dislike I actually enjoy. Review should be informative. I don't want to read your personal opinions, I want information.
After the neanderthal reference I didn't even read that far. That made it past the editor, wtf ?
sorry but his assessment is correct. The community is horrible and willing to jump down anyones throats compared to any other mmo. Look how YOU guys are reacting to his comment, and it is waht, only 3 or 4 of you? Now multiply that by a thousand fold and it is a fair representation of the games community. I have 2 toons, a level 24 Assassin on cimmeria and a level 32 HoX on Wiccana. PVP servers the community is atrocious, ooc every 5 mins "wtF ! XXX is an ass, just killed me at a spawn point" or wiccanna "Where the F*** is the pvp at? cmon gues queu up for a mini game you ***sy!" I am playing solo atm, giving the game a try 3 months after i cancelled, but while the graphics and music are truly awe inspiring, the 4k spike and community make it next to impossible to enjoy.
Having played both PVE and PVP servers, the community is just bad, slightly better on PVE, but still bad. I played SWG, EQ2, LOTRO, VANGUARD, and WAR in the last year, the ONLY game with a worse community is a wow pvp server. I never experienced such a vile and hateful bunch in any of the previous games mentioned.
Last night in Wiccana i had asked how to reset skill points, wanted to put some more into climbing for a quest to get a yeti pelt, and i was basically mocked for a good 10 minutes.
Yeah, but it's the writers fault right?
Seriously why do you bother anymore to come here and even waste your precious time to post?
So you think in 2 passable sentences your are doing a better job jan the reviewer? Be my guest write a full article on the game, post it here and let the community be your judge.
For now you are just a lame troll in the body of a sick gnome, not impressive at all.
Does your stereotype suppose to convince me?
a review, by definition, is based on a personal opinion, that's the nature of a review. How many times has a movie review said this movie sucked or was good, and you found the exact opposite to be true. hell i think the movie Hudson Hawk was pure genious and it got half a star from most critics! :P
re⋅view
/r??vyu/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ri-vyoo] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation.
2. the process of going over a subject again in study or recitation in order to fix it in the memory or summarize the facts.
3. an exercise designed or intended for study of this kind.
4. a general survey of something, esp. in words; a report or account of something.
5. an inspection or examination by viewing, esp. a formal inspection of any military or naval force, parade, or the like.
6. a periodical publication containing articles on current events or affairs, books, art, etc.: a literary review.
7. a judicial reexamination, as by a higher court, of the decision or proceedings in a case.
8. a second or repeated view of something.
9. a viewing of the past; contemplation or consideration of past events, circumstances, or facts.
10. Bridge. a recapitulation of the bids made by all players.
11. Theater. revue.
–verb (used with object)
12. to go over (lessons, studies, work, etc.) in review.
13. to view, look at, or look over again.
14. to inspect, esp. formally or officially: to review the troops.
15. to survey mentally; take a survey of: to review the situation.
16. to discuss (a book, play, etc.) in a critical review; write a critical report upon.
17. to look back upon; view retrospectively.
18. to present a survey of in speech or writing.
19. Law. to reexamine judicially: a decision to review the case.
20. Bridge. to repeat and summarize (all bids made by the players).
–verb (used without object)
21. to write reviews; review books, movies, etc., as for a newspaper or periodical: He reviews for some small-town newspaper.
Origin:
1555–65; < MF revue, n. use of fem. ptp. of revoir to see again ? L revid?re, equiv. to re- re- + vid?re to see; see view
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Right make a negative comment about war on it's forum...
I'm talking about the fact that I was just basically called an idiot and a neanderthal in an official review ( I played AOC, which makes me a part of the community). There's better ways to say the community has problems than resorting to the same level of asshatery you're complaining about. As I said the community has it's bad apples, I didn't experience anymore than I did on bloodfin in SWG. There's not much difference anywhere else from my experience ( I always pick pvp servers).
There's always those asshats who berate new players for asking simple questions, you see it in just about any ooc channel. I honestly never ran into someone in AOC who acted that way to me, as mr.Bloodworth pointed out the community you meet, is the one you experience. This differ's from server to server, guild to guild area to area....
I've never read a review here that had such inflamatory statements in it. Which I felt like commenting on, I'll use Straddens words here "Deal with it".
Your article pretends to be an objective review. It doesn't state "in my opinion, the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots..." It says let me paraphrase: the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots. Most of the things you criticise can be criticized in almost every game, depends on what approach you have towards the game. I'm not saying AoC is a good game, the game has great atmosphere for me and otherwise it's an overhyped mess. But the reasons why I dislike it differ from yours and most of the things you dislike I actually enjoy. Review should be informative. I don't want to read your personal opinions, I want information.
Sorry, but any time you read a review, 'in my opinion' is logically, and quite obviously, implied. That's what a review is, information presented from a certain point of view. If you want a straight listing of facts, I'd direct you to the product info page at Gamestop.com or something similar. If you read a review by myself or any other writer, expect to get their personal opinions interspersed with the facts. Its really not rocket science.
Or in other words:
"Because Funcom released AO in 2001 in a bug-ridden, early-beta state but did manage to turn it into a playable game we can expect them to do the same thing for AoC eventually."
But this is not acceptable to me as a "game development philosophy". I refuse to support Funcom for expecting its customers to be paying beta testers. Funcom should fail in this industry if it means tolerating this kind of game release strategy for any future games they develope.
really? i can find a ton of reviews and editorials in major publications (NY Times, Daily News, etc) in NY which totally destroy whatever they are talking about. Reviews and Editorials are based on personal insight, and what they think of it. If it was a technical review, based strictly on factual numbers such as hardware, costs, etc, then yes, making up this data would not be cool. But this is a review of a game, which takes alot of intangibles into affect. what one person may think is horrible (say huge numbers of quests for examples, which i hate in mmos) may be ideal for someone else.
Your article pretends to be an objective review. It doesn't state "in my opinion, the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots..." It says let me paraphrase: the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots. Most of the things you criticise can be criticized in almost every game, depends on what approach you have towards the game. I'm not saying AoC is a good game, the game has great atmosphere for me and otherwise it's an overhyped mess. But the reasons why I dislike it differ from yours and most of the things you dislike I actually enjoy. Review should be informative. I don't want to read your personal opinions, I want information.
Sorry, but any time you read a review, 'in my opinion' is logically, and quite obviously, implied. That's what a review is, information presented from a certain point of view. If you want a straight listing of facts, I'd direct you to the product info page at Gamestop.com or something similar. If you read a review by myself or any other writer, expect to get their personal opinions interspersed with the facts. Its really not rocket science.
exactly, reviews are BASED on ones experiences, likes, and dislikes. This is not a technical paper he is writing which can be scrutinized for factual content. A Review is an opinion, and each person has their own.
Or in other words:
"Because Funcom released AO in 2001 in a bug-ridden, early-beta state but did manage to turn it into a playable game we can expect them to do the same thing for AoC eventually."
But this is not acceptable to me as a "game development philosophy". I refuse to support Funcom for expecting its customers to be paying beta testers. Funcom should fail in this industry if it means tolerating this kind of game release strategy for any future games they develope.
Its not acceptable to me either, which is why I spent a good portion of the review bashing the game. That said, the potential for a fun game is there, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a good game down the road. Their recent promotion of Craig Morrison has already begun to bear fruit, in my opinion.
I come here to read what's new about the mmo's community. But when i read review that are obviously biased, i can't help but comment on it. And last time i checked, that's what a forum is about.
Destroying the product is fine, insulting a community because of a personal experience isn't IMO.
the problem is the community in online mmorpgs is the byproduct of a game.And in mmorpgs, where community is vital since you are dependant on the community, yes, it is valid to critique.
I don't know where you got that Steelrose, but I don't think you read the same article I did. Never did it say the community were full of 'idiots', I read and found it fair and subjective. Yes, subjective, as all reviews are.
Do you expect robots to review games instead, without emotion for any part of the game? Even the bugs are emotionally felt as annoying, otherwise ppl wouldn't care about them, they'd simply overlook them and play on for lack of anything better to do since they don't get emotionally involved in anything anyway, right?!
Even the technical problems wouldn't be accurate since not everyone has the same rigs and wouldn't experience the same issues. A totally objective review, would inherently be a boring read, since it would just be a list of things that work and don't work.
I enjoyed it and thought it mirrored my feelings toward AoC, it won't be be agreed upon with everyone here, and that's just fine. Expecting something other, in a review, than the writer's personal opinion is unrealisitc and somewhat naive. We simply had to read it and accept it as his/her experiences and compare it to ours (if we have them).
Being 'offended' by anything it is childish and immaterial, since it hasn't affected anything toward the liking or disliking of the game, maybe simply bruising an ego that happens to be on the other side of the writer's opinion. Such is life.
Destroying the product is fine, insulting a community because of a personal experience isn't IMO.
and you mean to tell me you were never asked by a friend or guildmate "hey how is this guild?" or "how is the community in this game?" or have never grouped up and found a couple of complete jerks in a group or raid group? Now when these numbers are lower percentages, you can shrug it off to the occasional "asshat", but as the % increase, it very much makes an impact upon a game.
Your article pretends to be an objective review. It doesn't state "in my opinion, the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots..." It says let me paraphrase: the interface is clunky and the community full of idiots. Most of the things you criticise can be criticized in almost every game, depends on what approach you have towards the game. I'm not saying AoC is a good game, the game has great atmosphere for me and otherwise it's an overhyped mess. But the reasons why I dislike it differ from yours and most of the things you dislike I actually enjoy. Review should be informative. I don't want to read your personal opinions, I want information.
Sorry, but any time you read a review, 'in my opinion' is logically, and quite obviously, implied. That's what a review is, information presented from a certain point of view. If you want a straight listing of facts, I'd direct you to the product info page at Gamestop.com or something similar. If you read a review by myself or any other writer, expect to get their personal opinions interspersed with the facts. Its really not rocket science.
Simply not true. I guess that's a difference between a good review and a bad review. Good review should have no personal opinions. It should be informative and contain facts only. For exmaple it should inform me about the interface (whether it can be resized, how many bars, how is the respond-rate etc).
Who the hell cares about his personal opinion? That's what forums are about NOT REVIEWS on a website like this. Just because you and your comrades are bastardized by the maganizes that write video game reviews that includes more personal opinions than an actual facts, doesn't mean a review should have personal opinions. You indeed can critize the interface if the respond-rate is extremly slow, it can't be resized etc, but you can't say the people that play the game are neandertals. That's stupid, childish and the writer should get whipped and an instant kick off from his volunteer unpaid job position. But I guess that's what I'm gonna get very soon.
Sorry, but any time you read a review, 'in my opinion' is logically, and quite obviously, implied. That's what a review is, information presented from a certain point of view. If you want a straight listing of facts, I'd direct you to the product info page at Gamestop.com or something similar. If you read a review by myself or any other writer, expect to get their personal opinions interspersed with the facts. Its really not rocket science.
Simply not true. I guess that's a difference between a good review and a bad review. Good review should have no personal opinions. It should be informative and contain facts only. For exmaple it should inform me about the interface (whether it can be resized, how many bars, how is the respond-rate etc).
Who the hell cares about his personal opinion? That's what forums are about NOT REVIEWS on a website like this. Just because you and your comrades are bastardized by the maganizes that write video game reviews that includes more personal opinions than an actual facts, doesn't mean a review should have personal opinions. You indeed can critize the interface if the respond-rate is extremly slow, it can't be resized etc, but you can't say the people that play the game are neandertals. That's stupid, childish and the writer should get whipped and an instant kick off from his volunteer unpaid job position. But I guess that's what I'm gonna get very soon.
all reviews and articles are personal opinions, even the dictionary says so
Again I'm not talking about a critique, it's the insults that came along with the criticism that bothers me. I find it highly unprofessional.
If you had a bad experience, it's understandable to comment on it. Calling a community cave men and a bunch of idiots is different.
This can differ by circumstance as well, a game is not made up only by the few hundred people you came across. Not when there's the possibility for hundreds of thousands to be playing. That's an important distinction to be made.
and you mean to tell me you were never asked by a friend or guildmate "hey how is this guild?" or "how is the community in this game?" or have never grouped up and found a couple of complete jerks in a group or raid group? Now when these numbers are lower percentages, you can shrug it off to the occasional "asshat", but as the % increase, it very much makes an impact upon a game.
I give up, you're just not getting what I'm saying. /sigh
Sorry, but any time you read a review, 'in my opinion' is logically, and quite obviously, implied. That's what a review is, information presented from a certain point of view. If you want a straight listing of facts, I'd direct you to the product info page at Gamestop.com or something similar. If you read a review by myself or any other writer, expect to get their personal opinions interspersed with the facts. Its really not rocket science.
Simply not true. I guess that's a difference between a good review and a bad review. Good review should have no personal opinions. It should be informative and contain facts only. For exmaple it should inform me about the interface (whether it can be resized, how many bars, how is the respond-rate etc).
Who the hell cares about his personal opinion? That's what forums are about NOT REVIEWS on a website like this. Just because you and your comrades are bastardized by the maganizes that write video game reviews that includes more personal opinions than an actual facts, doesn't mean a review should have personal opinions. You indeed can critize the interface if the respond-rate is extremly slow, it can't be resized etc, but you can't say the people that play the game are neandertals. That's stupid, childish and the writer should get whipped and an instant kick off from his volunteer unpaid job position. But I guess that's what I'm gonna get very soon.
Steelrose, while I have to confess some amusement, there's really no point in debating this with you. I can and did use the neanderthal comment, and, while some may find it crass, that is my style, and it isn't likely to change because it ruffled a few feathers (quite the contrary actually). As for your other assertions, let me just state that every single thing you said in this post is incorrect, and leave it at that.
/salute
I come here to read what's new about the mmo's community. But when i read review that are obviously biased, i can't help but comment on it. And last time i checked, that's what a forum is about.
Let me guess this straight...You believe that this site is paid to write their reviews for gaming companies, and you call it typical. Therefor, you must dislike all the reviews here for that same reason. Then why, in your last statement, would you say that you come here and read what's new if you know it's already biased because they get paid to write it in the first place?
In conclusion, this logic further suggests that since this is a forum, and you can, at any time, write your comments on said reviews. You will inevitably write contradictory comments about them, since they are initially biased from the start.
I'm not trying to flame you, just making you aware that anything can be construed by statements. It just takes the right sequence to turn into something else.
Again I'm not talking about a critique, it's the insults that came along with the criticism that bothers me. I find it highly unprofessional.
If you had a bad experience, it's understandable to comment on it. Calling a community cave men and a bunch of idiots is different.
This can differ by circumstance as well, a game is not made up only by the few hundred people you came across. Not when there's the possibility for hundreds of thousands to be playing. That's an important distinction to be made.
yes but if i had to write a review on my circumstances, i do include the community, because it is a very large part, if not an integral part of an mmorpg and my experiences within them. Every review i write, and i have written about 6 or 7 now on another website, based on mmorpgs, has included a community aspect, because i tend to get drawn into the community with rp, event, etc. While my reviews have not been kind to AoC's community, i have talked negatively about communities more in games like wow (where i played on a pvp server with guildies) and Hellgate. For me, the community is a HUGE factor in which game i play, and thats probably why i keep going back to games like EQ2 and LOTRO, where i find the communities and rp refreshing and helpful.
I ask you as well. Does your line suppose to convince me? Or convince anyone else reading this thread? Or you? When you wake up, do you look at yourself in the mirror and say "You are great, you are fantastic, you are genius"?
Let me guess this straight...You believe that this site is paid to write their reviews for gaming companies, and you call it typical. Therefor, you must dislike all the reviews here for that same reason. Then why, in your last statement, would you say that you come here and read what's new if you know it's already biased because they get paid to write it in the first place?
In conclusion, this logic further suggests that since this is a forum, and you can, at any time, write your comments on said reviews. You will inevitably write contradictory comments about them, since they are initially biased from the start.
I'm not trying to flame you, just making you aware that anything can be construed by statements. It just takes the right sequence to turn into something else.
And you think that when they put that HUGE background AOC wallpaper that they do it for free ? I'm not saying they are paid to write review, but they are certainly paid by the game they are reviewing. In my book you can't be credible if you get money from the same guy you review.
I ask you as well. Does your line suppose to convince me? Or convince anyone else reading this thread? Or you? When you wake up, do you look at yourself in the mirror and say "You are great, you are fantastic, you are genius"?
Well, it has certainly convinced me that he's more credible than you are, because he's right. Simple as that.
yes but if i had to write a review on my circumstances, i do include the community, because it is a very large part, if not an integral part of an mmorpg and my experiences within them. Every review i write, and i have written about 6 or 7 now on another website, based on mmorpgs, has included a community aspect, because i tend to get drawn into the community with rp, event, etc. While my reviews have not been kind to AoC's community, i have talked negatively about communities more in games like wow (where i played on a pvp server with guildies) and Hellgate. For me, the community is a HUGE factor in which game i play, and thats probably why i keep going back to games like EQ2 and LOTRO, where i find the communities and rp refreshing and helpful.
I agree, I came from games like DAOC and SWG. Community was the most important aspect to my enjoyment in those games. That's a highly important factor in MMO's in general, I wouldn't attempt to dispute that. The OP even admitted he's a crass individual, which explains the comments. I just find it an unorthodox approach at least compared to what I'm used to seeing here. I was highly surprised to find such polarizing comments in an official MMORPG.com review.
I think anyone who reads this (at least, i hope) would see that the review thinks anyone who players FPS games are some sort of mouth breathers (again, its on the internet), and decided to treat an entire player base with his own preconceived notions, and quite frankly dislike of that genre. I’m not even sure with this in mind that this person was even the right pick for the job, because he walked in with this notion before hand. This is where any comments about the community loose credibility. Like I said:
The reviewer came into it with a preconceived notion, and decided to flame, and name call an entire community of players. Acts that would get most banned or warned here. Considering that the entire premise of AOC was to have a real-time/FPS like combat model, not sure why the assignment was given to him. Also, considering what game this person is the correspondent for, makes it even more boggling.
If anyone would like to tell me, that i am wrong, or making assertions about the reviewer, I already covered this, I don’t know who he is, or what articles he has written before, going back to another of my original points. Perhaps is reviewers were given Genres, maybe then would I know where they are coming from.
All I read here, is someone who dislikes FPS, and has already subscribed to the idea that anyone that players them, is a Neanderthal, and also seems to be inexperienced in PvP games. Why would I take any review from him seriously?
As it stands, some one that covers a sandbox game, with RPG like PvP that’s as thin as a cap full of water, was given the assignment to review a game that is PvP at its core, Old school at that, and was pitched to the real-time combat crowds as a closer cousin to a FPS than an RPG.
While the review was more than accurate about much of the game, is it any wonder he didn’t like the community? Comparisons to the style of AOC PvP to Warhammer is , well, way off. AOC is more akin to UO, in every regard.
As far as the "They are sellout reviewers", that’s just dumb. The guy clearly gave his personal opinion regardless of who buys ads here.
Let me guess this straight...You believe that this site is paid to write their reviews for gaming companies, and you call it typical. Therefor, you must dislike all the reviews here for that same reason. Then why, in your last statement, would you say that you come here and read what's new if you know it's already biased because they get paid to write it in the first place?
In conclusion, this logic further suggests that since this is a forum, and you can, at any time, write your comments on said reviews. You will inevitably write contradictory comments about them, since they are initially biased from the start.
I'm not trying to flame you, just making you aware that anything can be construed by statements. It just takes the right sequence to turn into something else.
And you think that when they put that HUGE background AOC wallpaper that they do it for free ? I'm not saying they are paid to write review, but they are certainly paid by the game they are reviewing. In my book you can't be credible if you get money from the same guy you review.
Ah, now your talking advertising. That's totally different. You may try to connect those dots if you like, but in business, it's totally different. Just because a company pays another for advertising, it doesn't necessairly mean they bought the opinions of that company.
The issue of whether or not Mmorpg is biased for those companies by way of payment is irrelevant. Fact is, if YOU believe they are, and are still here posting and being a part of this community...don't throw stones in a glass house. It just makes you look like a hypocrite.
Well, it has certainly convinced me that he's more credible than you are, because he's right. Simple as that.
I don't mind arguing with masses, I'm doing that all my life. I'm happy to see it's so easy to convince you just by saying this guy is incorrect and i'm right. I guess you have a good life. A simple one, but definetly good.
Well, it has certainly convinced me that he's more credible than you are, because he's right. Simple as that.
I don't mind arguing with masses, I'm doing that all my life. I'm happy to see it's so easy to convince you just by saying this guy is incorrect and i'm right. I guess you have a good life. A simple one, but definetly good.
I do have a good, simple life. Complicated gives you stress, less enjoyment, and confusion that leads to misunderstandings and strife.
Seriously, I don't see in the article anything mentioned with the word 'idiots', so I he's right about that one at least. And you 'posing' as him in front of the mirror? That's a little asinine, don't you think?
I don't mind arguing with masses, I'm doing that all my life. I'm happy to see it's so easy to convince you just by saying this guy is incorrect and i'm right. I guess you have a good life. A simple one, but definetly good.
I do have a good, simple life. Complicated gives you stress, less enjoyment, and confusion that leads to misunderstandings and strife.
Seriously, I don't see in the article anything mentioned with the word 'idiots', so I he's right about that one at least. And you 'posing' as him in front of the mirror? That's a little asinine, don't you think?
All right idiot have 0-25 IQ if im correct. Shame we can't measure the IQ of an average neanderthal. That would be a close comparison.
So I guess I think I'm a mouth-breather, since, looking over my game shelf, I see Far Cry 1 & 2, all the CoD games, all the Doom games, Half-Life 1 & 2, and many more.
Need I go on?
I get that you didn't like the review, that's totally cool, but man seriously, at least come up with something more than an assumption if you're going to spar with me. So far what you've said lacks credibility, to be kind, and is flat out wrong, to be blunt.
Ok, bloody well enough. Not just the poster quoted here (I'm not picking on you Bloodworth, no worries). Nowhere in the article did he say that "Everyone who plays Age of Conan is a neanderthal. he said that this was his overall impression of ther community at large. As I saw it, he was also pretty clear about the lkinds of behavior that he felt justified the remark. Please, just let it go.
Idk, even Geiko gives them the credit to be able to save money on car insurance. Even they got offended, you can even see their endeavors on a few sites showing off how smart they really are...
Jedijef. Do not let the rabbid fan bois get you down. Your review was spot on and objective. I couldn not have written it better my self.
So I guess I think I'm a mouth-breather, since, looking over my game shelf, I see Far Cry 1 & 2, all the CoD games, all the Doom games, Half-Life 1 & 2, and many more.
Need I go on?
I get that you didn't like the review, that's totally cool, but man seriously, at least come up with something more than an assumption if you're going to spar with me. So far what you've said lacks credibility, to be kind, and is flat out wrong, to be blunt.
I wasn’t done posting. Also, I said I liked the review. Third, you just also reinforced my point about I DONT KNOW WHO YOU ARE OR WHERE YOU COME FROM. You are still, random reviewer #49857372902, with as much history as any other poster here. This was easily a post on the forums, like I said.
Not your fault, it’s the managements here. Regardless, it’s clear from your posting that you look down on FPS, and have a distain for PvP games and have already written off anyone who plays them. That and you like to just toss out crass words to increase readership, seemingly to cover up inexperience with the genre you are reviewing. You seemed to really want to let people know that with the many many references to FPS and PvP players.
I bet you did walk in and piss on the drapes, most likely right after you made a toon on an open PvP server, and PvP happened.
Not at all man, I actually appreciate the debate, as well as your support. The personal attacks are a little uncalled for (but can be responded to in kind, frankly), but other than that I'm cool.
With that, I'll bow out of the discussion before I get myself in further trouble.
I did. Talk to your boy. I also disagree, you may wish to re-read the article.
From almost line one he was insulting the player base, and had already written them off. Blanket statements don't make it right.
I won't take it persional, Have him do the same.
Dude played a PvP game, got ganked, wrote off the community. As if he didn’t know that PvP happens.
News at 11.
Not at all man, I actually appreciate the debate, as well as your support. The personal attacks are a little uncalled for (but can be responded to in kind, frankly), but other than that I'm cool.
With that, I'll bow out of the discussion before I get myself in further trouble.
I’m not attacking you, I am disagreeing with parts of your article.
I did. Talk to your boy. I also disagree, you may wish to re-read the article.
From almost line one he was insulting the player base, and had already written them off. Blanket statements don't make it right.
I won't take it persional, Have him do the same.
/snip
Cons
Neanderthal Player Base
That's as far as I got, so I've got to agree with Mr.B here, it's nothing personal. I don't take it as such it is however a questionable approach, considering people who play this game visit this site (for now).If this is what MMORPG.com is aiming for it might not be the place for me anymore, I'd be saying this even If I didn't play the game in question btw.
sorry, but maybe you need to reread it. I think the entire review was spot on, and even if he was harsh on a community, how is he wrong? Reviews are based on total personal experience. If you have had a bad experience you would be critiquing it as well. REVIEWS ARE SUBJECTIVE. That's, by definition, a review. Just because you may have had a different opinion or experience does NOT make a review wrong, nor does it make it right to YOU. Every person bases subjective truths based on their beleifs, morals, experiences, and if it is something you can experience and beleive true, then to you it is. Take religion for example, what one person beleives may be different than another persons, though neither can be true, as well as neither can be false, since there is no way to prove it, and subjectively, both parties are right.
I said the review was good.
umm he does play a pvp game, he plays war at the moment, and he hasn't cried foul about that community. He is also a swg corro, and don't see him whining about dying there? Obviously there was something he experienced (which i have also experienced a multitude of times in AOC, and still experiencing with the community) which has led him to write about the community.
so what? you said it is good but continually attack him for a personal review of a game? sorry but either a) you enjoy the strife or b) are looking for a little pat on the back. You can disagree with something he wrote, but it still does not make him wrong.
Apples and oranges. I allready touched on this.
War is to Wow, as AOC is to UO. In terms of the type of PvP you find.
I’m not "Attacking anything". Debate seems to be dead here a? Quite frankly, he got all defensive, not me.
Cant take criticism, get out the fire.
that makes no sense, what did you touch on?
Neanderthal playerbase...I laughed.
Please dont allow arrogant carebear pricks to review pvp games if they are going to cry about getting ganked. Its obvious the little girl has never played a real pvp game like shadowbane or eve and is used to carebear light titles like wow and war.
Aside from her tears about the community the parts about the actual game are pretty accurate for the most part.
rofl.....it's not ok to stereo type the community in aoc, but then we have this
Now you see my comparison with this review being an elevated post by forum user #8299647832.
ahh back to the old bloodworth, with 1 liners noone understands lol
I aim to please.
Noone else was attacking the reviewer on a personal level. Considering he (the reviewer) wrote a blanket insult himself. Your point doesn't have much standing.
Jef is an official reviewer for MMORPG.com. He is not "random user #anything.
Seriously. You didn't like the review. That's fine, but you're really starting to go too far. I am doing you the courtesy of asking you to please stop. You have made your point, now you're just spamming.
rofl.....it's not ok to stereo type the community in aoc, but then we have this
Actually i left the pvp genre a couple years ago for the most part. I got tired of that player mentality but i didnt sub to that kind of game then cry about it.
My limited knowledge of the game and its issues/features comes from playing a friends characte.
Jef is an official reviewer for MMORPG.com. He is not "random user #anything.
Seriously. You didn't like the review. That's fine, but you're really starting to go too far. I am doing you the courtesy of asking you to please stop. You have made your point, now you're just spamming.
Ok. You don’t get it either. Fine, i have been given my cease and desists. This was an elevated post in many ways, removed of all the crud; it was a great, correct review. Not sure how many times I can say that.
Jef is an official reviewer for MMORPG.com. He is not "random user #anything.
Seriously. You didn't like the review. That's fine, but you're really starting to go too far. I am doing you the courtesy of asking you to please stop. You have made your point, now you're just spamming.
Hold on a second, the only reason the point gets reiterated is because people keep arguing with it. They're also completely missing the point behind the complaint, which creates another need to reiterate the point.
How is it spamming if you are simply trying to keep your point in the context you wrote it in?
Actually i left the pvp genre a couple years ago for the most part. I got tired of that player mentality but i didnt sub to that kind of game then cry about it.
My limited knowledge of the game and its issues/features comes from playing a friends characte.
so how do you know as for a review, that it is accurate? i have played it (and am in my 3rd week of resub), and in my opinion, he got the gameplay part and the community part spot on.
Hold on a second, the only reason the point gets reiterated is because people keep arguing with it. They're also completely missing the point behind the complaint, which creates another need to reiterate the point.
How is it spamming if you are simply trying to keep your point in the context you wrote it in?
because i think bloodworth is spamming nonsensical 1 liners which is doing nothing for a healthy debate but padding his post count
because i think bloodworth is spamming nonsensical 1 liners which is doing nothing for a healthy debate but padding his post count
If he was referring only to bloodworth, I'd think he would have sent a PM. Usually when he's quoting in threads he's making a point to everyone (usually). I could be wrong, I'd still like to hear whether he was or not.
just going by the quote and response from stradden saying the reviewer is not a random poster, and since only Bloodworth mentioned it, was assuming it was more directed at him and to make a point that the review writer is part of the staff and has a respectable opinion.
Hold on a second, the only reason the point gets reiterated is because people keep arguing with it. They're also completely missing the point behind the complaint, which creates another need to reiterate the point.
How is it spamming if you are simply trying to keep your point in the context you wrote it in?
What context for crying out loud??? Reviewer wrote a review. HIS personal views on it. Some didn't like it and they want what? An apology? Get over yourselves, take it with a grain of salt and move.
You can't debate a one sided argument. It isn't reiteration anymore, it's not being able to accept the futility of arguing a point to death. The debate happened, it left without resolve, that's it. If you were all too slow to see it go, reread and move on.
It's gets sad when even the Managing Editor has to repeat himself in asking to 'move on'.
Good review. Personally, I would have gone with a 5/10 because I dont find the combat system too revolutional mostly because I play casters and the spell casting system that is implemented in AoC is absolutely no different from the 100's of other computer games on the market.
IMO, the only thing that AoC has done better than any other game is the graphics. However, because the graphics are so intense, FC had to instance the majority of the game in order to make it run in a playable state. I dont consider that a major bonus. I would rather have slightly less detailed graphics in combination with an open world.
I honestly dont see why some people are getting that upset about 1 random stranger saying that the community is made of up Neanderthals, but I guess that is just how I differ from some other folks. If some person that I have never heard of before publishes in a magazine that the city(or state, country, employment building, school, etc.) I live in is full of Asshats, I dont get offended by that comment. That particular individual most likely had a bad experience when he was in my city(or where ever) and is just writing what he felt like he experienced. Do I get all bent out of shape because 1 individual doesnt like the same thing that I do? No, that would be delusional on my part. Do I get offended when I am playing a PvE MMO and players call all PvE'rs Carebears? Nope. What about when I am playing a PvP game and someone referres to all PvP'rs as Gankers? Not at all. This is just someone's opinion and doesnt necessarily make them correct.
So, stop getting all bent out of shape because some guy you dont even know calls people who play a particular online game, Neanderthals. It is that person's own opinion and it doesnt make him right or wrong.
With that said, if you need further convincing then think back to when you were growing up and how your parents talked to you about Sticks and Stones. If you dont feel compelled to listen to some people on this forum then at least listen to your own parents. I dont think they would steer you wrong.
I was asking him in terms of all conversation, not just this one.
Another poster and I had a disagreement he made his case I made mine, that's the essence of debate, I am done with that conversation. When someone else replies to my post I'll respond, that's how it works.
What you're saying is once you're done, the whole conversation is done, that my friend is not how it works.
Yes and he was quoting on a subject already dead. If you wish to beat a dead horse thats's fine, but keep on track with which argument is being discussed. And fyi..it IS how it works, else you lose credibility for future debates, but I don't need to go into that discussion.
Yes and he was quoting on a subject already dead. If you wish to beat a dead horse thats's fine, but keep on track with which argument is being discussed. And fyi..it IS how it works, else you lose credibility for future debates, but I don't need to go into that discussion.
If you don't want a reply don't write the post, that's how it works. With that I'm done.
That makes little to no sense, but on an anonymous forum, I guess anything is permitted...read up on debating and/or logic and you'll understand what debates truly are. But like I said, this is a forum, and neither of those things apply here, you and I were just talking about different mediums.
Naah, I don't think so. Companies pay to put their ads on game sites, where as it costs nothing to subscribe to mmorpg.com. If there was going to be a bias I would be suspicious the other way.
It was a fair review.
Nah I agree with him mmorpg.com's reviews always seem to go with the current trend, which seems to be hate for the game especially on this site. I might have agreed with the review just after launch, but the game has improved so much since then.
Play games for yourself I say and dont go by obviously biased reviews on sites like this.
I commend the review, as well as the ability of the review to cut through the graphics and look into the core of the game, which is like every other mmorpg, but done at a level so poor that Anarchy Online text showed up on some of the descriptions of the skill. I'm just curious when the alien ship will arrive in AoC !
Aliens of Conan ! the xpac !
That makes little to no sense, but on an anonymous forum, I guess anything is permitted...read up on debating and/or logic and you'll understand what debates truly are. But like I said, this is a forum, and neither of those things apply here, you and I were just talking about different mediums.
I was referring to the last part of your post "how it works", you're saying it's spamming to post on a dead subject. I'm saying if people don't want a dead subject to continue, don't start it up again by posting about it or aguing with the points made.
Naah, I don't think so. Companies pay to put their ads on game sites, where as it costs nothing to subscribe to mmorpg.com. If there was going to be a bias I would be suspicious the other way.
It was a fair review.
No it works this way. The more happy visitors on this site => the more different IP mouse clicks it gets per day => the more money they're gonna get from the advertisment. If they go against the trend here and start making reviews that go against the majority, there is a risk of losing visitors, therefore less money from advertisment.
Yes, it's that simple....
Decent review. However you use way too many commas, and get a 'C' for grammar.
I was referring to the last part of your post "how it works", you're saying it's spamming to post on a dead subject. I'm saying if people don't want a dead subject to continue, don't start it up again by posting about it or aguing with the points made.
Even though I never said it was spamming, that was Stradden, I was pretty much saying the same thing. I thought you were doing just that (bringing up a dead subject by your objection:
-"How is it spamming if you are simply trying to keep your point in the context you wrote it in? "
MrB was just spamming this line: "Now you see my comparison with this review being an elevated post by forum user #8299647832.", even after it was explained by Stradden that nothing about the review was by a 'random user'.
If the subject/topic has been explained to the extent it can go, then further display of the same 'points' is futile and is spamming. That's all I was saying in that regard.
I apologize for the confusion, if any, though I still stand by what I said.
I was referring to the last part of your post "how it works", you're saying it's spamming to post on a dead subject. I'm saying if people don't want a dead subject to continue, don't start it up again by posting about it or aguing with the points made.
Even though I never said it was spamming, that was Stradden, I was pretty much saying the same thing. I thought you were doing just that (bringing up a dead subject by your objection:
-"How is it spamming if you are simply trying to keep your point in the context you wrote it in? "
MrB was just spamming this line: "Now you see my comparison with this review being an elevated post by forum user #8299647832.", even after it was explained by Stradden that nothing about the review was by a 'random user'.
If the subject/topic has been explained to the extent it can go, then further display of the same 'points' is futile and is spamming. That's all I was saying in that regard.
I apologize for the confusion, if any, though I still stand by what I said.
The spamming question was in regard to all conversations here, and my reasons for stating my opinion more than once. Tomorrow there could be 100 replies to my posts, I can't be blamed for the spamming of the topic if I reply to some of them , if you catch my drift. I wasn't referring to Mr.B's point at all, random poster #232324242 is irrelevant to the topic at hand really.
No worries though, all's well that ends well.
The guild I am in on Bloodspire boasts teachers, bankers, accountants, Uni Students....and they are ALL very nice and civilised to eachother.
Making a comment on the WHOLE playerbase based on rolling 1 toon on one server, and reading forum comprised of mainly people that have left is, in my opinion very unprofessional and should never have made it past the Editor. I am very disappointed.
There it is, I have stated my opinion ,in a way that does NOT slur or slander anyone, and I will leave it at that.
Decent review and agree with a lot of it except for a few points, which are:
* Lack of emotes? You just need to push 'Y' and a box appears with 12 quick emotes and a drop down menu with around 50-60. So I don't think that was fair.
* Player base - I actually find it quite good and for the most part I have had and seen plenty of good comms going on in global chat. Even if its a bit of smack talk its still pretty mature. On average the players I come across are 30-45 years old and seem pretty solid.
* Lag when in PvP? I dont find that and I play on high spec. Granted I have seen it slow down but in the mini PvP games I have seen 10-12 players on the screen and there is little change. I am yet to see a siege battle.
* NPC's giving quests using voices used to be mostly up to level 20 as you said but since a few patches back there are plenty more out there now. Could still use some more though.
Overall decent review but I feel the above points needed to be stated.
I have two comments on this review and one comment on Miagisans observations/claims. To start with you Miagisan first:
1. I agree with you the AoC playerbase has a large fracktion of pretty hardcore people that are not the most polite people in the MMO genre. Some of the most populated servers are Mayhem in certain areas and people hunt you for your head and XP. It's wild and if you look for a cushion ingame there is none. Necesarily there is also a lot of bitching when people realize "oh, high population is not always that good". I belive this is the reason for ingame bitching over the OOC channel. The second thing is forum bitching. If you have noticed many of the AoC forums (even though the official forums are quite good now) have a very agressive tone. I think that's what you are bound to have after n number of posts about shooting Erling Ellingsen, that FC stock is down, doom is burning in the horizon and wild wild speculations on population numbers from people that have not even played the game. Posts like this is normally made by people with a failcom logo or something along that line. typically there are in general few attempts to moderate these obvious trollposts. The average AoC gamer that visit forums is just so FCKing fed up of this, that the majority of them switch straight to "Shut it trollbitch"-mode the moment someone start to pull out old and wellused bashpoints, because AoC gamers are hardly ever left alone to just have a normal fruitfull discussion about a game they like. It's frustrating beyond belife and I can understand AoC fans, on the otherside this is the worst way to behave if you want to start something constructive.
2.In the review itself I thought one statement was quite wrong.It goes as follows: "Any discussion of Age of Conan is bound to get around to its visuals, and with good reason. The game is unquestionably the best looking MMORPG to date, full of eye candy both in terms of its lush environments and the startling attention to detail given to character models and movement animations. The motions are, for the most part, fluid and life-like, a far cry from the jerky, comparatively primitive offerings of other games on the market. That said, all the sexiness comes at a hefty price, namely the steepest system requirements in the genre, and the caveat that even with a three-thousand dollar tyrannosaurus of a gaming computer, you're still going to lag like a drunken wooly mammoth and experience significant frame rate issues when attempting to engage in siege combat (or really, any combat with more than a few people on screen)." This is not correct. AoC had performance and FPS issues some time after launch (according to players that played the game from the beginning). This is not the case anymore. There are hundreds of threads on this in AoC official forums, and the concensus is performance is way up. Me myself in example started playing like +3 weeks ago, and my really boring medio Rig (only nonboring part is my GeForce 8800) runs this game on high at 30-40 FPS. I have read numerous posts where people say they run AoC on high at higher FPS than WAR. So I think good old Jed took a shortcut here and recycled some after launch common knowledge. I suggest this part of the review is edited. All it will take is to fire up any medium rig with the game and confirm what I say. For lag, there have been some posts as of late on lag, but this is not the type of lag you will get due to high activity in an area. This is just high latency spikes that seem to drop in every now and then for no particular reason.
3. 6/10 is way too low for this very well made game. People keep telling me that the game I play has bugs. Well guess what I can't hardly find any. Game runs smooth as silk and I have only noticed one or two funny bugs til now (LvL 40s). Maybe I am not good enoough troubleshooter or a hopeless programmer (I think that would be to put it mildly), but this game looks bugfree to me. I am well aware of that every patch holds a ton of fixes, tweeks and changes for a reason, but I am saying these bugs are not glaring issues that will hamper the average user in any way. The game is totally fine in my opinion. When I started Age of Conan I was blown away. This game seriously holds the standard of Heavenly Sword and Lost Planet on Xbox360 for the guys that have tested those (and this is only the Dx9 version). This alone is a masterfull achievement for an MMO. When I started playing I kid you not, I went WTFOMGWTFOMG, this is the coolest shit I've ever seen *spasm* "I cut his FCKing arm off" lololol. I was shocked and I am still really amazed about how well this game is made. A mixture of the graphics themselves and the very welltimed smooth animations just absolutely fullfill all my demands on visuals. I could go on and on, but all in all i gave the game a 10/10 at start. Now after 44 levels I am thinking on giving the game perhaps a 9/10 as the crafting was not as good as it could have been. Anyway all this brings me to the conclusion that 6/10 is an outrageously low score. There is absolutely now way this game can get less than 7 or 8. Maybe it was those erronous FPS or bug remarks that contributed to the 6, but 6/10 for this game is way to hard. Just compare it to what other material available in the industry today and it should not be hard to realize that a 6 is way to hard on this game.
Ahh I like this. "Neanderthal Player Base"
Now about people offended by Neanderthals, this made me smile.
I would be glad to be a Neanderthals: you drink fresh water, eat tasty meat, premium quality vegetables, females have this sexy smooth fur that makes you purr and the air isn't even polluted! I take that as a compliment!
Edit: PezzBomb I found the last part of your post refreshing and I'm not really a Fanbois.
I agree with you.
Age of Conan has issues and still need at least one year/maybe an expansion to be great, it has good art, unique combat, a great lore, fantastic music, great graphics, but it need more balance, more content/zones, depth, fixes and polish, but as you said "This review is just the reflection of the state of the AoC-forums on this website. It's a coward article hiding behind the community."
The review is offensive, it lacks information and a subjective sense of judgment .
It is a personal and emotive review, not a profissional and informative review, the player base has the right to feel offended.
The lack of respect (for the player base) and perception ( about the "few emotes", there is more emotes in AOC than Vanguard, War, Guild Wars etc) showed this is not a serious review.
...
MMORPG staff. I try to stay as unaffected by forum posting or reviews as possible but review was just absolutley outrageous. You got multiple of your facts wrong, like that emoticon thing mentioned above. When I read that I smiling and I knew this is not the real stuff. Log on press Ctrl+y and you''l get up an interface with all emoticons thats just way way more comprehensive that in WOW even. Seriously, anybody from any game community I challenge you to count your games emoticons and you will not find as many as in AoC.
More importantly as Pess point out above, you were wrong on a very very importnat point. Performance!!! The game engine of AoC toss around this beast of a game at a FPS as high as 30-40 in the graphically most demanding areas of AoC (The villas) with fairly standard gaming 2K$ machines. This is a gross error from your side and must be corrected. Just for the record perfomance was way up since 6 weeks back.
Eurogamer game 6/10 very recently, I hope you were not tempted to let yourself be affected by them in any way. You can seriously not leave AoC on a score at the same level as Matrix Online. There is absolutely no sense in this.
/emote drunkpiss
posted by jedijeff:-
"Phuxurmom, a conqueror according to my combat spam, swings his sword deftly and, in two swift strokes, my assassin lies sprawled in a pool of his own guts as they spread beneath him on the frozen tundra, his head a few feet removed from the rest of his body and his arms embarrassingly akimbo. All I can do is hurriedly click the respawn button to save my poor avatar from the tea-bagging fate that is surely worse than his latest pseudo-death. The joke of it all is that there was no rare spawn nearby, no resource node within a country mile, and really, no reason at all for the bloke's sword to be sticking out of my gullet other than the sheer spitefulness and possible adolescent maladjustment of its owner"
-----------------------------
I guess the review was spot on and the rating was also fine, i havent played on aoc for a few months now due to it being very shallow at end game and there was nothing to do. But Jeff if i was bored sitting in egliophian mountains and there was nothing to do and i saw you walking across the plains you know what i wouldve done?, I would definately kill you. Probably for no reason but my sheer amusement as i was paying 15$ to play the game and it was a PVP server. Dude u shouldve rolled on a PVE sever..
It is a terrible review.
The author labels the Conan community as neanderthals, for the sole reason of getting killed too often. Here is a tip Sir, don't roll on a FFA PvP server.
AoC has many flaws, but at the same time has many qualities as well. I think this site is getting caught up too much in the AoC hater mindset, yet lest not forget hating is easy, but it gets you nowhere.
okay enough with the idiots thing - Steelrose made that up. Which you would know if you had read the review. So instead of taking such a beef with the review - you could instead take it out on people who lie about what is actually written
So maybe the author should have said one of the CONS of the game is the community, rather than saying the Neanderthal community.
Yea i totally agree, that was very unprofessional on the authors part. I still have a lot of friends on AoC and i can tell you that they surely arent uncivilised cavemen. Every single game is like a mixed bag theres some good people and theres some bad, but putting everyone in the same neanderthal category is poor judgement.
what in the heavens, how can you claim that age of Conan is age of Cavemen.....
You Sir, how dare you base your assumptions that aoc is full of barbaric prehistoric people on a public review.
I love it.
The fans are in this thread proving every last word of what the reviewer states, this is golden.
"How dare you say something negative about our game, how dare you think we have a horrible community, how dare you write a review that doesn't agree with everything we pretend the game is. You are biased, you are a carebear.... ME ANGRY!! ME MAD!! REVIEW BAAAAD!!!
You folks are priceless, and the worst of you are two people that have admitted over and over that they don't even play the game anymore, they want to argue so bad that they act offended just to try and start an argument... absolutely fabulous....
I'm sorry I didn't come back to this thread earlier, I'm laughing so hard I may crap my pants....
This article drove all the angry roaches straight out of the basement.
Spot on review, i couldn't agree with you more about the game.... I original played on a PvP RP Server when the game came out and it was nothing but a gank fest, being a RP server I figure they would only attack if they actually had a grudge against you, but nope, it was no better then a regular PvP server, people would kill me for no reason which defeats the purpose of a RP server...
I also agree the game falls apart after you leave Tortage (around level 20).. To bad because the first 20 levels got me hyped for the rest of the game, soon as I landed in Cimmeria and talked to the first NPC and all I got was text telling me to go kill 10 spiders I was very bummed..
After I hit level 80 and ran out of stuff to do, I decided to try crafting as I figured that was part of the end game content, boy was I wrong.... Crafting was tacked on at the last second as a novelty.. The items crafted were worse then looted / rewards items, and were very extremely generic looking..
Then I turned my attention to doing Raid Dungeons figuring that was going to be kick ass... WRONG, the dungeons were very generic and completely unbalanced with lots of bugs...
This game needs a lot of work... Hopefully 6-8 months from now the game past level 20 will be redone and made more in line with the first 20 levels..
Sorry any review that throws a label like that at a community, is going to get some form of backlash. Who even said anyone was mad? Looks like you're just trying to do exactly what you accuse others of doing (causing drama).
No one is attacking the reviewer on a personal level, or making unrealistic complaints about the review itself. If the reviewer had thought on a professional level, there would be no need for the complaints. It's unwise for someone speaking officially for this site to insult part of their community, that's exactly what happened here.
Yeah I realized that, after this post. Doesn't change a thing about the Neanderthal comment which is exactly, why I didn't read the review.
I spamed nothing. Both you and stradden need to try to read the POSTS in the thread. In order, you know, not just jumping and reading one post in the thread. Perhaps it just may make sense. I know its hard to track conversations and topics on this site.
Here, ill do it for you.
My First post:
Second, still touching on one topic of three in my posts:
jedijef at the ready with the guns:
Then the brilliant finnmacool1 posted this gem:
miagisan chimed in:
to which i responded:
IE: It had just as much Credibility as any other poster, such as our friend here, finnmacool1 . This review was nothing more than an elivated post...........
You know what...im not even going to repeat myself for the like, fith time.
Then i was told to stop posting, and that i was spamming. Really? looked on topic and consistent with the conversation to me, unless you cherry pick the posts you read and have a severe case of ADD.
Thanks.
I wasn't accusing you of spamming, I just said your comment was irrelevant to my point.
Try understand while you read, instead of using that time to form you next "I pawn" post.
Thanks.
Try understand while you read, instead of using that time to form you next "I pawn" post.
Thanks.
Instead of attempting to school people on how to read (which they seem to be doing well enough) maybe you should stop acting like the review was a personal affront to you, who do not even play AoC.
The review was spot on about the community, this is proven by the reactions of every player posting in this thread, the accusations, the anger, the attempts to discredit jedijef by undermining his professionalism and his integrity.
But please, continue ranting and raving about how your feelings are hurt by a review of a game you don't play.
Idk MrB, repeating three times your equally insulting 'Random user post' comment to someone named by the managing editor as being an 'official reviewer' in the same thread can be construed as spamming, don't you think?
Where are your 'debate' premises, other than the original post? Where is the constructive argument, the counterpoints made after the initial defense? You just spewed out the same thing, so in any logical debate, it's 'spamming'. You may not see it because you were trying to make a point, but the insistence in which you reiterated yourself showed a lack of 'decorum' on your part in this.
I read perfectly fine, friend, though reading is only half of a written discussion, writing obviously being the other.
This guy is speaking officially for this website, people who play AOC visit this website, it's very likely they are going to have some issue with being criticized by industry professionals.
This is basically the equivalent of the xbox mag, saying only yard apes play on xbox live. That may be funny for those who play playstation. However, those who play xbox are going to think twice before reading and trusting what that magazine has to say before spending their money on games it recommends. It could cause some to quit reading/posting here all together, which hurts no one but mmorpg.com.
This has nothing to do with how the game was scored, it has everything to do with the way you show respect to those who are visting your site.
As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't disagree with the game getting a 6-7( I'd go with a 7 personally, judged by the standards present in official reviews here), I take offence to being called a neanderthal however.
Take the forum war b.s. somewhere else, I'm sick and tired of arguing over ad hominem rehetoric.
I hate to interject against you once again Malickie, but nowhere does it say neanderthal in the review either. I just don't understand where those insulted get that.
He uses '"Unfortunately handicapped by the general asshattery of its player base.." but nowhere does he call the playerbase idiots or neanderthals. I wish ppl would spend more time reading and less time convincing themselves of their self-righteous claim to victimization. I've read it twice, so please tell me where he says that.
I hate to interject against you once again Malickie, but nowhere does it say neanderthal in the review either. I just don't understand where those insulted get that.
He uses '"Unfortunately handicapped by the general asshattery of its player base.." but nowhere does he call the playerbase idiots or neanderthals. I wish ppl would spend more time reading and less time convincing themselves of their self-righteous claim to victimization. I've read it twice, so please tell me where he says that.
Sure about that?
/snip
Cons
Grind-Geavy Mid to High Level Progression
Lack of PVP Risk/Reward
Neanderthal Player Base
Post-20 Quest Content
Under-Developed Crafting, Social Games
I hate to interject against you once again Malickie, but nowhere does it say neanderthal in the review either. I just don't understand where those insulted get that.
He uses '"Unfortunately handicapped by the general asshattery of its player base.." but nowhere does he call the playerbase idiots or neanderthals. I wish ppl would spend more time reading and less time convincing themselves of their self-righteous claim to victimization. I've read it twice, so please tell me where he says that.
Maybe you need to take your own advice.
Copy pasted from the review.
Cons
Grind-Geavy Mid to High Level Progression
Lack of PVP Risk/Reward
Neanderthal Player Base
Post-20 Quest Content
Under-Developed Crafting, Social Games
EDIT: Malickie was quicker than I with the copy paste.
Lol, I guess I slammed that door on myself pretty hard, didn't even see that window.
Never one to argue when I'm wrong, I apologize for not seeing it and you can omit everything I said in that last post.
Then I have no choice but to agree with you on your comments, and how insulting you may feel.
Yes he was, but thank you also for showing it. I love to debate, and even though I sometimes am proven wrong. I try to be 'gracious' in defeat.
Lol, I guess I slammed that door on myself pretty hard, didn't even see that window.
Never one to argue when I'm wrong, I apologize for not seeing it and you can omit everything I said in that last post.
Then I have no choice but to agree with you on your comments, and how insulting you may feel.
Again no worries.. honestly, it's not that I'm offended (I'm sure someone has been), I just find it highly questionable Stradden passed it with such a polarizing comment within it. There are a number of ways it could have been said, that definitely wasn't the right one.
This guy is speaking officially for this website, people who play AOC visit this website, it's very likely they are going to have some issue with being criticized by industry professionals.
This is basically the equivalent of the xbox mag, saying only yard apes play on xbox live. That may be funny for those who play playstation. However, those who play xbox are going to think twice before reading and trusting what that magazine has to say before spending their money on games it recommends. It could cause some to quit reading/posting here all together, which hurts no one but mmorpg.com.
This has nothing to do with how the game was scored, it has everything to do with the way you show respect to those who are visting your site.
As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't disagree with the game getting a 6-7( I'd go with a 7 personally, judged by the standards present in official reviews here), I take offence to being called a neanderthal however.
Take the forum war b.s. somewhere else, I'm sick and tired of arguing over ad hominem rehetoric.
You stated that you didn't read the full review, so your opinion really has no merit.
And how can you be so upset, anyway, you don't play AoC, it says in your sig that you currently play LOTRO, did he say anything negative about Ex-AoC players that quit to go play LOTRO? I didn't see anything about that in his review...
And as far as your xbox magazine versus MMORPG. How much money does it cost to sub to MMORPG? Now, how much money does it cost to sub to xbox magazine? You also fail to mention that Microsoft owns both Xbox and Xbox magazine. MMORPG just owns MMORPG. Apples and oranges, dude...apples and oranges...
And I am not the one starting any forum war, you seem to be at the forefront of the "AoC reviewer lynch mob", I just think that all the hate that this fair review has garnered is uncalled for, and it also proves the reviewers statement.
To that, I must admit I am also baffled. If it was overlooked, and Stradden was simply defending someone, I could understand. Though that tends to lead to mud in the face on everyone involved (in politics anyway).
You stated that you didn't read the full review, so your opinion really has no merit.
And how can you be so upset, anyway, you don't play AoC, it says in your sig that you currently play LOTRO, did he say anything negative about Ex-AoC players that quit to go play LOTRO? I didn't see anything about that in his review...
And as far as your xbox magazine versus MMORPG. How much money does it cost to sub to MMORPG? Now, how much money does it cost to sub to xbox magazine? You also fail to mention that Microsoft owns both Xbox and Xbox magazine. MMORPG just owns MMORPG. Apples and oranges, dude...apples and oranges...
And I am not the one starting any forum war, you seem to be at the forefront of the "AoC reviewer lynch mob", I just think that all the hate that this fair review has garnered is uncalled for, and it also proves the reviewers statement.
I do play AOC, just haven't updated that in awhile if you're that curious you can find the posts I made about returning in my history, shouldn't be to far back.
It's not about the money, it's about the respect. This site thrives on it's members visiting, just as a magazine thrives on subscribers. It was the closest example I could think of at the time, sue me.
I haven't been going after anyone's throat or trying to provoke them. My comments were my personal opinion on the review, I've only clarified my point in response to others. How exactly is that causing a forum war? It's those who feel the need to provoke individuals over their opinion that's causing the continuation of this debate and the confrontation.
The reviewer attacked players on a personal level, no one is doing so in return (if you didn't bother to notice). I think that proves the complete opposite tbh.
This guy is speaking officially for this website, people who play AOC visit this website, it's very likely they are going to have some issue with being criticized by industry professionals.
This is basically the equivalent of the xbox mag, saying only yard apes play on xbox live. That may be funny for those who play playstation. However, those who play xbox are going to think twice before reading and trusting what that magazine has to say before spending their money on games it recommends. It could cause some to quit reading/posting here all together, which hurts no one but mmorpg.com.
This has nothing to do with how the game was scored, it has everything to do with the way you show respect to those who are visting your site.
As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't disagree with the game getting a 6-7( I'd go with a 7 personally, judged by the standards present in official reviews here), I take offence to being called a neanderthal however.
Take the forum war b.s. somewhere else, I'm sick and tired of arguing over ad hominem rehetoric.
Your major mistake was to expect any sort of professionalism from MMORPG.com.
Your major mistake was to expect any sort of professionalism from MMORPG.com.
You're probably right.. I mean hey, nge's a better game than aoc ,right? rofl!
You're probably right.. I mean hey, nge's a better game than aoc ,right? rofl!
To be fair, the reviewer is only a random fan who writes about SWG when advertising that game as a correspondent (that has been how the correspondent program has been described every time the posters here complain that the correspondent posts read like advertisements), but he is an official part of MMORPG.com when he writes a review. MMORPG.com doesn't let useless things like ethics get in the way.
You're probably right.. I mean hey, nge's a better game than aoc ,right? rofl!
To be fair, the reviewer is only a random fan who writes about SWG when advertising that game as a correspondent (that has been how the correspondent program has been described every time the posters here complain that the correspondent posts read like advertisements), but he is an official part of MMORPG.com when he writes a review. MMORPG.com doesn't let useless things like ethics get in the way.
I didn't even realize it was the same person.
Ok, bloody well enough. Not just the poster quoted here (I'm not picking on you Bloodworth, no worries). Nowhere in the article did he say that "Everyone who plays Age of Conan is a neanderthal. he said that this was his overall impression of ther community at large. As I saw it, he was also pretty clear about the lkinds of behavior that he felt justified the remark. Please, just let it go.
Maybe he should not have said Neanderthals. More likely he should compared it to playing in a den of thugs, thieves and murderers who have next to no regard to anyone or anything beyond their own self centered enjoyment. With no control over any griefing, AoC almost promotes this type of play. Neanderthal no, juvenile most definitely.
At least he didn't mention the beginning month of racial epitaths which were so common in general chat.
And he isn't alone in commenting about the community.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan
I didn't make anything up. I wrote there that I'm paraphrasing and changed the word neanderthals to idiots. Want to argue about who's more intelligent? Idiot is 0-25IQ and what do you think, how well would neanderthals score?
Anyone who has played on a PvP server will agree that the player base on these servers are Neanderthals... There whole point of ganking is to grief players for no reason, for some reason they get a kick out of it, so I think the term "Neanderthal" definitely applies to them...
Now do all players on PvP servers gank? Nope, but the majority do.... Thats why when developers try to put mechanics in place to help prevent ganking there is a huge out cry because gankers don't want to be punished for killing a person who is 60 levels below them....
God forbid if a new person tries to play on a pvp server 2 months after the game starts... They won't have a chance in hell of leveling..
There's also people who play solely to take people like that out, that's my favorite thing to do on a pvp server. Soon we'll get rewarded for doing so.
I agree on the community comment but i don't believe it's entirely to be blamed on the "community". If you allow "human nature" and "anarchy" free reign in a game, this is what you will get. I have had 4 running subs of different MMOs in one month [WoW,AoC,WAR,CoX] , and must say everytime i logged into AoC it took me less than 20 minutes to feel utterly disgusted with the PvP antics of some of the players. And no, i do not believe it's anything to do with "not having a thick skin" or whatever, it is imho:
Funcom allowing
a] Smacktalk between opposing players [this alone breeds discontent and alot of "aggressive" chatter]
b] No rules, No factions , No objective, No sense to any PvP going on. [And no, Culture-PvP in it's current state is pathetically broken]
c] Too many abusive exploits [the way you can be spawn camped for one], which is not considered "abusive" or "griefing" at all by anyone playing the game it seems.
I can deal with a fair amount of PvP ganking and such, i can deal with people being competitive ,heck i can deal if some lvl 80 Ranger literally follows me around and kill me everytime i try to do a quest for no aparant reason once in a while..but if all of that happens -every- single time i log on, -everywhere- and -everyone- seemingly thinking it's how Free-for-all PvP must work, then i really start to wonder "is this really fun" ?
So when i decide "this is not fun" and every single AoC player telling me "go roll PvE noob" , guess what? I leave the entire game and go play Warhammer , which is also touted as a PvP centric game, but for some reason i never felt i'm on the receiving end of someone's inferiority syndrome...i wonder why? And no it's not the "community", it's all in the game design. In the end, who actually wins when half the playerbase feels similar and don't roll PvE but simple roll on another game where PvP works?
In fact, in WAR i literally die 7+ times every 15 minutes..alot of the time i die after i was outnumbered 3 to 1, or even 10 to 1. I die less than that in AoC! Yet i feel victimized in AoC and not in WAR , reason? In AoC 80% of my deaths are "had no fighting chance" + "no logical reason" .
I do not believe the WAR community is any different from the AOC community, i do however believe the game is configured to keep the community "in check" preventing this exact "slippery slope" from occuring.
It's even more amusing how Anarchy Online got LESS "anarchy" than Age of Conan. In fact, it's properly structured into 3 factions , all with nice checks and balances to keep things somewhat "humane". I actually loved the 3 faction system [vs. the 2 faction system in WAR/WOW], i'm just surprised AoC who obviously DO have 3 nations did not implement their own friggen faction system from AO....
Neanderthal playerbase sums it up nicely. Just read through this thread if you don't believe it.
I couldn't agree more. I also agree with the person who posted about the middle of the road man, and sitting on the sidelines. I think there's just too many people who roam the AOC boards just looking for an argument. You can see it everyday. They will disagree with someone no matter who it is on a daily basis.
I also agree with the review, but I would do as bcrankshaw said and given it a 5.
Great review...
This review is flawed and just pure bad. As someone said this review is just a pore attemt to please the angry horde on MMORPG.com
Just an example on things that are wrong or twisted of the truth..
There is for instance voice overs after 20 that has been patched in game ..
The computer spec's mentioned for the game is simply exaggerated, I have never lagged in this game, not in the way that is mentioned in the review at least. You need a good computer, but not a monster computer, and that is if you care to play the game in it's highest modes.
The mages in the game has Spell Weaving in regards to the melee combat system wich is not mentioned. Instead the review sais mage classes are all the same as any other MMO, besides if you wan't a mage and still care to use the combat system try a Bear Shaman or a Herald Xlotli
/junker
I agree with your point about the internet, but then again, the pvp rules were supposed to be in the game at release, not 6 months down the road, just like the directx 10 which isn't even on the test server yet,
The current pvp servers are notoriously known as huge gankfests, well I guess huge is not a good word to use any more, but still I agree the author should have pointed out the problems he sites with the playerbase lie with the pvp servers.
The basic fact is that Funcome knew the game was unfinished yet released it anyway, exactly like they did with AO. When you reinforce a bad reputation with another fine example of it, you deserve every bit of negative publicity that comes your way.
I really find it a shame, as I grew up reading the Conan books and so hoped they could provide us with a half decent game. That may still come to pass, but the vast majority of us will never find out because we have just had enough from Funcom.
Ya know, I was trying to stay out of this thread. I really was, but this just takes the absolute cake and I just feel like I HAVE to comment on it.
We have LOTS of advertisers here at MMORPG.com. That's how we're actually able to offer you a service ironically so that you can come here and complain about it. These companie sbuy advertising space, not because they're buying positive press, but because we get a lot of daily hits from MMORPG players who might potentially see their ad and maybe check out their game. That's actually the principal of advertising.
Now, on to your accusation, or at least implication, that this particular review was bought...
Is that a joke? Seriously, I just need to knwo if you honestly think that a company would pay for a review score of 6.0. Even if we WERE the kind of site to offer our integrity for sale (which we are not), don't you think that someone paying for a review might want something a little bit better than a 6.0?
I am honestly tired of constantly hearing these kinds of accusations. MMORPG.com has always been a company that keeps advertisers and content separate but let me ask you this: If you go around throwing out these wild accusations, even when they're totally undeserved and in this case absolutely and totally ludacris, what motivation does a company have to actually continue to operate on the up and up?
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Fortunately, we here at MMORPG.com are gamers first and the idea of accepting money for a review is frankly repulsive.
STradden I'd like to ask at what point in time this review was written because a lot of your issues and things you said seem out of date or based upon word of mouth.
Also, Do you actually spend any amount of time on these forums? The MMORPG.com forums are 10x worse than any game endorsed community I"ve seen (besides wow's) It's full of angry, bitter people with nothing positive to say about anything. The only feedback they can offer is "This game sucks because I said so" or "This game sucks because I played it 2 years ago and will go on the assumption that absoutely nothing has changed"
Ya know, I was trying to stay out of this thread. I really was, but this just takes the absolute cake and I just feel like I HAVE to comment on it.
We have LOTS of advertisers here at MMORPG.com. That's how we're actually able to offer you a service ironically so that you can come here and complain about it. These companie sbuy advertising space, not because they're buying positive press, but because we get a lot of daily hits from MMORPG players who might potentially see their ad and maybe check out their game. That's actually the principal of advertising.
Now, on to your accusation, or at least implication, that this particular review was bought...
Is that a joke? Seriously, I just need to knwo if you honestly think that a company would pay for a review score of 6.0. Even if we WERE the kind of site to offer our integrity for sale (which we are not), don't you think that someone paying for a review might want something a little bit better than a 6.0?
I am honestly tired of constantly hearing these kinds of accusations. MMORPG.com has always been a company that keeps advertisers and content separate but let me ask you this: If you go around throwing out these wild accusations, even when they're totally undeserved and in this case absolutely and totally ludacris, what motivation does a company have to actually continue to operate on the up and up?
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Fortunately, we here at MMORPG.com are gamers first and the idea of accepting money for a review is frankly repulsive.
Oh we support you Stradden. Nobody really thinks that MMORPG take money for reviews. BUT, you have to clean up this mess of an review though. Your reviewer seem to have had something equivalent to a late night out the day before making it. Patch 2.0 AoC could not have been researched very well, because Jef is very much wrong in many of his most important statements (I mentioned some before). Post launch word of mouth is simply not good enough for a review like this.
First question: The review was writtenapproximatey two weeks ago and was based on current gameplay.
Actually, I do spend quite a bit of time on these forums, but this wasn't a review of the MMORPG.com forums. We're not going to hesitate to criticize any aspect of a game simply because something here at the site doesn't match up. That would be like not criticizing a game's graphics because the images here at the site don't match up. It's apples and oranges, friend and to be clear, I'm not sure he was talking about the forum community in his review, but rather the community in-game.
This was a review of Age of Conan and any MMO review that doesn't include something about the community is probably missing something. In this case, the reviewer had a difficult experience with the in-game community. Whatever the reason, that was his experience. While I personally may not have chosen the wording that Mr. Reahard did to make his point, this was how he chose to make his point and I, nor he, will make any apologies for that. My job as editor isn't to censor out aspects of a review that I think that our community won't like any more than it is my job to filter out things that the game companies won't like. This is how we remain objective.
I am truly sorry if your opinion differs from that expressed in the review. No one is saying that you have to fully or even partially agree with what was written in the review, but Jef was given this project with the understanding that he would give his opinions of his play experience. Despite what some people will tell you, that is what a review is. Reviews are opinion based. You, as the reader are free to agree or disagree with as much of what was said as you like. That's your perogative.
Sorry Stradden, but I think this is not exacly a matter of just opinions.
Offenses and misinformation are totally unacceptable in a profissional review.
If the reviewer cant hold himself and has to be agressive and offensive, please, aim for the producers and not consumers, every MMO has nice/polite peole and offensive people, the reviewer just showed he is at the same level of the agressive people he found ingame (and the offensive people that usually post in these forums)... this could be just a server/occasion.
Are you OK with this kind of offensive and elitist posture around here?
The reviewer is not in the position of lable an entire comunity, it is just bad for MMORPG as a serious site.
The information about the emotes is just wrong, is not a matter of opinion.
I dont care about the rating, I was disapointed with a lot of ingame issues, but there are a couple of serious issues in this review aswell.
...
I am totally agreed with you on this. This review is a discrace. This game blows lots of others mmo's right back to the scratch table. How the hell can AOC get a lower score than for an example Matrix Online ????? Come on, Who the hell bought this review ? After this, mmorpg.com have dropped some stepes on my ladder.
You can't just ignore the playerbase.
It doesn't matter if "not all of them are like that" because the majority of them are. When you take a look at the community, you can't walk up to every person and say "Hello sir/madam, I'm working on a review for MMORPG.com about Age of Conan; I would like to talk to you for about 15 minutes to get to know you better;" it just doesn't happen. When you judge a community, you have to look at it as a whole group: not by every single person that logs into the game.
Take RuneScape for example (best example there is, really): when you log on RS you will get blown away with the rediculous crap that floods the public chat. Now, not everyone in RS is immature and talks about the crazy relationships of eight year old dating over the interwebz; but that is the impression you get after playing awhile. A large amount of how you base the community comes off what you hear in general chat and discussions that take place (as they very well should be), who you met while grouping, and the discussions that go on in the forums. Vanguard is a good example of a helpful community: as mature discussions usually take place and people are very helpful; while RS is the perfect example of a bad. You have to realize that the community is a big part of the game and has to be looked at in general: not by certain people that you meet.
Just because you're not a bad part of the community doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The majority of the community is pretty bad (and that you cannot deny), and it should not be overlooked in a review.
'nuff said
Mike 470
The majority of the comunity in all MMOS is unpleasant, as an user, it is ok for you to come here and say, the comunity of game "x" is a total " ", but as a serious reviewer, do you think it is ok to label any game comunity in a offensive and disrespectful way? He could mentioned comunity issues in a different way, Im sure of that.
About the Emotes, again, it is misinformation, not an opinion.
...
I suggest taking the word 'Neanderthal' out of the review and putting in it's place 'Polite and Courteous' when characterizing the community.
If not 'Polite and Courteous', perhaps 'Kind and Generous'.
Any other ideas?
Iam sorry Terranah, but your joke is just silly.
A clear review of the community issues withou labels/offenses would be better for sure.
To tell the truth it would be better for MMORPG.com and the reviewer and not to any game community.
When there are offenses and pure misinformations in a review like that, it is not the game community or the game itself that look bad, but the credibility of this site and the reviewer.
...
Then when reviewing the community, let's take out "Neanderthal" and just have "Community". That way no one's feelings get hurt.
Actually the more I think about it, saying the game has a 'Community' could be misconstrued as well, because that word has it's own meaning's and implications.
Here is my revision:
Cons
Grind-heavy Mid to High Level Progression
Lack of PVP Risk/Reward
Player Base
Post-20 Quest Content
Under-Developed Crafting, Social Games
Also, I am thinking the community should be allowed to write their own Official AOC Review. This is how we do it. Someone start an AOC Official Review Post, and give the following subjects: Graphics, Music, Gameplay, Performance, PVE, PVP, Crafting. Each poster will then post one paragraph on the subject they liked about the game the most. We could all then vote on which posts we liked the best and put them together like a collage to make a post that will make everyone happy.
That may be a good idea Terranah and would probably reflect the reality of a mmorpg.
About AOC, I still think the lack of more zones and the lack of development of the 3 cultures are big issues.
...
I was surprised to see Stradden was the author of this review. He seems extremely bitter at the playerbase and the haters of the game. It seems like he is trying to convince the reader he is somehow above all the insults all the while slinging a lot mud himself. Overall, I'm about as impressed with this review as I was with Conan.
Very well written and intelligent review.
The comments on the maturity of the playerbase are worthwhile in a review. Having played many mmogs over many years you really CAN determine the quality of experience you'll have based on the amount of immature 'asshat-ery' that goes on in the game.
And no, such an observation is not a matter of subjective opinion - an experienced mmoger can determine quite quickly whether a game attracts an audience of friendly helpful care bears or whether (as in the example of RuneScape) it's largely populated by children struggling with puberty and gender identity.
considering he wasn't the reviewer it would be surprising indeed. As mentioned in the OP and the review, it was done by Jef Reahard aka jedijef
It is quite clear that the reviewer was not calling everyone who plays AoC a Neanderthal. Just a section of the player base who exhibit anti-social tendencies.
It is also interesting that you instantly associated yourself with the Neanderthals...
In balance I think I agreed with the review 100%
It is quite clear that the reviewer was not calling everyone who plays AoC a Neanderthal. Just a section of the player base who exhibit anti-social tendencies.
It is also interesting that you instantly associated yourself with the Neanderthals...
In balance I think I agreed with the review 100%
Cons
Grind-Geavy Mid to High Level Progression
Lack of PVP Risk/Reward
Neanderthal Player Base
Post-20 Quest Content
Under-Developed Crafting, Social Games
Sorry there's nothing in this that excludes anyone, it's a blanket statement given to the whole playerbase. So yes I felt he was including me in it as well, he didn't say otherwise now did he?
I enjoy coming to MMORPG.com to read up on upcoming games as well as the ones already released that are revisited. I have come to realize that internet forums, whether they are official or not, tend to attract a lot of negative complaints, reviews and comments. I understand that it is ok to write about your experiences but it just seems so many go out of the way to bash an mmo. I seen it here and on other mmo official forums like AoC. Not everyone will like the same MMO on the other hand some will like certain MMOs while others will not.
Lets take a step back people, and look a bit more in detail on what was said in this review apart from opinions like AoC players are not nice or I don't like itemization. Let us look on stements that are just wrong in a binary/logical way. Errors that can be defined as either TRUE or FALSE. These issues are not about opinions, they are reduced to a mathematical level. Lets try and do this and see what kind of conclusion we can come to. I found several statements I could apply this logic on, but I would like to talk about the 3 below in particular.
1. Jef says there is no PVP reward system in AoC. FALSE
PvP reward has been in AoC since patch 2.0 that came out 6 weeks ago!!
2. Jef says there are poor possibilities for RP in AoC, few emoticons. FALSE
There are more emoticons in AoC than any other game (Ctrl+Y) for emoticon UI. This hase been in place since launch.
3. Jef says FPS of AoC is low on a 3K $ Rig in graphics intensive environments/conditions. FALSE
A 2 K $ Rig as of today runs AoC (high) with FPS 30 or higher in the most graphics intensive places in the game (Like the Villas). This change also came like 6 weeks back. it was a dramatic change from pre patch 2.0!!
4. Jef says also that there are no voice overs after level 20 apart for the destiny quest. FALSE
FC started to patch in many more voice overs since mid July in fact. I admit I am not aware of the totall number of voiced quests by now, but the point is that an official reviewer can't use information he is not sure about.
There are other things as well, but I purposely leave them out so that you can look on something as apriori as MMORPGs FUps above. There is absolutely no way Jef could say what he said in this review unless he didn't play AoC in more than 6 weeks. My question is now, MMORPG people how can you defend a review like this? This review is a joke. Do you really want to support BS like this in a Game reviewing forum like MMORPG? I would think NO. We want reviews of our games to be handeled with more professionalism than this. So burry your AoC war hatchet for a while and let right be right. It is our job to tell MMORPG when they Fck it up. As a reviewer it is MMORPG's responsibility to do the necessary research before review of any game. Otherwise the whole review is just BS from beginning to end. Right now I don't even believe anybody backstabbed Jef wherever he supposedly logged on.
There is nothing wrong with commenting on the player base of a game. Slamming a community for spamming chuck norris/murlock jokes is fine. Complaining about no one using the chat channels or ridiculing noobs asking basic questions is fine. Crying about getting killed "for no reason" on a ffa pvp server and calling the player base neanderthal,whiney,maladjusted,short attention spanned,etc is pathetic.
I actually found that the community was the best part of this game. When i was playing there was no reward for killing other players, so maybe 20% of all people i met were hostile. That added to immersion because you never let your guard down, always looking at people while you are passing by them, trying to figure out are they going to kill you or not.
Maybe thats changed now but in the first month it was fun.
People are fussing over stupid things like voiceovers (always skiped the dialoge, whateveryou choose outcome will be the same), or dx10 (what this game really needs is better underwater environment) when therer is so customization of yout character, items suck, inventory icons bland too, no crafting and no fun.
And everybody says that the best part of the game was from lvl1 to lvl20. Onyl good thing in that part i could find was the destiny quest and it was bugged then. Maybe because i was aquilonian, but 20-40 was really good.
I played AoC to level 80 twice on pvp servers, calling the player base a quote "Neanderthal Player Base" is the understatement of the year......I think your review was spot on, and the anti-reviewers posting here are the perfect example of the mentality of the player-base in AoC. Neanderthal, LOL, why do I get the feeling that these people are the cavemen in the Geico commercials. :P
AoC, so easy even a Neanderthal can bitch about it, Too funny.
Seriously? Did someone just accuse us of writing a review to appease our community? REALLY? I mean seriously, it really doesn't matter what we write in our reviews, I guess we're just ALWAYS going to get this kind of statement. More often than not, it's "you're trying to sppease sdvertisers" now it "you're trying to appease your community". Ya know what? Reviews are just one person's opinion of a game. That's it. There's no freaking hidden agenda. Seriously. Deal with it. That seem like something I'm saying to get favorable feedback?
There's no cowardice here, friend. I hate to break it to you.
I do agree with people commenting on the lack of professionalism base on the review... most professional reviewers realize they make money on both sides of the fence. On the other hand, I would not call your reviewer a coward since 'name calling' 400k( or whatever number is playing aoc) players/readers a "Neanderthal Player Base" takes a lot of balls.
Your community is a reflection of your site's paradigm; although it is not the reflection of 'the community'. You'll probably find numbers heading south as the mouth feeds off its body.
Excellent review and spot on. I played AoC for a few months on an RP-PVP server and noticed as time went on that the amount of random attacks increased. This was before the PVP reward system so I can only imagine what it's like now.
I don't know what Funcom were thinking implementing the rewards before the consequences - that just turns the whole period into a race to max out PVP-xp before the gank police turn up and end the party. AoC becomes very linear and confined after the first 30 levels so it's not like you can even escape.
I also agree with the review about combat being the be all and end all. Get to 80 without a decent sized guild and there's nothing to do but reroll. Once you run out of things to kill then it's game over. The seiges are buggy and limiting in who can attend with no feeling of purpose. Take a look at WAR to see how it could have gone.
This tea-bagging thing that goes on that originated in the first person shooter games and has moved on to World of Warcraft and other fantasy games just shows how immature these people are and they seem to have homosexual tendencies that is not appropriate in a game for children.
I just hate the fact that my fantasy games have been infested with people that comes from the first person shooter type of games as this was pretty non-existant some seven to eight years ago.
The aggressive and in most cases immature first person shooter players happily kept to their games and us Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons nerds kept to ours.
But this has changed as World of Warcraft with it's player versus player combat and some other fantasy online games attracts the first person shooter player because they are essentially just like the games that they love but with swords and magic instead of machineguns and handgrenades.
And no, I can't stand most of the obnoxius PvP players as you wouldn't stand some old hobo coming at you with his yellow teeth stinking of alcohol and other unamely things.
TL:DR version: I don't like most of the PvP players and I sertainly doesn't like that the fantasy games has turned into third person hack n' slashers.
I personally don't have an active AoC sub since I'm waiting on the content patch but I have to wonder why a re-review was done 2? days before the PvP/Craft patch that would have potentially dropped those two from negatives.
I do have to agree with the OP, AoC can be a great game and I did have fun playing it but sadly its generaly unfinished. I also have to continue to agree that at launch (its been a few months since I've played AoC) its community was very pathetic in comparison to other games. I noted someone mentioned that its unfair to rate a game on community, but the fact is that MMORPGs are all about the community, afterall why play an MMO if you don't plan on playing with other people? Overall I found the comunity to generaly be filled with imature people (not all mind you but the majority), players who would randomly attack people in PvP or purposefuly create drama and pointless conflict in RP. When I played on Wiccana I was suprised at how large portions of the RP community felt like the rejects of the PvP community, and on the PvP/RP servers it was nearly impossible to RP as you'd always find a knife in your back or a fireball burning your skin off as you gathered with a friend or two to "talk".
Overall the OP had a good sence of where the game stands, I can only hope that Funcom can turn it around and make it into a great game just like AO has been.
I am totally agreed with you on this. This review is a discrace. This game blows lots of others mmo's right back to the scratch table. How the hell can AOC get a lower score than for an example Matrix Online ????? Come on, Who the hell bought this review ? After this, mmorpg.com have dropped some stepes on my ladder.
ok..... if any game gets lower rating than Ybarras Matrix Online... something is totally screwed up. You just wont find any game worse than Matrix, its like saying the Devil is really a good guy, just maybe a little misunderstood !!
Totally agree... those 21 year old, mass-killers that does so without any penalty, what has this business turned into, supporting massmurdering like that. Ganking is like raping and should be punished the same way.
ok..... if any game gets lower rating than Ybarras Matrix Online... something is totally screwed up. You just wont find any game worse than Matrix, its like saying the Devil is really a good guy, just maybe a little misunderstood !!
atleast matrix is its own game. its WAY more interesting than "i am dwarf" games.
Sorry to Necro this thread...but wouldn't the score go up now that PvP risk vs reward is in and more midlevel content has been added?
WOW haha that was fun to read keep goin guys this is like watching a MUD battle =). I started when it first came out with Collector's edition and everything. Found out real fast gotta make friends or your F^*(ed haha. Hard as hell to lvl once you get out of tortuga,had to have my friends guild send some guards so i could get up a little cause people just running around in squads to gank smash peeps right out of the tutorial. All in all Conan was fun if you had friends that start with you but then again an MMO in my opinion is good or bad based almost soloey around who you play with considering all of them limit your play if you don't have others to play with. Limits to much content and tends to get boring alot faster. Haha and bashing a review for being a review(no matter how it is put out there and written even if it insults him her or it ) kinda destroys the point of a review doesn't it? Thinkin about it now the more down and direct a reviewer is kinda makes you like the review more cause they telling it as it is(in their opinion before im assaulted and beaten to a bloody pulp virtually)instead of covering up to make themselves/who they are writing for look better.