Profile: Gishgeron
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| Username | Gishgeron |
| Real Name | |
| Rank | Elite Member |
| Joined | March 5, 2007 |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 25 |
| Location | Princeton, KY, United States |
| Last Visit | May 9, 2008 |
| Post Count | 557 |
| Biography | Games Playing/played: |
| Quote |
2 Most Recent Threads by Gishgeron [more...]
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A Wii wish for a Wii MMO on 3/18/08 @ 11:55PM
Viewed 79 times, replied 0 times, last post was 3/18/08 -
Need some Vet assistance finding a game! on 1/17/08 @ 2:50PM
Viewed 308 times, replied 5 times, last post was 1/17/08
Latest Blog Entry - Wonderland, a review.
From my blog Weekly Random Meaningful Blabber [Gishgeron]
Allow me to begin by saying that I am only level 6, and have only JUST played the game today...and only for about 4 hours. I typically stay away from forming opinions without really delving into something, but this game warranted my immediate written opinion.
Now that this issue is cleared up and you all can see where I'm writing from, lets begin.
The guys making this need a well deserved hug. I found almost every conceptual element to this game refreshing enough that I'll be playing it for a while. First, it plays very casually and enjoyably. The combat system is so terribly nice compared to the boredom I'm used to in this genre. I like turn based battles, genuinely, and found this type of said method to be very well done. Its slick, fast, and easy to grasp without reading a single word of instruction. The games interface was quickly learned, and I was moving right along within moments. I found out very quickly that other players could even jump into a battle you were engaged in...though I'm still not sure how to do so myself. Before you begin to question my earlier comment about the interface...understand that I simply did not care enough to try. I'll explain why next.
Groups: Within mere moments of gameplay I had already acquired 3 NPC party members I could assign into my team whenever I wanted. As a result, I had no need to "join" anyone because I was still to early into the game to really need an actual player behind the wheel when I can control the NPC's better than some players can control their own characters. You can even "capture" enemies to use as pets (which is what the game calls any NPC team member) and level them as well. You can ride pets too...and yes, this includes the humanoid NPC members I picked up lol. I've been "riding" some straggler I picked up lying on the ground, unable to even speak the local language. Humor entails, and I never leveled her.
Housing: Immediately upon reaching the first village you can acquire a tent which will serve as your first player hosue. So far as I know, wherever you place that thing is where it stays...so I'm hoping there is some way to pick it back up again. The house also comes equipped with starter crafting tools in the form of a workbench. I quickly set myself to build other starter level crafting expansions to this tool, and left it at that until I discover more about it. Based on what I saw from what little reading I HAVE done (I prefer to dive into a game and learn as I go usually, its often a better indication of how good the UI is and how well designed the game is as a whole when you don't NEED a 120 page text document to explain everything) the crafting is pretty deep and I am actually eager to cut my teeth on it some more. I suspect there is more to the housing thing, but I won't dwell on what I'm not sure of.
Grind: I felt NO grind as of yet, and I feel that I may never feel one. Tragically, I think a lot of the grind problem games have is found in the dull combat that MMO's are built upon. I'm having too much fun fighting things....even things ignorantly below my level trying to get crafting goods. I never even look at my xp bar...I'm just not interested. My goals aren't level based at the moment.
Skills: I have no ideal how deep this rabbit hole goes...but I do know that the element I chose offers me some 30-odd skills eventually. Each skill gains levels based on its use...and each are tied into how the elements play on each other. I chose water (I'm a Pisces, and I wanted to make my avatar blue) so my initial ice-melee attack is "super-effective" against fire based foes (which I'm sure takes rocket science to deduce) dealing some 80 damage to them. Against an earth foe...it may do 20.
Stats: You assign stats, though I think the attributes stats effect actually go up each level as well. I'm not sure, I only just now thought to check that because I hadn't placed any agility points in a level or so...but noticed my speed wasn't the same. How the math plays out isn't important really...what is important is that you place your own stats. I think we all kinda like that.
Mobs: I haven't seen anything overtly mature yet (the golems were pretty neat), but then...I'm fighting things on a tropical island too. Since I actually enjoy vibrant colors and the act of killing wobbling piles of jello actually turns me on...I'm not complaining. The fact that said jello then drops things I can craft with...well...is icing on my proverbial happy cake. I've also had a few matches against some pirates, and I gotta say the fight animations are pretty hawt for a game which mimics old school console RPG combat stylings.
Now for the bad
Translation: I could follow everything that was said, but its loose and kinda choppy. No big deal for me, I've been around non-english speakers my whole life. My current landlord is asian, and we are good friends. I can accept that kind of thing, and generally ignore it. It genuinely doesn't bother me, but I have to mention it because it DOES bother some of you. If translation is going to ruin your fun (god save your gaming soul....) you may wanna try it first, but be expecting some hitches here and there.
Population: These newbie zones are crammed. I need to break right now and explain something. Combat occurs when you encounter a mob. This happens in one of two ways. You either click or collide with wandering mobs, or you get a random encounter in zones where you can be randomly encountered. In random encounter zones...being crammed with players doesn't matter. When the invisible dice say you fight, you fight. In other places...it DOES matter. There are also random chests that are strewn about the world which are NEVER going to be unopened because of this...but I didn't really care about that. There is another form of encounter which comes at you in the form of scripted engagement that happens as the result of talking to certain people are following certain quests.
Lastly...not everything is the game is super easy to figure out. The company does have most of that information on their website, and I advise anyone interested in this to go there and read at least enough to be familiar with the site so that you can return later if you NEED to. I still haven't figured out how to catch a pet, and am about to go learn now.
My vote on this game: 7.5-7.8. I want to really encourage developers to think outside the box...and to make a return to gaming elements that are based more on actual fun rather than bleeding my time and wallet. The 2-D of the game is something I didn't even think to notice. I was actually glad for it, because I needed something fresh after all my time in these stagnate 3-d worlds that offer nothing. I won't swear I'll keep that score as I play on...or even once the game leaves beta. But for now, for what I've just played, this is the score they deserve for making me as happy today as I have ever been in MMO's in all of my life.
Read more from my blog [Gishgeron]
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Recent Forum Posts [more...]
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- How to Fix Complainers
Originally posted by COORS
Originally posted by DeadDingo
How to fix a fanboi:
Invite him over to get the game running on your 'exceeding specs' rig.
You just won't go away, will you? LOL!
Whiny children never seem to go away. It's pathetic really.
Not to take sides...but...
Children don't often own a rig which would exceed the specs for this game. That honor is left to people that wear suits and ties, my friend.
- Posted: 5/09/08 10:44 AM
Age of Conan
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- How to Fix Complainers
Originally posted by BigMango
Originally posted by tikovoo
people who just dont like the game, like the people that cancelled their preorder and uninstalled the BETA client who have posted the same stuff over and over about how bad the game is.... should just move on.
The problem is, they can't. They have nothing better to do with their lives, no better games to play; so they are here enjoying their time bashing AoC. And if it wasn't AoC, it would be another game...
Heh heh, I think I'm the only one here who actually bashes the game based on its direction. Everyone else is hung up on performance issues (which is kind of telling....I've never seen such focus from the haters before. We normally each have a different 'hate' to spread on a given subject.).
Also, I'd probably not bash AoC as much if I didn't think so many wonderful things about it back when they shot they ideal to us. Nothing is more annoying than pledging your support to a game concept...only to realize its not going to actually BE the concept you were heralding. Its even worse when I'm forced to admit that Blizzard are actually kinda smart, and are probably going to be doing these things better. I really hate giving them props on anything anymore.
*sigh*
Oh well, I guess I could move on. Give Aion some time, I'm sure they'll make a choice that riles my ire.
(PS: For the record, I don't think AoC is a flop by any means. You guys will probably have some fun with it. I'm just looking for something ACTUALLY new, and this ain't it.)
- Posted: 5/09/08 10:43 AM
Age of Conan
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- Why all the nastiness in general?
I dunno, I actually find both bashing and uber fanboy-ism to be informative....once you learn how to read it. Here's the thing: Both sides have truth, and plenty of it. Both sides also obscenely exaggerate the truth to serve their particular end of the debate. All you have to do is read the material presented with a sort of exaggeration filter, and its fine.
Lets take a recent example. AoC!
I've seen plenty of posts which suggest the game crashes 24-7 and that the load and lag are enough to warrant making a few sandwiches and grabbing a beer in between them. This isn't true, of course. Using my super filter-delux...I can read that and see that the game is experiencing some pretty large performance problems on some systems. I can also read that some of them are quite major, and that it is best to look up information about the game before playing it, even after release, in order to be sure there aren't any hold-overs from the beta that can be easily remedied. I DO NOT read that and assume the game will crash every other second, or that the loads will be insane.
Another example: SOE
People like to say they butcher everything, hell I'm one of them. But, when you read this kind of bashing...you must do so with the the mind to remove exaggeration. Primarily...SOE only butchers IP's which aren't their own. Even then, a great majority of the butchering occurs before they even get to it. Now, they do make HUGE and IGNORANT mistakes...but to suggest they have killed everything is silly. They did well with EQ...and actually went back over EQ2 and made it substantially better. Notice, both of those are IP's THEY had full control of from the start.
Now...that still does nothing to remove my hate for how they view their players...but my hate is also not being tainted by exaggeration.
Moral here is this: Don't whine about the posts man! Stand up, think for a second, and realize that human beings often times exaggerate EVERYTHING to some degree...especially when a debate is concerned. You could have lost a little sleep the night before...and suddenly an average day at work becomes a "God awful, horribly busy, and mind-numbing nightmare" by the time you get home to talk about it....regardless of whether or not any actual work was added to you that day. Its pretty basic social stuff here...and its so common that I actually figured most of you knew this crap already.
- Posted: 5/09/08 10:33 AM
General Discussion
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- After AOCs latest patch - Will EA cancel WAR ?
Originally posted by Crusher
Originally posted by Stitch19
Now if AOC after realease becomes a huge game in terms of player population and fan base(huge dedicated fan base) I am sure WAR team will try even harder in order to get into the mmo competition with a good game that can competete AOC and other MMO's. Lets not forget that WAR is focusing mainly on PVP and RvR which is not something AOC can be so so so proud of. Since seems like AOC has a great PVE side and a solid PVP.
I can't agree more. If AOC becomes a huge success, then WAR really has to stand out in it's genre, or else just be another WoW - clone with a twist.A person playing and loving a game which follows the very same design direction as WoW aught to be mindful of throwing the "WoW-clone" talk around so readily. I have turned my attention AWAY from AoC because its devs have proven to me that they wish to direct this game in a way that I found too similar to the gameplay I left when I left WoW.
Second, AoC will never BE a huge success. It is not nearly hardware-accessible enough to be one. I'm sorry, but even if its the best game ever made it will only be a niche game at best. The huge number of players in WoW aren't likely to spend 700-1000$ on a new system for a 50$ game that comes with a 15$ a month subscription. This is just the cold, hard truth. I'm willing to bet a massive chunk of WoW's players are only PLAYING the game because its the only MMO with decent gameplay and upgrades that their PC can support.
WAR actually has nothing to fear here at all. What they are targeting, and what AoC are targeting, are two different people really. Oh, and WAR is far more hardware-accessible too. So even among the "God I wish I had a pretty MMO" crowd...there are gonna be a few who take WAR over AoC because they can actually run IT and its still better looking than WoW.
- Posted: 5/09/08 9:14 AM
Age of Conan
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- Can someone explain the hate towards SOE?
Originally posted by safwd
Originally posted by Gishgeron
Originally posted by WhiteknightI
- Originally posted by Makaveli04
omg...another one of these posts...if you do a forum search there are already several threads about the same topic. This is just going to turn into another flame fest like all the others.
I just wanted a sum up of why this company is hated so much. The other threads kind of drop things about it, but don't really explain where the hate if coming from directly.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
Here is the short version.
SOE historically and ritually admits to not caring one iota about its players. They do really bad things, and make really poor choices. To top that off, when called out on said bad things and choices...they tend to enjoy telling everyone that they are either stupid, or unneeded. Either one is pretty awful a thing to say to ones support beam.
Oh, and they also like to buy failing IP's and then ignore them completely...forcing them to survive on skeleton crews who do little more than add a tweak here and there whilst drawing in profit over the fact they have no one to pay for its upkeep.
That statement is true i guess, but only if you are one of those people who thinks the world would be better off if The Matrix Online and Vanguard would have just died vise going on the Station Access. Why should it matter that people are actually still playing those games and like them, reguardless of how much updating they get. Better to say screw them and just shut the games down.
I guess the question comes down to, Is it better to force a game to survive on a skeleton crew or just shut down. My view is if people want to play it then it is worth keeping alive.I would answer with:
Its better for those playing the game for their game of choice to receive attention and care just as any other MMO would. True, some of them would have died otherwise. I think that if you are going to buy something like an MMO...you aught be ready to put at least SOME effort into making it better. SOE does not do this...such things would detract from their OWN games and the money being pumped into those. I understand WHY...but its not exactly right either. They all hemorrhage players terribly.
- Posted: 5/09/08 2:15 AM
Pirates of the Burning Sea
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