Profile: dumbo11
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• • After trying WAR, im gonna fire up AoC again.

  • Originally posted by AmazingAvery
    

    Opps the PvP Patch went in yesterday :) Bug free pretty much in PvP too. WAR still has those spells that fly thru 50ft of solid wall though and other major issues but im sure they will get it fixed up quicker that AoC did.

    
    PvP is bug-free (apparently, after 1 day), but reportedly the patch broke the t1 raiding part of the game?  That does sound like AoC... although I suspect with the new boss that might be about to change :).

    Anyway, is AoC the 'future'?  Not particularly.
    - the instancing has turned out to be insanely unpopular, and is unlikely to be copied in future AAA MMOs.
    - the graphics system caused too many complications, too many bugs and also relied on the instancing.  It's more likely that MMOs will take a WoW/warhammer approach of a 'current generation' graphics engine than trying something cutting edge.
    - tortage is a mixture of huge success (quests players give a damn about) combined with huge failure (do it again? aaarrrghhhh!!!!!!).  I'd hope MMOs do pay attention to Tortage - some of the ideas are very good, whilst the pitfalls are quite obvious.
    - the combat was a bit 'meh' and obviously leaving out magic was a bit odd.  Thinking about new ways of doing combat is good, but I don't believe "just pressing more buttons" is enough... Ironically, the shield system was a brilliant idea, but kindof irrelevant due to the combos...
    - the "adult" parts of the game - consisting of blood/boobs/some 'adult' storyline was interesting.  Certainly the fact that an 15/18+ MMO sold well should allow developers a bit more freedom - which is a good thing.

    But the game itself?  In MMO-terms you normally get 1 chance to make a first impression, and AoC probably blew it.

  • Posted: 9/18/08 11:15 AM
    Age of Conan
• • No death penalty or looting?

  • Ok, I'm not sure I get this - there is a minor PvE penalty to dying, but that makes sense in a game where PvE is very much a secondary concern.  *you could argue that penalty isn't very big, and I'd agree - but somehow it 'feels right' in WAR.

    In PvP, the idea is to get everyone involved, at every level, without any fear.  (playing a scenario which is a 15 minute set of skirmishes would be seriously boring). 

    - we want proper battles, lots of death and destruction, respawning and more death & destruction
    - we want our opponents to respawn and rejoin, quit when they need to leave, not when they've run out of PvE cash
    - we don't want to spend X hours in PvE to recoup the money we lost from dying
    - we certainly don't want to be losing items that we gained from PvE

    So, the penalties in RvR are fairly minor.

    If you really have a problem with it, then maybe you aren't playing to win, but playing to hurt your opponent? imho that's really not a good philosophy to have.

  • Posted: 9/18/08 9:51 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Which side will be the underdog?

  • Originally posted by Ragana
    

    Is there a reason why destruction is outnumbering order (besides the fact to they look cool) or are the sides pretty balanced

    The sides seem pretty well balanced - but destro is 'cool/sexy' whereas order (for the most part) isn't.
    dark elves = chicks in underwear, chaos = 'badass', greenskins = fun orcs.
    empire = humans with odd classes, high elves = elves with "lotsa clothing" and 0 fun, dwarves = dwarves.

    It is almost certain that Destro will comfortably outnumber Order on most servers.  The plus side is that order wait queues are generally lower and we have all the best players ;).

  • Posted: 9/17/08 9:01 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Hi-Res Textures?

  • Originally posted by Stellus
    

    One thing to think about, though, is what this game entails. There will be a lot of people fighting at one time. It takes a LOT to render that many players on a screen. If anyone has played Planetside, you know the strain a system endured trying to render hundreds of players at once.

    Yep - but for an RPG it's less about "rendering 200 characters" and far more about "loading the textures to display those 200 characters"...

    
    

    AoC suffers from this badly - 'pop-in' (or for AoC 'pop-up') is a big problem, as-is the 'checkerboard effect', the 'grey map', the flat wall effect, and a variety of other bugs.

    For Warhammer, it looks like they've taken X players + terrain + equipment + effects, and worked out how much memory it takes to hold it all at once.  I guess we'll see how accurate they were with that number...

    (not forgetting that downloading/patching 16gb of textures takes a while...)

    - For LOTRO I believe there was a 'high res texture' download offered separately - it's possible mythic might do that at some stage?

  • Posted: 9/15/08 7:07 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • AoC will fail..even after they fix the bugs

  • Originally posted by Jasz
    

    AoC is already a easy game to pick up and play there is no need to make it easier. If these people had their way  there would be no traveling and grinding at all.

    Its a MMORPG people. An easy one at that. Do you really need cheaper horses? Do you really need more paths to other areas when traveling is already easy?

    Funcom..listen to me...people who want WoW and simple MMO's will play WoW. I came to Conan because i wanted something different. Stop trying to cater to the complainers and listen to the people who love your game the way it is. The way you meant it to be when you started. If you stay on this road your game will fail.

    Nobody wants an adult version of WoW...thats just a disturbing thought

    Errr... so travel in AoC was in some way 'challenging' or 'hard'???  What are you talking about exactly?

    And grinding is supposed to be 'challenging' or 'hard'???  It's mindless key-bashing, and terrible gameplay for 2008.. with a quest you could at least 'fail' (in theory) so there's a potential danger/difficulty - with grinding, there's often no danger whatsoever...

    I guess if your idea of 'hard' and 'challenging' is 'staying awake at the keyboard, sticking with a game through countless boring-as-hell hours', then I honestly don't see a lot of future MMOs that you're going to enjoy...

    And blaming WoW for this is stupid.  People have jobs, wives, kids - I seem to remember the average MMO player is in their 30s... if they get 30 minutes to logon, they'd like to accomplish something, not spend it running from A to B 'yet again'.

  • Posted: 8/01/08 9:17 AM
    Age of Conan