All Posts by Kusanoha

still keeping a close eye on this. the game seriously looks awesome.

The engineer looks awsome. The white lion looks really fun. I'm also liking the squig herder, the goblin shaman, and the magus.

They all look like fun.

Honestly, any company that has an MMO out for more than 3 years, has a subscription rate of over 200,000 at ANY time, and doesn't just go bankrupt?

Should by all accounts be considered successful. Other than WoW and Lineage, the MMO market is a cast-iron bitch of a thing. No amount of whining will change that MMOs are STILL a niche market product, with every MMO in the world being lucky to get any revenue, let alone 200,000 + and several years of successful server operation.

But no, I don't think they are the only two companies that are successful. I think Mythic is successful in that they seem to be the only company out there to listen to their playerbase AND create a AAA game, and blizzard... well, 10 million subscribers is a huge accomplishment, all crappy gameplay aside.

Honestly, I think EA has some good and bad companies under their management.

Mythic isn't one of the bad ones. DAOC is doing insanely good game-wise now, and that is all because of Mythic and the fact that they listened to the players (probably gonna head back and play it again if/when classic old-style RvR is re-instated). They may not have a huge playerbase, but the game itself is very polished and has been for a year now.

The flip side is that EA has some high profile idiots on tap as well.  DICE for instance, is a crappy company, and makes continually buggy games which make EA a lot of money thanks to their awesome advertising alone, but do nothing for EA's rep because of how phenominally buggy and crappy the games tend to be.

I've learned to wait and see. And so we will.

Yeah they off playing something newer. But at the same time, games like Call of Duty 4 come out, and you don't NEED a top notch PC for it... but it makes it incredable to play if you do have one.

I'd much prefer they manage the same level of detail and customization in an MMO, but I think that's wishful thinking.

Of course you'll get the "wait and see" reply from most of us here. And I agree mostly.

But my opinion is based off of what I've read of the few classes I've managed to get a detailed description of.

From reading the class descriptions and skill descriptions, it seems like the only dumbing down they've done is make each class have an obvious counter (so a rock/paper/siccors dynamic).

Engineers have to worry about long range attackers and strong melee characters. Witchelves have to worry about tanks and ranged attackers. Pet classes  have to worry about their pets and about tanks, etc.

But on reading a little bit more, the descriptions of the classes such as the shaman and the engineer especially bring me to the tentative conclusion that this isn't going to be a simple button mashing game, whatever the R/P/S dynamic might suggest.

For instance, playing a magus or engineer means playing a defensive caster (much like an animist in DAOC). And both classes have their own support functions. Apparently, the engineer has flares for +to hit, beer kegs for +regen, and various other gadgets for debuffs, roots, and general explosive-goodness. The magus meanwhile has multiple different demons that he can summon to much the same effect. They are defensive because, like a shroom turret, their "pets" can't go beyond a certain area. Picking up and moving is a big ordeal, so mobile damage/support is not their function.

Then look at the Shaman and High Elf Archmage. Both classes are damage dealers AND healers. An entire line in the greenskins specialization is devoted to buffs and anything "not healing OR damage dealing." To me, that sound a hell of a lot like buffs and support.

Not even the easy to understand classes seem like they will be simple. Tanks, each of them, have their own twists. And we've only seen the tip of the iceberg so far.

Despite my cynasism, I'm really looking forward to WAR. But as to whether it lives up to it's hype and manages to be more than just R/P/S regurgitation that is so popular in MMOs lately well... we'll just have to wait and see.

Originally posted by Khrymson

A Q&A with Mark Jacobs, EA’s chief warrior on Warhammer Online

 

VB: So when are you going to war?

Mark Jacobs: The announced date is this fall. One of the advantages of EA is we won’t release this game until it’s great. With Camelot, we ran out of money and so we released the game. It’s really important for EA to get the quality of our games out. We let the top EA executives into our game, even at the earliest stages. We have nothing to hide. We have almost 700,000 people signed up for our beta test. That’s ridiculous. I want a million. We have people inside now working 24/7 trying to break the game. To compete with Blizzard, we have to use our extra time to polish it.

The best part about this, to me, is that Mark still lets on that WoW is some huge "competitor" of all new MMOs.

It was a huge competitor. It was a game that nearly single handedly KILLED the niche MMO market. But at the same time, it has been out for three years now.

The way MMOs work, successful games catch most of an audience for around that time before they start to lose players to other games, real life, and so on. Then you see a pretty big exodus from the game not because the game just sucks, but because of jaded players, bored players, and real-life issues that are generally beyond a developer's control.

Eight MILLION people still play that game. And he's SURPRISED that 700,000 people have signed up for the WAR beta? Or thinks it ridiculous?

I wouldn't be surprised if near launch, the beta ticker went up to 1.5 million. People don't hate WoW so much as they simply want something else. Jaded older MMO players, veterans, and the like are NOT the only people to be interested in this game (or others). But fresh players who actually had WoW as their first game are right now looking for something new.

A lot of those people won't be suckered into another 10 levels + raids by the expansion because they simply won't care. It won't "Kill WoW" but it WILL cause a huge influx of people to OTHER GAMES.

All Mythic really has to do is make sure the game launches well and at the right time, and they will rake in a huge playerbase simply by being the only alternative to a game that is growing long in the tooth in many many ways.

I mean look at AOC. Despite it's atrocious structure and gameplay, it is still a pretty wild success. And why? Because it ISN'T WOW.

There was no "gonna wait and see because it could suck, or they could pull off a very easily boring/frustrating game mechanic and make it fun, instead of a complete waste of a normal person's time" so I didn't vote.

I have faith in Mythic. At least, I have faith in them ever since they fired/laid off/let go of Mackey.

Since then it's been a long uphill climb back to good stuff. And WAR is lookin sweet.

But I'll have to wait and see.

Sweet thanks for the replies. I wasn't sure anyone would.

It felt pretty wonkey to me having a FIFTEEN gig patch. Glad you guys confirmed it's not normal.

I'll try a repair install. Reverifyed five or six times so far. AND downloaded the "patch" last night to no success. Logged on today and I have another 14.4GB "patch" to download.

Will let you guys know if the reinstall works.

Well...  I have a similar problem.

Started last night with a 15gb patch to download. I downloaded about 4GB and went to bed, leaving the computer on. Got up this morning, went to work, came home, hit the launcher...

And I have to download 14.4GB worth of patch. AGAIN. Insanely annoying.

Just wow. 600kb-1MB a second and it's still telling me the total time for the download is...

6 hours 7 minutes. Give or take 30 minutes.

Not that I'm that addicted, but jeezus... I didn't expect a day of downtime to equate to me redownloading the GD beta client

Ah well. Guess I'll play tomorrow. What a dissapointment

This isn't a horrible design, it is just completely unforgiving.

I've known since the start that this kind of thing would happen in this game, and I applaud funcom for the inovation and the guts. They will reap the rewards for what they have done.

Even if that reward turns out to be a niche game with a small playerbase.

The point is, they WANT you to go through 20 levels, forced, in exactly the way THEY want you to... because it prepares you for the game. And it weeds out those who just don't want to play the game.

Leaving them with the cream of the crop. Not just fanbois (who will latch onto the nearest shiney object once it pops up and AOC loses it's shine anyway) but the people who LIKE the gameplay mechanics, the storyline, the world structure, the over saturation of gore and sex... and like conan also.

If NO ONE likes this game post-20, then they fail miserably as a company. If even a few like it, their plan pays off. Not as well as it could if they were aiming at a HUGE demographic (and animating cartoonish WoW or japinime avatars while they were at it) but also not with the same satisfaction and integrity of product they appear to be striving for.  If they fall short of that, they still were one of very few developers to try something different on a large scale. Not a tentative dipping of the toes into the swimming pool to test the waters, but a definative shift from the safe and boring toward the inovative. Even if the innovative might be flawed, or completely broken.

If their game sucks, I at least take my hat off to them for rolling the dice. And I doubt very much that their game just sucks. But I guess, in 17 days, I'll see for myself.

Originally posted by Sweeet

 

Originally posted by Kusanoha

You know... the ironic part of this is that I thought that WAR was almost a carbon copy of DAOC. Same lighting effects, same textures, same animation, same gameplay mechanics, same basic core...

 

And YOU say that it's a rippoff of WoW? What's that make WoW, since DAOC came before WOW, and since EQ came before DAOC?

 

Oh that's right... that makes WoW the single most unoriginal MMO ever made. The ONLY thing the game can claim as original isn't even their idea (the "!" and "?" above the heads of quest  mobs was in a single player game in the 90's. Nox I believe. One of those awsome games. Also, see dungeon seige.) Hell even the idea of a fight between orcs and humans dates back to the first world war. Go ahead, say that LOTRO is copying WOW by saying that in THAT game, humans are fighting an alliance of orcs, goblins, and evil people. Go ahead. I want to read something else stupid today.

 

It's no suprise there are no WoW fanbois screaming about how WoW has copied various aspects of every game in existance to be what it is. It's also no surprise that people who hate WoW with a passion will see WoW in every MMO that the damn game copied. The irony is now, all the original devs of those ideas and their future projects are the "clones" of WoW by public standards...

 

That's kinda ridiculous.

Correction, I don't say, I said it was a rip-off of WoW. To say would imply that's still what I believe, but as I do not, said would be the correct terminology. But squabbling aside as you obviously didn't read past the first post...


It's really no wonder people compare things to WoW considering it's one of the most successful MMO's of all time. It's brought a lot of people into the genre that have nothing to compare but the first MMO they've ever played, WoW.


Then there are the people who've completely burnt themselves out within WoW. Perhaps when ever they see similarities within other MMO's they may be interested in, it can cause a level of frustration towards that particular game? Perhaps it brings back tedious memories from a game they've grown to despise?


There are many reasons people compare other MMO's to WoW, be it personal experience or otherwise. But the sad truth is, WoW's been institutionalized as a MMO cornerstone based on its success and there's nothing we can do about it be it ridiculous or not.

 

 

This song 'n' dance is beginning to grow as old and weary as WoW itself...29 pages and it's still gasping for air! The irony 

I stand corrected then. No, I didn't read past page 8 actually. At that point I kinda figured the whole conversation was going in one direction and wouldn't really deviate much. And it also wasn't directed at you (otherwise I would have said "To the OP") but more at the idea you first put forth. Yes, I did sling mud, but I wasn't trying to attack a person, I was trying to attack an idea. Not very successfully, but still

Anywho, my apologies for my being an ass.

Stargate is being based off a pretty notorious engine.

If you've ever heard of "Dark and LIght" you might have heard of the engine. Big World.

So excuse me if I don't hold my breath waiting for SG to rock the market to its knees.

I mostly agree. I don't think the game is terrible, but I do think it gets pretty boring.

The game is beautiful (on the right machine). The animations are very nice. Sound is insanely well tuned. PvP is fun (though a bit hard to get into, since the balance was awful at first, and is still a bit wacky).

But at the end of they day, I can't bring myself to log on and quest in LOTRO anymore than I can bring myself to play WOW or DAOC.

The thing is that in LOTRO there is no real focus on YOU the player, or YOU the character. The few times when I really had a blast were the times I went out and had to do something myself. Something tailored for my class (the burglar quest to stop the bandits from breaking into a farm, but still steal stuff while you are there. Getting the guard dogs to go after the bandits was fun, and being sneaky about it was very entertaining).

But once you get through your class quests and get through the first few books, things peter out and become disjointed. It's no longer about you playing your class to perfection, its about getting a group and slogging through something (hello wow) or grinding to level cap and going to pvp (hello daoc).

The game is still a good game, but their PvE and story isn't as well rounded as it should be.

You know... the ironic part of this is that I thought that WAR was almost a carbon copy of DAOC. Same lighting effects, same textures, same animation, same gameplay mechanics, same basic core...

And YOU say that it's a rippoff of WoW? What's that make WoW, since DAOC came before WOW, and since EQ came before DAOC?

Oh that's right... that makes WoW the single most unoriginal MMO ever made. The ONLY thing the game can claim as original isn't even their idea (the "!" and "?" above the heads of quest  mobs was in a single player game in the 90's. Nox I believe. One of those awsome games. Also, see dungeon seige.) Hell even the idea of a fight between orcs and humans dates back to the first world war. Go ahead, say that LOTRO is copying WOW by saying that in THAT game, humans are fighting an alliance of orcs, goblins, and evil people. Go ahead. I want to read something else stupid today.

It's no suprise there are no WoW fanbois screaming about how WoW has copied various aspects of every game in existance to be what it is. It's also no surprise that people who hate WoW with a passion will see WoW in every MMO that the damn game copied. The irony is now, all the original devs of those ideas and their future projects are the "clones" of WoW by public standards...

That's kinda ridiculous.

I was part of the Freelancer/MC battles in the north. I was on the FL side of things. We did everything we could with what we had, but we had a complete lack of support, and a complete lack of capitol ships.

Until the end, the whole alliance was pretty tight knit. The jackasses of beasts and YW talked a lot of crap, but we didn't screw up because we all hit the eject button whenever they were in system. We screwed up because we didn't have capitol ships, didn't have an infrastructure to support safepoints, and didn't have the skill points nessisary to fly useful ships.

At the end there, most people were in battleships, battlecruisers, and frigates (elite mostly).

No, the game is NOT about skill, it is about being established, about being rich before hand, about social status, and about politics (both in game and out, thank you BoB/CCP devs).

We sat for hours on end guarding choke points, and watched as no-talent assclowns like storm armada took our entire quadrant from us because they had a big brother nearby to do it for them (MC). We fought back, took down fighters (because we lacked the firepower to kill the carriers themselves) while SA sat on their fat asses in the base and waited for MC, the established, strong, OLD force to take down the residents of the region.

The game is a joke of unimaginable proportions. Go download evemon, read a bit, and realize that it doesn't just take you 214 days get that carrier or dread (which you needed at the time, even though you only needed it for one thing) it takes 310 because you also need the skills to pilot it effectively.

310 days you could have been leveling up other skills in, or playing another game in.

If they would make numbers mean something (such as having 40+ frigs or 20+ BS be able to actually damage a cap or super cap ship) or terrain mean something, then the game would be more than a perpetual gate camp where only BoB and MC win in the end. But as it is...

DAOC's main strength was it's gameplay. The way the world was originally setup was pretty haphazard. If you every rode the horse from Bjarken to vinsual, you'd understand what I mean by that. A 20 minute horseride during an epic quest (multiple times even) is insanity of game design in pure form.

But people played anyway because the PvP system was so addicting and engaging that people were willing to put up with the lameness just to go bash heads and have fun with friends. Even the lack of balance didn't really detere people. The PvE was avoidable until Trials of Atlantis came out, so no one cared that it wasn't that great.

On the other hand, Blizzard crafted WoW's world perfectly. They made sure that the main cities were hubs of commerce, quests, and travel. They made sure that if you wanted to get a group or make money, there was a place in the game designed for just that. And by doing that, they ensured that the game would have a place for community. Something that DAOC still lacks. If you jump into the game now, the main cities are active, but they are absolutely nothing like a major hub ought to be. You cannot post and sell your wares (housing is still the mainstay for money and goods), the city is not the hub of travel (it is still timelier to port to a border keep instead of the hub, as it means one less loading screen to get where you want to go when you die), and the quests in the cities lead you off on epic quests. So the only reason to stick around a hub in the game is to quest.

What a game needs is good gameplay (ala daoc) a good world design (ala wow) decent mechanics and balance (ala guildwars) and a good platform from which to draw lore (ala LOTRO and WOW).

You get those and technical stability, and you have a good MMO pretty much.