All Posts by Ragemore

Only speaking on what I have found so far, I played Ekrund and Nordenwatch as a Order Warrior Priest more then 20 times each.

15 to 5 Chaos over Order for NordenWatch (NW)

18 to 2 Order over Chaos for Ekrund (EK)

It seemed in NW, the lack of a human tank really seemed to hurt, we might get a dwarf or two, but not many, which meant groups of Witch Hunters, Warrior Preists, and Bright Wizards to try and match the Tank heavy Chaos, with plenty of healer back up from many shaman. We were having a hard time with countering all the melee that comes to bear.

In the EK, it seemed like we were mostly dwarf based, which meant plenty of tanks, rune priests, engineers, and throw in some humans or elves who joined and we were holding our own against a mostly Orc Goblin team.

This is purely subjective to the group you queue in with so results will certianly vary.

I would like to point out, that Shaman at the sub 12 level is a pretty powerful character, but I'm sure it evens out later on.

After reading this I kind of chuckled to myself, you could replace the AoC with WoW, and in almost every complaint, it was the same thing seen during the WoW launch, in fact now that I think about it, Vanguard, SWG, and Asherons Call 2 too.

I dont remember hearing anything bad about the DaoC, or City f Hereos Launch.

I think the OP should change the name of his article, it has nothing to do with the anatomy of a launch, just rename it too "I didn't like AoC Launch, and here is why."

It's clear the OP is disgruntled on how his experience went, and his entire article is colored by that, to the point he sounds like nothing has gone right at all.

Just as if I were to write a 2 part article, it would be about the absolute zero problems I have had, or my guild, and people would just complain that I am a fan and my judgement is clouded by my experience. 

So how do we decide who is right, we take a look at all the players and their experiences, and make a judgment based on the majority of them, and in that case the game is a huge success at launch, we'll see if remains a huge success into subscription.

He could have written an article that focused on both sides of the story, and let players make up their minds or seek further information to judge, but he chose to see one side, which makes this the worst article I have read on MMORPG.com of which I have been a huge fan of for the last several years.

I suppose if Rant posting is to become the norm, I'll be looking for a better MMO news site to bring me ALL of the information so I can make informed decision with my gaming budget, and help me separate the good games from the bad.

Sitting at 45, and having a blast playing AoC. (I have played, WoW, LotR, CoH/CoV, Lineage 2, ShadowBane, SWG, DaoC, EQ2, AC2, AO, Eve Online, Guild Wars and many more I am forgetting right now.)

Best looking game I have played MMO wise, and better than alot of non MMO's. (Eve and LotR come close)

Best 1-20 gaming expierence in any MMO. (Nothing compares, very well done)

Best Melee Combat in a game. (nothing like directional swings, combos, fatalities)

Best Music in a game. (I am really enjoying the sound track while I play.)

Questing - On par with WoW, LotR, EQ2

PVP - better than WoW, but Guild Wars, and Eve are probably better at this point.

Guild functions - Several buggy features, but you can build a city, which very few games let you do that.

Crafting - Not so good, feels added on late, similiar to WoW and PvP at launch, something they didnt plan much.

Instancing - there is one annoying spot in Tortage sewers, where it seems like every door you walk through triggers another instance, most people that complain about this most likely have run into it. It is the only place I have been in that is like that, and the rest of entire world, you hardley notice it, so i am ok with it at this point.

Spell casting - pretty much what all other games have, nothing really new.

Classes - very fun and exciting to play, nice variety.

Feats - I have grown to enjoy testing results and builds, with out all of the info right in front of me, and having to read about the only build anyone is useing for thier class. It's exciting to be in a game that hasn't been dissected by the mathameticians.

Mounts - best in any game I have played

The Grind - Are you kidding me? stop complaining, this game is very easy to level in even if there were no quests at 50-60, which there are plenty if you know where to look. And be social, do some grouping.

All in all, this is a great game and has set a high bar for all existing, and upcomming MMO's.

Finding a good Corp makes all the difference, find one that fits the play style you like, and they will get you up to speed in less than a month.

And you said something really important, focus on attainable goals first, it is too easy to try and do too much too soon.

If any brand new players are looking for help, look me up in game, I would be happy to answer your questions.

Ragmore - HedgeKnight (Caldari Pilot)

You guys are welcome on the show anytime, I'll jump on your forums and  we can plan another grand appearance of Wardog Studios on the Wife Aggro Show.

Seth still gushes about you guys giving us a real insiders look at Indy developement, and those episodes are fan favorites.

Patrick and Jeff are very enthusiastic about thier game, make sure you tell all your friends and build some hype on this game. They have tasked themselves with makeing something truly great, and I for one can't wait until they finish thier game.

Great write up of Guilds in general. I recently helped with a Podcast on the same subject, I have been running many tests on guild creation lately, trying to find out how certain types of guilds form and why. If interested it is our PodCast 11 show at www.wife-aggro.com.

I have been in every type of Community out there, guilds, tribes, corporations, kinships, supergroups, companies and so on, and each genre brings it's own flavor to the mechanism. Something I didn’t see in your article were groups formed around role play or themes, which fall outside of groups of friends/family and raiding/competitive groups and size is a by product not a given for a type.

I do agree with the rise and fall mechanisms, and I would add that most guild changes/schisms happen if the Leader is less active. This from my experience has been the trigger the majority of the time, so it puts a lot of pressure on the creator/leader to keep the group together. I also find it interesting that you rarely have a "rule by committee" form of leadership, with all the forms of government in the world, it seems most of us are willing to play under benign dictatorship.

How do you feel about the tools provided by the game developers thus far? I find for a game based on bringing thousands of players together, they do not spend enough time on giving us better tools and features to create the communities of players. A simple chat channel and tabard is just not enough. Let me know what you think about where Dev’s could improve this part of their games.

Been running communities since Starcraft, though that was all friends in the same state, it amounted to the same thing. Went Online with Tribes and joined a great group of people from Strategic Alliance [S=A] where I was appart of running one of the largest tribes in that game. Everything from competition to casual play, like the previous posters we were in several games by the ned of it, and even a core of those members still create guilds in games such as City of Heros, Lineage II, WoW, LOTRO, ShadowBane, Guild Wars to name but a few.

In short I have seen alot of good and bad. I have been in the very small to the very large guild and each offers a unique expierence, I have worked my way up from a lowest grunt to leader, and started groups from scratch as the leader. I hate the word guild mostly becuase it doesn't explain what we do. We build communities, call it what you want.

The greatest thing that comes from community (Guild/Clan/Tribe/Gang/Superhero team) is being appart of something bigger than yourself, and knowing that you are surrounded for the most part by people who share your interest. It is being able to play with people who you can actually trust in game, and sometimes it will lead to real life friends. Thats the reward of the Guild.

What disappoints me the most is the lack of community building tools in most games. I'm not sure who decided that a chat channel, a tabard where all that guilds needed to organize themselves, but I really hope developers start to innovate in this area agian soon. The Cookie Cutter is broken and needs to be fixed.

Great reply to my post Greg, or at least I think it was to my reply you are reffering to.

I think the idea has to start from the bottom with the questing system. You have to start with a mindset of having two catagories of quests. Replayable static quests, dynamic triggered quests, and build these questing hubs around a believe them with in the game world. To define replayable static quests means thousands of players could complete the quest and it would still make sense for others to complete it.  Create a few pieces art assets to reinforce the idea of the quest, track the amount of players completing the quest and apply the art assest as needed to keep the idea feasible.

A fantasy example of this would be a Miller in a starter town who requests stacks of wood to run through his Mill which he sells to the local economy and sends to a larger town down the river. He would give you a reward for bringing him stacks of wood. The art assets you would need is the Mill on the river, the Miller himself, a barge, and maybe a few workers, also a storage area that shows stacks of wood. When the server launches the storage area is empty, after every hundred or so times the quest is compeleted the storage area begins to fill up with art assest, basically stacks of wood. As more and more of this quest is completed through out the day you start to see barges leaving down the river with loads of wood. Now 2 months after release a new player comes to the area and it is pretty deserted as far as other players, but it still makes sense that this guy needs wood and why. Go the next step and tie in this resource gathering into an economy of sorts and it impacts the world.

This is the basic idea, and could taken to a much higher level, but what is required is creating content knowing the world is impacted by it, and how to make it seem to make sense to anyone that takes the quest.

I signed up on you forum, so I would love to discuss it more with you there if your willing.

First I wouldn't call it end game content. I believe it is where the game actually begins, but to stick with the theme of the original poster, here is my opinion.

The gameplay we are missing in all of the MMO's is the player impact on the world. In almost every game out there, ( there are a few exceptions, bare with me) the impact of a player or thier commuinty (Guild/Clan/Gang) on the game world is zero. The quest you complete to save a farmer will be there when you roll another hero. The quest to save the village from the dragon, is never destroyed by the dragon no matter if you finish or not. The worlds are very static. I know the developers have had to wait for technology to allow them to do more things, but the next step is a Dynamic world, a living, breathing world, that reacts to the players actions for better or worse.

 If you remember in Pen and Paper games there was the one person who always made sure the world was effected by the players, the GM made sure to note the actions of the players and rewards or consequences of those actions. They burn a villiage looking for witches, when the come back in a few months nothing but charred buildings. They failed to save a princess, well she is gone, sacrificed to some evil god. To sum it up in one word we are missing Immersion. Imagin for a moment a Dev whose job it was to watch the actions of the players, and then deform the world into accordance with those actions.

Now the games so far have given us some good times, but what is on the horizon is so much more, think of it this way, way back when, Pong was fun. We will look back on WoW sometime in the future and it will be a novelty like Pong.

Lets get to more practical terms though, what could be done in today's technology?

I would think the first step is Land deforming based on player wars. If, on a server the Alliance tears down Ogrimar, then for a long time that place should be a ruin, until the Horde players rebuild it. Front lines that move according to which side happens to be winning, kind of no mans land inbetween the pve areas which boundries move depending on captured control points. Warhammer Online is a baby step of this. Player owned structures in the zone between the pve areas, some of it pvp, such as castles, forts, bases, what ever. Housing also on the fringes of that zone so that if you are losing the battle, it could be possible for them to sack the zone. And always haveing a PvE area that offers everything a losing side needs to make a come back.

 Also to keep this fresh often have NPC armies invade the zones, if players kill to many Orcs, it triggers a backlash from the Orc tribes who come together and fight back. They stay fractured and fight amongst themselves until some threshhold has been met and they unite and attack back. Let one or two large NPC factions go to war and allow the players to get swepted up in it, or make them run and hide until it is over.

And all of the time that these things are happening the world changes, one month a mountain near a city, the next the city and the mountain are gone. Maybe an evil faction releases a demon and several cities are wiped completely out. It wouldnt be the same world as when you joined. The designers could use the month of development to slow deform the and according events happening the worls, whether be player triggered or npc faction triggered. Snow comes for a few months then spring and summer.

In the end it is a new style of play called PvPvD. Player vs Player vs Dev or mayber World. The entire system is tied to the actions of the players and the Devs.