All Posts by Elikal

Originally posted by khartman2005

 

Originally posted by Baseline

Me. The Guild Leader of The ßox, on Deathwisper, just got banned very quickly. Basically, a GM just sent a generic PM about exploiting, and kicked me off without answering my inquiry as to why exactly.

My guild has spent the last week hardcore grinding coin in Keshatta and pooling all coin and resources to me to get our guild city completed with all walls as of just yesterday.

I had over 60 gold in my inventory today, pooled from our guild of nearly 100 people and friends of the guild, all grinding in raids in Keshatta with us. Yet the GM still banned without a specific explanation.

The bottom line here, is that Funcom just banned me, the leader of the guild, because a lot of our enemies on the server petitioned in saying I was exploiting, duping, etcetera, and they probably looked at how far we were with the city and how much gold I still had and believed it.

GG funcom. You said that it's going to be a guild effort to do this. You said that everyone would have to pool their resources to the guild leader and architect (both me) to make the cities / sieging happen. We did that, and you banned the guild leader.

Not surprising. Other people on the server have had their gold purged and bans have been handed out very quickly to anyone with any real pooled progress.

Here's a tip funcom, learn to differentiate between Dupers/Exploiters, and people pooling their endless hours of hard work into one person.

I won't be buying this game again, and you just pissed off about 100+ very vocal people that pooled a lot of resources, time and coin to me. You've also spread a lot of negative publicity about your game for how quickly you ban and  ruin a lot of peoples pooled efforts.

Funcom has the logs of those that exploited, I am sure you and the rest of your guild were exploiting and now your paying the price.

 

I hate cheaters with a passion and am glad you and your kind are being dealt with.

Wow I thought Spanish Inquisition and Nazis were past. You would have fit there well. And NO I am NOT taking THAT back under any circumstance. Its deeply viscious to sentence ppl like that without a hint of proof. Dispicable.

Originally posted by jackdupp

Originally posted by Gazenthia

Watching this whole thing unfold has been more entertaining than the game by far. I have even gotten my friends and family, who don't even play AoC themselves, to read some of these fanatical replies made in defense of FunCom. We really, honestly, burst out laughing and proceed to talk about it long after we have left the room.

We have started making jokes using the zealots replies as a base now too. The fanatically disturbed so obviously intend to force their will and vision upon others, that their comments wind up being comedy gold. My moms favorite wise-crack usually has something to do with the devs post about the demo community.

Like I said, so much more entertaining than the game at this point. :D

I found that alot with hellgate too.. damn forums were addictive

Thats the spirit, guys! :D

Its like Statler and Waldorf in the Muppets, haha.

S: Bravo! Oh, bravo! Wonderful! Just wonderful!
W: How would you know? You're not even facing the stage.
(Statler turns around.)
S: Why did you have to tell me? I was having such a good time!

Very interesting interpretation. Would explain at least some issues ppl have. It would indeed be bad if this was intentional watering down. I still feel it was their dumbness. Console players and PC gamers just overlap too little to make a Hybrid pay in the long run, but thats just my POV.

Following this forum is really fun. In a way. It is SUCH a wonderful Vanguard deja vu ALL over, heh. Save that I stopped believing in the ability of humans to LEARN. It was what the Vanguard launch taught me, so when I was depressed about human stupidity then, I am amused only now.

Same old all over. Shit its the fan, but fanbois tell themselves the smell is acutally roses. Typical reply, as once so now: "there are no issues because I dont SEE any". Yes, there is no dying of species either, becaus heck, I never saw it happen before my eyes! Ignorance must be bliss indeed.

Just look at this forum. Do you really, seriously think, if so MANY post of issues, they are ALL just stupid hatebois? I mean, come on, seriously. You really should try to snap out of this defensive egomania-barrier and try to ACCEPT there MAY be a problem. Or many. The person who tells of an illness MAY acutally be a diagnostic, trying to help, ya know, and if he says there is a cancer in your guts it doesnt help to pretend there is none, because you cant see it.

Originally posted by cptcurage

AoC is nothing but a gank fest.

I am a huge Conan robet.Howard fan and know the lore top to bottom and all I have to say is AoC is a huge gank fest. Days go by when I want to play and when I log in someone is swinging at me.--All this and on an RP server too boot! There is no difference in rules from an RP server to a full PvP server toons all round here.

This game sucks because I cant get the chance to explorer or even simlpy talk to people. They just start swinging all the fracking time. I killed my fair share but to be honest, I dont play games to get fustrated so guse who?

Age of Conan sucks balls.

You cant have my stuff as I'm back to playing a real gank game like L2.

See ya dont wana be ya AoC.

 

Wow, I have been to L2 a while... if a person who likes L2 says AoC is a gankfest, I guess THAT has some weight.

Originally posted by talif

 

Originally posted by Bladin

If i wait in queue for a gm to assist for 4-5 hours, then the gm doesn't respond, i don't recieve a msg saying why, or anything of the sort.  while recieving updates that im going to be helped, and that i'm getting closer to being helped.  When actually i'm not.

Oh you forgot don't log out because when you do you have to petition again because you have to be online for them to help you atleast that is what they told me LOL. So you are forced to stay logged in and waiting.

 

 

Great system btw i love it ...... NOT

Thanks for sharing, it take some deal to accept what one loved isnt as we hoped. But take your flamesuit now, heh. We all know whats coming.

Originally posted by DrowNoble

From what I read it is clear to me that the person who posted that editorial either (1) never actually played or (2) played in early beta.  Since most of what he says is incorrect, exaggerated or down right lying.

The game is not heavily instanced.  Like EQ2 it will make a copy of a zone if there are too many players in one.  Some quests lead to doors that, like City of Heroes, lead to an instanced quest.  This far from "heavy" as the editorial claims.  In Tortage (starter area) the night quests are instanced.  The day quests are not but some zones are barred unless you have a quest to go there.  Due to the numerous quests in Tortage, this is rarely a problem being unable to go into a particular zone.

The graphics are consistent from zone to zone.  Not once have I come into a zone and seen the graphics suddenly take a dive in quality.   This isn't EQ1 where you have "new" zones and "old" zones that still use 1999 graphics.

Experience from kills is NOT the substantial part of the leveling curve.  That statement clearly shows that the writer of the editorial does not know what he is talking about.  Questing gives vastly more XP than grinding.  Heck simply finding a new respawn location rewards more XP than killing 10 mobs.  You surely could grind if you wanted to, but the XP from quests really can't be ignored.  In addition, the group quests that he claims "can be quite soloable" well... aren't.  If I have a group 3 quest and it's even level to me, I can't solo it ... period.  I can solo in in 3-5 levels probably, but by then it's gone green and not worth as much as before.

Epic zones the mobs have higher health yes.  However, the claim of no better rewards is false.  I've done many epic zones and I've found that the number of green drops increased.  Instead of getting numerous "frayed circlet", I would get the grounding, sagacious, etc types instead.  So tells me he only did 1 or 2 epic zones and got unlucky on drops.

The chat options do matter as sometimes they will lead to quests depending on what you say.  The GPS system is rather nice, but you still have to actually find and kill the mobs in the "kill X critters" quests.  The game just gives points you towards where the mobs are, but they aren't always exactly at X marks the spot.  Some mobs wander, beast mobs run off to kill prey (rabbits, etc).

The limited inventory isn't a problem since "loot" goes in one inventory, quest items have their own and resources have another all to themselves.  In addition you have one bag slot that lets you equip a bag for more "loot" inventory slots.  This feature I absolutely love as the quest items and resources I gather aren't taking up my inventory space.

So in conclusion I can safely say the the author, Jarno Kokko, quite frankly is full of stygian poo.  Mr Kokko try actually playing the live game before you write a review on it, mmmkay?

Sorry to say, but how are the probabilites? if a professional reviewer lies, he and his site is sued, if you lie, nothing happens, so given that threat, how likely IS IT, they tell false facts?

Let Funcom OPEN their forum for ALL to read. Before I believe rather those who say they have something to HIDE than those who say all is good and cool. Why hide, if it were so? I wont bet on who of you tells the truth, but all probability and logic points one clear way: a growing catastrophe in Hyboria.

Or him: www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/183205
Is he lying too? is everyone of the more and more people posting negative all lying hatebois? How probable is that? You believe in conspiracy theories too? No Sir, where there is smoke there ALWAYS is a fire  SOMEWHERE, and gawd THAT forest is bright aflame somewhere given the smoke showing ALREADY.

The venerable game site YouGamers, made a well balanced review of 3/5, but also revealed some dramatic catastrophic details around AoC, potential customers need to know, before chosing where to put their money. Instead of mere opinion, here you may read some hard FACTS, and then make you OWN opinion, instead of just blindly crying "yay XYZ gave 90%".

LINK: www.yougamers.com/previews/18859_age_of_conan_first_impressions/

"The communication also failed due to the completely closed official forums. That's right - you can't even read the forums unless you have an active Age of Conan account. Funnily they even "banned" all the accounts created using preorder product keys that couldn't fit into the botched Early Access - so not only were you unable to join the game with your friends, you couldn't even read the forums. I'm still baffled by the motive behind all this. I can understand limiting posting privileges to paying customers, but is Funcom so afraid of negative comments that they have to hide what players are saying about their game from prospective customers?

Then came the blunder of the year. Eidos and Funcom managed to ship a faulty batch of EU Collector's Edition boxes at launch with non-working product keys. No word on how widespread the issue was, but in any case it took Funcom more than ten hours to publicly acknowledge the issue on the official forums, and most people are still in the customer support email queue waiting for working keys. The related thread on the official forum has over a thousand posts by now, and that's only from people who already had a working Early Access account - those who just bought the CE and were unable to create their account couldn't even read the official forums to find out what's up - let alone complain. The official community page still has absolutely no mention of the problem, and the whole site feels like the work of a PR agency.

Funcom also appears to fail in other ways at MMO Communication 101 - If you nerf something, you put it in the patch notes. Period. Players will find out either way, and if you didn't tell them, your forums will turn into a pool of hot magma. The game is just a few days old, but they already managed to sneak in couple of nerfs for some of the most obvious balance issues. What annoys me is that they did not mention the changes anywhere. "

...

"While Age of Conan is, at times, very beautiful, it's also maddeningly inconsistent. The visuals are best described by a single word - "uneven". There are places where you can take postcard-quality snaps, and there are places where you see something that looks like it was lifted out of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and then made uglier. "

"Far more fundamental issue is the design decision to go instance-happy. Age of Conan is heavily instanced and zoned. ...  Same goes for constant, if short, loading screens - heck, when you are resurrected, even by your group member, you get a loading screen before you are on your feet. "

"The content also has another fairly annoying issue. Many quest-related points of interest inside zones are designed with a single person in mind. Should you wish to level up with a group of friends, or happen to the area with several other people doing the same quest, you will run into problems. While mob kills are credited to everyone in group, looting quest items - either off mobs or off the ground - often isn't, and you will end up waiting for quest respawns a lot."

"Experience from kills is split evenly in group without any grouping bonuses, and as experience from kills is a substantial part of the expected advancement curve, group leveling will run you into trouble as you run out of quests and have to resort to grinding - all because the monsters you killed during your quests gave you only fraction of the experience you would have gained if soloing. Effectively the only way to level at the moment is to solo or duo. There are some "group" flagged quests that support 3-4 man groups better, but even they are not that difficult, and are often quite soloable. Some may consider this to be a good thing, and it's said that you can level to 80 completely solo if you choose, but in my book the poor grouping support is a downside.

Funcom did add an "epic" mode to all the adventuring zones just before launch and it seems the idea is to address this very issue by offering the choice of "solo" or "group" versions of zones. The problem is, whole Epic mode is very much unfinished, and the only practical difference is that the mobs in the Epic version of the zone got their hit points bumped up. That's all. Extra risk without any extra reward. "

"What disappoints me is the design choice made with questing - Funcom wanted to be "realistic" with limited inventory space, but at the same time they provide players with a full map and GPS system with dynamic quest updates. You can safely ignore all the quest text and just look up the arrow, head that way, X marks the spot and by the time you get there, it's usually obvious what you need to do. Quest items glow and can be seen a mile away, and even quests that ask you to "kill X mobs" show up on the map with clearly defined spawn area of the mob in question. All that text and dialogue is wasted as you can just click through the conversation (no, 99% of the time those dialogue options don't really matter) and zoom onwards based on your map and quest indicators. "

Given such fundamental faults I personally would rather give that 50% on a 100 scale, but a 5 point scale of course does not allow such nuances. I can only HIGHLY suggest to anyone who is interested in AoC to WAIT at least a couple of months and see the new reviews then.

Can anyone post some screenshots of the new spell effect pls. I am curious how they look.

It was my final nail on the coffin to quit. As long as no better char generation exists VG is beyond debate, whatever else they might change. Period.

Originally posted by neya

Positives

• Innovative Combat system
• Good character selection
• Nice graphics
• Nice introduction area for starting players which is immersive and well put together

Negatives

• Every zone, city and dungeon is instanced
• Zones are very linear not allowing free movement as you have to follow paths in most zones
• Cannot climb mountains or even navigate simple raised terrain unless there is a set path up a mountain
• Very system intensive and unless you have a decent gaming system you will find it very difficult to play; even those with systems who meet and exceed the required specifications are obtaining low FPS.
• Siege warfare is not immense as anticipated and is actually an instanced battleground of a maximum 48 players vs 48 players.  If your guild has 200 members; forget 3/4 of your guild being on the field to defend your guild city.
• Guild cities are instanced so are dead zones where nobody visits because they are difficult to get to
• No open world
• Very easy gameplay with little challenge
• Hardly any need to group
• Grouping reduces the amount of XP you receive
• mobs and quest items are on respawn timers and you suffer a lot of waiting around
• Death penalty lacks any impact
• Very few players met in each zone due to instancing
• Poorly constructed user interface
• Lack of inventory space
• Lack of weapon, armour and spell descritpions and statistics - you don't know what anything does
• Very difficult to progress your character as nobody knows where to quest from one place to the next
• Difficult to meet up with friends as you are in one instance; they are in the other.

Summary

Age of Conan will lack longevity for most MMORPG players as to re-roll an alt you will have to go through the same starting zone over and over again and do the same quests over and over again.  So it lacks variety and longevity from variety of different quests and starting areas.

The world is heavily instanced and lacks an immersive feel.  Zone hopping is in-consistent as you go from one zone to the next and are presented with a loading screen upon entering each instance.

Grouping at the moment is negative and has no incentive and with the instancing only adds to the difficulty in forming a group or meeting up with your friends.

Siege warfare where guilds take on other guilds is a big dissapointment because they are just small battlegrounds of 48 vs 48 so are very limited in what was originally anticiapted.

All hype but lacks substance

I rate Age of Conan 5/10

 

And so the truth surfaces, all shiny and no substace, as was to be expected. And also as expected the fanbois fight to preserve their self-deceit. Letting go self-lies is always painful, I see. But the truth will win, as it did in Vanguard. The lack of substance will indeed become evidently to all but the most hardcore rock-heads. ;)

Originally posted by Jackdog

I canceled my subscription today- reason no support or communication

I don't really expect anyone to care that I canceled but made this post just to let people whoi have not bought yet , do so with a bit of caution. If you have any issues with the game running do not expect Funcom to be of any help.

There is a reason they will not let you read their forums until you buy the game so buyer beware.

The patch 2 days ago broke the game for me. not just for me, for a lot of people.  We have begged for a indication that Funcom was aware of the problem on the tech forums and were ignored. There are a least a dozen threads started by people with the same problem, some of the threads over ten pages long. Not once has a Funcom moderator or tech person replied to any of the threads.

I submitted a email ticket to tech support over 48 hours ago and have recieved nothing but a auto reply.

If they fix the game to where it will launch for me or if Funcom decides to instigate some communication on the problem I may reconsider and  resubscribe.

 

I find it indeed VERY suspicious that you cant even READ their foum unless you have bought the game. Speaks volumns IMO.

All in all a democracy always produces only mediocrity. In the end you get a watered down result that leads to nothing, turns in circles and ultimately brings the most viscious qualities of men out, namely haggling, scheming, telling people lies to get their votes asf. You dont get greatness but both in good and evil, so it is a system invented by sheep people to make people like sheep. Mediocre and tame.

A dictatorship, or shall we say an Empire can create greatness, but both in good and evil. It is a false propaganda of the democratic systems to make us believe all dictatorships naturally lead to evil. Where the will of one person, or a small group is relatively undhindered, it can move great things, for ill or good. But it is at least progress, not that sullen, sheepish compromise of the smallest common sense. Democracy is essentially a form of the degeneration of will, where all great people are chained, people who otherwise would move the world ahead are levelled to a sheep-state.

People always think a dictator would deny their freedoms and stuff. But look at the precious democracies, are you really free there? The only freedom you have there is to chose between Pepsi and Coke, between Nike and Addidas.

No, a system but be founded on ability, on people working together, or MADE working together to create great things. They can still live their private lives as they want, thats of no matter, as long as they work for the common good of progress.

Compare the era of world exploration and space exploration. Why is it that we have no progress in space expansion? it is not so much a matter of technology, it is a lack of will the sullen, lulled masses in the so called democracies have. So many voices and the result is the worst compromise. But when Kings and Emperors ruled, people gave their BEST to expand our horizon! They discovered and founded America, sailing over a VAST ocean in nutshells! They DARED things, motivated by a harsh and antagonistic world. Today a thousands of lobbies have a say in everything, we are ruled by bureaucrats and paper-tigers, chained in mediocrity and without VISION, without GRANDEUR.

It is entirely false to presume an Emperor or King would be like a god, all in the air, free of conncetion to the people. Such kinds of rulers never held their place long. An effective ruler has his hierarchy, and thus a feedback to his people. He can never progress without them, and often the cruelty of rulers was just a reflection of the cruelty of EVERYONE in their era. Take Roman Emperors. Yes it was cruel to throw people to the lions. But that was the way of the time. It would not have been different in a democracy. It is a LIE to say democracies would be more peaceful, it is just that the era of Kings and Emperors was longer. If you look at history you see that democracies are EQUALLY likely to starts wars or commit hilarious crimes or suppress people. Was America no democracy when Blacks were mistreated as slaves? USA had no Dictator and still it commited such atrocities. (Not to blame US people, just as example.) Or was it NOT a democracy in Germany which VOTED Hitler, despite the fact it was CLEAR he would bring war and terror? So democracy did NOTHING to prevent wars or evil of ANY kind. That is a LIE and propaganda of so called democracy because they mask what is really going on, and lull us in false promise of having a say!

Yes, Kings and Emperors led us to blood and death. But heck, they also MOVED HEAVEN and EARTH, given the small matters of their time, while we with all our power sit like sheep and degenerate, satisfied with getting 100 years old safe and healthy with job and kids. We really make no use of the so called liberties of democracy at all. They are a great idea, but 99% of all people are not made for democracy. See how many ASK for penalities EVEN in a silly COMPUTER GAME! Humans NEED a whip to drive them on. Most do, maybe not all, but almost everyone. Those few who can motivate and govern themselves are a rare, exotic breed, and will ever be.

I dont think EQ2 and AoC player are very similar. I on the contray was made playingf EQ2 AGAIN after I had betaed AoC, heh. And I see once more EQ2 is WAY the superior game in every aspect to most other MMOs I have seen.

EQ2 and other MMOs are like wive and girlfriends. Sure, men like to try out some fresh, young, sexy looking girl, but in the end they always return to the very average looking wive they have, because she can cook and understands him. Thats how people always flirt with other MMOs and return to good old Mother EQ2 again - because of the inner values. ;)