All Posts by woalCE

Originally posted by Jammaslam

I think it will end up being an excellent console mmorpg, and an average pc mmorpg.

I think the biggest thing working against this game is the Euro Dev team. They need some major US PR/Customer service boosts ASAP. It's gotten so bad one of the devs (out of frustration?) posted the following last week:

"Don't let the reading the forums get you down."

Most of us on the dev team have been playing the game, and its been nice to see the different things people talk about on the OOC channel and hear peoples feedback. Sure there are issues, sure there are things we wanted to achieve that we were not able to for initial release. But we still have plans for the game. Currently the forums tend to be a very bad snapshot of the game community as a whole. Especially during a turbulent time like an MMO launch, people are far more likely to go and vocalize negative opinions then they are positive ones. So if you are sitting here reading the forums and maybe have not gotten your copy installed, patched ready to go or played yet I encourage you to not lose hope and hang in there while you try the game for yourself. My personal play experience the people having fun outnumber the people complaining currently probably a good 10-20 to 1 ratio, and that's on a PvP server where most the complaining is about getting ganked anyway. Age of Conan is not for everyone, and we never said "Hey we want to be a WoW killer" that was never our goal. We hope you enjoy the game and we will continue to make it better for you the fans.

 

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The flow of info out of Funcom is TERRIBLE. They had a duping bug in the bank system so they took out banks/in-game mail for a week and a half.  Two days ago we had nearly back to back 4 hour downtimes for patches. The last of which brought the bank back online. Today we had a 4 hour down time today for this fix:

 

"

 

Update Notes - 29th of May

The following important fix is updated today:

Withdrawing cash from the bank should now correctly add coins to your inventory instead of replacing the already existing ones."

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Originally posted by Housam

it takes 250 hours to max out your charecters (on average)....so...it will take a while.
my friend is almost level 40 as well ...

Axem Ebonlore hit 80 using some repeatable quests.

I would love to play this as well.

Originally posted by Vhaln

LOTRO has no depth(complexity of gameplay?), no character customization, and only seven classes.  I don't know much about EQ2, but it's gotta be stronger than LOTRO in those areas.

Having played up to a 40 Necro in EQ2 (no big deal, but I spent about six months in the game due to me SOE Station Pass from SWG days), and now playing a 50 Hunter (the most vanilla of the lotro classes) I can say that whie EQ2 used to be the best looking game out there, if you're not into hard core raiding, LOTRO is probably more interesting at this point. The Book 12 changes just launched provide a lot more character customization options, including new looks, an outfits system, and an in-game barbershop for changing characters already created. The lack of classes isn't as much of an issue in my mind as with fewer classes comes specialization and definition of abilities. LOTRO isn't the stats tweaker/min maxer game that EQ2 is but I think there's just enough of that through the Traits system to provide dabbling. Crafting in EQ2 is much more involved, but in the end  I find that Eve Online and other MMO's provide a more rewarding crafting model. I'm always a heavy duty crafter/merchant going back to the MUD days, and somehow I still like the SWG model of offering more options to crafted goods, automated resource collection, though Eve's "invention" options would be a nice addition. I digress, from the game's we're talking about to "the game I want."

Install andl give both demos a shot when you have a few weeks. Compare them head to head, you're the only judge that matters.

http://www.lotro.com/trial

Originally posted by Uproar

I guess lots of activity AKA red hot servers will do that these days.  The fans (or paid workers) of every other gaming company come out of the woodworks.

So since you have access to server population numbers, can readers assume you are a "Paid worker?" Having a queue at log-in for your server, or something along those lines, is far from data to back up such a claim.

For the casual readers, my adivce?  Try the game. 

If you're a repeat visitor to mmorpg, you've probably transcended the ranks of the casual, and you certainly know about the big budget/popular titles like EQ2, WOW, Eve Online, LotRo, GW. If this is your first time on the site, and you're game shopping, your forum post will certainly miss the intended audience.

Outback is quality, pretty good food that you know you can trust your expectations enough to try without much doubt.  Joey Bob's?  Might be ok, might even be good, but who really knows?  It might make you sick.  You might find only goat on the menu.  EQII is a mainstay.  It is an Outback (or Applebees or any other major franchise).  Joey Bob's are everywhere too, but they disappoint more folks then they don't.   That's all you really need to know.

Why take a chance on a new restaurant, when a chain will be predictable? Wow, this is perhaps the most telling of your arguments. "We fear change!" Thank goodness most of the posts here seem to point out the inherent flaws when applying this same method of selection to new game content. It doesn't drive any sort of innovation and further says, "trying new things is dangerous!" Since when is a bad video game demo (as the large majority of games offer free trials, or better yet offer free-to-play options for new players) any where close to food poisoning? Try every last game out there! A gamer's time is their real vote, after their subscription fee, so why waste time grinding in the mediocrity of an Outback-Applebee's-Strip-Mall-esque game where the food always looks like it should be good, but comes at a cost to your health and the diversity of the entire market? Find the mom and pop game where the dev's are available, just like the chef walking out to the table to see if the meal is what you wanted.  Heck, try the popular games from smaller studios, like Eve Online, to continue the theme, a local restaurant that was so good it had to expand and expand again, where the expansions are free, like the bread sticks at Olive Garden, but you don't have to support a megalithic corporation like Sony and a multitude of mediocre products. Diversity breeds strength, and it's refreshing to see that gamers are starting to demand excellence over mediocrity. "Another hack and slash grind through yet another fantasy world? No thanks, I've got 3 of those in my neighborhood and they're opening a new one down the street."

P.S. What's wrong with goat? It'd only be bad if you went to outback expecting cow...

Originally posted by Gaylen

It feels like they over-emphasized getting those important features in and didn't prioritize making them really great. Maybe they'll get around to it eventually. But do I want to cough up $15 bucks every month on the hopes that they'll eventually get around to it at the same time they are trying to crank out the other highly-demanded regions of Middle-earth? I don't like the odds.

It's a great starter game for people that don't know there is better out there for the same money. Once people get their feet wet in MMO's and branch out into other great games, that will highlight what LotRO is lacking: originality, innovation, and the drive to make it great and not just good enough.

 

Actually I have some faith in Turbine after time in AC a few years back. Here's 10$/month saying it happens. We're 159 days out of launch according to my kinship logs. We've already gotten a content update in Evendim that's large than any dungeon instance EQ2 ever threw at me. I'm pretty confident that things will roll along for the next year at a solid pace of improvement and expansion. Having been a launch-day SWG vet I'm highly attuned to what you speak of, and pretty much agree with many of the points you've made on the areas where polish is necessary. I feel like the attitude and quality of developers in this game are met with a corp. attitude at Turbine that might just pull it all off. It's certainly not as bloated nor as marketing droid driven.

     I've always found mmorpg.com incredibly helpful on keeping up with the many developments in the mmo world. It's in this vein that I think the time has come for an update to the game ratings system. When there's a seven-way tie for first place (with a score of 8.3) and an eleven-way tie for second place there's a decided lack of clarity in the ratings system. It looks like things aren't sorted by alphabetical order, so I'm assuming another digit is already in use.  If we still see a basic tie between the majority of the AAA games, it would indicate to me, that most games are in the top 10 are equal and I just don't think that's the case at all. Perhaps the very nature of polling members who might not have ever played the game is part of the issue as well? It helps to have the text reviews, but would be nice if it displayed a bit more info about the level of playtime of the reviewer involved and perhaps an equally voluntary listing of current and past mmo  subscriptions? It'd make the already great data a bit more useful in my opinion.

    I'm willing to agree that much of the top games on the list DO IN FACT seem similar, having spent time in all of the following games at some point, save some of the GW expansions. Heck, looking at this list, I can't even really say that the current AAA MMO titles list is adhering to what's safe. Sure, there are tried & true concepts from offline games, but it's hard to say that Eve Online is much like Planetside or Star Wars Galaxies. I'd say the expansion of the market is evident in the number of fantasy titles offering much of the same.  

    In the list below it's interesting to me that games released ten years ago are stats-wise competitive with the games of the last year. Certainly there's something to be said for getting things right over time, but I think that some of the recent games raise the bar quite a bit across the board and a .1 difference ultimately reduces the utility of the rating system when it fails to produce a broader spectrum.

MMORPG Gamelist - Released
Game		Genre	Developer	Date	PvP	Dist.	Pay	Fee	Rating
	EverQuest II	Fantasy	Sony Onlin...	11/08/04				$14.99	8.3
	Lord of the Rings Online	Fantasy	Turbine, I...	04/24/07	?			$14.99	8.3
	Guild Wars Factions	Fantasy	ArenaNet	04/28/06	?			n/a	8.3
	Guild Wars	Fantasy	ArenaNet	04/26/05	?			n/a	8.3
	EVE Online	Sci-Fi	CCP Games	05/06/03				$14.95	8.3
	Guild Wars Nightfall	Fantasy	ArenaNet	10/27/06	?