All Posts by Torak

I'm in the trial but upgraded to a full account the other day (don't know how that shows up)

Mining is in fact a drag.

Ballazzar   needs new skills and ships so he blast other people to bits.

City of Heroes

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Scriar

10 hours a day is more than enough, the majority of players tend to play at the most 6 hours of any game from what I have seen, and I believe thats on and off not everyday. 10 hours is a bit excessive if you are playing those hours each day.

 

And who decides what is excessive and what is not? Even if I myself don't play that much in a day, who am I to decide anyone else doing so is excessive and should be stopped?

In Korea, their government decides. In the U.S., I'd very much prefer my government stay out of it.

Koreans apparently need the government to hold their hands and tell them when to eat and sleep. At least, that's what their government has decided because a few idiots offed themselves.

I, for one, don't. And I'm sure the majority of U.S.  gamers would say the same.

Yeah I think what everyone is overlooking is that this is only in Korea. The US has no such restrictions.

Not that it matters, unless you are botting who can / will actually play anything for 300 hours a month?

Originally posted by redrum666er

Originally posted by Jefferson81

Originally posted by nomadian

 

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Originally posted by Jefferson81

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Originally posted by nomadian

 

 

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Originally posted by Waterlily
Could you please elaborate a bit on this. Where is this info from and how is the limit imposed?

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http://news.mmosite.com/content/2008-11-20/20081120005918847,1.shtml
This is just an Aion idea currently but for a 1 month card you can buy up to a max of 300 hours playtime. (I don't know if you can get around this via the addition of 3 hour/30 hour cards)

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Hahahaha, I will stay away from Aion then.
No game company is gonna tell me how much I can play.
I never were that interested in that game anyway. {shrugs}

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suppose that answers my question, but am I to assume you play over 300 hours a month?

By the way I should maybe say that maybe this doesn't 'impose' that limit just for the regular subscription that is the max number of hours.

 

What does it matter how much I play per month?

No game company is gonna come here and impose on my freedom to play as much as I want.

It is korean law that says that they can't play more than 300hrs each month...not a law created by a game company, but they do have to abide by it.
 

I don't even work 300 hours a month (I put in about 50 - 55 hours a week), I couldn't even imagine the sort of commitment one would need to have to play a video game for 300 hours a month.

I would think you would so sick of playing at that point that the choice of playing or throwing yourself out a window would be a hard call.

You're not even "playing" a game at that point, you have an issue if you clock anything even close to that IMHO.

Originally posted by spiveslude

Originally posted by Random_mage

Originally posted by spiveslude

There has long been an arguement in mmorpgs that a tank class should exclusivly be able to take a ton of hits with relatively little ability to dish out large amounts of damage.  Let us for a moment get into a philisophical discussion on the role of an actual tank in the real world(as a vehicle).  Tanks are categorized by tread wielding heavily armored vehicles sent to the front lines of battle to do what?  blast the enemy with heavy artilery fire.  Thats right guys, tanks have BIG guns.  Next time you use "tank" when talking about a mmorpg class or character type think about that.  This is meant to be kind of funny and aimed at the people that get mad with a heavily armored melee class hits them hard.

 

.. real world logic applied to a video game..

Let me know when you start shooting lightning bolts out of your hands and flying.. Then... we can change the "tank" to soemthing else.. sound good?

 

read my last sentence =)

Well the original "tank" concept for MMO's was built around the party role.  The "tank" or warrior usually was suppose to anchor the mob while the rest of the party (who were usually much more fragile) use their assorted abilities to take it out.

The issue was if the "tank" also had the ability to kill everything, it sorta made everyone else unnecessary. So it evolved into a damage sponge.It was all part of that original class interdependency they had going on back in the day.

IMHO with MMOs evolving into solo focus play games, the old class role system needs to be discarded and skill systems need to take its place. It would be nice to see a game with an actual "warrior" able to dish out damage was well as take it.

(Sorry if I knocked your topic off track there)

Originally posted by tarkin1980

No, you cant just build a larger turret for several reasons. First of all, the turret ring has to fit into the hull of the vehicle, obviously, and there are limits to how large you can make a tank's hull for logistic reasons (you have to be able to transport the tank on railroad cars, tanks dont drive themselves to the theatre of operations). Also, the more weight you put on a vehicle, the worse the power to weight ratio and general performance of the tank (Speed, range, ability to climb inclines). Another huge factor in tank construction is ground pressure (weight per track area). Too high ground pressure and your tank will get bogged down. To sum it up, there is a reason why super heavy tanks such as Maus and E-100 turned out to be a dead end in tank development.

Ok a few things here.

You don't need a larger turret to house a larger main gun. The M1 was originally a 105mm main gun the M1A1 upgraded to a 120mm main gun. The tank itself remained exactly the same. I crewed both.

Same for the German Leo 2. Origianl 105, upgraded to 120mm (same make and manufacturor as the US main gun)

Also you can mix and match to a point. Technically speaking the German Leo 2 is a Med class hull with a heavy turret thereby reducing the weight a bit but later changes to the armor reduced this advantage. Both the M1 series and the Leo 2's are considered extremely fast / agile for MBT's.

Now match that up with the T-72  T-80 series with its 125mm main gun and its relatively small turret.

Bigger main guns isn't always better. Accuracy plays a huge role. Russian made fire control systems are easily a few generations behind NATO. Russian battle doctrine calls for volley fire not individual accuracy unlike NATO which relies on much smaller units that are able to survive and hold off much large numbers on their own.

Also the Russian 125 does not have the long range accuracy of the NATO 120.

I have pics of both M1A1's and T-72's if you are interested. My tank killed 7 T-72 / T-55's and a few BMP's / BRDM's back in 90 / 91 and we captured a few somewhat undamaged. PM me.

T-72 where very poor performers in battle. As T-80 and T-90's are just upgrades, they are not really all that IMHO. No actual "official" info exist on a T-95.

The Russian "auto-loader" is notoriously unreliable and clocks much slower then a human loader especially if there is a malfunction, the main gun rounds are not easily accessible by the crew.

Without a doubt there is only one product that will completely dominate MMORPG's commercially and that is Warcraft. With over 2 and half million expansion boxes sold so far (about 2 weeks) in our market it is unquestionably the most successful game of 2008 in terms of sales and subs.

However, IMHO it had no real competition at all aside from a few pale clones and half baked, unfinished junk that was thrown out at the consumer.

WoW will reign over MMO's until someone wakes the f*ck up and smells the G*d damn coffee and stops making these f*cking fantasy level treadmill rat grinder clones!

The game is not listed on the "games in development" list.

The games homepage has plenty of screenshots and a trailer

www.globalagendagame.com/Home.html

Originally posted by Rekindle

Originally posted by Torak

 

Well I'm not gonna bash on Vanguard to much as I enjoyed the game myself BUT last I heard they were at the 40-50k sub mark. At launch the game had over 200,000 accounts created. Sigil the original maker went bankrupt and sold the game to SOE who put it on the "station welfare system". Hardly a good example for "why we should get more fantasy games".

Why is it DAoC dead while UO lives on? Mythic killed it with changes. Same for EQ vs AC. Why does one live and one is dead? One didn't change at all.

See where I'm going with this? The age of fantasy is over. Sure you can point at technical reasons many of those games died but the same can be said of the handful of Sci-Fi. Like Tabula Rasa or Face of Mankind where launched in a high quality state? Please. They were technical turds. 

The fantasy games that did it best and kept it up are still alive today. The rest is just companies slinging sh*t at the wall hoping something will stick and all they are doing is remaking the same thing over and over with different skins.

Why does EVE continue to grow at a healthy and sustained rate over the last 4 years while its fantasy peers drop like flies? Its overly complex, its slow paced, its punishing and it requires a lot of time.

  EDIT

Here is a list of MMORPG's with the genre marked on them. The amount of fantasy MMO's makes your head swim.

www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm

 

 

The games continue to succeed despite your opinion because people don't share it.  You suggest that games are a failure because of your sediment towards them.  Np in expressing your opinion but some of you are trying to put forward your opinions as fact and then get puzzled as to why the games are succeeding despite it.

WoW reminds me of Walmart and I try to avoid both places....but despite my opinion on those places people continue to go there.

Well I'm not going to play battling epeen with you over it, fact of the matter is WoW dominates the Fantasy MMO market and until devs get away from it, nothing will change. 

Originally posted by Rekindle

not that it matters what I'm playing but Eve and Vanguard.

Last night I had a dream I was playing UO again but then in my dream I had to page a GM and then I realized I didnt want to anymore.

Well I'm not gonna bash on Vanguard to much as I enjoyed the game myself BUT last I heard they were at the 40-50k sub mark. At launch the game had over 200,000 accounts created. Sigil the original maker went bankrupt and sold the game to SOE who put it on the "station welfare system". Hardly a good example for "why we should get more fantasy games".

Why is it DAoC dead while UO lives on? Mythic killed it with changes. Same for EQ vs AC. Why does one live and one is dead? One didn't change at all.

See where I'm going with this? The age of fantasy is over. Sure you can point at technical reasons many of those games died but the same can be said of the handful of Sci-Fi. Like Tabula Rasa or Face of Mankind where launched in a high quality state? Please. They were technical turds. 

The fantasy games that did it best and kept it up are still alive today. The rest is just companies slinging sh*t at the wall hoping something will stick and all they are doing is remaking the same thing over and over with different skins.

Why does EVE continue to grow at a healthy and sustained rate over the last 4 years while its fantasy peers drop like flies? Its overly complex, its slow paced, its punishing and it requires a lot of time.

  EDIT

Here is a list of MMORPG's with the genre marked on them. The amount of fantasy MMO's makes your head swim.

www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm

Originally posted by Rekindle

You're still wrong. People do play most of those games......games don't last over a year if they're not making money....otherwise, yes they're a failure.  Somewhere there is a revenue vs. cost scale which results in profits (not losses). 

I bet many of those games have as many subs if not more than EQ1 had at its peak. I think that people think games are dead or suck or a failure because they dont have a Blizzard logo on them.

I dont really like EQ2 but I certainly would not call it a failure.  Vanguard's population is low but climbing.  DAOC is a gen 1 (1.5? ) mmo and has made more money the last 8++ years.......

come on.

 

What do you subscribe to right now?

Originally posted by bobfish

Why should a company invest millions in a Fantasy MMO when no one plays them!

• AoC
• Vanguard 
• Fury
• Asheron's Call 
• Irth Online 
• Asherons Call 2 
• Dark Age of Camelot 
• Istaria 
• Roma Victor 
• Dark and Light
• Shadowbane
• Archlord
• EQ2
• Dungeons and Dragons Online
• an unknown number of Free to Play games

With the exception of World of Warcraft, they are all pathetic failures as far as number of players go. Please show me any justification for making a big budget Fantasy MMO?

Though, on the bright side we do have:

• Earthrise
• Fallen Earth
• Huxley
• Jumpgate Evolution
• APB 
• Champions Online 
• Global Agenda
• Vampire

I would expect only SWTOR to have any serious number of players, with JGE and ER falling in a long way behind it and the rest being pathetically small.

There, fixed that up a bit.

Although I somewhat disagree with the "bright side" list. IP's are destine to fail.

Originally posted by Aeroangel

I love the fantasy theme, but I don't feel like anyone is really doing it right yet

The 3,000 tries at generic fantasy grinders wasn't enough? How many more "visions" are we going to need to endure. Everyone who wants to play this fantasy crap is playing it already. On top of it anyone who is playing this stuff is more then likely playing WoW, seriously why play anything else when it comes to level / class based fantasy grinders?

Look at any other video game genre, its not fantasy that dominates it's modern and assorted SciFi. The problem with the MMO genre is the devs have been superglued to making their version of EQ for 10 years now. Enough already, its time to move and call it a day with the EQ and its bastard offspring WoW. They have the market covered.

Time to move onto some fresh unexplored ideas. The genre is STILL wide open. (I originally wrote that 3 or 4 years ago and it is still true today) because no one has moved on.

We have had what 2 or 3 half hearted attempts at Sci-Si games in the last 5 years vs how many turd fantasy games?

Seriously someone post me a total of the amount of fantasy games launched in the last 5 years. (and I'll show you a list of which 90% of it is crap)

How many more ways can you kill 10 rats? Its time to move on with some creative ideas and some actually interesting worlds. WoW, Vanguard, EQ, EQ2...blah blah blah...its all the same thing. You whack your rats, you level up, you play your endgame.

I also agree that IP's are definitely the WRONG way to go. IP's will never live up to expectations. Don't believe me? Log onto SWG, Matrix, Conan or DDO. IMHO LotR is about the only one that held any ground but its level of success, well, its pretty good...for a fantasy grinder but lets put it this way, they never had a problem with the amount of servers they launched with (10)  

Originally posted by Xara

Well, I for one will never buy another NCsoft game....ever.

Just out of curiousity....why is that?

• They made an unprofittable game so they are shutting it down. (good business sense)
• They are offering the current players a very nice package of benefits (trying to take care of the customer in light of the situation) 
• They got rid of the Bozo, "Spaceman Spiff" who was responsible for the entire mess the company has gotten itself into the last 6 or 7 years over here in the western market. (more good business sense) By the way anyone who thinks ol' lord brit just up and left on his own is dreaming. This has been brewing for months.

Did you subscribe to TR?

Originally posted by grunty

No one cared.

Yeah but the game was a piece o'shut. My wife played it for about a week back in 2003 if memory serves. It was difficult to believe the same people who made the Sims made the Sims Online.

That doesn't mean its not a viable idea.

 OP, I would think a lot of the social games releasing are sorta "Sim" focuses. MMO's as they are today are turning into dinosaurs. The age of the fantasy rat killer are at an end.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

Originally posted by Meridion

So in my book, this is a healthy thing and something that we, the players, can only profit from. The only way for pay to play games is down the "quality games, no ripoff" alley, because everything else will be smashed by the "free market" bat and hopefully, shut down.

 

I would have to disagree with this statement to a degree. Seeing big-budget developments (such as TR) close down barely 12 months after release is going to send out a warning to other potential developers.

The MMO market is a strange beast. It has a stand-out market leader in WoW that gobbles around 85% of the P2P market, and yet the majority of the community laments that it is a 'bad' game. Developers don't know what the masses want, because the masses can't decide. You just need to look at the constant debates on this forum for proof of that. The phrase 'you can't please all of the people all of the time' is never more pertinent than when applied to MMORPGs.

Totally agree with that zayne.

TR's failure along with the everything else that happened over the last 4 years in the long run is going to kill this genre, at least here in the west. Worse case is western companies totally give up on MMO's and all we will be getting in the future is localized versions of the latest Asian "hit".

It's pychotic how WoW continues to grow (after this new expansion it s looking like the NA/EU numbers are going to jump) while forum trolls like us moan about how horrible it is and yet everything else is dead, dying or just kinda rolling along.

I wasn't a subscriber to TR, I did play it a launch though and just did a free trial that ended about a week ago. I didn't think is was all that bad,  not to the point that this community ripped it apart.

I don't think I've read more then a handful of positive post about WoW in ages but if you log onto many of these other "wonder games" they are deserted. Only a handful have any real populations.

Is the western market going to turn into a secondary market for MMO's? Thats the question I am wondering about. Is the future of the market going to be "Aions"? Games launching in Asia then later, here in the west when / if they get around to it. Lets face it, the level of success that western made games have had in the last 4 years, you would have to be a real risk taker to want to get into this market.

I didn't purchase any "new" MMO's this year so nothing really disappointed me. It was actually a good year for me as most of the games I played had major improvements. I guess its in the eye of the beholder and where you spend your time. All the "new release chasers" will continue to get burned time after time.

I was greatly amused with the AoC fiasco though. I think the AoC fol