All Posts by Razrius

Hi guys,

I am getting really bored with Fantasy MMO-s and I would really love to try out Tabula Rasa for its scifi setting.

If any of you could send me a trial key that would be awesome.

Please send the key to this address: mikko@freemail.hu

Thank you

Razrius

I have just picked up Mass Effect for PC 2 days ago and I have played already 10 hours with it, and I come to the conclusions that I haven't had the same epic feeling since I have played Kotor. 

I would really love to see a company make MMO's that scales to the level of Mass Effects story telling, and "questing", and I feel Bioware has a potential to do it.

They have a history of creating awesome RPGs in space and in fantasy settings, and I hope their MMO based on a new IP will live up to their standards.

I would really like to see proper meaningful quests and story weaved into an MMO rather than just the fetch and deliver / kill X mobs, get  Y item quest.

It would be nice to have finally an MMO where your decisions during a quest would alter your path, your answers and actions would change the result of quest which could open up new paths and close down others and directly alter your whole destiny. I guess some of us would like to make choices in games that affects our characters long term and irreversible.

To scale up a single player experience like you have in Mass Effect to an MMO is indeed and epic task and it would probably take 5-6 years of development until it will be releasable in a good polished shape, however I think the company who will be able to do that will carve his name into the MMO history ( and generate piles of cash with it) and I think currently there is only developer out there who has the potential to do it is: Bioware.

What do you think? Can Bioware scale up their MMO to the level of Mass Effect experience?

WoW: Feral druid

I am looking forward to play games what features a shapeshifter class.

I am running WoW on a Mac natively under OS X. There are quite some other players who does the same thing on my realm.

I would really love to see WAR run natively under OSX, but the thing is that there is only 1-5% chance for it due to advanced costs.

Naturally I will run Warhammer on Bootcamp XP, however it would be a big relief to not make me restart the computer on windows.

Originally posted by Size-Twelve

I want my gaming computer to have a 6 year life cycle.

- I should be able to play things on high settings right when I first get it.

- In two years I should be happy running things on medium most times.

- In 4 years everything on low, but playable.

- In 6 years almost completely outdated.

This is a similar cycle to what consoles follow and it's a major reason for their success.

I'm 30 years old now, part of the Nintendo generation. I've got a wife, rent, student loans, a retirement account, car payments etc. Developers for computer games need to realize the Nintendo generation just never stopped playing. We are still here. Just like this new generation will probably not stop playing. We tend to have deep pockets, but we can't just keep shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars every year or two for these rigs.

As far as MMO's are concerned, gameplay, content, and interaction are way more important than pushing the limits of some new GPU, and if the dev's don't figure that out soon they're going to leave an entire generation of gamers behind.

 

I am in about the same situation as you do. Close to 29, Wife, job, etc.

I am a game dev myself and I still think a great gameplay in a conventional style (graphics) would any day beat beating edge graphics with decent gameplay(not speaking about poor gameplay at all).

Despite I can afford to upgrade computers it is not a good choice for an MMO to "subtley" require you to update your computer to bleeding edge specs.

Imho for an MMO if you want to have a decent subscriber base for your new game the recipe should be the following: 
- create a great fun gameplay for casuals and hardcores players
- try to make the world as seamless as possible(open world) instances for dungeons only
- keep what was good and become industry standards (hint: WoW UI.)
- get rid of the things people didn't like in their previous game
- invent, innovate some new stuff to add fresh stuff to the market
- add great amount of content for the beginning
- make it look decent on the mainstream computers (great solution to use convetional graphics)
- then polish and fix bugs, then polish and fix bugs for 1 more year, then polish again a bit more.

That's what Blizzard realized and worked out greatly. And I am really happy that EA-Mythic with Warhammer is on the same track here.

It has a nice art style that sticks to GW's Warhammer IP. Will run extraordinary good on bleeding egde computers and probably it will be still very enjoyable on the mainstream gaming computers while it still looks good.

It has promised content for casuals and hardcores, it has new innovations, while keeping old working designs and it is less demanding on peoples rig. I am glad they realized that and not gone Vanguard/AoC direction that is destined to suffer badly by the core design failures(sacrificing gameplay and seamless world on the altar of bleeding edge graphics which imo still looks plastic photorealistic without a coherent art style)

last note I agree with a previous poster who said a more "cartoonish" world with old comics design could do a lot more justice to Conan's world rather than using bleeding edge.

Thats good. I am really happy Blizzard got rid of the scifi outlands scenario, and all that spacey thing crap.
It seems wotlk will be the very good old Azeroth with the proper epic fantasy feeling, give me back the feel of Black Rock mountain!!

I am 28 now, Outland was a letdown and disliked theme for me, and I am rejoiced for having back old fantasy environment as high end scenario.

First of all I should let you know I am working as a game dev.

I agree with you about beta testing (closed).That's the one where you should sign up when you want to help the devs fixing bugs and polishing game.

However open beta should be only counted as a marketing tool, especially when it is only up for 2-3 weeks before release. You only need to test the game for yourself and after a while you should(would be nice to) write a detailed review about what you like and what you don't like in the game and why. Then tell your friends wether the game is good or not and should they join you or not.

That way you can give valuable feedbacks to other players to have some kind of early insight into the game.

Most of the devs and publishers are aware of that open beta is priorly a marketing tool.
However you still help devs by stressing the server, so they can make last minute changes/fixes to ease the release, but the polish and bugfixing should be done in closed beta.

If anyone interested I can give some feedback on iMac's performance. I have just received a beta key yesterday and tried the game for myself for a few hours.

I am playing it on an iMac(bootcamp XP)
2,8Ghz, 4GB Ram, Ati 2600Pro(XT in disguise).

I am running the game around 40FPS in 1400x1050, in medium details. The game was able to run in 1920x1200 but got around 15-20 FPS on avarage so I rather turned it down.

Load time were less than a minute for me(1400x1050,Med resolution). Client was quite stable.

I am using the official drivers for iMac under XP, except the video card driver which is the very last one from ATI.

Mind that my XP is configured for gaming only. It is almost a pure XP with some performance tweaks(services and known performance boost changes). Service packs, DX, latest video driver, Antivirus, no firewall software as I have a proper hardware one tweaked. I haven't installed anything else on it aka video codecs, office etc, none of this stuff that would slow XP down.

I hope I could help with this feedback for iMac users or the ones who consider switching to a new one.(Mind the very latest iMac has a 8800 in it so graphics wise the performance would be awesome in 1920x1200)

have received a beta key yesterday and tried the game for myself for a few hours.

I still have to decide if I keep my preorder or not.
I am leaning toward to cancel it.

I am playing it on an iMac(bootcamp XP)
2,8Ghz, 4GB Ram, Ati 2600Pro(XT in disguise).

I am running the game around 40FPS in 1400x1050, in medium details. The game was able to run in 1920x1200 but got around 15 FPS.

Load time were less than a minute for me(1400x1050,Med resolution). Client was quite stable.

I have started the game as HoX, and I had no issues to survive and kill mobs.

The game misses something for me. The music chore is awesome one of the bests I have ever heard in a game, but for me the game itself misses it's epic mood. The graphics looks okay and nice but the photorealistic art just felt a bit plastic too me. I would have prefered more styled art approach with less photorealistic engine to have a better feel of the world. 

The combat system was okay but for me it felt as it is an invention in the wrong direction. I could use them all the time and it was easy to use however I am probably got so much used to WoW's 1 click 1 spell/ability activation that AoC's combat system felt like a bit of an unneccesary addition to combat.

Well I give the game a few more tries with a Dark Templar and a Tempest of Set, but currently I am not keen on buying the game. I was awaited a bit more from the game(hype, and the lack of proper new MMO after WoW), and for me so far the game lack abit of epicness factor of Conan world.

Hi there.

I just wanted to thank you for the fast report.
I have now a beta key thanks to you, so I can test the game myself and decide wether I like the game or not and I want to cancel 2 of my preorders or not :)

Hopefully it will be something fresh and exciting, playing WoW for 3 years burnt me out.

Cheers,

My bet is that they will instanced as their video stated the battle will be between 2 guilds and it will be set previously and no other can attack during that time.

So technically speaking they probably set an ID for both the defenders guild members and the attacker guild members to an instance of their battlekeep.

Perhaps I am wrong and they figured out how to place these battlekeeps in an open world where a 100+ people can quest and how to seperate them to not join the fray.

www.play.com offers the rhino.
www.game.co.uk offers the mammoth.

I ended up preordering too because I can't decide and a secondary account might be useful.

Both has its own coolness factor and both would fit very well RP wise with a certain character.

Demonologist or Tempest of Set on a war - mammoth I still can cast powerfull spells on it during a siege and have fun taking me off from that beast while I will be usefull for my guild tearing the walls of the enemy castle during a siege.

However a Conqueror on a rhino is epic. Rushing into the crowd and kill a lots of them with a big 2hander weapon and if they dismount me than enjoy my melee havoc.

We use Vista alot in our company (game development) and I say its a curse in the current state even with SP1.

I have tried some decent amount of games on it and I still prefer XP bigtime.

After using Vista on a beefy computer at work I just stick to XP as long as possible on my home computer which is kinda beefy too for better performance and stability and compatibility.

Herald of xotli or Dark templar.

Stygian Herald of Xotli or Aquilonian Dark Templar as main depends which one turns out to be more fun. the other will be alt.

I am also considering Demonologist.

Sorry, I posted the link before MMORPG.com put it on their main page. :)

Hi guys,

check the very new video of this awesome game:

http://www.tcos.com/downloads/xfer/The_Chronicles_of_Spellborn__Raznilof__A_Fine_Day_in_the_Midlands.wmv

This game is going to be really cool when it will be released, and it is already cooler than what we have saw for AoC with their 'unique' combat mechanics.

Though I still gonna buy and try AoC this game would definitely the sleeper hit of the year.

So enjoy the video.

I am not buying AoC. The art style just doesn't appeal to me much. I am not keen on photorealistic MMO-s.

Also to be able to play only human race is a big downer for me too.

I know in Conan lore it's a must however I like to play different races.

Rumors about the technical issues limitations zoning etc is a low point for me even. So I just rather play other random games until WAR will be released.

EDIT: I am also waiting the big silent hit of the year The Chronicles of Spellborn. Now they have a really nice art style, also made by Europeans so its a plus for me too as I am one of them :)

I agree with you totally.

People should check the videos that are recently posted. Class preview videos and such.

The game look really good on that and people should start to judge the game by the videos rather than thoose low res screenshot.

Also the style and art of the game seems coherent and really good so a big plus too.