All Posts by dekken

Originally posted by Gishgeron

 

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I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory

 

 

  Now, before I say another word...let me say that, Dekken, I actually do not mean to target you in any way by using your post as a quote.  I just found that THIS sentiment followed well with what I am about to say.  With that in mind, I'm gonna mosey right along.

  I have seen most of these threads here...and throughout ALL of this "bash/love" madness I have yet to see you people actually address the game from a design point.  When I say "you people" I mean the haters.  I am actually getting irritated at the hate being focused on stupid minor choices regarding graphics and loading.  Even if you really hate loading, its not the most important part of a game.  Its just a means to an end.  The real meat of the matter is inside design path, and the dev team has made some design choices I feel are way more important here than their decision to make the game pretty (though, I rather wish they had spent more time on actual content than pretty...bar fights would have been cool).

  AoC IS designed to be WoW.  Its designed to be EXACTLY WoW with some better visuals and a few nifty combat tricks.  They have stated directly that raiding and raid gear are gonna be the "be all and all" for the games gear progression.  I don't care if we all love that stuff (I don't), but I really hate it when we speak about Conan as though it were actually DOING something new.  Its not, in any way, shape or form, doing one single thing different as far as actual gameplay design goes.  Its following the Blizzard theory of continuation by running us through the stupid raiding treadmill again. 

  I hate them for that...because I was really loving the ideal of a blood soaked world behind the Conan IP several years ago.  The only way to really get that NOW is to join a FFA PvP server...AND then get your face stomped in at equal level to some guy who has more time than you for raiding.  I thought we all decided that raiding to PvP was stupid when we had to do it in WoW...but I suppose you all forgot all about that when you received those neato combat ticks and pretty trees.

  Even through that though, I don't mind that some of ya like it.  I also don't think its going to FAIL based on my particular side against it.  I'm very glad it has the response it does...I suppose...and even more glad the the PvP servers are getting slammed.  Maybe they will take the BLOODY HINT and rethink this whole "Gosh, raiding in MMO's is the BESTEST EVA" bullcrap we've been force fed for a decade now.

This is valid criticism, but I'm not at all sure it will play out this way. Granted, FC wants to siphon as many players away from WoW as it can, and there are bound to be certain similarities between the two. After all, WoW established something of an archetype as far as PvP/PvE hybrid gameplay goes.

Whether AoC becomes what you fear it is, or something really new depends on what happens in the next year. I don't think that it will become a "raid to PvP" scenario, and I'll be disappointed if it does. However, it won't change the fact that AoC's combat mechanics are far, far more player-dependent than those in WoW. Over on the WoW forums, the "class balance" bawling that has been going on since 2004 can never go away, because WoW PvP is essentially a glorified dice game. In AoC, your personal skill comes much more into play.

I play WoW, but unless AoC really drops the ball HARD, I foresee cancelling the WoW account within a few months. We'll see when the new wears off and I'm playing a levelled character.

WoW has millions of subscribers. So what? Britney Spears sells millions more copies of her garbage. Appeasing the lowest common denominator will give you numbers, but it's irrelevant to the discussion of quality.

I played probably 10-15 hours over the weekend. I saw a couple of bugs. I was spawncamped once. I restarted my client once to resolve a graphics issue in the Acheronian ruins (sp?). I never had a load screen that lasted more than 10 seconds, and even though my computer is newer, it's not top of the line by any means. I had a f****ing blast the whole time, and am in awe of the quality of graphics/sound. I love the fact that every single new player isn't crammed into the same instance of Tortage. Nothing detracts from the feeling of immersion worse than 500 people stacked on the same NPC, randomly jumping up and down and yelling infantile garbage to anyone who will listen.

Funcom made a good game. It's good to be critical, but be realistic about what you can expect. Some of you will bitch and moan until someone makes a game that gives you an orgasm and then cooks breakfast for you (and doesn't ask for cab fare). I suspect that when that game finally gets written, you'll start pissing about how it cooks your eggs.

I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory, and as with anything that heads in a different direction, it will experience the odd hiccup on the road to the final goal. It's a solid game that looks great and is eminently playable and enjoyable within the framework it was designed in. If you like WoW better, Blizzard is happy to keep your subscription active. As for me, unless there's a dealbreaker somewhere down the road, I'll probably let my WoW subscription lapse within a couple of months. But it will take a lot to make me go back to grinding arena points.

Originally posted by bjornarg

Just wanted to say that I like the open seamless world of WOW, especially when flying around in epic flight form.

And I like the sense of athmosphere and greatness when standing on a mountaintop in Hyboria, looking at other players from a distance far, far away.

I like the arena battles and BGs of WOW, although I would wish there would be world-pvp. I have yet to test the PVP minigames of AoC.

Also, I like the tense feeling of never knowing what to expect in the huge open landscapes of AoC. I only hope they do something about spawn-camping and quest-camping.

Come to think of it, I also like apples and oranges.

What was this thread about again?

logged in to say this.

I can find points of agreement with almost every single post in this thread. However, I lean most towards Sovrath's p.o.v.

Conan lore is steeped in anarchist, anti-social behavior and mistrust of your fellow man :)

If you want to go solo through life, you have a long row to hoe. You need allies until your strength reaches the point that no one can cross you. Will the player base be willing to do what it takes to make life miserable for those who want to disrupt the "way of life" in the game? This is supposed to be an MMO for adults - let's start acting like adults and bring actual maturity (not just tits and gore) to the experience.

As to a risk/reward mechanic for pvp, would it be feasible to tie "illegal" behavior in with experience gain? In other words, if you engage other players at a spawn point/zone entrance, you get a non-removable debuff that removes your ability to gain xp, and stacks as you continue to grief at that place. At some point, you can actually remove xp and hence, levels.

You could apply some other kind of debuff if the player you kill is more than 10 levels below you. Say, a slowing effect that makes you walk like you're in quicksand for 10 minutes. Something that makes griefing more annoying to the griefer than to the griefed.

Is this kind of thing implementable?

I've noticed no rp on bane, but i'm still in tortage. People seem to be just getting their bearings.

had some pvp on the white sands island though (whatever it's called)

Having a blast on Bane. Several interface hiccups, but nothing that i didn't expect for the first day. For example, chat has been off and on -- sometimes I can't talk at all. Also,  sometimes it won't put me out of combat after a fight. Also, no climb icon on the ladder on a night time quest.

I think restarting the game fixes most of it. A++ opening, FC :D

Gee. I guess I can mow the lawn after all. >_>

I won't be dropping my WoW subscription yet. I'm as excited as anyone about the open tomorrow (CE comes via FedEx today, I've been proselytizing guildies in WoW, etc.), but there's no way I'm going to jettison 3 years and multiple 70s just because some company promised their game was going to be good. I'll still login to WoW off and on, once the new wears off of AoC.

A lot of it depends on how hardcore you have to be to enjoy AoC. If I have to become a lolraider for 6 hours a night, 5 days a week to experience endgame, I'll go back to WoW, which is making 10-man versions of all dungeons.

Come to think of it, Blizzard must be pretty worried to be making the radical changes it has been making lately.

Anyway, see you at the gates tomorrow :D

What server are you guys going to roll on?

I couldn't find the beating-dead-horse icon, so this will have to do. Gads I wish this game would come out so we can stop bitching about the beta and start bitching about class balance xD

"I'm tired of all these vista nay sayers who most of the time DON'T ACTUALLY USE VISTA. They go and read websites, pick up on what some a-hole is complaining about and decide that HAS to be the truth."

I'm tired of seeing 40% of my memory being used on twaddle. I'm a Vista user, and it uses way too much resource for way too little payoff. Period. Plus, blue screens of death once a week (although that might be my fault).

edit: oops, quote messed up.

I have one buddy from WoW coming over hopefully. So don't forget to count him.

Originally posted by miagisan

Originally posted by Teiman

Some people have reported a speeup with Vista.

But I am exceptical with Vista. Wait like 1 years so drivers stabilize, and you get hardware that is designed for DX10, and switch.  You will need more ram, too , because Vista waste a lot of resources in crap.

and by that time windows 7 will be out....so waiting a year will be pointless

Yeah, I'm not spending another dime on system stuff until the next OS comes out. I hope it's soon.

My company decided to be early adopters of Vista -- all this hassle to get off XP, and now Vista will go the way of the dodo after a year. Priceless.

I preordered. I see where everyone is coming from, but the potential benefits outweigh the risk for me. Whether or not the NDA is lifted or there is an open beta matters little to me, and I think to the majority of players. People want some kind of guarantee of playability and/or quality before they plunk down their credit card, and I certainly understand that. However, there is very little in life that comes with such a guarantee. If you want in on a poker hand, you have to ante up and see what cards you get.

For me, the fun of being among the first to see new zones, quests, monsters, etc., outweighs any potential disappointment. Opening the box, installing the software, and logging into the world the first time will be, simply, fun (unless it's a total joke, which I'm betting against). If I get a week's worth of play out of it, it will cost less per hour than any bar, rock show, amusement park, or camping trip.

When I bought Fury, I was in no way prepared for the lagfest and lame pvp that followed. I stopped playing after 2 weeks and will never play again. But I still enjoyed that new-game smell and exploring the game (when it was working). I liked jumping off the platform and not dying when I landed. I liked getting shiny epix (for awhile anyway) and progressing through the ranks (for awhile, anyway). Cost: $60. Time played: maybe 20 hours. That's a bargain, even if there was no long-term value to the game.

Forum bitching is its own reward, I know. I come to gaming forums expecting to read criticism and debate, and they help temper my blind enthusiasm for new titles (I'm an easy sell). But after awhile, you exhaust the real points of debate. All the questions that can be answered without physically playing the production version of the game have been answered. There are certain people that would hate AoC even if it included a coupon for lifetime backrubs and sandwich making from Jessica Alba. They say "I won't pay a cent for it unless they let me play for free first and make sure it meets my expectations." Only in the world of MMORPGs is such an entitled attitude taken seriously. But it still makes a fun read, I guess.

You guys are right on all counts. The thing I miss is how the community used to come together and play. There was mass buy-in of the game world and it was heavily self-regulated. Realistically there's no chance to make that happen again on a large scale, is there? I wonder what it would take for FunCom to hire a battalion of  GMs devoted to keeping the world "real" or at least trying to herd the 11-year-olds and e-ballers into some semblance of order? Maybe a "hardcore" RP server that's heavily moderated? Meh.

I logged in to my GS account last night (I forgot I had started a new character last summer and put it away -- don't want to count how much I've been paying Simutronics for nothing over the last year). There were 586 people online -- about half of what I remember from the last time I played regularly -- and it was pretty dead. I couldn't remember any of the commands either :p   I guess you can't go back again.

If AoC delivers what it looks like it might, it'll still be a jolly good time for all. I don't want to come off as snobby -- I love all kinds of games, and have more days /played in WoW than I want to admit. I also communicate in lol's and O_o  from time to time. But it's good to see you guys know where I'm coming from on this. :D

As an old fart, I remember the days of MUDs and other primitive, eye-candy-deficient games. In particular, I used to love games like Gemstone III and IV. It wasn't so much the roleplaying aspect, although that was definitely a plus -- it was the feeling that you were in a dynamic environment where your actions mattered. There was more than one path to "success" in the game (e.g., a healer could stay in a safe area and heal for tips, or could go out into the field; a rogue could be a pure thief or an assassin, not just a lightly armored warrior class). There were painful consequences for bad decisions (the possibility of "real" death if your character died under certain circumstances, jail time for attacking players in cities, etc.). There was also unique player-designed weaponry and fluff, invasions on cities by vast swarms of high-level critters, and other diverse ways of interacting with the world and the other players in it.

All that seems to be gone now. If you're into PvE, it's just a race for end game and bragging rights on progression. PvP is reduced to a bunch of people with the highest level of gear playing roshambo with each other. Players with names like Roflcopter or DarthMaul666 swarm everywhere, clogging chat and generally cheapening the experience.

I don't really know what I'm asking for here... I guess I want a sense of vastness, of mystery. I want my actions to have consequence beyond a 30 second resurrection timer or corpserun (EVE gets this right, or at least as right as any game I've played lately). The graphics/hardware arms race is never-ending -- who cares what's big right now, it'll be outdated within 365 days. What matters is that feeling that you've actually logged out of RL and into another universe.

WoW had that x factor in the first year or so, even up to the opening of AQ. Unfortunately, it's gone now. Will AoC get it right? I preordered the CE on a hunch. I might regret it later, but you gotta keep hope alive.

I'm pretty sure no one under 30 (or maybe no one at all) knows wtf I'm blathering on about.