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What Can They Possibly Hide?
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its great you using logic and all
but the fancy boy crowd wants you to use emotion so you may wish to reconsider
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
We don't know for sure the NDA will be dropped before launch. It would be nice to get an official response on that.
And the whole thing about "M" games not having open betas is just dead wrong. I was just in the Unreal Tournament 3 open beta.
I'm going to flip the question around: Why would Funcom not have an open beta? Launch is the ultimate time from a marketing perspective to get the word out, and if AoC is in a good state they are losing money not having one.
We do not know that the NDA will be lifted before release. They've not stated they will, and well, with no open beta...
1. Yep. AO proved that their servers needed to be stress tested better. This is one of the big reasons to hide stuff.
2.1) Incomplete classes. Many games (SW:G) did this. The classes could be improperly balanced, or some skills could be completely out of line. Since they're STILL redoing all the classes after the 'merge' and still finishing some, this is entirely likely to occur.
2.2) Incomplete world. High level zones barren/under popped/broken content/no content. DAOC launched with barely any content (one reason it was so smooth).
2.3) Broken mechanics, such as the combat system still acting wonky, or severe lag due to high numbers of players cause exploits to open up (dupe bugs etc).
2.4) Video performance issues in crowded areas (another big one). Different from server lag, video "lag" is a killer to reviews.
The ESRB rating doesn't matter for this. We're not buying the game from Funcom. A basic age check would get them off the hook legally (Enter your age, etc). And of course, they put up the "Rating Pending" and "Online Content: Rating subject to change during online play" logos, and they're set.
Waiting till the last weekend to find out your servers have 10 critical and complicated bugs that cause massive problems that will take weeks of recoding to solve (if ever) is a .... poor.... idea. PotBS I'm sure is still feverishly trying to solve their server lag problems they discovered in their two "open" stress tests, and in the open beta. But a month or so isn't much time to solve issues which affect the entire game's operation.
Actually, the 'fancy boy crowd' is using logic, and the "yea sayers" are all using emotion.
We rely on past experiences to formulate possible outcomes, and then using logic, determine which are most likely to occur based on those experiences.
All you not so fancy boys are doing is "<covers ears and eyes>LA LA LA ITS GOT TO BE GOOD LA LA LA" hehe....
Stop and think about it.
It's not a matter of them hiding something but rather the difference between hearsay and actual experience. I suspect that the engine is more demanding than Funcom anticipated or perhaps they thought DX10 systems would be more prevalent by now. It's one thing to read a review or forum post stating that a game is very demanding and another to have a playable demo where performance (or the lack of it) is obvious. I don't doubt that the game is playable on the average gamers rig, but to get that playable frame rate perhaps all that delicious eye-candy will have to be toned down or maybe even turned off. (Has anyone seen LotRO with the graphics set to the bare minimum?) I don't believe Funcom is attempting anything (too) sinister, they just think their sales will be better if they deny access to the bulk of their potential customers, at least until after they're committed. Fwiw, I didn't buy Crysis because the demo ran poorly. Oblivion runs 'OK', but if it's the benchmark against which AoC is set, I want to try the game out before I'll commit. In any case, I'm betting Funcom regrets putting so much emphasis of DX10.
Heh, I agree.
Even when I heard about DX10 and all the stuff it was about (improvements over DX9), speed was never mentioned as one of reasons to upgrade. It lets you do cooler stuff with water and clouds, etc. But as far as speed went, wasn't much to be gained. Sure, it lets you use programmable GPU's, but.... with the way games went about their business optimizing performance, this was not a step forward in my opinion.
And of course, it required Vista, which in and of itself, is a big performance hit (amongst other things).
When a game goes into open beta it is pretty much the completed release client that is distributed. The test is only a test of one thing really, how well the servers handle the load as most of the major bugs and faults should have been found months earlier and if not fixed at least added to the to do list and known issues posts to the community. The second and main reason for an open beta is to market the game, get people hooked and talking about it to their friends.
A poster above mentioned WoW having server problems during OB. It was actually a major DB problem which caused long lag spikes when looting, working with the inventory etc. and this fault became apparent only because Blizzard had an open beta. Can you imagine the crap that would have hit the fan if they hadn't had the OB and that fault only surfaced after release?
I suppose FC could throw a few hundred thousand bots into the game in order to stress test but this wouldn't come close to the reality of a few hundred thousand real players doing all the shit FC never thought of and as such wouldn't be an effective test.
I reserve judgement but by not having even a short OB they are sending a bad message to the would be subscribers and you do have to wonder if they are afraid of something similar to Vanguard's initial sales woes happening to them because of the bad press they would get from everyone and his dog posting on game sites just how bad it is. I salute FC for trying so many innovations with AoC but if they are indeed having problems then it would be much better to be up front about it, delay the release and let everyone know why. The players would respect them for that. If they release a bug fest then the damage would be imeasurable.
We do not know that the NDA will be lifted before release. They've not stated they will, and well, with no open beta...
1. Yep. AO proved that their servers needed to be stress tested better. This is one of the big reasons to hide stuff.
2.1) Incomplete classes. Many games (SW:G) did this. The classes could be improperly balanced, or some skills could be completely out of line. Since they're STILL redoing all the classes after the 'merge' and still finishing some, this is entirely likely to occur.
2.2) Incomplete world. High level zones barren/under popped/broken content/no content. DAOC launched with barely any content (one reason it was so smooth).
2.3) Broken mechanics, such as the combat system still acting wonky, or severe lag due to high numbers of players cause exploits to open up (dupe bugs etc).
2.4) Video performance issues in crowded areas (another big one). Different from server lag, video "lag" is a killer to reviews.
The ESRB rating doesn't matter for this. We're not buying the game from Funcom. A basic age check would get them off the hook legally (Enter your age, etc). And of course, they put up the "Rating Pending" and "Online Content: Rating subject to change during online play" logos, and they're set.
Waiting till the last weekend to find out your servers have 10 critical and complicated bugs that cause massive problems that will take weeks of recoding to solve (if ever) is a .... poor.... idea. PotBS I'm sure is still feverishly trying to solve their server lag problems they discovered in their two "open" stress tests, and in the open beta. But a month or so isn't much time to solve issues which affect the entire game's operation.
AoC is still being tested. Funcom has not yet announced anything. Indeed AC did not get its launch off seamlessly, the same happened to many games including WoW. AC was however a one time favourite, it was a great game for a while back then. WoW is still the market favourite today. So the bad history about a bad launch from AC is not enough to support a doomsday theory on Funcom. "Wait till ... 10 critical bugs"? That is a bit far fetched a conclusion. Please don't scarce us, its still too early to worry.I respect the freedom of Funcom to run its business. I generally understand the need to be cautious in opening the door to closed beta operations. Open beta is just one of the options available for product QC. Not necessarily the only option. One of the post up there has it clearly pinned down. If Funcom has 100,000 applicants available for CB, they can recruit from that pool, control the quality of CB testers, and still achieve the results of a grand open OB. After all, what do you want from 100,000+ testers? Stress test?
As for all those "Funcom is hiding something" conspiracy theories, or "Funcom will screw up" doomsday theories, come on. Its still everybody's guess at this moment in time. It can be anything. Your guess is good as mine, or as bad.
I know open betas shouldn't be directly compared to free trials, but in all reality they have become such for MMOs. There's enough competition in the MMO market that buggy games don't go over well anymore.
So if AoC is buggy like Vanguard and Tabula Rasa then Funcom is doing the smart thing -- exactly the issue.
I disagree with you on this. I have some gamer friends who have played MMOs in the past and they never even heard about AoC before I told them about it.Another friend who was playing WoW: never heard of it.
I didn't even hear about AoC until the LotRO beta when one guy in my warg group told me he was really excited about it.
AoC is overrepresented on these forums because the MMO community has been dying for a modern, decent PvP game to come out.
Of course it will be dropped from the release version, however, some NDA's still forbid you to talk about the beta and really never expire. I haven't seen one of those lately, but I have seen them.
SW:G held the NDA till 2 days before it released. It was reason #1 I hurriedly canceled my preorders (I was in the beta). That effectively is maintaining it till release (can't get a preorder or its goodies at that point).
1.) 100K apps is still just fluff until they invite them. If they wanted to assuage fears, they could announce that they're adding 10K invites a week for the next 5 weeks (for example). That would cause me and many other people to feel MUCH better about the game and the state of the servers.
2.1) I read in a recent interview about why the Assassin class hadn't gotten a preview (I believe it was the assassin, could have been another), and the reply was it was low on the list of changes to do regarding the merge. If they're still doing that, that means that the testing done on them is minimal at best. See SW:G's droid engineer and creature handler professions for examples. Plus, there is practically no information on several of the classes, and what there is is a year or two old (Druid of the Storm for example). One rumor started by a german report said that there were only 12 classes, not 14. Well, if that's the case, which two got the axe? http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Possible_Class_Changes So, the logical thing is they 'hid' two classes they didn't want people to create and play. Perhaps their new tutorial quest thing wasn't finished at the time, or some such... but most people wouldn't get to play those things in a review session to even get CLOSE to level 20 hehe.
2.2) I know that there are grinders out there who'll hit max level fairly quickly (EQ1, it took MANY months to do heh), but I'm talking about stuff that should be there, like DAOC's dungeons being empty, even the low level ones.
2.3 and 2.4) Reviews after the fact. If you were excited, and wanted to get in on the ground floor, and you pre-ordered.... only to find out the game is horribly broken once you got the game (and are now unable to return it).... not so cool. You're basing your arguments that the NDA will be lifted well before release. I HOPE it is. But from the sound of things, my magic 8-ball (past experience) is pointing towards "Look out!"
Check out the www.esrb.org website, and you can read up on what it really is all about (selling games from retailers).
They don't need an open beta with 100K apps waiting (actually, its probably far more, since the 100K comment was just how many they got over that easter holiday). However they need to INVITE them. If they put enough people into the beta to really stress the servers and lift the NDA well before release, then things will definitely be looking good for AoC, open beta or no. If they don't invite many more people, and keep the lid on till the end...
Funcom sent out 100,000 CD keys for Anarchy Online about 1 month before that game launched.
The simple fact is people dont want to spend their money on something which might not be to their flavour.
Therefore some aren't happy about there not being an open beta, but they could wait for a trial or buddy key.
But they still aren't happy because they believe the game to be a race to the end already without even playing it, and therefore waiting for their trial they feel left out and pissed off.
Whilst everyone else pretty much by the time launch comes will of seen all they need to see to make their mind up whether to buy the game. And you know what some 90% of the people that have applied to beta will most likely get in.
At the end of the day though its going to cost you $40-50 for the normal version box. With the average age of the mmo'r 27 yrs old that like about 90 mins of actual real life work for me.... To spend on a hobby of mine.
When the dust settles, in the next few days some sort fo clarification about the way things will go should happen, at that point some people can put the Kleenex away.
By the way Vanguard didn't FLY out the press to their offices about this time from release, where Funcom are in the next few days.. go figure!
Nothing to hide...
I assume you mean AC = AO
Asheron's Call had a decently stable beta (I was in it) and was a fairly popular game 
.
I do want FC to stress the game, and if they do it out of their pool of applicants, great. I want the NDA lifted earlier rather than later however. The NDA is the key to everything here, the fact there is no open beta is of only minor concern to me. Keeping the lid on this long is much more worrying. WoW had a huge open beta with no NDA, but they knew even with the issues they had, that their game was fun (for most people) and the OB stressed their servers and pointed out that huge lootlag bug that would have been crippling if it had been in the release.
As far as 'finding the 10 bugs' bit. I'm a programmer/developer, and heh, its not just MMORPG's that suffer these kinds of things. God knows how many nights I've had to spend at the office feverishly trying to fix something critical days or hours before release of the software (place I worked had deadlines that were externally imposed for most projects (Tax seasons, budget years ending, etc). So it HAD to be finished by Dec 31st or DOOOOM!!!
All of that experience has taught me to be cautious with making promises and skeptical when viewing other people's promises ("I'll have that to you by thursday no problem!" <two months passes> "I'm still working on it, it'll get done soon!").
All this is guessing of course, but at this point, unless you're in the beta, that's all we can do. Given the dearth of real info coming out, we don't have much else to discuss/argue about AoC at the moment
Did you get that supply of sodium thiopental to insure developer truthfulness I sent you?
Tell them to clean up their website too
I hate reading out of date stuff from 2 years ago. 
Good luck in Oslo.
I assume you mean AC = AO
Asheron's Call had a decently stable beta (I was in it) and was a fairly popular game 
.
I do want FC to stress the game, and if they do it out of their pool of applicants, great. I want the NDA lifted earlier rather than later however. The NDA is the key to everything here, the fact there is no open beta is of only minor concern to me. Keeping the lid on this long is much more worrying. WoW had a huge open beta with no NDA, but they knew even with the issues they had, that their game was fun (for most people) and the OB stressed their servers and pointed out that huge lootlag bug that would have been crippling if it had been in the release.
As far as 'finding the 10 bugs' bit. I'm a programmer/developer, and heh, its not just MMORPG's that suffer these kinds of things. God knows how many nights I've had to spend at the office feverishly trying to fix something critical days or hours before release of the software (place I worked had deadlines that were externally imposed for most projects (Tax seasons, budget years ending, etc). So it HAD to be finished by Dec 31st or DOOOOM!!!
All of that experience has taught me to be cautious with making promises and skeptical when viewing other people's promises ("I'll have that to you by thursday no problem!" <two months passes> "I'm still working on it, it'll get done soon!").
All this is guessing of course, but at this point, unless you're in the beta, that's all we can do. Given the dearth of real info coming out, we don't have much else to discuss/argue about AoC at the moment
Yes I mean Anarchy online and very sorry for the typo. I am bad on typing.Yes I am a system developer too, not games though. I know how much I hate bugs, I know all systems are buggy and we are the ones to be blamed :-).
Back to the discussion. I generally do not like opening the game completely to uncontrolled access during beta. I noticed during many game beta that players are there to play and they complain about a known bug, or against a sealed off zone, as if they are there to enjoy the full experience. I believe these players will not contribute to a beta stage as much as a bug hunter.
As for stress, well there are way to test stress for the pure sake of stress. There is no need to really introduce 1million players to test a system designed for 1million players.
Of course, we have to exercise caution when pulling money off our wallets. That said, we do not expect sellers to do everything our way. NDA sounds very intimidating, but that means the game is not yet finalised and discussing it might be hazardous to the health of the project. I believe Funcom is not a newbie in the market of MMO, they should know when to open the windows to the world for previews. Till then, we can only wait, and pray for them, and for the beta testers, hoping they do a good job for the rest of us.
There still hasnt been an official statement declaring no open beta except whats reported on this site, and that could be simply a misconstrued statement.
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Why they wouldn't have a beta:
Lets assume that they need the game out NOW. AoC has been in development a long, time, they may simply be running out of money. They don't have the cash to implement some of the features they need to, buy the servers they need to, whatever.
They throw up an open beta, whatever problem they have (not enough money for servers, whatever) is going to come to light. People cancel preorders, etc. They don't get the cash, game grinds to a halt.
They get the cash from preorders and purchases, they deal with the complaints however they see fit (lots of assurances that things will get better soon, etc. etc.) they start working on getting the game out of beta, we get another stinker where we get to pay for beta for 3-6 months (hell, Vanguard players have been paying beta for a year!).
Basically, we're all worried that we're getting a pay-to-play beta, not a game. Now this might not be the case, but honestly... Funcom can't have many income sources left. Dreamfall did okay, but frankly, they probably sunk the money they got there into Dreamfall: Chapters, so that's a no go. Other than that, AO can't really be doing much more than paying for the servers and developers to work on it. Its possible its a small cash source, but its NOT paying for AoC's development.
See why we're worried we're getting into a pay-to-play beta?
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
1. Server lag
2. Severe FPS lag
3. Clunky animations
4. Horrible visuals
5. Boring gameplay
6. Abundance of instanced areas
....
This are just some things that you just need to gauge for yourself.
So not playing the game will make you have 100% wrong impresion about above things
I have a crazy idea: if you are so concerned that there might not be an open beta and/or the game is going to suck or be laggy or whatever, why don't you wait until it is released and some reviews start coming in? It just might work... If you don't want to waste your money on it the day it comes out, wait a couple more weeks. We have been waiting a while... what is a couple more?
Would Funcom PR allow that part of the article to stand if there WAS going to be an open beta? Carolyn Koh quoted Jason "Athelan" Stone directly, I'd say that's more or less official.
Would Funcom PR allow that part of the article to stand if there WAS going to be an open beta? Carolyn Koh quoted Jason "Athelan" Stone directly, I'd say that's more or less official.
And...I would say you are wrong, it indeed was a misconstrued statement.
Guild Video|Forums|Guild Website+New Video|AoC official FAQ|E3'07 Official Trailer