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How AOC is helping to destroy the MMO genera
Nikoz78
Member UncommonPosts: 910
This game was admittedly designed for gaming consoles and is therefore a watered down version of a true MMORPG.
AOC lead developer:
"we designed AoC to be a console game from the beginning"
"AoC's combat system has gone through nine iterations throughout Funcom's quest to make it appealing to console users."
It's worth as an "MMO" should not even be seriously debated considering this very clear truth.
Further, this game in my opinion has the potential to damage the overall genera, bringing the core of what an MMO is to new lows.
Please don't misunderstand me; I'm not trying to attack anyone personally. I'm trying to point out that the sole reason this corporation (Funcom) made this game is to try and tap into a bigger market. In other words they are exploiting our genera for financial gains and we as MMO gamers should consider the damage it has the potential to cause to it.
Again, I'm not attacking anyone personally but consider the damage World of Warcraft has caused. It was such a hit ($$$) that every other, more complex MMO tried to emulate it. In effect, dumbing down the genera.
I like to compare World of Warcraft to pop music because pop music is very shallow and easy to understand and (admittedly) fun to listen to, and it out sells all other styles of music (by a large margin).
Pop music has damaged other styles of music, like country music (which today is candyass pop-fluff w/ no soul), ditto pop punk rock and nu metal.
It is in this way that these watered down MMO's are going to damage our genera. You can say that it does not matter, that it's just another duck on the pond - but I respectfully disagree.
In fact, I've lost much hope for the genera. These corporations ruin everything. Music is milked ruthlessly and turned into shallow trends, punk fashion is sold in mass chain stores like Hot Topic, it never ends.
They destroy the essence of whatever it is they are trying to exploit-for-profit.
MMORPG's are no exception.
I'm out.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Comments
I don't think another choice for people who love to play mmo's is negative. There will be people who dislike AOC, but there will be people who enjoy it too. If someone enjoys it, that's great
and I don't think it hurts the genre at all.
In the future we will probably see more cross developing of games so they appear on pc and console. Especially as moving forward, consoles become more and more like pc's. I understand the reservations that many have regarding this, but in truth I don't think anyone knows how it will play out yet. Ofcourse, everyone has their opinions
Yes you are right. And new MMOs witll make WOW look complex and rich. This is the sad state of things.
i dont think aoc is that bad of a game. it certainly doesnt seem to me that it is destroying the mmo genre. ive played everything out there that is an mmo and i hated pretty much all of them after wow since as you said games became wow clones. to me aoc is actually really fun, besides the gore and nudity factor. i think its a good idea to cross pc with consoles, the only thing that could harm is the graphics i would think and if you play a game simply based on what it looks like then there are plenty of other games suited for you.
plus id like to get to play aoc on a console so i could play in bed lol
Very interesting interpretation. Would explain at least some issues ppl have. It would indeed be bad if this was intentional watering down. I still feel it was their dumbness. Console players and PC gamers just overlap too little to make a Hybrid pay in the long run, but thats just my POV.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I'm sorry guys, but there is a reason why WoW was so popular. It was a great game. I tried playing Everquest long before WoW was even thought about, and I couldn't stand it. Friends tried getting me into other 2d ORPGs and I didn't like them, where later WoW had me immediately. People like to say WoW was a fluke, they are wrong. It was the first decent MMORPG where everything else was just plain HORRIBLE.
___________________
Sadly, I see storm clouds on the horizon. A faint stench of Vanguard is in the air.-Kien
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/13/
How is it destroying it? What about this game is destroying MMO's?
This is a very broad statement, without much content to your argument. Just because something is pop, doesn't always make it bad. Sometimes things are popular for a reason.
Kind of strange really, this is something along the same lines I was talking about with a girl I recently met. I use to be totally anti-mainstream myself, so I understand where you are coming from. It is kind of like rebelling against IPODs or anything similar because it is the cool thing. Personally I will not buy an IPOD because I think they are a total waste of money. You can buy something else that has more options and does the job as well or better.
Pretty much the way I think you should try to look at things is, do you get enjoyment out of it? If so, then what is really the problem?
To be anti-pop culture, just to be different is really stupid. If this is indeed what you are doing, wake up and reanalyze what is going on. You are being just as much a sheep as the people who follow mainstream but not using your head to figure out what you enjoy in life and going with it.
If you like it, do it. Otherwise, do not make judgements for other people. Just because you don't like something or agree with it doesn't make what you are saying right or true.
Welcome to the wonderful and exciting world of corporate capitalism.
Yes, it will turn everything to sh** if given enough time. From a song to a planet it is all the same story.
You need to constantly increase your profit because of interest rates. You can do it by either increasing the price or reducing the production value. Since consumers hate price increases you have to keep reducing the value of the product in a way that doesn't rub customers too much. It is a dirty world.
And I'm so sorry I don't accept the mass dumbing down of humans via TV, movies, video games, books, magazines, etc. A 'sheep' would be someone who is unaware of this reality.
But that is out of the scope of this topic.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Simply being 30 years old is hardly substantial evidence that you either are or are not doing what he claimed. I think you are trying to impress upon us that you are too old for that kind of thing when, besides my opinion that nobody is too old to do that, that is not particularly old at all. You are still quite young.
Just saying.
___________________
Sadly, I see storm clouds on the horizon. A faint stench of Vanguard is in the air.-Kien
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/13/
I stopped reading right here, since this makes no sense.
Sounds like eveyrthings been designed in bite-sized chunks to accomodate the console version...
Age is not the most important element to a persons character but rather their life experience and what they are able to take form that.
Anyway, I assumed he thought I was in high school by the wording in his reply. Also, it was quite rudely worded and was an unprovoked personal attack on my character.
...this is off topic.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
This game IS driving the final nail in the coffin of the mmo genre!
The problem is that greedy companies want us to pay for indefinite, extended beta. They market games with tons of hype and promises and then decide to pull content and make changes and the truth is revealed at launch.
Funcom blatantly lied about DX10. That alone (not for the sake of getting or not getting DX10) should have had players leaving in droves.
We are being treated like "15$ a month sheep". That is all.
The companies just add the very basic to get a game going and hope to finish later with players money. Or not.
Even highly succesful mmos like WoW never repaid the customers with free expansions or truly expanded on the game. Looking at the profits and all they gave was two expansions, one still not out and that is it. No giving back to customers. Just pure corporate greed.
I find it sad, because I love the idea of mmos.
But having to play unfinished games is a joke. And listening to these angry, flaming fanboys is even worse. People with real problems in the game (petitions getting deleted etc.) are being flamed for stating their problems. No community support! No community period.
Look at this post from the US forums:
How come the game who advertised MASSIVE EPIC SIEGE WARFARE in the media for 5 years can launch the game without sieges, battlekeeps or tier 2+3 player cities. All the content people really want is not there.
And the ressources and crafting is a joke. The ressources never flip around. Always based the same place. And the player cities are located in instances NO ONE ever need to visit. There is no incentive to go to your player city and neither will other players see it, because you like occupy instance X for example.. The guild I am in is in instance FIVE of Poitain...
So yes... the MMO GENRE IS DYING indeed...
Here's to hoping some game comes along and saves us all...
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CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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I stopped reading right here, since this makes no sense.
I'm sorry you don't understand.This was posted a couple days ago by dirtknap69:
...from this interview with the lead AoC designer:
"we designed AoC to be a console game from the beginning"
"AoC's combat system has gone through nine iterations throughout Funcom's quest to make it appealing to console users."
<END QUOTE>
This game is very high profile and viying for a dominate position in the MMO market. By designing it to accommodate console gamers (a much larger player base than our own) they quite literally had to water down this "MMO" to a very large degree in order for technically inferior systems (consoles) to handle it.
In short, they released and marketed this on-line game as an MMO, which it clearly is not. In reality it is a console game that PC gamers can play too.
The PC will always have an edge over consoles (we can upgrade our rigs, etc). There is literally nothing a console can do that a PC can't. I can play PC games on my big screen, I can use any number of peripherals/controllers, etc. And the PC can do it better. Much better.
Not that I have anything against console gamers. In fact my first gaming machine was an Atari 2600, then a SEGA Master Syatem followed by an NES. I also grew up playing PC games on my Apple II and Tandy 1000 (Sierra games like King's Quest ) in the 80's.
The point is that AOC is not good for the evolution of our genera. In fact it's de-evolution considering how they designed this little money maker.
Anyway.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Great point, this is something that bothers me too. I remember many times in the past being dissapointed, because certain PC games seemed seriously dumbed down due to being cross-platform. I don't know if this is why AoC feels dumbed down and set to ez-mode, perhaps it's just following the trend..in which case we should probably blame WoW.
I think it's unlikely AoC will do much damage to the mmorpg genre, I just doubt that it will be so popular has to have this kind of impact and become any kind of role-model for the future.
WoW on the other hand, as you've pointed out has and will probably continue to have a long term effect on future MMOs.
As one of the other posters mentioned though, WoW IS a great game, but future developers have realise why it's such...and not just try to emulate this and that. It does a lot of things really well; itemisation is awesome, the game is instantly fun and highly rewarding right from the begining, the enviroment is really well done and unique (if you can forgive the cartoon graphics) and it's caters for many types of different players, pvpers, casuals, raiders.
But please don't think I'm a WoW fanboi, I'm anything but...I could write a novel sized post of WoW's bad points here...but I'm also not blind.
Your analogy reflects the way I've been feeling for a long time!
It is definitely a step in teh wrong direction, imho. Moving towards a single-player game with a bragging area. Its the solo-player attiture that seems to be invading the scene so aggressively, which is really contrary to the purpose of hte genre. MMORPG's should have things that you can do alone, when you can find or don't have time to group. But the gameplay should be built around a large community, otherwise why are we all getting to gether to ignore each other?
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
OMG you sound exactly like dictator from one of those banana countries..
80% of people love to listen POP music, 80% love to drink lager instead real beer, 80% people love fast food, 80% people love to watch Hollywood popcorn movies, 80% people love to play graphic shallow MMO(WoW, AOC) more than true deep one without graphic(MUD), etc.... it's just a way it is, and always will be.
---
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
I stopped reading right here, since this makes no sense.
I'm sorry you don't understand.This was posted a couple days ago by dirtknap69:
...from this interview with the lead AoC designer:
"we designed AoC to be a console game from the beginning"
"AoC's combat system has gone through nine iterations throughout Funcom's quest to make it appealing to console users."
<END QUOTE>
This game is very high profile and viying for a dominate position in the MMO market. By designing it to accommodate console gamers (a much larger player base than our own) they quite literally had to water down this "MMO" to a very large degree in order for technically inferior systems (consoles) to handle it.
In short, they released and marketed this on-line game as an MMO, which it clearly is not. In reality it is a console game that PC gamers can play too.
The PC will always have an edge over consoles (we can upgrade our rigs, etc). There is literally nothing a console can do that a PC can't. I can play PC games on my big screen, I can use any number of peripherals/controllers, etc. And the PC can do it better. Much better.
Not that I have anything against console gamers. In fact my first gaming machine was an Atari 2600, then a SEGA Master Syatem followed by an NES. I also grew up playing PC games on my Apple II and Tandy 1000 (Sierra games like King's Quest ) in the 80's.
The point is that AOC is not good for the evolution of our genera. In fact it's de-evolution considering how they designed this little money maker.
Anyway.
Nikoz78
1- dirtknap69 CHANGED some words in this interview, you tried to sound smart saying you are not a sheep, but you were fooled by a guy that calls himself DIRTKNAP 69 ...isnt that funny???
2- you can go to EQ2 forum and post the same, as AoC mechanics are very similar to EQ2, and for your surprise, AoC has even more content than EQ2 at the release... and Im sure SoE would loved if EQ2 had the same sucess AoC has now.
3- You think SWG is a very deep experience made for mature, complex and smart people and AoC and WoW is for the silly masses right?You know, all these games are GAMES, PRODUCTS and Pop culture.... You know, you sound like those guys that think they have more culture because they like Star Wars... a entertainment pop culture serie of movies for the MASSES.
( edit ) Oh I forgot to say....Nikoz78.
Country music, punk and metal ARE POP MUSIC and easy to understand.... You want to talk about something that is not POP music??? Lets talk about Khachaturian, Mahler, Arrigo Barnabe, Prokofiev.
Nikoz, you just dont know what is pop, sorry.... talking about sheep
...
i lvl a conqueror in torage and only did the night time quest so i could be lvl to do the other day time ones. Then i was able to get to lvl 19 fast and easy solo, would have been faster if i would have grouped. Then i talked to the next night time quest giving NPC and could skip the rest of the quest !! The only quest you have to do is kill the last boss.
Anyone telling you that Torage Starter Zone is a bad idea or that the game was designed wrong, well sorry they are wrong game was made to fit into the market of todays older gamer.
Game is easy to learn, fast to play, easy to group, can mentor lower lvl group member so can team with anyone at any lvl once there out of torage, i have 72 game time hours loged so far and lvl a demo to 37 and a conqeror to 21 barbarina to 6 and started my healer class Tempest of Set he is only lvl 4
i posted Screen shots on the MMORPG site there should be 10 all max settings on a
intel duo 6600
nividia 8800gtx
2 gig DDR2 ram
ageia physX card
OS:vista 32bit home premium
bloom off, no AA, and shadows on all on but there on the low setting,1600x1050 resolution and i get low 30fps to 40 in some zone and 50fps to 70 in some Hub town zone, 100fps + in quest dungon
so far this game is a 8/10 for me some bugs and few client crash but still good times
I mean people who claim to have been playing all mmo's out there and find that WoW is the greatest haven't even looked at asian mmo's which has been out for far longer than WoW or others western games for that matter.
Problem is ofcourse that most good asian mmo's is not translated into english so we in the west can enjoy. The main reason for not translating into english it cost money and besides the western population is far lower than those of the asian countries.
Another good thing about asian mmo's is that they're free to download and play. They earn money on selling ingame stuff to players.
In west we have money farmers in all of our pay games the popular ones ofcourse no point in farming money on a game no one plays.
Some seem to think and actually believe that what they're saying is that all games try to clone WoW... try to play other games than WoW and EQ2 so you actually have a ground to stand on.
Yeah it has lots of people but most of them are westerners which actually thinks that this WoW is great game because Blizzard is brilliant enough to manage to get whooping 11 mill people to play it... sry pay for it.
I mean I tried to like it since most of my friends played it but it was just not what I liked.
A good mmo is what meets the eye and mmo is massive multiplayer online game... so it can be anything really not just mmorpg's and as the OP asks if AoC is helping destroy mmo in general.. doubtfully AoC will be taking people away from the screen and say I won't play mmo anymore.
Hey it is up to you to vote with your feet. Don't subscibe if the game does not meet your expectations, Funcom will get the message.
Personally I am disappointed with the game and will not subscribe after the 30 days are up, but there are a lot of people that like this game and will continue.
If the game fits your playstyle, enjoy. I don't think this will be the smash hit that so many envisioned, it's lack of content will soon be apparent to many, but won't be an abject failure either.
I don't think it will have that much affect on the genre at all, because I don't think they will maintain that large a playerbase. This is not the MMO that the MMO playerbase in general is waiting for.
I think what pisses me off the most is you have people using the term "dumbed down" to mean two totally different things. The first meaning that the interface and control scheme is watered down to meet the shortcomings of the console platform, this "dumbed down" makes sense and is a legitimate concern.
The one that annoys me to no end is the people who say a game needs to be "dumbed down" on a console as in less difficult or ez-mode as some put it. This implies that console players are a bunch of unintelligent simpletons. I have played consoles and pc since the days of the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64 and don't need my games "dumbed down" difficulty wise just becuase it is on a console and neither do the tons of friends I have or the console gaming populace in general. This attitude by pc eltiists is what gets my dander up!
Rant Over lol!
Also just so I do have something in my post relating to AoC I will say I think the game is good but i don't know why I but I just don't find myself having that I have to play feeling I have had wth most other MMORPGs
No signature, I don't have a pen
Wha?!?!? A game that isn't a WoW clone...OMG ITS DESTROYING MMOS AS WE KNO IT OMG!!!!
Huh? AoC IS a WoW clone!
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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AoC is a total setback in the mmo genre!
The game is 100% instanced.
Don't need to say anything else.