WoW and EQ2 were polished and complete games at launch, as polished as a MMO can be obviously.
WoW was missing the Battleground to be honest, but that wasn't the core of the game (although it became quite popular afterward)
Everything else was in there and perfectly working.
AoC is not even close to those games at launch, so Funcom should stop comparing AoC with WoW, probably the best comparison would be Vanguard, in which case AoC comes out as a winner, but that doesn t make it shine either.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
WoW issue is mostly due to over population on the server, EQ2, yap i knda agree more.
Patches coming out is not only to address bugs found in game, but also to add or change the game content. Most of the patches bought out by WoW and some from EQ2 is adding more content for the game and balancing the class. LOTR also adds tons of content during their patches. Love them...
The diff between AoC and them is this..... AoC is missing tons of promise in-game content when launch. Most of the players that complain is about the content and also how buggy the game is like you are still playing beta.
So the issue with AoC is more than just normal bugs....
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
Glad that you are enjoying the game, actually that is the most important part of it.
But for the rest of us, like you said, FC is not the first company that fail on their promises, we are tired and angry about what happen. Time and time again these devs take us as idiots and cheated us of our money and time. Thought they have learn given their AO history, but noooooo..... they have the guts to pull 1 again...
And the fact that they didn't remove NDA till the game is launch really shows us that they already know the true state of the game but intend to lie to us... This is unforgiveable....
And when the dev open up a conversation with the players on the forum, and the players really tell them about the problemand waiting for answer, amid some anger but who wouldn't, they close the thread when they can't answer...
Basically AoC as a company fail in their delivering of the game they promise so much and their disrespect to the paying customer...
Wish them all the best on their expansion next year. I for 1 will never touch any game release by them again... ever...
What is missing from this game is going to be trivial very soon. There is one thing this game is missing that Funcom can't patch in, subscribers. I frequently keep tabs on my old server since I quit, and everyone I used to play with or group with are all gone. Guilds are folding their tents up on a daily basis, and with WAR coming in a month the show will be over.
If there is nobody else to play with, it doesn't matter what they do.
WoW and EQ2 were polished and complete games at launch, as polished as a MMO can be obviously.
WoW was missing the Battleground to be honest, but that wasn't the core of the game (although it became quite popular afterward)
Everything else was in there and perfectly working.
AoC is not even close to those games at launch, so Funcom should stop comparing AoC with WoW, probably the best comparison would be Vanguard, in which case AoC comes out as a winner, but that doesn t make it shine either.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
It not about the bugs. theses can be patched ( well by most compagny , Funcom doesn't seem to be able to fix anything) . The game is all flash no soul.
It's BORING. PvP is BORING. PvP endgame raids with no strategy , go in with your group and combo/aoe/aoe heal shit... wow . Gem stacking in pvp , etc... This game is a mess due to poor design.
Also the way they presented the game pre-launch to reviewers / testers is digusting. You can clearly see they pour everything they had in tortage so that the 2 previously mentioned groups can be misled as of the game real design. Which in turn , gave a wrong impression to players that bought the game and listened to reviews of 1-20 gameplay , which was everywhere on the web.
I personnaly don't like do be manipulated and lied too. You might have low expectations , but obviously by the negative player feedbacks this game is getting , most people do not.
That game was so buggy and lacked so many of the promised features, it wasn't even funny. Hell, Brad even came out and said they were running out of money and needed to release early. The game lacked quite a bit of content, a lot of features were not in the game, and it was so buggy that it was a struggle to make it from one end of the continent to the other, much less travelling between them.
And yet, the game is still around, has had most of its features implemented, while others got dropped as being too unwieldy to implement. It gets patched on a regular basis and gets better as time goes on. People cried doom and gloom because SoE got involved, not realizing that SoE wasn't really involved in the development phase, only in the marketing and billing phase. But hey, who wants to let fact get in the way of good old SoE bashing, huh?
People just want to bash, rather than realize this is a normal part of development. The game just came out, is only a couple of months old and it does get improved, mostly, during its patching, with more features being implemented and fixed over time.
The hype was so big surrounding this game that people bought into it. Holding it up as the holy grail of MMO's that would dethrone WoW. When reality came crashing down on them, rather than beat up on themselves for being so stupid to let themselves be caught up by marketing, it is now Funcom's fault for the consumer's lack of responsibility. Let it go, people. Let it go....it's alright. You are weak-minded and follow like sheep. It's alright. It's people like you that make the economy strong and let games like Mourning get released.
WoW and EQ2 were polished and complete games at launch, as polished as a MMO can be obviously.
WoW was missing the Battleground to be honest, but that wasn't the core of the game (although it became quite popular afterward)
Everything else was in there and perfectly working.
AoC is not even close to those games at launch, so Funcom should stop comparing AoC with WoW, probably the best comparison would be Vanguard, in which case AoC comes out as a winner, but that doesn t make it shine either.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
WoW issue is mostly due to over population on the server, EQ2, yap i knda agree more.
Patches coming out is not only to address bugs found in game, but also to add or change the game content. Most of the patches bought out by WoW and some from EQ2 is adding more content for the game and balancing the class. LOTR also adds tons of content during their patches. Love them...
The diff between AoC and them is this..... AoC is missing tons of promise in-game content when launch. Most of the players that complain is about the content and also how buggy the game is like you are still playing beta.
So the issue with AoC is more than just normal bugs....
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
That is all to true, except if your game is buggy and laggy as can be, it will not be enjoyable under any circumstances. I dealt with this on a couple of games, and realisticly if it has a rocky launch, most people should avoid it until 6 months or more.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
True, but do you buy something and just use it if its not up to your expectations on its quality? I doubt it, most of us wont.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
Stress has been proven to be healthy in certain doses, also there is no scientific proof that relaxing and being patient during a games isssues or while playing will reduce or even prevent heart attacks or nervous breakdowns.
Its been quite entertaining to watch this whole funcom debacle, hope the industry is watching hard. Best more often to learn from others mistakes.
Playing: Not much actively. Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001 --------------------------
Hm. Has everyone forgotten Vanguard? That game was so buggy and lacked so many of the promised features, it wasn't even funny. Hell, Brad even came out and said they were running out of money and needed to release early. The game lacked quite a bit of content, a lot of features were not in the game, and it was so buggy that it was a struggle to make it from one end of the continent to the other, much less travelling between them. And yet, the game is still around, has had most of its features implemented, while others got dropped as being too unwieldy to implement. It gets patched on a regular basis and gets better as time goes on. People cried doom and gloom because SoE got involved, not realizing that SoE wasn't really involved in the development phase, only in the marketing and billing phase. But hey, who wants to let fact get in the way of good old SoE bashing, huh? People just want to bash, rather than realize this is a normal part of development. The game just came out, is only a couple of months old and it does get improved, mostly, during its patching, with more features being implemented and fixed over time. The hype was so big surrounding this game that people bought into it. Holding it up as the holy grail of MMO's that would dethrone WoW. When reality came crashing down on them, rather than beat up on themselves for being so stupid to let themselves be caught up by marketing, it is now Funcom's fault for the consumer's lack of responsibility. Let it go, people. Let it go....it's alright. You are weak-minded and follow like sheep. It's alright. It's people like you that make the economy strong and let games like Mourning get released.
Actually, thought that conan would be a good game because it was from the same people that made anarchy online. The game that is the deepest mmorpg in history.
Did i buy into the hype, no. I saw that they promised and thought, looks like it has alot of things i look for in a game. Then i am delivered none of the promises.
Hm. Has everyone forgotten Vanguard? That game was so buggy and lacked so many of the promised features, it wasn't even funny. Hell, Brad even came out and said they were running out of money and needed to release early. The game lacked quite a bit of content, a lot of features were not in the game, and it was so buggy that it was a struggle to make it from one end of the continent to the other, much less travelling between them. And yet, the game is still around, has had most of its features implemented, while others got dropped as being too unwieldy to implement. It gets patched on a regular basis and gets better as time goes on. People cried doom and gloom because SoE got involved, not realizing that SoE wasn't really involved in the development phase, only in the marketing and billing phase. But hey, who wants to let fact get in the way of good old SoE bashing, huh? People just want to bash, rather than realize this is a normal part of development. The game just came out, is only a couple of months old and it does get improved, mostly, during its patching, with more features being implemented and fixed over time. The hype was so big surrounding this game that people bought into it. Holding it up as the holy grail of MMO's that would dethrone WoW. When reality came crashing down on them, rather than beat up on themselves for being so stupid to let themselves be caught up by marketing, it is now Funcom's fault for the consumer's lack of responsibility. Let it go, people. Let it go....it's alright. You are weak-minded and follow like sheep. It's alright. It's people like you that make the economy strong and let games like Mourning get released.
Actually, thought that conan would be a good game because it was from the same people that made anarchy online. The game that is the deepest mmorpg in history.
Did i buy into the hype, no. I saw that they promised and thought, looks like it has alot of things i look for in a game. Then i am delivered none of the promises.
And adding to that. What made people even more furious and caused the real downfall of AoC is all the promisses and Yada Yada that were made since launch from wich nothing has seen the light on the live servers yet!!
- Adding a jitload of the promised 1500 armorsets (promissed end may)
- Adding new PVP system (promissed half june)
- Adding new midlevel zone to adress some of the lack of content issues (promised july)
We are now halfway august people and the game has gotten worse and worse with each patch and nothing from above has been delivered!
Adding all this to the false advertising and OVERhyping before launch is enough for me to lose faith in Funcom and NEVER buy a game of them again.
And you can count on it that at the Leipzig Game Convention DirectX10 is NOT going to be showcased (and if they do it will probably be fake as hell).
Hm. Has everyone forgotten Vanguard? That game was so buggy and lacked so many of the promised features, it wasn't even funny. Hell, Brad even came out and said they were running out of money and needed to release early. The game lacked quite a bit of content, a lot of features were not in the game, and it was so buggy that it was a struggle to make it from one end of the continent to the other, much less travelling between them. And yet, the game is still around, has had most of its features implemented, while others got dropped as being too unwieldy to implement. It gets patched on a regular basis and gets better as time goes on. People cried doom and gloom because SoE got involved, not realizing that SoE wasn't really involved in the development phase, only in the marketing and billing phase. But hey, who wants to let fact get in the way of good old SoE bashing, huh? People just want to bash, rather than realize this is a normal part of development. The game just came out, is only a couple of months old and it does get improved, mostly, during its patching, with more features being implemented and fixed over time. The hype was so big surrounding this game that people bought into it. Holding it up as the holy grail of MMO's that would dethrone WoW. When reality came crashing down on them, rather than beat up on themselves for being so stupid to let themselves be caught up by marketing, it is now Funcom's fault for the consumer's lack of responsibility. Let it go, people. Let it go....it's alright. You are weak-minded and follow like sheep. It's alright. It's people like you that make the economy strong and let games like Mourning get released.
I dont think anyone has forgotten Vanguard. That game failed to the point of going down to minimum number of servers and workers to maintain and fix the huge problems it got at launch. Thats why it has taken so long to fix basic issues in that game.
If you are thinking of Vanguard as a success story to justify what AOC is about then I remind you that the game went bankrupt....
So - as in terms of AOC and the future. IT wil end up as AO. Free game that will sell ingame items. Its only question of how long till that happens.
AOC has failed. It will not manage to recover. It had it chance. But I think we all know that the PR work from Funcom was to make money - not to make a good MMO game. Thats why it launched in this state - without lifting NDA.
I dont think anyone has forgotten Vanguard. That game failed to the point of going down to minimum number of servers and workers to maintain and fix the huge problems it got at launch. Thats why it has taken so long to fix basic issues in that game. If you are thinking of Vanguard as a success story to justify what AOC is about then I remind you that the game went bankrupt.... So - as in terms of AOC and the future. IT wil end up as AO. Free game that will sell ingame items. Its only question of how long till that happens. AOC has failed. It will not manage to recover. It had it chance. But I think we all know that the PR work from Funcom was to make money - not to make a good MMO game. Thats why it launched in this state - without lifting NDA.
That's also a very good point!
AoC is the first MMO I come across that has still it's NDA in place after launch and I played a LOT of MMO's.
There is only one explanation for this and that is that Funcom seriously has something to hide about what happened during the whole Beta period.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
I played both EQ2 and WoW at launch, both from launch day in fact. No, they had nothing even *close* to AoC's problems.
Yes, both had bugs when they launched, as any MMO does at launch. This is true. However, comparing the bugs in WoW/EQ2 to the problems in AOC is like comparing a small leak in your kitchen to your entire apartment being flooded. There's no comparison.
WoW's main problem was Blizzard were not prepared for the amount of subscriptions they would get so soon after the game's release. They had to stop box sales for a time so they could get more servers set up to handle it all.
IIRC, they met their 1 year projections within the first month or so. That's not "bugs and crappy release". Frankly, I think their game being far more successful than they could have expected is a problem most Developers would *like* to have.
So, the over-packed-servers issue notwithstanding, WoW was *highly* playable and stable when it launched.
One of EQ2's main problems was that hardly anyone could run it due to its steep system requirements and poorly optimized engine. It had glitches/bugs, but the game was still overall playable, and content that was intended to be in there, was in there.
Overall, in neither case did you see the even *close* to the degree of outcry you see for AoC. And it's not just because it's "the fun game to pick on". FC is bringing it on themselves with every misstep they make. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
You are being extremely disingenuous here. No one expects a perfect, bug-free game at launch. We're not talking "just bugs" here. Even LoTRO had bugs at launch, but look at the difference in posts going back to its launch... Quite the opposite of what you see with AoC.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
... they've had 5 years to get AoC ready.
It would have taken a day or two at most to prepare an official statement that certain functionality would not be in at launch and why, and explain those features would be high in priority. Instead they assume players are stupid and try passing off those features as "cool new content coming soon!"
Instead of being up-front and forthright with the true state of the game, they kept their mouths shut. They kept people who knew what was up silenced under NDA, and continued to let would-be customers believe what they'd been told would all be there. That has nothing to do with how long it takes to fix something. That's called dishonesty.... to put it mildly.
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
Again... No one's looking for a perfectly bug-less game and you are being extremely disingenuous in your reply.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
A few EU players began to whine that US players fubar'ed any shot at communicating with Funcom. Honestly though, the questions he got weren't as bad as other QQ & whine threads I've seen. And as a guy at EU forums said "Worst thing they could do was to ask for questions then close the thread". Just me that feels the questions posted in said thread were not that bad really compared to other threads? And even if not comparing, I'd still say it didn't warrant closing.
I started the game at Day 1, checked into the forums for info as far as quests, loot, etc.
Anyways, communication from the devs has been essentially non-existent since Day 1. Go ahead and look at any technical / class / gameplay issue since the game came out. Very little word from the devs despite overwhelming player evidence to any issue.
Hell, the idiots at Failcom only maybe 2 weeks ago finally acknowledged that the "Out of Memory" issue is a big, widespread problem, despite their paying customers telling them so since Day 1.
The EU players complaining about US players killing any chance of talking with the devs don't know what the hell they're talking about. **There wasn't any communication from the devs to begin with.**
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
The EU players complaining about US players killing any chance of talking with the devs don't know what the hell they're talking about. **There wasn't any communication from the devs to begin with.**
That's the dumbest argument I ever heard. They have always favored the EU forums over the NA ones. Their communication is jack shit. The director puts out a letter every month telling everyone the game is going better than planned (LOL?), meanwhile the game-defining features are missing. Then Erling has the balls to try and downplay it by saying only 1 or 2 minor things missing. If you swallow this load of hot steaming crap the PR guys are putting out there, you deserve to have your money taken from you at this point.
It feels funny reading through all of this and still seeing a banner-ad for AoC at the bottom of the site.
Failcom: I think by now, with all things pulled into perspective, that this game is notably one of the few worst failures of the gaming day and age. I don't mean since Vanguard, Mourning, Dark And Light; I mean since the old Atari/Intelevision days with the E.T. game.
I'll explain that, more openly. AoC has - or had potential. The plot wasn't bad, and the environment of a brutal, bloody world where most of the women are either wenches or amazonian war-maidens isn't much to complain about. Most of the quests were intuitive enough, and the visuals were refreshing, even if they weren't all that was promised. It was a good game, if you could deal with its other flaws.
Then there came the mechanics that would set it apart. Cities? An amazing idea. Let's make inspirational looking cities that offer bonuses to our guild's players. Too bad it was a little easy from what I heard, and most of the other impliments of having a city - sieging and being sieged - were bare. Ah, that brings PvP - or... maybe not? What PvP? I say that with true inflection of a question, not a sharp distaste. I for one don't care for PvP so I didn't mind it. But still - it was offered and that's what people were looking for.
It is a funny idea: who else wouldn't mind coming back with help to chop off that bloody piker of a fifteen year old's head who happened to roll Bear Shaman and danced on your corpse?
But the essence of the matter is the deception. And I say that gingerly. We may have bought into it, ranging from a lot to a little, but who's fault is who's is moot at the end of the day. They failed to follow through on the game's promises that a lot of people paid for and would probably still look forward to seeing. And there were a lot of promises. I won't list em again, everyone already knows them. But the NDA hesitation, the lying-through-the-teeth at interviews, the grand ordeal of the forum and its humorous closure for getting criticism? I hoped AoC could do better than gamble it's way dishonestly into plausible AO rating and banktrupcy, just so something more intuitive would come along rather than basic WoW (as it has become, agreeingly).
--------------------- Sniper is another term for unorthodox surgeon.
I'm sure erling told famine to close the thread. The game is in shambles and he figured he could lie his way out of it, instead he got blasted by almost everyone who replied. Its kinda funny how even the nuttiest fanbois didnt post a single reply in there.
The EU players complaining about US players killing any chance of talking with the devs don't know what the hell they're talking about. **There wasn't any communication from the devs to begin with.**
That's the dumbest argument I ever heard. They have always favored the EU forums over the NA ones. Their communication is jack shit. The director puts out a letter every month telling everyone the game is going better than planned (LOL?), meanwhile the game-defining features are missing. Then Erling has the balls to try and downplay it by saying only 1 or 2 minor things missing. If you swallow this load of hot steaming crap the PR guys are putting out there, you deserve to have your money taken from you at this point.
That's COMPLETE bullshit. Your argument is the dumbest I ever read!
The DEV's were IN FACT posting a LOT on the US forums! It was an EU player that had also a US account that found out about it and posted in the EU forums about this and then it turned out into an Outrage why an EU company was favoring the US forums and kept the EU players in the dark!
This resulted in the again FACT that EU players were GAINED read access to the US forums lol!
So get your facts straight before pulling BS out of your arse. As I was there since Early Access and have seen it all! There was litterly ZERO communication on the EU forums till weeks after launch!
The Director Letters were posted in newsletters, gaming sites and official forums and their offcial site all at the same time. And those were BS anyway as they only contained lies, more promisses and PR crap anyway.
It's all news TO ME GLAD I NEVER BOUGHT THE GAME well i see and hear all these things here end of the day they said it has something and has not delivered to me it's misleading sales.. but if you ask me a majority of games do this and fair do's to the customer. why should we be the ones getting screwed ...
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
I played both EQ2 and WoW at launch, both from launch day in fact. No, they had nothing even *close* to AoC's problems.
Yes, both had bugs when they launched, as any MMO does at launch. This is true. However, comparing the bugs in WoW/EQ2 to the problems in AOC is like comparing a small leak in your kitchen to your entire apartment being flooded. There's no comparison.
WoW's main problem was Blizzard were not prepared for the amount of subscriptions they would get so soon after the game's release. They had to stop box sales for a time so they could get more servers set up to handle it all.
IIRC, they met their 1 year projections within the first month or so. That's not "bugs and crappy release". Frankly, I think their game being far more successful than they could have expected is a problem most Developers would *like* to have.
So, the over-packed-servers issue notwithstanding, WoW was *highly* playable and stable when it launched.
One of EQ2's main problems was that hardly anyone could run it due to its steep system requirements and poorly optimized engine. It had glitches/bugs, but the game was still overall playable, and content that was intended to be in there, was in there.
Overall, in neither case did you see the even *close* to the degree of outcry you see for AoC. And it's not just because it's "the fun game to pick on". FC is bringing it on themselves with every misstep they make. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
You are being extremely disingenuous here. No one expects a perfect, bug-free game at launch. We're not talking "just bugs" here. Even LoTRO had bugs at launch, but look at the difference in posts going back to its launch... Quite the opposite of what you see with AoC.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
... they've had 5 years to get AoC ready.
It would have taken a day or two at most to prepare an official statement that certain functionality would not be in at launch and why, and explain those features would be high in priority. Instead they assume players are stupid and try passing off those features as "cool new content coming soon!"
Instead of being up-front and forthright with the true state of the game, they kept their mouths shut. They kept people who knew what was up silenced under NDA, and continued to let would-be customers believe what they'd been told would all be there. That has nothing to do with how long it takes to fix something. That's called dishonesty.... to put it mildly.
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
Again... No one's looking for a perfectly bug-less game and you are being extremely disingenuous in your reply.
How am I being extremely disingenous? Why not just come out and call me a liar, call me misleading what you call false facts. Do you honestly believe that you were lied to? No one put a gun to your head and told you to buy the game, that was your decision. Name me 1 mmo game that has launched with all that had been promised. I can't think of any.
I don't know about any1 else but I usually buy a software product after I have had a demo 1st, but that doesn't seem like a logical thing for most people to do. In the world of sales there is no such thing as honesty, people want to sell a product and everyone of them well tell you what you want to hear to get you to buy it, thats why you see commericals about 3 different drugs all claiming to have the same solution.
If the game is soooooo bad how come people are still buying and still playing it? How come they don't feel the same way about the game as everyone else? Could be because they understand how the system works, could be that they disagree with the negative comments. This is what FUNCOM is looking at, they aren't looking at a handful of upset people because they see on the other side the massive amounts of happy people who are still playing and they are wondering why these folks aren't complaining about nealy have the things that are posted.
If your going to call me extremely disingenous twice in the same post, well then thats just the pot calling the kettle black, because I was there @ both EQ2 and WOW launch and yes they did too have horrible issues @ launch that were equal to AOC's launch, so if your going to call someone disingenous make sure you have your ducks in a row.
If the game is soooooo bad how come people are still buying and still playing it? How come they don't feel the same way about the game as everyone else? Could be because they understand how the system works, could be that they disagree with the negative comments. This is what FUNCOM is looking at, they aren't looking at a handful of upset people because they see on the other side the massive amounts of happy people who are still playing and they are wondering why these folks aren't complaining about nealy have the things that are posted.
I would respectfully disagree with this line of thinking. Remember about a month after the game came out, they made a big press release touting the fact that over 700K copies of the game had been sold? Well now we are about 3 months out, and there had yet to be any announcement of either them touting a new number for boxes sold. Why do you think that is?
700k in 1 months, surely you think if the game was going as good as Gaute talks about in his letters, this game would be selling like hotcakes. There has yet to be a 1 million copy announcement, hell not even an 800k announcement. Why? The answer is because the number of subs peaked 4 weeks in and has been dropping off drastically. They can't even tout a new "boxes sold" number let alone "an active subscriptions" number. The word of mouth got out and the boat is sinking. My old server is emptying out, and with WAR coming in a month, people are not going to stick around.
This is not a "handful of people", this is a massive exodus of people fleeing from this game like a burning building. Warhammer has literally been handed a golden opportunity thanks to Funcom's debacle.
If the game is soooooo bad how come people are still buying and still playing it? How come they don't feel the same way about the game as everyone else? Could be because they understand how the system works, could be that they disagree with the negative comments. This is what FUNCOM is looking at, they aren't looking at a handful of upset people because they see on the other side the massive amounts of happy people who are still playing and they are wondering why these folks aren't complaining about nealy have the things that are posted.
I would respectfully disagree with this line of thinking. Remember about a month after the game came out, they made a big press release touting the fact that over 700K copies of the game had been sold? Well now we are about 3 months out, and there had yet to be any announcement of either them touting a new number for boxes sold. Why do you think that is?
700k in 1 months, surely you think if the game was going as good as Gaute talks about in his letters, this game would be selling like hotcakes. There has yet to be a 1 million copy announcement, hell not even an 800k announcement. Why? The answer is because the number of subs peaked 4 weeks in and has been dropping off drastically. They can't even tout a new "boxes sold" number let alone "an active subscriptions" number. The word of mouth got out and the boat is sinking. My old server is emptying out, and with WAR coming in a month, people are not going to stick around.
This is not a "handful of people", this is a massive exodus of people fleeing from this game like a burning building. Warhammer has literally been handed a golden opportunity thanks to Funcom's debacle.
It is just a handful of people, but your reply still doesn't answer the question..Why doesn't everyone feel the same way about the game being bad, about being lied to etc etc....
I disagree I have chars on 3 different servers and they are always packed at night and on the weekends when I play. There is no proof that their sub numbers have dropped, if that was the case they wouldn't be trying to pursuing an xbox 360 release. There is no massive exodus of people fleeing. The only thing people are going by is the negative posts they see in the forums.
Funcom announced on Friday that its "Age of Conan" massively multiplayer online PC game has now sold a million copies in less than three weeks, topping PC game charts in the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. "Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft," said Morten Larssen, Funcom VP of sales and marketing. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history."
WAR is coming out soon, people aren't fleeing because they hate the game. Im going to leave for a few weeks to try out WAR myself, doesn't mean im not going to play AOC anymore. Numbers always go up and down when a new mmo is coming on to the market. Just like when xbox 360 was released and WII and PS3 some people bought the new systems and some stayed with the old system.
Of course, "shipped" is not the same thing as "sold" but Funcom states that the game has also been selling well in the US and other countries and is now re-supplying retail stores with new copies and opening up the game in new markets.
heres what Funcom has announced for Activated accounts (not subs)
Comments
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
WoW issue is mostly due to over population on the server, EQ2, yap i knda agree more.
Patches coming out is not only to address bugs found in game, but also to add or change the game content. Most of the patches bought out by WoW and some from EQ2 is adding more content for the game and balancing the class. LOTR also adds tons of content during their patches. Love them...
The diff between AoC and them is this..... AoC is missing tons of promise in-game content when launch. Most of the players that complain is about the content and also how buggy the game is like you are still playing beta.
So the issue with AoC is more than just normal bugs....
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
Glad that you are enjoying the game, actually that is the most important part of it.
But for the rest of us, like you said, FC is not the first company that fail on their promises, we are tired and angry about what happen. Time and time again these devs take us as idiots and cheated us of our money and time. Thought they have learn given their AO history, but noooooo..... they have the guts to pull 1 again...
And the fact that they didn't remove NDA till the game is launch really shows us that they already know the true state of the game but intend to lie to us... This is unforgiveable....
And when the dev open up a conversation with the players on the forum, and the players really tell them about the problemand waiting for answer, amid some anger but who wouldn't, they close the thread when they can't answer...
Basically AoC as a company fail in their delivering of the game they promise so much and their disrespect to the paying customer...
Wish them all the best on their expansion next year. I for 1 will never touch any game release by them again... ever...
RIP Orc Choppa
What is missing from this game is going to be trivial very soon. There is one thing this game is missing that Funcom can't patch in, subscribers. I frequently keep tabs on my old server since I quit, and everyone I used to play with or group with are all gone. Guilds are folding their tents up on a daily basis, and with WAR coming in a month the show will be over.
If there is nobody else to play with, it doesn't matter what they do.
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Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
It not about the bugs. theses can be patched ( well by most compagny , Funcom doesn't seem to be able to fix anything) . The game is all flash no soul.
It's BORING. PvP is BORING. PvP endgame raids with no strategy , go in with your group and combo/aoe/aoe heal shit... wow . Gem stacking in pvp , etc... This game is a mess due to poor design.
Also the way they presented the game pre-launch to reviewers / testers is digusting. You can clearly see they pour everything they had in tortage so that the 2 previously mentioned groups can be misled as of the game real design. Which in turn , gave a wrong impression to players that bought the game and listened to reviews of 1-20 gameplay , which was everywhere on the web.
I personnaly don't like do be manipulated and lied too. You might have low expectations , but obviously by the negative player feedbacks this game is getting , most people do not.
http://revolutionwar.guildlaunch.com/
Hm. Has everyone forgotten Vanguard?
That game was so buggy and lacked so many of the promised features, it wasn't even funny. Hell, Brad even came out and said they were running out of money and needed to release early. The game lacked quite a bit of content, a lot of features were not in the game, and it was so buggy that it was a struggle to make it from one end of the continent to the other, much less travelling between them.
And yet, the game is still around, has had most of its features implemented, while others got dropped as being too unwieldy to implement. It gets patched on a regular basis and gets better as time goes on. People cried doom and gloom because SoE got involved, not realizing that SoE wasn't really involved in the development phase, only in the marketing and billing phase. But hey, who wants to let fact get in the way of good old SoE bashing, huh?
People just want to bash, rather than realize this is a normal part of development. The game just came out, is only a couple of months old and it does get improved, mostly, during its patching, with more features being implemented and fixed over time.
The hype was so big surrounding this game that people bought into it. Holding it up as the holy grail of MMO's that would dethrone WoW. When reality came crashing down on them, rather than beat up on themselves for being so stupid to let themselves be caught up by marketing, it is now Funcom's fault for the consumer's lack of responsibility. Let it go, people. Let it go....it's alright. You are weak-minded and follow like sheep. It's alright. It's people like you that make the economy strong and let games like Mourning get released.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
WoW issue is mostly due to over population on the server, EQ2, yap i knda agree more.
Patches coming out is not only to address bugs found in game, but also to add or change the game content. Most of the patches bought out by WoW and some from EQ2 is adding more content for the game and balancing the class. LOTR also adds tons of content during their patches. Love them...
The diff between AoC and them is this..... AoC is missing tons of promise in-game content when launch. Most of the players that complain is about the content and also how buggy the game is like you are still playing beta.
So the issue with AoC is more than just normal bugs....
I can gree with you but AOC is not 1st mmo to make a promise and not deliver and somehow people have forgotten that. TBH I can't wait till WAR comes out and all this hatred can shift that way...
I honestly don't experience 1/2 the issues people are saying exist, and it could be I take more of a logical approach to life and games. I have a lvl 80 char and multiple low level chars and yes every now and then I get a lag spike, but they are addressing these issues. Going through thousands of lines of code it not an overnight easy to fix issue.
.In the end people are forgetting the most important things..
1. This is just a game.
2. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and fun.
That is all to true, except if your game is buggy and laggy as can be, it will not be enjoyable under any circumstances. I dealt with this on a couple of games, and realisticly if it has a rocky launch, most people should avoid it until 6 months or more.
3. It's not a job, none of us get paid to play.
True, but do you buy something and just use it if its not up to your expectations on its quality? I doubt it, most of us wont.
4. Relaxing and being patient will prevent heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.
Stress has been proven to be healthy in certain doses, also there is no scientific proof that relaxing and being patient during a games isssues or while playing will reduce or even prevent heart attacks or nervous breakdowns.
Its been quite entertaining to watch this whole funcom debacle, hope the industry is watching hard. Best more often to learn from others mistakes.
Playing: Not much actively.
Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001
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Actually, thought that conan would be a good game because it was from the same people that made anarchy online. The game that is the deepest mmorpg in history.
Did i buy into the hype, no. I saw that they promised and thought, looks like it has alot of things i look for in a game. Then i am delivered none of the promises.
Actually, thought that conan would be a good game because it was from the same people that made anarchy online. The game that is the deepest mmorpg in history.
Did i buy into the hype, no. I saw that they promised and thought, looks like it has alot of things i look for in a game. Then i am delivered none of the promises.
And adding to that. What made people even more furious and caused the real downfall of AoC is all the promisses and Yada Yada that were made since launch from wich nothing has seen the light on the live servers yet!!
- Adding a jitload of the promised 1500 armorsets (promissed end may)
- Adding new PVP system (promissed half june)
- Adding new midlevel zone to adress some of the lack of content issues (promised july)
We are now halfway august people and the game has gotten worse and worse with each patch and nothing from above has been delivered!
Adding all this to the false advertising and OVERhyping before launch is enough for me to lose faith in Funcom and NEVER buy a game of them again.
And you can count on it that at the Leipzig Game Convention DirectX10 is NOT going to be showcased (and if they do it will probably be fake as hell).
Have a nice day.
I dont think anyone has forgotten Vanguard. That game failed to the point of going down to minimum number of servers and workers to maintain and fix the huge problems it got at launch. Thats why it has taken so long to fix basic issues in that game.
If you are thinking of Vanguard as a success story to justify what AOC is about then I remind you that the game went bankrupt....
So - as in terms of AOC and the future. IT wil end up as AO. Free game that will sell ingame items. Its only question of how long till that happens.
AOC has failed. It will not manage to recover. It had it chance. But I think we all know that the PR work from Funcom was to make money - not to make a good MMO game. Thats why it launched in this state - without lifting NDA.
That's also a very good point!
AoC is the first MMO I come across that has still it's NDA in place after launch and I played a LOT of MMO's.
There is only one explanation for this and that is that Funcom seriously has something to hide about what happened during the whole Beta period.
Cheers
Honestly, AoC won't go under.
Funcom might though and it is my personal opinion that maybe that would be the best thing. That someone else took over the game.
RIP Blackguard. May a resurrection come.
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
I played both EQ2 and WoW at launch, both from launch day in fact. No, they had nothing even *close* to AoC's problems.
Yes, both had bugs when they launched, as any MMO does at launch. This is true. However, comparing the bugs in WoW/EQ2 to the problems in AOC is like comparing a small leak in your kitchen to your entire apartment being flooded. There's no comparison.
WoW's main problem was Blizzard were not prepared for the amount of subscriptions they would get so soon after the game's release. They had to stop box sales for a time so they could get more servers set up to handle it all.
IIRC, they met their 1 year projections within the first month or so. That's not "bugs and crappy release". Frankly, I think their game being far more successful than they could have expected is a problem most Developers would *like* to have.
So, the over-packed-servers issue notwithstanding, WoW was *highly* playable and stable when it launched.
One of EQ2's main problems was that hardly anyone could run it due to its steep system requirements and poorly optimized engine. It had glitches/bugs, but the game was still overall playable, and content that was intended to be in there, was in there.
Overall, in neither case did you see the even *close* to the degree of outcry you see for AoC. And it's not just because it's "the fun game to pick on". FC is bringing it on themselves with every misstep they make. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
You are being extremely disingenuous here. No one expects a perfect, bug-free game at launch. We're not talking "just bugs" here. Even LoTRO had bugs at launch, but look at the difference in posts going back to its launch... Quite the opposite of what you see with AoC.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
... they've had 5 years to get AoC ready.
It would have taken a day or two at most to prepare an official statement that certain functionality would not be in at launch and why, and explain those features would be high in priority. Instead they assume players are stupid and try passing off those features as "cool new content coming soon!"
Instead of being up-front and forthright with the true state of the game, they kept their mouths shut. They kept people who knew what was up silenced under NDA, and continued to let would-be customers believe what they'd been told would all be there. That has nothing to do with how long it takes to fix something. That's called dishonesty.... to put it mildly.
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
Again... No one's looking for a perfectly bug-less game and you are being extremely disingenuous in your reply.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I started the game at Day 1, checked into the forums for info as far as quests, loot, etc.
Anyways, communication from the devs has been essentially non-existent since Day 1. Go ahead and look at any technical / class / gameplay issue since the game came out. Very little word from the devs despite overwhelming player evidence to any issue.
Hell, the idiots at Failcom only maybe 2 weeks ago finally acknowledged that the "Out of Memory" issue is a big, widespread problem, despite their paying customers telling them so since Day 1.
The EU players complaining about US players killing any chance of talking with the devs don't know what the hell they're talking about. **There wasn't any communication from the devs to begin with.**
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
That's the dumbest argument I ever heard. They have always favored the EU forums over the NA ones. Their communication is jack shit. The director puts out a letter every month telling everyone the game is going better than planned (LOL?), meanwhile the game-defining features are missing. Then Erling has the balls to try and downplay it by saying only 1 or 2 minor things missing. If you swallow this load of hot steaming crap the PR guys are putting out there, you deserve to have your money taken from you at this point.
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It feels funny reading through all of this and still seeing a banner-ad for AoC at the bottom of the site.
Failcom: I think by now, with all things pulled into perspective, that this game is notably one of the few worst failures of the gaming day and age. I don't mean since Vanguard, Mourning, Dark And Light; I mean since the old Atari/Intelevision days with the E.T. game.
I'll explain that, more openly. AoC has - or had potential. The plot wasn't bad, and the environment of a brutal, bloody world where most of the women are either wenches or amazonian war-maidens isn't much to complain about. Most of the quests were intuitive enough, and the visuals were refreshing, even if they weren't all that was promised. It was a good game, if you could deal with its other flaws.
Then there came the mechanics that would set it apart. Cities? An amazing idea. Let's make inspirational looking cities that offer bonuses to our guild's players. Too bad it was a little easy from what I heard, and most of the other impliments of having a city - sieging and being sieged - were bare. Ah, that brings PvP - or... maybe not? What PvP? I say that with true inflection of a question, not a sharp distaste. I for one don't care for PvP so I didn't mind it. But still - it was offered and that's what people were looking for.
It is a funny idea: who else wouldn't mind coming back with help to chop off that bloody piker of a fifteen year old's head who happened to roll Bear Shaman and danced on your corpse?
But the essence of the matter is the deception. And I say that gingerly. We may have bought into it, ranging from a lot to a little, but who's fault is who's is moot at the end of the day. They failed to follow through on the game's promises that a lot of people paid for and would probably still look forward to seeing. And there were a lot of promises. I won't list em again, everyone already knows them. But the NDA hesitation, the lying-through-the-teeth at interviews, the grand ordeal of the forum and its humorous closure for getting criticism? I hoped AoC could do better than gamble it's way dishonestly into plausible AO rating and banktrupcy, just so something more intuitive would come along rather than basic WoW (as it has become, agreeingly).
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Sniper is another term for unorthodox surgeon.
I'm sure erling told famine to close the thread. The game is in shambles and he figured he could lie his way out of it, instead he got blasted by almost everyone who replied. Its kinda funny how even the nuttiest fanbois didnt post a single reply in there.
That's the dumbest argument I ever heard. They have always favored the EU forums over the NA ones. Their communication is jack shit. The director puts out a letter every month telling everyone the game is going better than planned (LOL?), meanwhile the game-defining features are missing. Then Erling has the balls to try and downplay it by saying only 1 or 2 minor things missing. If you swallow this load of hot steaming crap the PR guys are putting out there, you deserve to have your money taken from you at this point.
That's COMPLETE bullshit. Your argument is the dumbest I ever read!
The DEV's were IN FACT posting a LOT on the US forums! It was an EU player that had also a US account that found out about it and posted in the EU forums about this and then it turned out into an Outrage why an EU company was favoring the US forums and kept the EU players in the dark!
This resulted in the again FACT that EU players were GAINED read access to the US forums lol!
So get your facts straight before pulling BS out of your arse. As I was there since Early Access and have seen it all! There was litterly ZERO communication on the EU forums till weeks after launch!
The Director Letters were posted in newsletters, gaming sites and official forums and their offcial site all at the same time. And those were BS anyway as they only contained lies, more promisses and PR crap anyway.
Have a nice day!
Sorry, Funcom rarely posted on US forums, most of us had to go through EU forums for details on patches etc.
We are talking about the first weeks of launch! Not at this current time.
There were a couple Dev's that were constantly posting on the US forums, discussing the issues in the early weeks!
That's what caused the outrage on the EU forums and resulted in the opening of both forums for both continents!
Cheers
I give Erling credit to admitting the Drunken Brawling was missing at launch
but so was the PVP Advancement system, which Funcom never said would -not -be in for launch
and hyped 2 weeks before EA launch
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2180015#2180015
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It's all news TO ME GLAD I NEVER BOUGHT THE GAME well i see and hear all these things here end of the day they said it has something and has not delivered to me it's misleading sales.. but if you ask me a majority of games do this and fair do's to the customer. why should we be the ones getting screwed ...
It's all Lies...
Are you kidding me? I guess you didn't play WOW and EQ2 at launch..Both games were horrible and both games had the same issues with bugs...I was there on both 1st day launches and they were horrible..AOC is a great game and it will get better if people would learn to be patient and relax a bit.
I played both EQ2 and WoW at launch, both from launch day in fact. No, they had nothing even *close* to AoC's problems.
Yes, both had bugs when they launched, as any MMO does at launch. This is true. However, comparing the bugs in WoW/EQ2 to the problems in AOC is like comparing a small leak in your kitchen to your entire apartment being flooded. There's no comparison.
WoW's main problem was Blizzard were not prepared for the amount of subscriptions they would get so soon after the game's release. They had to stop box sales for a time so they could get more servers set up to handle it all.
IIRC, they met their 1 year projections within the first month or so. That's not "bugs and crappy release". Frankly, I think their game being far more successful than they could have expected is a problem most Developers would *like* to have.
So, the over-packed-servers issue notwithstanding, WoW was *highly* playable and stable when it launched.
One of EQ2's main problems was that hardly anyone could run it due to its steep system requirements and poorly optimized engine. It had glitches/bugs, but the game was still overall playable, and content that was intended to be in there, was in there.
Overall, in neither case did you see the even *close* to the degree of outcry you see for AoC. And it's not just because it's "the fun game to pick on". FC is bringing it on themselves with every misstep they make. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Even after 3 and 4 years WOW and EQ2 still have issues, any mmo that gets released will have issues..WOW and EQ2 are not as polished as people think it is, thus we still have patches. No need to patch a game that people think is polished and complete imo. If you want complete and polished go buy an Xbox 360, WII, PS3 and play those games.
You are being extremely disingenuous here. No one expects a perfect, bug-free game at launch. We're not talking "just bugs" here. Even LoTRO had bugs at launch, but look at the difference in posts going back to its launch... Quite the opposite of what you see with AoC.
People act like it is so simple to instantly fix all their comlaints over night, well I have been a programmer for 6 years and I can tell you it isn't that simple, anyone who is good @ programming knows it takes some serious time to go through all the code and to figure out how to fix things...
... they've had 5 years to get AoC ready.
It would have taken a day or two at most to prepare an official statement that certain functionality would not be in at launch and why, and explain those features would be high in priority. Instead they assume players are stupid and try passing off those features as "cool new content coming soon!"
Instead of being up-front and forthright with the true state of the game, they kept their mouths shut. They kept people who knew what was up silenced under NDA, and continued to let would-be customers believe what they'd been told would all be there. That has nothing to do with how long it takes to fix something. That's called dishonesty.... to put it mildly.
AOC has bugs, yes so what...Name a game that doesn't have any issues..
Again... No one's looking for a perfectly bug-less game and you are being extremely disingenuous in your reply.
How am I being extremely disingenous? Why not just come out and call me a liar, call me misleading what you call false facts. Do you honestly believe that you were lied to? No one put a gun to your head and told you to buy the game, that was your decision. Name me 1 mmo game that has launched with all that had been promised. I can't think of any.
I don't know about any1 else but I usually buy a software product after I have had a demo 1st, but that doesn't seem like a logical thing for most people to do. In the world of sales there is no such thing as honesty, people want to sell a product and everyone of them well tell you what you want to hear to get you to buy it, thats why you see commericals about 3 different drugs all claiming to have the same solution.
If the game is soooooo bad how come people are still buying and still playing it? How come they don't feel the same way about the game as everyone else? Could be because they understand how the system works, could be that they disagree with the negative comments. This is what FUNCOM is looking at, they aren't looking at a handful of upset people because they see on the other side the massive amounts of happy people who are still playing and they are wondering why these folks aren't complaining about nealy have the things that are posted.
If your going to call me extremely disingenous twice in the same post, well then thats just the pot calling the kettle black, because I was there @ both EQ2 and WOW launch and yes they did too have horrible issues @ launch that were equal to AOC's launch, so if your going to call someone disingenous make sure you have your ducks in a row.
I would respectfully disagree with this line of thinking. Remember about a month after the game came out, they made a big press release touting the fact that over 700K copies of the game had been sold? Well now we are about 3 months out, and there had yet to be any announcement of either them touting a new number for boxes sold. Why do you think that is?
700k in 1 months, surely you think if the game was going as good as Gaute talks about in his letters, this game would be selling like hotcakes. There has yet to be a 1 million copy announcement, hell not even an 800k announcement. Why? The answer is because the number of subs peaked 4 weeks in and has been dropping off drastically. They can't even tout a new "boxes sold" number let alone "an active subscriptions" number. The word of mouth got out and the boat is sinking. My old server is emptying out, and with WAR coming in a month, people are not going to stick around.
This is not a "handful of people", this is a massive exodus of people fleeing from this game like a burning building. Warhammer has literally been handed a golden opportunity thanks to Funcom's debacle.
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I would respectfully disagree with this line of thinking. Remember about a month after the game came out, they made a big press release touting the fact that over 700K copies of the game had been sold? Well now we are about 3 months out, and there had yet to be any announcement of either them touting a new number for boxes sold. Why do you think that is?
700k in 1 months, surely you think if the game was going as good as Gaute talks about in his letters, this game would be selling like hotcakes. There has yet to be a 1 million copy announcement, hell not even an 800k announcement. Why? The answer is because the number of subs peaked 4 weeks in and has been dropping off drastically. They can't even tout a new "boxes sold" number let alone "an active subscriptions" number. The word of mouth got out and the boat is sinking. My old server is emptying out, and with WAR coming in a month, people are not going to stick around.
This is not a "handful of people", this is a massive exodus of people fleeing from this game like a burning building. Warhammer has literally been handed a golden opportunity thanks to Funcom's debacle.
It is just a handful of people, but your reply still doesn't answer the question..Why doesn't everyone feel the same way about the game being bad, about being lied to etc etc....
I disagree I have chars on 3 different servers and they are always packed at night and on the weekends when I play. There is no proof that their sub numbers have dropped, if that was the case they wouldn't be trying to pursuing an xbox 360 release. There is no massive exodus of people fleeing. The only thing people are going by is the negative posts they see in the forums.
As for the million copis sold, that was already announced on multiple websites.. 1 is http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/06/06/%2526quot%3Bage-conan%2526quot%3B-sells-1-million-copies%3B-top-u.s.-pc-game
Funcom announced on Friday that its "Age of Conan" massively multiplayer online PC game has now sold a million copies in less than three weeks, topping PC game charts in the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. "Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft," said Morten Larssen, Funcom VP of sales and marketing. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history."
WAR is coming out soon, people aren't fleeing because they hate the game. Im going to leave for a few weeks to try out WAR myself, doesn't mean im not going to play AOC anymore. Numbers always go up and down when a new mmo is coming on to the market. Just like when xbox 360 was released and WII and PS3 some people bought the new systems and some stayed with the old system.
what you linked is probably referring to number of copies SHIPPED
because your link has the date of 06/06
similar link date 06/08 -- clearly says shipped
news.bigdownload.com/2008/06/08/funcom-one-million-age-of-conan-copies-shipped-to-stores/
Of course, "shipped" is not the same thing as "sold" but Funcom states that the game has also been selling well in the US and other countries and is now re-supplying retail stores with new copies and opening up the game in new markets.
heres what Funcom has announced for Activated accounts (not subs)
May 26th: 400k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
June 2nd: 500k
www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/080602_Funcom%20Update.pdf
June 30th: 700k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
I am not aware of any further announcements from Funcom beyond June 30th
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