I'd like to have Mr. Craig Morrison's optimism and positivism. *roflmao* That game ain's going anywhere, whatever they do, it's dead. A real pity for the awesome art and level design of some parts, and a great BOO for the game designers, customers support, etc etc and the whole organization.
I left right after launch, even before my first free month had expired. But I am willing to give it another chance, should I read about some good improvements and coming population growth
What makes you so sure that Funcom still does not use their hype? Do you think that all the Funcom emploies just get fired and they hired completly fresh blood all over?
Or is it simply that you did not even get effected by the hype the same way some of us did? I wasted 120$ on crap
I'd like to have Mr. Craig Morrison's optimism and positivism. *roflmao* That game ain's going anywhere, whatever they do, it's dead. A real pity for the awesome art and level design of some parts, and a great BOO for the game designers, customers support, etc etc and the whole organization.
I agree that the days of "WoW killer" are long gone but AoC might still survive.
They have a good IP and if they manage to not brake the game again in future patching I can see Age of Conan surviving at about 100 subs. They will most certainly have to cut staff and therefore do less patching but an MMO can easily survive with only 100k subs.
Even if the game is lacking on other areas, good graphics and digital boobs will bring AoC that 100k subs.
It might be free to try it out again, but it is sure stealing your free time. And there is no way in heaven or hell that I am going to ever thouch a Funcom product again. That customer service made me mislike everything about Funcom. The lies, the unpaid GM staff, not listening to beta players, no response on mails or petition during the first 1-2 months when i played etc.. I felt like a complete tard.. why play a game when you get threaded like garbage by the creators?
Edit: And NOOO! I am not one of those that quit duo to low performance. It was the game play and the bugs and the support all together. I pointed out a lot of the limiting linear core elements in AoC from beta on, but ofc no response. They should have listened to gaming nerds like me.
You sir should never beta test a game ever again.
1. don't ask them to change a major part of the game after they let you into it.
2. Beta testers had no Siege to test, gathering, skills, Even certain zones. If you truely beta tested you would know that.
3. if you don't like it don't post. Obviously they struck a nerv with you some how. They fired that guy...... the new Game director should be given a shot.
I will not be resubbing because...well...i cant! Looksl ike funcom got shafted for that first wave of perma bans. Guess thats what i get for finding a bug in the game! I found a mob that dropped more than the usual amount of money, and killed it over and over? Is it my fault they fucked up on launch? No. Take it away and scold me. Dont perma-ban. O well, not like i was interested in going back to Age of Failnan anyways.
I will not be resubbing because...well...i cant! Looksl ike funcom got shafted for that first wave of perma bans. Guess thats what i get for finding a bug in the game! I found a mob that dropped more than the usual amount of money, and killed it over and over? Is it my fault they fucked up on launch? No. Take it away and scold me. Dont perma-ban. O well, not like i was interested in going back to Age of Failnan anyways.
You found a bug, you should have reported it. Killing the same mob over and over again is what people call exploiting. Any game, should ban exploiters.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by S1GNAL
It might be free to try it out again, but it is sure stealing your free time. And there is no way in heaven or hell that I am going to ever thouch a Funcom product again. That customer service made me mislike everything about Funcom. The lies, the unpaid GM staff, not listening to beta players, no response on mails or petition during the first 1-2 months when i played etc.. I felt like a complete tard.. why play a game when you get threaded like garbage by the creators?
Edit: And NOOO! I am not one of those that quit duo to low performance. It was the game play and the bugs and the support all together. I pointed out a lot of the limiting linear core elements in AoC from beta on, but ofc no response. They should have listened to gaming nerds like me. "I didnt get my free month with AoC (or my payed 1 month). But luckly I cancelled my account while being very frustrated 2 weeks before it renewed."
Remember that comment 9 months ago?
If you don't want to think that there is even the smallest chance things have changed since then, then that is truly awful.
You had maybe 2-3 weeks play thats all at a time right at launch when things were no where near perfect. They aren't now but there are no more issues in all areas than any other mmo.
Craig Morrison = what Mark Jacobs should have been
That is not fair at all.There is almost zero pressure on this new guy,after all Funcom at least broke even from their initial investment,that was the pressure to get the game out,weather it was ready or not.
The ONLY thing this guy has to do now is try to keep players or the obvious,trials and returnees.SOE and just about EVERY developer already does this ,so it is not like Mr.Morrison is bringing in any new or magical ideas.He is IMO just a guy behind a desk,i doubt he is doing anything to help this game.
I have already stated the obvious ,in previous posts and have not seen one movement in that direction,so again i would say this guy is doing nothing out of the normal.In other words it could be anyone in his position including Mr.Jacobs and we would see the exact same reaction.
Better drops/improve the linearity areas[especially the beginning.Most of the game is decent as is,so most of it just needs tweaks,i cannot comment on crafting as i do not even know if it exists,i never had the time to find out.The linearity stems from most of the game being locked out ,i would say 90% of it until you finish a quest,witch also at times feels like a single player event.I had one particular quest,where i meet up with some NPC and she helps me defeat all the baddies ,then decides to sit it out against the boss?lmao made no sense,after all she was out to killing the boss,and was following the same good guys allegiance.Most of the doors/houses in Tortage were locked out until i followed the linear path.
If i remember right[memory not always the best]but looking over my abilities /spells i did not see anything that lent it to be a grouping game,again i really got the feeling this game was originally developed to be a single player game and tried to incorporate Multi-player as an after thought.Ok my bad,i went back into history and realized Funcom was aiming for a 20 level single player buildup,before branching into specioalization,so i guess that is why it felt liek a single player game to me lmao,IT WAS .I played 3 different classes but never took one beyong level 20,so i guess i missed the next wave of the game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Give me a new free month to replace the wasted month just after the first launch and I'll consider it. I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition back in the day, was looking forward to AoC, gave a LOT of feedback in the closed beta and ended up quitting in frustration after barely 2 weeks when the game was "released". That is, when open paid & please-buy-a-boxed-copy beta started.
Out of principle I'm very tempted to refuse to play anything from FC ever again though. If they're willing to launch a highly anticipted MMO in that sorry state there's no limit to what they'll do to make a few bucks.
But hey, free weekend a year later, now that the game is actually done and somewhat playable. There's some money well spent on a CE.
Relaunch would definitely burry Funcom in todays economy. Would just hang low , maintain the current base and launch the 360 version @ Christmas 09.
lol you are on crack if you think 360 version will be out by Christmas 09
with how good the game is running, and the fact that they keep fixing stuff. i don't doubt that. But who knows, only them right?
It's starting to look like they are focusing the majority of their time and energy on a different MMO, my guess is tha all things Conan will take a backseat to TSW, just like all things Anarchy Online did when AoC was in mid development. www.massively.com/2009/03/10/funcom-to-reveal-the-secret-world-at-gdc-09/
Really... cause if that was the case FC wouldn't have been hiring new staff for TSW as they have been for months instead of taking them off the AoC team, rigth?
It's completely OK to dislike a game, and express it, but just using any random element to try and bash it or the devs without knowing any fact is not the way to go.
TSW is in dev, yes, and has it's own crew, Fc is hiring people for it still, just check their web page for available jobs, there are places for AOC too. When FC confronted problems with AO and actually got in trouble, they were starting the works on another MMO, Midgard, back then they didn't have the resources or size to handle both the problems in AO and a whole new project, so they focused on AO, canned Midgard and turned AO from a mess to a very good game, their Shadolands expansion was called expansion of the year by the specialiced media.
Most problems with AoC are ironed out (there are, and there will ever be problems, as in any MMO, and there will be people that like the game and people that don't, as usual) FC has a solid cash reserve, no need for investment in at least a year and still is and projects having a positive income, they also are much bigger now, and capable of managing different crews, both in terms of resources and manpower. Dunno how could this come as a surprise when the first announcement for the game was on 2007 when they had a very small crew doing pre development things, and when it's mentioned in all of their publicly available financial reports.
I'd be happy to try the game in it's current state, provided that trial was free.
But I got burned BAD by AoC the first time around. As a CB tester, I watched SERIOUS bugs that we had been reporting and discussing for weeks go into the live build.
Worse than that, I watched the game get hammered by nerf after nerf. Every time someone cried, another nerf was applied.
Nerfs, instead of content, where many of us were stuck with nothing but villas to grind for levels.
Nerfs, instead of fixing the horrible issues with ATI performance.
Nerfs, instead of making sure that advertised features actually made it into the game.
I could go on...but it's all been said. I'll never pre-order another MMORPG though.
Really... cause if that was the case FC wouldn't have been hiring new staff for TSW as they have been for months instead of taking them off the AoC team, rigth?
It's completely OK to dislike a game, and express it, but just using any random element to try and bash it or the devs without knowing any fact is not the way to go.
TSW is in dev, yes, and has it's own crew, Fc is hiring people for it still, just check their web page for available jobs, there are places for AOC too. When FC confronted problems with AO and actually got in trouble, they were starting the works on another MMO, Midgard, back then they didn't have the resources or size to handle both the problems in AO and a whole new project, so they focused on AO, canned Midgard and turned AO from a mess to a very good game, their Shadolands expansion was called expansion of the year by the specialiced media.
Most problems with AoC are ironed out (there are, and there will ever be problems, as in any MMO, and there will be people that like the game and people that don't, as usual) FC has a solid cash reserve, no need for investment in at least a year and still is and projects having a positive income, they also are much bigger now, and capable of managing different crews, both in terms of resources and manpower. Dunno how could this come as a surprise when the first announcement for the game was on 2007 when they had a very small crew doing pre development things, and when it's mentioned in all of their publicly available financial reports.
1) Hiring does not = adding more, they could have been replacing people who left / were fired.
2) Talk to the Anarchy Online players who were abandoned when FC pulled the majority of the staff to Dev AoC, and than pulled the rest off to handle the mess of a launch. AO players couldn't get a petition answered for weeks, AO GMs were pulled to do mundane things like moderate the AoC forums, Anarchy players have been left high and dry.
This company repeats it's history constantly, it takes no stretch of imagination to guess that they will once again all but ignore their less successful titles while they pour all the resources into trying to make a game that can keep subscribers. AoC's current player base seems to have no problem waiting 2,4,6,8 months for fixes, FC is taking their 3rd swing at trying to make an MMO that players will sub to after the box's 30 days.
And was a huge disappointment to the actual Fans. Godager's "Ther will be no camping in Shadowlands" statement is still referenced by players to point out that FC isn't honest with it's subscribers. SL was launched just as broken as the original release, it took them more than a year to patch its major flaws and more than 1 of the 6-7 zones is still barren of content to this day.
Give me a new free month to replace the wasted month just after the first launch and I'll consider it. I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition back in the day, was looking forward to AoC, gave a LOT of feedback in the closed beta and ended up quitting in frustration after barely 2 weeks when the game was "released". That is, when open paid & please-buy-a-boxed-copy beta started. Out of principle I'm very tempted to refuse to play anything from FC ever again though. If they're willing to launch a highly anticipted MMO in that sorry state there's no limit to what they'll do to make a few bucks. But hey, free weekend a year later, now that the game is actually done and somewhat playable. There's some money well spent on a CE.
I had the same experience with AoC. I wrote a few class guides early on, got involved in the community only to have one of the patches result in an unplayable game for me. After a couple weeks of trying to get support and never getting it I quit. I was also treated like crap by the wonderful forum mods in their efforts to cleanse the forums and supress bad PR during the launch.
I might come back for a free month or two and see how things have changed. The graphics were great but there was no core game, sense of progress or character development that you expect with a mmo. Id play for free but unless it was AMAZING they wouldnt get a cent.
Relaunch with free gametime for the brutalized sounds like a good idea.
So does an apology for launching crap, but we will never get it.
I could go on...but it's all been said. I'll never pre-order another MMORPG though.
Heh, me neither. The only reason I have kept playing since launch is that I was an avid follower of AoC before the game got launched and I also happened to really enjoy the lore behind the game.
I would most definitively have done myself a favour by waiting a year for the game to shape up into the gem it is turning into today. But lesson learned; I will never try out a fresh mmo again.
Originally posted by slipline So does an apology for launching crap, but we will never get it.
I'm just curious. Exactly who would you want in Funcom to apologize to you? The programmers? The propaganda minister (Erling Ellingsen)? The guys making the music (obviously not)? The previous game director (Gaute Godager)?
It's not like Funcom is a single entity that can apologize to you. There's got to be someone that was behind the scenes pulling strings, which ended up with tons of broken hearted players. We will never know for sure, but I would put the blame on the previous game director, as his distanced relationship and lack of communication (not responding to player concerns) with the community just showed how much he really cared what others thinked. The new director, Craig, is regularily writing updates to the community and is even talking to the players on the official forums. I cannot imagine him having any reason to go the lenght as to apologize to the previous disappointed players.
Someone else would have to do that, but who are they? And how do we know it is them who should be apologizing?
Well in that case you can ask me, as i am one of those AO players that were there when FC was developing AoC. The dev crew, GM and volunteer staff found in AO is proportionally appropriate for the population of the game, in my opinion, or was, i haven't played in over a year, but i was playing AO among other game (by Blizzard) back then.
Community had a dry season, which ended when they appointed Silirrion (Craig Morrison, current AoC GD) GD, from then we passed to a period where new content was being added on an average of 6 weeks, and to this day, just reading their forums (Means, new GD, seems to have keept a great forum presence and work pace) they have been constantly adding fixes, tweaks, revisions and overall paying attention to player input.
I have no complaint of my time in AO, other than lack of comunication on my earlier days, it's been the most straigthforward exchange of ideas with a developer's team on a live game i've experienced, where actual mechanics and system discussions were daily occurrence with participation ofr means and Sil, among others. the AO crew, on a nearly 8 years old game with a very small population its nothing but a sign of comitment to a playerbase and a product, to the point of moving the game to new servers (back then when i still was playing and AOC was still in development) and works on a new rendering engine.
Yes they have no doubt replaced people, and of course they have moved people, it's not the same to have a crew for game development than a live development crew, however theyir initial plans for TSW where delayed from planned as they devoted to AoC, tot he point that TSW crew was temporarily assigned to AoC, also inf available from their reports. TSW took the back seat, as Fc has focused on the game they launched.
Somhow i doub't you played AO back then, or now, or even that you have read their forums to see what the population thinks.
For the record, i do have complaints about my experience in AoC, even tho i enjoy it the most out of the games out there.
I had the same experience with AoC. I wrote a few class guides early on, got involved in the community only to have one of the patches result in an unplayable game for me. After a couple weeks of trying to get support and never getting it I quit. I was also treated like crap by the wonderful forum mods in their efforts to cleanse the forums and supress bad PR during the launch.
I might come back for a free month or two and see how things have changed. The graphics were great but there was no core game, sense of progress or character development that you expect with a mmo. Id play for free but unless it was AMAZING they wouldnt get a cent.
Relaunch with free gametime for the brutalized sounds like a good idea.
So does an apology for launching crap, but we will never get it.
FC has a long tradition of treating some of their most active community members & fans with total disregard and abuse.
The original creator of AO's Guild Chat-Bot was banned for life after helping FC identify and solve severe exploits in the game. There are many incidents equal to this over the years.
At Unfinished: Somhow i doub't you played AO back then, or now, or even that you have read their forums to see what the population thinks. For the record, i do have complaints about my experience in AoC, even tho i enjoy it the most out of the games out there.
More than 7 years as an AO player and almost 6 years of subscription time paid for AO. Was also a Clan RL for Tara and Pand at several points during my 'career'.
Not currently subscribing. I still read the AO forums, I even watched the endless "I can't get a petition answered" threads get vaporized during the 3 months after AoC's launch.
FC has a long tradition of treating some of their most active community members & fans with total disregard and abuse.
The original creator of AO's Guild Chat-Bot was banned for life after helping FC identify and solve severe exploits in the game. There are many incidents equal to this over the years.
Quite sad really. Either way, I like the IP and want the game to be good, not the company. Im bored with all the other crap out there. BTW other companies are not any better so I dont want to sound like I am bashing Funcom. A co-worker played EVE for a long time and CCP banned him for life when he reported a large scale exploit that several alliances were using. When you go up against these people you are nobody and money is the only thing they understand.
With all the new titles and IP on the table Funcom would really have to pull out the stops to get me back. I dont expect much because its more about the money than anything else for them. The relaunch is less about wanting people to enjoy the game and more about another cash grab.
It would be very difficult to justify giving them my money again after what they did. I think they will find this to be the case with the majority of people who left early in the launch period.
Have they made it where a person can duo with another person without losing more than 72% of the XP for the kill yet?
I duo with my wife. Is there a reason to play this game if you like grouping? We can't run instances endlessly, we like to quest together. Have zero interest in PVP. We'd play on a PVE server. We launched and left before they charged us for the travesty they had created.
We would come back in a heartbeat if they would fix PVE so you could actually group without losing so much. It's like getting punished for grouping.
Howcome then you can state that they stoped or slowed down fixes and additions to Ao during AoC's develoment, when actually then started the period with the most Dev activity, game fixes and free additions to the game since the post launch frenzy?
You can't expect Fc to keep an AoC sized development crew on a game several years old with a very small population, as it is unsustainable, yet the crew does a great job, that speaks well about FC ofor allowing the game to go on and the crew for making it possible (and the playerbase, that likely still find it enjoyable to keep going after 7+years) it's commitment, but AO won't pay it's own costs if you put 170 people as a live crew.
it's perfectly fine to dislike a dev company, but once you blind yourself to the point of using anything, even unrelated or not too accurate thing, to bash them your opinion stops being that of an honestly disgruntled customer, and starts turning itn that of someone with an agenda.
I can completley say FC shouldn't have released Aoc unfinished, sadly they did, they likely had little in terms of options, FC shouldn't have let the hype produced by the community to grow as it did, least encourage it, but they did, and the whole post launch should have been handled different, but it wasn't.
However i see a much better product today, i see a new face directing the proyect 8one i, and the AO community have had a great experience with) i see a contined plan on tackling the issues and moving on to actually add new content, i see a much different perspective now than 3 months after launch, therefore i feel i can recomend the game, and i find it enjoyable and fun, in ways i don't find in other games, and that allows me to see good posibilities in the future, if things remain in the path they are today, if that changes for the worst, i'll move on, that's it.
Really... cause if that was the case FC wouldn't have been hiring new staff for TSW as they have been for months instead of taking them off the AoC team, rigth?
It's completely OK to dislike a game, and express it, but just using any random element to try and bash it or the devs without knowing any fact is not the way to go.
TSW is in dev, yes, and has it's own crew, Fc is hiring people for it still, just check their web page for available jobs, there are places for AOC too. When FC confronted problems with AO and actually got in trouble, they were starting the works on another MMO, Midgard, back then they didn't have the resources or size to handle both the problems in AO and a whole new project, so they focused on AO, canned Midgard and turned AO from a mess to a very good game, their Shadolands expansion was called expansion of the year by the specialiced media.
Most problems with AoC are ironed out (there are, and there will ever be problems, as in any MMO, and there will be people that like the game and people that don't, as usual) FC has a solid cash reserve, no need for investment in at least a year and still is and projects having a positive income, they also are much bigger now, and capable of managing different crews, both in terms of resources and manpower. Dunno how could this come as a surprise when the first announcement for the game was on 2007 when they had a very small crew doing pre development things, and when it's mentioned in all of their publicly available financial reports.
1) Hiring does not = adding more, they could have been replacing people who left / were fired.
2) Talk to the Anarchy Online players who were abandoned when FC pulled the majority of the staff to Dev AoC, and than pulled the rest off to handle the mess of a launch. AO players couldn't get a petition answered for weeks, AO GMs were pulled to do mundane things like moderate the AoC forums, Anarchy players have been left high and dry.
This company repeats it's history constantly, it takes no stretch of imagination to guess that they will once again all but ignore their less successful titles while they pour all the resources into trying to make a game that can keep subscribers. AoC's current player base seems to have no problem waiting 2,4,6,8 months for fixes, FC is taking their 3rd swing at trying to make an MMO that players will sub to after the box's 30 days.
And was a huge disappointment to the actual Fans. Godager's "Ther will be no camping in Shadowlands" statement is still referenced by players to point out that FC isn't honest with it's subscribers. SL was launched just as broken as the original release, it took them more than a year to patch its major flaws and more than 1 of the 6-7 zones is still barren of content to this day.
First off....Shadowlands was very much like AoC at launch....not even half finished. There were zones that no one could get to due to intentionally bugged quests...so that no one would realise that the damn landscape wasn't even finished yet.
Worse, it took a Sci-fi game, and tried to pound a phantasy game on top of it.
I quit AO shortly after Shadowlands turned my fixer into a gimped soldier, and turned my 900million credit armor into a colorful trinket. I've been back a few times since, but never for long. SL ruined the game.
Second...in response to "There will be no camping in Shadowlands" I have to add some uproarious laughter....does anyone else remember the campfire kit reward?? I STILL say it was Funcom's idea of foreshadowing, or a sick joke.
Comments
I'd like to have Mr. Craig Morrison's optimism and positivism. *roflmao* That game ain's going anywhere, whatever they do, it's dead. A real pity for the awesome art and level design of some parts, and a great BOO for the game designers, customers support, etc etc and the whole organization.
What makes you so sure that Funcom still does not use their hype? Do you think that all the Funcom emploies just get fired and they hired completly fresh blood all over?
Or is it simply that you did not even get effected by the hype the same way some of us did? I wasted 120$ on crap
I agree that the days of "WoW killer" are long gone but AoC might still survive.
They have a good IP and if they manage to not brake the game again in future patching I can see Age of Conan surviving at about 100 subs. They will most certainly have to cut staff and therefore do less patching but an MMO can easily survive with only 100k subs.
Even if the game is lacking on other areas, good graphics and digital boobs will bring AoC that 100k subs.
You sir should never beta test a game ever again.
1. don't ask them to change a major part of the game after they let you into it.
2. Beta testers had no Siege to test, gathering, skills, Even certain zones. If you truely beta tested you would know that.
3. if you don't like it don't post. Obviously they struck a nerv with you some how. They fired that guy...... the new Game director should be given a shot.
I will not be resubbing because...well...i cant! Looksl ike funcom got shafted for that first wave of perma bans. Guess thats what i get for finding a bug in the game! I found a mob that dropped more than the usual amount of money, and killed it over and over? Is it my fault they fucked up on launch? No. Take it away and scold me. Dont perma-ban. O well, not like i was interested in going back to Age of Failnan anyways.
You found a bug, you should have reported it. Killing the same mob over and over again is what people call exploiting. Any game, should ban exploiters.
Remember that comment 9 months ago?
If you don't want to think that there is even the smallest chance things have changed since then, then that is truly awful.
You had maybe 2-3 weeks play thats all at a time right at launch when things were no where near perfect. They aren't now but there are no more issues in all areas than any other mmo.
Good luck with the small mindedness.
That is not fair at all.There is almost zero pressure on this new guy,after all Funcom at least broke even from their initial investment,that was the pressure to get the game out,weather it was ready or not.
The ONLY thing this guy has to do now is try to keep players or the obvious,trials and returnees.SOE and just about EVERY developer already does this ,so it is not like Mr.Morrison is bringing in any new or magical ideas.He is IMO just a guy behind a desk,i doubt he is doing anything to help this game.
I have already stated the obvious ,in previous posts and have not seen one movement in that direction,so again i would say this guy is doing nothing out of the normal.In other words it could be anyone in his position including Mr.Jacobs and we would see the exact same reaction.
Better drops/improve the linearity areas[especially the beginning.Most of the game is decent as is,so most of it just needs tweaks,i cannot comment on crafting as i do not even know if it exists,i never had the time to find out.The linearity stems from most of the game being locked out ,i would say 90% of it until you finish a quest,witch also at times feels like a single player event.I had one particular quest,where i meet up with some NPC and she helps me defeat all the baddies ,then decides to sit it out against the boss?lmao made no sense,after all she was out to killing the boss,and was following the same good guys allegiance.Most of the doors/houses in Tortage were locked out until i followed the linear path.
If i remember right[memory not always the best]but looking over my abilities /spells i did not see anything that lent it to be a grouping game,again i really got the feeling this game was originally developed to be a single player game and tried to incorporate Multi-player as an after thought.Ok my bad,i went back into history and realized Funcom was aiming for a 20 level single player buildup,before branching into specioalization,so i guess that is why it felt liek a single player game to me lmao,IT WAS .I played 3 different classes but never took one beyong level 20,so i guess i missed the next wave of the game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Give me a new free month to replace the wasted month just after the first launch and I'll consider it. I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition back in the day, was looking forward to AoC, gave a LOT of feedback in the closed beta and ended up quitting in frustration after barely 2 weeks when the game was "released". That is, when open paid & please-buy-a-boxed-copy beta started.
Out of principle I'm very tempted to refuse to play anything from FC ever again though. If they're willing to launch a highly anticipted MMO in that sorry state there's no limit to what they'll do to make a few bucks.
But hey, free weekend a year later, now that the game is actually done and somewhat playable. There's some money well spent on a CE.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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lol you are on crack if you think 360 version will be out by Christmas 09
lol you are on crack if you think 360 version will be out by Christmas 09
with how good the game is running, and the fact that they keep fixing stuff. i don't doubt that. But who knows, only them right?
lol you are on crack if you think 360 version will be out by Christmas 09
with how good the game is running, and the fact that they keep fixing stuff. i don't doubt that. But who knows, only them right?
It's starting to look like they are focusing the majority of their time and energy on a different MMO, my guess is tha all things Conan will take a backseat to TSW, just like all things Anarchy Online did when AoC was in mid development. www.massively.com/2009/03/10/funcom-to-reveal-the-secret-world-at-gdc-09/
Really... cause if that was the case FC wouldn't have been hiring new staff for TSW as they have been for months instead of taking them off the AoC team, rigth?
It's completely OK to dislike a game, and express it, but just using any random element to try and bash it or the devs without knowing any fact is not the way to go.
TSW is in dev, yes, and has it's own crew, Fc is hiring people for it still, just check their web page for available jobs, there are places for AOC too. When FC confronted problems with AO and actually got in trouble, they were starting the works on another MMO, Midgard, back then they didn't have the resources or size to handle both the problems in AO and a whole new project, so they focused on AO, canned Midgard and turned AO from a mess to a very good game, their Shadolands expansion was called expansion of the year by the specialiced media.
Most problems with AoC are ironed out (there are, and there will ever be problems, as in any MMO, and there will be people that like the game and people that don't, as usual) FC has a solid cash reserve, no need for investment in at least a year and still is and projects having a positive income, they also are much bigger now, and capable of managing different crews, both in terms of resources and manpower. Dunno how could this come as a surprise when the first announcement for the game was on 2007 when they had a very small crew doing pre development things, and when it's mentioned in all of their publicly available financial reports.
I'd be happy to try the game in it's current state, provided that trial was free.
But I got burned BAD by AoC the first time around. As a CB tester, I watched SERIOUS bugs that we had been reporting and discussing for weeks go into the live build.
Worse than that, I watched the game get hammered by nerf after nerf. Every time someone cried, another nerf was applied.
Nerfs, instead of content, where many of us were stuck with nothing but villas to grind for levels.
Nerfs, instead of fixing the horrible issues with ATI performance.
Nerfs, instead of making sure that advertised features actually made it into the game.
I could go on...but it's all been said. I'll never pre-order another MMORPG though.
1) Hiring does not = adding more, they could have been replacing people who left / were fired.
2) Talk to the Anarchy Online players who were abandoned when FC pulled the majority of the staff to Dev AoC, and than pulled the rest off to handle the mess of a launch. AO players couldn't get a petition answered for weeks, AO GMs were pulled to do mundane things like moderate the AoC forums, Anarchy players have been left high and dry.
This company repeats it's history constantly, it takes no stretch of imagination to guess that they will once again all but ignore their less successful titles while they pour all the resources into trying to make a game that can keep subscribers. AoC's current player base seems to have no problem waiting 2,4,6,8 months for fixes, FC is taking their 3rd swing at trying to make an MMO that players will sub to after the box's 30 days.
And was a huge disappointment to the actual Fans. Godager's "Ther will be no camping in Shadowlands" statement is still referenced by players to point out that FC isn't honest with it's subscribers. SL was launched just as broken as the original release, it took them more than a year to patch its major flaws and more than 1 of the 6-7 zones is still barren of content to this day.
I had the same experience with AoC. I wrote a few class guides early on, got involved in the community only to have one of the patches result in an unplayable game for me. After a couple weeks of trying to get support and never getting it I quit. I was also treated like crap by the wonderful forum mods in their efforts to cleanse the forums and supress bad PR during the launch.
I might come back for a free month or two and see how things have changed. The graphics were great but there was no core game, sense of progress or character development that you expect with a mmo. Id play for free but unless it was AMAZING they wouldnt get a cent.
Relaunch with free gametime for the brutalized sounds like a good idea.
So does an apology for launching crap, but we will never get it.
Heh, me neither. The only reason I have kept playing since launch is that I was an avid follower of AoC before the game got launched and I also happened to really enjoy the lore behind the game.
I would most definitively have done myself a favour by waiting a year for the game to shape up into the gem it is turning into today. But lesson learned; I will never try out a fresh mmo again.
I'm just curious. Exactly who would you want in Funcom to apologize to you? The programmers? The propaganda minister (Erling Ellingsen)? The guys making the music (obviously not)? The previous game director (Gaute Godager)?
It's not like Funcom is a single entity that can apologize to you. There's got to be someone that was behind the scenes pulling strings, which ended up with tons of broken hearted players. We will never know for sure, but I would put the blame on the previous game director, as his distanced relationship and lack of communication (not responding to player concerns) with the community just showed how much he really cared what others thinked. The new director, Craig, is regularily writing updates to the community and is even talking to the players on the official forums. I cannot imagine him having any reason to go the lenght as to apologize to the previous disappointed players.
Someone else would have to do that, but who are they? And how do we know it is them who should be apologizing?
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
At Unfinished:
Well in that case you can ask me, as i am one of those AO players that were there when FC was developing AoC. The dev crew, GM and volunteer staff found in AO is proportionally appropriate for the population of the game, in my opinion, or was, i haven't played in over a year, but i was playing AO among other game (by Blizzard) back then.
Community had a dry season, which ended when they appointed Silirrion (Craig Morrison, current AoC GD) GD, from then we passed to a period where new content was being added on an average of 6 weeks, and to this day, just reading their forums (Means, new GD, seems to have keept a great forum presence and work pace) they have been constantly adding fixes, tweaks, revisions and overall paying attention to player input.
I have no complaint of my time in AO, other than lack of comunication on my earlier days, it's been the most straigthforward exchange of ideas with a developer's team on a live game i've experienced, where actual mechanics and system discussions were daily occurrence with participation ofr means and Sil, among others. the AO crew, on a nearly 8 years old game with a very small population its nothing but a sign of comitment to a playerbase and a product, to the point of moving the game to new servers (back then when i still was playing and AOC was still in development) and works on a new rendering engine.
Yes they have no doubt replaced people, and of course they have moved people, it's not the same to have a crew for game development than a live development crew, however theyir initial plans for TSW where delayed from planned as they devoted to AoC, tot he point that TSW crew was temporarily assigned to AoC, also inf available from their reports. TSW took the back seat, as Fc has focused on the game they launched.
Somhow i doub't you played AO back then, or now, or even that you have read their forums to see what the population thinks.
For the record, i do have complaints about my experience in AoC, even tho i enjoy it the most out of the games out there.
I had the same experience with AoC. I wrote a few class guides early on, got involved in the community only to have one of the patches result in an unplayable game for me. After a couple weeks of trying to get support and never getting it I quit. I was also treated like crap by the wonderful forum mods in their efforts to cleanse the forums and supress bad PR during the launch.
I might come back for a free month or two and see how things have changed. The graphics were great but there was no core game, sense of progress or character development that you expect with a mmo. Id play for free but unless it was AMAZING they wouldnt get a cent.
Relaunch with free gametime for the brutalized sounds like a good idea.
So does an apology for launching crap, but we will never get it.
FC has a long tradition of treating some of their most active community members & fans with total disregard and abuse.
The original creator of AO's Guild Chat-Bot was banned for life after helping FC identify and solve severe exploits in the game. There are many incidents equal to this over the years.
More than 7 years as an AO player and almost 6 years of subscription time paid for AO. Was also a Clan RL for Tara and Pand at several points during my 'career'.
Not currently subscribing. I still read the AO forums, I even watched the endless "I can't get a petition answered" threads get vaporized during the 3 months after AoC's launch.
You guessed wrong.
Quite sad really. Either way, I like the IP and want the game to be good, not the company. Im bored with all the other crap out there. BTW other companies are not any better so I dont want to sound like I am bashing Funcom. A co-worker played EVE for a long time and CCP banned him for life when he reported a large scale exploit that several alliances were using. When you go up against these people you are nobody and money is the only thing they understand.
With all the new titles and IP on the table Funcom would really have to pull out the stops to get me back. I dont expect much because its more about the money than anything else for them. The relaunch is less about wanting people to enjoy the game and more about another cash grab.
It would be very difficult to justify giving them my money again after what they did. I think they will find this to be the case with the majority of people who left early in the launch period.
Have they made it where a person can duo with another person without losing more than 72% of the XP for the kill yet?
I duo with my wife. Is there a reason to play this game if you like grouping? We can't run instances endlessly, we like to quest together. Have zero interest in PVP. We'd play on a PVE server. We launched and left before they charged us for the travesty they had created.
We would come back in a heartbeat if they would fix PVE so you could actually group without losing so much. It's like getting punished for grouping.
Unfinished.
Howcome then you can state that they stoped or slowed down fixes and additions to Ao during AoC's develoment, when actually then started the period with the most Dev activity, game fixes and free additions to the game since the post launch frenzy?
You can't expect Fc to keep an AoC sized development crew on a game several years old with a very small population, as it is unsustainable, yet the crew does a great job, that speaks well about FC ofor allowing the game to go on and the crew for making it possible (and the playerbase, that likely still find it enjoyable to keep going after 7+years) it's commitment, but AO won't pay it's own costs if you put 170 people as a live crew.
it's perfectly fine to dislike a dev company, but once you blind yourself to the point of using anything, even unrelated or not too accurate thing, to bash them your opinion stops being that of an honestly disgruntled customer, and starts turning itn that of someone with an agenda.
I can completley say FC shouldn't have released Aoc unfinished, sadly they did, they likely had little in terms of options, FC shouldn't have let the hype produced by the community to grow as it did, least encourage it, but they did, and the whole post launch should have been handled different, but it wasn't.
However i see a much better product today, i see a new face directing the proyect 8one i, and the AO community have had a great experience with) i see a contined plan on tackling the issues and moving on to actually add new content, i see a much different perspective now than 3 months after launch, therefore i feel i can recomend the game, and i find it enjoyable and fun, in ways i don't find in other games, and that allows me to see good posibilities in the future, if things remain in the path they are today, if that changes for the worst, i'll move on, that's it.
1) Hiring does not = adding more, they could have been replacing people who left / were fired.
2) Talk to the Anarchy Online players who were abandoned when FC pulled the majority of the staff to Dev AoC, and than pulled the rest off to handle the mess of a launch. AO players couldn't get a petition answered for weeks, AO GMs were pulled to do mundane things like moderate the AoC forums, Anarchy players have been left high and dry.
This company repeats it's history constantly, it takes no stretch of imagination to guess that they will once again all but ignore their less successful titles while they pour all the resources into trying to make a game that can keep subscribers. AoC's current player base seems to have no problem waiting 2,4,6,8 months for fixes, FC is taking their 3rd swing at trying to make an MMO that players will sub to after the box's 30 days.
And was a huge disappointment to the actual Fans. Godager's "Ther will be no camping in Shadowlands" statement is still referenced by players to point out that FC isn't honest with it's subscribers. SL was launched just as broken as the original release, it took them more than a year to patch its major flaws and more than 1 of the 6-7 zones is still barren of content to this day.
First off....Shadowlands was very much like AoC at launch....not even half finished. There were zones that no one could get to due to intentionally bugged quests...so that no one would realise that the damn landscape wasn't even finished yet.
Worse, it took a Sci-fi game, and tried to pound a phantasy game on top of it.
I quit AO shortly after Shadowlands turned my fixer into a gimped soldier, and turned my 900million credit armor into a colorful trinket. I've been back a few times since, but never for long. SL ruined the game.
Second...in response to "There will be no camping in Shadowlands" I have to add some uproarious laughter....does anyone else remember the campfire kit reward?? I STILL say it was Funcom's idea of foreshadowing, or a sick joke.