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Pre-Orders
dramatikz
Member Posts: 51
I wonder if enough people pre-ordered this game it would give the developers incentive to make a better game? I know i'll be pre-ordering regardless because i like the concept so much that i'm going to check it out. But if enough people supported the game pre-release would they make an even better game to keep those subs?
[EQ][DAoC][WoW][WAR][SWToR][GW2][TSW][WS}
Comments
no.
the game has already been made. also, historically, Funcom has done amazing things to fix their games after they had poor launches - both AO and AoC became some of the best MMOs available after some of the worst launches in history. So if anything, it's probably better for TSW to fail early in order to get improved (although i certainly hope that it succeeds early AND gets attention!)
If you look at other companies.. TOR had tons and tons of pre-orders and still ended up a crap game that is only getting worse.
Rift on the other hand had a decent amount of pre-orders, but it's the frequent and high-quality updates that have impressed people.
LoTRo also had good pre-orders, but ended up not getting a lot of updates at all until it went freemium.
And of course there is WoW which is the best selling game of all, but has notoriously slow development.
What does it all mean? There doesn't seem to be any direct link between pre-orders and content updates or speed of development for AAA MMOs. For low-budget MMOs from small studios, pre-orders may be the difference between dying off and getting updates, but for AAA MMOs, chances are, the company has already planned development through to (and often past) the first expansion.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I just pre-ordered as well. I did not pick up the "life-time" version since I did so on AoC and got so burned on that deal I'll never do that again with a FunCom product. I am looking forward to TSW though.
I do not remebmer AoC offering a lifetime sub. I would have been all over that since I have been a subscriber since launch.
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
i noticed WoW is one of (if not the only) slowest AAA in development and with each expansion the game gets even more polished. So i dont get why other developers dont get the message. They rush their games to launch and fail to deliver, and then keep rushing other games?
WoW had more updates to fix important stuff, redesign classes, add or revamp PvP and PvE content in the first six months it came out than any other MMO I have played. Funcom's age of conan sold fine and is the slowest post launch development aside from warhammer.
WoW was competing against guildwars and everquest 2 so they took some high level everquest raid leaders and had them work in development of the raids and PvE side of the game. However, the raids didn't come out for a couple of months post launch and lucky for WoW, unlike other MMOs it had a londer leveling curve so instead of hitting level cap in a few days like in other games it took a while. Then it had group instances that where pretty hard but lead to armor sets and that was a time sink to keep players playing while they added raids. On the PvE side wow killed EQ2 who had a similar quest system by staying simple while trying to strive for quality, so better class design, PvE experiences, etc.
Guildwars did very well and is popular for the PvP side and WoW added some battlegrounds and a crappy PvP system but waited a couple of years before stealing the guildwars PvP arena idea. The one thing that was fun is open world PvP and in warcraft players don't have their own leveling areas that other MMOs have so you needed to kill other players to PvP or for fun at times.
Blizzard used a strategy to have high quality PvE experience while other MMOs didn't care about doing anything well. PvP would be a good strategy by copying doac's model.
Age of Conan based a whole game around simon says arrow keys and repeatable solo quest that they define as "content" while neglecting any focus on itemozation, PvP (shrines of bori, what???), class roles, . Warhammer, neglected any focus on end game PvE or combat balance, or faction balance as evil side was to well developed, any point to PvP was marginal. Warhammer guys went to TSW and did the same thing. Age of Conan guys went to TSW.
If you are one of the very few people that enjoyed Age of Conan you may like TSW but expect development to be at the same pace or slower.
I've pre-order did the cheapest pack. I'm still on the watch to get more on The Secret World but with EA in the mix and other host of factors I won't be doing the life-time subscription right out the gate. I must say though I'm really interested in getting my hands on this game. It's just about getting the right information and having the correct expectations when going into this one.
The combat I'm stil wondering about and getting my hands on it in beta will give me a better idea of where the game might be heading. My main draw like most others intersted in this title is the story and ARG elemenets they trying to bring in. Just gotta see how the game feels..
Never played AoC so I can't bring that into account but I did play SWTOR so I think that suffices enough for me right now. Don't put too much expectation into anything these developers are putting out right now. No more face-vaule-rolls for you guys.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
They do seem to be getting that, look at Rift, is IMO is thous far the most polished MMO relesed, even with WoW servers when down, login crashed ect. (we where more accepting back then).
The concepts in this game are interesting ....but...pre-orders before reviewers have really had exposure to the game in depth. I don't think so............Not with Funcoms resume.
Nah, I think it is best for both a game and the players if it starts out smaller and grows with time instead of starting out with a million or more players.
Just look on games like Eve. Too high expectations are a dangerous thing
OMG! EQ2 is dead!? Holy crap, what the hell have i been playing for the past 8 years? Who's taking my money?
Seriously though, while I can't argue with the fact that WoW is more financially successful than EQ2, EQ2 still remains the game with much better PvE mechanics, more PvE content for every possible playstyle, non-retarded graphics, more diverse class system, some of the best social features (housing, decorating, etc.). It's a better PvE game in every possible way except in sales.
So yeah, maybe WoW "killed" it in sales, but it's far from being a better game.
"Polish" meant something 8 years ago when games like EQ2 and WoW set a new standard in lack of bugs. Since then, games like LoTRO, Rift, TOR and pretty much every AAA release have come out "polished" when compared to the previous generation of MMOs (AO, DaOC, SB, HZ, etc.). It's not enough just to be polished anymore.
Just look at TOR - 100% polished game, easy to use, virtually a copy of WoW in terms of ease-of-play. But still a pretty bad game that offers people very little that they didn't already have before. I seriously doubt that many serious WoW or EQ2 players will be finding a long-term home in TOR. Frankly, they can already get what TOR is giving them in their exisitng games.
Am I "one of the few" that enjoyed AoC? Well, not as much as I would have liked, but i did. What I can tell you is that i leveled 1-80 in about 6 weeks of playtime after launch and in all my playtime I didn't run into a single bug or technical issue with the game. And that was playing on a pretty old PC and low-med settings. Does this mean there were no bugs? Hell no. Many of my guildies and other people ran into bugs, I guess i just got lucky. But ultimately, the game at the end centered too much around PvP and since I dislike PvP i felt like i was always missing out on half the game, so after about 3-4 months of AoC, I went back to EQ2 which is focused about 99% on PvE.
Still, I thought the story quests and the combat system were very well done in AoC. None of this retarded gloobal cooldown shit that many games are doing now (i.e. Rift, TOR). The graphics are the best to date in an MMO, so i'm looking forward to the same engine use in TSW. The art, music and writing were all excellent. Things I can't say about most other games except possibly LoTRO. Even EQ2 which i've played for years has complete garbage for writing and a pretty poor art design (although the graphics quality makes up for it somewhat).
I'm one of the people that would prefer to play a game that wasn't designed for complete morons. Unfortunately, very few of those are being made these days. If the price for playing one is that i have to deal with a few more bugs, I don't mind. It's better than playing a highly polished piece of crap.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
As the above poster mentioned, saying WoW PvE killed EQ2 is highly subjective. WoW had much simpler class design and PvE experiences, not really better ones. It appealed to the mainstream and was easy for newbies to understand. Most MMO vets from pre-WoW eras prefered the EQ2 depth compared to WoW.
The biggest thing that killed EQ2 at launch was the difficulty. The world at launch was brutal and the death penalties were harsh. It was pretty much impossible to level to 50 without grouping, as there was pretty much no solo content past level 35. In fact there was very little solo content in general past level 10.
So the bottom line is that at launch, WoW appealed to casuals and EQ2 appealed to hard core MMO vets.
EQ2 now is a completely different beast, its now very solo friendly, although the hardest PvE raids are still far more complex than WoW.