AA will most likely be like every other MMORPG' s nowdays. It will shine for abit and than it will slowly fade. People get bored of these games really fast especially nowdays.
reviewers trolling now? paid by trion to usurp zenimax? I'm just going to reinforce the need to make you own opinion. all reviews are now biased and probably bought. in any case games are medium marching into categories of taste. old or new there are no perfect games.
Great read Ford and totaly agree what you wrote down.
Zenimax just dint know how to capture the spirit of an elders scroll game and it shows on every turn.
From pvp to pve its all meh / bleh / hmm / no immersion / it created a forced progression trough a dull set of quests without any freedom.
Archeage use a quest system, but you can walk away from it and never do a single quest get to max level and do whatever you want.
Just make sure you did the few Craft quests so you have unlocked everything you need for your farm and poof do whatever you want.
And this needed to come from a "asian" studio who are labeled as grinders with boobs and pay to win mechanics, in reality they brought an mmo that our western studios failed to make as they just cant make an mmo that has to be a full wow clone.
Zenimax failed to make a decent mmo and they are a private studio......that makes it double fail.
They had no shareholders dictating the path of wow clone cash grabs.
No sir they had freedom, yet they still made a wow clone to cash grab money and profits instead of making a mmo that offers freedom.
I cant say enough how happy i am with Archeage, finaly an mmo driven by conflict in an open world without loading screen hitting your face every 5 minutes.
Amusing that our western studio's keep making these wow clones over and over again for the past decade hahahah
Look at ESO and Wildstar.....its pathetic and cost you a box price + sub to play another mmo we have been playing for the last decade....
Great read Ford and totaly agree what you wrote down.
Zenimax just dint know how to capture the spirit of an elders scroll game and it shows on every turn.
From pvp to pve its all meh / bleh / hmm / no immersion / it created a forced progression trough a dull set of quests without any freedom.
Archeage use a quest system, but you can walk away from it and never do a single quest get to max level and do whatever you want.
Just make sure you did the few Craft quests so you have unlocked everything you need for your farm and poof do whatever you want.
And this needed to come from a "asian" studio who are labeled as grinders with boobs and pay to win mechanics, in reality they brought an mmo that our western studios failed to make as they just cant make an mmo that has to be a full wow clone.
Zenimax failed to make a decent mmo and they are a private studio......that makes it double fail.
They had no shareholders dictating the path of wow clone cash grabs.
No sir they had freedom, yet they still made a wow clone to cash grab money and profits instead of making a mmo that offers freedom.
I cant say enough how happy i am with Archeage, finaly an mmo driven by conflict in an open world without loading screen hitting your face every 5 minutes.
Amusing that our western studio's keep making these wow clones over and over again for the past decade hahahah
Look at ESO and Wildstar.....its pathetic and cost you a box price + sub to play another mmo we have been playing for the last decade....
Trion / XLgames for the win.
And Archage isn't another themepark? Yes it has more freedom, but in the end it has heart of of a Wow Clone. it is not that much different. Getting your character to max level is easy and the end game is weak at best. Like any game you will be just as bored with AA as ESO in a couple months and still will have to contend with the extra charges from the item shop which is far more critical to the game than the one in Rift.
I will say this for ESO, they have no problem with cashflow and are rapidly fixing problems, I would not write off the game yet.
That was the entire point of the article - and I agree with it 100%
The responses from dozen or so posters that love to throw mud at ArcheAge (and love ESO) were pretty entertaining - always brings a chuckle to me.
But the articles is spot on - is it really surprising to ANYONE that a more sandboxy game *captures the sprit* (<- key phrase) moreso than a themepark game?
It didn't have to be ArcheAge at all - any sanboxish fanatasy game with open world would be a better fit than ESO.
Elderscrolls are not sandboxy.
They are single player games that broke from the traditional 1 long huge story arc to a compilation of smaller somewhat connected but non-interdependent story arks that may or may not tie in. There is nothing sandboxy about ES games other than an open world, but that's due to the multiple story arks more than anything else. Everything else about them is theme park. Even Hearthfire is still all predefined housing. You can't even decide where to place the items you build for your home.
Note: There are mods that make ES games sandboxy, but those aren't from Bethesda
Does anyone seriously play any ES game without running at least half a dozen mods?
Yes, love all the ES games I have only used actually more tried 2 mods. I think I one was a Star Wars mod on morrowwind, another was a online mod for Oblivion. Might sound wierd but I like my games to be clean without these 3rd party mods on my pc. Especially when reading how many people have issue's when using mods/addons and update/patches happen with the base game.
On topic: Very well written article, though I don't agree with his view on ESO because you simply can not compare a Themepark game (ESO) with a singleplayer game or a sandbox/park-ish game. And I truly doubt ArcheAge is able to capture the Elder Scrolls Spirit because AA does NOT have any ES lore so it's quite impossible to capture it's spirit. In that sense ESO is allot more ES game then AA for me.
What OP should have said is that AA suites his playstyle better which is to me allot more understandable then talking about catching it's spririt. Else any sandbox would fit OP's
MMORPG.com's articles have been way below par of late.
Compared to the Enquirer, MMORPG just is missing the mark. Everyone should be reading the Enquirer now.
See what I did there?
ESO is a new game. Just came out. Lots of fixes and tweaks just in the first month. Then a couple months later brand new content. Can it be improved upon? YES! The game is so close to being a great game to play, it's just missing the mark. But it is still cool to play.
I am sorry but the auther is also hashing out bugs for ESO that got squashed in the first month, like the dungeon delves. That camping thing, not as bad after they "fixed" the camping issue. Nightblade while not perfect in the first month, was still frickin hardcore in PvP and raids. I doubt this article was sitting in the bin for 4 months...
And I see the post above mine while I am typing, ESO has NEVER tried to be Skyrim. Developers tried telling the community this since before the beta was released. Not a random ESO defender, just fact.
Now Archage is ok. It does have a lot going for it. Ships are a great addition to an MMO, and while Pirates of the Burning Seas was close (after it's third pass of land based combat) it's hard to have just ship combat....so a game that can do both is awesome. (INVERT THE Y AXIS already!!!! )
But let's face facts, I know, crazy thought. ESO and Archage aren't even on the same wave length. One is Pay to Play, and the other is Cash Shop Free to Play. One game has been out for less than six months and the other out for close to 18 months.
If you are going to compare, compare on the same level. You dont compare Lexus to Honda and a Mustang GT Shelby to a Yugo. That is what is being done here.
I just feel this article is just more of the same crap that has been produced on the site of late. I might just have to move on to another site or hell, make up my own LOL!
Many of your comments are exactly the sort of arguing that this writer was discussing midway through his artical.... Which is predictable. The artical is well written and eloquent. I enjoyed it.
Article writer has zero forum posts. His join date is barely a week old..... Someone linked him to an ad company. ESO is direct competition for AA. Yeah I like giving these "players" a voice. Heck a few days ago we had an article along the same lines. It was labeled something like" TSW is great don't like it I don't care here's why you're wrong"
Originally posted by LordZeik Article writer has zero forum posts. His join date is barely a week old..... Someone linked him to an ad company. ESO is direct competition for AA. Yeah I like giving these "players" a voice. Heck a few days ago we had an article along the same lines. It was labeled something like" TSW is great don't like it I don't care here's why you're wrong"
Yes and someone later pointed out that his company is linked the non-gaming firms. Also ESO isn't direct competition for AA, currently only Dark Camelot is while AA is in the same area as DFUW and EVE.
"ESO wasnt meant to be like skyrim" random ESO defender.
"The MMO ES fans have been waiting for" ESO devs.
Skyrim accounted for 50% of pc sales in the month it released.
ESO is having major systems redesigned after a few months of release.
ESO is a wonderful example of the blind leading the blind.
So you have a link for the 50% remark? We wouldn't want someone blindly throwing out inaccurate numbers now. Also how about a list of games that also released on the PC that month.
Pc box sales in November of 2011 jumped 57%, lead by skyrims 2.8 million copies sold. Modern warfare 3 contributed to this, as it was released in the same month, but I'm unable to locate pc box sales for that game and the vast majority of the sales for it were on console.
ESO hasn't done anywhere close the number of sales that skyrim did, not even after 3 months. If they had made the game more like skyrim, or any other ES game, we would be reading articles about how many copies they sold instead of articles about why other MMO's do a better job of capturing the spirit of ES games than ESO does.
2.8 million in one month, just in boxes. After 3 months major systems are being redeveloped in ESO. That says something.
It didn't really compete with anything except Saints Row the 3rd.
(november release 2011)
Now compare that with Console... Uncharted... nuff said.
What it competed with is irrelevant. It was its impact on box sales for that month that was a big deal. If it had more games on the pc to compete with then pc box sales in 11/11 would have been even bigger.
A 57% increase in pc box sales is a huge deal when most people don't play pc games, and those that do tend to get them digitally.
Originally posted by coretex666 Very nice article. Quite surprised by all the flame.
I am not, this game threatens the status quo of the standard MMO's, The intertactive novel model of MMO's has been declining rapidly in recent years has been as the release of ESO and Wildstar has shown .
This is game that brings back the RPG feeling of MMO's which can only further hasten the demise of the follow the quest chain to raidville games. About time in my opinion. AA might not be a mega hit, but I will bet one thing. Developers are going to be re examining their future MMO's and moving away from the paint by numbers design which has been the standard since WoW
I can assure you even with it's rough edges this game is scaring the crap out of the big studios and the fans of the interactive video novel school of design. The MMO genre has been dying a slow death since LoTRO. I hope this game shakes up the industry and reignites the true RPG design in the spirit of Raph Koster and Mark Jacobs.
... and it STILL doesn't even come CLOSE to what Ultima Online achieved 14+ years ago.
No sandbox has.
You know what made UO so amazing?
It was simple. The simplicity of the game allowed for complex interactions to occur. Like Minecraft really. Minecraft owes a great deal of its success to its simplicity as well.
UO had nearly every feature you can find on the box of any of these so-called "sandbox" games.
Simplicity is so often overlooked.
UO had no instances or group requirements or classes... no complex stats and leveling/skill mechanics...
It just had adventure. Log into a world and just "do." Do what? Just about whatever you wanted.
So everyone he was just sharing his take this or these are the types of games that interest him most and i say good for you but to archeage i say its for a select crowd not everyone and again we all have to step back and stop killing games because they dont compare to your favorite game there not supposed to well most of the time we have all seen cough cough dare i say it tons of wow clones uh uh oh no he didnt yes i did smack ya mama and swallow coffe rounds lol just kidding guys. So i like ESO i dont like Skyrim and before everyone goes crazy i dont like playing alone and i like having to wonder if while questing will i run into opposing faction and have to do battle Skyrim is lonely but thats why they made ESO not to replace Skyrim..... I like where companies are gowing with games and others not so much cough cough not fan of archeage but i love Rift my style of game but Archeage is baddass in its own right. So my point everyone will not be please but the target aimed for should be i.e the writter of the above which people correction some people are bashing.
ArcheAge is one notch above Korean grinder. It's not even on the same level.
It's bland on all fronts. The graphics are mediocre, the class balance is pathetic, the story is like something you find in the bargain bin of a book store and the world is incredibly stale.
Sorry, the twists put on the systems (nothing is fully unique here) aren't enough to cover up the above.
Sometimes I feel like people enjoy living the lie. As in the theory of ArcheAge is a different game to AA itself, and yes, in theory the game sounds incredible - in practice, it's average at best. Maybe people need to justify $150 on a temporary beta server.
Even Trion don't look comfortable with how the game is going to perform and continue to try and bleed out as many $150 orders as they can. (Really, beta testing. What you beta testing exactly bros? Seeing as you have no code rights.)
Originally posted by ChicagoCub If a forum member had posted this they would have received a temporary ban for "excessive negative comments" and/or "trolling". I should know. I've had several.
this is absolutly true
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
ArcheAge is, IMHO, one notch above Korean grinder. It's not even on the same level.
It's bland on all fronts in my eyes. The graphics are mediocre, the class balance is pathetic, the story is like something you find in the bargain bin of a book store and the world is incredibly stale.
Sorry, the twists put on the systems (nothing is fully unique here) aren't enough to cover up the above for me.
Sometimes I feel like people enjoy living the lie. As in the theory of ArcheAge is a different game to AA itself, and yes, in theory the game sounds incredible - in practice, it's average at best in my opinion. Maybe people need to justify $150 on a temporary beta server.
Even Trion don't look comfortable with how the game is going to perform and continue to try and bleed out as many $150 orders as they can. (Really, beta testing. What you beta testing exactly bros? Seeing as you have no code rights.)
Fixed some massive flaws in your sentences (implying it is your opinion =/= stating it is).
As to the beta testing: The game systems, the backend code which is theirs (integration between the client and its systems with their servers, not as easy as it sounds) and tweaking and balancing the mechanics ( the code is not theirs thus they cannot rewrite it, in this you are correct but numerical values can be altered readily).
... and it STILL doesn't even come CLOSE to what Ultima Online achieved 14+ years ago.
No sandbox has.
You know what made UO so amazing?
It was simple. The simplicity of the game allowed for complex interactions to occur. Like Minecraft really. Minecraft owes a great deal of its success to its simplicity as well.
UO had nearly every feature you can find on the box of any of these so-called "sandbox" games.
Simplicity is so often overlooked.
UO had no instances or group requirements or classes... no complex stats and leveling/skill mechanics...
It just had adventure. Log into a world and just "do." Do what? Just about whatever you wanted.
Unfortunately everyone that has tried to recreate the "spirit" of UO has gotten it so, so very wrong.
Couldn't agree with you more.
I like themepark MMOs (they feel akin to a DnD PnP module if done well); yet UO offered more of that improvised PnP RPG experience, the kind of experiences that are still ingrained in my memory despite numerous fleeting ones from my childhood some 30+ years ago. I felt truly alive, in a world only limited by my imagination. UO allowed you to do so much because it understood that the greatest stories are the ones we make for ourselves. A concept so simple yet often lost to the new technological breakthroughs. For god's sake, it was a 2D isometric world!
It was not for everyone, however. But for some of us, it was unbelievable.
The genre needs to reexamine its cores and realize there is absolutely ZERO competition right now for that kind of AAA MMO. And there is definitely an audience for it.
Originally posted by coretex666Very nice article. Quite surprised by all the flame.
I am not, this game threatens the status quo of the standard MMO's, The intertactive novel model of MMO's has been declining rapidly in recent years has been as the release of ESO and Wildstar has shown .This is game that brings back the RPG feeling of MMO's which can only further hasten the demise of the follow the quest chain to raidville games. About time in my opinion. AA might not be a mega hit, but I will bet one thing. Developers are going to be re examining their future MMO's and moving away from the paint by numbers design which has been the standard since WoWI can assure you even with it's rough edges this game is scaring the crap out of the big studios and the fans of the interactive video novel school of design. The MMO genre has been dying a slow death since LoTRO. I hope this game shakes up the industry and reignites the true RPG design in the spirit of Raph Koster and Mark Jacobs.
Maybe it brings back that RPG feeling for you, but it doesn't for me.
For one, the class system is terrible. Its your standard 3 tree system where you pick three trees for a jumble of abilities. And you can change them at will so no one is remotely unique, and character progression is fast. It doesnt feel like you are building a character at all and that is the core of the RPG.
In addition, the game world is sub par. It is one of the blandest worlds ever created, and its not like it will be completely changed by players.
And you act like this is the only game with sandbox elements to come along. MineCraft did FAR more to change how developers think than ArcheAge ever will. If anything ArcheAge will be a lesson in what not to do: don't incorporate half assed themepark elements into your sandbox. There is room for themepark elements in a sandbox, not just poorly implemented ones.
And maybe someday a dev will learn the true lesson of EQ, WoW, FFXI, etc: the game world matters. You have to make a world that people want to spend time in.
If you read the article, it is one man's opinion, (not a MMORPG employee) and merely points out that AA plays more openly than ESO does, making it resemble ES games more in his opinion.
Actually as stated in his very article he is "not trying to universalize my own experience" while comparing one part of Skyrim to something completely different in AA to try to tie them all while stating "Gamers throw around terms like “Sandbox” and “Pay to Win” as if they are hard black-and-white measurables as opposed to buzzwords that vaguely refer to situations that are clearly on a continuum, and a heavily subjective one at that" all while writing an article about a game capturing the "spirit" of another, a term that fits the terms he rails against gamers for using. WOWZERS!
Its a heavily biased article, one that amazingly reminds me of the many other "independent" articles written about TESO being so ES and Skyrim like we wont even know the difference!
Well, I play AA, been playing it for some 6 months now and plan to keep on playing it in Japan...it aint ES, it aint Skyrim and the fact someone is being paid to make it sound like them tells me the company paying them doesn't feel the game can stand on its own merits which is yet another reason to HATE Trion.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Description reminded me of the recently killed Vanguard- despite the bugs, it was a beautiful game that required free-form exploration and that had plenty of significant achievements that didn't require you to be at end game levels. Makes me want to look harder at AA.- interesting read.
You're depicting ESO like it were in the beginning. Yesterday I ran a piblic dungeon on my own, not to be awesome, since I stealthed past the large mobs/warbands, but it completely felt as my own unscripted adventure. As such, I thoroughly disagree with you on your ESO crirics
"If I had the stars of the darkest nights or the diamonds from the deepest ocean, I would forsake them all for your sweet kiss"
I believe that people should have already noticed that MMORPG is not only one single category currently. Now, there are "on rail quests" (Neverwinter), "themaparked" (Wildstar), "sandboxed or semi-sandboxed" (Archeage), "shooters" (Defiance), "FPS" (Planetside 2), "Action" (Marvel Herores), etc... Moreover, you can have other sub-categories in each of those: themaparked click/target and pew-pew (FF XIV), themeparked action (Wildstar).
Mi point is that you can not make a "Themepark vs. Sandbox" comparison in terms of which one is more enjoyable. There are so many categories that you can like one and not the other. A game which scores 9/10 in one category, in other different category might only do 7/10 points.
The only objective comparison would be a pure technical one about music, graphics, computer/ network performance.
In the sense of what I said in my second paragraph, I understand that AA is far beyond more sandbox than ESO. So, AA is much like Skyrim than ESO.
Comments
paid by trion to usurp zenimax?
I'm just going to reinforce the need to make you own opinion. all reviews are now biased and probably bought. in any case games are medium marching into categories of taste. old or new there are no perfect games.
Great read Ford and totaly agree what you wrote down.
Zenimax just dint know how to capture the spirit of an elders scroll game and it shows on every turn.
From pvp to pve its all meh / bleh / hmm / no immersion / it created a forced progression trough a dull set of quests without any freedom.
Archeage use a quest system, but you can walk away from it and never do a single quest get to max level and do whatever you want.
Just make sure you did the few Craft quests so you have unlocked everything you need for your farm and poof do whatever you want.
And this needed to come from a "asian" studio who are labeled as grinders with boobs and pay to win mechanics, in reality they brought an mmo that our western studios failed to make as they just cant make an mmo that has to be a full wow clone.
Zenimax failed to make a decent mmo and they are a private studio......that makes it double fail.
They had no shareholders dictating the path of wow clone cash grabs.
No sir they had freedom, yet they still made a wow clone to cash grab money and profits instead of making a mmo that offers freedom.
I cant say enough how happy i am with Archeage, finaly an mmo driven by conflict in an open world without loading screen hitting your face every 5 minutes.
Amusing that our western studio's keep making these wow clones over and over again for the past decade hahahah
Look at ESO and Wildstar.....its pathetic and cost you a box price + sub to play another mmo we have been playing for the last decade....
Trion / XLgames for the win.
And Archage isn't another themepark? Yes it has more freedom, but in the end it has heart of of a Wow Clone. it is not that much different. Getting your character to max level is easy and the end game is weak at best. Like any game you will be just as bored with AA as ESO in a couple months and still will have to contend with the extra charges from the item shop which is far more critical to the game than the one in Rift.
I will say this for ESO, they have no problem with cashflow and are rapidly fixing problems, I would not write off the game yet.
Yes, love all the ES games I have only used actually more tried 2 mods. I think I one was a Star Wars mod on morrowwind, another was a online mod for Oblivion. Might sound wierd but I like my games to be clean without these 3rd party mods on my pc. Especially when reading how many people have issue's when using mods/addons and update/patches happen with the base game.
On topic: Very well written article, though I don't agree with his view on ESO because you simply can not compare a Themepark game (ESO) with a singleplayer game or a sandbox/park-ish game. And I truly doubt ArcheAge is able to capture the Elder Scrolls Spirit because AA does NOT have any ES lore so it's quite impossible to capture it's spirit. In that sense ESO is allot more ES game then AA for me.
What OP should have said is that AA suites his playstyle better which is to me allot more understandable then talking about catching it's spririt. Else any sandbox would fit OP's
Here are my two cents, or ten or whatever.
MMORPG.com's articles have been way below par of late.
Compared to the Enquirer, MMORPG just is missing the mark. Everyone should be reading the Enquirer now.
See what I did there?
ESO is a new game. Just came out. Lots of fixes and tweaks just in the first month. Then a couple months later brand new content. Can it be improved upon? YES! The game is so close to being a great game to play, it's just missing the mark. But it is still cool to play.
I am sorry but the auther is also hashing out bugs for ESO that got squashed in the first month, like the dungeon delves. That camping thing, not as bad after they "fixed" the camping issue. Nightblade while not perfect in the first month, was still frickin hardcore in PvP and raids. I doubt this article was sitting in the bin for 4 months...
And I see the post above mine while I am typing, ESO has NEVER tried to be Skyrim. Developers tried telling the community this since before the beta was released. Not a random ESO defender, just fact.
Now Archage is ok. It does have a lot going for it. Ships are a great addition to an MMO, and while Pirates of the Burning Seas was close (after it's third pass of land based combat) it's hard to have just ship combat....so a game that can do both is awesome. (INVERT THE Y AXIS already!!!! )
But let's face facts, I know, crazy thought. ESO and Archage aren't even on the same wave length. One is Pay to Play, and the other is Cash Shop Free to Play. One game has been out for less than six months and the other out for close to 18 months.
If you are going to compare, compare on the same level. You dont compare Lexus to Honda and a Mustang GT Shelby to a Yugo. That is what is being done here.
I just feel this article is just more of the same crap that has been produced on the site of late. I might just have to move on to another site or hell, make up my own LOL!
The artical is well written and eloquent. I enjoyed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_in_video_gaming
It didn't really compete with anything except Saints Row the 3rd.
(november release 2011)
Yes and someone later pointed out that his company is linked the non-gaming firms. Also ESO isn't direct competition for AA, currently only Dark Camelot is while AA is in the same area as DFUW and EVE.
Pc box sales in November of 2011 jumped 57%, lead by skyrims 2.8 million copies sold. Modern warfare 3 contributed to this, as it was released in the same month, but I'm unable to locate pc box sales for that game and the vast majority of the sales for it were on console.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/14/2635046/skyrim-leads-a-resurgence-in-pc-game-sales-in-november-xbox-360
ESO hasn't done anywhere close the number of sales that skyrim did, not even after 3 months. If they had made the game more like skyrim, or any other ES game, we would be reading articles about how many copies they sold instead of articles about why other MMO's do a better job of capturing the spirit of ES games than ESO does.
2.8 million in one month, just in boxes. After 3 months major systems are being redeveloped in ESO. That says something.
What it competed with is irrelevant. It was its impact on box sales for that month that was a big deal. If it had more games on the pc to compete with then pc box sales in 11/11 would have been even bigger.
A 57% increase in pc box sales is a huge deal when most people don't play pc games, and those that do tend to get them digitally.
I am not, this game threatens the status quo of the standard MMO's, The intertactive novel model of MMO's has been declining rapidly in recent years has been as the release of ESO and Wildstar has shown .
This is game that brings back the RPG feeling of MMO's which can only further hasten the demise of the follow the quest chain to raidville games. About time in my opinion. AA might not be a mega hit, but I will bet one thing. Developers are going to be re examining their future MMO's and moving away from the paint by numbers design which has been the standard since WoW
I can assure you even with it's rough edges this game is scaring the crap out of the big studios and the fans of the interactive video novel school of design. The MMO genre has been dying a slow death since LoTRO. I hope this game shakes up the industry and reignites the true RPG design in the spirit of Raph Koster and Mark Jacobs.
I miss DAoC
... and it STILL doesn't even come CLOSE to what Ultima Online achieved 14+ years ago.
No sandbox has.
You know what made UO so amazing?
It was simple. The simplicity of the game allowed for complex interactions to occur. Like Minecraft really. Minecraft owes a great deal of its success to its simplicity as well.
UO had nearly every feature you can find on the box of any of these so-called "sandbox" games.
Simplicity is so often overlooked.
UO had no instances or group requirements or classes... no complex stats and leveling/skill mechanics...
It just had adventure. Log into a world and just "do." Do what? Just about whatever you wanted.
Explore, fight, gather, build, fish, craft, stylize.. PvE, PvP, housing, decorating, character customization, taming, herding... Bards, assassins, warriors, mages, archers... lawless PvP, lawful PvP, looting, corpse runs, faction warfare, territorial control... treasure hunting, dungeon diving, map making...
Unfortunately everyone that has tried to recreate the "spirit" of UO has gotten it so, so very wrong.
ArcheAge is one notch above Korean grinder. It's not even on the same level.
It's bland on all fronts. The graphics are mediocre, the class balance is pathetic, the story is like something you find in the bargain bin of a book store and the world is incredibly stale.
Sorry, the twists put on the systems (nothing is fully unique here) aren't enough to cover up the above.
Sometimes I feel like people enjoy living the lie. As in the theory of ArcheAge is a different game to AA itself, and yes, in theory the game sounds incredible - in practice, it's average at best. Maybe people need to justify $150 on a temporary beta server.
Even Trion don't look comfortable with how the game is going to perform and continue to try and bleed out as many $150 orders as they can. (Really, beta testing. What you beta testing exactly bros? Seeing as you have no code rights.)
this is absolutly true
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Fixed some massive flaws in your sentences (implying it is your opinion =/= stating it is).
As to the beta testing: The game systems, the backend code which is theirs (integration between the client and its systems with their servers, not as easy as it sounds) and tweaking and balancing the mechanics ( the code is not theirs thus they cannot rewrite it, in this you are correct but numerical values can be altered readily).
Couldn't agree with you more.
I like themepark MMOs (they feel akin to a DnD PnP module if done well); yet UO offered more of that improvised PnP RPG experience, the kind of experiences that are still ingrained in my memory despite numerous fleeting ones from my childhood some 30+ years ago. I felt truly alive, in a world only limited by my imagination. UO allowed you to do so much because it understood that the greatest stories are the ones we make for ourselves. A concept so simple yet often lost to the new technological breakthroughs. For god's sake, it was a 2D isometric world!
It was not for everyone, however. But for some of us, it was unbelievable.
The genre needs to reexamine its cores and realize there is absolutely ZERO competition right now for that kind of AAA MMO. And there is definitely an audience for it.
Maybe it brings back that RPG feeling for you, but it doesn't for me.
For one, the class system is terrible. Its your standard 3 tree system where you pick three trees for a jumble of abilities. And you can change them at will so no one is remotely unique, and character progression is fast. It doesnt feel like you are building a character at all and that is the core of the RPG.
In addition, the game world is sub par. It is one of the blandest worlds ever created, and its not like it will be completely changed by players.
And you act like this is the only game with sandbox elements to come along. MineCraft did FAR more to change how developers think than ArcheAge ever will. If anything ArcheAge will be a lesson in what not to do: don't incorporate half assed themepark elements into your sandbox. There is room for themepark elements in a sandbox, not just poorly implemented ones.
And maybe someday a dev will learn the true lesson of EQ, WoW, FFXI, etc: the game world matters. You have to make a world that people want to spend time in.
Actually as stated in his very article he is "not trying to universalize my own experience" while comparing one part of Skyrim to something completely different in AA to try to tie them all while stating "Gamers throw around terms like “Sandbox” and “Pay to Win” as if they are hard black-and-white measurables as opposed to buzzwords that vaguely refer to situations that are clearly on a continuum, and a heavily subjective one at that" all while writing an article about a game capturing the "spirit" of another, a term that fits the terms he rails against gamers for using. WOWZERS!
Its a heavily biased article, one that amazingly reminds me of the many other "independent" articles written about TESO being so ES and Skyrim like we wont even know the difference!
Well, I play AA, been playing it for some 6 months now and plan to keep on playing it in Japan...it aint ES, it aint Skyrim and the fact someone is being paid to make it sound like them tells me the company paying them doesn't feel the game can stand on its own merits which is yet another reason to HATE Trion.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
"If I had the stars of the darkest nights or the diamonds from the deepest ocean, I would forsake them all for your sweet kiss"
I believe that people should have already noticed that MMORPG is not only one single category currently. Now, there are "on rail quests" (Neverwinter), "themaparked" (Wildstar), "sandboxed or semi-sandboxed" (Archeage), "shooters" (Defiance), "FPS" (Planetside 2), "Action" (Marvel Herores), etc... Moreover, you can have other sub-categories in each of those: themaparked click/target and pew-pew (FF XIV), themeparked action (Wildstar).
Mi point is that you can not make a "Themepark vs. Sandbox" comparison in terms of which one is more enjoyable. There are so many categories that you can like one and not the other. A game which scores 9/10 in one category, in other different category might only do 7/10 points.
The only objective comparison would be a pure technical one about music, graphics, computer/ network performance.
In the sense of what I said in my second paragraph, I understand that AA is far beyond more sandbox than ESO. So, AA is much like Skyrim than ESO.
^.^'