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Can Funcom deliver?
Kimono
Member Posts: 19
Age of Conan sure looks impressive, but will Funcom be able to deliver a quality product? I'm sure it won't be as bad as the release of Anarchy Online, but their Lost Eden expansion shows they still have serious QA problems. Also postponing the launch date is rarely a good sign.
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No they can not. Reason why: Funcom continues to allow users to become ARKs (GMs) with access to player information including alternate characters. They also allow ARKs to make banning recommendations without verification or due process. So if you piss off the wrong person in game or disagree with how something is being handled you can pretty much count on your account being banned for no reason. I have played that game for several years and it only gets worse. I no longer play because of this type of allowed behavior.
Funcom would rather ban accounts then investigate and/or resolve issues.
In addition, it's popular opinon that the shadowlands expansion should have been a seperate game entirely. How can you have players invest so much time and effort in developing characters just to change the rules of the game for an expansion? We're not talking about making it harder or difficult or with different content. I am talking about mechanics that are entirely different between the 2 worlds. That is just piss poor planning.
IMO only, I think Funcom is completely clueless and based on my experience with them am not going to waste my time with AoC.
like their decision to set the release date further back in 2006 because "the game needed more polish".. then their decision on removing many of the classes available which reduced the choice to about 3-4 choices in each archtype because "the classes felt too narrow" and "we felt in your best interest we should combine them to make them less narrow" instead of adding more more abilities.. then this.. because "the players will appreciate the many months we talk about our game/give screen shots/announce our kickass new ideas but wont release it because we keep changing our godamn minds about what the players want but ofcourse we dont ask the players because our small team of beta testers know exactly what the masses want and know our best interests and what we appreciate"..
maybe if they got their sh!t together and stuck with an idea and released the game, they would know what players want.. but hell they dont believe in patches so yea the game has to be perfect when it comes out... will be a sad day when they finally release the game and it turns out to be a WoW clone with blood.. hopefully it rocks my hole-torn socks off eh?
but yea this major announcement kinda killed it for me.. now im just waiting for whatever else comes out and turns out to be good heh
I have yet to hear about a single case where ARKs used their position for anything but the good of the community, and not a single hint of anyone getting banned because they "pissed the wrong person off". The only time previously I know of that someone claimed that, other players stepped up and revealed that the banned player was a grade A asshole, greifing everyone he could, is this the case here too? go on and fess up.
A.) ARKs can only investigate and provide proof of EULA violations, it is always up to a GM to verify said proof and decide from there
B.) Pretty much no one get banned for a first offense, said crooked ARK would have to fake results multiple times.
C.) ARK access to player info is limited, it is only the regular paid GMs with that kind of information
D.) What the fricking hell kind of due process do you expect? a jury and judge? Hell, having the two or three people in AO's system there to decide together is in and of itself a rare treat in MMO justice.
To OP: Other issues aside for now, postponing the launch date is virtually meaningless, at least untill the game is a year or two late. Rushing the game to publication is precisely what caused the failed Anarchy Online launch, Funcom simply has learned that particular lesson.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
Honestly, you obviously have no clue or no ARK friends or something cause your fooling yourself if you think they have limited ability or only do good.
I have played that game for years and seen tons of people banned for the stupidest reason or no reason at all. I have seen issues between guilds get a majority of a single guild banned which lead to their disbandment. I have seen no drop trading global bands be limited to certain people. I have recieved "tells" from friendly and non-friendly ARKs while on my alt who know who my main character. I know of personal accounts where people logged their ARK account to initiate a banning process against a player because I was at their house when they did it.
Don't try and fool yourself or anyone else here trolling the forums. Funcom is to lazy to take care of shit themselves and they just about let anyone else handle their dirty work.
The only due process I ask for is when a player gets banned they are:
Told why they are being banned and that the action or whateve the basis for the banning is verified and not just someones recommendation.
That's not a lot to ask for and yet a good portion (not all) of the bannings are without excuse or verification.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
lol whatever man it's not even hard to find peeps who have been banned from that game for any bullshit reason. Ask around if you don't want to believe me. But for real your fooling yourself thinking that Funcom is any bit a pro game producer. They are a joke.
I was on of the people that played AO when it launched and went through the nightmare with funcom. Now I must say it was a HUGE nightmare however pretty much everyone who played the game for a while will agree it became a GREAT game. Alot of the problems it had at launch was because of tht innovations, they were the first ones to do random instanced dungeons, the first ones with mission terminals, the first ones with jets you could fly or cars you could drive, the first ones many many aspects of the game, hell even the graphics were well ahead of its time.
I kind of expect the same from funcom. The might launch a little less buggy of a game however you can expect conan to have very innovative features that might end up becoming the staple of future mmorpgs. Expect new innovative gameplay, game design, and anything else you can think of. With all the inovations you usually run into NEW problems that nobody has ever had to deal with before because it is something you are the first to do. So even if it is a very rough launch funcom has proven it is well worth it.
One banned player I am aware of told me precisely how his "sentencing" went. It happened over a period of several weeks.
He had a particularly bad habit of highly abusive language.
At one point, while cussing at various ethnic groups over the OOC channels, two ARKs appeared, invited him to a private chat channel and issued a warning to stop his behavior, while citing the exact rule of the EULA he violated.
Second time, same thing, only the chat in question was in vincinity. Two ARKs appeared, invited to a private channel, and then all three were warped to a small room without an exit, where a GM joined them. One of the ARKs, who had apparently been investigating, repeated word for word what the accused player in question had been saying. Again a warning was issued, with the exact rule violated named, and the GM stated that a ban would be the next action.
Third time, same process as the second, only the GM took over and made the decision to ban the account.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
edit. to avoid flames im not saying it wont happen, but u cant really tell till u played the game.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
I loved AO even early on.........
Funcom took an idea that was different from what was the norm back then and turned it into a really great game that I and many others still enjoy to this day. That being said I think AOC will definitely be a niche game. A lot of people fear change and the idea of leveling up in a single player environment before entering the multiplayer portion may put some people off. Aside from that it is and has always been hard to implement FPS esque combat into an MMO well and many folks may not care to learn the new system.
I like the idea and I praise them for their innovation but I dont know how well it will be recieved by the masses who have proved time and time again that they want the same old warmed over simplistic crap over and over ad infinitum.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
I need more vespene gas.
im always glad that a game can get postponded unless its for a really bad reason such as if they push AOC back just for their X box release. pushing a game back to polish it up ad deal with some major problem and i mean come on its not even in beta yet. that can only mean that were some major problems with the game.
i think funcom learned a lot form AO and that will help them with AOC and its realease
I really do wish these guys all the very best of luck with any future project. And maybe other Devs/publishers will take note.
Well freaking said!!!
I have seen a player log into his ARK character before and pull some BS while we were running a 115ish level mission.
And I cannot agree with you more about how Shadowlands was a freaking failure and a blunder in so many ways. Whoever made that crap I sure as hell hope is not working on AOC, but somehow I doubt thats the case. I just cannot fathom what that person and his crew was thinking when they made EQ1.5 ala Shadowlands. That is one of the major reason's why I believe AOC will eventually fall flat on its face. Funcom has a way for ruining its own game, ala SOE.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
As far as the ARK's knowing who your main character is, your account includes ALL your toons, not just the one you're on when they come for you, otherwise people could just log another toon to get away from them. Anyone who couldn't figure that out just from common sense doesn't deserve to even be on the internet.
As far as bannings, if they were indiscriminately banning whoever they liked for no reason, the boards would be filled with angry players bitching about it. On the contrary, when the OCCASIONAL person comes on the boards there to try and spout off the "I was wrongly banned" monologue, it usually doesn't get to the second page before the players figure out they are full of crap, just as we have seen through the ban crap you've posted here.
As far as Funcom being able to deliver, damn straight I think they will. They have learned alot from AO, from both the good AND the bad. And let us not forget, that AO is responsible for a great majority of the mechanics you now consider routine must-haves in mmo's today.
As far as LE, yeah, it wasn't everything everyone wanted right off the bat, but anybody with enough brain cells to operate a mouse would see on the official forums that they are patching in fixes and content. 17.1 on the way and 17.2 already in development as well.
AO will be around for years to come, because it is THE sci-fi game in the genre, unless you count interactive screensavers. And AoC will be just fine, bringing Funcom's unique touch to the fantasy realm. And don't try coming back with the "Oh, another fanboi" retort. If that is the best you can muster in rebuttal, you need not apply yourself, 'cause you've already lost. Funcom is not perfect and has faults like any other mmo dev company. But they have far less of them and do try to work on the one's they have.
Also this game has promised a *lot* and shown very little. Reminds me of another game about a year or so ago... Dark and Light anyone?
Of course, being able to turn into a giant snake will make up for a lot
But looking at both games War and AoC they both have made *alot* of promises for that matter, so at the end of the day *you* as a consumer are gonna *believe* in the game u wanna play the most.
Ofcourse, you will hear stories about the ARK`s in AO wich is really bad. Its inevitable. Having played AO for almost 4 years myself I could tell of some horrors myself. That said, the bad stories are probably 0.01% of all the stories about what the ARK`s have done in total. (No, I was never a ARK myself
) ARK`S ingame solving peoples problems have been (when looking at the BIG picture) a huge success.
So, can Funcom deliver what we expect with AoC? I think yes. To those who say they have seen very little of the game I can just urge you to look around a little better. There is tons of lore info, tons of explanations on how game mechanics will work, and tons of ingame videos/pictures. And it looks AWESOMEin my opinion.
Comparing WAR and AoC seems a bit lame to me. Some prefer Conan-style, some prefer Warhammer-style (you MUST know what I mean), and some wont be able to keep their greasy little gamer-hands away from any of them.
I think I saw someone saying the delay was a bad sign and I just have to say I completely disagree there aswell.... There is a whole new DX10 version that needs their tender lub before they can release and there will also be more time for bug-killin and polishing all around. One can only speculate but Microsoft having their massive, chubby fingers into this is almost certainly a big reason aswell.
In short: Will Funcom deliver in the end?
Hell yeah!!!
So Amazing Avery, I was browsing through old posts (it's really quite interesting the stuff you fund, some dates back from 2006!) and saw you're answere here.
Were they proven guilty?
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
This post is extremely funny now.
Raising dead humans = cool
Raising dead topics ... not so much.