Do NOT believe anything Keean or Graev say...they are total noobs and don't "get" the game. I would not believe a single thing they say. I would go so far as to say they mislead people with their lack of understanding of classes, roles, gameplay, lore....just about everything. Though I do admire their diligence in recording and publishing their take on the game.
That said, AoC has performance issues IN BETA! Keep that in mind, it's beta...aka beta TESTING...aka you are supposed to be testing the game not getting a demo. Beta does not equal demo.
Now for a real unbiased view: AoC's beta has enough performance issues to cause me to be more cautious in purchasing the game. I already have 2 preorders for my household, and I am not cancelling either of them. However, I am going to unwrap them one at a time and install and test the live version before unwrapping the second box, so that I can return it if Funcom can't address the performance issues before launch. Funcom does, however, deliver on everything else. Combat, storyline, items, lore, guilding, raiding, pvp, pve....
So it really comes down to Funcom's ability to get their game running smoothly at launch. And we aren't at launch yet, so don't make any assumptions.
Man this Beta has as many polar opposite reviews as this forum does, kind of makes it hard to know which one is the right one. Maybe they are both right. I couldn't get in this beta for obvious reasons and I'm trying to find out how good it is through these reviews. but I'm having a hard time. Still keeping my preorder still
Aye, couldn't agree more. I'm guessing it's because there are (in the trial at least) good and bad parts. Most of the bad seem to be centered around the technical issues. Personally I can live with that at the start so long as they get working on it quick. But you're right from reading the reviews it is hard to judge. They should fully release the NDA to allow closed beta reviews.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
For those who dont know, the open beta client is a month behind the closed beta client (possibly longer) untill the NDA drops though the closed beta testers cant talk about it. Second, the closed beta client is behind the internal / gold client. Why are we using this client? Mainly for server stress testing, server populations limits, zone populations limits, login server stress testing etc. So calm down... its not the end of the world.
Mainly for stress testing/ That is stupid and so far past a smart idea.. it becomes stupid. There is no good reason to use an OLDER client for stress testing. NONE.
I just listed the reasons... we are a 50k player stress test for the servers. This is a limited client, not the final client.
And the reasons were invalid. There is no sense testing an OLDER client for open beta. There just isn't. You're taking steps back in development doing this.
Makes perfect sense to me to use an old client that wasn't tested with thousands of players on different setups. If they think they can fix whatever they're trying to find before release, ( and before you tell me the game has gone gold, hello? patches? think about it ) We'll see what happens. idiots.
yes we will see what happens...but if your wrong can i call you an idiot?
For those who dont know, the open beta client is a month behind the closed beta client (possibly longer) untill the NDA drops though the closed beta testers cant talk about it. Second, the closed beta client is behind the internal / gold client. Why are we using this client? Mainly for server stress testing, server populations limits, zone populations limits, login server stress testing etc. So calm down... its not the end of the world.
Mainly for stress testing/ That is stupid and so far past a smart idea.. it becomes stupid. There is no good reason to use an OLDER client for stress testing. NONE.
I just listed the reasons... we are a 50k player stress test for the servers. This is a limited client, not the final client.
And the reasons were invalid. There is no sense testing an OLDER client for open beta. There just isn't. You're taking steps back in development doing this.
No they arent. They are testing different things in the dev cycle. They have a good pool of closed and internal testers testing the release client, and we are stress testing the servers. Seems rather good to me.
Well sneakers, considering I have played the pvp client and it ran 50x better than the current client, Im more willing to believe my closed beta testing friends than I am ex-vanguard people.
I was excited about VG as well and I got burned, anything coming from brad in the future Ill definitely be leary of. However, Funcom isnt sigil, it isnt brad, I think they will do fine.
- right on, well as you can see it doesnt have the roof fitted exactly right just yet, and theres a problem with the steering if you try to turn left, thats just something we put in to test how its tackling those righthand turns...But we are working on all of those thing as we speak
- umm ok...
- so why dont you go ahead and take it for a spin?
- huh?
- yeah and also if you like it please tell all your friends about us, after all we wanna sell as many of these babies as possible!
Well sneakers, considering I have played the pvp client and it ran 50x better than the current client, Im more willing to believe my closed beta testing friends than I am ex-vanguard people. I was excited about VG as well and I got burned, anything coming from brad in the future Ill definitely be leary of. However, Funcom isnt sigil, it isnt brad, I think they will do fine.
actually i beg to differ...both of their first MMORPGS launched horrifically....AO and VG.
Well sneakers, considering I have played the pvp client and it ran 50x better than the current client, Im more willing to believe my closed beta testing friends than I am ex-vanguard people. I was excited about VG as well and I got burned, anything coming from brad in the future Ill definitely be leary of. However, Funcom isnt sigil, it isnt brad, I think they will do fine.
WTF?!
FC doesn't have a shady past like Brad/sigil/etc? Are you serious. Horrible AO launch, horrendously bugged expansions ( SL and AI ).. yes you're so right. FC has a perfect track record. Gaute, while not as bad as Brad, is still far off in his own la-la land with his own demigod-complex.
And many exVG people are also closed beta people... myself included.
Let me start off by saying this: I totally disagree.
While I have experienced a few crahses, and some slow load times, from my own stress testing experience: This is what happens. Remember the stress test is way more then just the 50,000 people in beta. It;s them running 400,000 instances of the game on a server, while the 50,000 are playing. Thus, pushing the server to maximum compacity. We all know how slow our own comptuers get when pushed to the limits.
Otherwise, this game does something so much better then vanguard, that I can't even compare them.
See, my computer is fairly low end. p4 3.00ghz processor, 1.5gb ram, and a 256mb x1300 card using a PCI slot. Very low end for a gaming computer. I pass everything for vanguard. No matter the settings, I will not crack 2 FPS on vanguard. Period, end of the story. Hell, on the lowest of low settings, Vanguard looks way worse then WoW, which runs on my rig at 40+ fps. That is what amazed me the most with that game.
Then, I run this game. In all the betas I have been in, I have been able to run the game on medium settings, with 30 - 50+ fps. If I bottom out hte settings, I hit hte fabled 60+, dipping to 30 fps at the most. Very, very playable. Thats what killed vanguard for me: It wasn't playable. This is.
The combat system to me is brilliant. It feels like button mashing early, but pvp beta weekend PROVED that there is a big difference between button mashers, and those that know how it works. Say you hit me on the left side, me swinging right is going to have a big chance to miss. There is a lot of "reading" what they are doing, and trying to move in a way to force wasted combo's while maximizing your own. It has a high learning curve. It does feel less polished then most Open Beta's, but this less polished game is still better then World of Warcraft (the king of kings).
I'm seeing the same thing for AoC that happened to Vanguard in forums and reviews.
Not just similar... the SAME.
Originally posted by miagisan
while i do not think its going to launch as bad as VG...there are some spooky coincidences 1) Both need tweaks made by players on the client 2) both had serious server side bugs, in fact very similar bugs 3) both sides (haters and fanbois) having the same arguments over the good/bad points 4) both promised legendary graphics, but had sub par performance 5) both claimed to be using older clients for their testing 6) both have spent alot of money in their respective developements 7) both crowds are spouting "its only beta" and "the magical patch/build" 8) both had supposed revolutionary aspects to mmorpg gaming
i could go on...but then someone might label me a hater
Is this just people with a disdain for AoC? Or a real problem?
We shall see... but if nothing else, It will turn out as a nice attempt that future games can build off of and learn from...it might be, like VG, before it's time.
I absolutely thrive on this drama. particularly when the OP has a full blown article that gets so many knee-jerk responses.
I don't think so. As another posted said, Why would they have you beta and find bugs in a client which they aren't planning on using? It's not like they are going to debug this version and not debug the release version. Makes no sense to me
that is what i don't understand
Keen and his horrible little website are pretty sad, mainly because they blame a game for their own lack of computing power. It doesn't help that he has no idea how a mmorpg is and should be, and that no mmorpg on launch comes out fully polished and up to snuff with a game such as wow or eq2 who has had years to fine tune and polish their game.
Anyone who goes into a PVP/PVE mmorpg thinking combat and quests are going to completely different then anything ever done in a mmo is.. well I don't want to get banned again so i'll let you fill that part in. It's just sad that people believe and hype themselves up to think any mmorpg is going to be some sort of godsend with no issues on launch. It is a very tough and demanding thing to polish a mmorpg, and polish almost always comes AFTER a mmo is launched.
so, to end this silly rant, Anyone who goes into a launch of an mmo to expect a perfectly polished pve/pvp game with no issues with crashing/slowdowns was obviously grainfed world of warcraft.
~ ~
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
What's funny, Aroll, is that substandard systems are performing better than some well above standard systems. Devs are saying thats because it isn't multi core or dx10 enabled yet. it won't be come launch day either, but that's another story for another day (18 days away in fact)
It's a good review, it's fair on his experience, but I have not ever crashed, locked up, or anything. Every new MMOG is going to have problems at launch, but I don't foresee too many compared to other launch experiences I have had.
Hate to say this Grimland but do you think the problem is with the game itself, or that your computer sounds like a f*cking mess? So far I have had NO problems with my AoC during beta and the game has been everything I've hoped from it, only got few spikes due to the dubugger running on the background. Try defragging or run sum virusscans to fix your shit.
lol AoC will do just fine I think. On the contrary even if it does contain minor bugs, as do all MMO's in beta, AoC should do pretty well. I personally don't have it on reserve, due to just buying a new Dell XPS, but i plain to participate in beta to see just how severe this "issues" stated by the poster really are lol. Maybe he just needs a new computer, who knows.
Well sneakers, considering I have played the pvp client and it ran 50x better than the current client, Im more willing to believe my closed beta testing friends than I am ex-vanguard people. I was excited about VG as well and I got burned, anything coming from brad in the future Ill definitely be leary of. However, Funcom isnt sigil, it isnt brad, I think they will do fine.
WTF?!
FC doesn't have a shady past like Brad/sigil/etc? Are you serious. Horrible AO launch, horrendously bugged expansions ( SL and AI ).. yes you're so right. FC has a perfect track record. Gaute, while not as bad as Brad, is still far off in his own la-la land with his own demigod-complex.
And many exVG people are also closed beta people... myself included.
I was in AO's launch, it was horrific. Its also been almost a decade and they have done wonderful things with AO since. If I had played the OB client before I played the PVP client Id be worried to...however... after playing a stable client, talking with closed testers, and doing some research... I dont think this is another Vanguard. I of course cant say its not another VG for sure... but from what I have seen, experienced, and heard... Im personally willing to give Funcom the benefit of the doubt.
I fall through bridges and stairs more often than not, and crash frequently. I like the game, and I hope that they resolve these issues by release. Hopefully all of the data that they are collecting will allow them to fix the problems.
Aye same here. AoC is the worst game i ever played in any beta. Vanguard was way better. Crashes is like once every 5 minutes. AoC seems to be only graphics. Very unpolished game which is almost unplayable.
Whatever you do - dont buy this game as a pre-order, youll most likely be very disappointed.
There's one major way that I see AOC being very similar to VG..... player experiences are varying widely. Some folks report no lag, others have tons. Some people have good systems, but the game is running worse than those with lesser hardware.
Some folks are having a ton of fun, while others keep waiting for the promised land (build) to arrive. Some absolutely hate it, for no really obvious reason at all. Some have unreasonable expectations, while some folks are almost too forgiving.
Think I'll have to try this one myself and see how my own experience goes.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
I dont recall close testers from VG saying the closed beta client was good.
Do NOT believe anything Keean or Graev say...they are total noobs and don't "get" the game. I would not believe a single thing they say. I would go so far as to say they mislead people with their lack of understanding of classes, roles, gameplay, lore....just about everything. Though I do admire their diligence in recording and publishing their take on the game.
That said, AoC has performance issues IN BETA! Keep that in mind, it's beta...aka beta TESTING...aka you are supposed to be testing the game not getting a demo. Beta does not equal demo.
Now for a real unbiased view: AoC's beta has enough performance issues to cause me to be more cautious in purchasing the game. I already have 2 preorders for my household, and I am not cancelling either of them. However, I am going to unwrap them one at a time and install and test the live version before unwrapping the second box, so that I can return it if Funcom can't address the performance issues before launch. Funcom does, however, deliver on everything else. Combat, storyline, items, lore, guilding, raiding, pvp, pve....
So it really comes down to Funcom's ability to get their game running smoothly at launch. And we aren't at launch yet, so don't make any assumptions.
Makes perfect sense to me to use an old client that wasn't tested with thousands of players on different setups.
If they think they can fix whatever they're trying to find before release,
( and before you tell me the game has gone gold, hello? patches? think about it )
We'll see what happens.
idiots.
PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com
go back and read the earlier posts in the vanguard forums...yes they did. In fact i was one of them...i ran the game pretty smoothly on my computer.
Aye, couldn't agree more. I'm guessing it's because there are (in the trial at least) good and bad parts. Most of the bad seem to be centered around the technical issues. Personally I can live with that at the start so long as they get working on it quick. But you're right from reading the reviews it is hard to judge. They should fully release the NDA to allow closed beta reviews.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Mainly for stress testing/ That is stupid and so far past a smart idea.. it becomes stupid. There is no good reason to use an OLDER client for stress testing. NONE.
I just listed the reasons... we are a 50k player stress test for the servers. This is a limited client, not the final client.
And the reasons were invalid. There is no sense testing an OLDER client for open beta. There just isn't. You're taking steps back in development doing this.
yes we will see what happens...but if your wrong can i call you an idiot?
Mainly for stress testing/ That is stupid and so far past a smart idea.. it becomes stupid. There is no good reason to use an OLDER client for stress testing. NONE.
I just listed the reasons... we are a 50k player stress test for the servers. This is a limited client, not the final client.
And the reasons were invalid. There is no sense testing an OLDER client for open beta. There just isn't. You're taking steps back in development doing this.
No they arent. They are testing different things in the dev cycle. They have a good pool of closed and internal testers testing the release client, and we are stress testing the servers. Seems rather good to me.
Keep telling yourself that. Diehards will always be diehards. Even til the pulling of the plug.
Hell... people still play Horizons.....
Well sneakers, considering I have played the pvp client and it ran 50x better than the current client, Im more willing to believe my closed beta testing friends than I am ex-vanguard people.
I was excited about VG as well and I got burned, anything coming from brad in the future Ill definitely be leary of. However, Funcom isnt sigil, it isnt brad, I think they will do fine.
- so are you the guy who called about the car?
- yes that was me.
- right on, well as you can see it doesnt have the roof fitted exactly right just yet, and theres a problem with the steering if you try to turn left, thats just something we put in to test how its tackling those righthand turns...But we are working on all of those thing as we speak
- umm ok...
- so why dont you go ahead and take it for a spin?
- huh?
- yeah and also if you like it please tell all your friends about us, after all we wanna sell as many of these babies as possible!
heh your complaining you cant drive the prototype... your not on the lot my friend.
actually i beg to differ...both of their first MMORPGS launched horrifically....AO and VG.
FC doesn't have a shady past like Brad/sigil/etc? Are you serious. Horrible AO launch, horrendously bugged expansions ( SL and AI ).. yes you're so right. FC has a perfect track record. Gaute, while not as bad as Brad, is still far off in his own la-la land with his own demigod-complex.
And many exVG people are also closed beta people... myself included.
Let me start off by saying this: I totally disagree.
While I have experienced a few crahses, and some slow load times, from my own stress testing experience: This is what happens. Remember the stress test is way more then just the 50,000 people in beta. It;s them running 400,000 instances of the game on a server, while the 50,000 are playing. Thus, pushing the server to maximum compacity. We all know how slow our own comptuers get when pushed to the limits.
Otherwise, this game does something so much better then vanguard, that I can't even compare them.
See, my computer is fairly low end. p4 3.00ghz processor, 1.5gb ram, and a 256mb x1300 card using a PCI slot. Very low end for a gaming computer. I pass everything for vanguard. No matter the settings, I will not crack 2 FPS on vanguard. Period, end of the story. Hell, on the lowest of low settings, Vanguard looks way worse then WoW, which runs on my rig at 40+ fps. That is what amazed me the most with that game.
Then, I run this game. In all the betas I have been in, I have been able to run the game on medium settings, with 30 - 50+ fps. If I bottom out hte settings, I hit hte fabled 60+, dipping to 30 fps at the most. Very, very playable. Thats what killed vanguard for me: It wasn't playable. This is.
The combat system to me is brilliant. It feels like button mashing early, but pvp beta weekend PROVED that there is a big difference between button mashers, and those that know how it works. Say you hit me on the left side, me swinging right is going to have a big chance to miss. There is a lot of "reading" what they are doing, and trying to move in a way to force wasted combo's while maximizing your own. It has a high learning curve. It does feel less polished then most Open Beta's, but this less polished game is still better then World of Warcraft (the king of kings).
I'm seeing the same thing for AoC that happened to Vanguard in forums and reviews.
Not just similar... the SAME.
Is this just people with a disdain for AoC? Or a real problem?
We shall see... but if nothing else, It will turn out as a nice attempt that future games can build off of and learn from...it might be, like VG, before it's time.
I absolutely thrive on this drama. particularly when the OP has a full blown article that gets so many knee-jerk responses.
Anyone who goes into a PVP/PVE mmorpg thinking combat and quests are going to completely different then anything ever done in a mmo is.. well I don't want to get banned again so i'll let you fill that part in. It's just sad that people believe and hype themselves up to think any mmorpg is going to be some sort of godsend with no issues on launch. It is a very tough and demanding thing to polish a mmorpg, and polish almost always comes AFTER a mmo is launched.
so, to end this silly rant, Anyone who goes into a launch of an mmo to expect a perfectly polished pve/pvp game with no issues with crashing/slowdowns was obviously grainfed world of warcraft.
~ ~
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
What's funny, Aroll, is that substandard systems are performing better than some well above standard systems. Devs are saying thats because it isn't multi core or dx10 enabled yet. it won't be come launch day either, but that's another story for another day (18 days away in fact)
It's a good review, it's fair on his experience, but I have not ever crashed, locked up, or anything. Every new MMOG is going to have problems at launch, but I don't foresee too many compared to other launch experiences I have had.
Hate to say this Grimland but do you think the problem is with the game itself, or that your computer sounds like a f*cking mess? So far I have had NO problems with my AoC during beta and the game has been everything I've hoped from it, only got few spikes due to the dubugger running on the background. Try defragging or run sum virusscans to fix your shit.
lol AoC will do just fine I think. On the contrary even if it does contain minor bugs, as do all MMO's in beta, AoC should do pretty well. I personally don't have it on reserve, due to just buying a new Dell XPS, but i plain to participate in beta to see just how severe this "issues" stated by the poster really are lol. Maybe he just needs a new computer, who knows.
Backup Your Videogame CD's
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
FC doesn't have a shady past like Brad/sigil/etc? Are you serious. Horrible AO launch, horrendously bugged expansions ( SL and AI ).. yes you're so right. FC has a perfect track record. Gaute, while not as bad as Brad, is still far off in his own la-la land with his own demigod-complex.
And many exVG people are also closed beta people... myself included.
I was in AO's launch, it was horrific. Its also been almost a decade and they have done wonderful things with AO since. If I had played the OB client before I played the PVP client Id be worried to...however... after playing a stable client, talking with closed testers, and doing some research... I dont think this is another Vanguard. I of course cant say its not another VG for sure... but from what I have seen, experienced, and heard... Im personally willing to give Funcom the benefit of the doubt.To each his own.
Aye same here. AoC is the worst game i ever played in any beta. Vanguard was way better. Crashes is like once every 5 minutes. AoC seems to be only graphics. Very unpolished game which is almost unplayable.
Whatever you do - dont buy this game as a pre-order, youll most likely be very disappointed.
BS. I didn't crash at all playing 5+ hours. So your problems are due to YOUR system. What are you running?
There's one major way that I see AOC being very similar to VG..... player experiences are varying widely. Some folks report no lag, others have tons. Some people have good systems, but the game is running worse than those with lesser hardware.
Some folks are having a ton of fun, while others keep waiting for the promised land (build) to arrive. Some absolutely hate it, for no really obvious reason at all. Some have unreasonable expectations, while some folks are almost too forgiving.
Think I'll have to try this one myself and see how my own experience goes.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon