An interesting post.....with some drawbacks for me, what are you judging this against, what is it that you would quantify as a good all round MMo with at least a 9/10 grade. Are you comparing this against target renagade on specky 48k? are you just a fps junky with no real interest in mmo's...have you been involved with and played MMo' for to long and just an old craby git? I just can't really get this from your post, perhaps you could elaborate a little more on these issues so if i can see if i have a similar veiwpoint on games as yourself...otherwise i just get the feeling this post is worthless 'to me'. My point being....how can i have any idea that i may love it even if you dislike it? A good post and would like to see more like it..just think you could improve it using some of the observastions in this thread....then it could be a great post
Did you read what he said? He clearly stated he has a long history of MMOs he tested, stating no where he even plays FPS games. Next, why does he have to compare what a 9/10 game is? It has no bearing and if he had said something like "WoW" is a great 9/10 or something, then you'd just bash he's a fanboy of that and disregard everything. He obviously took a general and unbias opinion the best to his abilities.
Next, why do you need to understand someone's exact background to see exactly why someone has the opinion they do? Just take whatever you want from someone elses arguement and form your own opinions, its relatively simple I think. Specifically, no one has ever made a claim in this post that you should love or hate the game, its just a different viewpoint to help some people like myself.
I normally wouldn't defend someone else so extensively but I really enjoyed the post.
Lol...wow..issues m8..
Did you read what i said?
At no point does he show any real love for playing MMo's or games in general....it seems to me its his job and is overly critical like an artist would be of their own work or other works...does not mean that general public wont love it. I could be wrong..but thats why i raised this issue.
If someone gave me a review of a cheesburger and only a month later i found out the guy had no tongue, didn't like cheese to begin with and has been working in McDonalds makin cheesburgers everyday for 25yrs and the sight of them makes him angry...but forgot to mention that in their review......get the point. Besides that..if you read my post...i gave the post a thumbs up..so go de stress in a corner plz and come back when you able to take in this concept.
Appologise to everyone else for having to try and make this overly simple for this guy to understand.
"Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C." - Wayne Allyn Root
An interesting post.....with some drawbacks for me, what are you judging this against, what is it that you would quantify as a good all round MMo with at least a 9/10 grade. Are you comparing this against target renagade on specky 48k? are you just a fps junky with no real interest in mmo's...have you been involved with and played MMo' for to long and just an old craby git? I just can't really get this from your post, perhaps you could elaborate a little more on these issues so if i can see if i have a similar veiwpoint on games as yourself...otherwise i just get the feeling this post is worthless 'to me'. My point being....how can i have any idea that i may love it even if you dislike it? A good post and would like to see more like it..just think you could improve it using some of the observastions in this thread....then it could be a great post
Did you read what he said? He clearly stated he has a long history of MMOs he tested, stating no where he even plays FPS games. Next, why does he have to compare what a 9/10 game is? It has no bearing and if he had said something like "WoW" is a great 9/10 or something, then you'd just bash he's a fanboy of that and disregard everything. He obviously took a general and unbias opinion the best to his abilities.
Next, why do you need to understand someone's exact background to see exactly why someone has the opinion they do? Just take whatever you want from someone elses arguement and form your own opinions, its relatively simple I think. Specifically, no one has ever made a claim in this post that you should love or hate the game, its just a different viewpoint to help some people like myself.
I normally wouldn't defend someone else so extensively but I really enjoyed the post.
Lol...wow..issues m8..
Did you read what i said?
At no point does he show any real love for playing MMo's or games in general....it seems to me its his job and is overly critical like an artist would be of their own work or other works...does not mean that general public wont love it. I could be wrong..but thats why i raised this issue.
If someone gave me a review of a cheesburger and only a month later i found out the guy had no tongue, didn't like cheese to begin with and has been working in McDonalds makin cheesburgers everyday for 25yrs and the sight of them makes him angry...but forgot to mention that in their review......get the point. Besides that..if you read my post...i gave the post a thumbs up..so go de stress in a corner plz and come back when you able to take in this concept.
Appologise to everyone else for having to try and make this overly simple for this guy to understand.
Do you not realize to have a completely unbiased opinion you can NOT have any ANY ANY!! other past experiences interfere with what you think of said thing? OPS claim of testing betas is the same as a doctor or a so called "expert" at a trial stating why they are considered a so called expert. Proof that his opinion should show some validity. No were in there does he state that the game is complete garbage, he says for the most part he liked everything but the combat, and even goes to say he would have liked it at an earlier time. But everyone has their own opinion, thats his, his un-biast opinion of the game.
And your cheeseburger example makes no sence what so ever. Weres the stand? You make a completely ridiculous example of the person having no tounge wtf? (edit for spacing)
Do you not realize to have a completely unbiased opinion you can NOT have any ANY ANY!! other past experiences interfere with what you think of said thing? OPS claim of testing betas is the same as a doctor or a so called "expert" at a trial stating why they are considered a so called expert. Proof that his opinion should show some validity. No were in there does he state that the game is complete garbage, he says for the most part he liked everything but the combat, and even goes to say he would have liked it at an earlier time. But everyone has their own opinion, thats his, his un-biast opinion of the game.
And your cheeseburger example makes no sence what so ever. Weres the stand? You make a completely ridiculous example of the person having no tounge wtf? (edit for spacing)
ffs..all i have asked for is for him to elaborate a little more on his opening paragraph so ppl can get a better feel for this guys likes/dislikes, its too short. I felt doing this would improve his post. It was never a flame, just a mere observation on how the original post could be improved on for passing readers. My first post made this clear enough, my second post was in responce to the unecessary flame in my direction that had no relevant points made to my post making me think a 12yr old had writen it...hence writing back so he may understand...
Now.....to state anything has a mark out of 10......needs to have a benchmark inorder to do so. This itself means that there is bias. It has to be COMPARED TO SOMETHING otherwise its meaningless. Now to elaborate in the first paragraph would give us the standard of where this bias is coming from and to what extent we can relate to it.
And why oh why....just proof to me that you did not read properly and care to understand my coments have the people who responded to me stated about him disliking the game..it being complete garbage or anything else to do with liking/dislikng the game. Infact i stated the complete oposite and only suggested that it was almost impossible to assertain wheather i would or would not like the game from his review.
Now stfu please and let me get back to designing stupid buildings for you to sit in and write this hate filled nonscence in.
"Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C." - Wayne Allyn Root
2 things you should know. 1)The devs have said mods, for the most part, will not be permitted in AoC. Quite frankly, I like this as the line between a mod and a cheat has certainly been tested in past games like WoW. 2) People were told ahead of time that this is a STRESS test, far moreso than an open beta. That said, its is done on older servers where they purposely stress the servers b4 1 player even logs in. The lag is there for a purpose, and it will only help make the release smoother. Its unfair to even comment on the "performance" of a stress test because it in fact, the opposite of the effect they are striving to achieve.
I totally agree.
Im in the open beta too now. It launched at 10pm UK time so I had to wait untill I got out of the cinema from watching IRONMAN (awesome btw - stay after the credits roll fyi), in order to play it.
I had a few crashes - going from charater creation to the tutorial, and leaving the tutorial to go to the city.
I was rather dissapointed with the character creation to be honest. thought it would be allot more open than it is, but I suppose they have to avoid people creating pure freaks of nature - the way you can on the Wii creatuing your 'Me'.
That said, i was still able to create a toon that I was happy with and jump in.
I think the gameplay will benefit allot from both my becoming more familair with it and with it getting tweaked after player feedback. managing attacks and defences on the fly will be challenging... but then this is a competitive game.
The game looked great on medium settings for me and I have a decent enough system.
For me AoC is too realistic, embeded in real world. I prefer games with fantasy like Evequest , Lineage II, with differents races ( orcs, elfs, dark elfs, etc.. ) maybe graphics in this game is better but most important in MMORPG's is gameplay no matter how game look like
For me AoC is too realistic, embeded in real world. I prefer games with fantasy like Evequest , Lineage II, with differents races ( orcs, elfs, dark elfs, etc.. ) maybe graphics in this game is better but most important in MMORPG's is gameplay no matter how game look like
Howard's Hyboria is a low fantasy world. This is actually one of the main points why I like it because of too much of high fantasy is in the market and nothing else really.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Do you not realize to have a completely unbiased opinion you can NOT have any ANY ANY!! other past experiences interfere with what you think of said thing? OPS claim of testing betas is the same as a doctor or a so called "expert" at a trial stating why they are considered a so called expert. Proof that his opinion should show some validity. No were in there does he state that the game is complete garbage, he says for the most part he liked everything but the combat, and even goes to say he would have liked it at an earlier time. But everyone has their own opinion, thats his, his un-biast opinion of the game.
And your cheeseburger example makes no sence what so ever. Weres the stand? You make a completely ridiculous example of the person having no tounge wtf? (edit for spacing)
ffs..all i have asked for is for him to elaborate a little more on his opening paragraph so ppl can get a better feel for this guys likes/dislikes, its too short. I felt doing this would improve his post. It was never a flame, just a mere observation on how the original post could be improved on for passing readers. My first post made this clear enough, my second post was in responce to the unecessary flame in my direction that had no relevant points made to my post making me think a 12yr old had writen it...hence writing back so he may understand...
Now.....to state anything has a mark out of 10......needs to have a benchmark inorder to do so. This itself means that there is bias. It has to be COMPARED TO SOMETHING otherwise its meaningless. Now to elaborate in the first paragraph would give us the standard of where this bias is coming from and to what extent we can relate to it.
And why oh why....just proof to me that you did not read properly and care to understand my coments have the people who responded to me stated about him disliking the game..it being complete garbage or anything else to do with liking/dislikng the game. Infact i stated the complete oposite and only suggested that it was almost impossible to assertain wheather i would or would not like the game from his review.
Now stfu please and let me get back to designing stupid buildings for you to sit in and write this hate filled nonscence in.
I agree here. I think that the OP has validity in his statements and has the background to give a sound argument. However, any time you present an argument, you should present with it a benchmark with which to make a comparison or contrast. Now, I realize this opens the conversation up for him to look like he's simply biased to one game or another, but if he genuinly has this much experience, then it shouldn't be hard for him to add some titles that he considers the pinnacle of acheivement for the areas he critiqued. The OP took the time to write out what I consider a well rounded review from a single point of view. I just think a benchmark for comparison would be a welcome addition to it.
I do not wish to have a eBetaTestingPissingMatch, but I have the same amount of experience with these games as the original poster. The original post is excellent, but based on limited information to the extreme, and bias because of the presumption that this "Stress Test" should work in X manner, etc.
What I do for a living is systems and network administration with quite a bit of programming. I design and frequently run simulations most of which involve a "stress test" phase, and I analyze the results (compared to real data patterns) to determine a margin of error... and I've been doing this for about 15 years now. Distributed databases and clustered web applications oh my. I -know- they are getting information they need to have a smoother launch. I have -zero- doubt the launch will be smoother than it would have been without this data collection. This is fact.
Originally posted by Terrapin54
Funcom is Funcom, not Sigil, not SoE, or any other company.
haha. Let me parody a line from fight club that applies to this situation perfectly -- "Funcom is not a beautiful and unique snowflake. They are the same decaying organic matter as everything else, and all the developers are all part of the same compost pile."
What you say is partially true. Sony, Blizzard, Turbine, Sigil, Funcom, CCP, etc, etc, etc. all have minor differences in how they do things specifically in regards to betas, development, infrastructure, design, etc, but when it comes down to a technical level they all need to know roughly the same information about any mmo they're dealing with... and in major ways, they all operate roughly the same. To claim otherwise is fanboy fanaticism at its furthest extreme... I was also there for early AO beta and later the stress test where I'm sure they got good data also. They went on to have one of the worst launches in mmo history even though hundreds of people in the beta long before the stress test were telling them, "this isn't even close to ready." This is fact.
Ever notice how companies tend to make the same screw ups over and over? UO2, UOX, etc. SWG, EQ2, Vanguard... IMO (and it is just an opinion) they're repeating the same mistake with AoC. It needs more time being polished up... at least a month more than they have, maybe more yet depending on how effective they are at getting things cleaned up. Which is why I canceled my pre-order. To pay for half finished software is to reinforce the behavior of shipping software half baked. I won't do that, its prevalent enough in the computer games industry.
Originally posted by Terrapin54
This is the same company that released a horrid release with AO, but turned that prodcut around to be one of the best MMO's ever created.
That's an opinion, not a fact One of the best sci-fi mmo? Definitely. Course the field isn't very large either. They're going into the most heavily contested genre of mmo... they have to be top of their game or they're going to do pathetically poorly. I'm not a marketing expert, but my past experience tells me this. Launches like AO can break a game. Clients like vanguards can break a game. This is also an opinion.
Originally posted by Terrapin54
They have the experience and resources to know what they are up against, and how to meet the challenges. If they tell you, as clear as day what is quoted above, you have a choice, believe it, or don't.
What matters, will be release, and the fixes during the 30-day free play time that comes with the game. If you decide not to move forward, based upon your experience in this stress test, that's your choice, but try and be humble enough to recognize you may not know WTF you are actually talking about. Thank you -Terrapin
Unfortunately when it comes to the technical aspects of simulations on distributed applications and databases, I do know "WTF you are actually talking about." Combine that with a lot of beta experience from late alpha to late beta and pictures start to come together. Is there a way for me to be 100% sure I'm right? Nope... I've even had results from simulations I've run come up and utterly shock me occasionally. Believe me, in this case I *want* to be so wrong. However, doing what I do, knowing what I know, and applying past experience to the formula, I'm unwilling to put my money up against the odds.
Above and beyond all of that... I discounted most of the issues as being correctable except for the game play ones. I just don't care for the game play and a lot of the instancing choices they made. So what was the point of your post again?
I respect your experience and education. I don't buy-in to your forgone conclusions. You do not work for Funcom. You do not work on the source code of the game. Much of your conclusion is "opinion", yet it is backed up with information that suggests fact. In the next half hour, I shall be posting another thread with detailed information with regard to performance, use of shaders, and insight to "why" players are having varying experiences in the game. If you see it, I hope you find it helpful.
The point of my post, is that while educated and articulate, folks should still read your post as an opinion, not a fact, with a good dose of salt.
I have to agree with the OP. The graphics are good, and the quests are pretty interesting. But the load times are terrible, the instancing is lame, and requires a really high end comptor to play.
I'm still underdecided about buying it
I am running a 3400+ AMD Sempron w/ only 1.5 GB of memory. The only thing "special" and it is very outdated is my 7900 XXX video card. Running on low settings was giving me 28 FPS and the visual quality between low settings and high is not too much. The load times when entering an instance were next to nothing. I disagree that it takes a really high end computer because it doesn't.
I have to agree with the OP. The graphics are good, and the quests are pretty interesting. But the load times are terrible, the instancing is lame, and requires a really high end comptor to play.
I'm still underdecided about buying it
I am running a 3400+ AMD Sempron w/ only 1.5 GB of memory. The only thing "special" and it is very outdated is my 7900 XXX video card. Running on low settings was giving me 28 FPS and the visual quality between low settings and high is not too much. The load times when entering an instance were next to nothing. I disagree that it takes a really high end computer because it doesn't.
I was getting 40 fps and I don't have the highest computer. 2 gig ram, ATI X850XT Pro (or something like that) and 2.4 dual core processor.
Low settings (which look great) and around 40 fps.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
You would think that you would have more combat options past level 13. At level 40 you get 2 extra directions and the interface changes. Way more combos etc etc. Different archtypes have different quests. Your on Tortage one massive noob island too. If the OP would be so kinda to do a review of the finished version, maybe from a buddy key? would make a nice read I think.
But if the first 13 levels doesn't grab you and pull you into the game, are you really going to hang on till level 40?
If the noob island doesn't give a good representation of the whole game, if you don't like the noob island are you going to stick around for the whole game?
First impressions are everything in gaming. The tutorial teaches you how to play, then the opening areas / scenes let you test drive the rest of the game.
Sure you could have amazing stuff that you'll love waiting for you later in the game, but if you don't like the opening hours then will you stick around for that later-game stuff?
Should you have to 'put up' with the noob stuff to get to the 'good stuff' or should the opening stuff be just as good as the rest?
The opposite can be true too. Tabula Rasa had a great opening few hours, but then the whole game just seemed to kind of drag on, just more of the exact same thing. At least this was how I interpreted it. Lord of the Rings Online was the same.
World of Warcraft was great in the beginning, it slowly taught you the game and got more and more complex and involved the further you got. Then in the end, at max level, you pulled everything you had learned together in order to complete the end-game challenges. This is why WoW is so successful, it was designed with a PERFECT learning curve.
No other MMO has yet been able to match that feat.
We seem to forget this about WoW because we've all played through the opening areas and early level content time and time again and gotten burned out on the end-game stuff.... but if you could remember how it was leveling up your first character when everything was new and different....
That's the WoW I'll always remeber, that's the WoW that has sold to 10 million + subscribers.
Thus far, AoC is just NOT had that same draw to me.
Boobs and blood aren't enough innovation to draw me in. The combat doen't go far enough away from the standard MMO conventions to really excite (though getting fatality moves is frigg'n awesome as hell) but beside that, I really haven't found anything "special" in AoC yet.
If I want a good single player story with great cutscenes and dialogue I'll play Mass Effect, I don't need that done in a half-ass way in a MMO.
That's the biggest failing of WoW is not making the story mean anything. And not making the war mean anything. It was all for personal gain. Personal gain is great, more inclusion in something great then one's self... that's epic.
You would think that you would have more combat options past level 13. At level 40 you get 2 extra directions and the interface changes. Way more combos etc etc. Different archtypes have different quests. Your on Tortage one massive noob island too. If the OP would be so kinda to do a review of the finished version, maybe from a buddy key? would make a nice read I think.
Different archetypes do have different quests however, when you have a quest to go to the volcano (for example) regardless of class, all of the mobs are the same, their placement is the same, and their pathing patterns are the same. Sure you may have a different objective but, it is not as you would seemingly imply.
The addition of 2 extra directions to swing a weapon does not change the combat all that much. The melee combat system is far from what was first trotted out as revolutionary. Is it different? Yes. Is it more entertaining? Well, that comes down to personal preference.
I agree with the original poster on pretty much every point made. It is not a massive step forward, definitely not on the scale that they (Funcom) have stated it as being.
Originally posted by Oriphus An interesting post.....with some drawbacks for me, what are you judging this against, what is it that you would quantify as a good all round MMo with at least a 9/10 grade. Are you comparing this against target renagade on specky 48k? are you just a fps junky with no real interest in mmo's...have you been involved with and played MMo' for to long and just an old craby git? I just can't really get this from your post, perhaps you could elaborate a little more on these issues so if i can see if i have a similar veiwpoint on games as yourself...otherwise i just get the feeling this post is worthless 'to me'. My point being....how can i have any idea that i may love it even if you dislike it? A good post and would like to see more like it..just think you could improve it using some of the observastions in this thread....then it could be a great post
Largely I get the notion you didn't bother to read the post and just cherry picked points to troll (but its hard to tell since this is the intarweb and its easy to be mistaken on intent), but the points you picked are fair enough I suppose and in that spirit...
I'm judging against the variety of MMO's I've played and beta'd in general. I can't say there's a single MMO out presently that I'd give a 9/10 to presently in the current state its in. Lately the industry has become stagnant (since the success of wow and everyone trying to mimic it) and lacks innovation... even prior to that innovation was slowing because people were trying to mimic everquest. Even wow, as well as it did, really didn't innovate -- they just added more polish in a setting a lot of people liked. The only place they innovated was in the interface department... and even now as much as they've reduced it, it wows me completely (the interface modability, not the game.)
I think you can safely assume that I'm not running on a 48k... being that the game is a 12g download.
The last fps games I seriously played were UT (the original) and Tribes 2. I almost exclusively play MMOs. If you consider planetside a fps, then thats the one I most recently played, but I consider it an MMO (just not an mmorpg.)
You really never know if *any* review written by someone is going to be accurate to your viewpoint. You face the exact same problems everytime you read a review of something on any site.
Edit: Examples--
Interface, the defacto standard for me now is wow. Amazingly good interface because of the modability, the base interface was simple and uncluttered but effective. The mods let you change the interface into anything you want it to be. Creative, innovative, and amazingly engaging from a technical standpoint. Runner up: EQ2, It's not as good as wow, but its still very skinable, and they've done some pretty amazing things along the way with the limited tools they have.
Variety of Play, anarchy online and asheron's call. Previously I would have listed star wars galaxies in there, but it's not really applicable anymore. They truly let you customize your characters far further than most games. You're not pigeon holed into a few specific builds or being stuck with things being gimped if you're not exactly like everyone else.
Character Creation and Customization, City of Heroes/Villains. I'd say the runner up goes to Starwars Galaxies even as it stands now. The character creator in CoX is a game in and of itself, it's absolutely amazing. The level of variety *wouldn't* be appropriate to all games, but its nice to see 200 people and not see 200 people that look exactly the same... nice to be able to pick your friends out of the crowd without having to have names on. Quite an amazing character creator.
Innovation, this one I'm going to go with "at launch time" and I'll be lambested for it anyways Ultima Online, Everquest, EVE, AO, and Asheron's Call... each of those games was extremely innovative in its own right. They took a chance and did their own thing and the entire genre benefited or will benefit from the lessons they learned and future they created. Everything since those games has been mimicking it to a large degree with incremental increases in game play rather than true innovation. First everyone copied, EQ, then everyone copied WOW, etc. While that works well in other areas of the gaming industry (FPS, RTS) because of the short shelf life of the game, it works poorly for MMO games because people play the same game for years on end and to pull them away from that game you really need a significant benefit over what they're already playing. I'm excited to see what CCP & White Wolf do with WoD... which means it'll probably suck.
Polish, WoW and LOTRO, while they didn't innovate much they added a level of polish to mmo's that hadn't been see previously and hasn't been seen since. WoWs launch wasn't perfect but the game was in better shape than the vast majority of games before it... and there was no way possible blizzard could have predicted the level of interest their game would generate, if I remember correctly they figured at best double eq... heh. LOTROs launch was simply stellar, I was in early beta and even from that point the game was far more playable than many of the games that came prior to it were at launch. They set the standard for how games should launch.
Gameplay, I'm going to do in reverse. SWG NGE, AC2, SB, Horizons, and MxO are all the runners up on the "wow this sucks" list of game play, but I reserve my bile and hatred towards vanguard, at no other time in mmo history has a game stepped backwards in some many ways as far as game play goes from a publisher with experience. In a lot of cases with MMOs game play issues you can blame it on attempted innovation by an inexperienced publisher, but not in vanguards case. It still boggles my mind that they actually believed that a significant number of people would want to play that crap and when it became apparent that a significant number probably wouldn't... they sold out and finished the destruction of the game by pushing it out the door before even a fraction of the promised features were implemented. They increased the tedium levels, they increased the frustration, they increased the suck to previously untold levels... maybe its better now, but I've not been able to muster the umph to even try it again recently and I try to revisit games when they have significant feature updates.
I'm going to shut up now because I'm rambling pointlessly
An interesting post.....with some drawbacks for me, what are you judging this against, what is it that you would quantify as a good all round MMo with at least a 9/10 grade. Are you comparing this against target renagade on specky 48k? are you just a fps junky with no real interest in mmo's...have you been involved with and played MMo' for to long and just an old craby git? I just can't really get this from your post, perhaps you could elaborate a little more on these issues so if i can see if i have a similar veiwpoint on games as yourself...otherwise i just get the feeling this post is worthless 'to me'.
My point being....how can i have any idea that i may love it even if you dislike it?
A good post and would like to see more like it..just think you could improve it using some of the observastions in this thread....then it could be a great post
Largely I get the notion you didn't bother to read the post and just cherry picked points to troll (but its hard to tell since this is the intarweb and its easy to be mistaken on intent), but the points you picked are fair enough I suppose and in that spirit...
I'm judging against the variety of MMO's I've played and beta'd in general. I can't say there's a single MMO out presently that I'd give a 9/10 to presently in the current state its in. Lately the industry has become stagnant (since the success of wow and everyone trying to mimic it) and lacks innovation... even prior to that innovation was slowing because people were trying to mimic everquest. Even wow, as well as it did, really didn't innovate -- they just added more polish in a setting a lot of people liked. The only place they innovated was in the interface department... and even now as much as they've reduced it, it wows me completely (the interface modability, not the game.)
I think you can safely assume that I'm not running on a 48k... being that the game is a 12g download.
The last fps games I seriously played were UT (the original) and Tribes 2. I almost exclusively play MMOs. If you consider planetside a fps, then thats the one I most recently played, but I consider it an MMO (just not an mmorpg.)
You really never know if *any* review written by someone is going to be accurate to your viewpoint. You face the exact same problems everytime you read a review of something on any site.
Edit: Examples--
Interface, the defacto standard for me now is wow. Amazingly good interface because of the modability, the base interface was simple and uncluttered but effective. The mods let you change the interface into anything you want it to be. Creative, innovative, and amazingly engaging from a technical standpoint. Runner up: EQ2, It's not as good as wow, but its still very skinable, and they've done some pretty amazing things along the way with the limited tools they have.
Variety of Play, anarchy online and asheron's call. Previously I would have listed star wars galaxies in there, but it's not really applicable anymore. They truly let you customize your characters far further than most games. You're not pigeon holed into a few specific builds or being stuck with things being gimped if you're not exactly like everyone else.
Character Creation and Customization, City of Heroes/Villains. I'd say the runner up goes to Starwars Galaxies even as it stands now. The character creator in CoX is a game in and of itself, it's absolutely amazing. The level of variety *wouldn't* be appropriate to all games, but its nice to see 200 people and not see 200 people that look exactly the same... nice to be able to pick your friends out of the crowd without having to have names on. Quite an amazing character creator.
Innovation, this one I'm going to go with "at launch time" and I'll be lambested for it anyways Ultima Online, Everquest, EVE, AO, and Asheron's Call... each of those games was extremely innovative in its own right. They took a chance and did their own thing and the entire genre benefited or will benefit from the lessons they learned and future they created. Everything since those games has been mimicking it to a large degree with incremental increases in game play rather than true innovation. First everyone copied, EQ, then everyone copied WOW, etc. While that works well in other areas of the gaming industry (FPS, RTS) because of the short shelf life of the game, it works poorly for MMO games because people play the same game for years on end and to pull them away from that game you really need a significant benefit over what they're already playing. I'm excited to see what CCP & White Wolf do with WoD... which means it'll probably suck.
Polish, WoW and LOTRO, while they didn't innovate much they added a level of polish to mmo's that hadn't been see previously and hasn't been seen since. WoWs launch wasn't perfect but the game was in better shape than the vast majority of games before it... and there was no way possible blizzard could have predicted the level of interest their game would generate, if I remember correctly they figured at best double eq... heh. LOTROs launch was simply stellar, I was in early beta and even from that point the game was far more playable than many of the games that came prior to it were at launch. They set the standard for how games should launch.
Gameplay, I'm going to do in reverse. SWG NGE, AC2, SB, Horizons, and MxO are all the runners up on the "wow this sucks" list of game play, but I reserve my bile and hatred towards vanguard, at no other time in mmo history has a game stepped backwards in some many ways as far as game play goes from a publisher with experience. In a lot of cases with MMOs game play issues you can blame it on attempted innovation by an inexperienced publisher, but not in vanguards case. It still boggles my mind that they actually believed that a significant number of people would want to play that crap and when it became apparent that a significant number probably wouldn't... they sold out and finished the destruction of the game by pushing it out the door before even a fraction of the promised features were implemented. They increased the tedium levels, they increased the frustration, they increased the suck to previously untold levels... maybe its better now, but I've not been able to muster the umph to even try it again recently and I try to revisit games when they have significant feature updates.
I'm going to shut up now because I'm rambling pointlessly
While your assessment is very valid and well thought out, the fact that you go to great lengths to let us know that you are a super beta tester, programmer etc extreme I can't help but point out it seems you are in the level 13 cap beta. So either you paid Fileplanet for it or you're not as good as you think you are or you'd be in closed beta with no level cap....
Originally posted by fatpanda While your assessment is very valid and well thought out, the fact that you go to great lengths to let us know that you are a super beta tester, programmer etc extreme I can't help but point out it seems you are in the level 13 cap beta. So either you paid Fileplanet for it or you're not as good as you think you are or you'd be in closed beta with no level cap....
Yeap, I played fileplanet beta. How does that effect the content of my post or the validity of it? I've had a fileplanet account for eh... 3-4 years now? Good service, one of the few I can honestly suggest subscribing to btw. Does it really shock you that I don't get in every single beta I apply for (It's a lot like a job, when applying for a job, especially if there is a lot of competition for that job, you won't always get in on the first pass, and sometimes you never get in at all, no matter what your qualifications are.) I try to keep my apps at about 3 at any given point. Conan was a pretty late application for me, well past the phases I normally enter to test. My freetime was mostly taken with or without testing Conan, so I was glad to get a few days to see the game, find out what was broken, and what worked well before release without having any serious commitment.
I find it humorous, one person finds my lack of background a point to rail on, another finds my including some background a point to rail on. Can't please everyone.
I'm in closed beta and while I'm not allowed to say what I think...
and to you fatpanda, the quality of a tester is not determined by whether they are in open or closed beta, but on their contributions.
Excellent and wonderful testers do not get to test thing simply because of the 'luck of the draw' at times, while others get in who couldn't test a toaster.
I'm in closed beta and while I'm not allowed to say what I think... and to you fatpanda, the quality of a tester is not determined by whether they are in open or closed beta, but on their contributions. Excellent and wonderful testers do not get to test thing simply because of the 'luck of the draw' at times, while others get in who couldn't test a toaster.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
I'm in closed beta and while I'm not allowed to say what I think... and to you fatpanda, the quality of a tester is not determined by whether they are in open or closed beta, but on their contributions. Excellent and wonderful testers do not get to test thing simply because of the 'luck of the draw' at times, while others get in who couldn't test a toaster.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
You
Are
Wrong.
Not just a little wrong, but EPICALLY wrong. You have absolutely no ideal what you are talking about, and it would likely be best if you ceased to do so. They do not do a background check on your training or education before taking beta apps. They ask a handful of simple questions (of which, to each you can lie) and then set about an automated system to select the testers. Dev teams do not have time to hand pick each tester, nor would it serve any intelligent purpose to do so when their available time aught to be spent working hard on making a game.
I'm terribly uneducated in the technical fields, and have gotten into betas over people who RUN these kinds of things. Whether or not he was in closed has no bearing here.
I'm in closed beta and while I'm not allowed to say what I think... and to you fatpanda, the quality of a tester is not determined by whether they are in open or closed beta, but on their contributions. Excellent and wonderful testers do not get to test thing simply because of the 'luck of the draw' at times, while others get in who couldn't test a toaster.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
Comments
Did you read what he said? He clearly stated he has a long history of MMOs he tested, stating no where he even plays FPS games. Next, why does he have to compare what a 9/10 game is? It has no bearing and if he had said something like "WoW" is a great 9/10 or something, then you'd just bash he's a fanboy of that and disregard everything. He obviously took a general and unbias opinion the best to his abilities.
Next, why do you need to understand someone's exact background to see exactly why someone has the opinion they do? Just take whatever you want from someone elses arguement and form your own opinions, its relatively simple I think. Specifically, no one has ever made a claim in this post that you should love or hate the game, its just a different viewpoint to help some people like myself.
I normally wouldn't defend someone else so extensively but I really enjoyed the post.
Lol...wow..issues m8..
Did you read what i said?
At no point does he show any real love for playing MMo's or games in general....it seems to me its his job and is overly critical like an artist would be of their own work or other works...does not mean that general public wont love it. I could be wrong..but thats why i raised this issue.
If someone gave me a review of a cheesburger and only a month later i found out the guy had no tongue, didn't like cheese to begin with and has been working in McDonalds makin cheesburgers everyday for 25yrs and the sight of them makes him angry...but forgot to mention that in their review......get the point. Besides that..if you read my post...i gave the post a thumbs up..so go de stress in a corner plz and come back when you able to take in this concept.
Appologise to everyone else for having to try and make this overly simple for this guy to understand.
"Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C." - Wayne Allyn Root
Did you read what he said? He clearly stated he has a long history of MMOs he tested, stating no where he even plays FPS games. Next, why does he have to compare what a 9/10 game is? It has no bearing and if he had said something like "WoW" is a great 9/10 or something, then you'd just bash he's a fanboy of that and disregard everything. He obviously took a general and unbias opinion the best to his abilities.
Next, why do you need to understand someone's exact background to see exactly why someone has the opinion they do? Just take whatever you want from someone elses arguement and form your own opinions, its relatively simple I think. Specifically, no one has ever made a claim in this post that you should love or hate the game, its just a different viewpoint to help some people like myself.
I normally wouldn't defend someone else so extensively but I really enjoyed the post.
Lol...wow..issues m8..
Did you read what i said?
At no point does he show any real love for playing MMo's or games in general....it seems to me its his job and is overly critical like an artist would be of their own work or other works...does not mean that general public wont love it. I could be wrong..but thats why i raised this issue.
If someone gave me a review of a cheesburger and only a month later i found out the guy had no tongue, didn't like cheese to begin with and has been working in McDonalds makin cheesburgers everyday for 25yrs and the sight of them makes him angry...but forgot to mention that in their review......get the point. Besides that..if you read my post...i gave the post a thumbs up..so go de stress in a corner plz and come back when you able to take in this concept.
Appologise to everyone else for having to try and make this overly simple for this guy to understand.
Do you not realize to have a completely unbiased opinion you can NOT have any ANY ANY!! other past experiences interfere with what you think of said thing? OPS claim of testing betas is the same as a doctor or a so called "expert" at a trial stating why they are considered a so called expert. Proof that his opinion should show some validity. No were in there does he state that the game is complete garbage, he says for the most part he liked everything but the combat, and even goes to say he would have liked it at an earlier time. But everyone has their own opinion, thats his, his un-biast opinion of the game.And your cheeseburger example makes no sence what so ever. Weres the stand? You make a completely ridiculous example of the person having no tounge wtf? (edit for spacing)
This makes me see it through your point of view, I can live with that.
Very mature reply btw, unlike certain posters in here. Kudos buddy.
ffs..all i have asked for is for him to elaborate a little more on his opening paragraph so ppl can get a better feel for this guys likes/dislikes, its too short. I felt doing this would improve his post. It was never a flame, just a mere observation on how the original post could be improved on for passing readers. My first post made this clear enough, my second post was in responce to the unecessary flame in my direction that had no relevant points made to my post making me think a 12yr old had writen it...hence writing back so he may understand...
Now.....to state anything has a mark out of 10......needs to have a benchmark inorder to do so. This itself means that there is bias. It has to be COMPARED TO SOMETHING otherwise its meaningless. Now to elaborate in the first paragraph would give us the standard of where this bias is coming from and to what extent we can relate to it.
And why oh why....just proof to me that you did not read properly and care to understand my coments have the people who responded to me stated about him disliking the game..it being complete garbage or anything else to do with liking/dislikng the game. Infact i stated the complete oposite and only suggested that it was almost impossible to assertain wheather i would or would not like the game from his review.
Now stfu please and let me get back to designing stupid buildings for you to sit in and write this hate filled nonscence in.
"Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C." - Wayne Allyn Root
Im in the open beta too now. It launched at 10pm UK time so I had to wait untill I got out of the cinema from watching IRONMAN (awesome btw - stay after the credits roll fyi), in order to play it.
I had a few crashes - going from charater creation to the tutorial, and leaving the tutorial to go to the city.
I was rather dissapointed with the character creation to be honest. thought it would be allot more open than it is, but I suppose they have to avoid people creating pure freaks of nature - the way you can on the Wii creatuing your 'Me'.
That said, i was still able to create a toon that I was happy with and jump in.
I think the gameplay will benefit allot from both my becoming more familair with it and with it getting tweaked after player feedback. managing attacks and defences on the fly will be challenging... but then this is a competitive game.
The game looked great on medium settings for me and I have a decent enough system.
2 gb ram, dual core processor, vista, GeForce 8800 GTS, 500gb HD.
The game is being stress tested though so i fully expect lag and the odd crash.
reporting this stuff is what this fileplanet limited beta is for btw.
For me AoC is too realistic, embeded in real world. I prefer games with fantasy like Evequest , Lineage II, with differents races ( orcs, elfs, dark elfs, etc.. ) maybe graphics in this game is better but most important in MMORPG's is gameplay no matter how game look like
Howard's Hyboria is a low fantasy world. This is actually one of the main points why I like it because of too much of high fantasy is in the market and nothing else really.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
ffs..all i have asked for is for him to elaborate a little more on his opening paragraph so ppl can get a better feel for this guys likes/dislikes, its too short. I felt doing this would improve his post. It was never a flame, just a mere observation on how the original post could be improved on for passing readers. My first post made this clear enough, my second post was in responce to the unecessary flame in my direction that had no relevant points made to my post making me think a 12yr old had writen it...hence writing back so he may understand...
Now.....to state anything has a mark out of 10......needs to have a benchmark inorder to do so. This itself means that there is bias. It has to be COMPARED TO SOMETHING otherwise its meaningless. Now to elaborate in the first paragraph would give us the standard of where this bias is coming from and to what extent we can relate to it.
And why oh why....just proof to me that you did not read properly and care to understand my coments have the people who responded to me stated about him disliking the game..it being complete garbage or anything else to do with liking/dislikng the game. Infact i stated the complete oposite and only suggested that it was almost impossible to assertain wheather i would or would not like the game from his review.
Now stfu please and let me get back to designing stupid buildings for you to sit in and write this hate filled nonscence in.
I agree here. I think that the OP has validity in his statements and has the background to give a sound argument. However, any time you present an argument, you should present with it a benchmark with which to make a comparison or contrast. Now, I realize this opens the conversation up for him to look like he's simply biased to one game or another, but if he genuinly has this much experience, then it shouldn't be hard for him to add some titles that he considers the pinnacle of acheivement for the areas he critiqued. The OP took the time to write out what I consider a well rounded review from a single point of view. I just think a benchmark for comparison would be a welcome addition to it.
What I do for a living is systems and network administration with quite a bit of programming. I design and frequently run simulations most of which involve a "stress test" phase, and I analyze the results (compared to real data patterns) to determine a margin of error... and I've been doing this for about 15 years now. Distributed databases and clustered web applications oh my. I -know- they are getting information they need to have a smoother launch. I have -zero- doubt the launch will be smoother than it would have been without this data collection. This is fact.
haha. Let me parody a line from fight club that applies to this situation perfectly -- "Funcom is not a beautiful and unique snowflake. They are the same decaying organic matter as everything else, and all the developers are all part of the same compost pile."
What you say is partially true. Sony, Blizzard, Turbine, Sigil, Funcom, CCP, etc, etc, etc. all have minor differences in how they do things specifically in regards to betas, development, infrastructure, design, etc, but when it comes down to a technical level they all need to know roughly the same information about any mmo they're dealing with... and in major ways, they all operate roughly the same. To claim otherwise is fanboy fanaticism at its furthest extreme... I was also there for early AO beta and later the stress test where I'm sure they got good data also. They went on to have one of the worst launches in mmo history even though hundreds of people in the beta long before the stress test were telling them, "this isn't even close to ready." This is fact.
Ever notice how companies tend to make the same screw ups over and over? UO2, UOX, etc. SWG, EQ2, Vanguard... IMO (and it is just an opinion) they're repeating the same mistake with AoC. It needs more time being polished up... at least a month more than they have, maybe more yet depending on how effective they are at getting things cleaned up. Which is why I canceled my pre-order. To pay for half finished software is to reinforce the behavior of shipping software half baked. I won't do that, its prevalent enough in the computer games industry.
That's an opinion, not a fact
One of the best sci-fi mmo? Definitely. Course the field isn't very large either. They're going into the most heavily contested genre of mmo... they have to be top of their game or they're going to do pathetically poorly. I'm not a marketing expert, but my past experience tells me this. Launches like AO can break a game. Clients like vanguards can break a game. This is also an opinion.
Unfortunately when it comes to the technical aspects of simulations on distributed applications and databases, I do know "WTF you are actually talking about." Combine that with a lot of beta experience from late alpha to late beta and pictures start to come together. Is there a way for me to be 100% sure I'm right? Nope... I've even had results from simulations I've run come up and utterly shock me occasionally. Believe me, in this case I *want* to be so wrong. However, doing what I do, knowing what I know, and applying past experience to the formula, I'm unwilling to put my money up against the odds.
Above and beyond all of that... I discounted most of the issues as being correctable except for the game play ones. I just don't care for the game play and a lot of the instancing choices they made. So what was the point of your post again?
I respect your experience and education. I don't buy-in to your forgone conclusions. You do not work for Funcom. You do not work on the source code of the game. Much of your conclusion is "opinion", yet it is backed up with information that suggests fact. In the next half hour, I shall be posting another thread with detailed information with regard to performance, use of shaders, and insight to "why" players are having varying experiences in the game. If you see it, I hope you find it helpful.
The point of my post, is that while educated and articulate, folks should still read your post as an opinion, not a fact, with a good dose of salt.
Thanks -Terrapin
I am running a 3400+ AMD Sempron w/ only 1.5 GB of memory. The only thing "special" and it is very outdated is my 7900 XXX video card. Running on low settings was giving me 28 FPS and the visual quality between low settings and high is not too much. The load times when entering an instance were next to nothing. I disagree that it takes a really high end computer because it doesn't.
I am running a 3400+ AMD Sempron w/ only 1.5 GB of memory. The only thing "special" and it is very outdated is my 7900 XXX video card. Running on low settings was giving me 28 FPS and the visual quality between low settings and high is not too much. The load times when entering an instance were next to nothing. I disagree that it takes a really high end computer because it doesn't.
I was getting 40 fps and I don't have the highest computer. 2 gig ram, ATI X850XT Pro (or something like that) and 2.4 dual core processor.
Low settings (which look great) and around 40 fps.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
But if the first 13 levels doesn't grab you and pull you into the game, are you really going to hang on till level 40?
If the noob island doesn't give a good representation of the whole game, if you don't like the noob island are you going to stick around for the whole game?
First impressions are everything in gaming. The tutorial teaches you how to play, then the opening areas / scenes let you test drive the rest of the game.
Sure you could have amazing stuff that you'll love waiting for you later in the game, but if you don't like the opening hours then will you stick around for that later-game stuff?
Should you have to 'put up' with the noob stuff to get to the 'good stuff' or should the opening stuff be just as good as the rest?
The opposite can be true too. Tabula Rasa had a great opening few hours, but then the whole game just seemed to kind of drag on, just more of the exact same thing. At least this was how I interpreted it. Lord of the Rings Online was the same.
World of Warcraft was great in the beginning, it slowly taught you the game and got more and more complex and involved the further you got. Then in the end, at max level, you pulled everything you had learned together in order to complete the end-game challenges. This is why WoW is so successful, it was designed with a PERFECT learning curve.
No other MMO has yet been able to match that feat.
We seem to forget this about WoW because we've all played through the opening areas and early level content time and time again and gotten burned out on the end-game stuff.... but if you could remember how it was leveling up your first character when everything was new and different....
That's the WoW I'll always remeber, that's the WoW that has sold to 10 million + subscribers.
Thus far, AoC is just NOT had that same draw to me.
Boobs and blood aren't enough innovation to draw me in. The combat doen't go far enough away from the standard MMO conventions to really excite (though getting fatality moves is frigg'n awesome as hell) but beside that, I really haven't found anything "special" in AoC yet.
If I want a good single player story with great cutscenes and dialogue I'll play Mass Effect, I don't need that done in a half-ass way in a MMO.
That's the biggest failing of WoW is not making the story mean anything. And not making the war mean anything. It was all for personal gain. Personal gain is great, more inclusion in something great then one's self... that's epic.
The addition of 2 extra directions to swing a weapon does not change the combat all that much. The melee combat system is far from what was first trotted out as revolutionary. Is it different? Yes. Is it more entertaining? Well, that comes down to personal preference.
I agree with the original poster on pretty much every point made. It is not a massive step forward, definitely not on the scale that they (Funcom) have stated it as being.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Largely I get the notion you didn't bother to read the post and just cherry picked points to troll (but its hard to tell since this is the intarweb and its easy to be mistaken on intent), but the points you picked are fair enough I suppose and in that spirit...
I'm judging against the variety of MMO's I've played and beta'd in general. I can't say there's a single MMO out presently that I'd give a 9/10 to presently in the current state its in. Lately the industry has become stagnant (since the success of wow and everyone trying to mimic it) and lacks innovation... even prior to that innovation was slowing because people were trying to mimic everquest. Even wow, as well as it did, really didn't innovate -- they just added more polish in a setting a lot of people liked. The only place they innovated was in the interface department... and even now as much as they've reduced it, it wows me completely (the interface modability, not the game.)
I think you can safely assume that I'm not running on a 48k... being that the game is a 12g download.
The last fps games I seriously played were UT (the original) and Tribes 2. I almost exclusively play MMOs. If you consider planetside a fps, then thats the one I most recently played, but I consider it an MMO (just not an mmorpg.)
You really never know if *any* review written by someone is going to be accurate to your viewpoint. You face the exact same problems everytime you read a review of something on any site.
Edit: Examples--
Interface, the defacto standard for me now is wow. Amazingly good interface because of the modability, the base interface was simple and uncluttered but effective. The mods let you change the interface into anything you want it to be. Creative, innovative, and amazingly engaging from a technical standpoint. Runner up: EQ2, It's not as good as wow, but its still very skinable, and they've done some pretty amazing things along the way with the limited tools they have.
Variety of Play, anarchy online and asheron's call. Previously I would have listed star wars galaxies in there, but it's not really applicable anymore. They truly let you customize your characters far further than most games. You're not pigeon holed into a few specific builds or being stuck with things being gimped if you're not exactly like everyone else.
Character Creation and Customization, City of Heroes/Villains. I'd say the runner up goes to Starwars Galaxies even as it stands now. The character creator in CoX is a game in and of itself, it's absolutely amazing. The level of variety *wouldn't* be appropriate to all games, but its nice to see 200 people and not see 200 people that look exactly the same... nice to be able to pick your friends out of the crowd without having to have names on. Quite an amazing character creator.
Innovation, this one I'm going to go with "at launch time" and I'll be lambested for it anyways
Ultima Online, Everquest, EVE, AO, and Asheron's Call... each of those games was extremely innovative in its own right. They took a chance and did their own thing and the entire genre benefited or will benefit from the lessons they learned and future they created. Everything since those games has been mimicking it to a large degree with incremental increases in game play rather than true innovation. First everyone copied, EQ, then everyone copied WOW, etc. While that works well in other areas of the gaming industry (FPS, RTS) because of the short shelf life of the game, it works poorly for MMO games because people play the same game for years on end and to pull them away from that game you really need a significant benefit over what they're already playing. I'm excited to see what CCP & White Wolf do with WoD... which means it'll probably suck. 
Polish, WoW and LOTRO, while they didn't innovate much they added a level of polish to mmo's that hadn't been see previously and hasn't been seen since. WoWs launch wasn't perfect but the game was in better shape than the vast majority of games before it... and there was no way possible blizzard could have predicted the level of interest their game would generate, if I remember correctly they figured at best double eq... heh. LOTROs launch was simply stellar, I was in early beta and even from that point the game was far more playable than many of the games that came prior to it were at launch. They set the standard for how games should launch.
Gameplay, I'm going to do in reverse. SWG NGE, AC2, SB, Horizons, and MxO are all the runners up on the "wow this sucks" list of game play, but I reserve my bile and hatred towards vanguard, at no other time in mmo history has a game stepped backwards in some many ways as far as game play goes from a publisher with experience. In a lot of cases with MMOs game play issues you can blame it on attempted innovation by an inexperienced publisher, but not in vanguards case. It still boggles my mind that they actually believed that a significant number of people would want to play that crap and when it became apparent that a significant number probably wouldn't... they sold out and finished the destruction of the game by pushing it out the door before even a fraction of the promised features were implemented. They increased the tedium levels, they increased the frustration, they increased the suck to previously untold levels... maybe its better now, but I've not been able to muster the umph to even try it again recently and I try to revisit games when they have significant feature updates.
I'm going to shut up now because I'm rambling pointlessly
Shadus
bumb
just for sheer effort on Shadus' part
Great post.
"Trump is a blunt force, all-American, laser-guided middle finger to everything and everyone in Washington, D.C." - Wayne Allyn Root
I agree that with all the instancing AoC feels like GW or DDO. To me that is a big turn off. I like open worlds with very little to no zoning.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Largely I get the notion you didn't bother to read the post and just cherry picked points to troll (but its hard to tell since this is the intarweb and its easy to be mistaken on intent), but the points you picked are fair enough I suppose and in that spirit...
I'm judging against the variety of MMO's I've played and beta'd in general. I can't say there's a single MMO out presently that I'd give a 9/10 to presently in the current state its in. Lately the industry has become stagnant (since the success of wow and everyone trying to mimic it) and lacks innovation... even prior to that innovation was slowing because people were trying to mimic everquest. Even wow, as well as it did, really didn't innovate -- they just added more polish in a setting a lot of people liked. The only place they innovated was in the interface department... and even now as much as they've reduced it, it wows me completely (the interface modability, not the game.)
I think you can safely assume that I'm not running on a 48k... being that the game is a 12g download.
The last fps games I seriously played were UT (the original) and Tribes 2. I almost exclusively play MMOs. If you consider planetside a fps, then thats the one I most recently played, but I consider it an MMO (just not an mmorpg.)
You really never know if *any* review written by someone is going to be accurate to your viewpoint. You face the exact same problems everytime you read a review of something on any site.
Edit: Examples--
Interface, the defacto standard for me now is wow. Amazingly good interface because of the modability, the base interface was simple and uncluttered but effective. The mods let you change the interface into anything you want it to be. Creative, innovative, and amazingly engaging from a technical standpoint. Runner up: EQ2, It's not as good as wow, but its still very skinable, and they've done some pretty amazing things along the way with the limited tools they have.
Variety of Play, anarchy online and asheron's call. Previously I would have listed star wars galaxies in there, but it's not really applicable anymore. They truly let you customize your characters far further than most games. You're not pigeon holed into a few specific builds or being stuck with things being gimped if you're not exactly like everyone else.
Character Creation and Customization, City of Heroes/Villains. I'd say the runner up goes to Starwars Galaxies even as it stands now. The character creator in CoX is a game in and of itself, it's absolutely amazing. The level of variety *wouldn't* be appropriate to all games, but its nice to see 200 people and not see 200 people that look exactly the same... nice to be able to pick your friends out of the crowd without having to have names on. Quite an amazing character creator.
Innovation, this one I'm going to go with "at launch time" and I'll be lambested for it anyways
Ultima Online, Everquest, EVE, AO, and Asheron's Call... each of those games was extremely innovative in its own right. They took a chance and did their own thing and the entire genre benefited or will benefit from the lessons they learned and future they created. Everything since those games has been mimicking it to a large degree with incremental increases in game play rather than true innovation. First everyone copied, EQ, then everyone copied WOW, etc. While that works well in other areas of the gaming industry (FPS, RTS) because of the short shelf life of the game, it works poorly for MMO games because people play the same game for years on end and to pull them away from that game you really need a significant benefit over what they're already playing. I'm excited to see what CCP & White Wolf do with WoD... which means it'll probably suck. 
Polish, WoW and LOTRO, while they didn't innovate much they added a level of polish to mmo's that hadn't been see previously and hasn't been seen since. WoWs launch wasn't perfect but the game was in better shape than the vast majority of games before it... and there was no way possible blizzard could have predicted the level of interest their game would generate, if I remember correctly they figured at best double eq... heh. LOTROs launch was simply stellar, I was in early beta and even from that point the game was far more playable than many of the games that came prior to it were at launch. They set the standard for how games should launch.
Gameplay, I'm going to do in reverse. SWG NGE, AC2, SB, Horizons, and MxO are all the runners up on the "wow this sucks" list of game play, but I reserve my bile and hatred towards vanguard, at no other time in mmo history has a game stepped backwards in some many ways as far as game play goes from a publisher with experience. In a lot of cases with MMOs game play issues you can blame it on attempted innovation by an inexperienced publisher, but not in vanguards case. It still boggles my mind that they actually believed that a significant number of people would want to play that crap and when it became apparent that a significant number probably wouldn't... they sold out and finished the destruction of the game by pushing it out the door before even a fraction of the promised features were implemented. They increased the tedium levels, they increased the frustration, they increased the suck to previously untold levels... maybe its better now, but I've not been able to muster the umph to even try it again recently and I try to revisit games when they have significant feature updates.
I'm going to shut up now because I'm rambling pointlessly
We agree on more than I thought.
Nice post. -Terrapin
I think this has been one of the more coherent and low aggression posts ive seen on this forum
Shadus
While your assessment is very valid and well thought out, the fact that you go to great lengths to let us know that you are a super beta tester, programmer etc extreme I can't help but point out it seems you are in the level 13 cap beta. So either you paid Fileplanet for it or you're not as good as you think you are or you'd be in closed beta with no level cap....
Yeap, I played fileplanet beta. How does that effect the content of my post or the validity of it? I've had a fileplanet account for eh... 3-4 years now? Good service, one of the few I can honestly suggest subscribing to btw. Does it really shock you that I don't get in every single beta I apply for (It's a lot like a job, when applying for a job, especially if there is a lot of competition for that job, you won't always get in on the first pass, and sometimes you never get in at all, no matter what your qualifications are.) I try to keep my apps at about 3 at any given point. Conan was a pretty late application for me, well past the phases I normally enter to test. My freetime was mostly taken with or without testing Conan, so I was glad to get a few days to see the game, find out what was broken, and what worked well before release without having any serious commitment.
I find it humorous, one person finds my lack of background a point to rail on, another finds my including some background a point to rail on. Can't please everyone.
Shadus
My point is if you're as damn good as you think you are you'd be in closed beta...and would be having a different experience.
I'm in closed beta and while I'm not allowed to say what I think...
and to you fatpanda, the quality of a tester is not determined by whether they are in open or closed beta, but on their contributions.
Excellent and wonderful testers do not get to test thing simply because of the 'luck of the draw' at times, while others get in who couldn't test a toaster.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
You
Are
Wrong.
Not just a little wrong, but EPICALLY wrong. You have absolutely no ideal what you are talking about, and it would likely be best if you ceased to do so. They do not do a background check on your training or education before taking beta apps. They ask a handful of simple questions (of which, to each you can lie) and then set about an automated system to select the testers. Dev teams do not have time to hand pick each tester, nor would it serve any intelligent purpose to do so when their available time aught to be spent working hard on making a game.
I'm terribly uneducated in the technical fields, and have gotten into betas over people who RUN these kinds of things. Whether or not he was in closed has no bearing here.
Actually thats not true is if he could prove all that he says he would get into every beta he applied. All this was was him stroking his own e-peen by trying to tell everyone that he's that damn good. Has nothing to do with anything else he had to say. It was pointless ego stroking on his part.
" I'm terribly uneducated "
yes. yes you are.