Thats just it-we are reaching a point where the MMO market is sorta mature. We have a sense of history, we have watched games launch, fail, succede, change over time. There is a collective memory of the industry from its infancy through to its present early teen years. The days of games getting weeks or even months to get to a playable state are long long long gone. The days of releasing with huge amounts of content missing are long gone. One of the principal differences between now and "those days" is we are all currently playing something. A game DOES have to be as good at launch as the older games are one, two or three years out-seeing as the only way they are going to get subscripers its to entice players to leave wow/lotro/eq/eve etc. Nobody in thier right mind will leave LOTRO or WOW for a game that is 6 months away from being fully playable. Nobody will abandon mature pvp in daoc/wow/eve for some sort of slap happy half assed as yet complete version in a new game. The bar has risen. What was once considered tolerable is now totally unacceptable. Game companies should know this by now-the landscape is covered in the tombstones of companies and games that still think its 1999 or 2000 in terms of release quality. If you do not release strong, if your game is totally incomplete, if you release for tommorrow's computer not today's, if you fail to deliver on most of your major promises the gaming market will not forgive you-the forums will explode, the reviews will crucify and before you know it you are absorbed by SOE where you will remain in MMO purgatory forever. I hope AOC is a smashing success-the market needs one-badly! I hope funcom delivers. But the early signs certainly look a tad disturbing. You could delete AOC from most of these posts and replace it with Vanguard and theyd be 95% relevant. This is not a good sign. The only game we've seen really succede in the past two years is LOTRO. Everything else has totally tanked. Of those tanked games-just about everyone-released in an incomplete state, released with major features missing and gameplay that lacked creativty, or a true focus. Release complete and with few flaws or die. I do believe that is what the market has been telling us since Vanguard started the failure cascade and fury/hellgate/tabula rasa and ptobs joined them.
Good points, I can't really argue with that. The bar has risen, but I don't see consumers being reasonable about where they put that new bar.
Here are my expectations of where I personally think the bar should be on launch day:
*Gameplay should work as intended.
* The game should be stable with minimal crashes.
* The netcode should be at a level as to not lag me out.
* I should be able to keep my XP bar moving. =P
About the other games you have mentioned, Hellgate was a waste of my $50 and I cant bring myself to play. Now about Tabula Rasa, I picked that game up recently and have got to level 30 so far and I must say that the game is really fun. I have encountered a few buggy quests, but for the most part I am really stoked on the game. I am seeing a steady stream of people in the n00b areas asking for help and are mostly WoW and SWG refugees. I hope TR makes a come back.
But I think people are referring to the polish of WoW when it was released, cause Id have to say it was the most polished mmo I've played on release, game play polished not the 'queues' and such thats not game play thats one of thetechnical issue all mmos had an have.
Dude... your memory is awful. WOW couldn't even launch their billing system until Feb 05', and when they did, most customers were reimbursed time for excessive outages. Your post is just blatantly wrong. AoC BETA is in a better state right now than WoW was at launch.
you sure you don't have WoW confused with Anarchy Onlines launch? I played WoW for a month after it's launch. Hated the community and the cartoony graphics went back to EQII, but I can't recall a single bug. Mind you I only played a gnome mage to lvl 25 so there was a lot I never saw.
Bottom line is all the spin control in the world will not cover up a bad launch.
The world must be comiing to an end when, the mmo community has put WOW up so high on this untouchable pedistal, that no other game can even come close to competing let alone get jabbed to death even before release.
I have sat back and laughed my ass off on some of the threads being started. My personal favorites are the ones that think the whole game is what the pvp weekend and open beta has to offer, in which FC has stated time and time again the open beta is using an older client and the starting area lvls are meant to feel like a single player rpg to let the player get their feet wet before going into the mmo world.
Some people need to understand that there were mmo's before WOW came along that were very good and in almost every way other than bugs way better. Don't get me wrong, WOW is a good game, that has four yrs. under it's belt, and a legion of players that stretch across this planet. But let's get real it's a pretty shallow game that really targets the younger more noviced mmo gamer.
If us, the mmo community can't look past WOW and judge every game that is being released to it, how will the mmo genre ever advance. How will the dev companies stretch out and be creative. The mmo world at this very moment is so bogged down by WOW copies it has made in my opinion mmo's stale and predictable.
If AOC is successful or if it fails, won't be because of how it can compare to WOW. It will succeed if FC can run the game in a proffessional manner, fix bugs quickly and give total customer support. It will fail if they don't.
No mmo releases without it's hiccups and problems. It's how the dev company handles those problems on launch day that makes or breaks a game.
I remember when I first started playing UO. if I had 20 disconnects in a day 10 were from UO and the other 10 was my AOL dial-up. Same thing when I moved to DAoC. Got better as DAoC matured and also got DSL and new computer. Thank God for DSL, hated getting dropped and taking 15 min. to get aol back up. Eventually after trying a bunch of different games which ALL had their problems at beginning I ended up playing WOW which in first couple of months was close to if not just as bad as many of the other mmos I played at launch. It was something I was used to and almost kinda expected when switching to an MMO that was just launched.
Maybe I'm wrong but from UO and EQ to early stages of WOW the MMO community was rather small and grew at a slow pace. I remember when I was started WOW, when you would meet new people one of the first questions would be "What game did you come from?". So lets say for argument sake that at the time of WOWs release there was 2 million MMO players. I would say that 90% of those players experienced plenty of buggy, shitty releases or the initial couple of months of lots and lots of patch work. Today if there is 10 million MMO players 80% of them didnt go through the many hiccups the genre has gone through. So perhaps they expect games to release like WOW plays after 3 years or to release like a console game. Seems to me though that 1 game in the whole MMO genre had a buggy free release which was LoTRO(Most of this info I'm getting about some of these releases is just from reading forums as I quit WOW a year ago and havent played an MMO since.) I had some great game experiences and met alot of great people. Would have been ashame if I didnt play some of those games and missed out on those experiences because the launch didnt go exactly as I had hoped. I havent played AOC beta, I justed planned to buy it to get back into the MMO experience before WAR comes out. I'll still buy it and try it out regardless and make my own opinion of it.
On a side note Bioshock, Crysis and World in Conflict for pc had some really buggy launches too. At least for me
aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system.
the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want.
people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting.
aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
here is your reality check aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system. the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want. people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting. aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
as much as this game wasn't for me. I highly doubt it will bomb. I do think the first month it is going to be huge and blow up, it will decrease and stabilize. Though the decrease will be noticible...it will not be a flop by any standards. 200k ish. maybe a smidge more. Def not a bad population for a game.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by iwantmyswg
here is your reality check aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system. the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want. people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting. aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
You vastly bias:
You posted this before beta:
"i buy good games.
aoc = a bad game.
so i won't be buying aoc unless they bring back the skill based system that they watned to put it in the first place along with putting player killing back in."
You already formed an opinion on the game, you already decided it wasnt for you, your pushing your ideals on the game. This game is not and has never been marketed to a point from what I can see is too your liking. Great you vented, thats awesome. So in all honestly what is the point of your post?
Hi my name is iwantmysig,
this gam fails because it isnt SWG pre cu its not sandbox for me and i will label the game with all this other shit because so many people think just like me and are here because we are all fucking jaded beyond belief and havent got the scope to see the bigger picture that the game might possibly appeal to a larger crowd than my own personal tastes. So sorry if I appear elitest and an ass, its just my opinion and I cant help speaking from it. Sorry if I sound like beavis and butthead huh huuuh huh i said BooBs!
here is your reality check aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system. the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want. people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting. aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
as much as this game wasn't for me. I highly doubt it will bomb. I do think the first month it is going to be huge and blow up, it will decrease and stabilize. Though the decrease will be noticible...it will not be a flop by any standards. 200k ish. maybe a smidge more. Def not a bad population for a game.
Mr. Miagisan, I think you hit the nail right on the head.
-------------------------------------- A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Damn, Avery is good. Nothing slips past him. Oh, and if it does, don't worry, Berge is right there behind him to catch the perp. Between those two, everyone AoC is cornered. And that, you can take to the bank.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
here is your reality check aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system. the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want. people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting. aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
A bit to much black'n white for my taste.
Nowadays a game has to be loot based and crafter based. LotRo does it nice. EQ2 learned their lesson (nerfed crafting to oblivion) and hired a new (female) crafter dev. And since that day crafting was improving every patch. I think even WoW improved their crafting. Not sure tho. Me personally dont want crafters to be overpowered, but a casual or roleplayer should be able to beat any solo or group content with crafted items. That should be the rule of thumb.
My personal opinion is that decay is the magic feature. But since decay is frustrating the itemizers we wont see that anytime soon in a game.
If i look right now at AoC i think it lacks a lot. Right now i see combat and.. combat and ... more combat. It was said by a dev that it takes approx. 6 days to reach level cap. At my casual speed this is 2 months gaming. Add another 2 months for the crafter quests. Then my personal progression ends. Game over. I may progress my guild or my raid. But my game is over. I am sure i ll have 4-5 months fun. Thats ok for 50 Euro and more then a single player game offers. Still a very short time for a mmo.
I also have doubts that there is a huge number of players who will enjoy the daily siege. Many will be bored after 10 or 20 sieges. The good thing is that fortresses have sort of decay if they get destroyed.
We will know more after funcom did their first content patch. I predict one 3 months after release.
I don't see why people seem to think WoW is some kind of gold standard that all MMO's have to judged by. Yeah WoW had its problems at release no one will dispute that. End game content, well obviously a new game won't have as much as a 5 year old game, but if you have nothing at all like Tabula Rasa and Potbs then good luck keeping any subs past 30 days.
Then on the other end of the suck scale is Vanguard. Most people, myself included, think that was pretty much the worst major MMO release ever. That doesn't mean that as long as a game isn't as screwed up as VG then it's a success either.
It's all relative really everyone has their own expectations. I pretty much ignore 90% of the advertising that is put out by these games. Words like "innovative" "revolutionary" ect. always overstate things. Right now I would settle for just a solid game that runs decently and has a fair amount of content. All these people expecting an MMO that doesn't have quest grinding and some version of button mashing, I think they were kidding themselves.
OP: I agree 100% with what you've said in this post. I think people have been way too hard on AoC and other games recently released. It is entirely unrealistic to compare new games to WOW in its current state. It is unfair to any developer to be held to this standard on release. Problem is, most peoples' expectations are far too high now... No one is ever given enough of a chance anymore to get their game up to snuff.
Reality check: its an unfair world. No1 is given a chance to screw up in his job, no automobile industry is given a chance to screw up it's cars etc etc etc.
And since like u said most people's expectations are far too high now every game developer better shape up and live up to them, that is if they want to sell their product. The days when people would pay their hard-earned money just to buy potential are gone, devs better realize that and live up to the people's standards. (that is a good thing imo)
I don't know if anyone has posted about this subject yet, but I have been reading a lot of concerns regarding polish and endgame content. Launch expectations on new MMOs these days seem to be a little unrealistic and I would like to address the topic. All new games are put up and compared to what WoW is _TODAY_. That is completely unreasonable and ridiculous. To illustrate my point, lets reminisce back to late 2004 / early 2005 with the launch of WoW.
Does everyone remember those days? I would suspect not. Being one of the many who started WoW at launch I have a recollection, as vague as it may be, of what it was like back then. Let me remind everyone (I hope I get these details right) what it was like. End game content consisted of Scholomance (which started as a 40 man???) and Strath. Black Rock Spire, Molten Core and Onyxia's lair were still in the works. PvP consisted exclusively of ganking with the most exciting PvP being guild vs guild when getting ready for a raid. All of these basic instances that attributed to WoW's wild success were only on the drawing board at release.
And that is just the content. Does anyone remember the stability / gameplay issues? Remember that taking the zep from Org used to drop you in the ocean instead of zoning? Remember heinous server queues? Remember the lag? I could go on, but I think I have made my point. WoW was a completely different animal back in early 2005.
Anyway, I needed to remind everyone about how much polish the "king of polish" really had back in the day. I just get so mad that the ignorance of these internet morons who compare the release polish of AoC to that of WoW which has roughly 3 years and 2 billion dollars under its belt. Apples and oranges people, apples and oranges...
I can do nothing but laugh at all those
WOW HAD BUGS AT RELEASE - posts
In entire history of MMO's there were two that made relatively safe launch. WOW and LOTRO...thats all.
Yes WOW had some bugs. But no more than you can expect from any extremely well polished game at release. It did have lag and server queues - but you also could not find the game nowhere in shops - it was so damn popular. And yes , it had much less content than today.
All this was nothing compared to games that came after
Games that would work on 50% of PCs , and crush the other 50%. Games that simply came with 50% of game , simply not implemented. Games that have been rushed out of the door to point it was blatantly obvious even to 12 year old.
As for AOC
It falls somwhere in middle. It is not in such state to be compared with Vanguard. But it is not as polished and stable as LOTRO.
I can do nothing but laugh at all those WOW HAD BUGS AT RELEASE - posts In entire history of MMO's there were two that made relatively safe launch. WOW and LOTRO...thats all.
Hehe.
On 11 february 2005 a friend of mine mailed me that he finally got an account, while the rest of his guild was without an account. Due to the extreme load Blizzard hat to turn of the accounting webpages. Not a bug, more like a sideeffect of success, still a rough launch. Lots of players had to wait for DAYS to create an account and play
I cant imagine what will happen if Funcom has to turn off the accounting website
here is your reality check aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system. the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want. people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting. aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
Have a feeling ur telling us what u want... I for sure dont agree with most of this.
I dont understand why som many ppl are whining about a game that hasnt even come out yet? Ppl have different opinions, always will and always have. If u think AoC (will) sux... well dont play it. I suggest a more open mind approach, give it a try... dont like it...well dont play it. Its kinda easy to be judgemental, instead of getting the experience ur self.
I read a lot on the forums regarding most mmorpgs, but never take much notice in all the negativity from player who judge a game from a few screenshot and some stresstests. If i wanna play the game, ill play it, no matter what some "so called experts" tells me. I suggest more players do the same.
You dont have to "beat" WoW to make a succesful game imo!
Also have in mind: Every1 is different, every1 likes different things, in RL and in mmo's!!
I don't know if anyone has posted about this subject yet, but I have been reading a lot of concerns regarding polish and endgame content. Launch expectations on new MMOs these days seem to be a little unrealistic and I would like to address the topic. All new games are put up and compared to what WoW is _TODAY_. That is completely unreasonable and ridiculous. To illustrate my point, lets reminisce back to late 2004 / early 2005 with the launch of WoW.
Does everyone remember those days? I would suspect not. Being one of the many who started WoW at launch I have a recollection, as vague as it may be, of what it was like back then. Let me remind everyone (I hope I get these details right) what it was like. End game content consisted of Scholomance (which started as a 40 man???) and Strath. Black Rock Spire, Molten Core and Onyxia's lair were still in the works. PvP consisted exclusively of ganking with the most exciting PvP being guild vs guild when getting ready for a raid. All of these basic instances that attributed to WoW's wild success were only on the drawing board at release.
And that is just the content. Does anyone remember the stability / gameplay issues? Remember that taking the zep from Org used to drop you in the ocean instead of zoning? Remember heinous server queues? Remember the lag? I could go on, but I think I have made my point. WoW was a completely different animal back in early 2005.
Anyway, I needed to remind everyone about how much polish the "king of polish" really had back in the day. I just get so mad that the ignorance of these internet morons who compare the release polish of AoC to that of WoW which has roughly 3 years and 2 billion dollars under its belt. Apples and oranges people, apples and oranges...
Thank God we have some bright ppl in this world
Id like to add something else
We cant keep on comparing everything to wow because wow isnt always right,isnt always perfect AND some ppl are SICK of it.When someone says something is "like" wow,I stop reading up on it because I dont want anything like wow at all,im tired of wow and if i wanted to play something "like" wow,I would play WOW
I think the PC industry needs a kick up its ass if it thinks it can release games with bugs in them. Yes MMOs IN THE PAST have had bugs in them and bad things, but these days more people are getting frustrated that the game they paid good money isn't even working or completed yet. Its not even MMOS either, its other PC games. Why do we say that we want a buggy game. Why do we stand for it. i remeber an era of gaming where there was no bugs in games. Why can't we go back to those days. Wh ydo we let the game companies swindle our money.
It was interesting to read the responses to my original post. I am pleasantly surprised to see that only a couple people got caught up in the semantics game and shocked by the lack of flaming. The surprising amount of coherent thought in this thread has given me hope for the community! heh
After digesting these posts I have come away from this discussion I have boiled down the thoughts of the posters ("OMFG AOC iz dumb" does not count as a thought) to this message: the type of person that holds the unrealistic expectations of which I speak is the type of person who's first MMO was WoW and joined the MMO community within the last 24ish months. These people seem to have the tendency to try and know WTF they are talking about even though they are new, and unfortunately the MMO n00bs have just a loud of a voice as all the old timers so the ignorant ranting resonate with the same weight as cogent arguments presented by eloquent types like heerobya.
It was interesting to read the responses to my original post. I am pleasantly surprised to see that only a couple people got caught up in the semantics game and shocked by the lack of flaming. The surprising amount of coherent thought in this thread has given me hope for the community! heh
After digesting these posts I have come away from this discussion I have boiled down the thoughts of the posters ("OMFG AOC iz dumb" does not count as a thought) to this message: the type of person that holds the unrealistic expectations of which I speak is the type of person who's first MMO was WoW and joined the MMO community within the last 24ish months. These people seem to have the tendency to try and know WTF they are talking about even though they are new, and unfortunately the MMO n00bs have just a loud of a voice as all the old timers so the ignorant ranting resonate with the same weight as cogent arguments presented by eloquent types like heerobya. *Cor Por* bithes!
Your OP and now this I presume your final post in this thread are both epic fails at WoW bashing.
I come from UO and Shadowbane back in the day. I've played nearly every MMOG worth playing. There is no disputing the fact that WoW is one of the most well done games ever. LOTRO is another well done games. Subscriber numbers are an indication of how complete those two games are. People say well wow is too "carebear" for me. Well, maybe WoW isn't YOUR game, but to nearly 11 million people currently subscribing to the game it is.
A person can like all the games. Matter of fact, I believe most of the people on these forums want to see AoC do well. What people don't want to see is another Vanguard at release. People are tired of paying these companies for beta play. These companies should be able to launch a polished game on THEIR dime and not ours. LOTRO is proof of this.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Originally posted by Shannia Your OP and now this I presume your final post in this thread are both epic fails at WoW bashing.
I am so tempted to break out my flame stick and beat you with it, but I think forum flame wars are stupid and I would hate to be a hypocrite. ANYWHO, WoW was the best MMO I have ever played (but after ~1400 hours of played time I am more than over it) and I did not say a damn thing negative about the game in any of my posts. The only thing I bashed here was internet trolls who spit fire while not knowing WTF they are talking shit about. Kinda like you, eh? L2R.
So I guess you are correct, I did fail at WoW bashing. But maybe that’s because I WASNT TRYING TO bash WoW?
Originally posted by Shannia
A person can like all the games. Matter of fact, I believe most of the people on these forums want to see AoC do well. What people don't want to see is another Vanguard at release. People are tired of paying these companies for beta play. These companies should be able to launch a polished game on THEIR dime and not ours. LOTRO is proof of this.
Comments
Here are my expectations of where I personally think the bar should be on launch day:
*Gameplay should work as intended.
* The game should be stable with minimal crashes.
* The netcode should be at a level as to not lag me out.
* I should be able to keep my XP bar moving. =P
About the other games you have mentioned, Hellgate was a waste of my $50 and I cant bring myself to play. Now about Tabula Rasa, I picked that game up recently and have got to level 30 so far and I must say that the game is really fun. I have encountered a few buggy quests, but for the most part I am really stoked on the game. I am seeing a steady stream of people in the n00b areas asking for help and are mostly WoW and SWG refugees. I hope TR makes a come back.
you sure you don't have WoW confused with Anarchy Onlines launch? I played WoW for a month after it's launch. Hated the community and the cartoony graphics went back to EQII, but I can't recall a single bug. Mind you I only played a gnome mage to lvl 25 so there was a lot I never saw.Bottom line is all the spin control in the world will not cover up a bad launch.
I miss DAoC
The world must be comiing to an end when, the mmo community has put WOW up so high on this untouchable pedistal, that no other game can even come close to competing let alone get jabbed to death even before release.
I have sat back and laughed my ass off on some of the threads being started. My personal favorites are the ones that think the whole game is what the pvp weekend and open beta has to offer, in which FC has stated time and time again the open beta is using an older client and the starting area lvls are meant to feel like a single player rpg to let the player get their feet wet before going into the mmo world.
Some people need to understand that there were mmo's before WOW came along that were very good and in almost every way other than bugs way better. Don't get me wrong, WOW is a good game, that has four yrs. under it's belt, and a legion of players that stretch across this planet. But let's get real it's a pretty shallow game that really targets the younger more noviced mmo gamer.
If us, the mmo community can't look past WOW and judge every game that is being released to it, how will the mmo genre ever advance. How will the dev companies stretch out and be creative. The mmo world at this very moment is so bogged down by WOW copies it has made in my opinion mmo's stale and predictable.
If AOC is successful or if it fails, won't be because of how it can compare to WOW. It will succeed if FC can run the game in a proffessional manner, fix bugs quickly and give total customer support. It will fail if they don't.
No mmo releases without it's hiccups and problems. It's how the dev company handles those problems on launch day that makes or breaks a game.
I remember when I first started playing UO. if I had 20 disconnects in a day 10 were from UO and the other 10 was my AOL dial-up. Same thing when I moved to DAoC. Got better as DAoC matured and also got DSL and new computer. Thank God for DSL, hated getting dropped and taking 15 min. to get aol back up. Eventually after trying a bunch of different games which ALL had their problems at beginning I ended up playing WOW which in first couple of months was close to if not just as bad as many of the other mmos I played at launch. It was something I was used to and almost kinda expected when switching to an MMO that was just launched.
Maybe I'm wrong but from UO and EQ to early stages of WOW the MMO community was rather small and grew at a slow pace. I remember when I was started WOW, when you would meet new people one of the first questions would be "What game did you come from?". So lets say for argument sake that at the time of WOWs release there was 2 million MMO players. I would say that 90% of those players experienced plenty of buggy, shitty releases or the initial couple of months of lots and lots of patch work. Today if there is 10 million MMO players 80% of them didnt go through the many hiccups the genre has gone through. So perhaps they expect games to release like WOW plays after 3 years or to release like a console game. Seems to me though that 1 game in the whole MMO genre had a buggy free release which was LoTRO(Most of this info I'm getting about some of these releases is just from reading forums as I quit WOW a year ago and havent played an MMO since.) I had some great game experiences and met alot of great people. Would have been ashame if I didnt play some of those games and missed out on those experiences because the launch didnt go exactly as I had hoped. I havent played AOC beta, I justed planned to buy it to get back into the MMO experience before WAR comes out. I'll still buy it and try it out regardless and make my own opinion of it.
On a side note Bioshock, Crysis and World in Conflict for pc had some really buggy launches too. At least for me
here is your reality check
aoc is going to bomb as no one wants a game like this. it's launch will be worse then vanguards and that is saying alot as vanguard is run by $OE who can't even get swg right and all swg needs is a rollback to the pre-cu system.
the pvp is not fun the level based system is not fun the fact that aoc main selling point is seeing boobs in game is just going to lead 10 year olds too it. the full point is aoc is going to be one of the worst mmo's made. as it has nothing people want.
people want sandbox games people want games like eve or pre-cu swg or even uo. and even then two of those games failed after changes put in them the nge in swg and trammel in uo. people want to feel danger when they play that is why games should have tefs or player killing. and people don't want this lame loot based systems. people want crafting.
aoc is a game that will fall apart after it comes out. it sucks plan and too the point and everyone knows that and once again us vet mmorpg players will be there to tell funcom what they can do to fix the game. if they want to ignore us like $OE does then they will have a dead game on their hands. if not aoc if it plays like an eve or pre-cu swg or pre-trammel uo will be one of the biggest mmo games to date.
as much as this game wasn't for me. I highly doubt it will bomb. I do think the first month it is going to be huge and blow up, it will decrease and stabilize. Though the decrease will be noticible...it will not be a flop by any standards. 200k ish. maybe a smidge more. Def not a bad population for a game.
You vastly bias:
You posted this before beta:
"i buy good games.
aoc = a bad game.
so i won't be buying aoc unless they bring back the skill based system that they watned to put it in the first place along with putting player killing back in."
You already formed an opinion on the game, you already decided it wasnt for you, your pushing your ideals on the game. This game is not and has never been marketed to a point from what I can see is too your liking. Great you vented, thats awesome. So in all honestly what is the point of your post?
Hi my name is iwantmysig,
this gam fails because it isnt SWG pre cu its not sandbox for me and i will label the game with all this other shit because so many people think just like me and are here because we are all fucking jaded beyond belief and havent got the scope to see the bigger picture that the game might possibly appeal to a larger crowd than my own personal tastes. So sorry if I appear elitest and an ass, its just my opinion and I cant help speaking from it. Sorry if I sound like beavis and butthead huh huuuh huh i said BooBs!
Do us all a favor mate... do 1.
as much as this game wasn't for me. I highly doubt it will bomb. I do think the first month it is going to be huge and blow up, it will decrease and stabilize. Though the decrease will be noticible...it will not be a flop by any standards. 200k ish. maybe a smidge more. Def not a bad population for a game.
Mr. Miagisan, I think you hit the nail right on the head.
--------------------------------------
A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
Damn, Avery is good. Nothing slips past him. Oh, and if it does, don't worry, Berge is right there behind him to catch the perp. Between those two, everyone AoC is cornered. And that, you can take to the bank.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Nowadays a game has to be loot based and crafter based. LotRo does it nice. EQ2 learned their lesson (nerfed crafting to oblivion) and hired a new (female) crafter dev. And since that day crafting was improving every patch. I think even WoW improved their crafting. Not sure tho. Me personally dont want crafters to be overpowered, but a casual or roleplayer should be able to beat any solo or group content with crafted items. That should be the rule of thumb.
My personal opinion is that decay is the magic feature. But since decay is frustrating the itemizers we wont see that anytime soon in a game.
If i look right now at AoC i think it lacks a lot. Right now i see combat and.. combat and ... more combat. It was said by a dev that it takes approx. 6 days to reach level cap. At my casual speed this is 2 months gaming. Add another 2 months for the crafter quests. Then my personal progression ends. Game over. I may progress my guild or my raid. But my game is over. I am sure i ll have 4-5 months fun. Thats ok for 50 Euro and more then a single player game offers. Still a very short time for a mmo.
I also have doubts that there is a huge number of players who will enjoy the daily siege. Many will be bored after 10 or 20 sieges. The good thing is that fortresses have sort of decay if they get destroyed.
We will know more after funcom did their first content patch. I predict one 3 months after release.
I don't see why people seem to think WoW is some kind of gold standard that all MMO's have to judged by. Yeah WoW had its problems at release no one will dispute that. End game content, well obviously a new game won't have as much as a 5 year old game, but if you have nothing at all like Tabula Rasa and Potbs then good luck keeping any subs past 30 days.
Then on the other end of the suck scale is Vanguard. Most people, myself included, think that was pretty much the worst major MMO release ever. That doesn't mean that as long as a game isn't as screwed up as VG then it's a success either.
It's all relative really everyone has their own expectations. I pretty much ignore 90% of the advertising that is put out by these games. Words like "innovative" "revolutionary" ect. always overstate things. Right now I would settle for just a solid game that runs decently and has a fair amount of content. All these people expecting an MMO that doesn't have quest grinding and some version of button mashing, I think they were kidding themselves.
Reality check: its an unfair world. No1 is given a chance to screw up in his job, no automobile industry is given a chance to screw up it's cars etc etc etc.
And since like u said most people's expectations are far too high now every game developer better shape up and live up to them, that is if they want to sell their product. The days when people would pay their hard-earned money just to buy potential are gone, devs better realize that and live up to the people's standards. (that is a good thing imo)
I can do nothing but laugh at all those
WOW HAD BUGS AT RELEASE - posts
In entire history of MMO's there were two that made relatively safe launch. WOW and LOTRO...thats all.
Yes WOW had some bugs. But no more than you can expect from any extremely well polished game at release. It did have lag and server queues - but you also could not find the game nowhere in shops - it was so damn popular. And yes , it had much less content than today.
All this was nothing compared to games that came after
Games that would work on 50% of PCs , and crush the other 50%. Games that simply came with 50% of game , simply not implemented. Games that have been rushed out of the door to point it was blatantly obvious even to 12 year old.
As for AOC
It falls somwhere in middle. It is not in such state to be compared with Vanguard. But it is not as polished and stable as LOTRO.
So far so good
On 11 february 2005 a friend of mine mailed me that he finally got an account, while the rest of his guild was without an account. Due to the extreme load Blizzard hat to turn of the accounting webpages. Not a bug, more like a sideeffect of success, still a rough launch. Lots of players had to wait for DAYS to create an account and play
I cant imagine what will happen if Funcom has to turn off the accounting website
Have a feeling ur telling us what u want... I for sure dont agree with most of this.
I dont understand why som many ppl are whining about a game that hasnt even come out yet? Ppl have different opinions, always will and always have. If u think AoC (will) sux... well dont play it. I suggest a more open mind approach, give it a try... dont like it...well dont play it. Its kinda easy to be judgemental, instead of getting the experience ur self.
I read a lot on the forums regarding most mmorpgs, but never take much notice in all the negativity from player who judge a game from a few screenshot and some stresstests. If i wanna play the game, ill play it, no matter what some "so called experts" tells me. I suggest more players do the same.
You dont have to "beat" WoW to make a succesful game imo!
Also have in mind: Every1 is different, every1 likes different things, in RL and in mmo's!!
I
Id like to add something else
We cant keep on comparing everything to wow because wow isnt always right,isnt always perfect AND some ppl are SICK of it.When someone says something is "like" wow,I stop reading up on it because I dont want anything like wow at all,im tired of wow and if i wanted to play something "like" wow,I would play WOW
I think the PC industry needs a kick up its ass if it thinks it can release games with bugs in them. Yes MMOs IN THE PAST have had bugs in them and bad things, but these days more people are getting frustrated that the game they paid good money isn't even working or completed yet. Its not even MMOS either, its other PC games. Why do we say that we want a buggy game. Why do we stand for it. i remeber an era of gaming where there was no bugs in games. Why can't we go back to those days. Wh ydo we let the game companies swindle our money.
It was interesting to read the responses to my original post. I am pleasantly surprised to see that only a couple people got caught up in the semantics game and shocked by the lack of flaming. The surprising amount of coherent thought in this thread has given me hope for the community!
heh
After digesting these posts I have come away from this discussion I have boiled down the thoughts of the posters ("OMFG AOC iz dumb" does not count as a thought) to this message: the type of person that holds the unrealistic expectations of which I speak is the type of person who's first MMO was WoW and joined the MMO community within the last 24ish months. These people seem to have the tendency to try and know WTF they are talking about even though they are new, and unfortunately the MMO n00bs have just a loud of a voice as all the old timers so the ignorant ranting resonate with the same weight as cogent arguments presented by eloquent types like heerobya.
*Cor Por* bithes!
Your OP and now this I presume your final post in this thread are both epic fails at WoW bashing.
I come from UO and Shadowbane back in the day. I've played nearly every MMOG worth playing. There is no disputing the fact that WoW is one of the most well done games ever. LOTRO is another well done games. Subscriber numbers are an indication of how complete those two games are. People say well wow is too "carebear" for me. Well, maybe WoW isn't YOUR game, but to nearly 11 million people currently subscribing to the game it is.
A person can like all the games. Matter of fact, I believe most of the people on these forums want to see AoC do well. What people don't want to see is another Vanguard at release. People are tired of paying these companies for beta play. These companies should be able to launch a polished game on THEIR dime and not ours. LOTRO is proof of this.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
I am so tempted to break out my flame stick and beat you with it, but I think forum flame wars are stupid and I would hate to be a hypocrite. ANYWHO, WoW was the best MMO I have ever played (but after ~1400 hours of played time I am more than over it) and I did not say a damn thing negative about the game in any of my posts. The only thing I bashed here was internet trolls who spit fire while not knowing WTF they are talking shit about. Kinda like you, eh? L2R.
So I guess you are correct, I did fail at WoW bashing. But maybe that’s because I WASNT TRYING TO bash WoW?
QFT. I think you're right on with this one.