"AoC is currently getting their sub numbers back"thats is a dubious statement, either that or you're reading too much amazing avery for your own good. they are both losing subs. AOc is losing less since it was already drained of a large percentage over the last 7 months
While it is mostly speculation, since neither company is giving us a running ticker of gains and losses, some people are basing their speculations of evidence such as xfire's numbers. They show that among xfire users, WAR is ahead but still falling, while AOC has been having a steadily growing number of concurrent users in recent months - which doesn't necessarily equate to more subs, but probably a good sign, for the overall direction the game is going in.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
"AoC is currently getting their sub numbers back"thats is a dubious statement, either that or you're reading too much amazing avery for your own good. they are both losing subs. AOc is losing less since it was already drained of a large percentage over the last 7 months
While it is mostly speculation, since neither company is giving us a running ticker of gains and losses, some people are basing their speculations of evidence such as xfire's numbers. They show that among xfire users, WAR is ahead but still falling, while AOC has been having a steadily growing number of concurrent users in recent months - which doesn't necessarily equate to more subs, but probably a good sign, for the overall direction the game is going in.
when a game loses to much of it's player base, the real die hard fanatics will mass use x-fire to say their game of choice still has numbers- SWG is well know for it.
moral of the story- basing anything by x-fire after is often useless when a mmorpg is in crisis. Notice i'm not stating that x-fire is completly useless, just that in certain cicles of a game's life any analisys sourced over x-fire is dubious.
still you are right. all speculative. We know that war had ~300 k in december, funcom never released numbers but it is easy to see in a empiric way that war>aoc is terms of player base (STILL, what doesnt mean it will not go under).
I would say that both are slowly gaining players, i resubbed to AoC to see if it had gotten better and Fury seemed pretty busy, the performance was better but not by much, on WAR i play on Karak-Azgal and i keep seeing more players joining.
they come transfered from other servers. I know that since half my previous server transfered to azgal, you guys got more plays, original server died .
I wouldn't pick either. AoC is probably in a better shape than WAR at this point though. WAR is losing subscribers constantly, still doesn't offer much PvP to be honest and the hyped up PvP endgame city siege is almost entirely made up of a public PvE quest. Very little PvP. It's also still troubled with bugs from beta, no content planned until at least after June, unless you count the planned "expansion pack" with 2 MORE classes and one dungeon as an expansion pack at all. If you absolutely HAD to pick, I'd go with AoC. While I don't know it, haven't played it and wouldn't, it's more than likely it's far more polished and content rich than WAR.
I wouldn't pick either. AoC is probably in a better shape than WAR at this point though. WAR is losing subscribers constantly, still doesn't offer much PvP to be honest and the hyped up PvP endgame city siege is almost entirely made up of a public PvE quest. Very little PvP. It's also still troubled with bugs from beta, no content planned until at least after June, unless you count the planned "expansion pack" with 2 MORE classes and one dungeon as an expansion pack at all. If you absolutely HAD to pick, I'd go with AoC. While I don't know it, haven't played it and wouldn't, it's more than likely it's far more polished and content rich than WAR.
Main reason for quitting AOC: the instanced gameworld (*shivers*)
Main reasons for quitting WAR: RVR is very repetative and there is way too much 'hand holding' in WAR; in that PVP only happens where Mythic wants it to happen (you can kill a fortress lord but you will have your ass handed to you by a 'simple' warcamp guard, for instance) which makes it an RVR themepark rather than having the feeling of an open, free world. Since death pennalties mean just the (short) time to get back to where the action is and a couple of coins to get rid of the debuff, killing and dying is pretty much without consequence and thus, without excitement.
So I quit both because of a lack of realism and freedom which derived of my immersion, essentially.
I'm subbed to both AoC and WAR at the moment. I play AoC primarily for the PvE and WAR for the PvP.
At the end of the day, WAR 's PVP is alot of fun, it has a "jump in and play" casual kind of feeling to it. Scenarios are great, and there's ALOT of them. Unfortunatelty RvR is very simplistic and repetitive to the extend that Alterac Valley in WoW is 10x more strategic than any Keep Siege in WAR. ORvR tens to be one gigantic zergfest , the team with the most players wins...simple. Still, i'm drawn to the PvP, it is fun, and i guess that's all that matters. What i realy like the most about WAR is the fact that i don't need to grind anything to just play the game, yes there ARE things to grind, but you don't need to, you can jump into PvP at lvl 1 and enjoy it. Not everyone seems to play it like i do, i pretty much play WAR like Guildwars or even something like counterstrike..i don't care about whether i will play WAR in 3 years.
AoC's PvP is nothing like WAR, alot of it is small-scale-wow type of PvP, and this is why class balance are a big issue in AoC, because 1 vs 1 type of fights are ALOT more common than in WAR. WAR is large scale fights, 1 vs 1 is rare.
PvE in WAR is as mind numbing boring as "kill 500 boars" quests can get..and it doesn't help that the graphics aren't exactly exciting...all very depressing brown/grey sites mostly.
WAR feels alot less polished than AoC to me, by that i mean OBVIOUS things like stuck animations or out of sync animations , getting stuck on every little corner , rez timers not dissappearing , spellcasting timers and actual events not in sync etc etc [it's the small things that eventually annoys the living crap out of me, and WAR got lots of them]. AoC always had much more serious bugs like quests not working, or bosses bugging out , class abilities not working or crafting being dysfynctional , but my UI and character [the thing you stare at the most] was pretty much solid.
AoC to me is like playing Oblivion/Morrowind. Awesome landscapes, lots of quests and dungeons to explore [and there are alot more now]. I actually love the combo-fatality "interactive" combat system, without it i probably would play LOTRO instead.
Funcom did one thing right and that's merging all the servers. On the -english- EU side , it looks like there's only 2 PVP, 2 PVE and 2 PVE-RP servers left ...no matter how bad it might look, those servers are now alot of fun to be on. Mythic is still fooling around with their silly transfer stuff, but to be honest, just freaking merge the servers already.
AoC feels very alive lately, i actually feel obligated to filter my chat channels again [something i only did in WoW] , WAR on the other hand, communication has never exactly been big, the channels were always very restrictive [i.e. only per zone/region] which makes the entire place feel very desolate until you're in warband or active guild.
AoC is also much less reliant on a massive population. WAR sadly falls completely [and i mean COMPLETELY] flat without a decent population. If you pick the wrong server, trust me , WAR is gonna suck. This ALSO sadly includes the Order vs. Destro factions, if that's not balanced, again, everything falls flat. So it's quite a balancing act Mythic needs to pull here...and i don't know how mythic will keep it up. AoC is quite resistent to this, even though there's 3 factions.
Oh finally regarding crafting, both games got pretty mundane crafting going. HOWEVER, only AoC seems to actually have a -reason- to craft your arse off. I am really struggling to justify doing any crafting in WAR as everything you need is always in gold bags / influence rewards / boss drops.
So yea, i'd say if you're leaning more towards PvE factors, AoC, if you're more interested in PvP, go WAR. But keep in mind, WAR pvp is essentially WoW Battlegrounds...even oRvR comes down to a battleground type of "kill the door, kill the NPC" affair..only diff is no one controls how many players go in or when they go in.
On a side note regarding server pops in WAR and AoC, you can't really compare the situations. In WAR i have characters across FOUR servers , something i have NEVER done in any other MMO. Main reasons are a] playing both factions b] WAR is all about the server pop . I'm pretty sure everyone is alt-rerolling in WAR, it's clearly a strategy of Mythic [which is why they release the classes in drips and drabs, so everyone can reroll] . In AoC you'd typically level like in WoW. In WAR T1-3 is actually alot more fun than T4 in alot of aspects , so people are actually rerolling constantly..i mean why not? You can do everything at lvl 1 that you can do at lvl 40 in WAR...
I have played both AoC and WAR and in my opinion, WAR is alot better!
I got to max level in AoC but after that i just got bored to death of it! Well i did get bored before reaching the max level. But i played AoC when it first came out and it was a VERY buggy game so i don't know if it has improved much.
I played WAR and i love how they have RvR (Realm v Realm) and the PvP is alot more fun than other MMORPGs i have played. You don't NEED to level to the max level to get the best out of WAR. You can have some great fun at a low level.
WAR beats AoC by miles in my opinion. The only thing i would say is bad with WAR is i find the community very quiet most of the time. But possibly because i am not yet a very high level. But i am still having GREAT fun!
Last I heard was that Age of Conan was desperate for subscribers, there is less 70K playing it. On the other hand, Warhammer Online have a stable and healthy population going. I think most mmo need 250K to keep going and WAR have 300K. So I would stick with Warhammer Online as Age of Conan might die out soon. Why even start on a dead game.
Spoils of War - The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
Last I heard was that Age of Conan was desperate for subscribers, there is less 70K playing it. On the other hand, Warhammer Online have a stable and healthy population going. I think most mmo need 250K to keep going and WAR have 300K. So I would stick with Warhammer Online as Age of Conan might die out soon. Why even start on a dead game.
To be honest, these days you need to pick an MMO based on your needs for the next 3 months. Not the next 5 years. Even WAR 's content is basically running out fast, i'd say 3-6 months of WAR and you'll be done with the game, or at least looking for something else. AoC, same thing..initially i'd say AoC's content was 1-3 months, now maybe a little longer. I can't see anyone playing WAR or AoC non-stop for more than a year. Only reason why WoW is lasting so long is because their content is actually enough to take you years, it took me a full year of constant raiding to even get close to sunwell and i still didn't even see alot of the Pre-BC raid content...
Regardless, there's no point in arguing about whether WAR or AoC will be there in 5 years or in 2 years. You must judge an MMO -right now- and ASSUME you will be bored in 3-6 months. Based on that, i seriously doubt AoC will close down this YEAR even [if ever], same with WAR.
Even the subscriber base is a moot argument, as long as there is ONE populated server [yes only ONE] you can play the game. So i'd say 20k and one server is all you need to keep going, you'll have the same amount of fun as if there were 11 million subs..i mean it's not like you actually play with all 11 million people? Funcom is already further down this road, with merging all their servers down to 2 of each ruleset [on EU anyway] , so while you might see this as a negative, it actually makes the game better as there's more people with you in the game. Mythic on the other hand, still not budging on the merger thing, even though WAR needs it's ALOT more than AoC ever did. I guess Mythic is hopeing everyone just re-rolls instead [extending the game lifetime].
And come on, Funcom has kept Anarchy Online alive for YEARS ...why does anyone think AoC will not be kept alive in the same fashion..heck they might even pull an AO-froobie [free to play, but pay for high level content].
Likewise with Mythic and DAOC..that game is STILL going, what do you think the population is in Daoc? Do you think it's above 100k ? Why do you think it's not shut down?
In fact, i'd place my bets on Funcom to keep a MMO alive [or on life support], i'm alot more hesitant with Mythic and their overlords, EA......i don't know if EA will tolerate a low subscription MMO for long when they will be pushing out the one MMO after another...
Last I heard was that Age of Conan was desperate for subscribers, there is less 70K playing it. On the other hand, Warhammer Online have a stable and healthy population going. I think most mmo need 250K to keep going and WAR have 300K. So I would stick with Warhammer Online as Age of Conan might die out soon. Why even start on a dead game.
How do you figure WAR's 300k is "stable"? They dropped to 300k in only 3 months, there's no way to tell if that stabilized at all back after the end of december.
Comments
"AoC is currently getting their sub numbers back"thats is a dubious statement, either that or you're reading too much amazing avery for your own good.
they are both losing subs. AOc is losing less since it was already drained of a large percentage over the last 7 months
While it is mostly speculation, since neither company is giving us a running ticker of gains and losses, some people are basing their speculations of evidence such as xfire's numbers. They show that among xfire users, WAR is ahead but still falling, while AOC has been having a steadily growing number of concurrent users in recent months - which doesn't necessarily equate to more subs, but probably a good sign, for the overall direction the game is going in.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I cant even imagine why a post like this ever born!!
There is no knowledge that is no power.
While it is mostly speculation, since neither company is giving us a running ticker of gains and losses, some people are basing their speculations of evidence such as xfire's numbers. They show that among xfire users, WAR is ahead but still falling, while AOC has been having a steadily growing number of concurrent users in recent months - which doesn't necessarily equate to more subs, but probably a good sign, for the overall direction the game is going in.
when a game loses to much of it's player base, the real die hard fanatics will mass use x-fire to say their game of choice still has numbers- SWG is well know for it.
moral of the story- basing anything by x-fire after is often useless when a mmorpg is in crisis. Notice i'm not stating that x-fire is completly useless, just that in certain cicles of a game's life any analisys sourced over x-fire is dubious.
still you are right. all speculative. We know that war had ~300 k in december, funcom never released numbers but it is easy to see in a empiric way that war>aoc is terms of player base (STILL, what doesnt mean it will not go under).
they come transfered from other servers. I know that since half my previous server transfered to azgal, you guys got more plays, original server died .
You are seriously deluded.
You are seriously deluded.
It's called non-biased, not deluded.
if you didnt even played or know the game , like you say, how can you use " non-biased"?.
I played both including endgame.
Main reason for quitting AOC: the instanced gameworld (*shivers*)
Main reasons for quitting WAR: RVR is very repetative and there is way too much 'hand holding' in WAR; in that PVP only happens where Mythic wants it to happen (you can kill a fortress lord but you will have your ass handed to you by a 'simple' warcamp guard, for instance) which makes it an RVR themepark rather than having the feeling of an open, free world. Since death pennalties mean just the (short) time to get back to where the action is and a couple of coins to get rid of the debuff, killing and dying is pretty much without consequence and thus, without excitement.
So I quit both because of a lack of realism and freedom which derived of my immersion, essentially.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I'm subbed to both AoC and WAR at the moment. I play AoC primarily for the PvE and WAR for the PvP.
At the end of the day, WAR 's PVP is alot of fun, it has a "jump in and play" casual kind of feeling to it. Scenarios are great, and there's ALOT of them. Unfortunatelty RvR is very simplistic and repetitive to the extend that Alterac Valley in WoW is 10x more strategic than any Keep Siege in WAR. ORvR tens to be one gigantic zergfest , the team with the most players wins...simple. Still, i'm drawn to the PvP, it is fun, and i guess that's all that matters. What i realy like the most about WAR is the fact that i don't need to grind anything to just play the game, yes there ARE things to grind, but you don't need to, you can jump into PvP at lvl 1 and enjoy it. Not everyone seems to play it like i do, i pretty much play WAR like Guildwars or even something like counterstrike..i don't care about whether i will play WAR in 3 years.
AoC's PvP is nothing like WAR, alot of it is small-scale-wow type of PvP, and this is why class balance are a big issue in AoC, because 1 vs 1 type of fights are ALOT more common than in WAR. WAR is large scale fights, 1 vs 1 is rare.
PvE in WAR is as mind numbing boring as "kill 500 boars" quests can get..and it doesn't help that the graphics aren't exactly exciting...all very depressing brown/grey sites mostly.
WAR feels alot less polished than AoC to me, by that i mean OBVIOUS things like stuck animations or out of sync animations , getting stuck on every little corner , rez timers not dissappearing , spellcasting timers and actual events not in sync etc etc [it's the small things that eventually annoys the living crap out of me, and WAR got lots of them]. AoC always had much more serious bugs like quests not working, or bosses bugging out , class abilities not working or crafting being dysfynctional , but my UI and character [the thing you stare at the most] was pretty much solid.
AoC to me is like playing Oblivion/Morrowind. Awesome landscapes, lots of quests and dungeons to explore [and there are alot more now]. I actually love the combo-fatality "interactive" combat system, without it i probably would play LOTRO instead.
Funcom did one thing right and that's merging all the servers. On the -english- EU side , it looks like there's only 2 PVP, 2 PVE and 2 PVE-RP servers left ...no matter how bad it might look, those servers are now alot of fun to be on. Mythic is still fooling around with their silly transfer stuff, but to be honest, just freaking merge the servers already.
AoC feels very alive lately, i actually feel obligated to filter my chat channels again [something i only did in WoW] , WAR on the other hand, communication has never exactly been big, the channels were always very restrictive [i.e. only per zone/region] which makes the entire place feel very desolate until you're in warband or active guild.
AoC is also much less reliant on a massive population. WAR sadly falls completely [and i mean COMPLETELY] flat without a decent population. If you pick the wrong server, trust me , WAR is gonna suck. This ALSO sadly includes the Order vs. Destro factions, if that's not balanced, again, everything falls flat. So it's quite a balancing act Mythic needs to pull here...and i don't know how mythic will keep it up. AoC is quite resistent to this, even though there's 3 factions.
Oh finally regarding crafting, both games got pretty mundane crafting going. HOWEVER, only AoC seems to actually have a -reason- to craft your arse off. I am really struggling to justify doing any crafting in WAR as everything you need is always in gold bags / influence rewards / boss drops.
So yea, i'd say if you're leaning more towards PvE factors, AoC, if you're more interested in PvP, go WAR. But keep in mind, WAR pvp is essentially WoW Battlegrounds...even oRvR comes down to a battleground type of "kill the door, kill the NPC" affair..only diff is no one controls how many players go in or when they go in.
On a side note regarding server pops in WAR and AoC, you can't really compare the situations. In WAR i have characters across FOUR servers , something i have NEVER done in any other MMO. Main reasons are a] playing both factions b] WAR is all about the server pop . I'm pretty sure everyone is alt-rerolling in WAR, it's clearly a strategy of Mythic [which is why they release the classes in drips and drabs, so everyone can reroll] . In AoC you'd typically level like in WoW. In WAR T1-3 is actually alot more fun than T4 in alot of aspects , so people are actually rerolling constantly..i mean why not? You can do everything at lvl 1 that you can do at lvl 40 in WAR...
I have played both AoC and WAR and in my opinion, WAR is alot better!
I got to max level in AoC but after that i just got bored to death of it! Well i did get bored before reaching the max level. But i played AoC when it first came out and it was a VERY buggy game so i don't know if it has improved much.
I played WAR and i love how they have RvR (Realm v Realm) and the PvP is alot more fun than other MMORPGs i have played. You don't NEED to level to the max level to get the best out of WAR. You can have some great fun at a low level.
WAR beats AoC by miles in my opinion. The only thing i would say is bad with WAR is i find the community very quiet most of the time. But possibly because i am not yet a very high level. But i am still having GREAT fun!
Shh! I'm gangstering!
Last I heard was that Age of Conan was desperate for subscribers, there is less 70K playing it. On the other hand, Warhammer Online have a stable and healthy population going. I think most mmo need 250K to keep going and WAR have 300K. So I would stick with Warhammer Online as Age of Conan might die out soon. Why even start on a dead game.
Spoils of War - The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
To be honest, these days you need to pick an MMO based on your needs for the next 3 months. Not the next 5 years. Even WAR 's content is basically running out fast, i'd say 3-6 months of WAR and you'll be done with the game, or at least looking for something else. AoC, same thing..initially i'd say AoC's content was 1-3 months, now maybe a little longer. I can't see anyone playing WAR or AoC non-stop for more than a year. Only reason why WoW is lasting so long is because their content is actually enough to take you years, it took me a full year of constant raiding to even get close to sunwell and i still didn't even see alot of the Pre-BC raid content...
Regardless, there's no point in arguing about whether WAR or AoC will be there in 5 years or in 2 years. You must judge an MMO -right now- and ASSUME you will be bored in 3-6 months. Based on that, i seriously doubt AoC will close down this YEAR even [if ever], same with WAR.
Even the subscriber base is a moot argument, as long as there is ONE populated server [yes only ONE] you can play the game. So i'd say 20k and one server is all you need to keep going, you'll have the same amount of fun as if there were 11 million subs..i mean it's not like you actually play with all 11 million people? Funcom is already further down this road, with merging all their servers down to 2 of each ruleset [on EU anyway] , so while you might see this as a negative, it actually makes the game better as there's more people with you in the game. Mythic on the other hand, still not budging on the merger thing, even though WAR needs it's ALOT more than AoC ever did. I guess Mythic is hopeing everyone just re-rolls instead [extending the game lifetime].
And come on, Funcom has kept Anarchy Online alive for YEARS ...why does anyone think AoC will not be kept alive in the same fashion..heck they might even pull an AO-froobie [free to play, but pay for high level content].
Likewise with Mythic and DAOC..that game is STILL going, what do you think the population is in Daoc? Do you think it's above 100k ? Why do you think it's not shut down?
In fact, i'd place my bets on Funcom to keep a MMO alive [or on life support], i'm alot more hesitant with Mythic and their overlords, EA......i don't know if EA will tolerate a low subscription MMO for long when they will be pushing out the one MMO after another...
How do you figure WAR's 300k is "stable"? They dropped to 300k in only 3 months, there's no way to tell if that stabilized at all back after the end of december.