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Is this game trully good or is this agressive viral marketing ?
Lobotomist
Member EpicPosts: 5,981
Ok..i never seen such thing on mmorpg.com
Xsyon went from nowhere - actually we knew about this game a long time but every gameplay report from mmorpg.com forum goer dismissed it as bad vaporeware.
Than suddenly 2 weeks from now we have a boom of hype.
Its best game - everyone says. Although it is playable for months now and nobody wrote about it. But now for two weeks everyone is suddenly playing it ?!
So - is this legit real players posting ? Or is Xyon viral marketing working overtime ? Yea ?
Let see ...
Tell me the game is good.
But you must be known mmorpg.com poster
Someone that posted a lot about other games, and was active at least a year ( and i mean active posting)
OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN 
Prove its not VIRAL marketing !
Comments
Notorious Games isn't using ANY marketing, besides a couple of interviews here and there. It's all from people posting about it on Forums. Me for example, I saw it come up on the homepage of MMORPG.com and wanted to see what it was about. I read the thread and became interested.
It wasn't very long before I bought the game and actively started posting about it on the official and this forum. So probably more people will see Topics come by and the same thing will happen to them. It's like a wildifre, it just keeps spreading.
EDIT: And to answer your question about the game being any good. I'll be honest and straight forward: the graphics are horrible, but you fail to notice how bad they are if you play long enough.
Also it might be the carrot on a stick that keeps people going and talking positive about this game. It has 'potential' meaning it's not locked down in a certain direction yet. It's still possible that the game will turn out the way 'the player' wants to see it.
For example: I want to have a farm and breed animals. They said it will be in the game 'somewhere in the forseeable future'. This would be my carrot to keep going and wait, wait and wait some more. As long as they don't tell me that animal breeding won't be in the game, with 100% certainty, then I will keep hoping and playing.
But if you take that carrot away; I think you will see a lot of people leaving and the positive talk decrease.
Viral Marketing: Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Im sure you seen much more viral marketing, its everywhere.
Xyson is good on paper, like a lot of games. Also its very new.
I think its more supporting something diffrent, over "this game is the best game ever"
Fact is, other than craft items that dont decay, which allow you to craft other items...theres really nothing much to do other than make baskets and tents, and trade a few items.
Yes its fun, but theres 4 killable creatures in game, creatures that certain populair crafts depend on. I havent seen a single creature since my first hour in game, when i ran untill the server went down, and i only saw one.
The whole terraforming and building a safe camp, in a pvp enviroment is definatly a breath of fresh air, and its very RPable, however in game you wouldnt know an apocolypse happend, feels more like your the first human in history, like a caveman to human type thing. Dont expect the game to look like a mad maxx apocolypic future.
This game has potential down the road, if this small development team can fine tune the crafting, add real combat, add a reason to combat eachother, add some pve combat, and possibly add more of a reason to tribe toghether. There is a lot of work for them to do, and as it stands....we got six months of making baskents and tents, that cant be destroyed...possibly looted. People are already boasting how when they kill someone they just destroy his inventory, since once you have an item stored safely back at your totem, you never need another again.
Well get a better taste of the game in a week or two when they move to a proper server, so we can see how the game is with a decent population that is able to do more than lag crafting.
But right now i would strongly suggest to wait before buying, lets see if they can move to a new server, and possibly add a bit more than just crafting. They need to fix their creature spawns, which on paper is realistic, but in game, anyone who chose to take hunting, bonecraft, and mabey a few other crafts, are finding it nearly impossible to skill them, since there are so few things to kill,skin,and get bones from.
Also im not sure the purpose of making structures...other than to have them. Im about to make a tent and mabey some walls, but im not sure why or what benefit they bring. Once i do that, im not sure what ill be doing for the remaining 2months of my sub.
For months now anyone who was paying attention read that Xsyon was a sandbox with deep crafting and terraforming. If they looked at the available videos they saw a crude, silly looking combat system. You use the phrase "viral marketing" as if people talking about what excites them and expressing their opinions of a new game is a bad thing.
Is Xyson truly good? It depends on what you want in a game. If you want a sandbox with great crafting and terraforming then yes, it is really great. If combat is why you play a mmorpg then, no, it is not good and there is little reason to hope for a significant change in combat in the near future. In other words Xyson is just what the beta players have been saying for a long time.
Xyson doesn't show you most of the numerical stats that players have come to expect from other games. For that reason min/maxers might find it too frustrating. Most gamers will find it too difficult as Xyson leans much closer to a wilderness survival sim than it does to an action game. You must find food and water frequently. Your skills will usually fail if you are hungry and thirsty. If you want to kill an animal you may have to hunt for 30 or more minutes to find one, assuming you even know where to look. It gets very dark at night. During the winter the nights are longer than the days. Crafting has many interdependencies. You will need to trade with other players to get things done. Xyson requires more social interaction than most mmorpgs. There are no dev-written quests, no raids. You must choose your own goals and be willing to work hard to achieve them.
At the moment the game is very unstable and has horrible lag. It wasn't that way until a few days ago so there is still good reason to think the devs can fix it.
Sound like fun? I love Xyson. Is this viral marketting? I don't know and don't care.
Its the amount of waiting that makes me nervous.
6 months is a LONG time before we get to move out of lake taho, and mabey get some actual combat, with pve mobs. Thats if they stick to their shcedule with how long the prelude will last, and that timeframe possibly assumes that everything will go smoothly, which it hasnt.
Im a realist, and they promised quite a big promise. Many games have done this and lost their community since realisticly, these things take a lot longer than advertised.
Thats not saying we all wont be surprised pleseantly sooner than we think.
Im just wondering wants going to keep me entertained in the game for the full two months, after i have made all i need to make. It wont be the community, which seems somewhat anti social and pushing for a no global -short range chat function only in game. I fear im going to be building the same stuff over and over out of bordem, talking to the same 10 people, for the next 2 months.
However, the reason im here, is because if im going to be bored after a month, i figured i was better off giving my money to this developer, over Rifts. I would rather support this kind of game than the other.
But yeah, so far, when its playable, the game is fun. It just needs more than just crafting asap.
The combat is poor, and that right there in any MMO should send up a red flag.
The PvE is extremely limited right now, another red flag.
Indie developer, trying to make a sandbox, red flag...
Pre-launch needs to be wiped, and started over.. flag.
That said, the game is pretty enjoyable.
Is it for everyone? Definetly not.
Currently its a world building sandbox, with some potential for some really interesting stuff for the future (including a promised combat upgrade). The game was incredibly stable until the pre-launch onslaught, and through communication from the devs, they seem to know the problem. They really need the next one to go without too much difficulty..
I hate the word potential when it comes to my MMOs as much as the next guy, but i think the thing thats drawing me is the idea of building this world. With a little thought, the possibilites are pretty amazing. Another thing is, its not the same old, same old that so many seem to be getting tired of.
Its a sandbox that doesn't have this enormous focus on full loot, stab you in the face PvP, because i can....
Don't get me wrong, I love PvP and its why i play these silly games, but one-shotting someone thats just joined, and taking all thier gear, is not PvP in my book (personal opinion). This is the impression i get from the devs postings, and from playing more than a few weeks, of beta, we'll have to see where it goes in the future of course.....
Right now, the game is you, and the rest, trying to rebuild a society after crawling out from under a rock... there is no gold, or currency to speak of. Its all trading of goods to try and "survive". Quick side note, you can scavange some change and bills from the ground while looking, but there are no NPCs to buy from, and right now, no one really needs money. What becomes currency in the future is anyones guess..
Again, i like it, but i can see where many won't. Its not going to get 12 million subs.....but I'm not one of the 12 million, so my enjoyement of these games is a lil different than most...
Nah, it's not viral marketing but simple fad mechanic. You've seen this phenomenon in other media as well - you know when something becomes stellar popular overnight while it's been around for a decade but nobody except the geeks paid much attention to it before that fateful "last tuesday". Say hip-hop.. or techno... or zombies and steampunk. I guess it's just a matter of reaching critical mass.
As for the game.. I'm playing it right now. I saw the vids and checked out their "mission statement" which I liked a lot. I said to myself "Well.. 40$ aint that much and even if it turns out to be total crap and folds next month I know this money goes to folks whose heart is in a right place."
So after downloading and installing you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized the game actually WORKS. Being burned by MO and to some extent DF (first because of the technical reasons and the second for the conceptual snafu) Xsyom really offers what it says on the box and is actually fun to play. The devs are very open and basically appear as "one of us guys" who just happen to be working on the game as well as playing it. There is that... feeeling.. that you get your moneys worth - you're not "buying" a product but are actually a part of a project with your donations and feedback. There is a very warm atmosphere in the game quite different from what you get elsewhere - its almost like a tribal, communal thing vs the corporate consumerism you get from other games.
Imo this is the reason you see so very little negativity about the launch voes this game is experiencing - both on these boards and in the game itself. There is almost no bitching, just good-natured supportive humor. Its an "we're all in it together folks" atmosphere as opposed to "I want my money back you lying greedy pigs!" which is the norm elsewhere.
The second reason why so little negativity despite the aforementioned problems is that us folks who got the preorders actually saw the game WORK before launch. When the devs say "aw shucks, we kinda overextended ourselves and we should have rented a separate dl server but don't worry we'll get it right eventually" we actually believe them because we saw the game WORK and work well so this coupled with extra 2 free weeks playtime basically seals the deal.
The third is that the game itself is most intriguing and imo well designed for a sandbox - a full blooded one. Numerous problems from other games are adressed here - skill decay over time for example, they you get stuff like comfort level (not implemented yet but in UI) which solves the motivational problem "well why should i build a nice house anyway, what's the benefit - i'll just go kill people". Then you have the thing where crafters with same maxed out skills don't have and cannot ever have the same reciepes - which promotes trade and interaction... Stuff like that - you can see that the sandbox here is not just tacked on but actually very well thought out. I don't know what problems might come up later when the game gets a bit older but it definitely feels like a next-gen sandbox rather than a tired old rehash of UO with 3/4 of features missing and an emphasis on pointless ganking (which is sadly what we've grown used to expect from games labeling themselves as "sandbox")
So anyways, I think my 40$ are well spent.
Marketing for Xsyon is done by the Community.
Word of Mouth got it's Boom.
It is very similar to WURM online, so it’s not that unusual or mysterious, it is just the first pure sandbox with the player numbers to actually build something interesting, the fundamentals are all there, what it lacks is content. Some players may be happy with the basic crafting and building as it is now, but I see it as a sandbox version of RIFT, doomed to lose a lot of players if it cannot deliver a lot of extra post-release content. There is no reason to think it will not.
Well ok , i get the drift
Lets hope they will have the sucess and founding they deserve.
But also I hope that some trial will be available, because i never buy game based on hype alone.
Then wait a while till they open the trial server, deu to players being able to drop stuff or claim land, the trial server will be a a test ground to check if the game is the type your into. deu to the delay I suspect it will be around the 15th of next month when they set that up.
This ^
Have to say, nice post. Completely agree.
Free cookies at:
www.gankalicious.blogspot.com
Bring cookies.
I was told they are working on a trial shortly after the official release. Think I was told there setting up another server for it..
As for the game it has huge potential. Heard that before?
The graphics are above average.. Especially considering the size of the world.. The charcters look a little rough. But you forget shortly after you start playing.
Combat is very limited. But gets the job done atm. I have had fun pvping. I have collected an Axe, Saw, Needles, Baskets, etc:) I only take 1 item per charcter... Unless they want to try there hand at revenge.. Then I get to collect another item..
At $40 with 2 months sub its a great deal if you ask me.
By the time we build something worth fighting over I believe we will have a combat overhaul.
Not trying to be rude here. As for the people that can't find the content go back to your themepark games... You obciously don't belong in a sandbox.. We'll I'm off to pillage some more tools....
---------------
Tested over a 115+ games since 1997.
Currently Playing:
Played(Retired): AOL NWN(91-95), UO, EQ1/2, DAoC, CoX, Lineage1/2, SWG(Pre CU/NGE), Planetside, Anarchy Online, FFXI, AC, Vanguard, D&D, AoC, DCUO, Rift, Eve, others
Xsyon is a great idea on paper that seems to have three massive hurdles currently preventing it from being a great game in reality. The good thing is that two of the three hurdles can be fixed.
1) Technical issues - the servers are currently a lag fest. This hurdle seems to be on its way out, as there are new servers on the way. For now, it's extremely laggy and, at times, unplayable. Everything that I have tried to do in game over the past few days has worked as expected. The biggest issue with getting anything that I used to function has been the insanely high latency.
2) Insanity or lack of familiarity with history - the game makes several mistakes that most sandbox MMOs have corrected years ago. Either the devs think they can repeat the same practices of the past and get different results or they simply are not familiar with the hurdles other MMOs faced and how they resolved them. The most glaring example of this is - when you die, you drop everything, including your newbie equipment. Fixable with time and since the devs have gotten this far with the project, it doesn't seem far fetched that they will quickly introduce solutions, either by aqdopting the solutions of the past or innovating new ones themselves.
3) The community - There seems like little middle ground here. Half the community seems eager to help out and the other half is incredibly hostile to any one that dares to question the game or its mechanics in any way. An example of the former is when this one bear was kicking my butt over and over for a good ten minutes. I couldn't escape it and couldn't kill it. After a couple deaths I asked for suggestions and I got a mix of both humorous and helpful replies in both chat and tells. I learned a lot on how to sprint, about ghosting, death penatly rules and dodging mobs in that 5-10 minutes of chats. Conversely, not long after that someone made the mistake of asking if they were going to make a certain mechanic easier, and a good poriotn of the community ate him alive. There's really no way to fix the attitude of a community outside having the community police itself in that regard.
"Prove its not VIRAL marketing !"
If you are asking to prove it isn't spreading by word of mouth, then that would be false. People are trying it, seeing that it does what it claims - or at least does what they were expecting from it - and are spreading the word about it. Persoanlly, I did not believe they could do what they claimed because I'm a firm believer in History over Hope, and history has shown that hope and MMO gamers normally makes for a lot of hype, a good amount of foolishly spent money, high expectation and extreme disappointment (Glitchless and Red Dragon Software to name two prime examples). The word of mouth publicity currently seems genuine and the more genuine a good review seems, the more weight it carries.
If you are asking to prove it isn't shills and a marketing team, I don't know if anyone can prvoe that to you, but I do ask that you look at some of the reviews and videos and see if you feel it's some marketing guy or genuine fellow players who are enthusiastic about the game.
Based on what I have experienced in-game and what I have read/watched over the past month or so, I am very enthusiastic about Xsyon - and I am more than happy to spread that enthusiasm.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Six months doesn't seem too slow for progression imo. I think it would be cool to set up a tribe ...then have various chapters added to newer territories as they become available....like a motorcycle gang. Sons of Anarchy FTW.
But also I hope that some trial will be available, because i never buy game based on hype alone.
Lobo trust me its gonna do good
MAGA
Agreed,this post said it all.
Hmm. What I find interesting is that the game has a number of features on its feature list that is nothing but promises for the moment, the pvp is lacklustre, and the game is very laggy/buggy at launch.
If this had happened for one of the non-sandbox titles, some of the same people that defend the game in these Xsyon threads despite those failures would've called fans of those non-sandbox games 'blind fanbois' and scorned them nonstop if they dared to try the same defending of those games as people are doing here with Xsyon.
I'm not saying people shouldn't have fun with their game. But to me it sounds like double standards that some sandbox fans and jaded MMO gamers are holding.
As I said elsewhere, one game's hater/critic is another game's fanboi
. It's just role reversal.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Of course much of this is marketing. If a game rockets out of nowhere to the top of the rating charts, you can be sure that the devs had some hand in encouraging players to repeatedly vote up the game on this site. Perpetuum did exactly the same thing. Considering the level of criticism this game has received on the boards, you think Xsyon would be hovering around a 7.2, but the voting system is not accountable to general public opinion.
That being said, a lot of people do like the game. It deserves at least some of it's score and in my opinion is of higher quality than several of the other games listed on the beta page.
I can guarantee you this is not the case, not a single time has the comunity bin asked to promote the game for them, infact this last day surge caused trouble for the launch of the game ( delay) deu to server capability the game now has to move to a bigger server network.
Ofc nobody has to belive it and I personaly compleetly understand the sceptisim, I would have tought the same if I were not in the know.
Now I will nudge some others to post and promote here else i be labeld as a ultra fanboi soon *grin*
PS: not a huge amound of post..but member since 2006..
MAv, there has actually been one very large difference with the issues at launch for Xsyon and a lot of AAA mmo's issues at launch. Instead of the devs sitting there and kinda shrugging their shoulders at the player base, Jooky, one of the devs, has been very active on the forums essentially giving the players a truthful, play by play update on what is going on ad what they are doing to fix it. they arn't saying "oh, server issues, we'll have that fixed in an hour... no wait two hours... errrr, maybe three?" etc. They have been honest and up front with the players about the problem currently happening, and what they are exactly doing to fix it. THAT is why that no matter what kind of community person you come across in the forums or in game with xsyon, you will find they are suppoortive of the devs and game.
It is honestly a nice change of pace for devs to be upfront and honest about an issue then sit there and dance around how they are trying to solve an issue etc. it shows they care about their player base. That gets my respect.
Nowhere did I ever see them say go out and hype the game. On the contrary I saw post stating the opposite. They wanted no hype until after release. They still havn't sent out the press release.
Now on the otherhand I know quite a few members over there that took it upon themselves to hype the game.
---------------
Tested over a 115+ games since 1997.
Currently Playing:
Played(Retired): AOL NWN(91-95), UO, EQ1/2, DAoC, CoX, Lineage1/2, SWG(Pre CU/NGE), Planetside, Anarchy Online, FFXI, AC, Vanguard, D&D, AoC, DCUO, Rift, Eve, others
First of all "everyone playing it" not sure where that came from? ihave heard more marketing and "everyone playing it" from RIFT.
As to the actual game,my opinion says that it has more and better "ideas" than any game i have seen,the problem is the over all game is just lacking too much for me to play it.
This IS the type of game that would make it great if a large developer was willing to put money into it,better engine,more content,better graphics,more server bandwidth to handle a better game ect ect.
This is an Indie developer that has obviously spent time playing games and knows what makes a great game,unlike many devs who are just desk nerds or game expo hosts.Too bad this is an Indie dev,could have been the first game since VG that i would give a AAA rating to,well AOC wasn't that bad either maybe a 2 1/2 for that game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The game really is good. Even if there are features missing, what is there both works and manages to be fun. Without tribal warfare in place the end-game department is seriously missing, but there's fun to be had building your tribe, crafting or ganking depending on what you want. I'm in a good tribe (Hopi) and at least for me the community is really great.
The game has been lagfest since final wipe (Friday), the servers have crashed, and there's been huge bugs caused by rollbacks. But I played for 1 week before the final wipe, and during that time I encountered 1 disconnect, 1 bug (items not stacking properly) and client crashed 0 times. Based on that experience I believe that once they switch to new and better server the game will actually be one of the more stable and bug-free releases.