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AoC Anniversary - New Content and Play Area
Nebless
Member RarePosts: 1,835
Sounds like they're going all out for their anniversary:
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Comments
Errr... that's not it
not to mention, TSW's one is without the -s, just one Blue Mountain. LotRO's Ered Luin could be a more fitting candidate, being harsh and snowy and cold, but that's in an another world as well.
Nice letter, a new area is always welcomed, and since it's scalable, it will be good for some alternate xp source during leveling. New faction to grind - not my cup of tea, same for the bear mount, my Shammy respects bears way more than to ride one... I'm curious about the membership option, haven't played AoC since months, so it's time to go back in the near future (as in soon™).
edit: (the soon™ ringed the bell and triggered the memory) what, still no crafting revamp?
So it turns out today, after the patch that the new content is actually a paid expansion on sale in the Funcom Store, not free anniversary content which many believed.
This has lead to the first threadnaught on the AoC forums in years. A day old post going to 13 pages is pretty much a riot in the AoC world. The last 13 page post was started in June 2014 and is still on the front page of their forums.
If you have a zero balance of Funcom Points, then you'll have to buy $30 worth of points for what is essentially a new dungeon.
People are pissed the fuck off and quite a few are unsubbing and leaving.
And to think, they could have prevented all the heartache by just learning how to write a press release. Would it have been so hard to put 'in honor of our anniversay we're releasing a new adventage pack.'? Would have killed 99% of the hate right there as you knew it would have been B2p.
Actually no skin off my nose as I'm not a big fan of the northern play area's. Just don't like snow I guess.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
coool, finally real new content!! going to get it on the weekend new AoC content is always tasty.
I think you might find this morsel rather lacking.
2 "new" zones which are the size of Conarchs Village & a revolving 6 quest daily.
Every day a new 6 quests in those areas, kill 5 mammoths, collect 5 axes etc.
The other 2 zones are Conalls Valley night instance which is exactly the same as the day but with some angry Vanir running around & is limited to the village area & continued with a load into the northern part where you kill the "boss" mobs.
The new Blue Mountain zone is tiny an contains nothing more than a "find the exit" quest with tagged on kill the (insert various mob here) quest which is en route, 10 minutes at best.
After that youve got Fort Snoderbjjmmmm or something like that which actually looks pretty cool, fairly nice size but again just a few precursor tasks before entering the fortress which im sad to say is the Atzels Fortress dungeon, no changes at all, few doors locked & some different assets placed but thats it.
All of these quests are for earning rep with the new faction which sells various armour pieces, mounts & accessories, some of which are quite nice, rings are on par with t4 for example an some nice vanity cloaks.
That said the difference in the collectors edition & normal arent that big.
CE you get a Swift Bear mount as well as the standard & only CE owners can unlock the additional bear skins/mounts from the vendor according to a dev post yesterday.A few extra shinies which are a face tattoo, ugly winged social helm & a 1 time redeem chest which dropped for me an elixir & 1g.
I dont know if im satisfied or not with it to be honest, on one hand im happy that something has been released but on the other its nothing new at all, all reused assets, bear mounts are bugged (no jump, all colour variants dont work) & the way they handled it is slightly disheartening. If your an AoC addict like me then dropping £20 on the CE was a forgone conclusion & even if im not happy with the actual content, I can at least say ive got an account wide swift mount for a few quid.
Well, that was pretty disappointing... not even the paid part, or the (rightful, imo) rage from the players, but more like the communication and the whole package.
FC, if you want to add a paid extra content, that's fine. This one is pretty overpriced imo, especially for some re-used old content, and I don't even want to compare it to the TSW Issues or Sidestories which are better and cheaper (not to mention the stipend there is 6x more than in AoC, so subscribers can easily buy those extra content from their subscription). Heck, if you want to make this overpriced purchase mandatory for subscribers as well, that's fine too, even if you said earlier you won't do such thing and Turan was the last one.
But.
Then just face it and tell it so. This whole "here's the anniversary, and our team wants to make it a memorable one!" (well, that's a success, I'm pretty sure this will be a memorable one... lol) "The upcoming anniversary is a great opportunity to make a new area accessible. We want to include something more along the lines of an expanded, permanent version of recent Halloween or anniversary events.... We're proud to introduce new areas for you to explore" indicates an anniversary event like Halloween, and in the letter there's nothing, not the slightest hint about FC points or the store. Just after a couple days later putting it into the store for the price of a full expansion, a very sad and unfortunate move.
And to be honest, the excuse after the sh.tstorm was not even unfortunate, it was straight out pathetic. "we never said it's a free anniversary event, it's an additional paid content which is by mere accident launching at the same time as the anniversary" - seriously?
(edit: but if that was a serious excuse, I just saved the dev letter for rubbing it under their noses later, like earlier with Joel's "we never add lockboxes" post
)
edit2: still like you guys, but this was a very lame move. And also it is overpriced. The CE version is a joke.