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If it had launched with no subscription fee, then it would have been hailed as one of the greatest online RPGs (not MMO) ever.
Take a look at Guildwars: It had much less content, only 2.5 dimensions (that's notational for raised 2d planes, but no actual three degrees of freedom) and was not QUITE as open as AoC.
Guildwars also had relatively inferior graphics, although this was balanced by the fact that they could run smoothly on most computers (even a 64 MB card could just barely run it) and was relatively bugfree when compared to AoC.
Seriously, how many of you would still be playing it if it had no subscription fee? All they would have to do is implement battlegroups and the increase in quantity demanded would make sure that there would be a good supply of people to World PvP with.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Comments
GW has several fantastic story lines,
working PvP,
working guild battles,
even RvR in Alliance battles,
complex skill system
armor dyes (heh)
great PvE
kept ALL its promised
AoC even for free is a PoS
If it had never been released and funcom advised Loinsgate on up coming Conan movie. Leaving the mmo games to the big boys.
MAGA
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Apples and oranges. Guildwars is what it was designed to be. Aoc is nothing what they said it would be and a diff class of game all together.
Guild Wars however, was fun to play. And at the time of release, those graphics were very impressive for the system requirements. At the time of release (and maybe even now, have not played it for quite some time) the PvP was also top notch.
Really, no fee is not what could have made AoC a success.
The higher level content of the game should have been like the first 20 levels in Tortage, that would have saved the game.
Including the features listed on the box would have gone a long way to making a differnce with AOC. But even with all the listed features in at launch the terrible quality of patches would have still taken its toll on subscriptions.
How AoC would have been deemed successful?
By giving people their money back.