3. No sides, having some racial allies in the game would have been good, Aquilonia vs Stygian etc
They had "culture PvP" servers at launch, and they did so poorly compared to the regular PvP ruleset that they ended up just merging them and forgetting the idea.
The main reason for this was because they implemented the cultural strife very poorly. They made it so that guilds and groups could still invite players from any culture. When taking on mixed group teams as a group of players from one culture, you could not kill the person that was the same culture as you even though he was on the opposing team. They should have made players unable to group or guild with players of different cultures, in my opinion. It was basically just a watered down FFA server.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Though sadly of late for some unexplainable reason my intenet has kept disconnecting and reconnecting itself (I blame my ISP) and this has lead me to lag out of the game. Only to come back and find I'm dead which may explain why it isn't more popular, the game is very unforgiving, there is no auto attack and making a mistake in a fair fight can often leave you in a dangerous position. Which may cause people to get annoyed with it and give up. So while I don't think it should be made easier they do need to look into ways that doesn't punish the player so much.
I found AOC to be nothing new after playing wow for years as it was the only decent mmo really around, main reason I stayed in wow for so long was becuase of guild friends and the social aspect that brings. I came back to AOC recently and it has improved a lot, but really there was still nothing new there, it just feels so linear to me, even quests are pointless, you dont need to read anything, just following the arrows - no thought or intuition required.
Never compared to my early days in UO, or following that Dark Age of Camelot.
Now playing Darkfall, 4th week in. This is only one since DAoC to give me a proper buzz, nothing like farming some semi-decent stuff (for a newbie anyway) and getting away by the skin of your teeth after being chased by enemy players knowing you can lose it all. Although its not the end of the world if you lose out, basic gear is plentiful. Its hard going as a new player but is now getting easier once you get used to it and there seems to be lots of improvments in the pipeline. If you are looking for something new, but dont need to be held by the hand (e.g. big arrows telling you where to go next, what to do) its worth trying. It takes some investment and getting over the inital newbie hurdles but so far definately worth it.
Age of Conan is the best MMO out. The only MMO that don't feel like a kids game (besides EVE).
Server I am on is well populated. Great community on Wicanna!
AoC is FAR from linear. You can level multiple times and do so in totally different areas. There is a ton of content. NO mission is NEEDED. There are many path choices, and you don't even need to do any missions if you don't wish.
As for no thought? try some dungeons and tell me you don't need to think. AoC has some very innovative areas and dungeons.
The expansion is solid with a ton of new high level content
Want to know the answer to the OP's question, why dont we let Age of Conan and Funcoms own forums answer that for us taken directly off its front page from general discussion.
Flame me all you want, but you cannot deny the proof, Id love to see the fanboys excuses for this one this time. Defend the company and the game, make excuses, convince people otherwise but the truth does not lie
I'd just point out that I live on the other side of the world and don't have those latency issues.
This isn't 'TRUTH', this is people who are too dumb to turn off bittorrent while playing and wonder why they get latency issues.
In answer to the OP's question yes, it is kind of about the bad launch.
But it's also about the fact that most of the people 'burned' by the bad launch had been spoiled by years of 'fixed' WoW. I played WoW from launch and my god, it had as many if not more holes and issues than AoC. And they took years to fix.
Yet by that point, we'd all been playing through them and become immune to them. Along comes the next generation of players for whom WoW was the first MMO and you have a marketplace full of artificial expectations.
If the same 'THIS IS BROKE I RAGEQUIT' had been applied to WoW, Lotro or EQ/EQ2, those games would have died before they had a chance to flourish - but people seemed to persevere.
Maybe the current gaming marketplace just suffers from a higher level of entitlement issues (not helped by WoW's hyper consumerist gerbil wheel lewt candy system ZOMG I GOT ALL THIS STUFF AN ALL I DID WAS DROOL ON TEH KEYBOARDZ!!!??!)?
I can understand your opinion, but Funcom is not Cryptic. I can forgive Funcom for past mistakes because they've put real effort into making this a great game with far fewer developers. I can support that.
Basically the logic of you post is your can forgive them therefore all people should forgive. It's poor logic. You get one shot in this industry and they got the results they deserved.
I have an active AoC sub right now and i do log in from time to time. I find the game can not really hold me though and the new expansion does nothing to help it either. I mean sure the new area is like all asian and shiny but its still not holding me at all.
Perhaps with a couple more levels gained i shall find something new. It mite just be i like the PVE servers better than PVP.
I played for a few weeks at launch and quit because of bugs and game play design. I have come back to the game twice now,and each time I left after just a week or so. The game looks pretty but I do not enjoy the way combat flows,character animations, and I really did not like the classes they offered. To me the game is not unlike a vintage wine that has a beautiful bottle and label but in fact tastes like vinegar. In short I just did not like it. Now if you do enjoy the game thats great!, but many of us do not.
2) The horrible launch and subsequent bad press that followed.
3) Funcom's lack of integrity with it's customers.
4) Lack of Game Direction. (Sorry to those who think CM is a great game director, but he is a wishy-washy individual who will not give a straight answer and sends mixed signals with everything he posts.)
The game started out as a skill based system with lofty promises of great mass PvP battles to be had. It has turned into a gear-dependant one with a largely broken, pointless and exploited PvP endgame.
To answer some of the dizzy hype of earlier posts - The RotG expansion was a high for the game that lasted about a month. The slump back down is now on as people realize what an extreme grind the expansion is. Once again, the cheaters were allowed to exploit the hell out of content and get away with it, putting them well beyond the curve of the honest player. FC's eventual band-aid fixes to problems end up punishing everyone but those responsible.
Someone elsewhere made a good point that this is supposed to be a mature game. Reasonable to assume then that a mature playerbase has jobs, family etc. and cannot play 24/7. Why then are the faction/gear grinds designed to put items beyond the reach of these people within a reasonable time?
Apart from the AA system, dungeons and larger zones, the new expansion is a bit of a dud for me. I would have preferred that they worked on what was wrong with the original game, rather than move the goalposts by adding other stuff with problems of its own. But hey, This IS Funcom and they did the same thing with AO.
Sadly, the serious problems with the game remain. The engine still has issues. The server-wide red line lag spikes are still there and FC still blame them on player's own ISPs. The raid zones are still buggy. Sieges are still buggy. Stupid crap like swimming up waterfalls and the HoX hair bug are STILL in the game 2 years on!
But the biggest problem remains FC's attitude towards any constructive criticism of it's game. In a word, patronizing. Posts are deleted, or given the 'we are holier than thou and know more than you etc.' and closed. I personally, don't trust Funcom or believe a single word they say. I've had 9 years of Funcom 'truth' thank you.
I still play the game because it IS better than it was and I still have some fun with it. I've only been back for about three months though so it is early days so to speak. I enjoy it more since I basically turned my back on the expansion content. I do kind of wish I had never bought RotG to be honest and would take a refund and have it removed from my account, knowing what I know now.
Unlike some of the deluded here, I know that the large population numbers will never return to this game and that there is only one entity to blame for that and it's name begins with an 'F'. Hopefully enough will stay to keep it viable since the game *can* be fun in small doses.
Comments
The main reason for this was because they implemented the cultural strife very poorly. They made it so that guilds and groups could still invite players from any culture. When taking on mixed group teams as a group of players from one culture, you could not kill the person that was the same culture as you even though he was on the opposing team. They should have made players unable to group or guild with players of different cultures, in my opinion. It was basically just a watered down FFA server.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I agree its a very very good MMO.
Though sadly of late for some unexplainable reason my intenet has kept disconnecting and reconnecting itself (I blame my ISP) and this has lead me to lag out of the game. Only to come back and find I'm dead which may explain why it isn't more popular, the game is very unforgiving, there is no auto attack and making a mistake in a fair fight can often leave you in a dangerous position. Which may cause people to get annoyed with it and give up. So while I don't think it should be made easier they do need to look into ways that doesn't punish the player so much.
I found AOC to be nothing new after playing wow for years as it was the only decent mmo really around, main reason I stayed in wow for so long was becuase of guild friends and the social aspect that brings. I came back to AOC recently and it has improved a lot, but really there was still nothing new there, it just feels so linear to me, even quests are pointless, you dont need to read anything, just following the arrows - no thought or intuition required.
Never compared to my early days in UO, or following that Dark Age of Camelot.
Now playing Darkfall, 4th week in. This is only one since DAoC to give me a proper buzz, nothing like farming some semi-decent stuff (for a newbie anyway) and getting away by the skin of your teeth after being chased by enemy players knowing you can lose it all. Although its not the end of the world if you lose out, basic gear is plentiful. Its hard going as a new player but is now getting easier once you get used to it and there seems to be lots of improvments in the pipeline. If you are looking for something new, but dont need to be held by the hand (e.g. big arrows telling you where to go next, what to do) its worth trying. It takes some investment and getting over the inital newbie hurdles but so far definately worth it.
Age of Conan is the best MMO out. The only MMO that don't feel like a kids game (besides EVE).
Server I am on is well populated. Great community on Wicanna!
AoC is FAR from linear. You can level multiple times and do so in totally different areas. There is a ton of content. NO mission is NEEDED. There are many path choices, and you don't even need to do any missions if you don't wish.
As for no thought? try some dungeons and tell me you don't need to think. AoC has some very innovative areas and dungeons.
The expansion is solid with a ton of new high level content
I'd just point out that I live on the other side of the world and don't have those latency issues.
This isn't 'TRUTH', this is people who are too dumb to turn off bittorrent while playing and wonder why they get latency issues.
In answer to the OP's question yes, it is kind of about the bad launch.
But it's also about the fact that most of the people 'burned' by the bad launch had been spoiled by years of 'fixed' WoW. I played WoW from launch and my god, it had as many if not more holes and issues than AoC. And they took years to fix.
Yet by that point, we'd all been playing through them and become immune to them. Along comes the next generation of players for whom WoW was the first MMO and you have a marketplace full of artificial expectations.
If the same 'THIS IS BROKE I RAGEQUIT' had been applied to WoW, Lotro or EQ/EQ2, those games would have died before they had a chance to flourish - but people seemed to persevere.
Maybe the current gaming marketplace just suffers from a higher level of entitlement issues (not helped by WoW's hyper consumerist gerbil wheel lewt candy system ZOMG I GOT ALL THIS STUFF AN ALL I DID WAS DROOL ON TEH KEYBOARDZ!!!??!)?
Basically the logic of you post is your can forgive them therefore all people should forgive. It's poor logic. You get one shot in this industry and they got the results they deserved.
I have an active AoC sub right now and i do log in from time to time. I find the game can not really hold me though and the new expansion does nothing to help it either. I mean sure the new area is like all asian and shiny but its still not holding me at all.
Perhaps with a couple more levels gained i shall find something new. It mite just be i like the PVE servers better than PVP.
I played for a few weeks at launch and quit because of bugs and game play design. I have come back to the game twice now,and each time I left after just a week or so. The game looks pretty but I do not enjoy the way combat flows,character animations, and I really did not like the classes they offered. To me the game is not unlike a vintage wine that has a beautiful bottle and label but in fact tastes like vinegar. In short I just did not like it. Now if you do enjoy the game thats great!, but many of us do not.
Why aren't more people playing AoC?
1) System Requirements
2) The horrible launch and subsequent bad press that followed.
3) Funcom's lack of integrity with it's customers.
4) Lack of Game Direction. (Sorry to those who think CM is a great game director, but he is a wishy-washy individual who will not give a straight answer and sends mixed signals with everything he posts.)
The game started out as a skill based system with lofty promises of great mass PvP battles to be had. It has turned into a gear-dependant one with a largely broken, pointless and exploited PvP endgame.
To answer some of the dizzy hype of earlier posts - The RotG expansion was a high for the game that lasted about a month. The slump back down is now on as people realize what an extreme grind the expansion is. Once again, the cheaters were allowed to exploit the hell out of content and get away with it, putting them well beyond the curve of the honest player. FC's eventual band-aid fixes to problems end up punishing everyone but those responsible.
Someone elsewhere made a good point that this is supposed to be a mature game. Reasonable to assume then that a mature playerbase has jobs, family etc. and cannot play 24/7. Why then are the faction/gear grinds designed to put items beyond the reach of these people within a reasonable time?
Apart from the AA system, dungeons and larger zones, the new expansion is a bit of a dud for me. I would have preferred that they worked on what was wrong with the original game, rather than move the goalposts by adding other stuff with problems of its own. But hey, This IS Funcom and they did the same thing with AO.
Sadly, the serious problems with the game remain. The engine still has issues. The server-wide red line lag spikes are still there and FC still blame them on player's own ISPs. The raid zones are still buggy. Sieges are still buggy. Stupid crap like swimming up waterfalls and the HoX hair bug are STILL in the game 2 years on!
But the biggest problem remains FC's attitude towards any constructive criticism of it's game. In a word, patronizing. Posts are deleted, or given the 'we are holier than thou and know more than you etc.' and closed. I personally, don't trust Funcom or believe a single word they say. I've had 9 years of Funcom 'truth' thank you.
I still play the game because it IS better than it was and I still have some fun with it. I've only been back for about three months though so it is early days so to speak. I enjoy it more since I basically turned my back on the expansion content. I do kind of wish I had never bought RotG to be honest and would take a refund and have it removed from my account, knowing what I know now.
Unlike some of the deluded here, I know that the large population numbers will never return to this game and that there is only one entity to blame for that and it's name begins with an 'F'. Hopefully enough will stay to keep it viable since the game *can* be fun in small doses.