Age of Conan Dead (front page post)

[Nighthawk]

See front page post for details.

Discuss here.

[ImaBovine]

I feel the same way. The whole time I did play, I kept saying that there was just something missing. Of course with it being just a WoW clone didn't make it much better. Questing was just like in WoW. I had a hard time dealing with that after all the leveling I did in WoW. At least there was decent end game content with WoW and that is what keeps me halfway interested.

IMO, to make another MMO successful, someone is going to have to think outside the box somewhat and come up with something exclusive not found in other games. FFA PvP definitely needs to be put in some sort of MMO and it needs to have some sort of penalty. That was the one thing I did like about UO. You had to take a chance and risk losing something in the process. It made you think twice about trying to off someone. Games like WoW that "claim" to have PvP...it's a joke. Run in, try to kill some...win or lose there is no penalty other than having to spend a few mins running back to your corpse then rinse and repeat.

Once I saw what AoC was like, I made a comment to a couple of friends telling them I did not think the game would last very long. It was very pretty graphics wise and I liked the way combat was displayed. Other than than, Funcom shot themselves in the foot by not having some kind of end game content to provide to it's users. I would rather wait a few more months for release in order to have something to look forward to. they were probably pressure to get it released because of money and they figured they could just fix shit on the fly.

Give me a game that has some good PvP. Give me something else to do as well when i don't want to PvP. A good crafting system to make items would be awesome. That was the one thing that SoE did good in Star Wars galaxies. You had to farm or make so much different stuff and the quality of the item was based on the quality of the mats you collected or manufactured. It made people think about how they crafted stuff to make it viable for certain situations.

Anyway, I saw the demise of AoC coming. I just have a hard time going back to games from the "good 'ol days" as most of the company owned servers are long gone and we now rely on player or clan based servers. Sorry but there is just too much mucking around with the game environment by people that shouldn't be messing with it in order to give me the feel that I had when I played these games many years ago.

[Lebowski]

Maybe this didn't bother others as much as it bothered me, but being a software developer myself, I just noticed way too many bugs. Some minor visual, some major visual, and lots with quests and skills...either way it felt like I was paying to beta the game.

It got to the point where I couldn't tell what was working how it was suppose to and what wasn't. I swear as I put more points in endurance, my stam went down FASTER than it was suppose, instead of slower, but being new to the game, I didn't know if I understood the mechanics enough to say for sure.

There didn't seem to be much to look forward to when I finished leveling either. From what I heard, the promised end game raiding and pvp was non-existent. This seems pretty basic, yet, it's happening a lot: if you have a list of major features in the game you are bragging about and advertising, maybe those features should, I dunno, be in the fucking game and working before you launch, with maybe some on-going balancing tweaks left.

It comes down to the typical, it wasn't ready to be released scenario. I understand they had to get it out to start making money, but when you know your game is going to be compared repeatedly to the much more polished WoW, you either need make the full commitment or don't bother.

Why get 80% there and say it's ready only to completely ruin the initial impressions of your game? It's going to be much hard to get those people to try the game a 2nd time than it was when you game was new and exciting.

Here's my AC rant, if you know me well, you've probably heard it...at least once in the last couple years =p

As far as Asheron's Call goes, I've wanted (and tried) to get back into that game, but just can't...no literally I can't. The network code is so old, it doesn't work with a lot of modern routers. Since my router works with a thousand other (and older) games and Xbox Live with no problems, I'm pretty much not willing to use my old router or buy a new one that happens to work with the game. Turbine said they won't be fixing this.

Also, After I sold my main account (The Big Lebowski and Manny Calavera account), I just couldn't get back into. I macroed back up to 180ish on my new account and Ainvar gave me Death Midget. I just always felt myself saying, if Turbine would just do these couple things, AC could be amazing...again. But, those changes never came.

The game is basically in auto-pilot mode from a developer and player stand point.

The devs just keep pushing out the same patch with basically the same quests over and over. They don't have the resouces to put out anything major, and obviously, not willing to throw some money at it to change things. It's really amazing it's still going considering the competition. I guess as long as it's not costing them money, it's better to keep it going and not get the bad press of closing another game.

Turbine has like 3-4 people pushing out a new patch every month. If you know anything about software development, that's not time to do anything. They really need to consider stopping the monthly builds and try for every 2-3 months. They'd get a lot more content and changes in if they weren't constantly in those short deployment cycles.. This gives them more time to actually build stuff and not doing testing on all these small builds and worrying about meeting a monthly deadline.

And if you still think Turbine cares about PvP...you're crazy. They do a PvP patch once a year and basically tweak the "PvP weapon" dmg, reversing who is overpowered this year (melee or mage). Their last two games shipped with basically no PvP whatsoever.

Everyone I know playing is...well not playing. I did my share of macroing back in the day, but it doesn't seem to ever end. Even people with max chars, all they do is macro. Because Turbine couldn't control their game, now the economy, content, drop rates, basically everything is based on macros. You absolutely have to macro or you're way behind in levels and dead broke.

The last time I played, to even really have a fight, you had to go to the "hot spots." Basically, you portal in and get ganked by like 10 people, or your group does the ganking. Since you basically have to go to these spots, they might as well be instanced battlegrounds like other games have. What's the point of FFA PvP if it only happens in a few spots?

Darktide PvP was at it's best when it just happened..."I'm trying to quest or level at this dungeon and I gotta fight people off to do it" or...."I'm going into town to sell the stuff I got while leveling and it gets raided"....not, "oh, if you want to PvP, you gotta go to these 1 or 2 spots."

Obviously, I have strong feelings for the game, it was amazing. It probably could still have a lot of life in it, but Turbine isn't putting money into it...which very well might be a wise decision, just sucks for all of us that use to love the game.

[Hytek]

I canceled my AoC subscription just a few days ago. I had been away on vacation only to come back to an even more buggy game that before I left 4 weeks earlier. How is that even remotely possible?

I'm in the Warhammer Online beta and will be playing that when it releases next month. Having experienced how well Mythic has done with that game during beta (I got in early May 2007) and having playing DAoC back in the day has put my hopes up for WAR to be the "new gen" MMO with great pvp and end game content. I mean, raiding capital cities and laying down the smack while actually gaining worthwhile rewards for it - who can say no to that?

[Fused88]

I was tempted to play AOC, but I knew it was just going to be the same thing as all the others. Maybe if they had done something more like guild wars and no monthly fee, it would have sold more. Since its obvious it was too much for them to keep pumping out content and most people wont keep paying 15 bucks a month to sit around and stare at their avatar.

Maybe some day they'll realize that the MMO market is way too overloaded with games and making a massive single player game with just some simple death match multiplayer would be a better use of their money/resources.

I have a feeling that Warhammer will probably suffer the same fate, if its lucky and its as brutal as they say it might pull it off and actually carve out a spot in the MMO market. But I honestly doubt it, what with WoW itself becoming somewhat stagnant. I think quite a few gamers are just tired of grinding and paying monthly fees for basically more delivery quests.

[Mindmaster]

Well, my impression of the game is the same. The game is super fun at low level unless you play a bear shaman, but everything about every class is broken and anything that could be a power move for your class is nerfed to shit or broken as well. I liked the concept of the Bear Shaman however really it's like DDR in the universe of conan. If don't play casters in this game (or a HoX) you just get rocked. Even saying that half the crap on the HoX doesn't work either. I've never seen a game where it took so much time to get rid of so many super small bugs.

I too work in IT and just can't even fanthom that these people at Funcom still have jobs and other than the way the game looks for the most part everything else about it is broken, partially implemented, or if it worked... NERFED. I've been unsubscribed for a month already after they seem to just outright refuse to fix anything that matters. Either way it's just too lame...

[Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Mindmaster

Well, my impression of the game is the same. The game is super fun at low level unless you play a bear shaman, but everything about every class is broken and anything that could be a power move for your class is nerfed to shit or broken as well. I liked the concept of the Bear Shaman however really it's like DDR in the universe of conan. If don't play casters in this game (or a HoX) you just get rocked. Even saying that half the crap on the HoX doesn't work either. I've never seen a game where it took so much time to get rid of so many super small bugs.

I too work in IT and just can't even fanthom that these people at Funcom still have jobs and other than the way the game looks for the most part everything else about it is broken, partially implemented, or if it worked... NERFED. I've been unsubscribed for a month already after they seem to just outright refuse to fix anything that matters. Either way it's just too lame...

And they just announced an expansion today too LOL. I can't imagine how buggy it will be and then slapped on the original mess.

[Judas Deceit]

I am glad I didnt buy into the hype and end up wasting 39.99 ( or was it 49.99) along with a subscription fee to find out it sucked. This is why I am jaded.

[Cyric]

The name "EA Mythic" on WAR is enough to keep me away from it. With the way they treat their customers, like nothing more than wallets. There isn't much out right now of interest. Only thing that i see of interest coming out (hopefully) is Darkfall. Aventurine is supposed to release a gameplay video of it on August 29th.

"There's a video coming out, most probably next week, or shortly after. We’re talking about a long 100% in-game pure gameplay trailer with no scripting, no simulation, no post-processing. It’s us play-testing while fraps is running on free cameras and playercams and all the footage was collected and edited. The scenarios for it had to be run as part of our testing and development schedule as they came up. Nothing is scripted. We wanted to give you something that can put you in the true spirit of the game and this requires us to be actually playing the game like you would be, and not just taking you on a sightseeing tour or have a company make a marketing cinematic trailer for us. "

But egh, we'll see. Beta dates for Darkfall have been mentioned a few times before. Although, there is actual proof of Aventurine negotiating deals with AudioVisual Enterprises, Codebreakers and Ubisoft.

[Hytek]

Originally Posted by Cyric

The name "EA Mythic" on WAR is enough to keep me away from it. With the way they treat their customers, like nothing more than wallets. There isn't much out right now of interest. Only thing that i see of interest coming out (hopefully) is Darkfall. Aventurine is supposed to release a gameplay video of it on August 29th.

EA Mythic is no more. They changed the name back to Mythic Entertainment. This was released in the latest newsletter that was came out like a couple days ago.

"Early this month, studio GM, Mark Jacobs, announced that EA Mythic was changing its name and is once again known as Mythic Entertainment. Here is an excerpt from his interview with MMORPG.com:

"We are going back to Mythic Entertainment," said Mark Jacobs, the VP and General Manager of EA Mythic. "I’ve always been a believer of separate branding," he continued, going on to cite a number of successful companies like Disney and GE that operate subsidiary companies under separate and distinct brands.

"I think that this is a wonderful example of how things at EA are changing," he continued, "both John (Riccitiello, CEO of EA) and Frank (Gibeau, EA) have spoken multiple times about city states, more freedom, that sort of thing and I think this is an obvious example."

While Mythic Entertainment is still an EA studio, with the resources of the entire company at their disposal, they are reclaiming their identity as the studio that created Dark Age of CamelotTM and pioneered the Realm vs. Realm experience."

Source: http://img.war-europe.com/syndic_img/nlarchive/2008-07/en/newsletter.html