[AoC] Age of conan set to fail more

[Eroa]

there was only one thing I enjoyed about AoC, and that was canceling my account with them

Sure, WoW was no where near perfect when it was released, seeing as I was a hardcore pvper from daoc I didn't really enjoy wow at the start, but AoC just pushed it even further and released a game so far away from beeing finished, just the fact that female charachters were doing 33% less damage? I mean seriously, it was know all the way through the betas and wasn't fixed untill several months into the release

Funcome should have been smart and waitied untill after the summer with the relase, seeing it being 18+ content and all, and as stated before, alot of 18+ people, like there summers to be a summer, specially when you are from places like me (north of sweden) where we have snow most parts of the year and as worst in the winter 3h sunlight a day

[Kopitar]

The only thing I liked about AoC when I tried it on a RPPvP server was the free-for-all PvP system. Everything else was pretty much rubbish, although the insane overuse of instancing to make up for a poor technical platform was the final straw.

The numbers will continue to decline.

Now... WoW with a free-for-all PvP system outside of towns. THAT I would re-roll for in a heartbeat.

Ah well. I can dream.

I rarely see more than 1 instance of an area these days, not enough people

A WoW FFA PVP server is the only thing that will make me come back....

/Lootable corpses would also be a nice addition to this server

[Elesar]

So, call me strange, but...

I love AoC. I have a lvl 80 ToS on the PvE server Dagoth. My guild is not large, but not so small as to never see people online. We have about 20 active members with several that have dropped until the end of summer, with promises to return and an eagerness to get to 80.

The main problem with AoC, as far as I can see, is that it was a premature release. Other issues are the demanding spec's of the game, a lack of content (Due to early release), and the PvP system not being fully implemented yet.

Leveling in the game was a stop-go pace. You would fly for a few levels, then hit dry areas in the content and be stuck at one level for several days of playing with little to do other than the daily quests (reset every four hours). The crafting system, while juvenile in its simplicity, is good in so much as you can make gear and consumables that are actually useful.

Player made cities are a nice feature of the game, and my city is nearly done with T2 (of 3). Once at T3, your guild is the able to go and compete for a battle-keep for the GvG instances.

Instancing: Is not due to a technical disadvantage. It is there for the players sake. Imagine running into a zone with the graphics that AoC has, and having a couple hundred people there. ANY system would lock solid. I run my system (8800GTS, AMD 6400+, 4GB RAM) at medium-high settings, and in a largely populated area, I can only pull around 35 FPS. Sure the game could utilize dated graphics like those that WoW is using, and the there wouldn't need to be instances, but what is the use of advancing the technology in gaming systems if we are going to still be using cell shading and blocky models in ten years time?

The combat system in AoC is by far the most intense that I have seen for a one character experience. This does hinder the ability to multi-box the game, along with the current lack of a /follow command.

Healing in the game is rather dificult, but a welcome change. A healer is never just a healer. All three classes can deal a decent amount of damage, and are easily solo-able if that is your style. The issue is the current balancing of the healing, which I think is rather under-par. Each class of healer can only heal effectively if the target is not already under the effects of other healers of the same class. On top of that, healers only get three heals by default, two HoTs and one burst. The burst induces a 60 second debuff against burst heals from the same class. The HoTs are difficult. The smaller one is non-stackable, regardless of the healers class. The larger of the two stack, but only from different-class healers. This can make it difficult to keep your tank up when being hit for 2-3k dmg by Vistrix (Big dragon raid boss). Heals are also only 50% effective on the healer itself.


Well, I seem to have lost my train of thought now, and need to act like I'm actually working before my boss catches me on the net again. Hope I provided a bit of insight on the game for those that haven't tried it, or quit before giving it a fair shot.

[Steph]

I bought AoC hoping for a new UO, i.e. ffa pvp and player towns. With all failures in deployment, server and client stability and more importantly poor design and ergonomics, I was hard pressed to play for more than an hour or two at a time. I remember trying out WoW and loving all the improvements made compared to UO. When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed. Yes, the graphics are nice. But then, what really makes a game is not pretty playing pieces, it is the game itself being sound and fun. I care more about classes, abilities, quests and game mechanics working than fancy graphics.

In retrospect I am very happy that I did not buy any fluffy collectors edition or wasted any money beyond the cover price of the normal game edition on this train wreck. =]

[Dominian]

I bought AoC hoping for a new UO, i.e. ffa pvp and player towns. With all failures in deployment, server and client stability and more importantly poor design and ergonomics, I was hard pressed to play for more than an hour or two at a time. I remember trying out WoW and loving all the improvements made compared to UO. When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed. Yes, the graphics are nice. But then, what really makes a game is not pretty playing pieces, it is the game itself being sound and fun. I care more about classes, abilities, quests and game mechanics working than fancy graphics.

In retrospect I am very happy that I did not buy any fluffy collectors edition or wasted any money beyond the cover price of the normal game edition on this train wreck. =]

Server stability??

I dont actually remember the servers beeing down at all while i played AoC apart from the 2 hours the first day, and poor design i assume the items didnt flash enough? Most of the areas in AoC were realy uniqe and you could walk trought a zone not feeling you been in the same place all the time. (Count the farming spots OUT) Try walking trought desolace,durotar,un'goro etc you wont find spots that atleast to me feels uniqe when the same buildings are placed all over the game. The game itself wasnt fun for me either thought... I realy hoped AoC would work for me but sadly im just another wow puppy!

[Elesar]

When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed.

Well, you do have to keep in mind that you likely tried it when there were just one or two, if any UI mods out yet. I personally author the EldarUI (Though it hasn't been updated in a while) and always look for ways to improve on the oh-so-lacking default UI. Honestly, the majority of games that I have tried had a piss poor default UI (Including WoW), but just give some time for the authors to explore the schema of the UI markup language (XML in AoC's case) and there will be better things to come.

One thing that would have helped is if FunCom gave us authors any kind of information on the UI modification process. All they really said was where to put the modified files, but no list of valid arguments or game variables. I still haven't figured out how to draw my own window in the game, which was the easiest thing to do when I did UIs for Vanguard. All anybody has been able to do so far is create info-windows, which are just html/text scripts that print text into a pop-up type window.

Again, with the game being as young as it is, there is always new content, better optimizations, better stability being patched in. The only time the servers are down are for patch days (Though the downtime is sometimes longer than announced). On a rare occasion an instance may crash, but is back up by the time that you can type your password back into the login screen.

We are still waiting to hear if the dev's ever come through on the rumored LUA integration/update, but I think that that has been swept under the rug, and will likely be denied as having ever been a plan from the start.

[wowphreak]

guess yeh all forgot how wow started of eh. Server crashing regulary unfinished content, half bake classes. Every MMO game starts off that way.
What yer playing now is been in development for years.

[glo]

guess yeh all forgot how wow started of eh. Server crashing regulary unfinished content, half bake classes. Every MMO game starts off that way.
What yer playing now is been in development for years.

Wow has of course had much polish applied since release but it was far superior to AoC on day 1.

As far as WAR goes it will come out with much less content because of economical pressure but I doubt very much it will come close to flopping in a way even close to we have seen from recent MMO's. I fully expect WAR to enjoy 10-20% market share within a couple years. WAR has a more sophisticated engine running the game with even more of a background story and extensibility options. The only way I see WAR disappearing is for WoW 2 to come out along with a sci-fi based game by blizzard(both with more advanced engines then the current wow) bundled for a single monthly fee. At that point they will corner the mmo market for awhile.

I for one hope WAR does extremely well, if you ever played warhammer 40k you can picture how amazing an mmo based on that game would be and that is their next project.