All Posts by boinged

Got a link to that?

This is the NCSoft way - close down a failed game so that their subscribers bolster the numbers for their new game, in this case Aion. It was a shame to lose the innovative Auto Assault, same with Tabula Rasa but at least NCSoft brought that innovation to the table. We're already seeing a similar cover system in Stargate Worlds and I feel that exploration has become a bigger part of MMOs, perhaps inspired in some way by TR's Logos hunt.

Tabula Rasa is dead, long live Aion. Well for a year and a half until the next NCSoft release at least ;)

It was a decent article. These types of players do exist and it's interesting to see a guide categorise them. Ultimately it's up to the guild leadership to decide what to do with them.

If you don't care about these failings and the recruit has a great sense of humour then feel free to recruit. If you have a lot of other members who take raiding seriously and one bad apple will spoil the experience for them then don't invite him in. Feel free to educate the person as to why he's turned down.

At the end of the day, a guild is a social group who spend a lot of time together trying to solve large team goals. This guide is about picking team players, not uber skilled people and applies even outside of raiding.

Excellent review and spot on. I played AoC for a few months on an RP-PVP server and noticed as time went on that the amount of random attacks increased. This was before the PVP reward system so I can only imagine what it's like now.

I don't know what Funcom were thinking implementing the rewards before the consequences - that just turns the whole period into a race to max out PVP-xp before the gank police turn up and end the party. AoC becomes very linear and confined after the first 30 levels so it's not like you can even escape.

I also agree with the review about combat being the be all and end all. Get to 80 without a decent sized guild and there's nothing to do but reroll. Once you run out of things to kill then it's game over. The seiges are buggy and limiting in who can attend with no feeling of purpose. Take a look at WAR to see how it could have gone.

I quite like the fact that there are cut classes. It makes each race different and gives scenario matches in each land a different feel. Ok so people go and play in other lands but the majority are natives.

I'm more interested in getting the capitals back (as long as players won't get spread too thin between them). I want to fight for my capital and that of the hated elves, not some chaos weirdos :)

I'd like to see some age related settings in the game.

For example, if the game is targetted at kids then chat is going to be phrase-based whereas that's going to be a real pain for adults. Hopefully parental controls will be able to lock chat so that kids can play safely and only read and write in phrases. With the locks off, full chat is enabled.

Of course, this won't stop people building giant phalluses (as seen in Spore) so I think GMs are going to be busy :)

I'd be fine with having servers for kids and servers for adults as well. I don't particularly want to play with young children although I can understand some parents might want to with their kids.

When I was a child I always wanted to stay in and play with my lego instead of going outside so I guess this MMO is the evolution of that.

Don't forget that AoC is aiming more for realism with muted tones instead of bright primary colours. That said the interesting AoC armour is the NPC stuff which was shown in most of the screenshots. Quest reward armour is generally dull and identical to everything else out there. Crafted stuff is similar.

What does look nice are the high level sets, the epic sets and the pvp sets. The problem is there is one each of these sets per class.

WAR armour is equally unimpressive (and much lower resolution) and my Witch Elf looks a lot like any other Witch Elf but at least it doesn't look like most of the other classes which is one of the failings of AoC.

Also, the WAR armour has fancy names and varying stats whereas AoC has 80 levels of "Scything Wristguards" which all add the same damage type. In AoC there are a few interesting blues and the occasional purple with a decent look and name but until recently they were really hard to get so a lot of people missed out on them.

If Funcom really want to turn the game around they'll look next at itemisation. The game is already immersive, it just needs to be rewarding and make people want to invest in their characters.

Well despite the farce that was EU open beta things actually ran quite smoothly for EU head start. I was away for most of the weekend and registered my codes Sunday evening. Got both confirmation emails shortly afterwards and then was in-game.

Servers are stable but there is a problem for some people with lag increasing the longer you play, which could be a memory leak. It's nowhere near as bad as the AoC memory leak though.

The main problem I have now is trying to actually get on my server. Mine isn't the worst one but I had a 20 minute wait last night, then got dc'd (I was afk so may be due to that) and was faced with another wait. Still, full servers are better than empty ones and their is talk of caps being increased.

The game is a blast with a good mix of PVP and PVE. There's actually a point to minigames which AoC sorely needed but should at least have soon. I'm playing a Witch Elf which is similar to my AoC Assassin so will be interesting to see how they compare and what the end-game is like for both in each game.

Head start is on the 14th Sep for CE pre-order boxes, 15th for SE pre-orders so expect open beta to end before then. With GOA though, it's anyone's guess.

Only about 5000 people got to play on the EU servers on Sunday, most of those being ex-closed beta members.

Registration was supposed to happen Sunday morning, about 48 hours ago. It is still not working.

We were told to create new website accounts but this wasn't necessary.

We were told to register our keys only once but people who spammed the reg server are now playing and I'm not, after waiting 20 hours.

Account creation is now disabled so anyone without a website account is screwed.

I've taken part in most open and closed beta's for the past 5 years and this one is without a doubt the most poorly handled. GOA have really screwed this up and I'm beginning to lose confidence in them for launch and post-launch.

To make matters worse I've had to pay for this privilege by paying the deposit on a CE box. I didn't pay just for OB but without paying I couldn't take part.

There are no official forums to let Mythic know how we feel about this. On the most popular fan forum you will get banned if you say anything negative about GOA followed by an offensive tirade from the site owner likening you to the few people that sent him offensive PMs. No, I haven't been banned because I'm too scared to post there now.

I just hope this is the best game ever and is worth all the hassle.

Nice article but I disagree about unpredictability. Most PVPers learn their i-win tactic (usually from forums and based on a cookie-cutter pvp-build) and blindly repeat that.

If you like FFA pvp then try AoC. Pretty soon the PVP there will have consequences due to the fugitive system and there will also be rewards. Even without this stuff the it's still fun having that element of danger, plus the servers are well populated.

If you like faction PVP then wait for WAR.

I'm enjoying AoC still but only because I rerolled and am hoping the extra content will be in before I reach lvl 55 again. I don't mind the out of memory errors every few hours, the lag spikes every few hours and the population is fine on my server (Aquilonia). I've got more than my money's worth of entertainment but wish they'd add some level 80 content that doesn't require 24 people.

I do find this talk of an expansion a bit strange but maybe Funcom are trying to copy that from Guildwars too. They are quite open about borrowing ideas. I'll tell you exactly why the PVP patch and new content isn't available yet - it's the bait to steal people back from WAR...

Open beta should mean open to all. This is only open to people that pre-order the game or have a fileplanet account. I remember there was such an outrage when Funcom did something similar with AoC. I guess all the AoC-haters were really WAR-fanbois...

For the record, I've pre-ordered and will play this and AoC and form my own opinions on which is best but I predict exactly the same fallout with fickle players.

So a stealth built Commander can sneak up to a group, kill one before the stealth points run out and noone else can see him? Then he can move on to the next one and as long as he neutralises enough of their reveal points, will remain stealthed?

It kind of makes sense from a sniper perspective but seems unbalanced in the stealther's favour. I think attacking should reveal you to everyone in LOS, this sounds like easy-mode right now.

I bought it and played for a few months at launch after the bad reviews. I just wanted to see how bad it was and was pleasantly surprised. I even bought a new PC to play it so some good came of this :)

As mentioned before, if you like the massive open world type MMO then this is for you. I'd like to see a follow-up article about what is great about it now.

I'm currently enjoying AoC, will try WAR and I think the only other MMOs I'd seriously play are WoW and VG.

Ryzom will be back soon which also has some beautiful scenery and fun gathering and crafting systems. VG reminds me of it in some ways although each has its pros and cons. I'd try the free trials of both, what have you got to lose?

I just bought a copy to play with some friends and to see how it compares to AoC, which I'm still really enjoying. Good to finally know the launch date but it would be nice to know when the OB and prelaunch start and end (I couldn't see the info on the EU site).

Sounds a bit like Tabula Rasa with the shield in TR being replaced by focus, cover affects damage and mobs circle you.

The combat is very fun in TR though and most MMOs borrow from each other.

Which MMOs are truly free to play, for the whole thing? Do those also offer a pay option? If they do then what don't you get for paying nothing? If you aren't getting something for playing for free does that mean it's a demo as well?

Demo is a pretty general term. Even Runescape which (to quote one of their recent press releases) "... remains the 2nd largest free-to-play and subscription-based MMO in the western world, with more than six million active players and over one million paying subscribers" has limitations and is a demo by your rationale.

Wurm Online seems to give away a lot in the "demo".

The villas are your daily quests to make money. You can still do them at 80 right? There are also raids, seiging, guild cities, crafting, world pvp & pvp minigames (soon with rewards).

I've logged around 250 hours since prelaunch with 2 alts in the 20s and one main in the 70s. If people have maxed out their chars and cities then that's their loss. Time to wait for the content to catch up, as with every other single MMO out there.

As for the buddy keys, it is a bit cheeky expecting people to pay for the download although it is around 20GB. Someone has to pay for that bandwidth and I'd rather it was a trial player than coming out of my subs

You can play Wurm Online for free in a limited form, same as lots of other games. I wouldn't expect to get the whole thing for free because they have a subscription model rather than an item shop model. The free trial is just marketing.

The article doesn't even mention that Wurm is free to play, just that there is a new server. Seems to me like it's a good time to start playing as you can help forge a new world.