All Posts by Fion

Please do, it is 'my' opinion after all, formed by plenty of time with the game in beta, pre-release, etc. I formulated my opinion of other MMOGs the same way, from LotRO to Eve.

Warcraft certainly coppied Warhammer, but WAR has done the same. Sure the orcs look the same, and the dwarves.. but they also look pretty much like classic 'dwarves and orcs.' I think when folks are talking about WAR being a clone of WoW, they are talking in terms of gameplay. Just about everything about WAR is very obviously taken strait out of WoW and it's predecessors.

Why on earth would you recommend Warhammer Online for those with MMO Burnout? WAR is nothing but more of the same. The same old lead-by-the-hand quest system. The same old linear and unimaginative areas and graphics. The same tired instanced RvR. The same old boring turn based combat system only even less fun and because the game is PvP focused..  the same old boring turn based peck at your keyboard PvP. There's little to WAR besides new quests to do and public quests that are so heavily scripted they are only fun once then you've basically seen all it has to offer.

Now if your looking for something like WoW that isn't WoW or LotRO.. you'll probably enjoy the game. But if your burnt out on the has-been and the tried and true.. you'll find little in WAR that hasn't been done before.

No matter your opinion of the game I thought this needed posting.

From this interview;

www.videogamer.com/pc/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning/preview-1252.html

I won't get into my own personal opinion of WAR (or WOW) but I will say typical Barnett hyping what he cant deliver.

Originally posted by kingofnothin

There's just really no open exploration, which means once you reach the end it's just RvR. Just wasn't my cup of tea, but may be for others.

I found the same thing. Granted I only got into Tier 2 on 3 characters but I found the areas are very clostrophobic and narrowly designed with a few areas heading off this way or that but extremely linear. Maybe for other races and in higher tiers things open up but if they are that closed in early on, I cant see it happening. It was like AoC Conall's Valley in beta x 2.

It's well put together but on the whole rather generic and not very fun IMHO. It'll do reasonably well because it's pretty solid (on the order of LotRO,) but it won't come close to being a 'WoW Killer.'

The combat especially is exceptionally boring on some classes and somewhat fun on others. The PvP is pretty much the same typical stuff you see in other games, though the rewards are nice and the fact that you can lvl and gear up on pvp alone isn't seen much these days.

The graphics.. well they are pretty 2004. But if the gameplay is there it doesn't really matter. Personally, the gameplay just isn't there. Though I did enjoy Public Quests... the first 2 times I did them.

I haven't had any technical issues really since I got into beta. Very solid on that front. Now bugs.. that I see a tun of, some big ones to.

I think the game will do good but IMHO it feels like a 'been here, done that' MMOG to me. Public quests are fun the first 2 or 3 times you do them, but the classes, the combat, the gameplay, just.. feels like I've already played the game for years and have no real intention on continuing.

That opinion would be wrong. Theres a tun more, simply because many of AoC's classes are hybrids.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Fion

I agree. I've played the pre-view weekend and the last two days and while you cant really get an accurate idea of the game in that time it becomes almost imediately obvious that the classes boil down to 4 or 5 archetypes and are extremely similar.

But think about it. Mythic's biggest focus in the game was how to bring about balance. Everyone knows they were horendous with balance in DAoC and took years to even come close to achieving it. They know it, theres no denying. Now whats the easiest way to balance the classes in the game. Make them all follow a certain pattern of archetype. I knew this was going to happen when the podcast showing how each class fell into a specific archetype.

I do like how each class kinda has their own trick. Healers who's heals get better/faster from melee attacks or spells, etc. Though these are directly taken from Age of Conan, only implented far more bluntly and with far less depth to them.

I think over-all the game is solid and relatively bug free (though the animation and 'cannot attack' bugs are game breakers IMHO,) It's certainly no WoW killer and IMHO AoC is the better game at it's core, even if WAR is more solid technically and bug wise right now.

I can see the game doing pretty well but after a few months the new shine will wear off and then I suspect the game will have subs similar to LotRO.

 

Ohhhhhhhhhh they stole them from Conan.   I thought they stole them from Guild Wars, unless Conan stole the idea from Guild Wars.  Oh no hold on I thought Warrior priests were a rip off of WoW paladins.

 

So I guess that means all the classes in AoC must be cheap WoW ripoffs too.  Really WAR classes were ripped off from AoC who just ripped off WoW.

 

See everyone?  WAR is not a WoW clone.  Its an AOC clone.  Its only a clone of a WoW clone.

Holy defensive batman. I make a simple comment that the idea is taken from AoC only not as well done and mr defensive goes balistic on me.

I agree. I've played the pre-view weekend and the last two days and while you cant really get an accurate idea of the game in that time it becomes almost imediately obvious that the classes boil down to 4 or 5 archetypes and are extremely similar.

But think about it. Mythic's biggest focus in the game was how to bring about balance. Everyone knows they were horendous with balance in DAoC and took years to even come close to achieving it. They know it, theres no denying. Now whats the easiest way to balance the classes in the game. Make them all follow a certain pattern of archetype. I knew this was going to happen when the podcast showing how each class fell into a specific archetype.

I do like how each class kinda has their own trick. Healers who's heals get better/faster from melee attacks or spells, etc. Though these are directly taken from Age of Conan, only implented far more bluntly and with far less depth to them.

I think over-all the game is solid and relatively bug free (though the animation and 'cannot attack' bugs are game breakers IMHO,) It's certainly no WoW killer and IMHO AoC is the better game at it's core, even if WAR is more solid technically and bug wise right now.

I can see the game doing pretty well but after a few months the new shine will wear off and then I suspect the game will have subs similar to LotRO.

They hurt somewhat;

But note that while most MMOGs these aren't necessary, there are some where they are. Like Anarchy Online, with has a thousand times as many items in then WoW does. People think WoW has lots of items and loot, they haven't got a clue. AO has tens of millions of items in it  and 99% of them have 'levels' from 1 to 250, which each level having different statistics. So there are times when you NEED those database websites lol.

Now AO is an extreme example. Interestingly Age of Conan went the opposite route, at least when it comes to websites like Thottbot and Wowhead when it comes to quests. Were as just about everybody uses Thottbot or Lightheaded mods in game to figure out where to go and what to do in a quest, in AoC the game internally does this by pointing you to where you gotta go. Giving you a rough idea of where you can get quest items, etc. Similar to SWG with it's waypoints. Now some might say that ruins it. But I say might as well include this in the game because you know if it's not there everyone will go to an external website or download a mod that does the exact same thing.

Originally posted by demented669

 

what we need is a real "sandbox" game

Wile I disagree that games today suck, I totally agree we need a new sandbox MMOG (and Eve just doesn't do it for me.) The next prospective sand box, afaik, will be CCP/WW's World of Darkness MMOG. Know I don't know if you've played White Wolves fantastic PnP RPG but it's set in our world, just more noir, more dark and brooding and all the creatures of legend exist and haunt the night of our cities. It's punk meets Supernatural meets a Frank Miller graphic novel with Vampires, Werewolves, Mages (and this is no simple 'wow wizard' magic.) If the game is anything like the PnP game it's class-less, level-less and will feature at least one big city in an open world sand-box game. I think it will as CCP knows how to make MMOGs that don't follow the norm and are very open world sand-box games (ie Eve.) Work has just really begun on it but as a long time WoD player (back to the early ninties with the release of Vampire: the Masquerade,) I simply cant wait for it.

Well truthfully I don't buy that many MMOGs. I've only really stuck with half a dozen MMOGs for any length of time. The rest I either played a trial for, or beta-tested.. more often the latter. The games I have stuck with (or plan too,) include;

Everquest - Played it until just after the first expansion hit. I really enjoyed the game though the slooow pace of gameplay and the camping really... really got annoying. When I got into AO beta.. I never looked back to EQ.

Anarchy Online - The deepest and most complex MMOG to date. Also the game with the 2nd worst launch to date. But similar to AoC it has gameplay mechanics that are so damn good and innovative I stuck with it until the rest of the game was fixed. I spent 3 years in Anarchy Online and loved it like no other MMOG. Though EQ was my first, it simply didn't hold a candle to AO.

Dark Age of Camelot - I played DAoC on and off for probly a year and a half. I say on and off for two reasons. One, this was my 'I need a break from AO' game, and two.. within 2-3 months of playing it was a sure bet that Mythic would patch the game and completely change classes, nerf classes, buff realms that clearly didn't need it. The last 5% of the patch was 'content'.. if you can call it that. So I always stormed back to AO pissed off at Mythic.. and no I didn't play the FotM classes. I played an Eldritch until the class was basically re-designed from the ground up.. and nerfed heavily, then I played a Blade Master, which actually got better over that year and a half, not utterly worse. But was still nerfed and then fixed on a regular basis. I think Mythic still holds the record for worst balance and worst nerfing in the genre.. though these days it's not bad.. but I think balance has been achieved more because theres only a few hundred people on each server at prime time, not because classes were actually ever balanced. This.. right here.. is the primary reason why when I look at WAR, all these old memories flood back and I am uneasy about the game to say the least.

Star Wars Galaxies - Another game that was unfinished at release but I bought it after beta-testing it for some months because it was just so different from any other MMOG. This game turned me on to crafting. AO's crafting was so so deep but never really hit me. DAoC's was an excersize in curing your sleep disorders lol. I spent a full year just tailoring in the game (with a little pistoleer on the side.) I specialized in making outfits from the movies and jedi outfits (before there were jedi.) Now IRL I'm a normal guy.. I sniff my shirts before I put them on.. cause I may have worn them before and I'm not sure lol. But in SWG I loved making clothing and I had a huge customer base. Then I found the most complex and deep crafting 'system' ever in an MMOG.. the Bioengineer. I loved the class. Played for 2 years before the CU hit and made our job a bit tougher. But the bright side was the games population boomed and the combat was actually fun for once. Then a few months later the NGE removed all that, killed the player base, nerfed all crafting, removed my beloved Creature Handler and Bio-Engineer and.. I said a permanent goodbye.

City of Heroes - Some time after SWG came out CoH/CoV (CoX) did. I love CoH as purely a casual MMOG experience. If you play it like other MMOGs (like investing 6+ hours a day,) you burn out FAST. But if you take it slow, play it casually, it can be one of the more enjoyable and unique experiences in the MMOG world. I mostly played this with my nephew and we had an absolute blast. Haven't played much in the last year though. But I must say the developers for this game (at least once Jack Emmert left,) are top notch and the content patches for this game are second to none. LotRO is a close second, but even their content patches don't really come close.

WoW - Love-hate.. I played WoW for.. oh 2.5 years. Starting a year after SWG went under (I finally convinced myself to ignore all the forum trolls and haters and give it a shot.) Loved it. So damn simpleton but in the purest form.. it is serious fun. Expansion came out (I dinged 60 that day lol.. yes I'm a slow as leveler) and they nerfed the SHIT out of my already crappy Druid (after buffing them and bringing them up from the worst class in the game just one month earlier.) I left for 6 months, came back and have enjoyed it since. Just about every RL friend I have plays the game lol, and despite moving on to AoC, I've kept an open account so I can play with my RL friends (only one of whom picked up AoC and loves the hell out of it.) So yea, WoW was really fun, though so very simplistic. But unfortunately Blizzard didn't learn from their mistakes in End game and WoW has by far the worst end game experience of any MMOG in the genre, by far. The PvP is simply horrid, accept for the arena. The PvE is just one big pointless grind fest for year, over and over and over.. and unfortunately WotLK doesn't look like it'll make any attempt to improve on this. Let alone an attempt to broaden their color pallet, or introduce new textures to the game, or monsters (if I'm fighting the same wolves at 80 that I was at level 1, only with different skins, I'm gonna be supremely pissed off lol.) I know that having a large open world SEVERLY limits your texture and mesh budget, but seriously.. the 'look' of WoW is getting really.. really old and really.. really over used.

Age of Conan - What can I say about this game. Funcom's first MMOG, AO, was by leaps and bounds my favorite MMOG of all time. So I knew I'd love it. I got into beta in October last year and immediately loved it and unlike LotRO (which I beta-tested from later summer to release the next spring,) I wasn't completely and utterly burnt out by release of AoC. Now, 2 months in the game seriously needs some work. Like AO it was incomplete, though technically much more stable. It's no where NEAR as bad as trolls and War-fanbois will have you believe. I've even seen a poster compare it to Dark & Lights release. For SHAME on them. Shit it's release is far superior to VG's even, though it is one of the worst 'content wise' releases in the last few years. The gameplay mechanics make up for it in a huge way and while it lacks the depth and compexity of AO, it's still thuroughly enjoyable. AO didn't have 1/4 of it's depth at launch, so I'm confident AoC will increase substantially in this as well. So for the forseable future, AoC is where I'll be staying, and I love it. So if you haven't tried it, get a buddy key and give it a go. Despite what you read on these forums, you may find you love the game. Just remember that the 1-20 game is quite different then the 20-80 (though I personally think the 20+ game is much more enjoyable.) IMHO the Tortage experience was Funcoms major mistake. In making the 1-20 game so different from 20+ they 'gimped themselves' in to eventually disappointing many players once they got past Tortage. But alas that is history.

Heh lovely propaganda Battlekruse. The only people that even suggest that it's '6+ months before it's even playable' are those that haven't even played it.

Game has some issues no doubt, but it's more complete then many MMOGs are at this point. And WoW didn't have major problems in it's first several months? Can I borrow your rose colored glasses please?

Always good, always accurate. But it's also pretty clear this guy has a particular dislike of all things MMOG, or as he calls them 'MMO-or-pi-ga' :) Except for WoW of course. I'd even say he got a few things wrong, such as the character creation. This review isn't as harsh as some folks would like I'm sure, and certainly not as harsh as some of the other recent Yatzee reviews.

www.videosift.com/video/Zero-Punctuation-Review-Alone-in-the-Dark

And Battlekruse continues his unblemished record of posting every bit of negative news, reviews, tidbits or over-inflated troll-worthy goodness.

There was one really funny part.. the rest kinda sucked.

Originally posted by Warmaker

Quit a few days ago.

Not letting those incompetent, useless, nerf-heavy patchers get anymore of my hard earned cash.  Those idiots can't fix major technical issues that have been around for months now.

Originally posted by MaGicBush

I am still playing and plan to stay for quite a while, may quit when WAR is released(but will wait a few months after war comes out to see the response). ATM I am very much enjoying myself, and today's update actually had some good fixes/additions for the first time.

Considering the game's been out for a few months already, and this patch is the first in ages that is actually USEFUL and not dreaded... it is a telling example of the quality of patches coming out for AoC.

I really wanted to love this game, jumped alot of hoops to get and play it on opening day.  What a disappointment.

erm.. games been out for less then 2 months. Though yesterdays patch did help the game quite a lot.

Originally posted by ghostinfinit

happily still playing.

same.. makes me wonder how some folks are like 'it won't be playable for 6 months.' Games buggy for sure, theres content holes for sure, theres issues that shouldn't have been there at launch. But the game is very playable and highly fun. At least IMHO.

Originally posted by Ghist

Just another straw poll that mirrors XFire's numbers.  I still say that any game that has more 50% people quitting in the first 2 months is a bad game. 

 

At 50% that does still leave 350K left though. 

Xfires statistics do not represent accounts but hours played. Coupled with the fact that every single game's number of players play less often after the game has been out for a bit, suggests that a 50% reduction does not remotely = 50% less players. But simply a 50% reduction in time played. Now obviously some number in there does represent folks who have quit, but it would be beyond false to suggest it the xfire statistics represent a 50% drop in accounts.

And this poll (as with every single poll and number on this website,) is completely inacurate because it isn't controlled. You can vote multiple times with multiple accounts. You can vote any option you choose with no way to know if you voted truthfully. Last but not least even if only 350k subs were left, only 120 people have voted and that isn't even close to being statistically significant.