Kools

But that's not really what MMOs are about; they're supposed to be a continuing experience. If everyone quit as soon as they hit the level cap, the MMO market would probably collapse. I don't know many MMO players - purely anecdotal evidence, of course - that pick up a MMO expecting to only play it for a month or so and then quit. From that standpoint, it's perfectly reasonable to be negative about the game. I'm not saying I was screwed out of my hard-earned cash or anything like that; I'm simply saying that it leaves a lot to be desired from a sustainability standpoint, since right now you hit 80 and then find yourself with nothing to do, which is a piss-poor game design.

Took me about as long as it did in WoW. Which, coincidentally, is about the amount of time Funcom themselves said they thought it should take. I wasn't the first on my server or anything, by any means. And, no, MMO developers need to stop releasing games with absolutely no endgame and telling themselves they can get it patched in within the first month. Rarely, if ever, happens, because - in AoC's case, at least - massive technical and gameplay issues take priority. Finally, as stated earlier, this isn't just an endgame complaint; content thins out at 50, to the point where you spend far more time grinding than questing. There are literally nowhere near enough quests to get you to 80. There are nowhere near enough quests to get you from 55 to 58, really. It's pretty bad.

Yeah, the game got such glowing reviews mostly because a lot of the reviewers only played the 1 to 20 content, which is pretty awesome. Things take a turn for Crapsville around the level 50 area, though if you're only 19 now, they'll probably have all the promised 50+ content that was supposed to be released in July out by the time you have to worry about it.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart3.html As you should be able to see from the chart AoC and AO are on entirely different scales, AoC had 700,000 subscribers as of june 30 and AO never had more than 60,000. Has AoC launched in asia? 50% or so of WOW subscribers are from asia. AO launched before WoW massively opened up the MMO market to those who had previously never been interested in it as well. I'm not really sure what your point is; AoC sold a lot of boxes, that's absolutely true. I'd be shocked if it hadn't bled at least 40% of its subscriber base since then, though. And no, it hasn't launched in Asia, as far as I know. And yes, it's roughly half of the subscriber base for WoW. That still leaves five million European and North American subscribers. Nobody's going to touch those numbers for a long, long time.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart3.html

This is a foolish statement. No, it's not. The players have been extremely vocal about what needs fixing; the developers have made some remarkably shocking comments about their own game that indicates they're not completely aware of how it functions. The female character swing speed bug was denied as existing for the first two months, for example, and that's a -significant- problem. Coming out now and saying, "Uh, hey, what ought to be fixed?" is a little worrying in that context. Except that SOE wasn't trying to improve things for the people playing the game; Smedley specifically stated the reason for the NGE was that they were chasing WoW's subs. People playing the game always let the developers know what sucks and what they want fixed. Not really. I've been around for plenty of launches. The technical issues aren't what bothers me; I expect those, as anyone should. WoW had technical issues at launch, but it also had plenty of content, and more patched in almost immediately. No MMO's ever finished, but some are more finished than others. AoC shipped drastically unfinished. You might want to check AO's numbers again. It launched fairly well, and then tanked due to all the issues - eerily similar to AoC. It never recovered its popularity; it basically pulled a Vanguard, where it kept enough subs to sustain, but was in no way an "exceptionally popular" game. That's not really what they're doing, though. Their stated goal has always been to do an XBox 360 release; they think that's where the real money is, with the way consoles are taking off. The guys that get a console MMO right, theoretically, are going to be hauling in the cash. Current AoC release is basically funding for 360 dev time. Dedication's great, as long as it pays off. There's no question that the dev team at Sigil, aside from the guys actually running the company, were dedicated to Vanguard. They built that game in a year, and taken objectively, that's pretty damn impressive. The game still killed itself at launch, and is never going to be considered a success. AoC seems to be trending down that path. Might be a great game in a year, but it's going to have a fifth of its launch population, because people move on, and WAR, Chronicles of Spellborn, and a couple other dark horses will be out by then. And let's not forget WotLK.

It all of course depends on how much the developer sent on making the MMOG. I used to know the typical number a simple MMOG would cost... but I am drawing a blank. Here's some info (While not 100% accurate, it is quite extensive) on subscriber numbers. If any are interested. http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html lol that chart is ridiculous if accurate. Any developer who would try to go after WoW is just throwing money down the toilet. None of the others are even remotely playing in the same ballpark. Not even close. The chart matches pretty closely with actual company-released subscriber numbers, so I'd say it's fairly accurate. The thing about WoW is, it was a remarkable, totally unexpected success. MMOs were trending in the 200K range at the absolute upper limit before WoW came along, and nobody can really say why it's so ridiculously popular. That's part of the beauty of it. MMO devs don't really know for sure what's going to be a hit, and even if it's not a runaway, lightning in a bottle success, you're still pulling in $15 a month from 350K people, which is a lot of cash, in the grand scheme of things. MMOs can be profitable at far fewer subscribers than that; there's some German cyberpunk one out there that only has like 6K, at last count, and it's apparently pulling in enough cash to keep afloat. All depends on how expensive the game was, and how expensive it is to maintain. AoC shipped 1 million units upon release, and sold anywhere between 500K and almost all of them. I think actual subscriber base has dropped drastically since then - it's kind of crap at endgame - but still, they probably recouped their development costs and made a little, but who knows? Either way, that's a game out of a studio with a far, far worse reputation than Bioware, the name of which alone is going to sell a hell of a lot of boxes. The only problem is that it makes a single play KotOR III rather unlikely. As others have pointed out, the release of a Warcraft IV RTS would be extremely suprising, simply because WoW's storyline is still going on - though at this point it's more like really bad fan fiction - redundancy alert - than anything else. It's probably going to be a great game, but it won't be a great story. I like MMOs, and I'll undoubtedly play the KotOR one, but I'm pretty disappointed the storyline's not going to get the trilogy format it deserves. Then again, it's gonna kick ass to tank with a Jedi.

Given that WoW hit the 10 million subscriber mark a few months ago, I think it's fairly safe to say that the pay-to-play MMO market isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You might as well start minting your own money at that point. Which is a good thing. MMOs need to evolve to survive, and there's simply no way you could continually develop a game with just the income from the initial sales.

Hit 80 on my Guardian a little less than a month after release, and cancelled soon after to see how it shapes up. 50+ leveling is far, far too grindtastic, with only enough quest content to get you roughly 3 levels out of every 10 level interval, and even less the higher you get - for example, the one and only level 70+ zone has enough soloable content to get you from 70 to...71. There are remarkably few endgame six-man instances, and while there are a refreshing amount of raids in at release, they're all pretty buggy, and none of them have the "epic" feel of the early WoW dungeons - as much of a God-I-want-to-stab-my-eyes-out slog as Molten Core was, the Rags fight was pretty goddamn cool. They're also all pretty short. The lack of gear emphasis really bothers me for some reason. I thought I'd like a game where bleeding edge gear wasn't a necessity, but it turns out I don't. Most of the crap you pick up from 1 to 80 is at best a marginal upgrade to what you're already wearing. Sieges were a total joke last I checked on them, with framerates dropping into the unplayable slideshow region with less than half the supposedly supported number of participants, and that makes GvG PvP kind of pointless. The real bitch of it is, the combat system - which is a refreshing change from one-click combat - makes it difficult to go back to other MMOs once you've experienced it. Which isn't to say it's perfect; melee is pretty much screwed in PvP unless they really can outplay the other guy, since casters still get instant damage with a single click, whereas some poor melee guy has to run around trying to land oftentimes abominably slow combos on moving targets, which is especially hard when you consider that you cannot be moving when the final swing - the money shot - of the combo goes off. A buddy of mine who's still subscribed said he got an e-mail from the dev team today, a survey they're doing asking players what they should focus on next. This does not inspire me with confidence, since it seems to indicate that they have no idea how to go about fixing the numerous serious problems with the game, nor even what they all are. But Jebus, it's a pretty game.

I'm pretty sure that's likely just the result of this particular knucklehead coming to understand firsthand what happens when you start trash-talking people who actually know how to link a URL to their friends. He's probably just desperately trying to get some breathing space in his inbox.

If you're getting a new rig, the only possible game to break it in with is Crysis. Video cards should be made to weep blood out of the box. It immediately lets them know who's the boss.

Parts of it certainly do, which is why I was quick to point out that the Poles went way overboard with the whole sex card notion earlier in the thread. What I was more referring to was the generally bleak world, the moral ambiguity, etc. Those are themes that most fantasy simply doesn't have, unfortunately, because at least to my mind, they make any given story much more interesting for the simple fact that, to me, it's a more 'realistic' presentation.

Well, no. You're entirely missing my point. Having a sailing dwarf or a heterosexual elf in a fantasy game doesn't automatically make them variants of the usual old fantasy garbage. Nor does throwing the setting to a realm like Thay, or Calimshan, or whatever else you're talking about. I haven't read a D&D rulebook since I stopped reading Dragonlance, but I'll agree that those are probably this "dark fantasy" concept you're talking about. Unfortunately, that's not what I'm pushing for, because it's still clearly aimed squarely at the 12 to 16 demographic. And I'm not trying to turn that into an insult; if that's what people like, then by all means, they ought to go nuts with it. But the success of The Witcher indicates that there are at least a fair proportion of RPG fans out there who'll be just as happy with a To Have And Have Not take on fantasy as they will a Green Eggs And Ham take. You want to claim The Witcher's direction isn't new, go right ahead; I can't think of a single RPG out there, though, other than that one, that goes to such pains to make it clear you're not in Disneyland/The Sword Coast. I know this isn't going anywhere, for the same reason that Nintendo keeps pumping out Mario and Zelda games. People buy them. And they're going to keep buying the usual fantasy drivel, too, so why stop making that?

This is an argument of preference, so obviously there's no way for either side to win it. In my opinion, fantasy's about as stale as it gets. Yeah, I read Dragonlance when I was fourteen, but there's a reason I don't anymore; I got older, learned to appreciate a far more nuanced approach to storytelling, not to mention stand-alone literary merit, and moved on. Same goes for games in my book. The average gamer age has gone up to, what? 27 or somewhere thereabouts? I think, as a demographic, we can handle a fantasy setting that isn't so squeaky-clean it looks like it's been powerwashed by Disney rainbow rays. The Witcher's very much a step in the right direction, with the only exception being the sex cards. Though I personally view those as a giant European middle finger directed our way, knowing we'd be perfectly fine with the violence, as we always are, but blush like nuns at the nudity. And they were absolutely correct. What's so terrifying about a fantasy game that doesn't use the exact same formula as every other fantasy game on the market? I mean, I loved me some TIE Fighter, but I didn't expect every other space sim that came after it to be an exact copy with a couple of name changes.

Except that it's really not. Honestly, terrorism's nothing new; it's what kicked off World War I, just to name a pretty significant example that's still recent enough for people to to be familiar with.

I think you meant to type "known human history" but accidentally typed "current events." I also don't understand the widespread aversion to shaking up a ridiculously stale genre, honestly. The beer-swilling, gruff, ultimately loveable dwarf, the arrogant, agile elf, the mischievous, kleptomaniacal halfling, and the bland human all get together to chase after some McGuffin in a world where everyone save the bad guys - usually clearly identifiable due to baldness or being half-snake - are good-hearted and likeable. We really need that yet again? I don't hear anyone screaming for Lethal Weapon 49. Why is this phenomenon peculiar to RPGers?

The Total War series are the best strategy games ever, why fix something that aint broke? And ETW does stretch well into the 1800's I dont remember when it ends but Napoleon is definently in there. How far does it stretch into the 1800s? I figure Napoleon would deserve an entire Total War game on it's own. But they probably will make an expansion about him anyway... I'm actually fairly certain, from the press releases I read, that it'll conclude just before Napoleon's rise to power, leaving 19th century warfare either for an expansion or its very own game. Personally, I'm hoping on the latter, since that's far and away the period everyone SHOULD be hitting with their games, yet there aren't any major ones out there that I'm aware of. And all that ancient China stuff...blech.

Smoking while you lift never works out well.

True, but Aero grows on you after a while. When I boot into XP now, I find myself wondering where all the pretty went.

Many elderly care homes offer in-house medical services these days. I admit to remembering nothing about this game other than its famous non-existence. Is it going to be an RPG? First person shooter. A member of a series of FPS games that is notorious for being very macho and crude. Not exceptionally violent, but having evil pigs dressed as cops and lots of strippers. Also a series of FPS games that had its last entry debut just after the Kennedy assassination.

Many elderly care homes offer home-based medical services these days. I admit to remembering nothing about this game other than its famous non-existence. Is it going to be an RPG? It wouldn't shock me if it was.

I thought they hadn't confirmed any factions for sure? Maybe my info's wrong. But, yes. This is the most highly-anticipated game on my list, provided they don't make naval battles unrealistic to the point of comedy. When my first-rates sail directly into the wind, I'm taking the DVD outside and burning it.

It's cable, and it goes through a router. Thing is, it's only a recent problem; started when I built my new computer a few weeks ago. It's not an issue with any of the other machines on the network, which has me seriously wondering if it's just the onboard ethernet connection on the motherboard, or something else going on.

That's actually really bad news. High-profile game that, I imagine, took an assload of cash to produce, and it's not faring all that well. It's the sort of news I hear and go, "God, I hope they don't just say, 'Screw it,' and start making console games."

So I've noticed this off and on for a while now, and it's really starting to annoy me. It seems every now and then my internet connection will just lag for ten or so seconds; it's most noticeable when running something like Ventrilo, where my ping will hop from around 36 to 11873 or whatever, and everyone's voice will lag for that five to ten seconds, but I also see it just doing general web-browsing; normally when I open a link or type in a URL, it instantly opens. Sometimes, however, it takes a solid ten seconds before it even goes to the page. It's random, so it's not one or two specific sites or anything like that. Also happens a lot on YouTube, where I'll be watching a movie, and it'll all of a sudden stop halfway through and start buffering again. Drivers are updated to the most recent, and the other machines on the network aren't having the same problem. Any ideas as to what could be going on?