Blizzard not evaluating AoC as a threat?

[Kreugen]

Except AoC's main "do something different" feature is kinda lame ;/

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

Except AoC's main "do something different" feature is kinda lame ;/

Thats hilarious compared to the same old shit Blizzard have come up with in the last four years.

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by Lefazz

Starcraft 2 isn't an MMO. I bet a good chunk of WoW subscribers couldn't care less about SC2.

Oh really? So where did all the WoW players come from on release day then? I'm betting a good chunk came from Warcraft 3.

[Wilfan]

Originally Posted by Flight

Thats hilarious compared to the same old shit Blizzard have come up with in the last four years.

Yea, we've all got bored to tears with Arenas, flying mounts and badges in WoW 1.0.

Personally, I'm waiting to see how AoC endgame turns out. Leveling crack is very strong stuff but loses its appeal after a month or two. We'll see if there's any staying power after all the quests are done. I'm still betting on being doomed to half a year with 3 raid instances and AV 2.0, but maybe Funcom will pull a rabbit out of the hat.

[Vehn]

going to take a long time to get your guild city / battlekeep up (the resources needed for it are like the resources needed to make a thunderfury in terms of time needed). Then you need to defend it so that will be fun

[spronk]

i don't think its a coincidence that a bunch of wotlk f&f alpha stuff was leaked over the weekend, and I think we'll see a lot more over the next few days. minimal counterprogramming, but its there imo.

personally i cancelled my 2 wow subs a month ago in the hope aoc would take over, but tbh while I like AoC it totally lacks (for me) the "crack" quality of wow. I get bored after an hour or two and logoff to play xbox or watch TV. I guess I like more the cartoony look of wow over AoC's "serious face" type game, plus I've always enjoyed playing the weird races (gnomes, orcs, undead, tauren, etc) over humans. Unless endgame is drastically different than I think it'll be, I'm going to be cancelling my AoC sub in a month or two and be MMO free until wotlk, which will probably last 4-6 months. Even after just ~10 hours I'm level 22 already, should be 80 within a week or two at this rate of playing casual (some level 56s already on my server lol)

[Vehn]

I think it is going to be a threat to WoW, given these sales figures: (reposted from AoC thread)

[The Collector's Edittion units] are also sold out, and the total print run stands at 111.000 units

Additional retail figures for the standard edition of Age of Conan are also highly impressive. In total, Funcom is shipping around 700.000 copies of Age of Conan on day one.

“Everyone in Funcom is delighted and humbled with the historical pre-order numbers for Age of Conan. If the information we have is correct, they represent the highest pre-order number for any global launch of an original PC game, ever, including the original World of Warcraft launch,” said Morten Larssen, Funcom’s VP of Sales & Marketing.

Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

[Horse]

After actually playing AOC, I'd have to say there is little to nothing that is remarkable about it.

Talk about the boredom factor with WoW, that extends to all MMOs. If you're not exceptionally different, the fact that I did some fedex quest in EQ1, 2 WoW and LOTRO makes me fucking hate the "run back and forth between 3 zones 12 times for some shitty quest." Just because every instance is instanced does not make collect 40 crocodile skins entertaining the 4th time around. And 40? Lolwut?

Yes, I'm a tank that runs around without a breastplate on so my tits are flopping everywhere and it hardly makes any difference in the game.


Here's a list of things that it is missing:
~ polish
~ interface
~ artful graphics (not to rehash the uncanny valley, but I just fucking hate plastic Poser2 3DSmax models)
~ any semblance of balance at all, not even remarkably close.
~ nearly bug-free environs

~ TAUNT STILL DOES NOTHING IN PVP, YET HALF OF THE DARK TEMPLARS ABILITIES ARE TAUNT BASED.


What it has
~ tits
~ attacking is somewhat dynamic in that you don't press 1 button to do a sword attack, you might actually push 6! Wow!
~ Everyone gets shadowmeld and you can move. Everybody gets perception.
~ Free retalents (yea, that'd be so hard to add to wow)
~ Dynamic skill system
~ If you're a ranger you can FPS headshot someone for like half their hps. Oh and you get root. BALANCE, SURE.
~ If you're an assassin you can kill people 15-20 levels ahead of you because sneak attack is just so clearly balanced as it ignores all those concepts that make someone that's a higher level stronger. This might be an interesting concept except for the fact that they're the only class that can do it.
~ When you die you warp to the rez stone, alive, with 1 hp. Some dick can stand there 1shotting anyone and everyone.


I'm not going to pretend I'm a marketplace barometer but from my point of view you can't just clone WoW in an EQ2 skin, add shitty PVP to it with the shitty PVP players, some tits and expect to make long term money. Even the PVP guilds flooded one server (isn't this going to always happen? Hi Arch) with Goons bloating it further.


Dunno, but this seems like they're trying to secure the fickle little kids who realize WoW is a little kids game, and somehow conan is more mature and grim. How anyone can feel that with a bunch of mannequins running around, tits or no, killing plastic looking & poorly animated "enemies" is beyond me.

[Horse]

And I call bullshit on those numbers - they're claiming over 70% of the people who played the demo/previews pre-ordered. That would be an insanely high attachment rate, and unless they have some amazing alien-like server technology I am not seeing how that demand could be quenched by the maybe 20 servers they have available.

Sniff sniff... smell that data cooking

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Vehn

I think it is going to be a threat to WoW, given these sales figures: (reposted from AoC thread)








Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Preorder != sales.

And how many faggots got 3 preorders just to get every bonus then cancelled them? Too many, that's how many.

It's pretty decent though, but servers aren't overloaded at any point yet. All being normal with 1 PvP server hitting heavy load once or twice.

[Zarcath]

Starcraft 2's effect on WoW will be this.

1. A large majority of players will play SC2 on "downtime". This means instead of farming consumables/honor/badges/rep etc, they'll want to play SC2 instead.

2. Decreased interest in raiding and attendance issues. Decreased performance and efficiency. This will have a trickle effect and impact serious WoW raiders that aren't into SC2. More recruiting is needed. More disgruntled players = more player movement within guilds.

Personally, I think we'll see a drop in WoW subs in the next 3-5 years. After the release of WotLK but before their next unnamed expansion. In my eyes, there are more up-and-coming MMOs than Blizzard can push content out to compete, at the rate they're going anyway. I can't even imagine them releasing another MMO (if/when) and trying to split time between both. WoW is all over the place as it is, trying to be a catch-all MMO for the masses. They haven't developed any base mechanic to push new content. They're always developing brand new zones from scratch, why not put some time into designing real instanced dungeons (LDoN+D2).

[Vehn]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Preorder != sales.

And how many faggots got 3 preorders just to get every bonus then cancelled them? Too many, that's how many.

It's pretty decent though, but servers aren't overloaded at any point yet. All being normal with 1 PvP server hitting heavy load once or twice.

too bad those figures only include unique accounts made with those preorders. So multiple pre orders for 1 account only means 1 pre order

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Horse

How anyone can feel that with a bunch of mannequins running around, tits or no, killing plastic looking & poorly animated "enemies" is beyond me.

You make a number of good points, but I don't agree with this.


Anyway, Blizzard have made and are making the same mistake SoE made - thinking their position of market dominance is unassailable, and because of that, not giving customers what they want and certainly not enough of what they want.

4 years in and the biggest selling point of the next (second in 4 years !!) expansion is the first and only hero class ?? They should have been breaking their backs for the last four years to be innovative and fun, giving people what they want, instead of sitting on their sales figures and turning out as little as possible to keep the sales flowing.

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

It's pretty decent though, but servers aren't overloaded at any point yet. All being normal with 1 PvP server hitting heavy load once or twice.

Thats irrelevant - as you know, they stopped letting people in on the pre-order promotion a week ago. They're also bringing up a mass of new servers at launch and at post launch.

[Lenaldo]

Originally Posted by Flight

...
4 years in and the biggest selling point of the next (second in 4 years !!) expansion is the first and only hero class ?? They should have been breaking their backs for the last four years to be innovative and fun, giving people what they want, instead of sitting on their sales figures and turning out as little as possible to keep the sales flowing.

I'd hardly call what blizzard is putting in WotLK a "hero" class. To me its more of a new class that they decided to call "hero" to quiet up the fucks who still complain that hero classes never made it in... Regardless, some sort of hero class ( or "jobs") would make wow's end-game a LOT more enjoyable.

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Flight

4 years in and the biggest selling point of the next (second in 4 years !!) expansion is the first and only hero class ?? They should have been breaking their backs for the last four years to be innovative and fun, giving people what they want, instead of sitting on their sales figures and turning out as little as possible to keep the sales flowing.

Pretty much my feelings on the subject.