AOC - General Discussion II

[Schatze]

And this site is definitely not a representative or random sample, and the fact that the poll is open to anyone distorts results as well.

[Falmer]

So basicly their numbers peaked at 700k? That's still quite a lot. Also, Pyros talking about there not being a patch this week - is that official? Thought they just went with an update every wednesday instead of every tuesday and thursday.

[l0z]

Ouch.

Conan's female avatar DPS bug will take weeks to correct - Massively

3-4 weeks to fix the female dps inferiority? And no guarantee that even that long will yield a fix? Awesome.

Edit: Sorry pain, I totally missed that you posted the forum link to this. Just noticed the massively article when it went up today - stopped reading the AoC forums a couple weeks back. =/

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Bongk

Is it really any more unfinished than any other MMOG to hit the market? Why would AOC suddenly he held to a higher standard than every other MMOG ever released?

Because it's about damn time people stopped accepting broken, unfinished and buggy games as the status quo.

This is a good thing, really.

[Bongk]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Because it's about damn time people stopped accepting broken, unfinished and buggy games as the status quo.

This is a good thing, really.

While I agree with the premise the logic makes no sense. If every game releases that way, than that is the status quo and you cannot be any angrier at AOC than you were at EQ2, LOTRO, WOW or any other.

It seems like you are taking all your anger over the whole genre releasing garbage products at release and channeling it all at AOC like it is their fault the MMOG industry sucks. To be honest their launch is one of the best in recent memory, they just are not catering to power gamers at this time, which is what FOH is made up of.

[Dashal]

If they werent unfinished and buggy most of them would never be released or never go into development in the first place.

There just isnt enough time and funding to provide all the things expected in a modern MMO and have it fully polished to WoW levels before releasing as far as I can tell. Unless you're a Blizzard or similar company that has access to huge sums of money and time, which I'm guessing Funcom is not.

[Jabberwhacky]

Originally Posted by Bongk

While I agree with the premise the logic makes no sense. If every game releases that way, than that is the status quo and you cannot be any angrier at AOC than you were at EQ2, LOTRO, WOW or any other.

It seems like you are taking all your anger over the whole genre releasing garbage products at release and channeling it all at AOC like it is their fault the MMOG industry sucks. To be honest their launch is one of the best in recent memory, they just are not catering to power gamers at this time, which is what FOH is made up of.

Maybe because you're still stuck in the retarded notion that we compare AoC of today to WoW of 4 years ago?

[Bongk]

Originally Posted by Jabberwhacky

Maybe because you're still stuck in the retarded notion that we compare AoC of today to WoW of 4 years ago?

what else would we compare it to, you expect a game just released to match a game 4 years old in terms of content and quality?

[Ailu]

Originally Posted by Bongk

Is it really any more unfinished than any other MMOG to hit the market? Why would AOC suddenly he held to a higher standard than every other MMOG ever released?

I would say it is worse, but maybe it's just a bit more obvious. Like having no real zone to level in 34-40, not enough quests at many levels, broken quests such as arena key Q etc. But I dunno, maybe I'm just spoiled playing WoW for so long.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Bongk

what else would we compare it to, you expect a game just released to match a game 4 years old in terms of content and quality?

Content? No. Quality? Yes.

You don't need to launch a game with 4 years of content but you need to launch it with enough content of sufficient quality. AoC failed to do either. Extreme lack of content and a lot of what is there is terrible. Some is fantastic though... so maybe that's why the bad sticks out like a sore thumb. The contrast is just so.. shocking. You can literally see the lines where something good ends and the rushed crap begins.

No one expects a game to have content to last 4 years on opening day, but is 4 months out of the question? I wouldn't think so. And that is a fairly agressive update schedule in it's own right. I'd say 6 months should be the minimum to give you ample time to address launch issues while polishing up content that just didn't make release and getting new content on the drawing board.

AoC is in a huge hole now. I mean, having to redo a THOUSAND animations over the next month or two to fix an issue that never should have left alpha, was reported in beta and went live anyway? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[DJk_zero]

Yes, aoc launched pretty flawlessly, as the 1-20 game was highly polished and the way they setup the servers to distro the load worked very well (all those clone zones). This fooled many of us that initially called AoC a piece of shit, and should have stuck with our gut feeling (myself included). That's about all AoC has to brag about, cause the rest is a nightmare.

The game basically shipped 40%? complete, has massive core mechanic bugs, has many classes with still to this day broken abilities, no inter-class balance, broken raids, broken instances, broken crafting system, non-existant pvp system, broken guild structures, broken siege mechanics... yadda yadda yadda..

Pretty much everything worth doing past level 30 is broken in some way, and going on 5 weeks post release is STILL BROKEN. Add onto that the female attack bugs, you get the point yet?

[Bongk]

Originally Posted by DJk_zero

Pretty much everything worth doing past level 30 is broken in some way, and going on 5 weeks post release is STILL BROKEN. Add onto that the female attack bugs, you get the point yet?

Sounds like AO release except you are able to zone (I was stuck in athens for a week). I personally haven't bought it yet as I am sick of buying MMOG's at release and feeling like I got ripped off. Sounds like I made a wise choice with this one... Maybe I will pick up D2 after work I need something to play and Mythos is getting old.

[Necrolyte]

Whoever uses the polls on the FoH forums to argue general decline... that's an epic failure in itself.

Majority of the population don't even visit the Official Forums, and the subset that visit the FoH forums are highly likely to have unsubscribed due to lack of content now... probably because most of the people here are heavy MMO veterans and/or fairly hardcore. This says nothing about the general populace.

[machineman]

Originally Posted by Bongk

Is it really any more unfinished than any other MMOG to hit the market? Why would AOC suddenly he held to a higher standard than every other MMOG ever released?

AoC is in far worse shape that most MMO releases.

Lack of content can be forgiven, but the bugginess, lack of promised features and outright bad game design decisions are the big ones.

The fact that AoC should have been able to learn from everyone else's mistakes makes this even more perplexing. They SHOULD be held to a higher standard, this isn't day 1 for the MMO industry.

Hopefully this will send a message to other developers that consumers will not accept half-assed piles of crap from MMOs anymore.

If AoC had been polished and finished when it released, you could have well seen over 1 million subs by now. But instead it went the other direction, which it can't ever recover from and now will just sit on the shelf next to Vanguard in the bargain bin.

Funcom made their choice now they must live with it, and 5 years of hard work is almost for nothing... opportunity lost.

[sticktastic]

Originally Posted by machineman

AoC is in far worse shape that most MMO releases.

Lack of content can be forgiven, but the bugginess, lack of promised features and outright bad game design decisions are the big ones.

The fact that AoC should have been able to learn from everyone else's mistakes makes this even more perplexing. They SHOULD be held to a higher standard, this isn't day 1 for the MMO industry.

Hopefully this will send a message to other developers that consumers will not accept half-assed piles of crap from MMOs anymore.

If AoC had been polished and finished when it released, you could have well seen over 1 million subs by now. But instead it went the other direction, which it can't ever recover from and now will just sit on the shelf next to Vanguard in the bargain bin.

Funcom made their choice now they must live with it, and 5 years of hard work is almost for nothing... opportunity lost.

You know the sad thing about that is it's pretty much true, now days if you dont get your shit straight in 1 month or less, you can forget it. It will end up right up there with other mmo failures sadly. I just do not understand how company after company keeps doing this tho, it is really mind boggling how it's all the same mistakes over and over.