Thank you for testing Age of Conan Beta (first siege.)

[Tuco]

Before the raid this morning we were discussing how they could implement this fairly. I think I came up with "They should make a mini-game PVP style instance with the city and allow the four raid leaders to join it."

I think the worst possible implementation would be to offer it on a first come first serve basis.

[WillzZz]

Getting 100 people working in the same area interacting with one another is a fun problem. Worked in daoc, though.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Araxen

Vanguard had the "absolutely huge" potential thrown at it too and all we got is an internet meme from it "too much brown".

Ummmm,
This could turn it around for internet memes.

[Pren]

Originally Posted by dechire

LOL poor sinister they just can't get a break, this is what happens when you rush to the end in less then a month. Could Funcom have been better prepared? Sure, but really who was.

Not playing AOC not caring to, but this post sounds like funcom is to blame on both counts.

[Dashal]

Of course this isnt a surprise to anyone who ever even heard of an MMO. Maybe the people involved were surprised it was THAT bad but they had to know it wouldnt work well if at all. This cycle appears in every MMO since time began.

People sprint to max level, bitch about no end game or end game that doesnt work. They have fun bragging they exposed the flaws because it means they were first to the end. That's all cool with me. The thing now is how fast can Funcom fix it.

[Sinter1]

Hmm, do recall making a statement like pvp and the siege system which wasn't or was barely tested would suck ass upon release. PvP and siege warfare isn't something you just tack on at the end. That needs months of testing period. I wouldn't expect it to be ready in a month or two... try 3-6.

[Sythrak]

This game is still so deep in beta it's really hard to care about anything end game be it raids, sieges, whatever. I think the first few sieges everyone should be naked, just because stats don't mean anything.

[spronk]

Thats the thing that bugs me about people who "defend" Funcom - look, the game is not that great at endgame for many people. No other product in the world would be "ok" with having major shit not work after using it for a month, but because its new and shiny and every other company so far has pretty much done as poorly people defend it as normal. Of course releasing a new MMO with 99% done and tested content for at least 3 months seems like an impossible challenge nowadays.

You guys do know Funcom is currently working (and has been for over a year) on another MMO, right? Secret Worlds, a "concept" shot is below - seems like a more modern day MMO with Cthulu'ish influences. Will the money we spend on boxes and monthly subs go 100% towards improving AoC, or will some/a lot of it go towards their next MMO? I'm hoping its mostly going towards AoC and SW is a small project, but I just don't know. The 2x/week patches in AoC have been great, but lets face it, all the patches have fixed really small things and for every 10 things they fix 2 things get broken.

TSW snapshot (from D A R K ¿ D A Y S ¿ A R E ¿ C O M I N G):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Dashal

Of course this isnt a surprise to anyone who ever even heard of an MMO. Maybe the people involved were surprised it was THAT bad but they had to know it wouldnt work well if at all. This cycle appears in every MMO since time began.

People sprint to max level, bitch about no end game or end game that doesnt work. They have fun bragging they exposed the flaws because it means they were first to the end. That's all cool with me. The thing now is how fast can Funcom fix it.

Sprinting to cap and hitting cap pretty much one month and a half after release when it takes at most 5days played to cap, and depending on class/guild power 4days, those are 2 different things. Sure if you're quite casual, you might not be able to fit those 5played days in 40full days. That's about 3hours a day, a LOT of people can afford this kind of time. There's not much to do on the way besides leveling either.

I like the game, but they spent the last few months of beta testing the stupid pve raids, and no one ever stepped into a siege but their internal team, which can't test shit as far as I'm concerned. They have plenty of raids, with quite retarded pve mechanics making them easily exploitable, and no siege. That's the biggest issue here.

There's also a huge difference between rushing to cap, then seeing there's no content, which is to be expected, and hearing from the officials at release that there's plenty of endgame and that everything is working and functionnal. I don't remember blizzard at release saying they had all kind of pvp when they had jackshit. But Funcom specifically stated multiple times right before and even after release that sieges were great, and they were tested and working and all kind of stuff.

It's not so much that sieges don't work, it's more the fact they lied that they did work. Everyone expected them not to work. Hell get 100people in the same instance in the same spot, and the instance crashes and resets, and various rollbacks happen. How could they work. But why pretend they work, it's just stupid.

[Radek-SiN]

Our take on the siege. More pics etc, yes it was horribly broken. Includes some good suggestions on helping the lag issues.

First Siege - Sinister

[MrSpitz]

Yep, siege weapons will be a hard thing to balance for sure. No arguments there. But, I haven't heard anything suggesting they are scrapping the idea, so I'll definitely reserve judgement and give them more time. Bring out the apologist label now!!

Two points before I exit the thread:
1. I get the sense a lot of people didn't even participate and are just jumping on the negative nelly band wagon.... that's a shame. There are some glaring flaws, no doubt, but it was still fun for me.
2. Someone else said it and I will just take it one step further, but please share your experiences of rushing to 60 in WoW at release and what 5-man scholo or MC was like (when they dropped in)? Or what there was to do?

I remember I camped that horde outpost south of BFD in ashenvale just to kill the grifon master and grief lowbies. For weeks. Eventually I moved on to outside gadz.

[spronk]

wow at launch had 5-40 man strat, scholo, ubrs, lbrs, brd. you could raid the instances and drop/join group at quest items or bosses to get quests done. i ran ubrs 40+ times trying to get 8/8 t0, which was really the only thing to do in the game after 2-3 months. strat/scholo were nightmares at launch, scholo could take 4+ hours in 5 man and was crazy hard.

there was no real pvp (other than tm/ss zergs), and the server infrastructure was absolute shit as most servers constantly lagged, queued, rolled back, crashed, etc. classes didn't change much for a long time - anyone with a heal button healed, warlocks/hunters sucked, warriors were the only tanks.

aoc has offered a lot, lot, lot more at launch (more zones, more quests, many raid zones, guild keeps, a wider crafting system, classes that are much more varied, etc, etc) but almost everything you do after a certain point has bugs, many of them that stop you dead in your tracks. so its really whether you'd play a more polished product that is very limited, or a rougher product that is more open. Still hoping for #3 someday, a polished product that has everything.

[Mkopec1]

Well you can have polished and wait your ass off for 2+ yrs for new content while grinding your ass off on the same shit over and over, or chose a more buggy game with hopefully a more timely content delivery.

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

Well you can have polished and wait your ass off for 2+ yrs for new content while grinding your ass off on the same shit over and over, or chose a more buggy game with hopefully a more timely content delivery.

Given the choice between Half-Life 2 and generic_shitty_games 1, 2, & 3...I'll take HL2 thanks. Same should apply to MMOGs.

[Sinter1]

It's one thing for there to be a lack of content in end game WoW. It's another thing to have an end game that is entirely broken. When the main emphasis of the game doesn't work there is a problem. Since I saw something just like this happening, and the fact that I don't have a top of the line pc I decided not to buy AoC. Turns out I was right. No I don't play and have no first hand knowledge, however more so than broken siege weapons the fact that the defense can "zerg" out the attackers is a clearly broken mechanic. I'm sure with time more shit will turn up to be broken and the time it will take to fix it so it's properly functioning with minimal hiccups will take just as long if not longer than WoW did to add to their original content, which by the way was quite enjoyable for the most part. I'll take tm/ss pvp over the crap that battlegrounds has turned into.