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Anarchy Online - Shadowlands Toured
Thanks to GameSpy for their in-character guide tour of Anarchy Online:Shadowlands, the newest expansion pack for Funcom's PC cyberpunk MMORPG. The article references the game's botched launch back in 2001: "The very name brings up images of anarchy when one remembers the disastrous first effort at colonizing the planet. Basic services didn't work, colonists disappeared, weapons and equipment suffered from mysterious breakdowns, and there was fear that the entire notum project would have to be abandoned." But it goes on to suggest that: "Even now Omni-Tek Corporation has difficulty recruiting colonists. That's unfortunate, though, because the corporation has long since stabilized the situation." Can/should MMORPGs be given a second chance after a bad launch?
W00t, I can't wait. The ARK (Advisor of Rubi-Ka) tour department looks to be really good, they've been giving tours on the beta for a while now.
I tried (for the 3rd and final time) last weekend to play AO, as one of my friends wanted to try the 7 day demo...
so I downloaded it (again), and proceeded to sign on.
I was a Soldier, and I (think I did anyway) assigned my skill points so that I could use the super cannon of a rifle I was given (it actually just LOOKED impressive), yet I still couldnt kill anything. I couldnt kill Leets (rat like things), I couldnt kill Eleets (they looked the same, maybe stronger?), rotting corpses (nope, they kicked my ass too), and there was another thing, looked like a pissed off gopher, it kept hostiling me.
All in all, it was complete anarchy. And it was online... I guess it lived up to its name.
I give it a 2/5, the character creation was better than it was the last time I tried it, obviously they are trying to make it better... but in the end, it was a waste of three hours of my life...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Sometimes it's even good to be there in the buggy beginning. I remember I started playing ultima online a week after release and it was the buggiest game ever, with exploits mistakes and rough edges all over the place. As it turns out, these led to hillarity and fun beyond anything the game has become after it was 'fixed'. It was absolute chaos, and that made it an incredibly good game to play.
Oh, but don't give it a second chance if the game sucks. *cough* Asherons call 2 *cough*
Liberty.
Anarchy Online? Isn't everything online basically Anarchy? Especially with MSBlast, Melissa, Code Red, Sircam, skript kiddez running around, etc.
If that doesn't define anarchy, I challenge you to tell me what does.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
The golden rule of developing MMOG's.
You _will_ have startup problems.
The only way to counter it is to be prepared by not sending off the entire project team to a new project, the game ain't finished until it works properly.
This is a really underated MMORPG, and while it had its share, and the share that should have gone to about a half dozen other games worth of problems it really is a pretty decent game.
You have a huge world, lots of different classes to choose from with very different abilities (build robots, pilot vehicles, use a matrixesque alternate world) Lots of randomly generated dungeons that you have to yourself or your party alone rather than having to share it with 400 other people crowding in to it, and relatively steady character advancement (that is, the treadmill moves along a little faster than most games)
That bad launch is still haunting them though; When I started playing it about a year ago during a free demo, and actually found it pretty good, my apporval for it was meet by laughter and disbelief by my other MMORPG playing friends.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
"Should" is a religious opinion. If you're that pissed at them, I guess maybe you shouldn't. If you think it might have gotten better, maybe you should.
I gave AO a shot well after the debacle. and I was perfectly happy with it. However, there's just only so much time and money I have monthly to devote to MMORPGs. Can't play them all.
AO is actually the only MMO I have fun in. There are so many options and classes to play. Its great fun.
Granted there are still things that are broken since day 1, but nothing that the players havent learned to live with.
Meta Pysicist comes to mind. They have 3 pets they can have. Problem is, 1 of them doesnt really work and actually can do more harm to you. But all MP's have learned to live with just 2 pets..which believe me is enough.
I gave AO a try a few months ago. I got to about level 20 before I gave up due to boredom and a very poor socialization system.
The people who played AO were the lease conversive group I've ever encountered. I could get no questions answered by anyone, and if you weren't already part of some clique, people just ignore you. The only people I talked to in the few weeks I played were other newbies, who were just as lost as I was.
The only thing I found to do in the game was endless missions. I think the mission system was kind of cool, but it got boring fast and I had no guidance to tell me what else the game offered.
I also enjoy crafting in most of the MMO games i've played and I could not for the life of me find anything resembling a resource gathering + crafting system in AO.
My conclusion based on a couple weeks of play is that AO is an MMO game where people powerlevel by doing missions until they reach the top and then they just PvP all day.
Being an Explorer-Achiever-Socializer type player does not fit well with AO. However a Bartle Killer-Achiever-Explorer types will probably find it to be a great game.
I still think Earth & Beyond has the most wasted potential. I haven't played it as much as SWG in the past few months, but I keep going back to see how it's progressing.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
But I bet their tech/customer support is 100 times better than Sony's. I'd give (insert any name other than Sony) a second chance before I pick another SOE product off the shelf.
NO! The trend of releasing buggy, crappy, content-free MMORPGs with later (free and paid) expansions to fix these bugs has to stop now. I am tired of being a paid beta tester. I bought AO, SWG and even (i'm ashamed to admit) Earth and Beyond. I am very angry at the shitty state these games were released in. AO stands out in memory as about the worst possible release, with SWG and EB both being generally "poor" but playable.
However EnB & SWG had no content on release, so stability (necessary) was gained at the price of content. As a result in SWG you can wander around and kill stuff, but once that gets dull (2 hours) you want to find the designers and behead them.
If just a few MMORPG candidates died on release as a result of investor pressure to release games before they're ready, maybe this trend would stop.
I wa sin the beta long logn ago and the game was a mess, even right up to launch there were many many bugs and the game was un-playable imho. I just opened a new account using the 7 day trial at the urging of a co-worker and I am hooked! This game has come a long way, My 5 day old 16 lvl engineer is having a great time and I do plan on continuing to play after the trial ends. If you liked UO / Everquest, this game is very good.....
That amuses me way more than it should, probably because it shows a remarkable load of cajones. I guess the departure of Ken Karl from Turbine (AC, AC2) will now be made storyline. "Birds sang in the trees, the tides calmed, and the sun shone just a little brightly, as a great evil left the world. But at what cost? Well, about 60k and some stock options."
Back when EQ was first starting, it was acceptable. People would tolerate a few bugs on launch. Now though, with a new MMORPG coming out practically every week, the bar is getting higher and higher for how stable your launch is. There are too many MMORPGs out there for people to care about all the problems the game has. They'll just find a new one that IS going to have a good launch. And I haven't even addressed the issue of releasing without much content and planning to add it in with a later expansion *cough*Starwars:Galaxies*cough*.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I did my best to see through the rouhg edges and bugs... I spent more time there then I care to recall...
Grouping was extremely optional to the point that with my availability to play, I couldn't make enough long-term friends that would be relatively similar to myself in terms of power level...
So, I played a MMORPG that seemed like a Single Player Game...
I was an Engineer and found the crafting system severely lacking. The disparity between character levels became simply mindbogglingly numbing and was something I couldn't stand after a little while...
The only MMORPG I played before that was UO and the only reason I left that was because I lost my house over a looong weekend vacation. I spent two weeks attempting to place another one and then said, forget about it. (I played UO for almost 3 years too and had accumulated a GREAT deal of things and friends.)
AO was and still is an insanely boring MMORPG. There is nothing compelling you to play with other people or to socialize. There is nothing there that levels the playing field between a level 32 and a level 100 character. If you can't run the treadmill of AO all day everyday, you get to quickly left behind and nobody wants to enter the useless (Since they don't get XP) dungeons of someone as low as your character would be.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I remember growing up playing nintendo and venturing online for the first time using Q-Link on a c64. It seemed so obvious that the future of gaming would be a mix of the addictive gameplay of the nintendo and the social possibilities of playing with people all over the world.
Now, 15 years later, there still is no game like I was imagining, where the world is dynamic and populated by all real people who want the same thing as you. To have a fun game experience. I have tried all the popular ones, and got sick of mindlessly leveling up. The less popular ones, such as A Tale In The Desert and Second Life have more promise but not enough players.
I think some of the underlying principles devoplers are using to make these games must be flawed. I guess I will sit around and wait for the day when something akin to the revolutionary effects of Doom comes to MMORPGS.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
I've very recently gone back and tried several games I gave up on in disgust before. They were Anarchy Online (and shadowlands beta), Asheron's Call 2 and Neocron. Without exception they were all still bad for many of the same reasons I left them the first time. Overall there were fewer bugs but I was shocked at how many ugly game stopping bugs I remembered from previous experience were still present and how little had changed in the games to make them any more fun than they were the first time. I think a bad game is a pretty solid sign of an uninspired or incompetant development team. Things just don't get much better. It is as obvious to the game's managers that a game is a bomb as it is to the poor tortured souls who buy it. Bad projects are left to languish and die they aren't given more time and new resources to repair what's broken (if it is even possible) The one exception to this may be WWII online but since I've never gone back to it I couldn't say.
when they're busy playing music or trying to 'become Jedi' in SW Galaxies. I'd like to see a chart of the massive drop in other MMORPG subscriptions when that particular game came out. [I've quit playing DAoC and Earth and Beyond - I was considering going back to EnB once they went to war in the storyline - but I won their screenshot contest BACK IN MAY and despite getting two emails asking for my address and fax number to sign a release; I have not gotten my prize - so I'm not going to waste money on a game with that kind of 'community support'.]
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Being an "early adopter" when it comes to software just means extra expense, and extra bugs. I started buying games a year or two late just to pick them up on the bargain racks for $5-$20. But these days, they're sometimes as buggy as system software, so even if you don't mind paying full retail, it's probably worth waiting a few months and watching the message boards to find out when enough patches have come out to make a game playable! With SO many new games coming out all the time, who has time to give a first chance *AND* a second chance to a lot of different titles? You can't even give ONE chance to more than a tiny fraction of what's released each year.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.