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Age of Conan Expansion Coming In 2009
At the recent Leipzig Games Conference, Funcom developers announced that the first expansion to Age of Conan is planned for a 2009 release. Details about the expansion are sparse, but a significant amount of new areas appear to be in development for that and a free upcoming content patch. Massively points out a video which showcases some of the new content. 1Up has a piece of concept art for the expansion.
Most people who I know play it are not satisfied with the content, so instead of announcing an expansion they should focus on finishing what is already out. With this announcement, I bet a lot of people are going to decide not to resubscribe and just wait for the expansion.
As if WoW was any better when it launched.
Not really, but then most people remember everything in rosecolored hindsight. AoC is a mediocre MMO, but then all MMOs have been mediocre, at best, when they launched. The main problem with this one being how much further it takes WoW's annoying obsession with being Singleplayer Online. Stability is fine, performance is fine, some crap bugs with the more advanced stuff but they're mostly fixed as far as patch notes go. But it's still just an Online Singleplayer, and I quit before I even made it to lvl 80. Maybe the next game will have reasons to play with a team of players instead of running around alone. With WoW's success in this area though, I don't hold much hope. *goes back to Anarchy Online*
Having seen 1st hand the release of every major MMORPG since EQ1 I have no qualms in saying it was much better at release. There's no rosey colored hindsight required for AoC.
It was later. At launch, everything was fine. The problem was scaling, and you can't entirely blame them. See Blizzard looked at EQ's peak numbers and figured "well we can't do any better than that." Made sense. EQ was the first real big MMO, and there was now competition. None of the other MMOs before WoW had beaten EQs peak. So Blizzard figured they'd do no better. Well, they were wrong. Suddenly people bought up every available copy and they had more and more players coming in. THAT was when the problems started. Their hardware simply couldn't handle the load. Once they got that straightened out, it has gone pretty well since.
While their beginning was not without problems, it was a lot smoother than AoC. Goes double since what WoW had mostly was technical problems. The game itself was sound. Good design, lots of stuff to do, etc. That's one of the reasons why they started having the problem of too many people playing. Their game was done so well that people started rushing to it. They not only got lots of players from other MMOs, they got people who didn't do MMOs before.
WoW was capped at 60 at launch, so I'm not sure how you had a 70, but whatever.
And single player? Yeah, it's so terrible that I don't have to group with people who insist that I help with their quest first and then leave. Or who just simply suck.
Read and understand. It helps. I was talking about Age of Conan. Teaming being annoying? Yes, the current itteration of quests in online games is stupid. It's just a singleplayer game inside the online game, making the idea of teaming up intrusive, interrupting your own lvling, making everything less effective. Think about something other than WoW and it's retarded online singleplayer game, maybe try playing one of the few remaining games where teaming is not worse than being solo and you might change your mood. The reason that you play an MMO is to play with other people in some way or other. Making the game's design inhibit this is just puzzling.
I would call you quite wrong here. First, Anarchy Online, this game has a more extensive fast travel system than any other game I've ever played. You can travel to almost any anchorpoint anywhere in the game world in less than a minute. But the game isn't about running around alone, it's about teamwork, so the community people created grew strong.
What ruined a lot of AO was the inclusion of community controlled raidgroups, that took everyone from everywhere and raided everything. As there is no limit on how many you can bring in a zone in AO. This caused guilds to become useless, as previously you would need your contacts in order and your guild to be strong in order for you to prosper in the world. With the major basis point for guilds disappearing due to public wellfare, everyone turned into lazy solo-focused idiots rather than focusing on community, despite being fed by the community.
Guilds swapping game is understandable. You want to play with your friends from the guild, but hey, if you don't think you want to go where they go then why go? You should have no problem finding new friends in the MMO world you're in if you're not a complete ass.
WoW's gameplay style, the solo-questing, is what's breaking MMOs apart and reducing the community to elite groups that start out complete and only let others in. It's not because of fast travel or guilds.