tvtorrents.com
I've personally never used mininova for anything. There never seemed to be anything that I wanted on there, so in my mind it was always just some runty site with no content.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition completely destroys VLC player... shaders and hardware decoding, and less system use easily outweighs the need for a few codecs. Not that I've ever had issues with those, but VLC has had issues since forever:p
had one merrit; gratuitous violence. A retarded villain and poor acting, was fine for the pg-13 movies. Like some garbage the kids can watch. But it's about a guy who kills people, how can you make it pg-13? Who REALLY cares about a bit of violence on screen? Those who're too sensitive, and those who are insane. Nudity and violence are what life is based on.
How everyone seems to ignore the fact that he was a gun nut, owned 40+ soft guns, had his parents remodel the basement to a shooting range, and was an outsider. All of that doesn't matter, let's nevermind that. It was obviously the videogames. Perhaps the whole censorship thing germany is pulling on games and movies made him desperately ache for that extra bit of violence that the government denied him? Could more violence in games have prevented this?:p
You would only pay the EU VAT if you live in a EU member country. If you do, note that the price listed on steam now is including the VAT, so it is not factored in later to increase the price.
Just to note, I am not negative towards digital distribution. In fact I am very positive towards it and I would most definitely buy more games from digital outlets if they were priced accordingly competitive. But I am not paying a large premium for digital distribution. Nor a small premium. I expect a digital outlet to be cheaper than retail. So, when you can show me Fallout 3 at 25 euro VAT included, I'll buy it on steam. Untill then, no chance.
While Newell said in his speach that one of the advantages of Steam is they can adjust the price of a game runningly to compete, then I've never seen it done. Sure, maybe like 6 months after the game is released it'll be 10 monetary units cheaper.
I'm sure not buying any games on Steam though, I'm european, Danish, to be exact, and a game on Steam, like say Fallout 3 at launch, cost 50 euro + 15% VAT, that's about 80 US $. Later, Valve changed it so that the VAT is included in the price. I believe the current price (I'm too lazy to start steam to check) is 45 euro, VAT included. If I were to go down to the closest game retailer (Blockbuster O.o) Fallout 3 costs 33 euro, and that's including the danish VAT which is 25%.
So, even with 10% less VAT, steam is still 35% more expensive on this particular game (and pretty much eveyr other game), and by buying on Steam I forego the very strong consumer protection my country provides, which I may not need, but you never know. Answer me this, mr. Newell, why should I ever buy a game from your service? You are not competitive on the price and you are not competitive on service and support. Where is the advantage of buying a game on Steam for me?
Whether the price on Fallout 3 is different at present doesn't matter either, as the price in stores on launchday was the same as it is now.
The only thing I buy on Steam are the extreme sales offers that come and go. Like 1-2 euro games or packages.
You're not locked into any selection system. You can use the mousewheel or assign any key you like to change to the weapon of your choice.
There is no box in the middle of the screen either, and the hud does not interfere with the vision, it just sits there, like in a bunch of other games. Calling that a consolification makes no sense, as a game developed heavily for consoles, Far Cry 2, has had the hud almost completely removed! Which is quite awesome. Calling a graphic part of the hud intended to increase immersion a console thing is stupid, though.
The demo wasn't amazing, it was dull and tripe, showing you that the GAMEPLAY was consolified, not the interface (except the "pda" part). The AI is stupid and never given time to use cover or flanking. It just stands there in the middle of the room or starts jumping over stuff leaving it completely exposed and vulnerable all the time. Or maybe they're busy knocking over tables or opening cardoors to hide behind. None of it is "smart" it's just stupid as the animations are long and slow. Just so for someone's greasy fingers on the gamepad torturously pushing that right-stick towards the intended target...
Speaking of SHOGO, there's a researcher guy in FEAR2 that you meet underneath the Wade Elementary who is wearing a SHOGO 2 tshirt! Silly easteregg, devs teasing, or an early announcement?:D Let's hope for the latter!
Sadly, even though an interview with the devs said differently, the dust and destruction in FEAR2 is not at all on par with the first. I remember countless times getting into a firefight and shortly the whole room would be clogged by plaster dust and debris from the walls, maing it almost impossible to see. This gave some really great moments. In 2, there's no great dustclouds or anywhere near the feeling of destruction in the environments that you got after blowing your way through a group of enemies in the first game.
I reviewed it and gave it a 6/10. The game is simply not worth more, there's nothing new brought to the table from the first in the series. Indeed they take away from it. The difficulty, even on Hard, is bottom rung due to the excessively fast recharge and duration of the slow-motion ability. In the first game you had to figure out some of the encounters, save the slowmo ability and use it and grenades to great effect. In this version I've hardly ever anything but full HP/armor, full all grenades (cause I never need them) and full ammo for most weapons.
The scary effects are ALL OVER the place, it's like the developers thought "Oh, hey, this worked in small amounts, let's use HUGE amounts in the sequel, cause more of a good thing is better, right?". Sometimes it is, granted, but not in this case. It desensitises you to the scares, and the oppressive expectant mood of the first game is gone.
What it feels like is a console shooter. The pace is slow and the difficulty suitably low for people to play it with gamepads. Using the mouse and keyboard you just plow right through everything like a breeze. Should you fumble the entire place is riddled with healthpickups and armor anyway.
It'll still score 9/10 and so on on major gaming sites no doubt. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a diehard shooter fan. If you're on a tighter budget, don't bother.
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.
Fast travel was implemented over a month ago. All hub city travel NPCs now travel you everywhere.
I mean, you can flame all you want, but please get your facts straight before you do so, else you just look silly.
I've played Anarchy Online for 7 years. It has 320 levels. I loved every moment of gaining them. It might have been a huge uninteresting grind, but it was done with good friends in a great environment, and we knew that there was always something around the corner to make us better yet again. And if you didn't want to bother going all the way, that was fine too, because it wasn't required. But there was always something to do, no matter if it was a small raid or gain another level. That was appealing. Not like modern MMOs where you hit max level in a week or two and then sit and wait for the once a week you can go on a raid.
No, I'm not. But then, WoW has become the stuff of legend now, and so much has been pumped into it that who can really remember what was there and what wasn't there 3 years ago.
If anything but money talked, AoC wouldn't have been released so early. But unfortunately, money shouts higher than any number of whiny beta testers. Sucks for AoC, it had potential to be something new and cool, but now it'll just place itself in the mid-highend of MMOs, much like every other economically well positioned MMO released since the first generation.
Perhaps because of my dislike of quests of these types in online games. I insta-skip all dialogue and run out to whereever stuff needs to be killed or picked up, then run back. There is no need for me to read or listen to what's being said, because none of it matters. Being told a story about how I saved some characters in a world that doesn't ever change doesn't matter to me.
WoW was dullsville for me because it was also solo-focused. I had some of the best times I can remember in an online game with WoW in the lowbie dungeons, like Wailing Caverns, and some group-quests, playing with a small group of friends. Stopped playing because I couldn't stand the art direction and the solo-focus. Dungeons & Dragons Online was also really great in this manner, at least to start with, then the great dungeons started turning somewhat generic, which was sad. City of Heroes had really nice team-based gameplay as well and you could have some real fun times in that. Those games don't make teaming a hindrance to gameplay, they make it an asset, a way to do better.
Basic stats in AoC halfway worked at launch. The stats that had an effect on stamina and mana and HP did buff these the right amount. It was the effect on evades and attack strength that was broken. Like I mentioned in a previous post, going from those stats not doing anything to them giving their full benefit gave me something like +1% DPS. Negligable.
Why bother with the stats from the developer side? I guess because it's expected. The game is dumbed down considerably to accomodate casual gameplay, which I find rather insulting to the casual gamer, but I guess that's not the case.
Of course players in general would like to choose both singleplayer and team content in the same game. So would I. There's noone saying that that shouldn't be an option. But I guess there's some sort of rampant WoW fanboyism gone into things here when you start to talk about that game in anything but a rose colored light.
AoC shouldn't be defended because Funcom created it. It is a game that is a travesty in my eyes. However, I can also see that there is plenty of good things in the game, which a lot of other people obviously see as well, to such a degree that they far outweigh all the bad things that you and I are perceiving. AoC should be defended because just racking it down is retarded. Just like it would be racking WoW down for being a hindrance to the genre's development, when it's probably the best current generation MMOs. The next generation in MMO is not this type of game at all.
I don't constantly accuse others of doing that, I said it once or twice, and in general people do wear rosecolored glasses when what you talk to them about is something they care about one way or another. I have no illusions about my interests in the multiplayer market being anything but a minority, at least currently because noone has yet displayed anything more exciting than tic-tac-toe raids in WoW or whatever as the penultimate achievement for group based gameplay. Just go ahead and look elsewhere, the coop-function has disappeared from most modern games, replaced by a jump-in-and-play shallow multiplayer deathmatch or whatnot. Fun and games. Casual. Nothing to get involved in at all. Works great for a lot of games. Apparently it also works in a subscription based model as long as you can throw enough crap at people. But hey, McDonald's is also a succesful corporation, so that's not really a surprise.
Casual players are what the game is targeted for. If you're a casual player, like you say, then how is your time wasted? Did you get to lvl 80? If you didn't, and you think that questing around solo is fine because it's casual and doesn't eat up your time, and you're interested in getting to max lvl to participate in the weekly raid or whatever is popular now a days. How is your time wasted then? The lower levels were fine, the mid range is being improved upon swiftly, revamping every dungeon in the game, and several are already in the revamped state, so everyone playing casually should see the content upgrade around them swiftly. For me, that's just not good enough. I play MMOs to play with people. Not to sit in front of my screen and grind or do dull quests.
In 6 months? Most likely no noticable reduction in player count. They've got a full development team throwing out updates, summer is over and people are back on the job. 6 months is a long time when you're live, content is thrown out regularly and people are kept happy by new things and the prospect of future goodies.
I was there at AO launch and I've been there ever since. I still play AO. AO's launch was awful. Did I ever say anything different?
And no, they did not have to start giving away AO to maintain the playerbase, like with more or less every other game it's free to try it, they just found a way to make money on free trials.
Why am I defending the game? Well, mostly because I'm bored, and because whenever you read stuff like these comments, it's only the negative voice heard. If there's an article about WoW and how well it's doing, you get a hundred guys posting "WoW sucks". There's never anyone speaking for the level ground, or the pros to the cons. Perspective isn't popular on the internet, and your rather hostile post just adds to that. Why did I quit AoC? I quit because it was a singleplayer game in disguise and because the character system is so primitive compared to the games I normally enjoy. Everything about the game said "don't team with people, it'll only slow you down/make you inefficient" and that's just not why I play online games. I enjoy cooperating with people and having goals to work towards. Seeing that you could reach max level in a few weeks and that there was no real point to getting max level, other than being able to use epic gear and fight in raids designed by someone from the EQ1 devteam kept in cryostorage... so, singleplayer online game with no real goals other than just playing the game? I'm out.
I'm not wearing any rose colored glasses. The after 20 experience was no different for me than the pre-20 experience. The whole singleplayer online is highly annoying, and I hated every moment of running around in singleplayer land. That all of it continued after 20 was worse. WoW lead the way, AoC followed and did it better. You had your retarded quests that were go here and do that, in AoC they'd just spammed 5 quests in the same general area and that was great. The whole running around the world for the quests sucked. That quests made teaming a burden sucked. That quests in MMOs are generally about saving the world, and in AoC every quest is about saving the world, makes them suck even more, because you never ever save the world. The world never ever changes based on your actions in the quest.
Just seems like they took all the experience they had from Anarchy Online, which has turned into an excellent game despite all the flaws that a first time production of this type caused, and threw it out the window. Let's start afresh with AoC. Let's not make any cool boss encounters. Let's not make teaming about fighting with many lower-HP mobs, but with many high HP mobs that if you screw up the slightest with, you get killed. And so on and so forth, taking every wrong step they'd already taken with Anarchy Online. Why? Who the hell knows...
Stats only half working didn't really do anything after they were fixed either, so who really cares. The level of polish that was lacking in AoC was astounding, but it didn't really play worse for it. The fighting really was more fun than in more or less every other MMO. The quests were better done than in most MMOs. The small world was well crafted. The graphics are good. The game is stable, servers up, no queues.
pvp issue, spawn camping I can't really condone. That's just an expression of mental retardation from the camper side. Don't see why you shouldn't take steps to avoid that. Ingame mechanics now prevent it.
Yea, you can draw out all the little flaws here and there, but reality is that the game was in the stability and fun factor pretty much way above what you get from most MMOs that launch these days. The MMO genre is tough to get into, and apparently 4 years is not enough to develop a game that can even remotely compete with a title that has been established for just a year's time.
I have no more hope for future titles than I have with this one.
The next major MMO title, Warhammer Online, seemed like it was also on it's way to sink, throwing all the balast and loose content overboard to still be floating at launch. At least they seem to be focused more on the multiplayer part of being an MMO, and not just the Online.
But, WoW at launch, dullsville:| just a better dullsville for your average Joe than the rest.
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'm not familiar with the wording of the letter scale grades, + I can read that US school grades are highly inflated, so I guess that just continued over into the ratings system.
Good grades should be earned, just as a high review score. But then, that's not how the world works apparently; money and influence apparently help a long way where it shouldn't help any.
And, like I mentioned above, 6/10 might not be Call of Duty 4, but instead something like Turok. Not a really bad game, but something that fans of the FPS genre might play while waiting for the next big game. non-FPS lovers won't find it attractiev, and will steer around it.
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tvtorrents.com I've personally never used mininova for anything. There never seemed to be anything that I wanted on there, so in my mind it was always just some runty site with no content.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition completely destroys VLC player... shaders and hardware decoding, and less system use easily outweighs the need for a few codecs. Not that I've ever had issues with those, but VLC has had issues since forever :p
had one merrit; gratuitous violence. A retarded villain and poor acting, was fine for the pg-13 movies. Like some garbage the kids can watch. But it's about a guy who kills people, how can you make it pg-13? Who REALLY cares about a bit of violence on screen? Those who're too sensitive, and those who are insane. Nudity and violence are what life is based on.
How everyone seems to ignore the fact that he was a gun nut, owned 40+ soft guns, had his parents remodel the basement to a shooting range, and was an outsider. All of that doesn't matter, let's nevermind that. It was obviously the videogames. Perhaps the whole censorship thing germany is pulling on games and movies made him desperately ache for that extra bit of violence that the government denied him? Could more violence in games have prevented this? :p
Current SSDs have a lifetime of somewhere around 10.000 years. I think that's enough.
You would only pay the EU VAT if you live in a EU member country. If you do, note that the price listed on steam now is including the VAT, so it is not factored in later to increase the price.
Just to note, I am not negative towards digital distribution. In fact I am very positive towards it and I would most definitely buy more games from digital outlets if they were priced accordingly competitive. But I am not paying a large premium for digital distribution. Nor a small premium. I expect a digital outlet to be cheaper than retail. So, when you can show me Fallout 3 at 25 euro VAT included, I'll buy it on steam. Untill then, no chance.
While Newell said in his speach that one of the advantages of Steam is they can adjust the price of a game runningly to compete, then I've never seen it done. Sure, maybe like 6 months after the game is released it'll be 10 monetary units cheaper.
I'm sure not buying any games on Steam though, I'm european, Danish, to be exact, and a game on Steam, like say Fallout 3 at launch, cost 50 euro + 15% VAT, that's about 80 US $. Later, Valve changed it so that the VAT is included in the price. I believe the current price (I'm too lazy to start steam to check) is 45 euro, VAT included. If I were to go down to the closest game retailer (Blockbuster O.o) Fallout 3 costs 33 euro, and that's including the danish VAT which is 25%.
So, even with 10% less VAT, steam is still 35% more expensive on this particular game (and pretty much eveyr other game), and by buying on Steam I forego the very strong consumer protection my country provides, which I may not need, but you never know.
Answer me this, mr. Newell, why should I ever buy a game from your service? You are not competitive on the price and you are not competitive on service and support. Where is the advantage of buying a game on Steam for me?
Whether the price on Fallout 3 is different at present doesn't matter either, as the price in stores on launchday was the same as it is now.
The only thing I buy on Steam are the extreme sales offers that come and go. Like 1-2 euro games or packages.
You're not locked into any selection system. You can use the mousewheel or assign any key you like to change to the weapon of your choice.
There is no box in the middle of the screen either, and the hud does not interfere with the vision, it just sits there, like in a bunch of other games. Calling that a consolification makes no sense, as a game developed heavily for consoles, Far Cry 2, has had the hud almost completely removed! Which is quite awesome. Calling a graphic part of the hud intended to increase immersion a console thing is stupid, though.
The demo wasn't amazing, it was dull and tripe, showing you that the GAMEPLAY was consolified, not the interface (except the "pda" part). The AI is stupid and never given time to use cover or flanking. It just stands there in the middle of the room or starts jumping over stuff leaving it completely exposed and vulnerable all the time. Or maybe they're busy knocking over tables or opening cardoors to hide behind. None of it is "smart" it's just stupid as the animations are long and slow. Just so for someone's greasy fingers on the gamepad torturously pushing that right-stick towards the intended target...
Speaking of SHOGO, there's a researcher guy in FEAR2 that you meet underneath the Wade Elementary who is wearing a SHOGO 2 tshirt! Silly easteregg, devs teasing, or an early announcement? :D Let's hope for the latter!
Sadly, even though an interview with the devs said differently, the dust and destruction in FEAR2 is not at all on par with the first. I remember countless times getting into a firefight and shortly the whole room would be clogged by plaster dust and debris from the walls, maing it almost impossible to see. This gave some really great moments. In 2, there's no great dustclouds or anywhere near the feeling of destruction in the environments that you got after blowing your way through a group of enemies in the first game.
I reviewed it and gave it a 6/10. The game is simply not worth more, there's nothing new brought to the table from the first in the series. Indeed they take away from it. The difficulty, even on Hard, is bottom rung due to the excessively fast recharge and duration of the slow-motion ability. In the first game you had to figure out some of the encounters, save the slowmo ability and use it and grenades to great effect. In this version I've hardly ever anything but full HP/armor, full all grenades (cause I never need them) and full ammo for most weapons. The scary effects are ALL OVER the place, it's like the developers thought "Oh, hey, this worked in small amounts, let's use HUGE amounts in the sequel, cause more of a good thing is better, right?". Sometimes it is, granted, but not in this case. It desensitises you to the scares, and the oppressive expectant mood of the first game is gone. What it feels like is a console shooter. The pace is slow and the difficulty suitably low for people to play it with gamepads. Using the mouse and keyboard you just plow right through everything like a breeze. Should you fumble the entire place is riddled with healthpickups and armor anyway. It'll still score 9/10 and so on on major gaming sites no doubt. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a diehard shooter fan. If you're on a tighter budget, don't bother.
and your egotistical, belly gazing, freedom loving hypocrisy....
22 people this test is extremely statistically significant.
...would get over it's commie fear and see the light.
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.
Fast travel was implemented over a month ago. All hub city travel NPCs now travel you everywhere. I mean, you can flame all you want, but please get your facts straight before you do so, else you just look silly.
I've played Anarchy Online for 7 years. It has 320 levels. I loved every moment of gaining them. It might have been a huge uninteresting grind, but it was done with good friends in a great environment, and we knew that there was always something around the corner to make us better yet again. And if you didn't want to bother going all the way, that was fine too, because it wasn't required. But there was always something to do, no matter if it was a small raid or gain another level.
That was appealing. Not like modern MMOs where you hit max level in a week or two and then sit and wait for the once a week you can go on a raid.
No, I'm not. But then, WoW has become the stuff of legend now, and so much has been pumped into it that who can really remember what was there and what wasn't there 3 years ago. If anything but money talked, AoC wouldn't have been released so early. But unfortunately, money shouts higher than any number of whiny beta testers. Sucks for AoC, it had potential to be something new and cool, but now it'll just place itself in the mid-highend of MMOs, much like every other economically well positioned MMO released since the first generation.
Perhaps because of my dislike of quests of these types in online games. I insta-skip all dialogue and run out to whereever stuff needs to be killed or picked up, then run back. There is no need for me to read or listen to what's being said, because none of it matters. Being told a story about how I saved some characters in a world that doesn't ever change doesn't matter to me.
WoW was dullsville for me because it was also solo-focused. I had some of the best times I can remember in an online game with WoW in the lowbie dungeons, like Wailing Caverns, and some group-quests, playing with a small group of friends.
Stopped playing because I couldn't stand the art direction and the solo-focus. Dungeons & Dragons Online was also really great in this manner, at least to start with, then the great dungeons started turning somewhat generic, which was sad. City of Heroes had really nice team-based gameplay as well and you could have some real fun times in that. Those games don't make teaming a hindrance to gameplay, they make it an asset, a way to do better.
Basic stats in AoC halfway worked at launch. The stats that had an effect on stamina and mana and HP did buff these the right amount. It was the effect on evades and attack strength that was broken. Like I mentioned in a previous post, going from those stats not doing anything to them giving their full benefit gave me something like +1% DPS. Negligable.
Why bother with the stats from the developer side? I guess because it's expected. The game is dumbed down considerably to accomodate casual gameplay, which I find rather insulting to the casual gamer, but I guess that's not the case.
Of course players in general would like to choose both singleplayer and team content in the same game. So would I. There's noone saying that that shouldn't be an option. But I guess there's some sort of rampant WoW fanboyism gone into things here when you start to talk about that game in anything but a rose colored light.
AoC shouldn't be defended because Funcom created it. It is a game that is a travesty in my eyes. However, I can also see that there is plenty of good things in the game, which a lot of other people obviously see as well, to such a degree that they far outweigh all the bad things that you and I are perceiving. AoC should be defended because just racking it down is retarded. Just like it would be racking WoW down for being a hindrance to the genre's development, when it's probably the best current generation MMOs. The next generation in MMO is not this type of game at all.
I don't constantly accuse others of doing that, I said it once or twice, and in general people do wear rosecolored glasses when what you talk to them about is something they care about one way or another. I have no illusions about my interests in the multiplayer market being anything but a minority, at least currently because noone has yet displayed anything more exciting than tic-tac-toe raids in WoW or whatever as the penultimate achievement for group based gameplay. Just go ahead and look elsewhere, the coop-function has disappeared from most modern games, replaced by a jump-in-and-play shallow multiplayer deathmatch or whatnot. Fun and games. Casual. Nothing to get involved in at all. Works great for a lot of games. Apparently it also works in a subscription based model as long as you can throw enough crap at people.
But hey, McDonald's is also a succesful corporation, so that's not really a surprise.
Casual players are what the game is targeted for. If you're a casual player, like you say, then how is your time wasted? Did you get to lvl 80? If you didn't, and you think that questing around solo is fine because it's casual and doesn't eat up your time, and you're interested in getting to max lvl to participate in the weekly raid or whatever is popular now a days. How is your time wasted then? The lower levels were fine, the mid range is being improved upon swiftly, revamping every dungeon in the game, and several are already in the revamped state, so everyone playing casually should see the content upgrade around them swiftly.
For me, that's just not good enough. I play MMOs to play with people. Not to sit in front of my screen and grind or do dull quests.
In 6 months? Most likely no noticable reduction in player count. They've got a full development team throwing out updates, summer is over and people are back on the job. 6 months is a long time when you're live, content is thrown out regularly and people are kept happy by new things and the prospect of future goodies.
I was there at AO launch and I've been there ever since. I still play AO. AO's launch was awful. Did I ever say anything different?
And no, they did not have to start giving away AO to maintain the playerbase, like with more or less every other game it's free to try it, they just found a way to make money on free trials.
Why am I defending the game? Well, mostly because I'm bored, and because whenever you read stuff like these comments, it's only the negative voice heard. If there's an article about WoW and how well it's doing, you get a hundred guys posting "WoW sucks". There's never anyone speaking for the level ground, or the pros to the cons. Perspective isn't popular on the internet, and your rather hostile post just adds to that.
Why did I quit AoC? I quit because it was a singleplayer game in disguise and because the character system is so primitive compared to the games I normally enjoy. Everything about the game said "don't team with people, it'll only slow you down/make you inefficient" and that's just not why I play online games. I enjoy cooperating with people and having goals to work towards. Seeing that you could reach max level in a few weeks and that there was no real point to getting max level, other than being able to use epic gear and fight in raids designed by someone from the EQ1 devteam kept in cryostorage... so, singleplayer online game with no real goals other than just playing the game? I'm out.
I'm not wearing any rose colored glasses. The after 20 experience was no different for me than the pre-20 experience. The whole singleplayer online is highly annoying, and I hated every moment of running around in singleplayer land. That all of it continued after 20 was worse. WoW lead the way, AoC followed and did it better. You had your retarded quests that were go here and do that, in AoC they'd just spammed 5 quests in the same general area and that was great. The whole running around the world for the quests sucked. That quests made teaming a burden sucked. That quests in MMOs are generally about saving the world, and in AoC every quest is about saving the world, makes them suck even more, because you never ever save the world. The world never ever changes based on your actions in the quest.
:| just a better dullsville for your average Joe than the rest.
Just seems like they took all the experience they had from Anarchy Online, which has turned into an excellent game despite all the flaws that a first time production of this type caused, and threw it out the window. Let's start afresh with AoC. Let's not make any cool boss encounters. Let's not make teaming about fighting with many lower-HP mobs, but with many high HP mobs that if you screw up the slightest with, you get killed. And so on and so forth, taking every wrong step they'd already taken with Anarchy Online. Why? Who the hell knows...
Stats only half working didn't really do anything after they were fixed either, so who really cares. The level of polish that was lacking in AoC was astounding, but it didn't really play worse for it. The fighting really was more fun than in more or less every other MMO. The quests were better done than in most MMOs. The small world was well crafted. The graphics are good. The game is stable, servers up, no queues.
pvp issue, spawn camping I can't really condone. That's just an expression of mental retardation from the camper side. Don't see why you shouldn't take steps to avoid that. Ingame mechanics now prevent it.
Yea, you can draw out all the little flaws here and there, but reality is that the game was in the stability and fun factor pretty much way above what you get from most MMOs that launch these days. The MMO genre is tough to get into, and apparently 4 years is not enough to develop a game that can even remotely compete with a title that has been established for just a year's time. I have no more hope for future titles than I have with this one.
The next major MMO title, Warhammer Online, seemed like it was also on it's way to sink, throwing all the balast and loose content overboard to still be floating at launch. At least they seem to be focused more on the multiplayer part of being an MMO, and not just the Online.
But, WoW at launch, dullsville
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'm not familiar with the wording of the letter scale grades, + I can read that US school grades are highly inflated, so I guess that just continued over into the ratings system. Good grades should be earned, just as a high review score. But then, that's not how the world works apparently; money and influence apparently help a long way where it shouldn't help any. And, like I mentioned above, 6/10 might not be Call of Duty 4, but instead something like Turok. Not a really bad game, but something that fans of the FPS genre might play while waiting for the next big game. non-FPS lovers won't find it attractiev, and will steer around it.