Age of Conan

gameplay aside which is ok but nothing speacial and graphics aside which are very nice . can the fact that aoc use of zoned instances with a limit on the number of players that can be in one zone at a time really be described accuratly as an mmorpg . while its an online rpg i think it would be hard to describe it as massive possibly an lmo limited multiplayer on line game would be a more fitting description . the closest game i could liken it to is guild wars  . but even guild wars could be described as an mmo because it did nt have the mirrored instanced system in its communal areas .

instances are an important part of any mmo , but they need to be used conservativly . if a whole game is instanced it destroys that feeling of community and an emerisble game world.

these are conans biggest problems i think . its a game the majority people will perhaps want to play a few months then leave only returning now and then to try some new patch or other .

i cant see it being a long term success myself . by the end of the summer the drop off in subscribers will be huge .

If they can called Hellgate:London an MMORPG, then AoC is certainly one.

hellgate failed miserably

If the only problem that a mature AoC has is the instancing, then this game will do just fine. Right now it has more problems than that (as to be expected), which leaves some people in a wait and see state.

WAR, Spellborn, Guild Wars 2, at the least will have instanced zones of some sort. That fact alone does not make them immidiate failures.

I would love to discuss the topic of your thread OP, but even you didn't stay true to that topic.

If EQ2 is an MMORPG, same goes for AoC.

Hello. Reality check please.

HGL and GW consisted of personal instancing, aoc has almost none of this.

Instead it has rather more persistant version of instancing which simply divides crowded areas up.

MMO = Massive Multiplayer Online

Instanced or not instanced. Doesn't make a difference. Instancing is simply a tool to deal with choke points and camping.

No one has ever said that an mmorpg should have a big open world with no instances

the point of an mmorpg is that you can play an rpg game with other people on the internet

so, hellgate is an mmorpg, guildwars an mmorpg, wow is an mmorpg, dungeon runners is an mmorpg, eve online is an mmorpg, ... so aoc is also an mmorpg

For guildwar where an instance is only for you or your group I would say no. For AoC. CoH/CoV and EQ2 that all share the same zone/instane system its yes.

Originally posted by Arthen123

i cant see it being a long term success myself . by the end of the summer the drop off in subscribers will be huge . 

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New user, only one post. Smells like a troll but I'll bite.

FC's other game is Anarchy Online which I played for close to 3 years. If you look more closely, you can find a lot of similarities in the game mechanics. In AO, there was also a limited number of players who can be in one play field. This number was based on the purpose and the size of the field.

It was a long time since I played AO so I don't remember the exact number of people that lets say can be in zone at Tara but I think it was around 200-250. It created some interesting player strategies but that's not the point. In reality, you need only 10-12 people to kill Tara so the limit was more than enough to accomplish whatever was the purpose of the gathering.

On the other side, there were Mercs which back then pre-SL required a crapload of people.  I am pretty sure that a lot of the time there were much more than 200 people including clams and OT. I've never heard of the different gs for Mercs. There was always only one.

AO was a niche game for sci-fi fans. If you will ask many people who played it, different play fields didn't kill it. In my opinion, they didn't even have any impact on our decisions whether to continue the sub or cancel it. It was the expansion packs who ultimately ruined the feel of sci-fi and turned off a lot of people.