All Posts by Sinistrad

How about this:

1. A skill based game where levels aren't everything, just an "edge" (i.e. you can easily kill someone/something 50 levels higher than you if you know what it's weaknesses are and have the proper skills to exploit them)

2. TRULY explore! No choke points (lookin' at you WoW), zone boundaries, artificial barriers, or any kind of obvious demarcation to say "This area is for level 20-40 characters, while this area is for 40-60"

3. A deep, interesting skill based system with "trained" and "specialized" skills picked by the player.

4. Complete character freedom.

5. A fun and interesrting "crafting" system which allows for fantastically powerful gear created from basic loot, as well as truly epic quest rewards.

6. No "raids": Depending on the levels of the players involved, you can either take on most content with a small group or even solo.

7. Player skill means something in PvP, and is not overcomplicated by hundreds of overcomplicated spell/abilities.

8. Player skill in PvE: You can take on dozens of monsters at once IF you know what you are doing and prepare properly. It is truly hectic, but fun!

9. Yes, if you WANT to, you can bot. I generally don't.

10. One of the most developed and detailed stories in any game, ever; nearly ten years of a new, free patch and story update every month. Books of lore and NPC's with stories literally saturate the game world.

Screw IP. Give me an original setting that can stand on it's own.

EverQuest, Asheron's Call, EVE... these are truly unique settings, and are/were successful games.

Even WoW was built on an IP. Even though it was Blizzard's OWN IP, the WarCraft series was a well established IP before it became an MMO. Same with Ultima Online.

I much prefer the dev's to not have even the slightest notion lurking in their subconscious that, "Oh, well this IP is bulletproof, so I think we can ship this pile of crap and just patch the hell out of it!"

MMO's based on an IP generally, I said GENERALLY (i.e. not always, so don't go giving counter examples. I KNOW they exist), tend to be the more cookie cutter games like LoTRO, WoW, EQ2, etcetera. Even if they "innovate" in one or two areas, largely they tend to be pretty run of the mill.

You also have to understand that all of this is coming from someone who's perspective is that of one who has been playing online multiplayer RPG's since the time of MUD's. I played EQ, and AC back when they were brand new games, after I was done with the MUD. The big three were AC, EQ, and UO. They, all three, were very different games. Now, 90% of all the MMO's have branched off the EQ paradigm (including WoW) while, for the most part, "taxonomic" derivatives of the other two have largely avoided the spotlight with a few rare exceptions. As such, the safe bet is the following:

-1. Pick a good IP. "zOmg! Let's make a Castlevania MMO!" (Random, I know. Hehe)

-2. Pick a well-tested design, because the people who OWN that IP, EXPECT a successful game! "zOmg! Let's make it like WoW, except we'll add in [Concept, X, Y, and Z]"

-3. Market the differences with trumpets, fanfare, subliminal messaging, and moonverstising.

-4. Ship a barely playable product which fans of said IP will snatch up, and hopefully tolerate long enough for you to:

---A: Patch it in to a decent game.

---B: Patch it in to oblivion.

---C: Not bother patching, they made enough money selling boxes.

Originally posted by Jokerkaaos

I've been watching those forums (I love a good train wreck...) and I was struck by the decision to appoint various players as moderators. In fact, it ALWAYS astounds me when a company does this.

A company running a multi-multi-million-dollar enterprise should take pains to make sure that their Public Faces (forum moderators, tech support personnel, etc.) are of the highest quality. They should use letter-perfect English in print and should be able to maintain a top-notch level of professionalism in all circumstances.

I encounter this in my work all the time - more "technically-minded" people (engineers, etc.) tend to have a certain disdain for the more liberal-arts educated. In short, they think writing and communicating are for English-major girls and they find customers to be nuisances.

In gaming, this typically manifests intself on the official forums. Devs think they know how to manage customer communication because they are smart and know the game. When they find out they don't know the first thing about dealing with customers, they either clam up or hire/appoint some intern or a bunch of "community leaders" to do this job for them.

This is a HUGE mistake, but I see it constantly. Any company with an investment of this size, dealing with millions of fickle customers in a highly competitive, highly public, highly-internet-discussed industry is harming themselves immeasurably by delegating the critical duties of communication and customer service to amateurs and fans on power trips.

The above post == "win";

1. LOTRO - Literally played for one day.

2. Horizons - They actually renamed it, "Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted" haha!

3. AC 2 - An insult to AC fans everywhere.

4. Lineage II - If I want a grind fest, there are plenty of free ones, thanks.

5. Final Fantasy XI - Grind Fest EQ style. I quit at level 13

Honorable mention: WoW

"Congratulations, you are now level 70! Now that you are done grinding quests for XP, it's time to grind them for GOLD! Yay! Oh and by the way, you'll need to raid three times a week, grind PvP for days, grind arena for days, grind faction for a Netherdrake, grind faction for crafting, grind monsters for crafting, all just to even begin to compete with the people who play this game for 50+ hours a week. You better get to work, yes work!"

Don't forget Asheron's Call.

It wasn't the most successful game, but for a brief time it was one of the "Big Three." Back then, EQ was king with a whopping 200k subscribers, wow! (Yeah, sarcasm)

The skill system was very sophisticated, with lots of options. Basically at character creation you used a point buy system to set things like your base stats, then a separate pool of points to set skills to trained, or specialized -- specializing a skill cost a lot of points.

When you kill monsters you gain experience, which you then choose to apply to any skill. This is the main method to increase your skills. Also, whenever you use a skill, it gains a small amount of experience. This is more to augment your combat experience, and not a way to increase your skills in and of itself.

Trained skills, if I remember, did not passively increase. Specialized skills gained a 5 point bonus, meaning the cost to increase them was as if it were five points lower. This may not sound so great, but at higher levels five points can make a huge difference. Those same five points might cost you a few billion XP if you are nearing the skill cap ;)

I once made a character named "Angry Wife" on the PvP server (Darktide). I specialized her in cooking, and thrown weapons. I stocked her up on dinner plates, and ran around accusing female characters of being "that harlot" and male characters of being "pigs," while flinging various dishes at them. I know, horribly sexist of me, right?

Ahh, those were the days!

I just wanted to give an example other than EVE. AC was a successful game, even if time was not kind to it! I feel like a lot of people here have no experience outside the more recent games. EVE and AC, though not perfect, are evidence that somewhere out there in the hazy cloud of possibilities there lies a game which can be different and successful!

Hmm I'm confused. I signed up for early access on Tuesday, if I remember correctly. So I should be in. I don't see the 5 dollar charge on my bank statement or an email in my inbox with a link to download the client. Did they retroactively remove some people from EA?

I thought I had signed up for it but I don't see where to get the client. Not a good sign...

Originally posted by Reiketsu

Originally posted by Sinistrad

Haha... best... idea... ever!

On the gross side though, my character is going to be a Lich. He should be immune to STD's

Anyone want some cold dessicated lich-lovin' ooooh yeah...

bow chicka bow wow!

*cackle*

Eh, couple of fire spells and it should be about right.  Gotta remember to rotate you during to avoid those nasty cold spots.

Fire's icky! Get it away from me!

Haha... best... idea... ever!

On the gross side though, my character is going to be a Lich. He should be immune to STD's

Anyone want some cold dessicated lich-lovin' ooooh yeah...

bow chicka bow wow!

*cackle*

Originally posted by Talgen

Well I just ordered from gogamer.com yesterday, and within 2 hrs I got my code.  Just putting it out there.

I ended up ordering from them as well. I got my code right away, and ninja'ed an early access just before the cut off, or they ran out. I haven't recieved my early access code yet though, but they charged me the 5 bucks so hopefully that means I got it, or I might be flaming them again, haha! Sometimes those e-mails can take a day or two...

I am beginning to like GoGamer.com. They've been good to me so far. Either way, I am happy I got the rhino. I play casters who can't use bows, and I hate elephants. So, there ya go

Cool. Hopefully GoGamer still has them. This is the last time I pre-order anything at a physical store. I am going down to GameStop tomorrow to cancel ALL my pre-orders for several upcoming games. I've officially had it with brick and mortar.

I pre-ordered AoC from GameStop MONTHS ago. They asked me for my phone number, so they could call me when the pre-order goodies came in. Well, guess what, they never called. I went down to check today, and the manager was a total jerk. He tried to blame corporate for me not getting a phone call. Supplies are limited, and they were all out. So basically I got screwed out of my early access, my in-game items, and the book (which I did not care as much about) even though I ordered WAY before most people.

Right now I am hunting around for someone to pre-order from that still has some pre-order goodies left. I am pissed at Funcom as well for limiting the virtual incentives. I can understand limiting the physical books, but the in-game items cost them nothing to mass-produce, and if the servers can't handle letting all the pre-orders on early, what the HELL is going to happen at release when everyone comes flooding in?

I tried a pre-order from GoGamer.com, but I have to WAIT for an e-mail to tell me if they are out of keys or not. They don't have a notice on their site. I can only hope that because they digitally distribute their codes (rather than physically) that they have a more abundant supply of them. If not I will be cancelling that preorder as well.

Why does every company feel the need to burn the people who are giving them GOBS of money BEFORE their game comes out? If I am going to pay for something that far in advance I expect VIP treatment.

This is absurd. Shame on everyone involved, and thanks for ruining what should have been a good time for me.

I'm skipping the entire thread and addressing the OP:

1. & 2. They are powerful enough. I was running it using a single 8800 GT with 512/mb DDR3, and 4 gigs of high speed DDR2 system RAM. I ran a fairly consistent 30 fps without SLi or multi-core support enabled. Oh, right, and the game was running in DEBUG MODE. Beta, anyone heard of it? My load times were almost always brief. Most peoples' problems stemmed from the fact they did not have enough RAM. The game, just sitting there doing nothing, uses close to 2GB in some places. RAM is cheap, if you have an awesome video card and are trying to play newer games with 2gb of system RAM, you need to get real. Just because a pseudo-seamless environment is right for WoW does not mean it is right for other games.

3. Again, you are wrong. There were people running the game with GeForce 6800's. My old computer with an 8x AGP 6800 could probably run AoC with a RAM upgrade. I would recommend shader model 2.0, no AA, no AS, shadows off, and med or low texture quality, but it would run fine. There were a lot of people saying that upgrading their drivers to nVidia's current beta drivers increased performance dramatically as well.

Bottom line, unless you extensively troubleshooted your crappy performance, and made allowances for the fact it was a beta client running in debug mode, you need to place a big part of the blame on yourself. Personally, I had more troubles with server lag, but I understood this was a stress test. Looks like they stressed the servers.

-Sinistrad

Yes, I am from the states. Sorry, I forgot to include that.

I already read over most of the guilds advertising here. Nothing really caught my eye. If there are any officers out there looking for additions to their PvP guild, please send me a PM.

My main is probably going to be a Necromancer. My feats are going to go down the Lich line, with a focus either on pets or abilities which heal me/leech life. I'll need to level a character higher than was allowed in beta to really figure out what's effective.

I am going to be on a PvP server so I am looking for a guild to group with while leveling up, and to experience the end-game PvP with. I am open to high end PvE content, but that will not be my focus. I do not want to be expected to participate in PvE raids on a consistent basis.

My PvP experience is mostly from WoW (2+ years) and EVE (2+ years). Outside of MMO's however I have years of experience in competitive online play. Games are a hobby for me, so I spend a good chunk of my free time playing them. I have a good work/life/gaming balance however, so I do not spend all my free time playing games. I can probably guarantee 15 hours a week on average. Again, PM me with any questions.

Thank you,

-Sinistrad

Hopefully they are bringing the Open Beta client up to date with the closed beta client! I hear it runs MUCH smoother!

I am crossing my fingers!

I haven't had any problems with my SLI setup. Maybe I just haven't run in to any games that are flaky yet. I'll upgrade to a 9-series eventually. They weren't out, or they were so new they were overpriced when I bought my rig.

Arguing about a beta under a NDA is silly.

I think it would be more productive if you guys argued about the existence of God (Yes I am being facetious. No, I am not some religious whacko.)

The bottom line is, it's true that beta clients are almost never, ever the most up to date version that a developer will have. They will often keep the same old client while their working copy is months if not a year ahead. They may shuffle around different versions of varying usability in order to isolate problem. The list goes on. I find it likely the fast travel map is their way of isolating players to certain zones. As someone who has done some programming myself, I can say that it would be extremely easy to set up a "fast travel" system to circumvent a large portion of the game if I for whatever reason wished to focus my testers to certain zones. All you have to do is change the destination of the trigger at the zone boundary to a non-adjacent zone. Simple.

In any case, if I were running a beta, the fact that the client I was sending to users was an old, fragmented copy meant to test specific aspects of the game, would be my prime motivation for keeping the NDA active for so long. I might also do the same if my game was a broken, steaming pile of refuse that even I didn't want to play.

Either way, there is no way to know unless you can get your hands on their most complete copy of the client. Speculating about their reasons for holding on to the NDA so late in the game is an exercise in futility. I'm not taking sides here, let me say that right now. You've both made inane arguments against one another. Avery's history as a "fanboi" is no more relevant than your assertions that the game must suck simply because the NDA has gone on so long and that the beta client is buggy and incomplete.

Like I said. Simple.

If you are so worried about it, just wait a few days after release and then read some reviews.

I am running dual GT's. They are not standard though, as each one has 512 mb of DDR3 RAM.

Even so, together they were still cheaper by a fair margin than a single GTX, and together perform better than a single GTS. I can easily run CRYSIS, UT3, and pretty much anything else at max settings. AoC should be cake.

I imagine a single GT would still perform admirably! Anything in the 8800 series, really, ought to be fine.

Ship insurance in EVE is not a carebear rule. If you had actually  played the game for any length of time you would know that ship insurance in most cases barely covers the cost of the ship, but any modules you lose, are just that: lost. That's not even counting fittings, or implants (which can run in the BILLIONS if ISK versus the MAYBE 150m payout you will get).

Insurance exists for a few reasons. It does make sure that if you lose a very expensive ship you aren't completely destitute, but can slap together something to start making money again. However, if you have a T2 ship or T2 fittings, it won't be anywhere near enough to make it as if nothing had ever happened. Getting your ship blown up hurts, and you lose a lot.

Do your homework.

Sorry. I don't mean to seem slow, but I just need confirmation.

Does Wrath of the Burning Price proc with a Freehand Sorcery, Fireshaped Manaburn?

Yes or No? :)

I want to build my wizard to be the guy who lays the final blow. I have already gone on a few excursions to take down epics and manaburn has been invaluable. While over-time DPS is great, mediocre DPS followed by a colossal killing blow seems preferable as it shortens the fight in general. That means a lot less risk for everyone!

 I don't intend to be using my Wrath of the Burning Prince on anything but the epic mobs so I don't imagine it will be too difficult to always have that ready. Really, my grandiose idea is to get several wizards together with wrath of the burning prince and have them all simultaneously cast their fireshaped frost nova while one of them fireshapes a manaburn.... hehe. I am currently going Sage/Battlemage for now, to help me level up, but I definitely see the possibility of going Sage/Spellshifter once I hit 70.

Thanks for all the info!