Ao is a great game , but has a high learning curve.

If your not committed to learn the game , you will more or less hate it and quit.

Rk1 atm has some decent activity, less tower fights but more Battlestation games in diffrent TL's
If your looking for a game that is enjoyable and has alot of number crunching :P ao is your game.

The way you can costumize your own char is amazing, you can "almost" use anything in the game if you know your stuffz =).

Iv only played on rk1 since 2001 on and off =) the server is fairly mature and friendly and there is growing more and more Froob orgs (guilds) now aday.

A fixer is more or less the miiper :P as we call it . They are fast and mobile , can warp away into the grid realy fast, and are the only class that can get you into the Fgrid. They also have alot of evades , and Heal over time. As well as great speedbuffs. Damage wise they arnt that good, but in team they are great.

Talking about balance. Well the game has be out for 7 years now , and i would say its fairly balanced. To break it down for you , its alot about how you make the char and how you play it. A person can have all the gear in the world , but simply cant beat a person thats abit undergeared with higher skill in the playstile.

Well that makes ao uniqe.
Lets see, well you have the Futureish setting , where people can turn into bits / bites , traveling trough out a grid(basicly a computer network) The worlds you can go to, Shadowlands a mystical place with alot of old creatures, that is a great challange to take down(matter of speaking :P ) . YOu have Alien invation , aliens trying to take over Rubika the planet your on. Also you have playercitys. Giving bonuses to the entire guild =). And you have Lost eden, giving you more abilitys making the transformation of your char more fun. since you have more choises.

To break it down . Ao is a game that is hard to understand at first, when you first start to understand it the game blossums it become so wide and FUN!. Its an old game so dont excpect much from the grafics , but a grafic engine update is on the way , and it will become much more enjoyable then it already is.

Best regards

RIli

Aka Lotuslove (rk1)

Wow lots of encouragement to play the game here, yea I had a feeling it was all just a bunch of whinning your right you find that in every mmorpg. I really appreciate all the advice in everything and yes I do plan on buying all the expansions. I really like teams its a tough decision between adventurer and fixer. But to me it seems the fixer is lacking if all they have is medicore buffs, debuffs, and heals and low dps. I mean why cant they just be medicore at all of them?

Thanks everyone.

Oh and im far from a graphics junkie sure there nice to have but to many shallow games are made because of graphics personally im sick of it part of the reason why im staying away from console games for a while. Personally I like the graphics there pretty good for 7 years old even on the free version.

do not buy or support funcom in anyway this company needs to go away ty :)

Originally posted by Angelbound

Oh and im far from a graphics junkie sure there nice to have but to many shallow games are made because of graphics personally im sick of it part of the reason why im staying away from console games for a while. Personally I like the graphics there pretty good for 7 years old even on the free version.

Same here, however don't forget that they are doing a complete overhaul of the graphics soon. From what we've seen so far it looks like a pretty large leap in "quality". ;)

You do realize that aoc and ao are 2 differant teams other then the fact they work under the same company right? You all need to get off of it im tired of seeing these posts I for one am digging this game and you or anyone else will not change that for me unless funcom changes this game drasticly in some bad way. But for godsakes stop screaming doomsday all these companys are rolling around in money you just got to find the one game thats appealing who cares if there greedy show me one company thats not.

I didint like supporting soe but you know what I stuck with it because it should not ruin your own fun thats there problem not yours.

Originally posted by Angelbound

You do realize that aoc and ao are 2 differant teams other then the fact they work under the same company right? You all need to get off of it im tired of seeing these posts I for one am digging this game and you or anyone else will not change that for me unless funcom changes this game drasticly in some bad way. But for godsakes stop screaming doomsday all these companys are rolling around in money you just got to find the one game thats appealing who cares if there greedy show me one company thats not.

I didint like supporting soe but you know what I stuck with it because it should not ruin your own fun thats there problem not yours.

stupid question gets a stupid answer.....um no i always thought same teams worked on all the games.

if you want support a garbage company that rips people off that is your business.  i on the other will

not.  of course all companies are greedy.  there is a difference between greed, and out right ripping

off your customer base.  i'm not say they will fold.  i will do my part to make sure they get hit where it

hurts the most. have a nice day

First of all my questions where far from stupid the simple fact that you come here whinning like you are now proves no one should take you seriously. Any rational person would realize my questions are pretty valid. Ok so if you had such a bad experience with funcom where is your evidence? I want screenshots or something you cant even explain why dont come into my post whinning at how bad funcom is unless you explain the whole reason.

You dont know what they are doing all the companys are the same to me and have all done things as far as im concerned if you dont like ao then move on but please stop trying convice others not to support something you obviously dont know everything about. And if you did have a bad experience with them then im sorry but you sure as hell dont speak for everyone now move on to a new game please bye bye.

Originally posted by Darkholme

I agree about the Keeper as a good first character with expansions. What I was trying to say that a Froob Adventurer doing Froob content has good survivability. As for the number 100,000 I used, that was a general example, not an analogy. I realize that AO's subscription numbers are nowhere near that. However my point still stands, the complainers in AO are a vocal minority, as it is with all things in Customer Service. Basically I was saying that for every person with a horror story about FunCom's CS, there are 100 more that have had nothing but good experiences with FunCom's CS. The difference is, you never hear about the good, only the bad. Since I've had nothing but good experiences with FunCom's CS in the 4 plus years I've been playing their game, I can't say much to complain.

Gaute? Gaute, is that you, you little bugger?

Originally posted by Angelbound

You do realize that aoc and ao are 2 differant teams other then the fact they work under the same company right?

You do realize Gaute owns the fuckin' company and takes resources from AO rather than paying for more for AoC.

You all need to get off of it im tired of seeing these posts I for one am digging this game and you or anyone else will not change that for me unless funcom changes this game drasticly in some bad way.

 You gotta take the bad with the good, or stick to the official forums ( you know, where the "vocal minority" of the meager 20k total AO subs hang out ).

But for godsakes stop screaming doomsday all these companys are rolling around in money you just got to find the one game thats appealing who cares if there greedy show me one company thats not.

They are far from rolling in money anymore, AoC took it all and AO can barely support itself considering fr00bs far outweigh paying customers, but maybe that's just because of their "stellar" customer service reps ( hard to say that with a straight face ).

I didint like supporting soe but you know what I stuck with it because it should not ruin your own fun thats there problem not yours.

Last but not least, anyone who thinks they are still going to go ahead with the new graphics engine is gonna be sorely disappointed. They've ruined their reputation permanently between the years of ineptitude where they ran AO into the ground and the months of ineptitude where they've done the same with AoC.

People were willing to come back to AO with the graphic revamp, but most were waiting to see if they could actually successfully launch a game after the dismal launch of AO. Now, it has been proven that Funcom does not have the ability. They are two for two in the lame developer department for mmo games.

It took almost 7 years before AO was finally made almost completely stable and playable, and that is due to the fact the hardcore AO fans kept it afloat. They're not going to continue for another 7 years to bail out Funcom again.

Just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

I have played many mmorpgs in my time and if any companys are bad its soe, they are the worst to me funcom is far better then soe but soe probably has more money. I have played many mmorpgs and I can tell you that funcom probably isnt as bad as people claim, please show me one mmorpg that still does not have issues eq1 did for years cox still has issues, wow has probably the least because of there graphics engine its very easy for them to use. Then you have everquest 2 it took them years to make the game popular most of it was due to poor mechanics and rushed graphics engine.

My point is there is no perfect game yes funcom might have taken a long time to fix there issues but I have never seen a mmorpg without still having bugs such as graphic driver issues, class balancing, oh and by the way if pvp is part of your opinion I will tell you right now any game that starts out as mainly pve then pvp will hardly ever be truly balanced trust me you cannot have both without extreme design and planning before game release. Anyways im sure you all get the point.

The best company ive probably experienced was nc soft from city of heroes/villains they where great and friendly but changed after a few years its almost always like this. Pick and choose your battles people or you will never be happy with what you play.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Gaute? Gaute, is that you, you little bugger?

Nope sorry, I've been using that buzz-phrase since 1999/2000 before and after Origin released UO Renaissance... when everyone was decrying the end of Ultima Online.

Anyhow, the graphics update will still happen, and it's probably not that far off. It's looking like maybe 17.10 is one to two months away, then the new graphics engine will be in 18.0 which will probably be at least 1-3 months beyond that. I'd probably expect it later rather than sooner. So between late November and January 2009 most likely. Remember it's a DX9 engine, so it's not anything ground-breaking, but it'll be a quantum leap from the current graphics. Which also means that it's not as daunting a task as some people might believe. Plus they will have easier upward compatibility if they decide to upgrade the engine further later.

As for subscription numbers, yes AO's subscriptions were steadily declining since late 2003, but have started climbing back up steadily over the past couple years. Besides, there is a laundry list of current mainstream MMOGs that have under 50k subscribers that are doing fine. Not every MMOG has to have 10 million accounts to be "successful" and continue running and making a profit.

Not really into debating about it anymore since no one is likely to change anyone's stance or opinions from it. Some people like an MMOG and the company that runs it, and have no problems with either and some do...