If it had launched with no subscription fee, then it would have been hailed as one of the greatest online RPGs (not MMO) ever.

Take a look at Guildwars: It had much less content, only 2.5 dimensions (that's notational for raised 2d planes, but no actual three degrees of freedom) and was not QUITE as open as AoC.

Guildwars also had relatively inferior graphics, although this was balanced by the fact that they could run smoothly on most computers (even a 64 MB card could just barely run it) and was relatively bugfree when compared to AoC.

Seriously, how many of you would still be playing it if it had no subscription fee? All they would have to do is implement battlegroups and the increase in quantity demanded would make sure that there would be a good supply of people to World PvP with.

GW has several fantastic story lines,

working PvP,

working guild battles,

even RvR in Alliance battles,

complex skill system

armor dyes (heh)

great PvE

kept ALL its promised

AoC even for free is a PoS

If it had never been released and funcom advised Loinsgate on up coming Conan movie. Leaving the mmo games to the big boys.

Originally posted by Askatan

GW has several fantastic story lines,

I disagree, although I had never gotten into it. You don't really see many people in Guild Wars rping..

working PvP,

PvP works in AoC to an extent: If they were to properly reduce the effectiveness of gems (their current gem parameters on live are nothing short of retarded), then PvP could be just as great.

working guild battles,

That I agree with. If sieges in AoC were to be fixed 100%, then I could see myself coming back to the game. The invincible keeps and bugged gates/walls made it hell on everyone, not to mention getting ported out during the fights.

even RvR in Alliance battles,

I suggested that they implement something similar in AoC. I agree that it's a great feature in GW.

complex skill system

That is completely bogus: Although there are more skills in the game, you only get to choose from a small subset to actually use while quite a few classes have two-three toolbars worth of skills to use in AoC. The character customization is also superior in AoC... well it would be if they were to fix talent trees. There is also no directional shielding system, AoE attack system and collision detection as there is in AoC.

armor dyes (heh)

Yeah... uh... can't really argue with that as armor choices in AoC are blah.

great PvE

I don't consider it any better than AoC's. AoC has a lot more solo content, which I prefer to have over forced grouping scenarios as in GW.

kept ALL its promised

 Who cares? Really, I don't. Of course I listen to the music of murderers, so to each his own.

AoC even for free is a PoS

I respectfully disagree.

Apples and oranges. Guildwars is what it was designed to be.  Aoc is nothing what they said it would be and a diff class of game all together.

Guild Wars however, was fun to play. And at the time of release, those graphics were very impressive for the system requirements. At the time of release (and maybe even now, have not played it for quite some time) the PvP was also top notch.

Really, no fee is not what could have made AoC a success.

The higher level content of the game should have been like the first 20 levels in Tortage, that would have saved the game.

Including the features listed on the box would have gone a long way to making a differnce with AOC. But even with all the listed features in at launch the terrible quality of patches would have still taken its toll on subscriptions.

How AoC would have been deemed successful?

By giving people their money back.