Age of Conan: First Week Impressions - Page 2

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Right – because succubus nipples is what I was talking about when I suggested going to the forums to become familiar with the problems people might be having when deciding whether the game is really having a smooth launch or not.

Here, I’ll peruse the forum for a moment and see if I can make some better choices than you.

It would appear that many Vista users with 4 GB of memory are having “out of memory” crashes. Funcom recommends a boot config fix mentioned on a CAD forum until they can locate and resolve the issue, a work-around that - in some cases - results in your computer failing to start.

Players are still having problems with the patcher it seems. Either it’s crashing, stuck in a downloading loop, or not downloading at all. Lovely.

Some players are frequently losing their mini-map – it greys out until they restart the client. Annoying.

Here’s a good one. Characters using names which were used previously used by another character and then deleted (re-rolls) are unable to receive new in-game mail from other players. Well that’s good to know in an age where half the population name-claims before ever re-rolling the character up for real

Players are having performance issues they can’t understand. Choosing a “high” quality setting seems to give better performance than a “low” quality setting. No – nothing odd there.

Looks like Funcom has adjusted portions of the character creator after launch, changing the look of existing characters. Uh oh - players never like that one.

People seem frustrated with the amount of time and polish placed on the first 20 levels of the game compared to the lack of quests and areas for players after level 50. Destiny quests cease being unique after Tortage. Disappointing.

Most player petitions seem to get deleted once they drop below 10th place in the queue. That combined with the fact that it takes 6 hours to move 60 spots in the queue = scary.

Same old complaints about a lack of developer feedback. Probably doesn’t help that the dev-tracker on the forum is still broken. The web designer must be hard at work fixing pressing in-game issues – or on vacation.


Well that’s at a glance - while making an attempt to actually make our forum visit useful. – and there’s lots more to pick from. And at the point when this article was being written the game was also plagued by much more severe leveling exploits, dupe bugs, guild issues and bugs that turned particular classes into one-shotting gods. You probably wouldn’t be aware of that without visiting the forums unless you ran into the problem personally. Ignorance of the true state of the game does not equal a smooth launch.

That pretty much sums up your true feelings on AoC. You directly respond to somebody who made no reference of WoW or stunlocking rogues by spending two paragraphs talking about how much more skill it takes to play a rogue in WoW than it takes to combat in AoC. So if somebody likes AoC your basic argument is that WoW is better? Get over it.

So, Pmid, what was your true purpose in posting? I'm rather curious. Did you wish to, I'll even give you an alphabetical breakdown, A.) Express your opinion on Age of Conan or B.) Attack tmeacham's impression of the game? As has been stated, this is a thread about AoC, stick to it.
And, as I'm moving throughout the article, specifically your post at the top of this page, you're being compared to a troll due to your constant attacks on tmeacham and the overwhelming level of arrogance you display towards anyone who, and believe me, the hypocrisy here absolutely slays me, disagrees with your opinion.
And, as I'm succumbing to the same folly you obviously have, I'm off topic.
My *impression* of AoC is that it has done rather well by itself. The combat is engaging, in MY opinion, and accomplishes what every MMO attempts to do, bring something new to the table. The initial players at launch numbers were staggering, and they've coped with this fact to an amazing degree. Everquest had server crashes during December, I believe, well into the Planes of Power era, considering they have roughly equivalent player numbers Funcom should be commended in this respect. Having weathered WoW's open beta and launch, I'm impressed. The CS does need improvement though, but this is a facet in which I expect failure to an epic degree.

I played a rogue for a number of years on a PVP server. I didn't say playing a rogue takes no skill. I said the only concern for where you are hitting a player is that you're behind them for some skills. I didn't say it took no thought to correctly use your energy and properly use timered skills. What I said was that you don't have to predict where your opponent will be weakly defended. There defense is always the same regardless of where you are attacking.

It seems to me that various mobs tend to attack and defend a certain way. Maybe that only carries through the first part of the game, but I've been able to predict where defenses would be light in a reasonable amount of cases. I can't speak for every mob in the game as I've not faced them all, but from my experience thus far it certainly doesn't feel like I'm completely guessing.


I still don't see your logic on why a reviewer should report bugs that they don't experience from a public forum. Anyone who can read the review is capable of looking at the forums and complaints themselves. It seems irresponsible to repeat someone else's opinions if you've not experienced them or don't agree with them.

The only way I could see any sort of validity in him looking at the bug forums would be if he had a wide variety of hardware platforms at his disposal and he was attempting to reproduce the bugs from information in the posts. Even then it would only be his responsibility to report on the bugs that he could reproduce, which would likely be a small segment of the available bugs if any. This seems to me to be what he reported on. He mentioned the bugs/features that he ran into and gave his opinion on them.

Well I made an idiot out of myself by not thoroughly reading clay's post. It must have been to late to be reading. Anyways I think the whole argument about which is better and which takes more skill is kind of stupid and is the prime reason why the AoC forums are a complete mess. I haven't visited since the first day I had the game but I would say easily 75% of the post either started as or devolved into either how AoC was better or worse to WoW or some other MMO. It's one thing to give your opinion on which you think is better and why, but to argue about it or use it as a reason to say why one game is bad or not is just silly. To me as a WoW player I see the AoC combat system as pretty revolutionary. But that's just my personal opinion and it isn't meant to diminesh WoW at all, AoC is just very different.

I'm definitely new here. It seems quite a few of you have had these posting "battles/discussions" before. I'm late to this thread to though I see but I just had to post my own thoughts to...

One I completely agree with Pmid's points. They are all valid but maybe they should have been brought up in a less angry manner so to speak...BTW Pmid in one of you posts you mention AoC has 3 class types - it's 4 - soldier, rogue, priest, & mage

To the person that wrote the article - rather than restart your game to fix texture rendering issues - increase the draw distance (the overall draw distance and the high detail draw distance) - that fixed the problem for me and I no longer see the textures being added as I walk up a ramp etc. This also did not put any noticeable hit on FPS.

One other point I have to make, and yes I understand this is just a 1-20 level points of view article - but the different classes had different issues you might not have experienced though I know the logistics of leveling all 4 classes up to 20 and trying all different scenarios might have been to time consuming for just an opinion article. As an example - there was a very big bug not everyone would see - it was restricted to the mage classes. In the night time quests if you chose to wait to do them until you were well beyond level 15 (the first set of night quests are doable whenever - but at a certain point in the chain it requires you to be level 15 to move on) this broke a certain chain in the quest line (Awakening II). Now you could skip this but when you're playing a new game you don't really wanna do that and Funcom listed in the information screen that skipping certain parts of the destiny quest would break it. Kind of ironic is it not that it would break without skipping and require you to skip which Funcom suggested you do not do.

The other alternative was to petition - and I think someone already mentioned how the petitions went and are still going.

And to answer the writer's one question - Yes, I am still playing. I might agree with Pmid on a lot of points but I paid for my game time and I like to experience as much as I can. I would like to see how AoC crafting is which can't be done until level 40.

I also would like to say I also agree with Cyberqat about the launch. Yes AoC had a huge amount of subscribers but I don't think that means that have had the smoothest launch to date. And that is my opinion. A perfect launch is perfect whether it is 1 custmer or 400,000. A launch with 399,000 subscibers without a problem and 1 with is not perfect. Did AoC have a good launch? Yes they did a good job for the most part. Personally I think Auto Assault has had the best MMO launch to date. That was one of the smoothest games from beta to actual play (though yes not perfect) I have ever experienced and yes that was NCSoft to but that is just the publisher. Net Devil I believe would have to be given credit for that.

I think this article does hit on some good points - AoC is unique and refreshingly different in alot of ways and as a game I think AoC is setup to be very good. And of course the graphics though not directx 10 are astonishing for the most part. Funcom on the other hand is very lacking as a company it seems in anything other than actually creating AoC. They have falsely advertised at least more than one thing or just plain provided information that was wrong. Either they don't know their own game or they change things without correcting old information on their website. Perhaps they leave their marketing department with the short end of the stick or don't keep notes? I do not know.

Oh I almost forgot - I to disagree with the assestment that the AoC official forums are mostly a small minority of opinionated users. The simple fact that customer service has been so poor has caused A LOT of people to sign up on the official forums just to look for answers. These are probably not people that would normally have had they not required some sort of assistance. I also do not think most of the issues a majority of subscribers experience is hardware related. Though people assuming that I believe will not continue to play as I have heard them say in the local chat channels. It will be interesting to see how the 400,000 subsciber total ends up after a month or 3 if they bought time cards right away expecting the best.

The voice-over cut scenes extend past the starter island but "only" for the destiny quests. At least at the moment. Lastly, I myself am a pack-rat so I had a big issue with the bank/e-mail system being down. I love finding cool items and e-mailing them to alts to use! Oh well, that's my two cents though I'm sure I forgot something I was thinking when reading all these posts.

haha, well, if anyone is silly enough to still be trying to enjoy AoC, I have a few tips, since you'll never get a petition through.

Its a fairly well known issue that the AoC game files become corrupted rather quickly, and it effects your load times. Since the loading screens are already pretty frustrating, this is bad.

I used defraggler to defrag the AoC folder regularly, and can say that this helped improve the problem.

If your particle effects go missing, the most common solution is to use a different version of your video drivers.

If the intro scenes stutter, its most likely sound card drivers. Which, if you are using Vista, might not be easy or practical to resolve.

For the texture detail decreasing and looking like crap, increasing the draw distance (the overall draw distance and the high detail draw distance) helps, like mentioned by thegh0st, but also you may try playing with the AA settings. If you notice that when you zoom out far, that the texture detail drops on your character model, its slight more common to be resolved by bumping up AA. Does this make sense? Nope.

Just as a by the way, if you turn the high detail draw distance all the way down, it makes the game look humorous.

If you notice your graphic settings are reverting back, or acting strangely, you can try deleting the AoC folder found under Application Data inside your windows profile. In XP the path for this is usually something like C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data
-If you can't find the Application Data folder it might be hidden.

If you make a change that causes the game to crash immediately upon entering the game, try the above as well.

There are some shader files, that commonly get **** up, but I can't remember the path to them, because I removed the **** game from my system. I'm sorry I couldn't remember.

As far as individual settings go, Bloom should be disabled on your system, especially if you are running a 7 series Nvidia card, or you will suffer a substantial performance hit. If the game is not playable on low settings, you can try lowing the shader model to 2.0, but the game will look like ass. On my 8 series bloom caused me the same over-brightness as Travis experienced, but with less of a performance decrease as I saw on my 7 series card.

On 7 series cards, you should probably turn shadows entirely off, since they are often buggy, and cause an unreasonable performance loss.

Enjoy paying for extended beta =)

I also want to expand on the comment someone made about "usually" being able to predict the guards of AI mobs.

"Usually"? Are you serious? Most mobs follow the exact same pattern every time. For example, if a mob of a type starts with his left guard open, then his middle, and then right, pretty much all of them will do the same thing every time. The AI in no way reacts to player action. If a mob follows a different pattern, sometimes 1 or 2 other sequeces are in there, to give the illusion of AI, but you will soon recognize this. So, say you are killing mobs with the Left, Middle, Right open guards, and one starts with the Right open, then Left, then Middle. Next time you see that mob type start with right open, he'll have about a 100% chance to then have Left open, then Middle.

There is no reactive AI whatsoever, that I could tell. Just simple patterned behavior.

For bits of "bait and switch", we should elaborate and just name a few. DX10 still on the box, and sieges were the most obvious. In what way is less than 100 player sieges the same as "hundreds of players" in sieges, which was hyped right up until the last minute before launch?

FC's overall dishonesty, is a key reason why players like myself have abandoned ship.

On Pmid... well, you start with a very narrow looking "non" review, which gives non-warranted praise to a flawed product. Which, I mentioned upset me as well. She expressed many legitimate reasons why this frustrated her, and then is basically told to piss off by Travis in his he “Since the game is so much trouble though can I assume that you won't be playing it or visiting the official forums anymore? Seems kind of silly to continue to play a game that you don't like or frequent the forums for a game you aren't playing. Or, are you still playing it. And if so... why?” remark. Then, we have Purplerat trying to defend AoC, and Travis... which I kind of find hilarious. This is made further humorous by Rob defending Travis as well, and adding in "pitch your review my way" comment, which I'm actually surprised Pmid didn't fume over, since it would have pissed me off pretty good. We have impressions that should have never gone up, and someone from Toms suggests a forum user writes new impressions? Obviously, a comment just made to shut Pmid up, since it wasn't reasonable.

Assume I work for a car magazine, and I test drove a car, and write 2 pages of "impressions" encouraging buying it.... but its common knowledge there are many recalls, and otherwise large amounts of issues. The manufacturer is even false advertising the horsepower, and other specifications, and I mention nothing. Doesn't that make me an ******* for encouraging people to buy the thing? Even if I liked the product, I should have said something.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Pmid was the only person to loudly voice frustration directly at the journalist/writer.

Anyway, back on subject a bit, AoC is still being hyped as something, new, revolutionary, or evolutionary. Basically, we see lots of suggestions that its doing something different. The key thing I want people to know, is "No, no its not. Its the same old MMO formula many of us are growing tired of". It just takes a little getting through the combat systems learning curve until this is obvious. Wherever the is a step forward, there are many backwards.

If we compare AoC's "revolutionary" combat system with something old like FFXI, what do we see? In AoC, players mash 123 for directional attacks, and in combos. In FFXI, we have auto attack, and abilities the user must execute... but wait! In FFXI you can perform combos with members of your group, for added damage. Hmm... for small groups, FFXI actually has superior combat mechanics? We can do this with pretty much any game, WoW, EQ, whatever.

Further elaborating on the combat systems' flaws...

Combos are tied to stam. Stam is tied to sprinting, active block, and dodge movements. Combos can break on enemy movement. The regen rate on health is too high. If you concentrate on combos your enemy can just run away. If you should only dodge if you are trying to avoid an enemy combo, and rarely. I was most effective in PvP circle strafing, like I did in the FPS days, and just sprinting off when enemies use too much stam. Midway, I knew how things would go, and be able to decide whether to run or stay, adding a stun followed by a few combos. It all felt poorly done. Much slower paced than the shooters I enjoy, much less strategy or skill than required by other MMO type games, like Guild Wars, WoW, and so on. So, it feels like more button mashing, without any added substance in what would otherwise be inferior stategic combat in an MMO. OK, I suppose some will be satisfied that you can chop heads off... but lets see how thrilled then are when they see the same fatality combo in a row the 5th time. It only gets more boring folks. If a few bloody animations are a draw now, surely after a few months they won't add much value. If they do, maybe you have a fetish for blood... I had an ex-gf like that once.

Basically, what I'm trying to say, is this is a poor PvE combat system, that involves little teamwork or strategy. In PvP, it has frustrating button mashing, and a decreased level of strategy compared to other MMOs. Overall, in my opinion, this is an inferior system.

I could easily attack AoC's graphic choices. We have high res textures, and some pretty effects, but the consequences for this are substantial. The game is buggy, runs poorly on lower end systems, and is both instanced and infested with load screens. Whatever immersion that was added by the pretty graphics is soon taken away by the disjointed feel of the game that resulted. Not to mention a sea of glittering bags.
--AoC's high graphics are a negative attribute, and feel like a crutch hiding uninspired art direction.

Oh, but thats a low blow that will make fan boys freak. Ok ok, I still think its pretty on my 8 series Nvidia at Medium or High settings. But, I do not consider the cost of the graphics to have been worth it.

I sit here, honestly wondering what AoC has to offer at all. I cannot think of a single thing that has been done, that doesn't have large amounts of flaws tied to it, or hasn't been done better elsewhere.

**hmm, I suppose my job is more boring than I thought. I seem to have gone on a rant here.

It's perfectly reasonable. In fact, Toms gets some of its best employees from the forum. I was a longtime reader before joining. So was Travis. And we have an intern, by the way, starting Monday who I encoutered on the forum. So I'm not sure why my offer/invitation would piss you, Bucko_40, or Pmid off or why you find it hilarious. So I'll extend the invite to you as well, Fulle, since you make a number of good points in your "rant." Though if you do take me up on the offer, may I humbly suggest that you 1) not interpret "are you still playing the game?" as an attack/piss off remark, and 2) not get up an arms about an editor sticking up for his writer.

I agree with you on your 2 points. I have somewhat of a forum warrior style, so its hard for me not to be confrontational, I suppose.

I'm glad to hear you guys are thinking about discussing Valve's stance a bit more... If the subject came into a Second Take, I'd be interested in what you guys have to say. I'm not sure if I agree with you about PC gaming being on a decline, though, it seems more of a decline in boxed sales, and a change in the type of products that are profitable.

As far as the invitation... well, I'm a bit too opinionated to write a fair, neutral set of impressions, but if I hadn't already trashed the game I might have took you up on that.

Thanks Rob.

Good question, Travis. "Why are we playing a game we don't like?" is definitely a more interesting question than "How does AoC compare to WoW?"

MMO Addiction, is a relevant subject, and will probably be the only reason people will continue to play AoC after the newness wears off.

Some parental help sites, geared towards gaming additions have lists of signs to look for, such as:

A preoccupation with gaming
Lying or hiding gaming use
Disobedience at time limits
Loss of interest in other activities
Social withdrawal from family and friends
Psychological withdrawal from the game
Using gaming as an escape
Continuing to game despite its consequences

The Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO), has thousands of cases of youth with gaming addition a year, recognizing it as a serious problem. Since they're the most wired country in the world, they're a bit ahead of us western folks in this respect.

Good examples of this sort of gaming addiction are everywhere. We've all listened to the WoW kid cry on youtube, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QRPHGSJIs

It might seem funny, but what we're listening to, is the results of a videogame's abuse of the child's addictive personality.

One site brought up the question:
"How many of you in here have lost something important to you or almost lost something important to you - due to an MMORPG?"

So, what causes MMO addiction?

Well, simply put a combination of carrot on a stick rewards, the social network, and immersion. Luckily, AoC isn't very immersive, and has poor socialization tools, which helps make socializing frustrating, which is why I could quit so easily.

Anyway, WoW's a great example of the carrot on a stick tactic. There is always some small reward a half hour away. A pet level, crafting levels, weapon skill points, reputation dings, and so on. AoC is the same way, but does so more clumsily, foolishly introducing some of these factors too late to properly addict players.

It should be noted, that the leveling systems are setup so that leveling early on is faster, and becomes more time consuming later in order to exploit gaming addiction. The way this helps, is it adds more instant gratification of rewards early on, or a hook, and then once there is substantial time investment, where the poor sob is starting to be hopelessly addicted, it ensures for that reward system to stay in place as long as possible. Giving other addiction factors, like the social hooks time to take hold.

Individuals who are depressed, or have low self esteem are at the highest risk. We all joke, that players of MMOs have no friends, but there is some truth to this. Its the lack of healthy real life social groups, and poor opinion of self worth that drives many MMO players so hopelessly into addiction.

In a large way, MMOs exploit the weak, and attempt to suck them dry for every dollar they can.

Now that this has been brought up, and considering my own addictive patterns, I am feeling somewhat fortunate that AoC was so poorly executed. Thank god it was.

No, it really does matter.
Meriam-Webster and Dictionary.com respectively say an opinion is, " belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge" and "a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty". These definitions obviously point towards something you are not positive of, it is merely what you have experienced without delving deep into the subject.

On reviews, Meriam-Webster and Dictionary.com weigh in saying, "a formal military inspection" and "a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation." Most people following this thread are intelligent, and the differences are clear. But to reiterate, one is an uncertain belief while the other is a formal or critical report or inspection.

Now, please tell me how an impression (the first and immediate effect of an experience or perception upon the mind-Dictionary.com) or in other words tmeacham's opinion is the same as a review.

Why do you phrase your comment in this manner? Right off the bat you’re making an assumption – perhaps based on your personal inability to leave games you’re unhappy with – that everyone else is equally hopeless. That’s the problem with your entire review – you make too many assumptions and statements bred of ignorance.

I’m not playing the game any longer. I had chosen not to answer the question simply because I felt the question was stupid and insulting. You’re asking people who bought a non-refundable product if they’re still playing it during their initial 30 day trial period. The answer is – what does that have to do with anything? Did it occur to you that dissatisfied customers might be playing because they’re trying to get the most out of their spent money? Who would fault them for that? Once their 30 days are up – once they must decide whether the product and its problems are worth paying a monthly subscription for – then you can ask your question without looking ridiculous.

Where did this discussion turn into an AoC versus WoW debate? I don’t see it. I see WoW, along with LoTRO, CoH, EQ2 and TR all having their combat system compared to AoC – which is exactly what you did in your article, except you used the label “other MMOs”. So, what – our take is “infinitely” less interesting because we disagree with your opinions on the combat system? So sorry to bore you.

To repeat myself, the hypocrisy is killing me.

This thread just keeps making me want to talk more here - I'm sure I will miss something I was thinking reading all the new posts but I'm going to try to get most of them out here...

RobWright - I have to say that is a commendable invitation to the readers of this forum. Also this is off topic to but is there any information on how they gather statistics/info as to whether pc gaming is dying or it isn't? I personally switch back and forth periodically between my pc and my xbox/xbox 360. I wouldn't give up either if I don't have to. But when I am playing a game that interests me on my xbox that does not mean I have given up on my pc. I would guess some of this is done through sales. However when I find a game that gets my interest I tend to not spend money on other games for a while. One thing I think has changed is the "buy and try" which used to be one of the best ways to discover new games. Today with places like tomsgames, gamespot, actual game homepages, gamespy, and the likes along with magazines such as pc gamer and game informer to mention a couple - the amount of research a person can do into a video game before they buy it is enormous. I think that alone would put a serious dent in the way people used to purchase games. I know this has stopped me from "trying" more than one game I might have bought long ago. Just another small side note - I know I myself am very opinionated and I don't always shy away from games that are bashed by the majority. I can read a bad review but still have a game interest me from what I piece together. Overall though the wealth of information to base a decision on has resulted in less games being bought for myself.

Ok that went on longer than I planned - next on to Travis - personally I didn't see you question myself as an attack because it does not bother me to answer it as I already have. I do think how you presented the question though is where it comes across as wrong to others. Like answering barbs from other posters then following up with a question like that right away can be misleading as to the true intention of the question. This is just my opinion though I'm not trying to attack you. I think we all know on the internet a lot of people read things differently and things get taken out of contest when there is no audible tone to go by. We also leave out things we might speak that show a change in the conversation.

As for posting on those other sites...I completely see where you're going with that to but for me personally - I read toms site primarily. I've been a reader of this website way before there was a tomsgames (at least not that I knew of or was ever linked on the main page). To date how long I have been a reader - I started reading it in the pentium 2/pentium 3-Slot 1 days. I bought my first ASUS product - a Slot 1 motherboard based on the review it got from toms. It was rated the best - slightly ahead of the microstar board I had at the time but I had to have it! So of course toms writers and user's are going to get my attention more. Why else would I have signed up after so long? =) I do primarily read toms for the hardware reviews but lately I've been watching the game review videos and reading the articles on the games and I enjoy both of them. This AoC thing though has just compelled me to have to speak my say to.

And back to Pmid - I bascially will repeat what someone else said - Pmid has some very valid points that I agree with on purchasing a non-refundable product for the most part(some people do sell their accounts) and getting the most out of the money spent. It would make more sense to clarify and ask if the people in question intend to keep playing past the point they have already paid for (which Bucko bascially said to). Pmid no offense to you either because I do not know what all you or the writer have discussed before but you do come across as abrasive. But let me follow that up with, I came across just as abrasive to Funcom themselves in the multiple e-mails I sent them. I feel if anyone deserves to hearing ranting and venting they are the proper ones to direct it to.

I have thoughts on Bucko to - I see his point about the author passing his impression on to readers but I also can see how an article which is more of an opinion than a review would be hard to include the amount of extra negative information needed to balance the article out as neutral. The author probably gives us enough credit to understand his opinion might not reflect our own. Maybe the article did not stress the fact enough for everyone that is was not an actual review? I do not know.

On to Fulle - I agree with a lot of the things you mentioned also and I like the way you think for the most part. lol =) But I do disagree with you on the addiction thing at least for myself anyways. I would think it would be more accurate for myself anyways to say it's more of an OCD than anything. I get a mind set and I want to do something I have seen myself or create my own unique character. I also more enjoy working through an MMO and earning a rare drop on my own than completing some obnoxiously long quest chain for a reward. I do enjoy a game with a good story to and that is the times when long quest chains are fine to me. I think AoC does a great job in having a storyline which I immensely enjoy in games. I want to point out a lot of the times I'm working on my own in an MMO rather than with other people. Of course there is always the chat going on. It is also fun to run into random people out in a virtual world a lot of the times (I do immensely enjoy ressurecting the fallen though I'm not that fond of being a monk-type go figure) but just as many times it can be annoying because they are killing your quest mob or something! =) I also enjoy finding that just right armor combination to give my character that particular look I want them to have. Which is more like I'm putting my own carrot for myself out in front of me. That's one thing I think MMO developers should learn - the more armor options as in looks the better - everyone should not be wearing the same quest item for 10 to 20 levels and all look the same. Add more options even if they have the same stats - add in game dye options like Guild Wars. Back to the addiction thing - about the kids being addicted - I'm not going to bring up basic parenting. And back on to the adults and addiction. Fulle you didn't rebuttal you own statement like you mention with the car review analogy. What about the other opinion of MMO's as a whole not just AoC. They keep some people occupied at home and out of trouble they might get in were they not at home. I know several older gamers that like to have a few drinks now and then and I'd say it's much safer for them to be on an MMO than out at a bar having to drive home afterwards. Though that does take away from the outside world social aspect you mentioned. But I would call it a plus. As for attempting to suck people dry for every dollar they can. I hardly think 15 dollars a month is sucking someone dry though there was a time I would never have pictured myself paying to play a game. 15 dollars a month is actually cheaper than going to see just one movie if you happen to like popcorn and drink when you watch one (unless you get the very small ones maybe). It's also cheaper than going out to most places. For example like said bar for people who do drink. As for the AoC CE and sucking people dry of every last dollar - thats a whole other forum thread I have already posted on! Another rebuttal just to be fair - what about the Million Man Lan? That actually is way in which games bring people together in a real life social group. And it isn't the only one of its kind either. I do see your point though Fulle and I know it does apply to some people.

Ok I got a tad carried away. I just want to reiterate...

AoC = a game with alot of potential
Funcom = very poor rating as a company (aren't they based in Switzerland or Norway? maybe things didn't translate just right and that's where all the false claims originated from)

thegh0st,

That bit on gaming addiction was primarily meant to be a conversation starter. I agree that I tend to go to extremes in my wording. I also use the topic, whenever convenient, to point out more ways I feel AoC is a failure, since I'm sneaky like that.

I'm the same way when it comes to outfits. In my normal everyday life, I'll just wear a wrinkled shirt to work, but in a game I'm making sure my shoes match. I also enjoyed the dyes in GW... I think that itemization, and character customization are also a large factors to the fun, and coincidently, the addictiveness of an MMO. FC would have been wise to have included a trade post in Tortage to take advantage of this. Another failed opportunity to add to the game's early addictiveness!

While I agree that videogames can be bring people together socially in the real world, its just sort of rare that this happens for the average player. Sure, I was kept as an intern a few months extra on occasion, due to my superior gaming ability weighing in positively on office politics. I've also met several people through games, 3 FFXI players, 2 WoW, and a handful of Counter Strike players... even still talk to a few of them, but I still consider gaming a poor replacement to normal social activity... The relationships I formed with similar strangers through activities like sports, martial arts, and binge drinking seem to be more long lasting, and grounded here in the real world.

Uhm, have you been to an event like the Million Man Lan? And did you make any friends? Looks like fun, actually...

Nope... open backed loincloths are bad enough. Have have ever stumbled upon one of the GMs with one of those? A male character model wearing a thong *shivers*

I should have noticed Xfire was just showing the "This week" total. My bad, Travis.