Shame.

Good read, now I know why I left in the first place.

What AoC is a fantastic solo’able PvE game, so you’re never sitting there with nothing to do while waiting for a group, that you can also group up in to take on harder content for better rewards. I’m not really sure how you’d improve on that.

Where AoC failed was the PvP part. The seige bugs and the one shotting via stacked gems especially. I do have to say the combat system between players has a rather steep learning curve and pretty much requires you to know your opponent as well as you know your own class. aka it’s complex and rather deep and, well, you just plain have to be good. The fact that equipment makes almost no difference is especially appealing.

Exploits/cheats suck beyond words. As do the people using them; you know who you are. Sadly I don’t know of any online game that isn’t riddlled with one or the other or both. Likely there never will be one. No, not making an excuse for them in AoC. Just a lament that they exist.

One thing that has always irked me, and is mainly what I wanted to say here, is that the oom crashes and 10k ping spikes at launch had a very simple solution. 64 bit Vista with four or more gigs of ram fixed it for almost everyone that tried it. This was mentioned over and over on the AoC forums but no one seemed to listen. Now sure, it sucks to upgrade your OS to play a game… but it worked. I played for two weeks at release, using XP, with the oom crashes/ping spikes happening every few hours before I upgraded to 64 bit Vista. I haven’t had a single issue since. Not one. As a result I’m sure my impression of AoC is vastly different from someone who suffered through the crashes for months.

AoC’s main problem right now is a lack of new things to do for veteran players. We’ve all been there, done that, several times over for some of us, after a year of playing. It’s time for an expansion.

I remember watching gameplay videos of people mule-kicking countries on their horses and the devs saying “it’s very rewarding,” like players were monkeys pressing a shiny red button for a banana.

I can’t believe the rampant design flaws in this game. It’s amazing that none of them ever came to the realization that while it might be very “rewarding” to mule-kick a city of people, those are going to at some point be players being flung like rag-dolls by some drool-bib on a horse. How rewarding is it for them?

Frickin’ read some John Stuart Mills and apply the Utilitarian principle to your “rewards.” Doesn’t Sweden offer any higher education of the non-culinary/sauna variety?

I’ve been scouring the net for a decent MMO that i can play for a while but i guess i can cross this one off the list and spend the money on crack or something. Cheers dude.

whatever the flaws, WoW is a boring endless grind, with nothign but boring lame PvE.

I am on WAR rite now, but to be honest, it sucks….. the game isn’t good at all. it’s a big slow grind. RvR was fun for a bit but its boring.

atleast AoC has a combat system that makes skill factor a lot more. As a barbarian i’ve killed barbarians 15 levels higher than me, and done lots of crazy hit-and-runs….

ulitmately, all the mmos at the moment suck. WoW was good in its time, but was too pvE oriented and too much of a grind. the future MMO will also eliminate lvling, feature mounted combat, feature a truly persistent game world that is affected by player interactions, and hopefully feature significant RTS posssibilties… Darkfall is vaporware…. I can’t see any MMO on the horizon that will deliver. but i do hope Darkfall actually makes it to launch soon. (and i hope they include significantly more RTS featgures into it)

What’s hilarious is all you naysayer’s and shit slingers. 99% of you could not design a game my 10 year would like (half of your probably are 10) yet your full reasons why you “know” the game sucks and will fail. What’s failed are your own concepts of reasonable expectations.
The lot of you are so fickle you sound stupid! You complain about the zoning and you complain about the travel … what do you want … a teleporter behind every mob! Arseholes … its “massive” … its suppose to be big! You complain about combat … what?! You want to point and click the little mobs and have no combat input at all!? Morons … the combat is waaay dynamic and skillful, problem is you have no patience to understand and learn it. I don’t want some stupid point/click combat “ooww which fancy looking attack will I click now?” Try something that has pros/cons based on mob and situation and suddenly its too crappy for your nano-second time attention span brain.

I’ll not suggest this game is bug free, it technically has loads of issues … those can be fixed. Is content missing … certainly. Do I think they are working to add more and more? Your stupid if you think they are not!

And which one of you financial or business geniuses would think it a sound idea to throw in the towel on a project you’ve invested tens of millions of dollars on when its still in its infancy stage? That’s so stupid you sound retarded when you say it.

Its doomsayers like your collective ilk that help to suppress the ability to increase subs. No one is suggesting you turn a blind eye and act like that arsehole Erl. But from someone who likes the game, its theme and concept, you bunch of sniveling wet blanks with delusions of MMO god player abilities just suck the life out of the game market. Thanks morons.

PS Even the company name is a lie.there is no Fun in this game,just DISAPOINTMENT

crusty