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Those of you on EU and NA servers. I do have a few questions.
-exo
Member Posts: 564
This thread is on the reasons why a game such as AoC has not been able to fix these things. Let me show you something that probably not a whole lot of you quite understand yet.
I am going to take blizzard, seeing how they have been out for sometime now and their games seem to promise something to game players. Blizzard is the type of company, NOW, who could honestly care less about their players because they have what they want. Even their C.E.O. is working the developers to death with little pay and long hours, yet millions of people are still loyal to this company for what they can shell out. When was the last time you really had a whole hearted discussion with a GM in any of the games blizzard has put out? and why is that? or even on their forums? It's probably been a very long time where a GM actually popped up on a feedback forums and asked how everyone was doing. To me, this gives me the flag, that they really don't care at all. I they had that attitude mixed with say... the little staff and technology of Hi-Rez, Funcom, Mythic and we will say Turbine, They probably wouldn't get anywhere... at ALL.
I was just reading a thread here on mmorpg that posted how one of the GMs were actually talking with the players on an EU forums, i personally was blown away. Coming from a game such as world of warcraft, they don't do that.. at all. Sure they come on to theory craft with you once in a blue moon, aside from that it's all professional. Just last week when i was playing Global Agenda I had a discussion with one of the GMs on how life was, and the games that inspired him to even make GA. With mythic they have put out amazing games ONLY because the fans decided to appreciate the game for what it was.
In my opinion, I don't think people are giving developers much of a chance anymore, and players are actually asking for a litle to much. Do you not remember the original Ever quest? the graphics? Do you not remember Ultima online? Do you not remember the release of World of warcraft and how horrible that game release was and unpolished to the sickest extent? How do you forget these things?????
how is it that the majority of you are that spoiled now??? Games ONLY get better if you let them, and quite frankly , you have not been letting them get better. THAT is why WoW is #1, because all it took was thousands of CHILDREN, young children between the ages of 11 - 16 to buy into this game or ask their parents for it, and now they are #1. It's almost silly how we as adults are so fickle. You complain about the children in World of Warcraft, yet they are the ones that keep that game a live. Age of conan is an adult game, and so are a lot of the other ones i have listed. I think we should try and keep them a live too.
Just common sense and food for thought, ANY game with out a fan base, will die.
I'm also waiting for those of you to flame about the sieges crashing and a lot of other BS just to prove my point here. When that happens please refer back to the released games i listed on actually how crappy they really were, whether it was graphics or gameplay.
Also I would like to say thank you for your time in reading this thread, It is greatly appreciated for you to take time out of your day/night to read this. 
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
Comments
The developers do post in Funcom's forums and usually say vague things like, "it is to complex for us to know what is wrong" - on sieges or they don't say much at all or just say how the player's view is wrong ;p The Blizzard developers post as well www.tentonhammer.com/wow/blizztrack/general But yeah I get the point, Funcom added some stupid things, PvP reward/penalties, guards all over on PvP servers, they worked to much on post release voice acting do to listening to players that don't know what they are talking about.
Actually, at release Blizzard had more communication with the community. They had reps for classes and a lot of active developers on forums.
The major flaw in your argument is that this game is new, it is almost two years old...two years out EQ released it's second expansion had mad mad mad amounts of content for raiders and also had mad content in general for level grinding. Veriant did pretty well back then but a bit after the two year mark it was sold to Sony who didn't listen which began to drive off players but the sony EQ devs still posted on the boards they just didn't fix stuff.
Back onto Blizzard as that is the prime business model for MMOs and the best bench mark in this industry. They did a reasonable amount of communication but the quality of their work was much better than Age of Conan or any other MMO out, they didn't do anything new just raise quality. You say that it was a buggy mess at launch but that is not true, it was more polished on day one than AoC is two years out. There were major hardware issues and some servers could not handle the player load of raid instance loads. But that was for the most part fixed quickly with new hardware, while Funcom left sieges in a laggy and crashing state for most of the last year ;p
Then Blizzard stepped it up and released a PvP system and then revised it twice within the first two years, a PvP system that AoC tried to copy and has done nothing with it since. Blizzard revised all classes with communication from players within the first two years. Blizzard also told the players that PvP penalties for ganking was silly while Funcom listened to PvE players and added many restrictions to global PvP which also lead into groups of lower levels ganking higher levels.
Blizzard's budget was 63 million USD pre release, Age of Conan was around 40 million but they had more funds in the bank if they needed them. So they had similar budgets but AoC was pretty lame at launch and Funcom declared 40 million in losses from AoC so far. Then After release Blizzard did well and plugged away so around this time out from launch WoW had at least 4 times the raiding and another 4 times the grouping content and around 4 times the leveling area content pre expansion. But to be fair Blizzard had a much larger development budget because of its success from not launching in a buggy messy state and also because of that they spent time developing raid zones, special events like silithus and Naxx invasions, and adding more solo content like the stuff in silithus ;p
Funcom is working on an expansion so we can compare that to TBC as it is on the same time line. But tbh I don't think Funcom knows what to do so they probably need feedback from players more. Many of WoW's developers where Everquest end game guild leaders.
Also, at least at release WoW had a higher player average age than AoC and the Barens chat had a much more mature theme than AoC's child humor global.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
I'll tell you something I feel very strongly about.
And it's been a very long time since I played WoW let alone been in contact with a GM from Blizzard, but I much rather, and a hundred times over, have a cold hearted professional GM who does not care about you than a biased, subjective and unprofessional one that takes sides and has views on "ingame" things.
Because if you happen to be "on the side that the GM is not", then you're fucked, wherease in the case of a professional one who doesn't care, this problem does not exist as all players are treated in the same way.
This applies also to moderators and community team in general.
But then you move on in your post, to talk about developpers. And once again, I feel strongly about this, because you linked this thread in another discussion that had to do about Battle Keep Sieges, which is end game pvp content.
Let me be very clear, being frustrated because there is no working pvp content except for minigames which have just been turned worse than they were before is not a sign of being spoiled.
Expecting good quality services and professional work is not being spoiled. What am I? A kid waiting for a present from santa claus? Sieges do not work since more than 2 years! Minigames are a farming massacre at worst and 20 minutes of AFK time at best, and I can't criticise any other pvp content because there is none !!!!
And yes, I do remember playing WoW, I was in beta, and at release, they had working battlegrounds if I remember correctly, and in two years, they went on to develop exciting and working pvp content. Not the case of Funcom for Age of Conan who won't be introducing any new stuff until AFTER the expansion.
But to answer your opponing statement, they probably have not been able to fix things because of 1 of 3 things, or all 3 even :
1. slacking and being lazy and unprofessional
2. not having enough available ressources to deal with all the issues
3. wrong priorities
In all cases, they are not being efficient and/or productive.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Both of you make very valid points. Maybe it was just me remembering the strange things that happened during WoW's release. Also to though, you have to understand too, blizzard had tons of other games released before WoW that was able to do all the things they were wanting. I understand Funcom had possibly close to a similar budget, but they haven't released many games over the years , so they had no idea what to expect.
I suppose that's good then that you get a stone cold hearted GM, but keep in mind what you asked for when people start to complain about certain things. This goes for any game though too. I think personally that people should just give games more of a chance. Honestly, i do not want WoW to be the number one reigning MMO still when my daughter decides to start playing games as well, ( if she does ever haha). People say " there isn't a game that lasts for ever" . are you sure? because right now, at this present time, the way people are acting it's a definite possibility and can always sky rocket to get even worse. Sure things change all the time. But with our 10 - 20 year time span, honestly not a whole lot has changed but the graphics and some very minor and new things implemented.
The system of Dungeons and dragons for any typical MMO still stays and remains the same, Stat based level game. So really i guess my question more so a long the lines is, wouldn't you like to actually see one of these developers gain respect and possibly reach the top? If that's a no, they why are you here? If you aren't supporting them, then it's almost a waste of your time, and you probably could have done 2 - 3 jumps already in EvE , or raided over six bosses in WoW. Or even actually finally took your turn in Final fantasy heck, or if even hell froze over sony decided to sell SWG for a revamp. ( haha jk. )
, but jsut saying you know? It's sort of pointless to constantly give horrible feed back, you would think people would at least give them some sort of positive news. Otherwise the game/games still wouldn't be open.
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
I am giving this game a chance, and have been doing so with no regrets for a long time. And I still do believe that it is a great game and am not considering a quit in the near future.
Many others including entire guilds however did come back on good faith from Fucnom announcing that sieges were fixed and I am afraid that they will leave the game if nothing is done, and this time for good...
What I don't think people understand is that the player's frustration come from the fact that it could be so much better....
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
And that is the exact problem though. One thing and people flee like scared birds. in the words of spock, It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh... and then with some of kirks help , "the few". And that sadly is the problem here , which is why we need to defy logic.
Because honestly, that IS why games die. one person hollers "NERF" , and so do the rest. So easily influenced it's sick. I completely understand the frustration, and the problem is that people are thinking it could be so much better.... but in THEIR own way and form. They really don't think of the person beside them, which is why people should play the games for what they are.
Granted the bugs and crashing all the time would suck. That i do admit, but besides that, I don't see any other problems unlike lots of other people who are so focused on the fact that it will "never" be fixed. when it actually will.
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
it's the only problem that matters, because we are speaking of end game pvp content and there is none.
I don't think any of the veterans who suspended their accounts and came back when they heard sieges were fixed really care about the leveling curve, or the story line, or Iron Tower.
They all (and so do I) got multiple level 80 characters, some also have multipe PvP 5 characters and tell me something, if they are not interested in PVE, what do they do? They already did spend thousands of hours in world PvP, fighting for no reward in the same old zone, they already did thousands of minigames, and the sieges dont work, so what do you expect them to do? Make more videos or something?
The point is, if sieges don't work, people who's primary activity is PvP are bored, there is nothing to do. The frustration is beggin Fucnom to give PvP players a reason to log on...
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Well, then i ask what suggestions are you giving them as a whole? besides complaining? All i have seen are flame threads, i haven't seen any suggestion threads. If you can show me these then you have persuaded me 100%, if not then I really don't know what to tell you but that the fact that no one really was giving them a chance at all.
If someone can't take leadership and rally people as a whole to make suggestions to funcom and petition it, then the game is already dead. Funcom can't read minds and because they want it original I'm more then sure they do not want a "clone" of another game. Granted some similar things could be implented, but I wouldn't go into the case of adding "battlegrounds" like everyone else or "40 man raids". maybe something different that will hold your "end game" content? maybe out door world bosses?
Possibly a dungeon where players can be the boss and have a system where it is chosen at random so there isn't a way to make it as if free loot was handed out? These are just thoughts. But honestly, if there are player suggested threads or something, I would like to see them. I have been searching for a long time for them and have found none.
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
Blizzard will make another MMO sometime and it will probably be very good...they could do World of Star Craft and own. I don't know how good it will be but KOTOR MMO from Bioware is actually trying to make the game more immersive or whatever a MMO with an actual coherent story, they seem to make good games so it will probably own but I'm not sure about end game. Then Guild wars II will probably do well do to no monthly fees and a solid PvP system for replay. If some developer makes a good game people will play it. I havn't played Lotor but I imagine it was pretty amazing because it didn't start out strong but the population increased to a respectable level. Unlike AoC who had great initial sales but then fizzled to an obscure level with not much added. Wait and see if the expansion is good but I'm not sure this is recoverable. The graphic improvements are great but they hinder development of content and limit the possibilities of a gaming engine do to high poly loads in all games. So graphics or gameplay?
AoC has been out two years so how much more time do they need ? Funcom did invest a bit less so they could afford another MMO TSW and the expansion but if the expansion doesn't do well, they will have even less funds available so even less development funds to improve. TBH it seems as if all developers have been working on the expansion the last two years so maybe it will be good, who knows. AoC didn't change the MMO formula in anyway, even the combat system is just chain sequences set in stone....Aion has them and warhammer has the collision detection...but they are not used in any innovative ways.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
But that's my exact point. The game everyone wants , does not exist.
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
Here are the player suggestions: forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
wow, ok awesome. now where's the petition?
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
Well, then i ask what suggestions are you giving them as a whole? besides complaining? All i have seen are flame threads, i haven't seen any suggestion threads. If you can show me these then you have persuaded me 100%, if not then I really don't know what to tell you but that the fact that no one really was giving them a chance at all.
If someone can't take leadership and rally people as a whole to make suggestions to funcom and petition it, then the game is already dead. Funcom can't read minds and because they want it original I'm more then sure they do not want a "clone" of another game. Granted some similar things could be implented, but I wouldn't go into the case of adding "battlegrounds" like everyone else or "40 man raids". maybe something different that will hold your "end game" content? maybe out door world bosses?
Possibly a dungeon where players can be the boss and have a system where it is chosen at random so there isn't a way to make it as if free loot was handed out? These are just thoughts. But honestly, if there are player suggested threads or something, I would like to see them. I have been searching for a long time for them and have found none.
All these suggestions have been made, and are continuously being made on the official game forums, primarly on Test Live, which can only be read by players, and on normal forums.
Here is one example of a constructive post (written by myself) 24 hours after the minigame change was introduced :
forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php post made by myself about minigames
There are countless examples, but don't expect to read them here, these forums are for Fucom employees and friends to spam good things so that potential customers read good things about the game and want to purchase the game (or competitors to spam bullshit so they don't). Well, it's one scinical way of looking at things anyway.
FYI
forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php post made by a friend of mine, written in cooperation with mewhile I was banned from forums about pvp in general.
or forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php this thread, which tried to constructively discuss why PvP should be a priority and received much support (check replies) from PVP and PVE players alike. All saying basically that we had enough PVE content now with the 1.06 patch and we did not need the expansion so soon if there was still no pvp content....;
not to mention the thousands of posts and threads related to why the sieges don't work and how to make them better.
So don't say the players aren't trying to be constructive, and all we do is flame.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Well, then i ask what suggestions are you giving them as a whole? besides complaining? All i have seen are flame threads, i haven't seen any suggestion threads. If you can show me these then you have persuaded me 100%, if not then I really don't know what to tell you but that the fact that no one really was giving them a chance at all.
If someone can't take leadership and rally people as a whole to make suggestions to funcom and petition it, then the game is already dead. Funcom can't read minds and because they want it original I'm more then sure they do not want a "clone" of another game. Granted some similar things could be implented, but I wouldn't go into the case of adding "battlegrounds" like everyone else or "40 man raids". maybe something different that will hold your "end game" content? maybe out door world bosses?
Possibly a dungeon where players can be the boss and have a system where it is chosen at random so there isn't a way to make it as if free loot was handed out? These are just thoughts. But honestly, if there are player suggested threads or something, I would like to see them. I have been searching for a long time for them and have found none.
All these suggestions have been made, and are continuously being made on the official game forums, primarly on Test Live, which can only be read by players, and on normal forums.
Here is one example of a constructive post (written by myself) 24 hours after the minigame change was introduced :
forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php post made by myself about minigames
There are countless examples, but don't expect to read them here, these forums are for Fucom employees and friends to spam good things so that potential customers read good things about the game and want to purchase the game (or competitors to spam bullshit so they don't). Well, it's one scinical way of looking at things anyway.
FYI
forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php post made by a friend of mine, written in cooperation with mewhile I was banned from forums about pvp in general.
or forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php this thread, which tried to constructively discuss why PvP should be a priority and received much support (check replies) from PVP and PVE players alike. All saying basically that we had enough PVE content now with the 1.06 patch and we did not need the expansion so soon if there was still no pvp content....;
not to mention the thousands of posts and threads related to why the sieges don't work and how to make them better.
So don't say the players aren't trying to be constructive, and all we do is flame.
If you don't mind me asking. why were you banned?
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
the thread explaning this on these forums was deleted (I was told by a Funcom employee who works at MMORPG) so i don't think it's a wise idea to start discussing this again in detail.
However a brief explanation --> nazzi mods (who are by the way players, and I mean customers, not employees who play, that's another matter) leading to rage post --> ban.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
ah, I understand. Personally I do think almost all of these "next gen" MMOs, really do have what it takes. I think too, people though , should actually take things with a grain of salt. I did buy AoC when it first came out.
I personally didn't see much lag at all, and if i did, it's because i was running on poor settings with a Poor pc at the time. a Pc that shouldnt have even ran it, but it did.
So honestly when i read things like this, i'm thinking to myself, are these people complaining because it really is lagging server wise? or is their pc a POS and they really don't want to admit the fact that it can't handle AoC? these are all skeptics. Same thing went for WAR and Aion.
Saw tons of people screaming about the lag. the ONLY reason the things crashed was because of how it was handled. On the server Dark Crag in WAR there was a guild by the name of Ruin. They decided to round up literally ... 1000 people between destruction and order and siege just to make the server crash. I know this happened because i was there, and i even have a Screen shot of it.
So honestly I can't help but to sit here and think it might just be the players ruining it for the other players, and not the developer.
www.roxstudiodesigns.com
with time, people upgrade their PCs, so why are they complaining more and more about lag and FPS problems?
I have a high end PC and am experiencing more problems now than before, here is an interesting example from a player who was fine, then who upgraded but got even more issues
forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
Lastly, Funcom officially admitted that there was a lag/latency issue and they were working on it. In fact, very often, each patch includes notes that refer to "an improvement in latency issues".
you really are jumpoing from one topic to another aren't you?
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Ive played this game for 1,5 years and I liked it almost to the end and I would still be playing it if only 10% of all the suggestions that was posted on the official forum both EU and .com had been implemented.
SirPaco is still playing the game [as I monitor the forum allthough I dont play the game anymore and have seen his name], and I have to agree with him that PvP have been neglected very much by Funcom. One can't post on the forum unless one is a subscriber bit I think there are lots of players out there that would be returning if the PvP content would get a serious owerhawl (not so much the sieges but world PvP in general not just inbetween guilds).
The expansion should have been about that, it would have brought more people back, and would have made more people stayed then just another land to explore. Most players have so many lvl 80's that one have to delete one to make a new char.
Played WoW for 3 years on Runetotem (chars: Ariman and Redsonja)
Played AoC for 2 years on Crom (char: Kallisto) and Fury (char: Siratsia)
Playing SWTOR on Tomb of Freedon Nadd