I'm really hoping that even if they sell, that games will remain available for play even if its maintenance mode.
This is interesting. Personally I hope these games get cut for not making enough profit.
Thats really selfish and spiteful as viewpoints go, if you dont like them dont support them, but there are people that do like them.
And there are always people who are sad when an MMO closes shop, just ask the dozens of Vanguard and SWG fans, or CoX fans.
I really don't give a shit what my viewpoint seems like to you or anyone else. Personally I abhor this company. You and others may dislike my opinion as much as you want, but it means nothing to me.
It would be awesome if every "person" who works for FC got shit-canned.
I really don't give a shit what my viewpoint seems like to you or anyone else. Personally I abhor this company. You and others may dislike my opinion as much as you want, but it means nothing to me.
It would be awesome if every "person" who works for FC got shit-canned.
I agree, Funcom never once listened to te community. Never fulfilled pre launch promises, continued to lay seige on peoples accounts, over billing, double billing, turning billing on and never sending offical notices.
Funcom is swimming in the cesspool they created themselves, and I'm enjoying every minute of this companies demise. Reguardless of how great AoC is /was and ect. The Funcom brand is a over, and those people should be black listed from the gaming industry.
Who should be blacklisted? The CEO of the company when Age of Conan was launched; Gaute Godager? Sorry to say but he has a Phd. in Psychology and has been out of the gaming industry and working as a counselor for almost a decade now. It was his game to fail, he failed and he's been gone for years.
It takes a special kind of sadism to want everyone else at the company to be out of job.
I really don't give a shit what my viewpoint seems like to you or anyone else. Personally I abhor this company. You and others may dislike my opinion as much as you want, but it means nothing to me.
It would be awesome if every "person" who works for FC got shit-canned.
I agree, Funcom never once listened to te community. Never fulfilled pre launch promises, continued to lay seige on peoples accounts, over billing, double billing, turning billing on and never sending offical notices.
Funcom is swimming in the cesspool they created themselves, and I'm enjoying every minute of this companies demise. Reguardless of how great AoC is /was and ect. The Funcom brand is a over, and those people should be black listed from the gaming industry.
Who should be blacklisted? The CEO of the company when Age of Conan was launched; Gaute Godager? Sorry to say but he has a Phd. in Psychology and has been out of the gaming industry and working as a counselor for almost a decade now. It was his game to fail, he failed and he's been gone for years.
It takes a special kind of sadism to want everyone else at the company to be out of job.
It's interesting how you just pass by how little FC has done for AoC in the past (4-5) years. Gaute was terrible and so were every other GD after - this is mostly because FC has always had horrible "visionaries". The only guy I would give credit in that company is Ragnar Tornquist.
Sadism? Sure, I can live with that after seeing how FC treats their players.
I really don't give a shit what my viewpoint seems like to you or anyone else. Personally I abhor this company. You and others may dislike my opinion as much as you want, but it means nothing to me.
It would be awesome if every "person" who works for FC got shit-canned.
I agree, Funcom never once listened to te community. Never fulfilled pre launch promises, continued to lay seige on peoples accounts, over billing, double billing, turning billing on and never sending offical notices.
Funcom is swimming in the cesspool they created themselves, and I'm enjoying every minute of this companies demise. Reguardless of how great AoC is /was and ect. The Funcom brand is a over, and those people should be black listed from the gaming industry.
Who should be blacklisted? The CEO of the company when Age of Conan was launched; Gaute Godager? Sorry to say but he has a Phd. in Psychology and has been out of the gaming industry and working as a counselor for almost a decade now. It was his game to fail, he failed and he's been gone for years.
It takes a special kind of sadism to want everyone else at the company to be out of job.
It's interesting how you just pass by how little FC has done for AoC in the past (4-5) years. Gaute was terrible and so were every other GD after - this is mostly because FC has always had horrible "visionaries". The only guy I would give credit in that company is Ragnar Tornquist.
Sadism? Sure, I can live with that after seeing how FC treats their players.
Read my post history on Age of Conan. I'm one of its biggest fans and one of its loudest critics. I will give criticism where its due, and this game has a lot of due criticism. You are dead on correct about the past four years. Ever since the RotG expansion, the game has been marginalized and ignored by Funcom. I won't let them slide on that.
On the other hand, it's still the only experience like it. It's the second most enjoyable experience in the MMORPG genre for myself and I'm not going to let that deter the fun that I have in the game.
The only guy I would give credit in that company is Ragnar Tornquist.
Read my post history on Age of Conan. I'm one of its biggest fans and
one of its loudest critics. I will give criticism where its due, and
this game has a lot of due criticism. You are dead on correct about the
past four years. Ever since the RotG expansion, the game has been
marginalized and ignored by Funcom. I won't let them slide on that.
On
the other hand, it's still the only experience like it. It's the
second most enjoyable experience in the MMORPG genre for myself and I'm
not going to let that deter the fun that I have in the game.
I agree, pretty much in the same shoes myself (just I don't like the RotGrindslayer). It still is a great game, fun mechanics, and I'm also a Howard fan so love the setting as well. Heck, to me even the launch wasn't that bad - I got the bug vaccine and the dissapointment before, from Fuc... err Rockstar so my gear was upgraded (for GTA IV) when AoC launched, that alone eliminated plenty of bugs. And the game's being unfinished, bugged missions, etc. was pretty much the same GTA IV was in the first month so it wasn't some new and outrageous experience, got used to that a few months earlier. Still was a bumpy ride though. and as @Scorchien says above, there was AO's launch...
Rawiz: Ragnar is in his own company now (plus I think he wasn't working on AoC, just on AO and of course on TSW, one of his best games so far next to TLJ)
Age of Conan is the only low fantasy setting, high quality MMORPG in existence. Everything else is a Tolkien caricature.
What's wrong with Tolkien? :awesome:
There's nothing wrong with Tolkien. Hell, I grew up loving LOTR and the movies were fantastic. I'm just sad that every single other fantasy tale out there has to only borrow from Tolkien. One of the best fantasy writers of his day, and even to this day, was Robert E. Howard. In fact, I find myself reading Conan short stories far more often than I pick up Return of the King for a full read through.
I just want brutal, gory, low fantasy to have more options. So far there's just the one game that everyone but me seems to despise as if Jar Jar Binks himself turned out to be bad guy at the end of Tortage. I don't understand the pure hatred that people have especially this many years later.
The only guy I would give credit in that company is Ragnar Tornquist.
Read my post history on Age of Conan. I'm one of its biggest fans and
one of its loudest critics. I will give criticism where its due, and
this game has a lot of due criticism. You are dead on correct about the
past four years. Ever since the RotG expansion, the game has been
marginalized and ignored by Funcom. I won't let them slide on that.
On
the other hand, it's still the only experience like it. It's the
second most enjoyable experience in the MMORPG genre for myself and I'm
not going to let that deter the fun that I have in the game.
I agree, pretty much in the same shoes myself (just I don't like the RotGrindslayer). It still is a great game, fun mechanics, and I'm also a Howard fan so love the setting as well. Heck, to me even the launch wasn't that bad - I got the bug vaccine and the dissapointment before, from Fuc... err Rockstar so my gear was upgraded (for GTA IV) when AoC launched, that alone eliminated plenty of bugs. And the game's being unfinished, bugged missions, etc. was pretty much the same GTA IV was in the first month so it wasn't some new and outrageous experience, got used to that a few months earlier. Still was a bumpy ride though. and as @Scorchien says above, there was AO's launch...
Rawiz: Ragnar is in his own company now (plus I think he wasn't working on AoC, just on AO and of course on TSW, one of his best games so far next to TLJ)
AoC's launch was not bad for me at all. I didn't experience any of the same frustrations that other people claim to have. I spent the first two months leveling up the three characters that I wanted to play and then I jumped into Tier 1 raiding. Sure there were some growing pains, but ffs, the community makes it out as if it was 100% unplayable at launch. Anyone remember Diablo III? Funny how no one's still bitching about error 37 all this time later. It amazes me the shit we'll forgive and forget while gripping other things so tightly our fingers bleed.
Wow, some of you people..... You actually wish it upon somebody else to be unemployed or 'Flip burgers at Mc Donalds' with all the consequences for him/her and their family over a stupid videogame? What is wrong with you, no really, did you attent special school or something? A frigging stupid video game, are you 12?
Funcom might have disappointed on more then one occasion but these kinds of reactions are more horrible then anything they could ever do. Treat others like you wanted to be treated is what they say, they released products that disappointed you and promised things they could not deliver, you wish them harm. These posts say nothing about Funcom but all the more about you, disgusting.
I hope Funcom and their games survive, the games are rough but still a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale genre, the MMORPG landscape would be a lot more barren with them gone.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Bad news. My first mmorpg was AO. Those were real MMORPGs, not what we get now. And i loved AoC, cool classes, cool combat, funny open world pvp. didnt like secret world. Best quests by far though
Age of Conan is the only low fantasy setting, high quality MMORPG in existence. Everything else is a Tolkien caricature.
What's wrong with Tolkien? :awesome:
There's nothing wrong with Tolkien. Hell, I grew up loving LOTR and the movies were fantastic. I'm just sad that every single other fantasy tale out there has to only borrow from Tolkien. One of the best fantasy writers of his day, and even to this day, was Robert E. Howard. In fact, I find myself reading Conan short stories far more often than I pick up Return of the King for a full read through.
I wasn't serious, hence the smiley :awesome: and I too get odd looks sometimes, having Howard next to Tolkien and Lem and Asimov
The more often part is probably because Howard wrote episodes, while Tolkien worked on the world and the storyline all along. I'm similar in this, I used to read Silmarillion, Tales, Hobbit and LotR together, maybe once a year, while I read random Conan or Kull stories very often (even moreso since the Kindle era). It's fun though, if you follow one of the chronology lists (there are peeps who try to make a "universe" from his writings), did that once, but I think I prefer either the random, or the publishing order more... Phoenix on the sword was such a great opening (even if it's Kull actually )
And playing this game at release did not make me feel like I was in Conan Country at all. Tortage was a nightmare, always happy to get out of that tutorial place.
A matter of taste I guess but the Pict dungeon outside Tortage, the Aquilonia city and the Stygia city felt like pure Howard to me (on the other hand the Cimmeria zone was too gamey).
Rawiz: Ragnar is in his own company now (plus I think he wasn't working on AoC, just on AO and of course on TSW, one of his best games so far next to TLJ)
Yes, I know this - he was smart to bail, should have done it sooner.
TSW has a good story - thanks to Ragnar, otherwise it's a very "meh" game. TLJ is probably top-5 adventure game in existence. That is exactly why I give him credit and no one else from Funcom. To me he has always been on another level compared to regular "visionaries" who work(ed) there.
I'd love to see the reaction from you guys if PWE buys them
I was thinking that EXACT same thing... wow.
Does PWE have a track record of continuing to support and develop products after they're released? Cause if so, then hell yes. AoC has needed some serious development love for about four years now.
I'd love to see the reaction from you guys if PWE buys them
I was thinking that EXACT same thing... wow.
Does PWE have a track record of continuing to support and develop products after they're released? Cause if so, then hell yes. AoC has needed some serious development love for about four years now.
It's a mixed bag... but I admit I only know PWE because they purchased Cryptic (an another bunch I like since CoH/CoV ). It was similar, Marvel left them in the middle of developement (CO would be a larger hit with Marvel, Champions IP is mostly known by a few roleplayers... lol), then their owner Atari went bankrupt.
So, on one hand it was good, CO is still here 4-5 years later and got a couple updates (actually I'm leveling a hero right now :awesome: ), STO got a new launch, regular updates and an expansion, plus they launched Neverwinter. On the flipside... lockboxes everywhere, increased grind (and Khitai factions + AA is a massive grindfest, it'd be much worse ), in-game shop in your face, etc.
Age of Conan really didn't keep me interested as it had too many issues to iron out after launch. I thought Secret World was going to be something amazingly new and different, but I found that it didn't have enough zones to avoid becoming boring. Not to mention action combat tends to lack staying power and MMORPGs are meant to hold players for long durations. If anything, a lot of Funcom's work proved that action combat isn't the way of the future everyone was hoping for in MMORPGs and its time to go back to some slower, more tactical gameplay options.
You are so wrong here, and that's what we loved about the game that it was high skill based.
Tactical gameplay options? Please, you are talking about a more noob-friendly and boring combat system.
There's a lot of people that enjoyed it, so please, don´t say stupid stuff, AoC failed due to poor managing of the game when everyone wanted it to be heavy PvP oriented they demolished the game by going full PvE.
Funcom had great ideas and translated them poorly into products: -
AoC
The idea: An adult MMORPG with blood and (for the time) relatively complex sequential button pressing, a great lore and a great story.
The reality: A really fun starter area followed by buggy and unfinished grind released far too early.
I think you are really wrong here, this point of view seems to be coming from someone that has never played the game in depth.
The game took some months to become the awesome experience it became for hardcore PvP players and raiders.
You will notice I said "released far too early". I played this game at release, I played it before the F2P transition and after. No doubt I enjoyed it after they had filled in the many gaps at release. But releasing a bad or unfinished game; that is hard to recover from. You sound like you are trying to argue against first impressions, yet we all know they count for a lot.
No one needs your 7 year old first impression. It has zero relevance to the current game or this discussion. Leave it in the past. Man, you must carry a lot of emotional baggage.
I don't think the games are going anywhere and Funcom has been trying to find a buyer/merger for a while now. However, if they did close it I would miss Tortage the most. The game after isn't bad, but somewhere around the mid 50's it sort of loses its traction with me. Monotonous is too strong a word but that's the general idea. The Conqueror is one of my favorite melee classes of all time though. It was a blast to play.
So for those of you that never hit 80 and played end game in AoC, you missed one of the best MMOs ever. To this date it is still top notch. The raiding, the solo options, the group dungeons. Khitai and the post 80 content and the raids are more than half of this game. It truly is an example of the game beginning at level cap. The Alternate Advancement. Not to mention the class diversity
I didn't miss anything. Having fun starting at end game doesn't work for me. I don't need to be at end game to enjoy class diversity. When I played 80 wasn't the end game either. Like I said, it has a tedium to progression and content that isn't fun. The payment model sucks. I hate the deal where I paid for content but needed to pay again to access it. Having AA and other systems crippled without a sub isn't fun. It's not a bad game at all and if it works for you, great. There are just better, friendlier options that I have more fun with out there for me now.
80 has ALWAYS been end game.
Why are are you talking as if you don't understand subscription model? Or are we pretending that it it wasn't the only model used by MMOs when released.
So you're saying you want access to the entire game for free now?
Choose what you want to play, not trying to stop you. Just calling out your BS for the sake of an honest discussion.
AOC is still the best PVE MMO out there IMO. It's combat system for melee is still the most skill intensive (if you don't use macros) and requires good positioning to be effective. Healing is unique, and really only the 2 pure caster classes are all that cookie cutter. IF it was a pure aim combat game, it would be perfect. Best character quest in any mmo as well, just not unique to each class (so repetative).
It is a 'tab' targeter for the ranger, casters and 2 caster healer classes, but melee is absolutely not tab targeting in the normal sense. Turning off auto-facing is important, as your weapons can cause splash damage. Fatalities are pretty cool too.
You can raid/solo/6-man and even the normal solo content can be a challenge. It's alternate advancement system is great as well, along with pretty nice and meaningful skill choices. Great unique classes, too.
It's brutal, ancient world feel is unique to the entirety of MMO's. No dwarves or elves or pandas either. The zones are well crafted, and as you progress they get pretty complicated to navigate. Aztell's Approach, for example, is a challenge at level because the guards are constantly sending warning signals and you can get overrun easily.
The Khitai zone is probably the best end-game content in any MMO period. It has challenging mobs (unless your full khitai or T4+ gear) and really does benefit in the areas above Chosain to have a group to progress. It is grindy, though, which is it's only downfall. IF the mobs were pushovers, sure it would be boring.
The vanity armor system is probably the best out there currently, although the soldier classes get the most bang for your social armor budget. Doing old quests often will get you a pretty unique piece, or crafted armor (Stoneheart Leggings for example).
The shop, though, is expensive. It also requires a sub to really play through at all (you gain AA points as you level, 1 per level with a sub). The expansion zones all cost money, too, and the newer ones are not as good as Khitai. Ardashir is pretty cool, and the solo dungeon is pretty cool. Tier 1 raid / PVP gear and full level 80's are available, but pricey. A nice option for a new player, though, if it wasn't so expensive.
Leveling is pretty tough, but there are many things you can do to help IE offline levels (for subs) and a free level 50 when you reach level 50 on your first toon. Pretty cool IMO. Offline allows for a single level every 4 days of paid sub. Good value.
Dungeons and raids are excellent, and they have tough mechanics that require certain mixes of archtypes to perform in many cases. This is cool IMO.
Funcom, though, has had a pretty bad reputation for not getting things done, and with their tiny dev team it's moved at a snails pace in the last few years. The crafting system for example .
I just hope there is a way to run the servers if they do go out of business. I always come back to this game, it is amazing, and most the bugs are gone.
I could rant on forever about the endless stupidity of Funcom. They dont even seem to get the theme of their own creations. Shadowlands is a shining example of theme breaking expansion. You take a great setting in Anarchy Online and try to add fantasy into a sci fi game. I really wanted to love Anarchy online since it was the only sci fi game in town for a long time.
Anarchy online sums up Funcom in its first attempt at mmorpg's. Funcom created a great sci-fi based theme about a civilization controlled by a giant corporation and then dumbed it down. Nanotechnicians and Metaphysicists which are basically mage looking classes from any generic mmorpg out there, do not belong in this game. They added all these lovely skills but then gave such limited options per professions that the number of skills has no real impact. To top it off to this day viable weapon choices are limited. You would think there would be a multitude of weapons choices since this game is old as hell but nope. Skill based games by definition are about player choice and not random restrictions placed upon the player such as locking weapons to specific professions. If the best shotgun is trader only and as, lets just choose a random prof, as a Crat why would I want to train shotgun knowing it costs me more skill points to train than a trader and that I cant even wield some of the better shotguns.
To this day I want Anarchy online to be the game that I imagined when I first laid eyes on it. Funcom, what a disappointing company...
Holy crap, have you been holding that rant in since 2003?
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
I could rant on forever about the endless stupidity of Funcom. They dont even seem to get the theme of their own creations. Shadowlands is a shining example of theme breaking expansion. You take a great setting in Anarchy Online and try to add fantasy into a sci fi game. I really wanted to love Anarchy online since it was the only sci fi game in town for a long time.
Anarchy online sums up Funcom in its first attempt at mmorpg's. Funcom created a great sci-fi based theme about a civilization controlled by a giant corporation and then dumbed it down. Nanotechnicians and Metaphysicists which are basically mage looking classes from any generic mmorpg out there, do not belong in this game. They added all these lovely skills but then gave such limited options per professions that the number of skills has no real impact. To top it off to this day viable weapon choices are limited. You would think there would be a multitude of weapons choices since this game is old as hell but nope. Skill based games by definition are about player choice and not random restrictions placed upon the player such as locking weapons to specific professions. If the best shotgun is trader only and as, lets just choose a random prof, as a Crat why would I want to train shotgun knowing it costs me more skill points to train than a trader and that I cant even wield some of the better shotguns.
To this day I want Anarchy online to be the game that I imagined when I first laid eyes on it. Funcom, what a disappointing company...
I disagree if you played sci fi at all you would know that nano tech and metaphysics exists in other sci fi games that are not mmorpgs, I found it added allot of fun to the game, this is far from the reason why anarchy online stopped doing well just confusing your opinion with fact.
Wow, some of you people..... You actually wish it upon somebody else to be unemployed or 'Flip burgers at Mc Donalds' with all the consequences for him/her and their family over a stupid videogame? What is wrong with you, no really, did you attent special school or something? A frigging stupid video game, are you 12?
What an asinine stance. Videogames are a billion dollar industry. To try and trivialize consumer fraud because of the type of product is incredibly ignorant. Companies and their employees should be held accountable for bad business practices. It took some years but it looks like it's finally coming around to deservedly hit Funcom.
People paid for this game with hard earned money and what they got at launch was a skeleton of its potential. MMOs seem to get away with this constantly - Funcom more than others! They did this with two games in a row!
Look beyond your affection and preconceptions of what videogames are and boil down the complaint to simply this: The product we were provided at launch was not what they advertised.
That's NOT OK! You shouldn't be OK with it. Stop trying to defend practices that are against your best interest!
Comments
It would be awesome if every "person" who works for FC got shit-canned.
It takes a special kind of sadism to want everyone else at the company to be out of job.
Sadism? Sure, I can live with that after seeing how FC treats their players.
On the other hand, it's still the only experience like it. It's the second most enjoyable experience in the MMORPG genre for myself and I'm not going to let that deter the fun that I have in the game.
and personally i love them , ive made so much money off there stocks it would make you sick
I agree, pretty much in the same shoes myself (just I don't like the RotGrindslayer). It still is a great game, fun mechanics, and I'm also a Howard fan so love the setting as well.
Heck, to me even the launch wasn't that bad - I got the bug vaccine and the dissapointment before, from Fuc... err Rockstar so my gear was upgraded (for GTA IV) when AoC launched, that alone eliminated plenty of bugs. And the game's being unfinished, bugged missions, etc. was pretty much the same GTA IV was in the first month so it wasn't some new and outrageous experience, got used to that a few months earlier. Still was a bumpy ride though.
and as @Scorchien says above, there was AO's launch...
Rawiz: Ragnar is in his own company now (plus I think he wasn't working on AoC, just on AO and of course on TSW, one of his best games so far next to TLJ)
Funcom might have disappointed on more then one occasion but these kinds of reactions are more horrible then anything they could ever do. Treat others like you wanted to be treated is what they say, they released products that disappointed you and promised things they could not deliver, you wish them harm. These posts say nothing about Funcom but all the more about you, disgusting.
I hope Funcom and their games survive, the games are rough but still a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale genre, the MMORPG landscape would be a lot more barren with them gone.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
didnt like secret world. Best quests by far though
The more often part is probably because Howard wrote episodes, while Tolkien worked on the world and the storyline all along. I'm similar in this, I used to read Silmarillion, Tales, Hobbit and LotR together, maybe once a year, while I read random Conan or Kull stories very often (even moreso since the Kindle era). It's fun though, if you follow one of the chronology lists (there are peeps who try to make a "universe" from his writings), did that once, but I think I prefer either the random, or the publishing order more... Phoenix on the sword was such a great opening (even if it's Kull actually )
A matter of taste I guess but the Pict dungeon outside Tortage, the Aquilonia city and the Stygia city felt like pure Howard to me (on the other hand the Cimmeria zone was too gamey).
TSW has a good story - thanks to Ragnar, otherwise it's a very "meh" game. TLJ is probably top-5 adventure game in existence. That is exactly why I give him credit and no one else from Funcom. To me he has always been on another level compared to regular "visionaries" who work(ed) there.
So, on one hand it was good, CO is still here 4-5 years later and got a couple updates (actually I'm leveling a hero right now :awesome: ), STO got a new launch, regular updates and an expansion, plus they launched Neverwinter.
On the flipside... lockboxes everywhere, increased grind (and Khitai factions + AA is a massive grindfest, it'd be much worse ), in-game shop in your face, etc.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Tactical gameplay options? Please, you are talking about a more noob-friendly and boring combat system.
There's a lot of people that enjoyed it, so please, don´t say stupid stuff, AoC failed due to poor managing of the game when everyone wanted it to be heavy PvP oriented they demolished the game by going full PvE.
80 has ALWAYS been end game.
Why are are you talking as if you don't understand subscription model? Or are we pretending that it it wasn't the only model used by MMOs when released.
So you're saying you want access to the entire game for free now?
Choose what you want to play, not trying to stop you. Just calling out your BS for the sake of an honest discussion.
It is a 'tab' targeter for the ranger, casters and 2 caster healer classes, but melee is absolutely not tab targeting in the normal sense. Turning off auto-facing is important, as your weapons can cause splash damage. Fatalities are pretty cool too.
You can raid/solo/6-man and even the normal solo content can be a challenge. It's alternate advancement system is great as well, along with pretty nice and meaningful skill choices. Great unique classes, too.
It's brutal, ancient world feel is unique to the entirety of MMO's. No dwarves or elves or pandas either. The zones are well crafted, and as you progress they get pretty complicated to navigate. Aztell's Approach, for example, is a challenge at level because the guards are constantly sending warning signals and you can get overrun easily.
The Khitai zone is probably the best end-game content in any MMO period. It has challenging mobs (unless your full khitai or T4+ gear) and really does benefit in the areas above Chosain to have a group to progress. It is grindy, though, which is it's only downfall. IF the mobs were pushovers, sure it would be boring.
The vanity armor system is probably the best out there currently, although the soldier classes get the most bang for your social armor budget. Doing old quests often will get you a pretty unique piece, or crafted armor (Stoneheart Leggings for example).
The shop, though, is expensive. It also requires a sub to really play through at all (you gain AA points as you level, 1 per level with a sub). The expansion zones all cost money, too, and the newer ones are not as good as Khitai. Ardashir is pretty cool, and the solo dungeon is pretty cool. Tier 1 raid / PVP gear and full level 80's are available, but pricey. A nice option for a new player, though, if it wasn't so expensive.
Leveling is pretty tough, but there are many things you can do to help IE offline levels (for subs) and a free level 50 when you reach level 50 on your first toon. Pretty cool IMO. Offline allows for a single level every 4 days of paid sub. Good value.
Dungeons and raids are excellent, and they have tough mechanics that require certain mixes of archtypes to perform in many cases. This is cool IMO.
Funcom, though, has had a pretty bad reputation for not getting things done, and with their tiny dev team it's moved at a snails pace in the last few years. The crafting system for example .
I just hope there is a way to run the servers if they do go out of business. I always come back to this game, it is amazing, and most the bugs are gone.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.