Funcom to AoC players, GTFO!

Posted on May 15, 2008 by SynCaine

I’ve been fairly harsh on Funcom and Age of Conan here on this blog. I ripped them for the whole ‘open’ beta fiasco, then for releasing a crash prone client due to a last minute ‘fix’, and finally the entire 1-20 ‘single player but not’ deal. Today’s news takes the cake though; I mean we have stepped over the bounds of stupid and are now firmly in the realm of insane.

Somehow Funcom can’t handle everyone who PUT DOWN MONEY and preordered AoC to download the client, so they have cut off access to the early start. I can’t even begin to image how pissed I would be if I had put down money for AoC, partly for the early access, and been told access has been cut off. We are talking about paying customer now being denied a promised service, and no the whole ‘while supplies last’ thing is not an excuse, as we see that little message attached to every spoon and toaster sold in stores or TV. I think we are only a few days away from Funcon announcing the servers will only support 100k players total, and once that limit is reached all other accounts will be shut down. I mean seriously, how can one game go through so many issues pre-launch. Is anyone going to be surprised if on go-live the servers just implode and AoC goes down for a week?

Mythic really did Funcom a huge favor by delaying Warhammer Online. Image the WAR and AoC open beta start on the same day, and you download both clients (lets assume you could actually download the AoC client when you tried). You fire up AoC, and get a black screen. Quit, find a fix, launch again. You have a decent rig, but AoC runs like crap, so you turn everything to low, resulting in it looking like something from 2002, and finally get 10-15fps, until you get a BSOD. Restart again. Now you start up WAR, and with near-max settings you get a solid 30fps, 6 starting areas, and a rock solid client. You play for 2-3 hours having a great time. Next day you again fire up AoC, download a huge patch, get a corrupt file message, find a fix, get a BSOD 2-3 more times, and finally receive a message that your early access is denied even though you already put down money. Are you telling me any sane person would still go through and pay for AoC if they had a choice?

Now granted WAR might have similar issues when it gets into open beta, but I think odds are good that it won’t be anywhere near the disaster Funcom has dragged AoC fans through, I have a bit more faith in Mythic than that.

It’s honestly shocking to see so many people jumping through so many hoops just to play a new MMO. Maybe it’s all the anticipation for something new, combined with the massive burnout from WoW. I mean when you view more organized grinding (daily quests) as a huge content update, you have clearly reached a desperate level of boredom.

So while watching the whole AoC train wreck from the sideline has been somewhat amusing, it’s getting borderline sad now, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse for AoC fans. At least those of us on the sidelines have something interesting to watch and write about, so thanks for that Funcom…

Posted in Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 42 Comments

Greater Barrows owns us, hard.

Posted on May 14, 2008 by SynCaine

Last night Aria and I made our first trip into the Greater Barrows instance in LoTRO. Our group featured all kin members save for the tank.

Here is our fellowship:

Level 25 and 21 burglars

Level 20 guardian (the pug)

Level 17 hunter

Level 20 Minstrel (Aria)

Level 20 Captain (me)

The instance features mobs in the 20-24 level range, so while we were certainly not over-leveled, I’m not sure we were all that under-leveled either. We had plenty of healing, a tank, good crowd control, and dps with the ability to start fellowship maneuvers. Only thing we really lacked was AoE DPS, but that was not an issue.

What was an issue, and what ultimately lead to us calling it an early night, was our pug tank. Having played a tank for ages in both WoW and previously in LoTRO, I guess I always took the roll for granted, not truly realizing how make-or-break a tank is to a group. Our unfortunate tank could not hold agro, broke mez, and failed to pull mobs off our healer, which resulted in plenty of deaths and frustration for Aria. The pulls in GB generally consist of 3-4 elite mobs, with the possibility of some non-elite adds. We had plenty of crowd control, as both burglars were able to mez and Aria had an undead stun, meaning we SHOULD have been generally fighting one mob at a time. Unfortunately on almost every pull, we had 1-2 mobs loose and quickly charging our healer, which in turn lead Aria to get very frustrated as this was her first real experience as a healer for a full group. Note to self: don’t bring a new healer into a tough instance with a sub-par tank. Lesson learned I guess.

We got maybe 8-9 pulls into the instance before we called it quits, as we had either a full wipe or a few deaths on almost every pull, and everyone’s frustration was mounting. Sadly no quests were completed, although Aria and I did pick up a few chalices.

On a good note, we dropped our tank and with our kin members completed the final step of book 1, which is of course a much shorter and easier version of the Greater Barrows instance. Hey, we got the final boss, just not the way we had originally intended. Tom Bombadil > Pug tank…

Posted in Lord of the Rings Online | 13 Comments

Can my toaster run AoC? – Concerned Wal-Mart shopper

Posted on May 13, 2008 by SynCaine

There has been a good amount of debate lately about Funcom’s decision to release a high system requirements game with Age of Conan. The debate often drops into the very familiar ‘gameplay vs graphics’ debate.

Leaving the gameplay aspect aside, let’s talk graphics. We seem to be in an odd age where we are confusing computer gaming with consoles. People seem to think going out and dropping $500 at Wal-Mart is enough to play today’s games at high settings, and if they can’t, it’s the games fault. You know what box at Wal-Mart can play games at max settings for $500? A PS3 or an Xbox. I’m sorry your on-board graphics, or that $1000 PC you bought two years ago can’t run Crysis at 1900×1200 with 16xAA, go figure…

It’s amazing to read people bitch about performance in games, only to find out they have the graphic power of a toaster in their machines. Rumor has it you get crazy lag online with a 14.4k modem too…

The system specs for AoC are fairly clear; it’s a high-end game. Maybe if you have a midrange system you can turn everything down and play it, but then don’t be surprised that it looks like shit, and don’t blame AoC. If you have a Wal-Mart system, WoW runs great on those, play that or Runescape.

As for all the ‘killing their market’ talk, consider this: maybe Funcom is only aiming for the high-end niche? If a movie makes 50 million at the box office, is it a hit? If it’s got a Blair Witch budget, it’s a smash. If it’s Waterworld… well someone just got fired. My point is looking at sales or subscription numbers is rather pointless if you don’t know the budget and expectations. Is it that unreasonable to think that maybe Funcom thinks they can make a profit catering to a certain niche, that niche being 18+ with high-end rigs? Does every MMO going forward need to compete with the WoW demographic?

AoC, right from day one, made it fairly clear they don’t aim to please everyone. Instead of getting caught up on how the average gamer might not find AoC accessible, lets instead focus on the fact that Funcom is trying something different, trying to bring a little diversity to the MMO space. If you hate the combo system and PvP focus, you have plenty of other options.

To expect every new game to run well on old hardware is foolish, as is the assumption that there is not a market for graphic whores like myself. Yes I’m still looking for quality gameplay (news flash: everyone is), but bonus points if that gameplay comes with DX10 graphics. Last I checked, Nvidia is doing quite well as a company, which means there are plenty of others willing to spend $200+ on a newer card to enjoy some eye candy.

Graphics are also a two way street. If I can’t run a game, that’s a deal breaker. But if a game is stuck in 800×600 with low res textures, that’s also a deal breaker for me. For example, while StarCraft or Diablo still have amazing gameplay, the fact that they look like pixel throw up on a 24′ monitor means I won’t be playing them, or any game with similar graphics.

Posted in Age of Conan, Console Gaming, MMO design | 27 Comments

WotLK, too little too late?

Posted on May 12, 2008 by SynCaine

Blizzard went on a bit of an info spree this weekend, flooding sites with news about WotLK. Most of it sounds good, like the 10/25 man raid changes, better heroic itemization, and inscription. Some of it sounds a bit suspect, like the whole ‘deathknights for all at 55 in the plaguelands’ looming disaster (think AQ40 gate event, but on all servers at launch), the ‘public quest’ pvp zone (Bliz doing what Bliz does best, copy/paste), and the vehicle combat mini-game battleground.

Changes like the 10/25 man raid options, or allowing enchanters to sell enchants on the AH, make me wonder why it takes Blizzard until the 2nd expansion to get this done. When you re-release an entire raiding instance (Nax) because only a handful of guilds from a population of millions have seen all of it, is that not enough data to show that raiding needs more serious changes than just lowering the cap from 40 to 25, especially when issues like cost and overall length are so dominant? How much better would TBC have been if from day one we had 10/25 man options for everything, including Kara? Would the huge issue with keys and such been there if anyone with 9 friends was able to enter the gear rat race of WoW endgame?

Those questions aside, I’m left wondering if WotLK is too little too late for WoW. Not in the ‘I wonder if it will sell’ wonder (it will), but more ‘people come back, hit 80 as a deathknight, and move back to game x’ sort of way. Considering that by the time WotLK is released (2009ish) Warhammer will be out, AoC will hopefully be fixed up and doing its thing, LoTRO will have seen it’s first pay expansion, and overall far more MMOs will be nearing release than we saw in 2008. Is the content of WotLK going to really change WoW in a major way; will it give us that same feeling we had in 2004/2005, or just give us 10 more levels to enjoy before we hop back onto the same old treadmills like we did with TBC, only with an even more dated graphics engine and much stiffer competition?

I can sum it up like this; with the new info released, are you dying to play WotLK now, or is it simply something that will be kind of cool to see when it’s released? Personally, I’m very much in the second group, with the possibility of moving on completely if WAR delivers on it’s promises.

Posted in Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 17 Comments

LoTRO progress update.

Posted on May 9, 2008 by SynCaine

A quick LoTRO update today to end the week.

Aria and I hit level 18 after wrapping up our first trip into the Barrows. Since most of the quests in that place are multi-part, we will be making another trip shortly. I really like the Barrows area, the whole ‘giant graveyard’ with undead all over the place just works for me. Once tiny detail that I noticed during the little girl escort quest (too lazy to look up the name, sorry) is that her missing cloak is now visible on the ground. Either I missed it before, or that was added in some patch, but it was cool to actually see her find it before going off to meet the prince, who tries to kill her of course. Good stuff.

We also did a bit of questing in the Great Forest, which thankfully now has a map built into the game. No more getting lost FTW!

Our Captain/Minstrel combo is working really well so far, as we have plenty of healing/buffs with decent damage output, plus the Captains ‘run away fast’ ability to save ourselves. Hopefully this weekend we do our first run of the Greater Barrows instance, and see how we fare in a full group. So far even group quests near our level we have been able to tackle with just the two of us, so we have yet to play in a full group.

Posted in Lord of the Rings Online, Site update | 10 Comments

Remember the LoTRO beta?

Posted on May 7, 2008 by SynCaine

Quick thought that popped into my head just now: remember how polished and smooth the LoTRO beta felt? The game levels 1-15 seemed amazing during beta, with great quests, landscapes, and story. It was not until release that we all realized the game was a bit empty at levels 35+ (fixed now).

Am I the only one making the comparison with the LoTRO beta cap and the AoC beta cap? Add in that the closed beta NDA is still up, and all the tech issues… well the post below states my opinion on how AoC will fare, but this 1-20 limit just adds more fuel to that fire.

Posted in Age of Conan, MMO design | Tagged | 5 Comments

Age of Conan, say hello to Auto Assault, your new roommate.

Posted on May 7, 2008 by SynCaine

The current buzz in our little corner of the MMO blog world is all about the AoC beta and the game’s approaching release. Most sources are reporting major issues, both gameplay wise and on the tech side, ranging from sub-par frame rates to BSOD type crashing. Perhaps most surprising is that people are reporting poor performance with the game set to low settings. I’m guessing the game looks fairly close to absolute trash on low, as most games do? Has ANYONE had any luck with this game on high/max settings with a decent resolution?

Beta issues aside, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I say AoC is in for a rough/disappointing launch. A potential niche game already, this amount of negative press certainly won’t increase box sales or pre-orders. Many already are taking a ‘let it get patched up’ approach, which sounds very similar to Vanguard. The problem is many people are STILL waiting for Vanguard to get ‘patched up’ or ‘turn the corner’, and had Sony not bought up Vanguard and put it on the MMO life support system that is the Station Pass, I doubt the servers would still be up.  Somehow I don’t think Funcom has the funding to fix up AoC with 25-50k active subs. I also don’t think AoC will be the type of game to start slow and then see a steady climb ala EVE. Aside from using a graphic style that does not age well, it also features an endgame (PvP) similar to what most predict will be the next big thing in Warhammer Online. Even if AoC had a strong launch, how many people are simply playing it as a hold over to Warhammer, or a break from WoW until the expansion hits?

My prediction (based purely on reading about it, I’ve never actually played AoC thanks to how ‘open’ beta was handled in terms of distribution) is that AoC has a very weak launch, and a huge drop in subs after the first month. It either dies a quick and silent death shortly after launch (3-4 month), or it teeters on life support with a skeleton crew managing it before finally going the way of Auto Assault in a year or so.

Posted in Age of Conan, EVE Online, PvP, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 35 Comments

Time to make this blog do some work for me…

Posted on May 6, 2008 by SynCaine

Long shot here, but does anyone work for, or know someone at Turbine Entertainment? If you do, please email me. (syncaine at yahoo dot com)

Thanks everyone.

/end shameless usage of blog for personal gain

Posted in Random | 7 Comments

Too WoW-like, a positive or negative?

Posted on May 5, 2008 by SynCaine

Tobold has a post up today questioning the wisdom of designing an MMO with features too similar to WoW, speaking specifically about Age of Conan. His point is that why would someone play something WoW-like when they could just play WoW, which has 3+ years of development and refining behind it, not to mention the overall high quality polish and design that made it a hit to begin with.

While a good point, it makes me wonder how far we have to get away from WoW in order to be ‘different enough’, and what exactly are we aiming for here. The bottom line of course is to have a game that’s fun to play, regardless of which design you follow. Whether you go PvE, PvP, a mix, or something entirely different, the game has to just be plain old fun in order to work. It’s a bit of the EVE Online theory, in that EVE nails almost every design-related issue spot on, yet for many it’s missing that key component that makes it fun to log on and play consistently. For many EVE is more fun to read about than to actually play, which says a lot about the game, in both a positive and negative way.

But back to the original question; how much different does an MMO need to be in order to compete, and what does compete actually mean? As fans, I think we get too caught up in the numbers, looking at WoW and saying ‘the next MMO has to get 10 million subs in order to beat WoW’, forgetting that WoW has ‘only’ 4 million or so subs in the US/EU, and that the other 6 million or so are in Asia, where the profit margin is far, far lower on a pre-account basis. So are current developers focusing on that magic 10 million subs number, or are they just looking to make a quality game with enough subs to make a profit? After all, any game that makes a profit is a success right? The servers stay up, new content is produced, the company makes money, players continue to enjoy a world they like, and everyone wins.

Moving away from the bean counter aspect of MMO development, let’s talk about what really counts; what do fans want. Recent releases show us that WoW-like games (LoTRO) do well, while games that try to break the mold seem to struggle (PoTBS, TR), and that future releases (AoC, WAR) seem to be moving away from their original ideas and seem to be going the WoW-like route.

Now the above paragraph contains a slew of over-simplifications, and counter arguments can be made for almost all points, but the overall view of the current MMO space holds true, for whatever reason.

And finally, it’s important to note that everyone will have a different opinion on what ‘too WoW-like’ means. For example, many people wrote off LoTRO because they viewed it as WoW set in Middle Earth. Yet for Aria and I, we are really enjoying LoTRO right now (and did before when we played at launch), even though we still play WoW. While LoTRO is indeed similar to WoW, its difference enough to be fun, and in many ways (combat speed, graphics, community) it feels/plays better for us. The best thing of course is we have both; we raid casually in WoW, and quest/level in LoTRO, but if we had to cut one out, it would be WoW right now, simply due to having already done most of it.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m very excited for Warhammer Online, especially the PvP aspects. Am I worried that it will be too WoW-like to be fun? Not really. My one concern is that Mythic balances PvP on PvE and not PvP, but given Mythic’s track record and experience from DAoC, I doubt they will make that mistake, especially when WoW is giving them the perfect example of what a disaster PvP is with PvE balance, and what a hole that type of design puts you in. If WAR has WoW-like PvE elements, that will just be a plus in my book, as even PvP diehards like to take a PvE break once in a while.

With all that said, what’s my stance on the whole issue? Make a fun game that on day 1 is ready to go. If it’s WoW-like, it better have enough to separate itself and offer compelling reasons to play. It could be just one difference in design; if that change is good enough, people will play it. If it’s not very WoW-like, it better live up to the standard WoW set, as no amount of good ideas will allow fans to see past glaring errors, like fans did in the late 90s, early 2000.

Posted in Age of Conan, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Pirates of the Burning Sea, PvP, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 23 Comments

I will kill you with nagging

Posted on May 2, 2008 by SynCaine

Between my Man Captain and Aria’s Elf Minstrel, your little duo+herald do a LOT of yelling. I mean like 3-4 yells a regular mob. We kill bosses by making either eardrums bleed. I don’t mind the yelling, it’s kinda cool in an odd way, but I’m fairly sure the people who just moved in next to us might not enjoy our nightly ‘death by nagging voice’ gameplay. Too bad we have seniority in the building, so they will just have to suck it up and deal (or knock on our door to complain, like the previous tenants did…)

Oh and speaking of loud noise, I’m sure they will LOVE all of the great sounds from DoTA (‘triple kill’ ‘god-like’ and such) that blare out at stupidly high levels. DoTA has basically two sound levels, earthshaking and mute, and I don’t game on mute.

Posted in Lord of the Rings Online, Random | 4 Comments