f13.net

Linky (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1094&table=PUBLISH&template=news_features_game&selected=1094)

No mention to player-build (not just player-owned) fortresses? I smell a fish!

Are there any details out there on the specifics of the "pvp" server?  Full FFA, level-locked, other nations only, etc.?  Full FFA may actually prompt me to buy this game.

EDIT:  The FFA debate going on over at the official forums is pure gold.  Did ya'll know that FFA works and is stable long-term because of player policing?  I never felt old in the MMO world until today, but I guess you can't expect circa 2008 forum warriors to remember the lessons of things that happened when they were still in the obstetrics ward. 

The PvP servers are straight up GvG with open combat anywhere outside towns as I recall. I think partly they feel there's a need for some safe areas, and also I think collision detection is deisabled in towns (to prevent clogging) and so that would have quite a major impact on PvP. I might be wrong though.

I'm glad Drunken Brawling is back in, last I heard that was something that wasn't going to make release.

Wow.  THis will be a colossal flaming disaster with nobody on the that server 6 months after release, but I am so there.  That six months will be a helluva ride  :awesome_for_real:

Guild versus Guild or group versus group?

What if one doesn't belong to a guild, or it's a small one?  I want an RP server with stringint rules, but I'm a little wary of open PvP.

Sounds like "we have DAoC's RVR and FFA PVP rulesets + WoW Battlegrounds".

I like the sound of Warhammers PVP much better.

It's mentioned in detail in "further reading" section linked from that page. The battlekeeps are built by the players:

( http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=online&utm_campaign=Clan_of_Conan&utm_content=Issue_10&func=publish.show&table=CONTENT&func_id=1923 )

eh, both I guess. There's probably a better term, but I'll coin it loosely to describe anything where you get to pick who you fight alongside, rather than picking a side at the start and then getting lumped with whatever mouthbreathing cretins also chose lol-alliance (or whatever) many months or years ago. Frankly I'm all for that. I'm rather hoping that AOC can offer some interesting world PvP; although the PVP-am-mai-lyfe-m8yte crew who want permadeath, full loot and mexican midgets that facestab opposing players who die IRL are probably going to be dissapointed. I must admit, after a little time in EVE I'm really swinging towards more sandboxy, full-loot and death type games (although not permadeath, because frankly I think that's pointless hardcore that I don't need); however the game needs to be designed around those aspects, not have them added as an afterthought. As such I'll see how AoC as it is when it comes.

As far as RP goes, from what I read on the forums there are some people who are seriously into the REH lore stuff and I think the RP and RP-PVP servers could potentially be a lot stronger than in other games. That said, I anticipate endless "REH didn't/wouldn't have included X/Y/Belfs" talk over the course of the game, with FC lacking Blizzard or GW's luxury to reinvent their own lore at will.

edit: the Battlekeeps will be Guild-oriented PvP content of course, something that WoW sorely lacks. Although I remember reading that they were scaling different types of ownable structure for different sized guilds: whole keeps for the biggest guilds, and then lone towers/outposts for smaller guilds. I don't know how well this will work out. Based on tower wars in AO it could work well. Towers were a lot of fun there for small groups, although when they got zerged and the server hamster had a heart attack they sucked balls.

Are they doing straight RP or just PVP RP? I have only seen mention of the latter but I haven't really been following all that close.

In any case, it won't work. You need to charge a buck extra or require a separate client or something that will prevent yahoos from randomly joining RP servers or people just join cause there friend is there or cause it's the first alphabetically or because they have a right.

And whatever they do, don't make an RP server show up on the recommended list when making a character just because its load is light.

I've been deliberately avoiding info on this game so that when I try it I won't be burdened with the preconceived notions SB had before release.  I just hope the FFA pvp server is fun, and ultimately that will rely on the game's combat.  Has anybody played it?

Its very easy to make an RP server.  Just disable all chat except /tell and a 20 foot radius /say.  Otherwise, its doomed to flaming disaster.

Just like it's easy to make a PvP server...

Either that or require all people playing on the server to pass a test asking the most intricate questions about the lore and history of the world.  Note: This can be difficult if your lore and history changes as often as most people change their shoes.  *Cough.* Blizzard. *Cough.*

Still.  Take us back to the days of early UO where in order to speak to someone you had to be in their physical presence, and that's going to weed out pretty much everyone who isn't very into maintaining the realism of the setting these days.

RP servers in WoW aren't that bad, though.  There's a surprising amount of 'light' RP that I saw when I played on one for a time.  PvPRP servers, on the other hand, suffer from most RPers being afraid to PvP (this is something I don't and probably never will understand, since being able to bash in the face of an enemy when I feel like it is kinda an important part of roleplaying to me - hell, being able to bash in anyone's face whenever I feel like it and have to deal with the consequences is important, but one step at a time) and there being too many PvPRP servers to concentrate the population of roleplayers that do PvP.

Ooh, I didn't even think of this since it hasn't been an issue in all recent MMOS:

If the FFA server has the normal communication tools, how do you deal with the after-kill trash talking?  Punish the guy who was ganked and whispers "you f@@@ing f@@@@t" and pretty soon you have thousands of banned subs and an empty server.  Don't punish it and you have a constant crossfire of abuse that ends up with some guy driving 5 states to pk irl. 

What's Funcom to do?

Garble all speech between players that have engaged eachother in combat. Permanently.   ;D

Nah. Funcom's entire messaging about this game absolves them of having to address trash-talking in my opinion. They've probably got their CSR already training on the proper cadence for "learn2play" and "cry more noob".

The logical solution would be to give players an infinite account-based /ignore list, and tell them to use it if they feel the need to complain.  People whining about trash talking is one of the most stupid and annoying things in these games, and if a person is so sensitive they feel like one or two messages before they /ignore the person isn't enough, then they shouldn't be on the internet in the first place.

Trash-talking is stupid and childish, but being so sensitive about it that you have to whine to the company instead of just ignoring the person that bothers you is even more so.

But the problem I'm  thinking about isn't about the pker trash-talking the gankee.  It goes something like this.

Person A repeatedly ganks Person B over an entire evening.  Then:

B /tells A: "@@@@ you you @@@@ing f@@@@t @@@@!!!!!"

A: "Reported."

That is the nightmare CS scenario, and giving the victim an ignore list doesn't solve it.  And if you ban the guy getting killed all night, you very quickly ban 80% of the server. 

See above. The whole marketing campaign for this game allows some flexibility for Funcom. The spoken rulesets of the server takes that even further. "You only play on this server if you're hardcore" covers it all. This is not a game for MMO-newbies.

None of this makes it "better" or "worse". It's only to illustrate that they're setting this game up differently from "we play the game for you" PvE dikus in which a cross look gets a CSR investigation.

I'm pretty tired of seeing people think that trashtalking is unacceptable in a competitive online game.  Nobody forces you to play on a PvP game, and if you want to then fucking accept that somebody is going to hand you your ass and that they could very well let you know all about it.  If somebody acts like a dick, don't stress out over it: kill that motherfucker right back.  I realize that there's always going to be crybabies asking for the GM to intervene, but when you are playing a goddamn Conan game where lamentations of the women are the norm, maybe the CSR's should tell the people wasting their time on useless requests to ess-tee-eff-yoo.

In AO you could talk to anyone, it really was never a big problem there. If anything it made the game better as it turned out there were a lot of awesome people on the other side of the game. AoC, as a GvG game, I'd expect everyone to be able to chat to everyone else, and frankly I'm all for that. I really didn't like Blizzard's heavy handed "thou shalt not communicate with the opposite faction" because I couldn't see the justification. Even the RP justification was weak, since I'd frequently encounter NPCs from the other side who I could chat to, and most player characters are considered bi or tri-lingual, but then this is Blizzard lore we're talking aboot. Overall I'd be amazed if most players would report someone who whines after getting ganked, certainly not enough to see thousands of banned subs. Most people I know screenshot and store funny gank messages; and there's always /ignore for genuinely annoying cases. I heard that AoC is stealing AO's chatsystem (although this may be wrong) and that could be a good thing, because AO had a very good chat interface, one of the better ones I've used. The only thing it needed to be perfect was timestamps and the ability to change channel colours in-game (like wow). So should be good.... I think.

That said, account-wide ignore is a feature more games should have, since in all cases you want to ignore the player not the character.

You are a mature adult. Enough people playing these games are either a) teenagers who act their age, b) adults who do not, or c) shithouse rat crazy insane so that it is actually a brilliant idea to just shut it off and spare CS hours for something other than being a babysitter.

And to those people, I have only this to say: This is why we can't have nice things.

I agree, it's a waste of money diverting resources of the CS on such 'immature acts' when the user can simply /ignore.
/reported bluff followed by ignore would probably be sufficient to call the goon's aggression off, no need to bring the GMs into this.

On another MMO forum I've been following, there has been a concerted call for FFA PvP with full looting and a single character server (only one server for the entire game), which will:

1) Allow the players to police themselves and solve all in-game social problems

2) Allow meaningful PvP

3) Build a meaningful in-game economy

4) Make players care about their characters and their character choices

5) Stop the evils of instancing that break an otherwise immersive world.

The thing is, I'm sure some of these people played UO (or at least they claim to). If that's the case, they obviously weren't paying attention.

IMO full loot is a little harsh. if they're willing to go that far, hold public executions imo; beaten to a pulp, you'd still survive with stat gimps that takes time to recover, but if your head is on a chopping block it's one way to ticket to Deletesville. Now THAT'S policing. Strap em on a chair and inject poizen too, have their screen fade to black while the crowd cheers wearing their neon coloured robes and brandishing flaming torches  :grin: Let em burn on a stake too! Extra crispy! STOP DA EVIL! BURN DA PK! Then have a city-wide auction on his ashes. Mwahah. Here lies Dreadlord Azzrape.
(http://www.channel-japan.com/entryimages/110106_Punishment.jpg)

First, make sure there is clearly stated policy that profanity or any other kind of 'offensive language' is not something the CS staff will get involved with: that's what the ignore list is there for.  As long as ignore is account-wide and has no limit on the number of people ignored, there's no reason why it can't be the only tool given to handle all chat-related disputes between players.

Then, ban nobody.  Warn the person doing the reporting not to waste CS time with this shit.  At least, that would be my solution.

The only game I played that was a one account per server was Neocron (Pluto server). It worked well enough, obviously some people got additional accounts but for the most part it was pretty cool. Problem is everyone is used to having their crafting alts and shit.

Everyone knows full looting wouldn't work in Diku's (or hybrid Dikus in this case). Games like UO, Neocron, and Eve it works because you dont have to spend 40 hours getting one piece of shiny (though in most of these games you can spend your ass off to get an uber item .. but you really wanna risk it?).

I personally would love to see a server that had FFA PvP, looting, and 1 character per account. Will it happen? Of course not.

I don't care about full looting.  What I do want is decent PvP, good siege systems and decent guild mechanics.  I don't associate looting with any of that stuff.  I prefer to keep the loot I've gathered, but it's not too big of a deal, as long as it's not seriously difficult to replace it.  I hate hate hate the idea of one character per account and I might have to kick Slayerik's ass now.

I expect this is actually what their approach will be.  The game is getting an "M" rating (or was it "AO"?)  so they have an out to allowing cursing and other such things. "T" and "PG" games do not and so must ban/ enforce some sort of 'channel quality' for their public channels.

EVE is effectively one character per server really.

Hmmm....my 2nd account has a noob scout alt...a 2 mil hauler alt, and a 5 mil raven ratter/loot whore/salvager alt.

Sure, the rest of the way I'm going to put my SPs into the 5 mil character but I still have 2 other VERY useful characters on that acct :)


After you did it, I'd know it was you....and you could nevar hide!!!!!  Since we would be on a one character per server game, I could then hunt you down and repeatedly beg you for my stuff back.

Generally one character per account or one character per server breeds multiple accounts per person in my experience.

Yes.. which from a business standpoint companies love.  "What, you're going to pay for 6 accounts a month?! FANTASTIC!"

I despise the mechanic, but I've lived with it unhappily.  I'll tell you for certain it makes me more likely to jump ship for the next new shiny.

All the pvp and blah blah talk about how it is awesome sounds great, if you make it that a brand spanking newbie with the lowest gear can gank and kill the elite veteran.

QFT

If you have a level-less system where everyone starts at an average skill level and progression is a movement towards expertise...especially in an MMOFPS you could have someone 5 seconds from world entry killing an "elite vet"

Never going to happen in an MMO, unless it's PS. If advancement means nothing, then you'll find not enough killers wanting to play it for long.  Socializers and exploerers, perhaps, but that depends on other systems.

Advancement is that thing that everyone likes to publicly kick, but then quietly wishes for when it's gone.

Now, if you want to argue the noob character ganking the old character that's not optimized, feel free.  But an un-optimized older character is still a 'noob' just of a different flavor, and not the 'elite veteran' previously described.

Wouldn't killers don't give a damn, actually? (did they in UO?) Achievers might scoff at "lack of progress" but these two don't necessarily overleap, e.g. killers in EVE are quite happy to gank people with whatever they have available at given moment...

If you think UO didn't have Advancement, then we're not even having a conversation yet.

Advancement is NOT limited to Levels & Loot.  If it is, then Eve Has no advancement, either.  Enjoy taking your noob ship to 0.0.

Even hardecore killers don't try that.

No, i think killers in UO didn't care much about them.

There's probably some goons on this board who will be happy to represent. Others do it too; when you lose your ship in fight in 0.0 and noob ship is all you're left with, that doesn't exactly stop every single player from fighting, some will carry on not giving damn.

edit: it's bit aside from the point though. The point being, if the gear and 'advancement' is limited then it simply means killers are able to kill _anyone regardless of their level and gear_. What makes you think that would discourage said killers from playing, rather than do exactly opposite?

Somewhere an MMO producer just got sexually excited and he's not sure why.

Yeah, they didn't care so much that they developed and used the macros to buff out a toon before even thinking about "playing."  Silly me.


There's also a vast difference between being in a blob of 300 noob/ early ships vs 50 in other ships (Goons successful strategy), and just wandering there all by yourself.  The statement was made about A noob killing AN elite veteran in the game. Again, that's not happening in any MMO other than PS; attempts to reframe that statement notwithstanding.  You're simply NOT able to kill an "elite veteran" in Eve as a solo noob - the original statement.


Now, perhaps plenty of folks would be willing to see all EVE's advancement go bye-bye and continue killing.  I'm more willing to bet they'd bugger off. Advancement is part of the hook, and always has been.  And as I said above, killers AREN'T exactly able to kill anyone regardless of level and gear in Eve or any other MMO.  The opportunity is there to work around, or gang-up and dominate that elite player, but that's true of even the "UBER LOOTZ DIKU" games everyone here spews such hate for.  The only difference is if the game world is PvP+ or PVP-voluntary.

We might be thinking of it in two slightly different ways. How do you go from the point that's killers not ignoring the advancement in game to conclusion the advancement is necessary part of the game for these killers to keep playing it? Again, killers specifically as opposed to achievers who are by definition supposed to pay more attention to that particular aspect of game.

"because it's always been a hook in every game" it's questionable when you already accepted possibility the socializers and explorers may not care about this particular hook too much. Why do you think the killers would?

Killers require the advancement everyone else does. They can't be very effective otherwise. There's, what, two MMOs that exist at all which do not have some form of measured advancement schema? And I'm not even sure if Underlight is still active anymore.

All four of the much-abused Bartle archetypes require advancement of some form to do their thing if that purported playertype is active in an MMO. You're not going to be a level 1 Explorer for long in WoW. You're not going to explore the ends of the universe in Eve with a Rifter for very long. You can socialize all you want, but if you do that in a MMO, chances are you're doing it while (or between) other things.

Nobody's "just" anything in MMOs, except that we all have some amount of achiever. Or we wouldn't be here.

Yeah, but again, that can be seen as two different things. i.e.:

* i do the treadmill because it's there and i can't do much if i don't
* i won't play this game (for long) if it doesn't have the treadmill

Merusk seems to be saying it's the latter option for killers in MMO. To me it feels rather it's the former case -- they'll do the treadmill if it's there (and bitch about having to spend time in PvE in order to get that done) ... but if the treadmill was removed they couldn't care less about lack of it.

My reasoning is based primarily on one thing.

If you, REALLY, REALLY don't want the treadmill and just want to defeat folks in head-to-head competition, there's plenty of games NOT mmos that do that.  They're all FPS or "Casual" games like chess, checkers, etc.   Fuck, if you insist on killing folks there's better competition on Consoles these days I hear.

If you're playing an MMO you're in it for more than just the killing/ competition. Most probably the "worldliness," and part of that "world" architecture is advancement of some sort.

Vote For your Preference!! (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=64720)

Funcom is polling the players for how open PVP should be on RP-PVP Servers and regular PVP servers.

1 on 1 a 1 week old Eve noob in a gank fitted cruiser could take out the most senior vet in a top end fleet fitted sniper battleship without taking a scratch (provided the vet didn't carry light or fast med drones), with the right engagement conditions.  Like say, they both come out of warp at close range to each other.   If the engagement range was large then the BS vet could probably pop the newb in the cruiser before he knew what was happening.

Eve pvp has raised situational awareness and tactical planning to an importance of very high levels.  Something that even UO didn't do that well.

They call that a survey?

At least they don't beat around the bush and just get straight to the point.

I wonder what percentage of people will take the PVP/RP-PVP server poll just so they can say that they won't play on a PVP/RP-PVP server.

My problem isn't with advancement. A BR 20 guy has a significant advantage over a BR 1 guy in Planetside. Especially over the course of an assault, and not just a single duel situation.

My problem is with the concept that higher level = autowin button. That shit is gay no matter how you slice it.

That's why world PvP in WoW sucked balls, and they retreated to the concept of battlegrounds.

I think the mistake in this reasoning is, it excludes the possibility player may genuinely not care if the treadmill is there or isn't. I.e. situation where they will participate in treadmill if it's there, but if it isn't there they won't miss it.

There seriously is room for "who gives a fuck" that sits squarely between the "want" and "do not want". But your reasoning jumps straight from one to the other -- 'they must want it because otherwise they wouldn't want it and then they'd play something else'.

The problem with that survey is that it's self-selecting - every PvPtard will want to select the most extreme PvP setting they can because that makes them hardcore. The people who don't PvP probably won't click on the link.

If Funcom actually wanted to know this kind of thing for real, they really should have 1) sent out email invitations to a random selection of their forum database so that the responses are less likely to be stacked and 2) have already made the damn decision by now. AoC launches in two months. These kind of decisions aren't polish, they're core gameplay choices.

And that's a bad thing for a MMOG company how?

 :oh_i_see:

It's a fair point, the decision on whether or not to have safe havens in a game with collision-detection is pretty big. If you allow PvP anywhere, you need to maintain collision detection in towns to maintain parity; however then you run the risk of people clogging up in corwded areas. I expect they'll take the less "hardcore" route and disable PvP in towns, so that they can also turn collision detection off in those areas.

AoC still seems very wait and see though; FC's strategy of being fairly coy about gameplay details isn't inspiring me to rush forward and jump into the blindly. Although I'm still holding out some faint hope for a bit of  :nda: someday.

On one hand: lolFuncom.

On the other: you'd have thought they'd have worked it out by now.

What is your favorite food?

- Hamburger

- Cheeseburger

Thank you for taking our survey.

Yeah.  All the options suck if you can't or won't eat bread.

I disagree. If you're in it for killing/competition, it's because it's a field of competition that you like over another field of competition. You like how winners are determined over other games. It's sort of what Ratman says, except without the "shit is gay" part.


MMO PvP competition is as different from FPS PvP competition as Baseball is from the either type of Football. They're both competitive team sporting events. But the needs for success are completely different, have different fans, have different needs, and have different competitors.

That shit is gay, though. To clarify it's not even that higher level = autowin thing, but how the combat equations give artificial modifiers to attack/defense rolls that ensure characters few levels younger can't even hit the higher level thing. It's initially made for PvE i think, to ensure players have zero chance to tack content 'too early' ... which is just as annoying designer's attitude in its own right. Ohnoes you're level 20 in level 25 zone, we better make sure you stand absolutely no chance to do anything here whatsoever even if there's raid worth of you.

sigh, just go back to FPS like Savage 2 to solve it. It's that simple. If you want to make some sort of 'permanency' of the world, you need to make the players feel rewarded for sticking with the game longer than some beginners. That's what levels and exp are for: gratification, makes people wanna grind and pay for the subs. If you have PVP MMOgames where people just login and start owning 1 year vets, i doubt there's gonna be good retention.

Even EVE had to resort to 'passive levelling' to segregate the newcomers and long-time players.

Yes.  Yes yes yes yes yes.

This is perhaps my biggest complaint about level-based games.  That to-hit modifier.

Why can't I even land a hit to scratch a mob for 1hp? 

Surely there are other mechanisms to prevent whatever the hell this is meant to prevent that make more sense.

Yes, but EVE has enough common sense to let that newbie in Ibis hit the guy who's been playing for 3 years just fine. For all the 5 hp worth of it.

And no one is quitting in disgust over it for some strange reason.

So it isn't about the combat but the fact that you reward time over some other skill.  I would rather it be that you are equal on it, and the more you play at it, the better you become at it.

FPS and RTS/TBS have that type, they let you come in equal, but what you do with the tools given means how well you will do.  The top FPS'er on a server knows that if he does something stupid, he can be owned by someone who out thinked him or her.  But then again, RPG'ers freak out over this, they don't like the idea that someone below them is able to do anything to them.

I also stated my position, since if you are going to let it go wild from the get go, i.e. log in and anyone can gank and loot you anywhere, you better have a way for the newbie to fight back and fight back effectively.  If not, you aren't going to have many people still wanting to play the game after start up (UO after 6 months).  I have noticed that the ones who want the world PvP and loot all, usually aren't into a good fair fight, but want to play the wolf and kill sheep.  I saw this in UO, I saw this on Darktide, I saw this on DAoC (sort of), the higher ups would come in and gank the lower levels, but when higher levels would show up they would run off since the easy kill wasn't easy anymore.

(http://www.thenoobcomic.com/headquarters/comics/00064.jpg)

I have given long thought to how to solve the problems of FFA pvp games/servers. What I would like to see is a more refined noob experience that would ease players into the game. I imagine a skill based game with a very steep learning curve. I imagine when you first start out the game you are in the tutorial instance and you have amnesia or something to that effect. You walk up to an npc and start conversing with him, and he asks you what your name is, then he asks you if you remember what your profession was before you lost your memory. Based on this conversation tree you get a few skills (lets say you tell the npc you remember healing people). So the npc gives you a few healing abilities, and sends you on a quest to heal some npcs fighting another npc. After you finish the quest the npc will ask if your memories are coming back to you (if you answer yes he sends you on to the next tutorial, if you answer no you keep doing quests to determine your initial skills based on what kind of archetype you want to play). It is important to note the initial skills the player starts with will not lock him into any specific role long term, but in the short term he would have to specialize in whatever skills he starts in to prevent gimping himself (lets say it takes a week or less to build up these core skills after which he could then diversify, or even respec to have new core skills if he got bored of the ones he started with).

The next thing I would do is introduce the new player to the way the world works (what are the safe areas, what are the not safe areas, how to interact with objects etc.) After the new player has went through all of the basic stuff I would then send them onto a new tutorial that would be more advanced, and would teach the player how they should act during a siege (or whatever the appropriate etiquette is for your end game). In a siege example the player is placed in an instanced zone with npcs trying to siege a fort. If you follow the npc commanders instructions you get credit for accomplishing them (defend this tower, man this siege weapon etc.) This would re-enforce the idea to the player that this is a team based effort, and if he works with the team he gets rewarded, if he chooses to not work with the team he gets nothing. This would hopefully have the effect of getting new players up to speed so they can quickly enter the end game (I recently tried playing EVE, but the tutorials suck ass, and it would be nice to have a tutorial explaining the basics of fleet combat so when the player feels he is ready for fleet combat he can jump in and not feel like a total noob).

So the final thing I would do to encourage guilds to bring new players into the fold is rip off the idea that AC had with the allegiance system. More vassals = more exp for everyone (kind of like an exp pyramid scheme). Maybe even throw in a guild recruitment board at the end of the tutorial, and to take it one step further flag the characters who successfully complete the tutorials so guilds can see who the motivated newbies are versus the ones who can't even bother to learn to play.

To conclude, the overall idea would be to ease new players into the game, give them the tools they need to find like minded people, and have very little grind to get up and running (a linear exp curve to reach x amount of core abilities and then an exponentially harder exp curve after that to become more versatile). Then of course as long as you have safe (relative to other areas, like EVE's empire space) the noobs should be fairly protected and can then ease their way into the game by doing pve missions, until they feel comfortable enough to go fight with the big boys (or they can go right from the tutorial into the wolf den if they are motivated enough). Issues like item loot would depend on how the game's economy is built. I personally like the way the EVE economy, and death penalty works, but other ways could work just as easily (and if not too harsh gain more subs).

This is what makes the audiences different.

I don't think this tells the whole story though. Where does most WoW PvP happen? Where did most DAoC PvP happen? Basically either at the level cap, a level cap (like the level-ranged battlegrounds in both caps), th

What that tells me is that, over time, RPGers don't want level-based PvP. They want PvP when the levels don't matter, as a result of a combination of things:

• Character depth that becomes apparent over time/investment
• A world/theme/lore/style they can care about
• Maximum or at least high-end achievements they can treat as longterm goals
• PvP that adds depth to a world as long as it doesn't impede their progress (bracketed level ranges basically)
• PvP at the end of all levels with some progression still there (when again, levels don't matter).

Now sure, someone's gonna say "I/they love lording over lowbies". But like god-mode in any game, that gets boring after awhile, either as an activity unto itself or because your opponents stop showing up.

No. Well there is absolutely no RvR (or any realms for that matter) and there is only one battleground that they recently shoveled in, but it clearly isn't the focus of the pvp. So no.

 :nda: ?

Yeah, but you can kill a level 18 guy when you are level 11. Not that I would know though, right?

 :nda:

So?

So did anyone get in? i don't think theres an NDA on this.

Been in for awhile.

Haven't launched in awhile.  :awesome_for_real:

Are you sure there is no NDA? I was convinced there was.

http://conanvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=40285

Would suggest that the NDA drops on May 1st.

Been so long I don't remember  :grin: Will check, but then I can't tell you anyway.

Well, technically you could tell *me*.

:wink:

I think you can say if you're in it or not.

I'm in it and I'm giving it a final playthrough currently.

I was speaking only about the pvp weekend, no idea about the NDA situation on the regular beta.  Nobody i know that got in the pvp weekend has mentioned anything about there being an NDA.

So can someone give me a recap on what's known about AOC and WAR PvP/RvR in total, please?

I got in the PVP weekend and pretty sure there was a NDA while I was clicking through.

Personally I don't think it matters what kind of PVP a game has if the game is entirely mediocre - and I really haven't seen anything to suggest AOC is anything but.

Please let me know if I've somehow gotten the wrong impression as I'm this close to crossing this one off my "check it out" list.

I am pretty sure THAT kind of answer would be covered by the NDA.

Just hypothetically, have we ever seen a single game that went to a month before release with the NDA intact that was OMG AWESOME!!1!!1! ?

FIFY

I just got sent an AoC weekend key!   :awesome_for_real:  And for my emptiest weekend in ages too...

Good luck getting the client download, installed, and patched by Sunday.

 :awesome_for_real:

Evidently, they sent out 5K more invites.  The Funcom Download Manager was pretty quick, I think. 

Apparently, I'm in as well. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to get that much hard drive space free.

Why are your weekends empty?    You should get married.  Us wives are great for filling up the empty time slots.  (http://www.sheknows.com/graphics/emoticons/dance2.gif)

I really can't figure this out. I couldn't when it came up during VG either. Three years ago I got a dirt-cheap 250gb drive that still runs smooth on max load. Friggin' space is at joke/cost levels. Are you way overloaded on MP3s? Or is your drive old?

It's not like I went out to buy a hard drive to support my MMO habit either. I looked at it more as a requirement for "keeping up". Freakin' COD2 pushes 8gb with the mods and maps and nonsense we used. COD4 is even more.

And this isn't to just target you of course. :wink:

I think im the only person who signed up and didn't get in, i officially hate you all.

Porn.

As it is, I'm using a 250 GB HD, and up until very recently, was using a 160 GB.  But I don't keep alot of stuff my HD, and have MAYBE 40 mp3s on my 'puter.  I still listen to CD's.  I'm old school, or obsolete, take your pick.

I don't even own an MP3 player...

I can't remember if I signed up or not, but I didn't get in either, if that helps  :uhrr:

Both my drives are old and full of shit. Only one is full of pr0n. And comics. Lots and lots of comics. If I had the money to go buy a cheap 250gb drive, I'd have the money to buy a new goddamn computer. Also, pr0n.

I'm a nomad.  Law school, one year of clerking in random_middle_of_nowhere_place_00, and next year in Tokyo.  And then I want to go back to Ohio.  You may be surprised to hear that "hey Ivy League/East Coast gal, move to Ohio with me!" isn't the world's greatest turn-on.   :-P 

Jesus.  WHen I click on the "torrent" download option, it just opens a long word doc full of gibberish.  Trying to download in four parts gets me into Gamespot Download Manager, but then it instantly says "error occurred."  Any ideas? 

http://games.internode.on.net/filelist.php?filedetails=16830
http://games.internode.on.net/filelist.php?filedetails=16831
http://games.internode.on.net/filelist.php?filedetails=16832
http://games.internode.on.net/filelist.php?filedetails=16833

+ using download manager worked for me last night.

FYI, Ausgamers.com has a much faster download (at least for me, in MA) then Ratadm's link- I am getting 80 kbps from the aussie site, and was getting 15 from internode.  Thanks for the help though. 

Woo, getting 50/kbps on the torrent.   :awesome_for_real:

At this rate, I might have it downloaded in time for the carnival of failure release.

I got it done in about an hour and a half using the Funcom download manager.  Unless it's become useless with this event, I recommend it.

You must have some sort of mystical demon-powered computer or a magic download site.  Was this through gamespot, or somewhere else?

It was from Funcom.  I can't find it anymore.  I even looked on some AoC boards and other people can't find it anymore, either. I guess it was so fast that it escaped.  Sorry.  Mind you, that was just for the game.  The patching took another couple of hours, I think.  I'm not sure because I wandered away and when I came back a couple hours or so later, it was done.  And I have a very mediocre computer.  I'm seeing how long I can go without buying a new one to test my sanity.

The Gamespot Download Manager is shit. Ultra shitty shit shit shit. Downloading using the Internode thing. Might actually be done by tomorrow.

I'm getting 200 kbps from http://www.ausgamers.com/files/download/html/35188, if that helps.

Free Download Manager might even be faster.  Wish that Funcom one was still around.   :?

Hey!  Try this, the free one:  http://rapidshare.com/files/108207123/aocpvp20080415.zip

I got it using the Free Download Manager and the Internode files over night. I'd tell you what I think of it, but  :nda:.

The NDA for PvP beta was lifted on 19:00 GMT (3PM EST and noon PST or something like that). Spill the beans.

(source (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26351543))

I'm still downloading (thanks for sending me the key yesterday at 2 P.M., Funcom).  Should be in tonight. 

If you are on a pve server does that eliminate you from enjoying the pvp sieges and such?

Does being on a pve server just mean, that the only thing ill miss, is me getting ganked at a quest giver by someone 20 levels higher then me?

I am kinda in the middle, i wana have my pvp content but i wana enjoy the pve... i dont want to have to deal with bullshit basically but as of now, my rl friends wana do the FFA thang... and me being something of a pve whore, kinda on the fence.

I think joining PVP server and actually hitting the level cap means a higher level of accomplishment than doing it in pure PVE. And in the off-chance of server character transfers they're not gonna let you hop your character from PVE to PVP either.

People are going nuts over the FP AoC beta invite for subscribers.  They're releasing 5K twice a day, until 50K are gone, I tihnk.  Evidently, they're going extremely fast.  Like a minute or so for each batch.  People are screaming that it's not fair that Funcom is making them pay for beta. (they scream this every time FP has a subscriber give away)  I'm bored waiting for my grocery delivery and all the hate and bitterness is so fucking amusing.  It's like they put this together to amuse me in what should be a boring morning of waiting and laundry.

Thank you, bitter gamers of the world.  I appreciate the effort!  (http://www.sheknows.com/graphics/emoticons/flip.gif)

Reminder #76983:  These are games.  There are no "accomplishments" beyond having fun. 

This has been a public service reminder.

You say it so much nicer than I do, Neb.

Sure, "accomplishment" is an inherently fuzzy word, but I think we can agree that its "harder" to get to max level on a PvP server than on a PvE server.  Someone on a PvP server faces all the same PvE obstacles as a PvEer, plus the additional threat of roving gankers.  Nobody will ever agree whether that makes PvPers "better", but their experience is more difficult. 

Was WoW more fun on a pvp server? Maybe at first but once the BG's came that all went to shit and there was no reason to play on a pvp box.
dunno just thinking out loud, pve content has to have a steep curve, take lots of time. the content itself not because some asshat is ganking ppl near a quest giver. imo.

Difficult?  I don't know.  It's different.  I've leveled toons to 70 on pvp and pve servers in WoW and found them to just be different play experiences.  Pvp servers offer a level of intensity that can make the pve grind more enjoyable at times, but also acts as a source of annoyance at others.  Getting to 70 on a PvP server isn't any kind of accomplishment, it's just a different play experience. 

Performing in the game better than someone else *is* source of fun for considerable part of the participants.

I disagree.  I think that the majority of players find winning their primary source of fun.  Sadly, winning has become more about farming gear and using the best macros than it has about being the better player.  I personally get more enjoyment from losing a close fight and knowing I've played well than I do from destroying a poorly geared noob.   I'm finding that my preference places me in the minority. 

Maybe we're just engaging in semantic quibbling, but on both PvP and PvE servers you have to get X amount of experience points to get to level 70.  Many of those points are gained through non-instanced questing or XP grinding. 

The ONLY variable differentiating PvP and PvE servers is the possibility of open-world PvP.  Time spent defending from ganks or respawning from quest-giver ganks, by definition, increases the time it takes to get to 70.  Again, I'm not making any moral claims about "better" or "more skill,"  but there is no way you can say that leveling to 70 on a PvP server isn't more difficult.  Its X versus X+1, unless there is a variable (another difference between the servers, like increased rate of XP gain on PvP servers) I'm missing. 

I think you're correct here.  It takes longer and is potentially a LOT more annoying to level on a PvP server.  In that sense, it is indeed more difficult.  I guess my point was that none of this makes it an accomplishment.  The only goal in games is to have fun... they aren't built to accomplish anything unless your goal is to supplement your income with gold sales. 

That's generally what i meant when i said "performing better". To elaborate, since ranking players (based on their win/lose ratio, gear acquisition, exploration, whatever) is huge part of a game, it is certainly possible for the player to set their own goals and consequently, accomplish them (or not). The more difficult to meet goals imply 'better' "accomplishment". Similar to how becoming the best chess player in the country is  generally more of accomplishment than becoming the best player in town simply because it takes beating larger competition etc. It's not that 'games are for fun' eliminate accomplisment from them, it's the accomplishments themselves that serve (partially) as this 'fun'.

That depends on the penalty for losing in PvP.  I haven't looked into Age of Conan enough to know what their mechanics are, but I'm guessing it's a minor penalty if any, because it seems unlikely any game today would take the risk of making pvp penalties significant like Shadowbane or early UO did.  In a game where the penalty is minimal or nonexistent, I don't feel there's any real difference in accomplishment for hitting the level cap alone.  I think exp loss or item loss would be required in order for me to consider reaching highest level a greater accomplishment, because in a game where death is a minor inconvenience at best, all it means is you have the patience and/or stubbornness to stick it out.  This applies to PvE too - any PvE game which doesn't have exp loss means that as long as you are stubborn enough to keep at it, you will eventually get there because you can ONLY progress.

That's why I think the limitation on transferring from a PvE to a PvP server is stupid in say, WoW, while if a game like Lineage II where you have exp loss and the possibility for item loss (well, you can't lose items anymore, as long as you keep your PK count below 5, but that's not the way it used to be) had PvE servers where you could ONLY PvP during sieges or other specific areas, it would be a fair and reasonable limitation.  In one, as long as you are stubborn you cannot help but reach max level.  In the other, if you suck and keep getting killed, you'll not only never reach max level, you'll lose levels.

As for the accomplishment debate...to many of us, succeeding at something difficult, particularly that which others lack the ability to succeed at, is an accomplishment.  This is the same principle that leads people to call say, climbing a mountain that others have climbed before, an accomplishment.  It is difficult, and not everyone can succeed at it.  It is considered an accomplishment although it serves no useful purpose.  Now, whether a particular thing is difficult or not is a very good point to debate, but I think we can all agree that games are certainly capable of giving us difficult challenges that not everyone can succeed at, therefore there certainly is the possibility for accomplishment in games, just as there is in pretty much any field of anything that a person can do.

i agree with what you say,

I would much rather have games with a horizontal (ex ffxi) end game as apposed to wow/eq vertical method.

The idea that, it is the journey that counts and not the destination… meaning I would rather have a longer level cycle with more rewards then a game like wow that is on ez mode.

The idea is that I want to play a party centric game. Meaning that there is a synergy between the players. Do not misinterpret this as forced grouping (like most do).

This is where most mmos fails as they try to appease everyone… the genre has to move away from the big clan experience and allow smaller groups to enjoy the end game content on an equal playing field. Imo, this is where WAR has an advantage with their public quest system.

I quit wow during the MC raiding because it was flat out boring. Simply put, I don’t want to guild with people I do not like but this is not the case. At least in ffxi, we had a linkshell system so you could join multiple guilds based on the kind of activity I wanted to do.

For me, AoC looks like it has the depth and technology that I actually expect from a mmop and ffxi was the last game that delivered that.

*edit*
also having a more party centric game helps limit the cheating. lets be honest here, i wouldnt be shocked at all if 80% of the wow players on this board alone doesnt use glider.

Hey if you want to have a real talk on AoC PVP, thats great, but please dont destroy this thread also. You can expect anything you want, but look at what people are saying. AoC PVP weekend was pretty much a total bust. Their engine cant handle their claims ATM. Its fine and great they are saying all this stuff, but if it flat out doesnt work, then it doesnt work.

I really want AoC to be good, as they have some great ideas, but if they cant balance the classes to even semi close state, and also have their engine be able to support the actual gameplay, I dont see the pvp being good.

Its fine if you want to take their claims at face value, but a lot of people are calling it Hellgate 2.0.

Sorry your wrong. The vibe that came back from the pvp weknd was actually very good. Yeah im sure a few people with low end pc;s had issues... but the game looks very solid.

Well I'm glad that got cleared up.

also anyone that says this game is like hellgate or gasp, vanguard are simply trying to become one with the fail.

Morfiend your views are simply ... "retarded"

*Sigh* I can see using logic on you is a wasted exercise, but I have to try.

How are my views, who has first hand experience with the game, vs you who only read the hype, retarded? I would go in to more detail on the state of the game but  :nda: so I can only talk about the PVP weekend.

As I said before I REALLY hope the game is good, cause I want to have a fun PVP game, but you who hasnt played it, and only read the hype insulting people who have is much more "retarded".

I did not play the weekend myself either, but guildies who did had the same experience of "pvP might have been fun if we could have not lagged through it."

And, the whole "well, yea, the LOW END MACHINE people will suck" excuse IS amazingly like... hmm Vanguard I think.  Perhaps AoC is choosing to limit its customer base, hoping that only the new-computer crowd will play their game.  But, if that is not the case then they have some work to do on the whole lag thing, at least for the PvP side.

It's not just low-end PC's either, as I don't think much of anyone would consider mine low-end.  It's not top of the line anymore, but a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 2.8 Ghz with 6 GB of memory on Vista Ultimate 64-bit and a GEForce 8800 GTS isn't low-end.  And just to head off any suggestions that Vista might be a problem, remember that AoC has DX10 support which means it should be thoroughly tested and run just fine on Vista.  For me, however, I had constant crash issues, the PvP portion of the game was interspersed with such bursts of lag and slowdown that I didn't manage to play it very much at all, and the PvE section, while an interesting new take on combat, also suffered from difficulty of playing it.  Will it be more functional at release?  I am certainly not expecting much.

Grunk I hope every single person like you ends up playing Conan and leaves the rest of the games for everyone else.

I suspect the kool-aid is good?

What was your rig setup for the pvp weeknd? also this was a stress test no?

I thought the PvP weekend version didn't support DX10.  (I may be remembering it wrong.  If not, there is this to consider then.)

E6600, 150gb raptor drive, 2gb RAM, 8800GTX, XP Pro s2. And unlike what you tried to say in the other thread, I DID build it myself. Also, no I am not playing the stress test. I am playing  :nda: as I said in the post you quoted, but ether didnt read, or didnt comprehend. But since I am playing the  :nda: I can only "talk" about the PVP weekend.

Yes i did read what you said, and yeah i understand. i am just having a hard time accepting that the game is broken.

I am not asking you to talk about ????. I am talking about the stress test that took place and thats it.

Wow, you were not kidding. The second batch was gone in under a minute. Do you have to be a paying subscriber to get in? I have some sort of free account there.

Become one with the fail.

Don't bother with fileplanet unless you just want to download early. Everybody who ever applied will be getting into the open beta.

Yeah, because no one (http://www.anarchy-online.com/wsp/anarchy/frontend.cgi?func=frontend.show&template=main) has release (http://www.wwiionline.com/scripts/wwiionline/index.jsp) a boring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_And_Beyond) buggy (http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/) unfinished (http://www.hellgatelondon.com/) or downright crappy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Assault) online game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_City_Online) before have they?

You forgot the fallen king of shitty mmos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheron's_Call_2).

And UO and EQ1  :awesome_for_real:

There's two different versions of AoC people are talking about: PvP weekend and :nda:. I suspect that the former suffers the usual problem of having hundreds of different PC configurations banging on a single server trying to make sense of it all, while running an older client. That "older client" element is not unbelievable, as they have done that in the past when they have conducted focused tests.

Also, Morphiend, is it possible the Vista Aero UI was messing you up? I've read a few accounts of people discovering that it isn't so much that Vista is crashing them as much as it is the Aero UI that is the cause. Most use a different desktop configuration and otherwise find Vista to work fine.

Also, just what the hell are you doing with all that RAM?!  :grin: (and yea, I know, in about three years, 6gb is going to be the 2gb of this year and the 2mb when I bought my Mac SE :wink:)

and they say im "fucken" negative... and wtf, i liked EnB, how can you go wrong with eq in space god damn it!!!? also it was the only game that i could watch a pr0n and level up in at teh same time!

dont let me catch you stealin mah shiznick!

YOULIKETHAT!?

(http://jasonnardi.com/uploads/Nigga%20Please.jpg)

People talking about the  :nda: shouldn't be saying a damn thing about it.  I'm only asking on the PvP weekend.

i knew i shd've green text'ed that reply.  :grin: I did 60 on PVP once and felt really bitter. The only way to wash the taste off is to gank some stranglethorners again. Did the Rhok'Delar quest in PVP? Tough luck, I'm quite tired of it. I could kill the horde but some alliance guy got a shot in and de-spawned it. Telling me I 'ninja'ed' him. I decided to take a long break and re-evaluate the value of open PVP in WoW after the customer service couldn't sufficiently explain why such game mechanics are even in game when it's obvious some random dude in my OWN faction could grief me without repercussions.

How many hours did I spend stealthed at Hemet Nesingwary's camp?  Ah, the beautiful, corpse-filled memories....

afk shadowmeld + shadowcat on aggressive stance pet = lulz.

The thing is this. I dont care about someone who "maybe" in beta, or poses as such.

You can goto betaleaks.com and get all the info and nothing that i read from known testers would say that this game is in such bad shape.

That's why I commented the way I did. If people want to know what's going on, the info is out there. If they only hear about what's "allowed" to be public, they're going to get an (unfortunate-for-Funcom) skewed impression of the game. I'm not here to be their shill of course. I just get disappointed when the actual state of the game is not being conveyed accurately during those rare occasions when it's actually better than what is being presented as public impressions.

It must be a good game because their PR people are only allowing good things to be said about it. :drill:

Then go there. We tend to care more about what our folks think about stuff.

My god. Return of the Grunk.

Will you sign your posts with your level in AoC please? I think that would be more fitting.

Man, I'm so glad I'm home when all the crazy is about to unleash.   :awesome_for_real:

I have XP Pro and 2gb RAM. This you got me confused with the other person who posted their specs.

Mm, it's possible it was Aero.  I didn't think to try disabling it, though honestly, I don't think I should have to if the game is supposed to run on Vista.  As for my 6 GB of ram, I had 2 from an older computer that I decommissioned, then I bought 4 more, mostly because I could afford 4 instead of 2.

Anything can be forgiven for having troubles with Vista.  There's a reason Microsoft may be relenting and letting XP survive (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4716159).

The. Fuck? People get PCs with VISTA now because the manufacturers are installing it that way. It's not like the average user gets much choice nowadays.

They just get their new laptop, power it on and wonder why Windows looks different, and why their new computer is running like a snail on valium.

Not to mention that Microsoft made deals with Dell and other manufacturers to explictly omit Windows XP as an OS choice.

The thing that really irks me about preinstalled OS's is that I recently helped my father order a Dell laptop...they would configure it with 4GB of memory but they wouldn't put Vista 64 on it, essentially rendering what, a little over a half-gig useless, since 32-bit only recognizes a little less than 3.5.  I had to reformat and reinstall, plus the bastards didn't include 64 bit drivers on their driver DVD, so I was left scouring the net for them.

But this is going way off topic.  Me, I don't forgive anything for not designing for Vista these days considering it came out 2 years ago, especially a DX10 game.  To me, if you're not gonna design for the current Windows, make things for a fucking Mac or something.

If they really do have another client that's working much better, maybe I'll wind up buying the game after a month or two, but if that IS true, using anything less than their best working client for my first hands-on experience with the game cost them, because I've already disinclined several other people I know from buying it because of my poor experience.

I think the point was they ARE designing for Vista, but the 32b version, not the 64b one.

Uh, my point was they can try to design for it, but if the base OS is crap, there is only so much they can do.  They can't patch Vista to make it run better.

Red Panda is feisty today.

I approve.

Ah, yea, it was you, not Morfiend. And no, you shouldn't have to disable Aero. But then, you went into Vista with both eyes open, didntya?  :grin:

I have a copy of Vista Home Premium sitting on my desk. It's my "I've finally arrived" install, the moment when I have no active games and no prospects at least for a solid week when I wipe the drive, install, learn2hate it and then wipe and put back on XP Pro.

I don't suspect that moment will be coming. I may just frame the thing and wait for the next OS. MS keeps saying "June", but I so very much doubt they'll keep to that. And Lantyssa's link substantiates that. Worst part is they really don't need to stop releasing XP boxes because the part I do agree with them on is the target audience for XP: IT and geeks like us who want to maximize gaming PCs at a time when consoles get all the market attention and a good chunk of the revenue. We're not a huge audience, but nor are we blinding buy PCs from Best Buy with this whacky black-ish UI on it and why do I keep getting barked at by my computer?

I did the whole Vista thing the last time I needed to reinstall, don't bother. To me the biggest thing was the 64 bit. The drivers and compatibility just aren't there. I"m pretty convinced they won't be until they just stop producing a 32bit version.

Does anybody have any info on this? They seem to be talking solely about fileplanet subscribers so far and we are only 22 days away from launch.
The initial rampage on the beta keys has died down, any fileplanet subscriber can pick up a key here (http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/ageofconan/beta/) now.
I was hoping to check it out before launch but I'm not taking a fileplanet subscription for it.

"Open beta" = Launch.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't know.  The last I heard the 50K Fileplanet was the only open beta they'd be having.  That was last week.  I don't know where Sam heard that but he IS an eggplant, you know, and privy to all sorts of sekret information.

I wasn't aware that was sekret beta infoz... please ignore!

The stress test is under two weeks anyway, it's not like it's a big deal like the WoW beta.

(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1111/1453350267_7e8406ae3f.jpg)

NOOOOOOOOO!  NOT SAM!   :ye_gods:

YOU *nom* *nom* *nom* BASTARDS!

*dip* *dip* *nom*

WHYYYYYYYY *nom* *nom* SAM!?  WHY? *sob*

Can you pass the salt, please?

That was my aunt. You bastards!

Small update on how mercenary-system will work, stolen from a post by Tarib (Senior Community Manager) on the official forums, dated May 1st:
Sieges accessible to everyone, sort of! Whee?

Just stand over there next to the egg wash,  and ignore the hot oven.

(http://home.metrocast.net/nhcook/food/sole/sole-dip-egg-wash-2-.jpg)

Age of Conan PVP Interview from Gamespy from May 1: >Link< (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/870785p4.html)


I have never been more excited to have other people play an MMO.

I disagree with this plan of action, but I think I know what he's trying to say. He assumes that PvP balance right out of the box will be so bad that certain classes will be completely worthless as anything but targets in PvP. He doesn't want the players of those classes to get too discouraged until they've hammered out the balance issues... which may take a few weeks. He doesn't trust that the testing they're doing now will reveal just how broken the game is, so he wants 100,000 people paying to test it.

It's idiocy, but there's method to it.

lol!

Oh man, I hope they add item loot as a punishment for losing. That would just be perfect.  :grin:

I spent all my time avoiding even looking into whether they had crafting. But given the amount of sheer loot drops in the pre 20 game, item looting (even if it's light-weight AC1 style random item/value loot) could actually work here.

WITHOUT XP loss.
WITHOUT Stat penalties.
WITH a lot more ways of, like, not dying.

No matter the system, nothing yet has been invented to prevent rapid death by Zerg/focus-fire in an MMO. The side with the better coordination is going to kill characters in measurements of seconds. Fights in any MMO is X of fighting with X*10 of traveling.

Collision detection.  When you can stand in front of someone and protect them, when you can't shoot fireballs or arrows through your melee teamates to hit the guy they are all beatin on, when you can only have three or four people beating on the same guy before theres simply no room for anyone else to swing their weapons, then you will see the end of the "assist train" that dominates pvp in every game so far.  That or one hit kills so the emphasis of combat  is on avoiding being hit at all rather than slashing someone five hundred times with your sword before they die.

Even that. The game needs to be a corridor-based environment for CD to truly make a difference. These games are highly unrealistic spaz fests of people jumping around in open plains worlds designed more for "realism" than promoting compelling combat. That doesn't make a difference in combat  for the most part but it feels good anyway. CD is simply unreliable in anything but a semi- or full- FPS game, and as long as the environment makes that useful.

Newer games have better maps, but there's still a long way to go until you get to some of the best FPS maps out there. THEN turning on true line-of-side and CD and allowing for players in front to soak. Even games with some amount of CD still have target locking.

More like end of melee classes and all-archer assist trains. Since 20+ arrows can still hit that one guy without shooters having to bunch closely together, and increased distance/radius increases amount of people who can encircle and fire at the single target.

Easy enough, just let a shiled block any incoming arrows when in a sort of 'defensive' stance. No movement or attacking but full defense against ranged and most melee aqnd perhaps a tank with a large shield will autoblock for one nearby teammate who could sling some ranged back. If we're talking 3v1, 5v1 of course the single guy flanked my ranged is always at a disadvantage

So uhmm, if the tanks are given full immunity against archers then #1 how does an archer ever manage to kill that guy with the shield and #2, how do we deal with everyone switching to mages, instead? Unless of course mages are also granted full cockblock vs the guy in tin can, but that still leaves us with drawback #1 ... except now extending to both kinds of ranged classes...

That's how balance works. You are good against 1 or 2 types, sucky against 1 or 2 types, and sorta OK against 1 or 2 types.

Get a friend if you need help.

You do play Eve, don't you? :)

so yeah, logic be damned. Your wrong n00b. AoC is teh shiznick... glad i dont listen to ch00bs like j00!

ch00bs!!!! i love it, stay grunky!

Prison system is not real. (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=838131#post838131)