AoC vs WAR vs ? - Biggest Launch Disappointment 2008

[Murgos]

I actually enjoyed my first 30 levels or so of AoC.  WAR, even from level 4 or 5, seemed like a grind.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I actually enjoyed my first 30 levels or so of AoC.  WAR, even from level 4 or 5, seemed like a grind.

This was my experience as well, I really powered my way through conan, even got an alt pretty high. The problem with conan was that the content they had was pleasing but as you travelled further and further from newbie island it began to unravel. Though when you had it, it was fun.  DAOwarhammer was different to me, from the start it felt like nothing more than a soul crushing grind. The lore was awesome but the scenery felt flat to me and i couldnt seperate my pixel grinding into a fantasy world, it just felt like a game.

[Ratman_tf]

This was my experience as well, I really powered my way through conan, even got an alt pretty high. The problem with conan was that the content they had was pleasing but as you travelled further and further from newbie island it began to unravel. Though when you had it, it was fun.  DAOwarhammer was different to me, from the start it felt like nothing more than a soul crushing grind. The lore was awesome but the scenery felt flat to me and i couldnt seperate my pixel grinding into a fantasy world, it just felt like a game.

I tried a character on my brothers account when he got the game. I made it maybe 15-20 minutes, said to myself, "Ah. Been there, done that." And never logged in again.

It utterly failed to capture my attention. Perhaps partly because I'm a MMOG vet, and played the heck out of DAOC in it's day.

[HaemishM]

WAR was the biggest disappointment of 2008 for me because I could tell on the first beta weekend that I was not going to buy AOC. I didn't think I'd buy WAR and should have listened to my first instinct which predicted most of the problems the game would have. But I gave in to the cravings and bought the game and we all know how that turned out.

[Sky]

But leveling curves are simply something I have NO patience for. No one likes spending a shitload of time doing anything and not being rewarded.

Dingratz != the only reward in mmo. All but one of my characters in EQ2 is combat xp-locked, because leveling is /too fast/. And I don't even have the xp bonus of having capped characters (each capped characters give an xp bonus to your alts).

But I will agree that if the content is lacking, even if the game is otherwise fun (CoH), then the grind gets old. Maybe that's why I stick with EQ2, I see no grind there, except crafting and even that's only grindy on a couple classes.

[Delmania]

WAR was the biggest disappointment of 2008 for me because I could tell on the first beta weekend that I was not going to buy AOC. I didn't think I'd buy WAR and should have listened to my first instinct which predicted most of the problems the game would have. But I gave in to the cravings and bought the game and we all know how that turned out.

Well, to be honest, open beta was only tiers 1 and 2, which are both a lot more fun that tiers 3 and 4.

[DLRiley]

AoC has the comfort of releasing before WAR. So when the mmo-gamers left the AoC in mass they turned to WAR to be robot raptor riding jesus that will deliver them WoW...and found a grindy piece of shit. Hence why WAR gets more ehatred. And just to note no amount of money would have possible filled AoC with enough content to support playing it for more than a month. People just going to have the face the fact that Funcom simply figured they go korean mmo on its subsribers once they get past level 20 and hope the PK metagame will fill up the void.

[Malakili]

 tiers 1 and 2, which are both a lot more fun that tiers 3 and 4.

This sums up WAR  quite nicely and succinctly

[Ashamanchill]

Tier 3, specifically Tor Annroc, is the reason WAR beats AoC for biggest dissapointment.  As bad as AoC was, there was simply no equivilent to being knocked into the lava 753,895,321 times just to level up once.

[Soln]

WAR.

they should've known better.  And honestly?  They weren't trying for anything that was really that new in the market or innovative design-wise.  Just better PvP design and backstory.  And the feeling seems to be it ain't a good experience.

I wish they both succeeded, but this market will prolly eat both games and companies alive.

[Falconeer]

Funcom simply figured they go korean mmo on its subsribers once they get past level 20 and hope the PK metagame will fill up the void.

This is ridiculous. Quests were MORE than enough to get to level 40 without a single second of grind since day 1. What confused players was the zone layoyut. They started in a common zone (Tortage) then they were split in three different 20 - 38 zones (Wild Lands, Kopshef, Conall's) that were full of quests. You couldn't make 20 levels in just ONE of those zones but you could have made 45 by doing all the quests in all the three zones and you would have been MORE than fine by doing all the solo (no dungeons) ones in at least two of them. Not a great idea, I only noticed that on the second run myself, but content was there.

Point is: the game was very good in pointing you to where the mobs were, it just forgot to tell you where to the OTHER ones as you finished the first wave.

Seriously, I am the Conan fanboi but so many here confused "not as detailed and rich as Tortage" with "empty and without content". The first silly wall was at 50 something, Eiglophian Mountains. Oh boy. And then things were pretty cool again with Thunder River and Atzel's only to let you down again for the last 8 levels or something to get to 80.

I honestly think that quests were more than enough EVEN in the very first day of Conan. Not WoW level of "enough" but fine for sure. What killed the interest of many here and not here was clearly the crappy itemization: no shiny rewards? silly .0004% numbers? ugh, boring. And gross!


Oh, and back on topic they BOTH disappointed me for the unbelievable amount of promised and not delivered things, or for the wasted potential if you want. To someone who like me is out of the industry that is simply too hard to understand.

The reason I am still playing Conan is because it has the best MMO PvP out of EVE (which gets bonus points for the consequences, not because it is fun per se).

[Falwell]

WAR almost got a month's subscription fee from me. AoC didn't come close.

AoC wins.

[Shatter]

I played AOC and after I got to level 80(yeah I stayed THAT long) I looked around and realized it was more fun to go ride a bike without a seat.  There literally isnt sh*t to do at 80.  I still play WO, to some degree because I refuse to go back to WOW or start some old MMO from scratch.  WO is getting better, but I understand why people have issues with it

[Jherad]

Two different kinds of disappointment.

With AoC, they hyped it up, right up until the moment of release with features that just weren't ever going to make the cut. What they promised and what was delivered were two different things. Marketing wrote too many cheques that the devs couldn't cash, and there was a serious lack of high-end content. After passing lvl 20, it was something of a 'heeey wait a minute...' kind of disappointment.

War got progressively worse after numerous  design decisions in late beta / early release. Something of a 'WTF just happened' kind of disappointment.



If either are getting better, that's great. I'll check out a free trial in year or so. Meanwhile, Lotro, a previous year's disappointment for me, has seriously bounced back. It can happen.

[Falconeer]

I played AOC and after I got to level 80(yeah I stayed THAT long) I looked around and realized it was more fun to go ride a bike without a seat.  There literally isnt sh*t to do at 80.  I still play WO, to some degree because I refuse to go back to WOW or start some old MMO from scratch.  WO is getting better, but I understand why people have issues with it

There are raids and dungeons as in any other game, problem with them is they give uninspired rewards. And some very cool PvP, like in no other game of this kind.

[Zzulo]

The raids were bugged, easily exploited and also boring. The PvE instances were bugged, unfinished and also boring.

There was no real PvP endgame whatsoever.  I remember the "endgame" on my server consisting of the large zerg guilds guarding the best grinding spots where they exploited the apprentice system to get people to level 80 in one or two days. This went on for the month I tried to enjoy the game, but it never really evolved past that. I recently resubscribed to AoC, perhaps only two months ago, and the PvP seemed to consist of clusterfucking around a small area near a spawnpoint in Kheshatta or doing what has to be the most boring "battleground" ever.

It was all just so...dull.

And the grinding was horrendous as soon as you got to the fields of the dead (40ish). There were not nearly enough quests even if you traveled all over the world and did quests far above your own level. You had to grind, and you had to grind a lot.  I hear it is different nowadays, though, with more quests and new questing zones and even a PvP system. But it all came more than half a year too late.

If they do release an expansion however, I will return to AoC, because there were pockets of fun to be had in the game, and maybe, just maybe, they wont make as many mistakes with an expansion as they did in the vanilla version.

[DLRiley]

The difference between AoC and WAR is very simple. There is hope that AoC can satisfy it's an audience once the initial "this game is HARDCORE" 13 year olds are gone (i think funcom stopped listening to them). WAR just simply can't please anyone considering that its playerbase can't admit that DAOC was a failure and hence Mythic is stuck listening to those kids great ideas since they are both the vocal minority and close to half the remaining playerbase. 

[Nebu]

WAR just simply can't please anyone considering that its playerbase can't admit that DAOC was a failure and hence Mythic is stuck listening to those kids great ideas since they are both the vocal minority and close to half the remaining playerbase. 

I think many MMO developers would be content making the same money a "failure" like DAoC made.  It was a fine niche game.  Trying to make a niche game mainstream is where MMOs are failing. 

[gryeyes]

I never played DAoC but i always thought of it as a successful game by the standards of the time.

[Delmania]

WAR just simply can't please anyone considering that its playerbase can't admit that DAOC TOA was a failure and hence Mythic is stuck listening to those kids great ideas since they are both the vocal minority and close to half the remaining playerbase. 

FTFY

[tazelbain]

Awesome, Nebu is to blame for DAoC and by extention WAR.  The laundry list of Mythic's issues is very long.  The playerbase isn't one of them.  The playerbase's loyalty (some would say it's misplaced) is what allows Mythic to get by with it's mediocre talent.  Which makes Mythics passive-aggressive relationship toward the players all the more surprising.  It's really a shame the Mythic always has to wait until the subs go into the toilet before listening to the players.

[Ingmar]

The idea that DAOC was a failure has always been nonsense, DLRiley is just trolling as usual.

[Redgiant]

...
WAR just simply can't please anyone considering that its playerbase can't admit that DAOC was a failure and hence Mythic is stuck listening to those kids great ideas since they are both the vocal minority and close to half the remaining playerbase. 

Um, Trials of Atlantis was DAoC's downfall. It was a solid, popular financial success story until that time, and especially dominant in the PvP/RvR category.

For WAR, ex-DAoC players should have been listened to more and earlier, as it is squarely Mythic's fault that they (for whatever reasons they have) ignored the essence of how DAoC worked, then tried to shoehorn in some of it late in Beta due to real feedback from real people trying to have a real motivation to RvR.

I doubt half the playerbase is ex-DAoC players now, since they are the first ones to cancel or not renew their 3-month subs. But it sure was 60-70% of the initial playerbase if not more whenthe promise was there.

[Hindenburg]

I doubt half the playerbase is ex-DAoC players now, since they are the first ones to cancel or not renew their 3-month subs. But it sure was 60-70% of the initial playerbase if not more whenthe promise was there.

That'd be impossible.

[DayDream]

bah, wrong thread


edit:  WAR takes my vote for biggest disappointment.  I had hopes that it might not crumble immediately.

[DLRiley]

...
WAR just simply can't please anyone considering that its playerbase can't admit that DAOC was a failure and hence Mythic is stuck listening to those kids great ideas since they are both the vocal minority and close to half the remaining playerbase. 

Um, Trials of Atlantis was DAoC's downfall. It was a solid, popular financial success story until that time, and especially dominant in the PvP/RvR category.

For WAR, ex-DAoC players should have been listened to more and earlier, as it is squarely Mythic's fault that they (for whatever reasons they have) ignored the essence of how DAoC worked, then tried to shoehorn in some of it late in Beta due to real feedback from real people trying to have a real motivation to RvR.

I doubt half the playerbase is ex-DAoC players now, since they are the first ones to cancel or not renew their 3-month subs. But it sure was 60-70% of the initial playerbase if not more whenthe promise was there.

it was the ex-DAOC players who suggest the no scenario server.

[Redgiant]

it was the ex-DAOC players who suggest the no scenario server.

Yes a few did out of frustration, but most thought they needed to tone down scenarios (or better yet elevate open RvR rewards). And remove the tedious locking depdendence on non-RvR things. Removing scenarios after already having them would be a bad move, but hey if they had never existed I wouldn't have noticed ...

Scenarios as a short side-game == fun. Scenarios as the main thing you do in game ==  too repetitive and mind-numbingly by-the-numbers boring.

As enough have said before, they WoW-ified it, then half-heartedly tried to somewhat DAoC-ify it in Beta, then caved to more WoW-ification when things got rough.

When MJ was flailing for what to do, and everyone here kept telling him
- you won't out-WoW WoW, so play to your strengths of open RvR, not PvE which you will never hold a candle to WoW on
- lessen the PvE grind curve especially in T3/T4 (a direct follow-on from get people to your strength and get people away from your weakness)
- Open RvR needs to be more attractive relative to scenarios, given that you already have scenarios and need to now live with them as well as you made this a WoW always-chasing-the-carrot loot-centric game devoid of realm identity and motivation like DAoC naturally had.

its just the same thing any sane ex-DAoC player would say (as many of the f13 members themselves no doubt are). And as we all now know he didn't really apply what he heard here.

I can only go by my opinion and those of everyone I know who plays these games. And every one of them has said the same thing I say: if I had known that WAR was so instance-fested and WoW-fested and not just a naturally realm-oriented and motivated Open RvR game, I wouldn't have even bought it.

[Nonentity]

WAR was a bigger disappointment. I wanted to like it so badly, but the grind just defeated me. If I had been level cap in the time it took me to hit the low end of tier 3, I would have stuck around longer to at least check out the endgame dungeons and stuff.

Conan was true, genuine fun up to the point where I realized there was no endgame content, and everyone else I was playing with was level cap and bored. I played a Guardian. I quit the day after they nerfed Overreach, heh.

[Draegan]

AOC for me.  I was really looking forward to it.  But I knew WAR was fail when I got into Beta around June of '07.

[Hayduke]

WAR for me definitely.  Never had much interest in AoC.  It seemed like it was going for things that wouldn't really work in a massive game, and plus it was Funcom.  WAR's further depressing because I still hold out hope that Mythic will have a come to jesus kind of moment and wake up.

[lamaros]

The biggest disappointment for me was that there wasn't a MMO launched that wasn't retarded enough for me to actually bother getting, let alone getting, playing and then giving up on once the hopelessness became clear. Maybe it's just because I'm older and know better, but to me it seems like all the potential was bled out of these titles well before they launched.