Launch.. Impressions?

[Slayerik]

Even as an old school AoC fanboy, I expected a hell day today.

Somehow, their billing system is keeping up...lag is not a factor...the game is playable and fun (at this point)...

I must say I'm a little shocked right now.

[Threash]

Huge success, incredibly surprising.

[Nerf]

Indeed, it's hard to overstate my satisfaction with the launch so far, doesn't feel like launch day.

[rattran]

Getting up TO launchday was a mess, but pretty good overall.

[Montague]

The Good:

Rock solid client. I haven't had a single crash or hiccup in the game in 12 hours of play.

Rock solid servers. Have had a steady green ping except for one very brief episode that was probably net-related. No disconnects or queues.

Graphics are prettay. Buh bye cartoonsville. Caster effects are cool.

Gameplay is fun. It's diku but I like the combo system, it's like a little minigame each combat.

The storyline is top-notch.

The Bad:

Inconsistent performance. I have a quadcore CPU with an 8600 GT and 3 gigs RAM and I can barely get 30 FPS on low. Other people with similar setups are claiming 40 FPS on high. *shrug*

Poor communication by Funcom. No one knew when launch was scheduled. People were quoting Gamestop e-mails FFS... a community weenie could have handled the shitstorm in 2 minutes.

Some launch glitches, I got stuck in a wall and was luckily able to drown myself. No hearthing in Tortage sucks, especially with all the White Sands runs.

Itemization has a much weaker impact for low level melee than most games it seems. My conqueror is able to fight just as well naked with weapons as without his gear. Might be a good thing at level 80 so that gear doesn't totally dominate but the "ooh shiny" factor suffers when you know it doesnt really matter. I'm only up to level 12 so this may change, ymmv

[schild]

You can hearth in Tortage. What do you mean you can't?

Yea, I have an 8600GTS and an Q9450 with 2GB Ram in Vista32, getting 60FPS with some on high and some on medium when inside and 30-40 outside.

[Margalis]

Damn it I'm starting to get excited about this. I'm a sucker for Conan and I liked AO far more than most.

Quick somebody say it sucks!

[Montague]

You can hearth in Tortage. What do you mean you can't?

My hearth spell is grayed out. I think you need to be level 20 before you can use it?

[schild]

You can hearth in Tortage. What do you mean you can't?

My hearth spell is grayed out. I think you need to be level 20 before you can use it?

You're doing it wrong?

ShenMolo and I were hearthing all day long. In fact, prior to 20, the length of time between hearths is like half afaik.

[Montague]

You can hearth in Tortage. What do you mean you can't?

My hearth spell is grayed out. I think you need to be level 20 before you can use it?

You're doing it wrong?

ShenMolo and I were hearthing all day long. In fact, prior to 20, the length of time between hearths is like half afaik.

Yeah I just tried and was able to do it. I tried hearthing when I was stuck and it didnt do anything. Might've been because I was swimming.

[schild]

Can't hearth while swimming because of having to open a portal in the ground to Hell's Subway where Gordon Ramsey makes you a Spicy Italian and send you on your way.

[Vinadil]

Outside of a random bug with ATI cards that made the game completely unplayable for a few hours... this launch seems to be very good indeed.  And, I have to say that it scales nicely, because I baaarely meet the min reqs and it runs smooth.  I am running it on low settings, but still looks good enough for me and plays well.  As launches go this is one of the best I have seen.  Of course I did not get high enough to level into the zone-that-never-lets-go, whatever that was.  If they don't fix that quick it could mean some unhappy customers.

[schild]

The zone that never lets go? Reference/Source?

Anyway, as for what Nija said, I'm in the late 30s and have quests for areas from 40-45 already. I've done about 200 quests with no end in sight. It's pretty ridiculous. I've done absolutely zero grinding unless you count mapping out resource nodes as grinding - which I don't. I've always loved exploration, particularly in worlds as handcrafted as this one. Anyway, yea, launch was fucking awesome, imo. They might've had downtime, but actual server crashes or client issues were nonexistant.

[Trippy]

There's a warning in the patcher to stay away from Lacheish Plains. Dunno if that's what Vinadil is referring to.

[schild]

There's a warning in the patcher to stay away from Lacheish Plains. Dunno if that's what Vinadil is referring to.

Yea, I saw that but the Lacheish Plains is also where all of the sploiting was going on. I'm fairly sure they're fucking with it to fuck with people who are fucking with them. Which is a fine solution IMO as it's a pretty barren zone other than being somewhere you run across to finish a handful of quests and get a few more. That said, they're moderately low level quests that dish out 10,000 experience which is pretty unheard of around level 22-23 and all it takes is a shitload of walking (a shitload being 15 minutes worth if you pace your sprinting).

Also, are you playing the game Trippy?

[KallDrexx]

Inconsistent performance. I have a quadcore CPU with an 8600 GT and 3 gigs RAM and I can barely get 30 FPS on low. Other people with similar setups are claiming 40 FPS on high. *shrug*

You might try installing Nvidia's 175 beta drivers.  During the end of closed beta, each new beta driver seemed to increase performance in AoC by a lot (had a lot of people thinking they were tweaking the drivers specifically for the game but who knows).  That might be the difference.

[Xilren's Twin]

I can honestly say news of a basiclly error free launch from Funcom of all people is icredibly surprising, especially considering teh Open beta appeared to be something of a fiasco.

*sigh* Based on what you rose color glasses jerks are saying, i'll bite and will pick up a copy.

[stray]

Inconsistent performance. I have a quadcore CPU with an 8600 GT and 3 gigs RAM and I can barely get 30 FPS on low. Other people with similar setups are claiming 40 FPS on high. *shrug*

The inconsistency is more than likely due to us all having different monitors. Hell, I'm sure I could run the game decently with my dinky 7300gt IF my screen wasn't 24". 

[Trippy]

Also, are you playing the game Trippy?

After I download the bazillionth patch, yeah.

[Brogarn]

Well there goes my entertainment. A solid launch? From Funcom?! Son of a...

Guess I'll have to pick this freakin game up, then.

[Vinadil]

It was the plains I was talking about... and my only info was a couple of guildies who got stuck and the warning on the front page.  All in all this launch and the gameplay itself has been good enough to convince quite a number of fence sitters (me included) to grab a copy.  Even after as many MMOs as I have run through, I find myself just enjoying the journey here, playing the game to see it unfold rather than just racing to some sort of "end game" experience.  If the rest of the game is as good as the newb experience then, well then bravo Funcom for a job well done.

[Slyfeind]

Poor communication by Funcom. No one knew when launch was scheduled.

I thought the game was still in beta! O_O

[Signe]

The game seemed to launch okay.  There weren't the expected Funcom problems and I didn't hear of computers that spontaneously combusted or anything.  There were few problems in the game but loads of issues for people outside the game.  Funcom just doesn't handle their business well.  They don't communicate at all, for the most part.  The whole EA thing was a mess.  Not having a grace period for preorders is beyond stupid.  If I hadn't been in the EA, I wouldn't be playing right now although I've ordered the game.  That's just not right.

One good thing... people are starting to make mods.  Mirage has wee one out already and I'm sure there will be more coming... hopefully fast and furious.  This UI is horrible, horrible, horrible.  I hate how it's set up and it makes me cranky.

[Lantyssa]

It's been the worst launch I've ever been in.  Or not been in.  Fucking pre-order early access that doesn't give access coupled with idiocy on both Funcom's and Best Buy's behalf.  Support behind a registered users only forum?  Brilliant.

It's great that it was technically competant, but providing the service side of things is important, too.

[schild]

It's hard to blame a developer for a retailer fuckup. This isn't in defense of Funcom as we walked into EBGames, bought another copy, and DannyBStyle was playing within 10 minutes of doing that. Installed from the disks in my set, in fact. As the key isn't tied to the client, just the log in name. There will be salty tears in heaven before Funcom apologizes for not making more than 880k boxes available on day 1. In other words, blame the retailer and only the retailer.

[Miasma]

There's a warning in the patcher to stay away from Lacheish Plains. Dunno if that's what Vinadil is referring to.

Yea, I saw that but the Lacheish Plains is also where all of the sploiting was going on. I'm fairly sure they're fucking with it to fuck with people who are fucking with them. Which is a fine solution IMO as it's a pretty barren zone other than being somewhere you run across to finish a handful of quests and get a few more. That said, they're moderately low level quests that dish out 10,000 experience which is pretty unheard of around level 22-23 and all it takes is a shitload of walking (a shitload being 15 minutes worth if you pace your sprinting).

Also, are you playing the game Trippy?

I got stuck there but logged in this morning and managed to hearth out.  The exploit was in the zone leading to it, field of the dead, not Lacheish.  Lacheish is just a resource gathering zone.

[schild]

Ah. That explains it. Weird.

[Lantyssa]

It's hard to blame a developer for a retailer fuckup. This isn't in defense of Funcom as we walked into EBGames, bought another copy, and DannyBStyle was playing within 10 minutes of doing that. Installed from the disks in my set, in fact. As the key isn't tied to the client, just the log in name. There will be salty tears in heaven before Funcom apologizes for not making more than 880k boxes available on day 1. In other words, blame the retailer and only the retailer.

I blame both.  Funcom misled me.  (On more than just the early access being shut off.  Let's not make me do the full write up.)  Best Buy compounded the problem.  Neither was willing to do shit about it.

I had to sort it out.  Yes, being a week late to game isn't the end of the world, it's just an annoyance.


My launch day impressions:  CoX Issue 12 had some great quality of life issues!

AoC launch impression:  misinformation, false advertising, lack of information, retailer screw-ups, more retailer screw-ups, lack of support and lacking support.

The thread asked for impressions.  Mine was I couldn't play because people made a series of screw ups.  It's as valid as "THIS GAME IS THE FUCKING SHIT! "

[Vanifae]

Schild what resolution do you play at?  I am at 1680x1050 and I get about 40 frames per second 8800 GTS, Intel Core Duo E6750 and running Windows XP.  I think my setting are set to Medium for now.

[schild]

1920x1200. I've tweaked the FUCK out of the advanced settings though. My high-res view distance is shit. My shadows of all but off. Specular mapping and parallax mapping are on though. At this very moment I'm getting 64.3 frames per second. Remember though, I have a Q9450 and all 4 cores are at 60% right now. It's a very processor intensive game and seems to utilize them well.

[shiznitz]

I have a Q9450 and all 4 cores are at 60% right now. It's a very processor intensive game and seems to utilize them well.

That is impressive. Is WAR going to multi-core compatible?

[fuser]

Note: I'm scoring the launch excluding the retailer issues (two friends were caught in the Best Buy backorder crap, and another had zero issues with EB), and totally skipping the early start access.

I walked into Futureshop and picked up my boxed copy and created my account at work with zero issues. Went home and installed and patched with zero issues (I had another install on primary vista box so I checked with a secondary system) on a remarkably fast patcher download. Logged in quick with no delays and created an account and played all night with zero issues.

After playing for a few hours I can say here are good parts and the bad parts.

Overall, good launch imho.

[Abelian75]

I was really planning on having this game entertain me with a horribly failed launch, but it turns out it is entertaining me by actually being a fun game (so far).  I'm particularly impressed that I'm still having fun post-Tortage.  Arguably more so, in fact.

[fuser]

1920x1200. I've tweaked the FUCK out of the advanced settings though. My high-res view distance is shit. My shadows of all but off. Specular mapping and parallax mapping are on though. At this very moment I'm getting 64.3 frames per second. Remember though, I have a Q9450 and all 4 cores are at 60% right now. It's a very processor intensive game and seems to utilize them well.

I was going to say the exact opposite. I'm not seeing over 50-60% CPU load under Vista at 1680x1050 with "medium" detail selected at ~40FPS.

System specs:
Vista Home SP1 64bit
E2180(2.0Ghz) thats OC'd to 2.5Ghz
4GB (PC2-8500)
P35 chipset (GA-P35-DSL)
Samsung T series 500GB SATA HDD (AHCI mode, and the T series is slower then normal 7200rpm)
8800GT 512MB (not OC'd)

Curious, I have access to a q6600 at work that i'll plunk in for "testing".

[Mrbloodworth]

I have always been, and still am suspicious of Vista. Its has never said to me "I am a gaming OS".