Preview Weekend In Review - From Mark J

[Goreschach]

Would it really kill us to just wait a couple days before selecting a server? This way we'd have a pretty good idea of how the pops there will turn out, who will be there, etc.

[Ghambit]

I'll see all you guys back in AoC in a month or so.   You'll see. 

Big PvP patch next week on the 3rd btw.  You know you're curious!

[schild]

Huh?

[cevik]

And everyone has said it was working fine before the code got messed up. The devs have admitted it was a "woops" moment, and it will be fixed in the next patch. So far every time they have said that, they have produced.

And you don't understand my concern?  The devs had a "woops" problem they had to fix (CTD).  They said they were going to fix it.  They produced (supposedly, they still have a lot of CTDs for me, I'm shocked that it used to be worse than it is now), but in the mean time they managed to break something else in a horrific way.  Now they are saying "woops" again, but they promise to produce.  The last time we went through this cycle they broke pathing in a terrible way, what is going to break this time through the cycle?

[Ghambit]

And everyone has said it was working fine before the code got messed up. The devs have admitted it was a "woops" moment, and it will be fixed in the next patch. So far every time they have said that, they have produced.

And you don't understand my concern?  The devs had a "woops" problem they had to fix (CTD).  They said they were going to fix it.  They produced (supposedly, they still have a lot of CTDs for me, I'm shocked that it used to be worse than it is now), but in the mean time they managed to break something else in a horrific way.  Now they are saying "woops" again, but they promise to produce.  The last time we went through this cycle they broke pathing in a terrible way, what is going to break this time through the cycle?

See Reply #71

[Khaldun]

See Reply #71 because Age of Conan has done such an expert job of demonstrating how fucked-up development teams can be in executing their half-baked plans and how much they can sling teh bullshit about those plans?

[Ghambit]

See Reply #71 because Age of Conan has done such an expert job of demonstrating how fucked-up development teams can be in executing their half-baked plans and how much they can sling teh bullshit about those plans?

Actually... yeah.  Only AoC has the benefit of having marinated for a few months.  So the shytty smell doesnt smell so bad after a while, making it easier to come back to.  WAR will smell like a fresh turd I think.  Which is worse.

[Morfiend]

See Reply #71 because Age of Conan has done such an expert job of demonstrating how fucked-up development teams can be in executing their half-baked plans and how much they can sling teh bullshit about those plans?

Actually... yeah.  Only AoC has the benefit of having marinated for a few months.  So the shytty smell doesnt smell so bad after a while, making it easier to come back to.  WAR will smell like a fresh turd I think.  Which is worse.

Honestly the two are so different in terms of polish and buggyness that you cant even compare them. AoC is a festering dung heap of bugs and broken promises and incomplete features, at its absolute worst WAR is maybe a gallon of milk that is one day past its expiration date.

[cevik]

Honestly the two are so different in terms of polish and buggyness that you cant even compare them. AoC is a festering dung heap of bugs and broken promises and incomplete features, at its absolute worst WAR is maybe a gallon of milk that is one day past its expiration date.

With Warhammer still in beta there is time to get things fixed, but between CTDs, unresponsive gameplay and the fact that mobs don't even fight back when attacked as of this last weekend, I'd say that AoC at release was much better than WAR is currently.  At least level 1-20 worked and worked well with Conan, in WAR right now they've only shown us the first 20 levels and it was one step away from just not working at all.

[Morfiend]

Honestly the two are so different in terms of polish and buggyness that you cant even compare them. AoC is a festering dung heap of bugs and broken promises and incomplete features, at its absolute worst WAR is maybe a gallon of milk that is one day past its expiration date.

With Warhammer still in beta there is time to get things fixed, but between CTDs, unresponsive gameplay and the fact that mobs don't even fight back when attacked as of this last weekend, I'd say that AoC at release was much better than WAR is currently.  At least level 1-20 worked and worked well with Conan, in WAR right now they've only shown us the first 20 levels and it was one step away from just not working at all.

While this is opinion, and I can't really saw your wrong. You are totally wrong. WAR is in such a better work state that AoC was. AoC tried to pull the wool over peoples eyes with the polish they added to Tortage, but it was still very bug ridden. And while I can't speak of the current Elder Test, I will say that the Guild Beta client that was up before the Preview Weekend, and had every one bumped up to 31, the polish and amounts of content carries through to the later part of the game.
I will go out on a limb here and tell you, there is no way that WAR will launch with the pathing/AI screwed up like it was in the Preview Weekend. Honestly, I think the only criticism you can put on the game is the "unresponsivness", and that is a feeling or personal preference.
Yeah, the game has bugs, but nothing on par to the male/female combat speed problems, or the 1/3rd of feats being completely broken, or the complete imbalance of classes.
WAR feels like a AAA title, while AoC was a C trying to show you an A.

You really cannot compare the two.

Now, if WAR releases with the broken AI/Pathing and horrible game breaking bugs, and incredible imbalanced classes, you can come back here and point to this post and tell me I was wrong. But from what I have seen, and played. I have no worries of that happening.

[cevik]

WAR feels like a AAA title, while AoC was a C trying to show you an A.

There is no sane world where WAR feels like a AAA title.

It doesn't look like a AAA title, it doesn't feel like a AAA title it isn't nearly polished enough to be a AAA title.  It just isn't a AAA title.  Anyone who believes it is is fooling themselves.

[Abelian75]

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm with Morfiend here.  There's no comparison.  It's like a completely different league.

There's a point at which opinions differ so much on something that there's just no way to speak about the subject, and this is one of those times.  This is just like the times that people talk about how WoW at release was full of bugs in the same way that AOC was.  If someone genuinely believes that, there's no possibility of conversation between me and them.

(Which again, isn't to say that WAR is necessarily more fun or better... I'm speaking only in terms of being "finished" and low on bugs)

[amiable]

WAR feels like a AAA title, while AoC was a C trying to show you an A.

There is no sane world where WAR feels like a AAA title.

It doesn't look like a AAA title, it doesn't feel like a AAA title it isn't nearly polished enough to be a AAA title.  It just isn't a AAA title.  Anyone who believes it is is fooling themselves.

I agree with Morfiend.  Perhaps your standards are just higher than ours.

[trias_e]

If WoW is AAA, I'll give it AA.

Honestly, I thought the presentation was better than WoW.  And I would say the game from 1-20 is more polished and interesting than Tortage (other than the NPC pathing).  PvP was excellent and delivered as promised.  PQs are like diku 3.0 and a fantastic idea.  The only thing that hurt it were uninteresting NPCs/PvE, npc pathing, and not enough people to do PQs/scenarios.

I enjoyed the game even with something as crucial as npc pathing totally borked.  That's impressive.

[cevik]

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm with Morfiend here.  There's no comparison.  It's like a completely different league.

I assume you mean a lower league.

It crashes every hour right now, they had to take out the good scenario over the weekend due to server crashes.  You could stand still and kill anything in the game because nothing fought back.  The animation is fucking horrifically bad (cast your long range nuke with a Zealot and tell me that animation isn't the worst thing you've ever seen in a game).  The game plays like crap and feels terrible (and it's a pvp game!!1!), the "solution" to population issues is a terrible stop gap fix that is going to be exploited to deny people the ability to play the game.

It's terrible.

[schild]

Cevik, if it's crap and feels terrible, why are you even in this forum? Stop trolling. Let us get bored with it like we do everything else and just bugger the fuck out of here. Go troll politics.

[Mrbloodworth]

[cevik]

Cevik, if it's crap and feels terrible, why are you even in this forum? Stop trolling. Let us get bored with it like we do everything else and just bugger the fuck out of here. Go troll politics.

Because I assumed you wanted discussion from both sides of the fence here.  Or is it only about being positive about crappy games now?

[schild]

You don't really ever discuss games though. You only have two switches - raging fanboi and insufferable troll.

[cevik]

You don't really ever discuss games though. You only have two switches - raging fanboi and insufferable troll.

Perhaps.

[schild]

Not perhaps, it's the reality of it. Take a step back and read the last year of your posts. You've become a parody of your former self.

[cevik]

Not perhaps, it's the reality of it. Take a step back and read the last year of your posts. You've become a parody of your former self.

Perhaps.

[tazelbain]

I am as big of fanboi as there can be for this game and I think it will be really a great game(especeally once they pull head out of the sand on the skill queue issue), but I would have never gone into preview weekend in the shape it was in.  Besides the AI being jacked up, everything on MJ's list was well know going into PVW.  And I don't think it enough of those issues will be fixed in time for 9/18.  To be a AAA game, you have to have the AAA polish.  Which is surprising that EA is letting this happen because I thought the whole point of buying Mythic was because they wanted to run with the Big Dogs (ie Blizzard).

[Slayerik]

See you guys at 10/18... I predict:

"Meh, going back to WoW to get ready for WOTLK"

"I got bored...endgame grind sucks"

"Too buggy, queues suck...going back to WoW and I'll check it out in 6 months"

"Just not enough content, I'm going back to WoW"

"X class is totally nerfed now, I quit...."


But hey, more power to WAR if they can prove me wrong. I'm still butthurt from the AOC debacle.

[Ghambit]

Please forgive my snooty posts prior.  I just dont see WAR surviving with f13 if AoC didnt... and AoC is further along IMO and still has the potential to be an extremely appealing game.  f13 will dump WAR after a month or so... and people will peak again at AoC and see what they've been missing (you can punk my avatar if I turn out to be wrong).  That's just my opinion.  Bugs aside, the real gameplay aspects of WAR (although creative) are quite bland on many levels (animations and sound being the least of them).  People talk of what makes a game... gamey.  I dont see the gameyness in WAR.  I just see 5s whack-a-mole on a crappy game engine.  With gobs of long-winded lore and disorganized skilless PvP.  RvR can get quite bland after a while too, no matter how many layers you add to it.  Especially without any semblance of upper echelon leadership.

Dont get me wrong, I kind of LIKE WAR.  I've been playing and it's not a bad game (i'll probably play it).  But, from playing both titles I cant logically choose WAR over AoC.  Especially once siege/pvp is fixed (next week), loot is tweaked, and the DX10 client comes out... which are all happening in Sept.  I could go on with this (i've got some long posts in other forums) but I shouldnt be crashing this parade anyways; I admit to being a h8ter, which is wrong.  I'll wish everyone luck with WAR and hope it doesnt bomb.

[Ghambit]

See you guys at 10/18... I predict:

"Meh, going back to WoW to get ready for WOTLK"

People arent going back to WoW to get ready for WotLK.  Reason being, their gear is rendered wack with the expansion, just like what happened with BC.  1 month or so prior to release of WotLK people will dump the game until it actually comes out along with no longer planning Raids.  It'd be a waste of time.  Molton Core was a ghost-instance just before BC came out, and for good reason.  Knowing this, WAR is actually in good shape to "steal" players from WoW just before WotLK comes out... assuming they've polished the game and it's actually fun.   The same can be said for any MMO that releases a month or so before WotLK.

[Simond]

On the other hand, WotLK launching two months after WAR would be timed about right for "Fuck this queue/destro zerg/imbalanced classes/endgame/etc, I'm going back to WoW and making me a deathknight"

[Morfiend]

Sorry for the following SB, but it had to be done.

I just dont see WAR surviving with f13 if AoC didnt... and AoC is further along IMO and still has the potential to be an extremely appealing game.  f13 will dump WAR after a month or so... and people will peak again at AoC and see what they've been missing

AoC is such utter crap you can't honestly compare the two games. In no world is AoC even close to as balanced and polished as WAR is a month before release. Predicting that f13 will dump WAR after a month, is a gimme, I might as well predict that on a beach there will be water. But they wont be going back to AoC. That ship has sailed.

Dont get me wrong, I kind of LIKE WAR.  I've been playing and it's not a bad game.

You are correct, AoC is a bad game.

But, from playing both titles I cant logically choose WAR over AoC.  

....

Especially once siege/pvp is fixed (next week), loot is tweaked, and the DX10 client comes out... which are all happening in Sept.

What in all your experience with AoC and their devs leads you to believe that they will be able to get THIS patch correct?

I predict massive  

 I could go on with this (i've got some long posts in other forums) but I shouldnt be crashing this parade anyways;

Please, go on. So far your attempts to show why AoC is better is several patches they plan to introduce over the next month containing stuff that was promised for release, but due to the fact they had to patch the patches that they introduced to fix the original stuff that was supposed to be working, your not doing a great job.

I admit to being a h8ter, which is wrong.  I'll wish everyone luck with WAR and hope it doesnt bomb.

Ahh I see the problem now, you are the type of person who would call yourself a "h8ter". There is nothing I can do to help you.

[squirrel]

WAR is an AAA title, there's absolutely no question about that. Cevik - you're certainly entitled to your opinion but WAR is a big, well financed, far reaching MMOG that is mostly feature complete 2 weeks prior to launch with an internationally known IP. It's AAA without question. AoC I would argue should be an AAA title, but simply isn't due to the vast issues it suffers in the post-Tortage gameplay as well as the underlying systems and design.

That said, while I really like a lot of aspects in War (the cradle to grave RVR involvement, the Tome, the PQ's) and I'm a Mythic Fan (3+ Years DAoC, RR9+), I will be waiting and seeing on War before I purchase. The "mushy" combat feel and disconnected animations absolutely kill the game for me. However much I like everything else I just can't get past these issues which affect the core gameplay too much.

I am hoping the miracle patch resolves my concerns, then I'll be a happy month two subscriber. Until then I play a little WoW (dragged back by RAF friends) and putz around ganking folks in AoC. Not the spectacular MMORPG Fall season I was hoping for so far.

[Khaldun]

Look, I  think it's worth remaining skeptical about ALL MMOGs given the track record so far. Skeptical isn't hating on something for the heck of it. So defensiveness about Warhammer or anything bugs me at this point: we should all be smarter. On the other hand, no point to making it out to be really grim or bad or anything. There's a lot to like, some interesting things going on, it's kind of fun, and there are a lot of ways they could improve on it and respond intelligently to some of its potential issues. Age of Conan, I have to say, never really impressed me at all, though I didn't play it in beta, just in live. I could see pretty much already where level 1-20 was going and I could see already that there was really no hope to make it much better, that about the only thing they had to offer was a better combat mechanic. That's it--the content really wasn't much, even in the heavily designed levels, the mechanics were otherwise totally meh, and it was clear that they had no answer to "How do we make this interesting once people have max levelled" even before anybody max levelled and found out that Funcom had less than no answer, they had a minus answer.

So no, I don't see the comparison. AoC is a game with no potential at all, and I guess we should have seen that coming. Warhammer's got some potential, but nobody's doing it any favors by acting like it's basically ok except for a few bugs. These guys are not going to do what needs doing unless people keep pushing them on it--Mark Jacobs has already taken steps to plug his ears and yell "LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU" this time around.

[cevik]

Molton Core was a ghost-instance just before BC came out, and for good reason. 

Because it was a 3 year old instance at that point that everyone had geared out of?  We were running AQ40 raids and the bigger guilds were running Naxx raids all the way until the week before TBC released.  And at that time we were culling our raid force to 25 people, because we no longer needed 40.  WotLK doesn't even suffer from that problem.

[cevik]

WAR is an AAA title, there's absolutely no question about that. Cevik - you're certainly entitled to your opinion but WAR is a big, well financed, far reaching MMOG that is mostly feature complete 2 weeks prior to launch with an internationally known IP. It's AAA without question.

It takes quality as well as budget to be AAA, and as it currently stands (not where it will be on release, since none of us know, but as it was this last weekend) it is in no way even remotely a quality product.

Supposedly it used to be a quality product and they broke it just before preview weekend, and in theory they've promised to make it a quality product again in the future.  But as it was last weekend it was fundamentally broken and in no way a AAA game.  Pathing alone made it not a quality product over the weekend, and that was honestly the least of it's troubles.

If a game releases with something so fundamentally broken that the mobs cannot fight back when they are engaged, there is no way you can call that a AAA product.  Will they fix that (and the myriad of other issues) before release?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Morfiend]

Look, I  think it's worth remaining skeptical about ALL MMOGs given the track record so far. Skeptical isn't hating on something for the heck of it. So defensiveness about Warhammer or anything bugs me at this point: we should all be smarter.

I just want to point out that I am NOT saying WAR is the holy grail, or that it has no problems. All I have been trying to point out is that it is much less buggy than AoC already, and it is much much more feature complete.

Yes, it has bugs, and some big ones, as cevik keeps pointing out, they borked AI/Pathing really badly, and while the CTD issue is vastly improved, it is still there. But, so far from my time in beta the devs have earned a little of my confidence by proving that they confront problems head on, and are able to drastically improve major issues fairly quickly.

Now compare that to the first month of AoC where the dev basically attempted to do a Jedi Mind Trick on the players "There is no swing speed discrepancy" and then proceeded to do sweeping feat changes. And then try for what was it, 3 or 4 patches to fix the swing speed bug. Also their QA for patches was horrible. I would log on to the forums on patch day to see pages and pages of new bugs and broken content from the patch that didnt even fix what it was trying to fix.

[squirrel]

Will they fix that (and the myriad of other issues) before release?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Determining whether WAR is quality based on it's current issues is pretty silly. On release day it will be a AAA MMORPG. Whether it's a good enough one is subjective and remains to be seen.

[slog]

I liked the WAR preview weekend, but it's just not ready.  EA just doesn't get it when it comes to MMOs