AC Expansion Pack

[Evil Elvis]

Gamespot has an article up about it now.  Evidently they plan on making an official announcement tomorrow.

The only things it really mentions is that:

1) The expansion pack will have a texture upgrade.  Something they've mentioned before, but there's still no word about any increases to poly count.

2) There's going to be some form of resource and land control system.  I don't know what to think of this, considering some of the ideas they've floated lately.

[Alluvian]

That game needs SO much more than a simple texture upgrade to not look like anything other than play-mobil.  Yeah, yeah, gameplay is what matters, yadda yadda, if so, then why the texture upgrade?

[waylander]

Unless they get rid of automatic macro leveling, dungeon whoring afk people then I'm not interested. I went back to AC1 about 6 months ago, and all the good spots were eaten up with afk macroing people.

Its good they nerfed the allegiance system so that only a patron 2 tiers up gets XP, but they need a new set of fresh servers. Under the old chaining system there's bascially tons of level 150-300 people walking around, and the AC1 content over the last year and a half has been geared towards those guys.  With the exp chain nerf, getting level 150+ isn't going to be the norm, and it will cause potential new players a lot of fucking grief if they try to enjoy the high level content.

[Grelf]

New server is coming, one with the new chain rules.

And now that Turbine is away from MS, they've actually started being rather draconian with their afk macro policing.

Personally, my opinon is "too little, too late". The regular servers are basically fubar, with the legions and legions of 150+ lvl players. The new server will wind up bogged down all to hell.

And still, after all these years, the lag is still fucking horrible in game.

[El Gallo]

The central problem is that the game mechanics are very, very shallow, so the whole thing comes across as a very naked grind.  It is still kind of fun in the "I don't want to think hard enough to play Diablo" kind of way, because it has some character.

[waylander]

Yeah that's the thing for me too. I quit AC when I was one of 10 level 100+ toons on my server...(2001). I came back and all the content over the past two years is basically geared towards the level 150+ crowd, and I simply got pwned super fast. You had to be a chain/macroing whore just to get powerful enough to live to enjoy the high level content that came out after AC:DM.

On a new server I'd bascially have to grind my way through the same bullshit content that I saw my first two years in the game, and that just isn't appealing enough to make me want to return.

[Evil Elvis]

Unless they get rid of automatic macro leveling, dungeon whoring afk people then I'm not interested. I went back to AC1 about 6 months ago, and all the good spots were eaten up with afk macroing people.

They did.  There's a 3-strikes policy in AC now, and macroing is now against the ToS.  A few people have already been perma-banned for macroing.

Also, the official release has come out here.  As expected, the feedback has been less than stellar so far.

[El Gallo]

Any details on this territory control system?  Sounds like they are making the endgame PvP.

[Evil Elvis]

Ibn's saying that some parts of it won't require pvp, and some will.  He's also defining pvp as player vs player in a broad sense, as in competing with one another.

It's almost certain their will be pvp fighting involved in some form though.  I'm really not sure how that's going to work out.  PvP balance is still pretty borked, and if they require players to go true red, I'm not sure how willing people are going to be towards a system where they can drop their gear in such an item-based game.  If they allow for pklite or put in some new pvp dynamic (which would really start to clutter up the forms of pk), it might be workable.

On a side note, they just announced that a new server is opening on May 12th, and that all existing accounts are going to receive a 6th character slot in - what they elude to - may as well (new accounts won't get a 6th slot).

[Arnold]

That game needs SO much more than a simple texture upgrade to not look like anything other than play-mobil.  Yeah, yeah, gameplay is what matters, yadda yadda, if so, then why the texture upgrade?

I'd much rather have the shitty graphics, but awesome movement capabilities of AC1 than the shiny graphics and crappy movement system of AC2.  One of my favorite parts of AC1 was the fast, fluid movement.  I haven't seen any other MMORPG that was so responsive and FPS like (haven't seen CoH though).  The running, jumping, sliding, falling, etc was great.

[Alluvian]

EQ had tighter, more fps control than AC if that is all you are going to focus on.

[Arnold]

EQ had tighter, more fps control than AC if that is all you are going to focus on.

No way.  I played EQ and it wasn't even close.  Not to mention that EQ, like DAOC, made me feel like I was attached to the ground and artificially limited in movement and speed by the game.  AC1 has much better freedom of movement and the camera, of course, owns those other games.

[Glamdring]

EQ was the only first person game that actually made me sick to my stomach.

Well, the only one on PC.  For some reason any game running the Turok engine on the N64 did as well.  Maybe it was the stupid 'realistic' bouncing effect.

[Evil Elvis]

Yeah, AC is by far closer to a FPS than any other mmorpg I've played.  The ability to dodge war blasts and arrows, gravity (in some form), extremely responsive controls, fast character speed, and more.

In fact, you could probably draw a corollary between fast casting and god moding in AC to rocket jumping in fps's, and things of that ilk.  Alot of people see these as things that take time and skill to master to really become good at, and not as hacks or cheats.

I mentioned on another forum today that AC's FPS feel has been the lifeline keeping it's PvP, despite being borked, still popular with it's players.

[SurfD]

I also spotted on their official site (though i cant find the link now, as it seems to have been bumped off the page) that they are also upping the subscription price from $9.xx USD to $13.xx USD.

Unfortunately, that means they just drasticly decreased my chances of re subbing again, as I had been tempted to do.  Being canadian, I simply cant justify nearly $20 a month, where as $13 was a bit easier to stomach.  I really liked the fact that AC was probably the cheapest of the big name MMOGS on the market.