Games - AOC (1 Viewer)

[Shiminee]

Hi guys,
I just hit level 40 on Age of Conan. My character is a Tempest of Set which falls under the Priest classification. I have put most of my points into lightning damage and some into healing. I have to say this toon is extermely powerful in a pve setting. I had a hunter on a pvp server, but some friends rolled toons on a pve server hence, that is where I am now. I know I have only seen a minute part that this game has to offer.

My lament is so much to do and only so much time to do it. I ask myself.."Self, do you really want to invest as much time in AOC as you did WOW?" As many of you may know I have a WOW account and play multiple characters. If I had more hours I would keep playing AOC. If there was no WOW, I could be perfectly happy with AOC. (There's nothing like attacking one of your party members if he starts irritating you.)

AOC has come up with some good innovations, like LOTR did. Maybe someday someone will come along and put the best of the three games together. 15 bucks per month is not a lot of money, but I just can't justify spending money on a game that I will only be able to play a couple of hours each week.

 

[isobelle]

yeah, for me personally, my weekly allotment of game time was better spent in WoW, but everyone is different.

 

[sirandal]

Personally I'm enjoying AoC for the simple fact (even in the incomplete state that it currently is) that it's a relatively fresh breath of air. I was just totally sick of WoW.

 

[mven]

My only real problem with AoC is just that it's a bad game haha.

 

[Khatib]

Personally I'm enjoying AoC for the simple fact (even in the incomplete state that it currently is) that it's a relatively fresh breath of air. I was just totally sick of WoW.

Completely agree.

My only real problem with AoC is just that it's a bad game haha.

Completely disagree.

It's not a bad game. It's just not a great game, and needs some work yet. But it's not bad at all imo.

 

[mven]

Completely disagree.

It's not a bad game. It's just not a great game, and needs some work yet. But it's not bad at all imo.

We will have to agree to disagree then. The game has some amusement value in spots but really it's just a turd wrapped up to cover up the stench. Everything in AoC is sub par with two exceptions -> Titties, Fatalities.

The combat system is lame, the classes are uninspired, the questing is just the same tired bullshit, city building is terrible and completely uniform, PvP is meh at best and aside from the fact that there are no teams is actually weaker than what you would find in WoW or any other game with PvP servers, the siege combat is a much much shittier version of what you would find in DAoC or Shadowbane or Lineage 2... And everything is fucking instanced. EVERYTHING. The game has little to no redeeming qualities.

It's just new. Once everyone gets over the "I hate WoW so AoC is the greatest!!" thing I think it will click for more people. AoC brings next to nothing new to the table and the things it rehashes are all 2 or more steps backward from previous implementations.

I don't know how else to describe it other than pointing out that it's just bad. Vanguard is an okay game that could potentially be fixed up to be an awesome game. It has a huge world and systems in place for implementing real city building, siege, mounted, ship, and whatever else kind of combat you could desire, and it isn't instanced all to hell. AoC on the other hand would have to be completely scrapped and the game redesigned from scratch to be anything beyond mediocre *shrug*.

 

[fonso]

At first I thought AoC was amazing, a new combat system that takes skill, boobs, vaginas, headchopping, it was perfect! Sure everybody had to wear equipment designed by disco loving fashion retarded nerds from Norway but as far as I could see, that was the only downside.

Then when the game got released I realized that the combat system became repetitve and add-ons made the entire combo system worthless. EVERYTHING was instanced, from the newbie zone to dungeons, while leveling I was ALWAYS alone unless I was grouped with somebody from my guild. The vaginas were permanently censored with those fake bikinis from the TV version of Showgirls and the boob size slider was truncated.


THANKS FUNCOM, YOU'VE RUINED MY FAVORITE GAMING FRANCHISE!

Ugh, talk about ruining a great idea...

 

[sirandal]

Ugh, talk about ruining a great idea...

I hated this level.

 

[sirandal]

Well naturally the instancing allows them to have absolutely breathtaking environments (and I don't take the word breathtaking lightly.) I've never played a game where I "looked around" and thought "holy crap this place is incredible looking."

I take that back, the original PS version of Tomb Raider also had some pretty stunning environments (for the time.)

 

[fonso]

Well naturally the instancing allows them to have absolutely breathtaking environments (and I don't take the word breathtaking lightly.) I've never played a game where I "looked around" and thought "holy crap this place is incredible looking."

I take that back, the original PS version of Tomb Raider also had some pretty stunning environments (for the time.)

I'd prefer playing a singleplayer game with better controls and a more engaging storyline for that, Elder Scrolls or something. I play MMORPGs to play with other people, not fight hordes of NPC clones in an instanced dungeon.



That's another thing that I hate about AOC, the controls feel clumsy and the UI is clunky, really just a badly designed game. Some of the zones are really pretty though, that Conall's Valley place was awesome, however I think they could have nice looking zones without instances...

 

[sirandal]

Someday it'll be possible to have it all, but currently you can't have an "open, seamless world" and have the highest quality graphics...no machine can handle it (at least no machine that people have at home on a mass-market scale.)

 

[isobelle]

Someday it'll be possible to have it all, but currently you can't have an "open, seamless world" and have the highest quality graphics...no machine can handle it (at least no machine that people have at home on a mass-market scale.)

i really don't buy this. WoW is fucking huge. from the tip top of one continent to the southern tip of the same... does that ALL actually load? every single tree and shrub and doodad? there's NO streaming of content at all in WoW?

really?

like the game doesn't prefetch any data based on your current location? even though you're in ogrimmar, your client is actively running tanaris in the background or whatever?

i honestly don't know.

the fact remains that on AoC you can turn all the fluff way the fuck down and end up with something looking a bit like WoW. i swear the only thing that makes peole wet their pants is the vegetation effects, and those are completely client side anyway.



i think the only reason it's instanced is to alleviate collision. that people can be dicks and "block the bridge" means having an instancing system in place gives you a way around it.

that or thier server systems are just weak. i'm not being a dick, it's an actual possibilty.

 

[RedBema]

I agree with the poster that said Vanguard has the most potential of all the current MMO's. If you havn't played it yet, at least try the trial and you will see what I am talking about.

Currently, it sucks because of everything that it has gone through, but the potential of it is grand. It is the kind of game that I really wish could get bought by someone who could spend time fixing it and reaching its potential.

 

[mven]

My understanding of "seamless" worlds are that you have a large number of heavily used textures cached in advance and then minor details are loaded on the fly in a sort of "bubble" surrounding your character so that you obviously don't have the whole game loaded at once nor does you client keep track of the locations of objects outside of your "bubble". You still have "zones" of sorts which are areas where the heavily used textures will also be swapped out. So like say when you cross from Elwynn into Westfall the textures that are common to Elwynn will be swapped out for those common to Westfall. If this is done properly and gradually enough you won't notice much of a "bump" as you cross into the next zone. I think the problem with this is that it adds a bit more complexity as your client is having to manage constant texture loading and such on the fly rather than having the majority of it done as you cross a zone line. This could be seen in VG initially as crossing between "chunks" was almost as bad as loading in some games.

Anyway I think it is false to assume that instancing is required for a game to look amazing. VG's graphics are no less complex than AoCs and while they definitely had some issues starting out, they have since fixed these for the most part proving that properly coded a game can still look amazing and be "seamless". I think that while having a zone based game was probably based on reducing the complexity of the game's grapics related coding, the instancing decision was probably more heavily based in the fact that it allows them to get by with much much much less content. AoC zones are pretty tiny for the most part and lacking in content/mobs. Even a few decent groups in Khesh for instance can hog almost every decent spawn and it is pretty much the only high level questing zone.

That being said one of the few things I will give AoC props for is the game's appearance. There are a few zones in AoC (thunder river for instance) that just look really fucking cool. VG's graphics may be as complex but their sense of style isn't as good. In that same regard I think WoW looks really good based on the actual style of the art more so than it's complexity. *shrug*

 

[Ccomp5950]

i really don't buy this. WoW is fucking huge....

To his credit he did say "highest quality graphics"

LOL WOW IS CARTOONISH GRAPHICS LOL

Fake edit: (Wow is actually really good in how they did it and is a great example for seamless worlds with high quality graphics)

 

[Thules]

I think the reason everything is instanced in AoC is because of the collision system, but not to the same degree that Iso is saying (in that it prevents people from being dickheads and blocking a zone or something).

Just think of it client-side / server-side processing..... I'm pretty sure that if the server didn't process the collision system, there would be a HUGE potential for some really nasty hacks. If your client processed all the collision stuff and then just sent it to the server to 'activate', you could basically change all the info coming from your computer and the server wouldn't verify any of it.

Idunno, with my vague experience in knowing how MQ2 works, that's why I think it's instanced, and that's why zones sometimes seem so empty of other players.

 

[sirandal]

As far as I'm concerned, WoW is the text book example of pushing the envelope with using textures to mask low polygon counts. It has been (and continues to be) top-notch when it comes to the art direction (all the forum crying about lack of models notwithstanding.)

Having said that, though, I can no longer play it since I'm thoroughly accustomed to the higher levels of realism afforded by AoC, and I never liked "realistic" graphics in any of the previous MMOs that used them (Vanguard and EQ2 particularly.)

Interestingly, I would say that DAOC was a good example of a bridge between the cartooniness (which came from the limitations of the time) of EQ1 and the epitome of cartooniness (as a style) that is WoW.

 

[mven]

DAoC had a very clean and insanely boring look. It was also the first game I remember playing that let you dye the shit out of your armor. Which was fun for the first day and then it just annoyed me. I actually prefer that games do not have that system anymore. I liked in EQ1 (pre-dye) that you could look at someone and have at least some idea of what they have done in game by what they are wearing. I think WoW takes this a bit too far as weapons and shoulder armor graphics are way the fuck overdone. Annyway.

I think VG had so many problems (the guy responsible for most of the "good" art assets in the game died or something?) and the game was so horribly incomplete that it is only a shadow of what it could have looked like. In its current state it just looks like someone went absolutely crazy with the bump mapping.

I think AoC did the same thing as WoW to some degree. Most of the stuff in the game looks like complete shit like all of the nasty low res plantlife but the way it is placed throughout the world and just the overall density of some of the shit makes it all look so lush and "lifelike". I just wish the character animations looked anywhere near as good haha.

 

[Wilbur]

you could dye your armour in EQ. All the ogre war's were wearing pink armour forever.

 

[Thules]

I was one of those ogres....

(xcept a shadowknight)

(and I did it because it was punishment for killing a guildie during a raid)

 

[decker]

I was a member of a elite Pink-boot club !

Swing (and a miss)

- decker

 

[mven]

That is why it says "EQ1 (pre-dye)" they didn't add dye til like Luclin or something? I forget.

 

[isobelle]

食いlどぁrすぁsてぇ」 gah...

okay! keyboard in english mode, let's try again!

guildwars was the first game i came across with dyes, and i thought it was pretty dumb / silly.

black dye was the most coveted for achieveing the "omg i'm badass" look, and the cost of a single vial of dye was way more than any single piece of armor was worth.

that alone seemed kinda dumb, but yeah... to each his own.

 

[AL3X711]

People In guildwars mainly use black dye as currency because you are only able to trade 100 platinum(100,000 gold) at a time, and many items are worth far more then 100 platinum. Black dye is also the hardest to get, and people that dye their stuff black is basically because they have enough dye that they want people to know their rich :P

 

[Ccomp5950]

That is why it says "EQ1 (pre-dye)" they didn't add dye til like Luclin or something? I forget.

Legacy of Yekesha I believe.

 

[Running in Circles]

People In guildwars mainly use black dye as currency because you are only able to trade 100 platinum(100,000 gold) at a time, and many items are worth far more then 100 platinum. Black dye is also the hardest to get, and people that dye their stuff black is basically because they have enough dye that they want people to know their rich :P

I always saw people trading ectos...not dye. :: maybe EotN changed it, I quit a few months before so I dunno.