AOC: Level 20 Assassin beta vid.

[Booms]

http://www.vimeo.com/882473


=)

[Forecast]

doesn't look too bad, but I'm not a fan of the type of gameplay that forces your character to face the opponent (which this seems like). I've become accustomed to the WoW controls of being twitchy and running around people, when I went back to CoH (which this play seems similar to) it seemed like I had so much less control.

[Zorat]

It looks like there may be a limit on how fast you can turn?

I think that's a good idea. I hate the DOOM3esque constant 180 degree bunny hopping melee in WoW.

[Elad]

awesome, thanks

[Forecast]

I hate the DOOM3esque constant 180 degree bunny hopping melee in WoW.


I love it... makes the game more twitchy, more reactive, and gives the player more control, so elements like: surprise and LOS (line of sight) and running behind people and other fun strategies are tangible.

[Zorat]

Yeah I can see how people would like it. After a while it tends to make me more nauseated then anything else. Damn old guy syndrome. ;)

Actually I think its not really the bunny hopping 180 stuff that really bothered me but the lack of collision detection in WoW with people just running back and forth through each other. If you want to get to your opponents back you should damn well have to go AROUND him. Not through him.

[Forecast]

...the lack of collision detection in WoW with people just running back and forth through each other. If you want to get to your opponents back you should damn well have to go AROUND him. Not through him.

Completely understandable. That would be cool, actually.

[Noremac]

AoC said there would be collision detection. This actually makes it interesting for attacks that need to be made from behind, so you can't just spin in a circle really fast (why do you think daggers are pretty much dead in pvp in wow?).

[Forecast]

This actually makes it interesting for attacks that need to be made from behind, so you can't just spin in a circle really fast (why do you think daggers are pretty much dead in pvp in wow?).

Collision would be cool as hell, but I still do not believe that there should be limited character control when fighting an opponent (such as is present in COH and what appears to be present in the posted video).

Also, spinning in a circle really fast doesn't do anything against dagger rogues in WoW, and dagger rogues are far from pretty much dead. With the recent changes (recent being the past few months) dagger rogues are phenomenal in pvp.

[Drekor]

Seems like it's going to be some horrible fusion of guild wars and vanguard.

[Zorat]

Open Beta May 1

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/38119/FilePlanet-Funcom-Announce-Age-of-Conan-Open-beta

Guess I am going to try gaming on the MacBookPro (in XP) for the first time. :)

[Zorat]

BTW, LOL@13GB client download. Good times. :insane:

[Thaelcron]

Warhammer Cities (http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/herald/flash/2008-03_pp_JeffonCities.html)

[Koltas]

Warhammer's PR is so much better than AoC. So far I'm more amped for Warhammer simply because they've done an awesome job selling people on their game through podcasts, etc.

[Thaelcron]

i'm robbing the bank every chance i get and burning buildings to the ground lol

[Elad]

I'll play the one that has the best opportunity to do what we did in shadowbane.

AoC is expected May (we'll see), Warhammer is October.

How are we going to come to a decision on this? We're pretty split it seems like, and some people will want to pre-order collector's edition stuff, etc

PS: Zorat, I downloaded 3.6 gb worth of updates yesterday in aoc

[Yoma]

I'll play the one that has the best opportunity to do what we did in shadowbane.

Well, there is Shadowbane, we're pretty active in that right now.

But if that no longer tickles your fancy I think that game is already out and it's called EvE. Sign up you damn bilge rats.

PS Speaking about bunny-hopping and combat, the second both feet leave the ground you should be vulnerable to a shield bash that puts you flat on your back for the next 5 seconds and makes you vulnerable to a coup-de-grace to the throat.

[Elad]

I wish I had time for that stuff right now, I'm ending the first year of grad school and want to finish next april/may. I was hoping to get something going in late summer or so after my oral exams. Wish I had the time for that but I cant balance school stuff, reading, and the wii..I just end up buying games and never get to play them (crysis, civ4)

[Mourne]

BTW, LOL@13GB client download. Good times. :insane:

I was in beta but the client and patches got so large I had to just stop playing. I have a small, but fast, 60g hard drive. The basic client was like 13GB, and then it wanted me to download a 15+GB patch... :thumbdown I'll give it another go if they actually trim down how pathetically big it is.

[Koltas]

Warhammer Cities (http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/herald/flash/2008-03_pp_JeffonCities.html)
By the way this is completely badass.

[Mutt]

lol "robbing the bank, burning down their homes, literally stealing their stuff"
uber

[Mutt]

not hyped about the emphasis on loot at the end.

[Elad]

That video quits on me in FF after the first min or so and goes to the start..anyone else having any problems with that? I'll try it out in IE tomorrow

[Mourne]

Yeah, I'll definitely be playing Warhammer when it comes out (hopefully) this Fall. When I played the beta it was pretty damn stable and seemed polished to me.

[Silver]

Is WH a gear based MMO?

[Koltas]

Is WH a gear based MMO?
They're all gear based. The only difference is the means in which you acquire the gear. WH will be similiar to WoW in that respect... i.e. obtaining gear through both pvp and pve.

[Silver]

They're all gear based. The only difference is the means in which you acquire the gear. WH will be similiar to WoW in that respect... i.e. obtaining gear through both pvp and pve.

I don't think SB is really gear based...

i.e., gear is necessary but a gear disadvantage can be overcome.

[Drekor]

Gear is not nearly as major a factor in WH as it is in WoW. Although it still does take ridiculously long amounts of time to get appropriate level gear through pvp especially if you are not a healer.

[Silver]

Gear is not nearly as major a factor in WH as it is in WoW. Although it still does take ridiculously long amounts of time to get appropriate level gear through pvp especially if you are not a healer.

No thanks.

[Mourne]

Everything is going to be gear based except for utopian-games like Darkfall or Mortal. AoC will be gear based too, I'm sure. It's one of the ways games can keep people subscribed.

[Forecast]

WHO looks amazing (I think it sounds better than AoC, I'm hearing too many negatives about that)... can anyone post some good gameplay footage? I would love to have something to compare to that AoC posting.

[Mourne]

Just type in "Warhammer Online" in youtube and there are lots of vids. Here's one I found right quick.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fDEFPam9U0M

[Forecast]

RvR sounds like DAOC... I watched both vids and I'm a little confused about the PvP and the use of the word Realm (at first I was thinking server realm). I mean... can we as one faction essentially take over the entire other factions cities and such? Either way it looks way better than AoC I'm sorry to say.

[Elad]

WHO looks amazing (I think it sounds better than AoC, I'm hearing too many negatives about that)... can anyone post some good gameplay footage? I would love to have something to compare to that AoC posting.

What negatives are you most worried about that you're hearing?

[Forecast]

Honestly, here goes...

Stability, general concept of PvP in the game (I've heard from a few pirates that their pvp needs a complete overhaul but they've yet to recognize any problems), size (15gb patches? what should I just buy an extra HD for this game? lol), and of course control. As I said in an earlier post it looks similar to CoH where you can't move swiftly around and circle your target to confuse them or LoS them or anything like that. I've grown accustomed to that type of control in WoW, and I'm a twitchy player be it whatever class I am.

I heard WHO is just like WoW but improved. I'm still confused about some things about it and I've started to look into it more. In AoC I wasn't really thrilled with the class selection, but the race/class selection in WHO Is not that great either. I love how AoC is trying to resurrect some of the concepts that I've missed about SB, but robbing banks, pillaging towns and cities, and trying to take over places that others have built up seems almost as fun (and very pirate). I still need to watch the RvR podcast, though, and make sure I'm understanding it correctly.

Also, I play MMOs with my shipmates and my family. And, while I know I could get myself into any game that that Cap'n n'Crew say, I don't see some of my family members digging AoC nearly as much as WHO (they were reluctant to even give AoC a shot when I showed them).

[Mourne]

Elad, I can't speak for Forecast, but I can speak for myself as I have a beta account. First, let me say that before I tested either game, that I was a strong supporter of AoC and admonished WAR as being WoW 2.0. I love the Conan lore and setting and was really pulling for that game to be my guild's next full-time project. Also, I haven't played it in a while due to how large it wound up getting. The initial client download was around 15gigs give or take, with one or two gigs of a patch. That was when I last played the beta. Then it wanted me to download a 15+gig patch and that's when I decided it wasn't worth it. I have a small, but fast hard drive and would've had to start deleting other stuff to make room for the 30+gigs of AoC room, and frankly didn't think it worth the effort. A friend of mine told me that having such a large game is a sign of poor coding.

That said, after beta testing AoC, these are some things that had me worried:

Firstly, the huge amounts of lag that I experienced. I have a decent computer, and am pretty sure it's not my comp. If anyone's interested, I have an AMD 64 dual core 2.4g proc, 4 gigs of ram, two Geforce 7800 GTX's, a 10,000 rpm sata drive running windows xp64. With that setup, I was fairly convinced that the fps issues I was having with the game weren't due to anything on my end (though admittedly I'm not that computer savvy).

Talk on the beta boards was that there were huge memory leaks in the game. The type of lag I was experiencing got worse and worse over the passage of time. After about 30 minutes of playing, the game was literally reduced to an unplayable 3~ fps unless I restarted to clear the RAM. Reminded me of SB style memory leaks x10. If anyone has ever played Vanguard, it was sort of like Vanguard's increasing lag, but with no /flush command to help during play. Aside from the lag caused by the memory leaks, going into a city-type area with lots of buildings etc. caused lag regardless of how long you've been playing. I suppose that could be considered normal, but thought I could mention it.

There were many graphical bugs and glitches with the game (when I last played anyway). One of my friends is pretty experienced with computer programming stuff and was telling me that at the stage of development they claimed to be on, that there shouldn't be those sorts of things if they knew how to code worth a damn. I'll have to defer to other people's opinions on this, however, as I don't have the background to know one way or the other. There were lots of clipping issues. Getting stuck in stairs. Getting caught up on 1 inch high pieces of terrain etc. Not game breakers I suppose, but highly annoying and quite noticeable. The animations themselves for the character movement seemed awkward and not very well done.

The rest of what I say is mostly my personal opinions and preferences:

The character models have lots of problems that I last saw too. The normal running and jumping animations were pretty bad, to the point that I'm even mentioning them here. You look like a retarded running around and every time you jump it's like one of those Trinity slo-mo jumps from the Matrix... The NPC's sway around and do movements that simply don't seem natural. It's as if when doing motion-capture, that instead of just standing there acting natural, the "actors" felt compelled to move around more just to feel like they were doing something?

Ok, now is my rant on the combat system. In and of itself it's not completely bad. I suppose it's still the first time an MMO (to my knowledge) has attempted the real-time directional swings. But, it's most definitely not as revolutionary as the dev team tried to hype it up to be. I was, quite frankly, disappointed by the combat system. First of all, it's not twitch (as I've heard devs try to describe it as such). To me, twitch doesn't just mean controlling your character with keyboard and mouse-look. Twitch means aiming. The only aiming you have to do during combat is to face your intended opponents. Considering you could probably list off several other MMO's that require just that (WoW to name the most popular) this is hardly "revolutionary twitch based combat". Although, to me, twitch = aiming.

When doing attacks with the AoC combat system, you hit different directional attacks repeatedly. As you level you gain access to special moves. You then click, or hit your hotkey, for the special move and it lights up the directional attack sequence you need to perform to execute that special move. It's basically a dull and mindless version of the memory game Simon. Basically, instead of just turning on your attack sequence and hitting hotkeys for your special abilities (ie WoW) you constantly mash your directional attack keys and when you're ready for any special attack keys, you hit them, and then enter in a simple 3~ key sequence to execute them. Then it's back to hitting the directional buttons over and over to continue your regular attacking. They can claim it's revolutionary all they want, but really it's just a bother. It doesn't make anything special open up by using this system. It just keeps you mashing keys while fighting, but without making you think any more on tactics or anything else. To me, it literally just seemed like the exact same combat I've experienced on other MMO's except you're constantly hitting keys.

One plus that I'll give the combat system is the ability to hit multiple opponents at once and the collision detection. These seemed to work as advertised and were the highlights of their combat system imo. Another plus I'll throw out there is that when you transition between the attacks it does so smoothly. ie if you do a right attack and then a left, you swing your weapon across to the left and then bring it back in a backslash to the right.

Ok, about what I've seen of the world itself. Too many loading screens. Everything is a damn loading screen. The world funnels you into areas where there are "gates" or "a little boat" or "a door" which are all just loading areas for another zone. I thought the days of all these loading zones were behind us in MMO's but this game proved me wrong. I did not feel freedom while running around this world. I felt like I was walking around a huge path that was predetermined. Walking down a path with a huge impassable mountain on one side of me and a river of lava on another etc. Then the path ends at a large gate...time to load the next instance or zone. Wait, I want to go into the Inn for a hearty ale...good thing I said "wait" first cause that's what you're going to be doing while you load the Inn. This is obviously just my opinion, but I hate all the zones/loading they have. The way they funnel you down paths and into the load points detracts from any sense of freedom. From what I experienced, most of the quests even seemed to be a "public instance" design where it was basically an instance that anyone could come join. A zone lol. Only I say instance, because it's not a section of zone on their worldmap. It will be a little rowboat that you go click on for a quest to row to some treacherous island to complete some quest and it will load the island as an instance.

I know it was long, but those are my gripes about the AoC experience that I had. On the other hand, my experience with WAR, while familiar as far as the UI and control schemes (WoWish) was much better imo. No lag, no bugs that I encountered, no loading zones or instances. Well, except for one instance I loaded...but it was a BG style pvp match and I was level 3! Any game where you can jump in and start pvping it up at level 3 against other players gets a big smile from me. :smile_ok: Overall, WAR just seemed much more polished and stable than what I experienced in AoC. Even the little things were better, such as the UI and their Tome of Knowledge concept. The graphics weren't photo-realistic or anything, but they're much more realistic than the cartoon quality that WoW has and that's a plus for me. Their public quest system was also a blast. It was really working just as they describe it in their excitement laden dev journals.

Also, WAR was only about 8~gigs of space. It's hard for me to fathom how WAR was so small and AoC so large.

Regardless, I'm more than willing to give AoC another go at release. I genuinely hope they can correct what problems they can, especially when it comes to those damned memory leaks. Remember, I wanted AoC more than WAR and enjoy the dark and brooding Conan setting much more. However, if it releases taking 20+gigs of space, I'm going to pass based on principal. That and I really don't feel like deleting lots of other games just to play AoC when WAR should release this Fall.

Longest post ever, but I hope I explained enough so people know where I'm coming from with any of the AoC or WAR posts I wind up doing.

[Mourne]

Sorry for the double post, but I found a video that better describes their PvP system, Forecast. It's very long though, and covers many topics.

http://trailer.onlinewelten.com/videos,id3478,warhammer_online_war_paris_praesenta tion.html

It's a german site, but just click the Play button. :)

[Elad]

I appreciate you taking the time to write all of that. I'm also down for whatever. The fact of the matter though is regardless if its polished or not, AoC is still slated to release before hand..so I hope before hand we figure out if its going to just be a game to pass the time, or if we crown it ''the game''. Because if not, I need to cancel my preorder..I can wait a couple extra months for the game we're all looking for. I'm just wanting the end game, the sieges, great guild vs guild fights, and people bitching and moaning about us all over message boards.

[Mutt]

The normal running and jumping animations were pretty bad, to the point that I'm even mentioning them here. You look like a retarded running around and every time you jump it's like one of those Trinity slo-mo jumps from the Matrix...lol so true. My conquerer always looked like he was doing a canonball off the diving board everytime I jumped.

Im glad you took the time to write that up Mourne because its pretty much echoes my sentiments on what I have experienced so far. I thought boosting my PC to something more current with a 8800 GT card would alleviate performance issues, but it hasnt helped a whole ton.

Triggering your special abilities and then having to hit the attack sequence to perform them is adding complexity to a system that I find non intuitive and a deterant more than anything else.

[Forecast]

That video was awesome, ty Mourne. For me, the only real question left is what side? I'm sorry but I vote Empire.

[Forecast]

I am so tempted to pre-order the CE right now, lol. Brewmaster!

[Maj]

Heres the way I see it.

Whichever releases first we're going to play. People have been waiting too long to just sit by and watch either game release without trying it out. There is no possible way for us to look at both games and declare that one is better for everyone.

The only way is to try them, so here's whats going to happen, and there is no way to avoid it.

AOC is going to release, most everyone will jump in and we'll start playing. The game will appeal to some and not to others, its just the nature of a game. The others will complain, bitch, and moan that AoC is a complete failure and soon quit. Those remaining will enjoy the game and continue to progress.

A few months later WAR will release, the people who quit AOC will jump into WAR. They will praise WAR as everything that AOC wasnt for them and attract some AOC players to come try it as well. Meanwhile the hardcore AOC players will complain that WAR is stealing their members and there will be a pretty big division in the guild.

In the end we'll have players in WAR and players in AOC. Theres no way to avoid it. The only thing that we can attempt to do is to try to make both guild divisions viable and having fun.

People always say "I just want to play with pirates" but most of the time its really "I just want to play with the pirates in the game I like" which is fine. There is no chance that we're going to be able to say, ok all pirates are now moving to WAR. It might work for some, but most of the people who are enjoying AOC are far more likely to stay and find another guild.

So why am I telling you this? Because like I said, its going to happen. Its something we need to accept and not fight. People will go to the game where they enjoy playing the most, regardless. If someone decides to leave AOC for WAR it doesn't do us any good to bitch and moan because its not going to get them to come back. In fact it usually forces more people away.

Now that we know that this event is going to happen we can prepare for it and handle it accordingly.

[Elad]

Like the warhammer video..but sounds like constant fight fight fight? AoC gave off a more medieval quality to me as far as owning your own land, keeping your town goes..but we'll see

[Forecast]

I think it's really exciting that we have the opportunity to have statues erected of us, and to capture locations and hang the pirate flag =]


I'm a little confused as far as the looting system still, though. I'm not too thrilled about not being able to choose who gets what loot in a guild run quest. If we decide "Person X" should receive an item as an upgrade we should have the option to default it to them or pass on our "lottery" ticket within the group.

[Mutt]

I think you got it nailed Maj. There are going to be pirates in both, and as such those that enjoy either should be left to enjoy it. The only way to ensure maximum enjoyment for all is for those who arent in said game leave those playing without any negativity towards their efforts in that each game.

[Forecast]

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/warhammer-online/860606p1.html

Great little article with some info about loot and guild systems in WAR.

btw...

Gear is not nearly as major a factor in WH as it is in WoW. Although it still does take ridiculously long amounts of time to get appropriate level gear through pvp especially if you are not a healer.


Could someone elaborate on this a little for me? Can gear disadvantages be overcome? I thought WAR was supposed to entail less reliance on gear and less grinding for those who want it.

[Noremac]

I'm really disappointed with what I've been hearing about AoC. I have heard that the lag issues and fps issues are from them not having optimized it yet (apparantly dual cores aren't being utilized by the game yet). I just don't want to buy the game and be disappointed like I was with Vanguard. I will probably wait a few weeks or so after release before I buy AoC.

[Koltas]

I'm really disappointed with what I've been hearing about AoC. I have heard that the lag issues and fps issues are from them not having optimized it yet (apparantly dual cores aren't being utilized by the game yet). I just don't want to buy the game and be disappointed like I was with Vanguard. I will probably wait a few weeks or so after release before I buy AoC.
:werd: Vanguard was the perfect example of how not to do things, and why hype is overrated a lot of the time.

Atm I'm leaning towards WAR as well. AoC hasn't really impressed me at all with anything they've released to the public. :\

[Drekor]

Could someone elaborate on this a little for me? Can gear disadvantages be overcome? I thought WAR was supposed to entail less reliance on gear and less grinding for those who want it.
You still need good gear and will spend a very long time grinding for it. It's just not AS bad as WoW.

[Mourne]

Yeah, I know I'll wind up playing both. AoC comes out first, as you guys have already said, so I'll play that until WAR comes along. Assuming they can clean up the lag it'll be a much better experience. I'm thinking Avari will be similar as far as some members preferring AoC and some preferring WoW. I guess now all we can do is wait.

Oh, and I was getting all ready to get my guildies to do the "open beta" that AoC is about to have on May 1st...but then I found out that you have to be friggin subscribed to fileplanet to get it and the damn level cap is 13. :\

And Forecast, after I watched that hour long video I almost busted out my credit card and ordered the damn pre-order right away. Had to force myself to be patient and wait for another paycheck heh.

[Silver]

lol so true. My conquerer always looked like he was doing a canonball off the diving board everytime I jumped.

Im glad you took the time to write that up Mourne because its pretty much echoes my sentiments on what I have experienced so far. I thought boosting my PC to something more current with a 8800 GT card would alleviate performance issues, but it hasnt helped a whole ton.

Triggering your special abilities and then having to hit the attack sequence to perform them is adding complexity to a system that I find non intuitive and a deterant more than anything else.

I also couldn't agree more with Mourne and Mutt.

I was really pumped for AoC, but my experience in beta is as posted above.