Getting owned in eots

The eye of the storm.

What's up with the alliance getting owned so much in this battleground? Is it just me?

So, since my rig is not strong enough to run AOC, I decided to wipe the dust off wow and fire it up for a bit. I figured I would let Wow tide me over until I decide to get a new Pc in about a month.

I got on my 70 warrior and decided to re-spec protection, I hardly have time to play and I figured maybe I could run some instances if I planned it out in advance. Groups always need tanks.

I had some descent protection gear, but I wanted to get this 1h sword from the bg vendor which required 20 eye of the storm marks.

No problem I thought, boy was I wrong. I think I may have won 2 matches out of 16. One of those wins seemed like the horde were purposefully letting us 4 cap. The second win was just eaked out in a very close battle.

Very few of the losses were close however, most were blowouts. Some were a bit close but they always seem to start of well, but somehow during the course of the battle something goes wrong and we end up losing.

No one wants to plan in the beginning, and even if you do decide on a strat, 2 or 3 people do their own thing anyways. What could the problem be? Is it impatiance, does the horde have better gear? Are alliance players inferior? Is it me?!?!

If anyone has some ideas on how the alliance can win in this bg, i'd love to hear it!

Despite what's said, prot spec is not too bad in pvp. It has its place, sure you dont get many kills, but I do serve as a good distraction and attract alot of players trying to kill me. Usually this can help turn the tide in certain cases. Plus they always need tanks for AV.

Killing the MMO Instance

After reading this post over at /random. I started to think about how you could get around the problems instancing solves in mmo's.

Having played many of the early Mmo's like Ultima Online and EQ I remember the early days of gaming without instances. Dungeons were overcrowded and camped for items. Players often argued over loot ninja's. Many times I would log on at odd hours of the night just to be able to garnish a valuable item.

The open world was always very immersive, However, the lack of instances doesnt suit itself to a mainstream audience with the current designs we see in mmo's today. While I may have enjoyed farming a dungeon for hours on end, or waiting for a respawn in the middle of the night, that type of gameplay no longer fits into my current lifestyle.


I want to be able to get in, run a quest, and do a dungeon without having to wait for other's who beat me there to wrap up with their fun.

Instancing has provided this type of gameplay to now. But sometimes the instances take away from the feeling of an open world for many gamers.

So the question arises? How can we build a world where both gamers are satisfied. Group A wants a completely open world with alot of social interaction. While
Group B wants social interaction and a world that can be explored at their leisure.

So in order to come to a solution, we have to understand the problem. I have always felt that instancing is a solution to a game design flaw - lack of content. Lack of content for a certain area that does not coincide with the number of players in an area at any given time. This allows for overcrowding and unfulfilling dungeon gameplay.

I dont think that the lack of content is due to the size of any given mmo. I believe its due to the levels. I would recommend 20 levels max for an mmo. For example of wow was reduced to 20 levels instead of 70, you immediately open the number of quest areas in the game. With the level range being reduced the amount of content that players have immediate access to triples. Instead of having 1 or 2 zones for a certain level you now have 6 or 7. Instead of selecting one starting town per race, you would have access to 4 or 5 starting towns. This would have the trickle down affect of reducing camping of dungeons in certain non-instanced zones.



In order to keep dungeons static more explorable dungeon areas should be added to a game world. Reducing the level gap should help with making more dungeons available for each player level. However, I do believe double or triple the amount would be needed to keep overcrowding minimized.

Dungeon design should also be enhanced to be less linear. Different groups may need to explore or quest in different sections of a multi-branch dungeon. Perhaps even making the lower levels only accessible to higher level players, or a large well organized group of lower levels.

Another gameplay element that I would try to implement would be something I like to call a "wild dungeon". These would be random dungeons that spawn periodically at a random location in the game world. While I would use instancing technology to create these dungeons, there would not be a player limit to the number of groups that could enter. These "wild dungeons" would encourage open world exploration. Players would be encouraged to only share the location with their friends or guild in order to avoid overcrowding. These dungeons could be spawned from a day to a week, or until the dungeon boss is defeated.

Well, im gonna cut my thoughts a little short, due to the length of this post, But,In summary, I think mmo design will have to drastically change if an open world is ever going to be preferred over instancing. In order for an open world to appeal to a mainstream audience mmo games need to implement

Fewer Levels

More content per level

More Dungeons

Random Dungeons spawns

All are steps that could be taken to re-make the open worlds that mmo's are supposed to be. What do you think?

Max Level Crisis - when will endgames matter?

Reaching max level in any mmo has always been a badge of honor. Many of the old school mmo's made it very difficult to do this. But as game designers cater to the more main stream casual player. The difficulty in reaching max level has decreased.

This has had the effect of diminishing the value of reaching max level for many gamers. Not only did you have to reach the max, but you always needed the best equipment and the best gear. It is a constant competition to be number one.

But some players like myself look for more meaning in the endgame activities besides upgrading my own character. Upgrades have their place, but I prefer the feeling of impacting the world or contributing to a greater cause.

What I would like to see is more player driven content for endgame. However, I would like to see the content shaped in context with the game world. Instead of acquiring player owned cities or keeps through gathering resources. I would like to see players garner favor with the king or lord of that region. This favor would then be used as currency to purchase lands.

These king or lord of the region would deed the land to the guild for them to shape as they see fit. It would start as a small village with npc's, shops, perhaps a small militia. The village would grow based on the resources gathered from the guild, as well as quests given by the local lord of the area.

Guild resource gather should be seemless and tie into the proffessions of the guild members. Those who chose to collect resources of their own could do so as well. As the city grows, trade routes are established, alliances are formed and enemies made.

As the village grows and generates money for the kingdom, the village will level up 2 different stages. Similar to guild cities in age of conan. Eventually increasing the might and land of your kingdom. The kingdom would start at the outskirts of the lords land, so keeping it safe from predators, npc's and enemy guilds would be a challenge.

The city growth has to be somewhat seemless and not too much of a grind. Having played shadowbane for some time, one of the main game killing gameplay elements was that a large city took so much to acquire and maintain. Once it was destroyed, usually the guild responsible would quit.

City financial decisions will be made by all max level guild members. I would apply a weight to certain guild officiers. Similar to shareholders, the guild leader may have 10 shares to use for their vote, while a new max level char would only have 1. That way all players are involved, and the most dedicated players are rewarded with more influence on political or financial city issues.

Hopefully having the player cities tied to a local king or lord will alleviate some of the pain of having your village or city burned to the ground. Multiple guilds can offer their allegiance to the same king and compete for favor. As well as opposing factions.

Once max level is reached in an mmorpg, apart from gaining gear and money. The only way to keep the game from ending is to transform it into more of an mmoRTS. The gameplay focus has to go from being player-centric to world-centric

Politics, betrayel, war, famine, disease, peace, prosperity all these aspects of rts gameplay should somehow be implemented. I havent quite figured out a way to do that, but if someone ever does, it will be a great step forward in the mmo space.

who knows, maybe after I think about it for a while I can ramble on about mmorts gameplay elements.

Age of conan released to the masses!

Let the madness begin!

Check out this blast from the past!



Good times.... Good times...

Man can not live on Beta alone

After the boggled open beta release for age of conan Hyborean adventures, I clearly had the impression that this game was gonna be all hype and no substance.

The beta client fiasco, the rampant complaints on the forums about glitches, lag and bugs.

There was a steady stream of negative forum comments bashing the game. Maybe "stream" it too light, perhaps a tidal wave, monsoon or tsunami is more appropriate.

Cries of doom rang out! Clearly the last days were at hand!

So what happenes at pre-release? The Apocalypse?

No, of course not...

just the opposite. From what I Gather all is well and good in the land of hyboria. The so called "Miracle Patch" that would be needed to save the game actually worked. Many gamers enjoyed a steady dose of conan over the weekend.

Albeit not perfect by any means, it does appear that the game is stable enough for release.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But I think funcom just did.

AOC Spellweaving vid's

Some cool spellweaving videos. Thanks to those who posted these on youtube.

Stylized and Mature Mmo Graphics

If I could have the Pve of Wow, the fatalities of Age of Conan, and the RvR PvP of the upcoming Warhammer. That would be an mmo I could sink my teeth into.

And why not? Many companies struggle to find their niche in the mmo industry. Wow has captured the fantasy realm and the so called kiddies. Cox has the superhero genre on lock. Even the subpar SWG at some point in time had the sci fi genre in the bag.

With alot of people digging the mature settings and gritty graphics of age of conan, its a shame that alot of hardcore fans will be locked out.

I dont think having a mature theme has to equal realistic graphics. Graphics have always been a passing fettish, it is what draws many people to a game, but its not what keeps them there.

I know warhammer online toyed with the idea of having a more mature, bloody world, but eventually nixed the idea.

I believe the niche for a playable game of that type exists now. If BLIZZARD were to add fatalities to wow, i may actually start playing again, just for something different.

AOC to have EPIC mini sieges!

Alot of heated debate has been going on since more siege details for age of conan have been revealed. It looks like the starting size for warring guilds will be 48 vs 48. While this number is not set in stone, it has been met with great skepticism from AOC fans.

Myself, Im not really sure its that big of a deal, as long as the fun factor remains. If you figure 8-9 keeps, thats about 900 people involved in keep warfare per week, which is a pretty descent number. Also, this is only a starting number, as game stability improves im sure that number will grow.

Im far more concerned with how this numer will affect resource, maintenance and siege weapon crafting. If a hardcore pvp guild wants to min max and only have 50 to 60 guild members. Is that size adequate enough to maintain a battlekeep?

My second concern would be who gets to select the players eligible to defend or attack, after the pvp points for a guild have been tallied. Will it be the players who contributed the most? Or will the guild leader have total control over the selection process.

Another concern I have is whether people are able to enter the siege after its started, especially if someone goes afk or loses connection. Depending on the timeframe of the attack window(i've heard anywhere from 1 to 2 hours) with only 48 people per side, I would imagine there would be some turnover. Sometimes things come up?

What I would like to see, if this siege system is going to be limited in this way, is some type of queue for entering and leaving the battle. For example my guild consists of 70 players, 60 show up for the seige. The top 48 are selected and begin the battle. The remaining 12 would be in a re-inforcement type queue based on their pvp contributions. After a guild mate dies 5 or 10 times for example they would go to the back of the queue line and the next available guild mate would enter the battle. This would continue rotating giving everyone a chance to experience the battle who wanted to.

Granted that type of solution could be problematic for large sized guilds, but a guild of around 100 active players would probrably fare well in that system. It would also add importance to not dyeing, and since the re-inforcement members of the guild would prolly be less seasoned it would add a nice flavor of realism to the battle.

For me, right now I dont know enough about some of the other mechanics in the game to know if these siege numbers are good or bad.

But hopefully funcom will enhance and improve on this foundation as the game matures.

NO TANK YOU!!

With the upcoming release of AOC and the highly anticipated Warhammer Online. I wanted to touch base on one of the two classes I always felt were prohibitive to the casual gamer.

The Tank.

The tank class is historically known to be a “meat shield”, soaking up all the damage and enemy blows. Leaving the other members of the group in a better position to deal damage while the attacking mobs are focused or taunted onto the tank class.

Tanks are known for their high survivability and low damage.

But here’s the rub.

While I always enjoy the company of a good tank. When I quickly want to jump into a group to do some dungeon running. There seems to be 1 of 2 holdups.

1. No Tanks available.

2 No healers available.

While I am focusing on the tank class in particular. As a casual gamer, whem im running short on time, being forced to look for 1 or 2 classes to have a successful group has always been a problem for me.

I’m not sure what out-dated model mmo developers have been using, but it would seem making any combination of classes viable in a group, would increase the mainstream appeal of the game, to both hardcore and casual alike.

Many mmo’s often boast about how great and innovative their A.I is. But how great can it be when mobs just run up and stick to whatever tank taunts it?

Even though Im against the idea of a tank class for gameplay. There are so many viable alternatives. All classes should be able to tank effectively. Perhaps a tanking switch where the character would sacrifice dps in order to tank better for the group.

There are many ways to make classes tank.

• Rogues – Increase dodge ability greatly when in tanking mode

• Mages - Perhaps a mirror image spell or stoneskin spell that will allow the mage to tank, at the expense of spell casting or dps.

• Pet classes – should be able to buff their pet animal or undead to a tanking mode.

• Warriors - Should always have high dps, but sacrifice it when in tanking mode

• Rangers – if no pet involved a mix between dodging and using a shield buff.




The overall idea that im trying to get across is that once developers stop following obsolete grouping requirements and make grouping more open and viable for different types of classes, I believe the playerbase and game community will really thrive.

Instead of making tanks a class type, I would rather It be a stance, skill or option usable by any and all classes. With each class having its own variation of a tanking ability.

This would be a start to having less grouping guidelines and more immersive and casual friendly gameplay.

Any thoughts?

Age of Conan - PVP MAYHEM!!!

Let loose the dogs of War!!!

Crush your enemies(friends too), see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women(avatars)…

Age of Conan is taking off the gloves for this epic pvp ending to the open beta. So everyone in it needs to post some kick ass vids and posts with the final word on the game.

Will it be a thumbs up or thumbs down! Only this weekend will tell.

Check out the details here!

A little War in Warcraft

Well, being the casual gamer that I am, I finally got around to visiting the new sunwell isle from patch 2.4. I ran some daily quests, grouped up with a few people and generally had a great time. I had no idea what I was supposed to be trying to accomplish on the isle or why I was getting the shattered faction rep, but it was cool.

While I was there I found a vendor selling pvp rewards for some strange marks or items. Not knowing what it was I tried looking up some info on the net. I didnt find what I was looking for, but I did come across this video.

It pretty much shows sunwell on a pvp server. I was amazed, I hadnt seen that kind of open world pvp'ing since the early days of wow.

Of course the playerbase on a pvp server is slightly different than on the regular servers, but it was still odd seeing that the one place where pvp wasnt purposefully planned was getting the most action.

I wonder if blizzard noticed this? Granted, im a little late, but it seems like with a little tweaking, that type of zone can make for a great open world battlefield.

Utilizing the daily quest system, with a pvp based emphasis would generate a lot of skirmishes, perhaps an ancient city, partially controlled by one faction or the other. Increased city control based on daily quests completed. I think you would need to keep the zone focused on bottlenecks where a lot of pvp could occur due to the quest system. Finally culminating with complete control of the city by either the horde or alliance. Of course through in a little npc help when one faction is outnumbered. and voila! open world pvp is born again!

I dont know what blizzard has waiting in the wings with the wrath of the lich king.
Who knows? maybe one day there will be a little more war in warcraft.

AOC Beta Issues updates

I came across this article

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1927 at mmorpg.com.

It has an interview with some interesting insight on some of the issues many people on the forums and blogosphere have been having with the Age of Conan Open beta.

Explanation of what caused alot of the load issues is explained to be due to an "update" to the code prior to the open beta. Apparently, in an effort to bow to consumer demands and "peer pressure" Funcom wanted to squeeze in a couple of new fixes to enhance the beta.

If you believe this I've got some swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you!

I find it hard to believe that an experienced mmo developer would find the need to insert code that was not properly quality tested, prior to a major release. In fact according to the article I can only assume it was done mere hours before the beta began!

This article didnt really alleviate my concerns, if anything it made me more skeptical that funcom has it's ducks in a row this close to release.

But who knows, maybe its just me?

What are you looking forward to in Age of Conan?

Having been a long time fan of conan comics and movies. Finally having a mmo come along, set in the conan universe has been extremely exciting.

Having played wow since release, I started to wonder, what exactly was it about aoc that I was so excited about? Was it the graphics? The new combat mechanics? The fatality system? Or was it just the fact that it was something new?

I think it was a little bit of all those things. With the mmo genre finally maturing, the upside of many of the next gen mmo's is really impressive.

Not only do I find the lore and mature setting of conan to be appealing. The graphical representation of the world, by all accounts is amazing.

I look forward to playing a game where my skill has more of an impact on the battlefield than what im wearing. A game where my guild, my clan, my tribe, can have an actual impact on the game world by destroying and claiming a keep.

I look forward to a world where the grind of pvp combat is non-existant due to the fun gameplay.

I look forward to AOC.

THE OPEN BETA BLUES

Boy, did funcom drop the ball with this one. With the highly anticipated release of aoc, I was looking forward to new video’s, glowing reviews and walkthrough guides for the first 13 levels. Instead, I got heated debate about how the game is unfinished, instancing sucks, and only high end pc’s can play it.

This was disturbing news indeed, then the news that the open beta was actually on an older client started creeping to the forefront. Of course, being the logical person that I am, I couldn’t not believe this and dismissed it as just a rumor. I mean what kind of marketing genius purposefully releases a buggier game client to the people who are going to be giving the first widespread glimpse of the game. Surely an experienced mmo developer like funcom would have lessons learned from past games and not do that. Boy was I surprised when it was actually confirmed to be the case.

It made me lose a lot of confidence in the people behind the game. At the very least , if you are going to do something like that. Please leave the NDA up, and in full force. I cant help but to wonder with the mish mash of players, pc’s and expectations if removing the NDA for this open beta was a mistake.

Granted with the game approaching its release date, it is very troubling that the need for a NDA is even present.

Perhaps companies should make an effort when conducting open beta’s to inform the player’s what type of information they are trying to gleam from the test. Players need some type of baseline to measure the type of gameplay they are seeing. For instance, if they are lagging heavily and have no idea whats going on. Versus, lagging heavily and knowing that the city has a max pop of 300 but there are 700 currently in game. At least with a small bit of information, beta testers would be more open to understanding why they are getting the results they are saying.

As far as I’m concerned the open beta news has been a disappointment, but I will take it with a grain of salt. I wont be picking aoc up on opening day, but I do still plan on giving it a shot. As long as the release reviews are descent.

Has the open beta given anyone else second thoughts?

INSTANCING IS THE FUTURE OF MMO'S

An instance is defined as an occurrence of something.

With Age of Conans upcoming release and open beta. A lot of gaming details have come forth. Including the fact that some cities and environments in the game will be instanced or copied to avoid issues with lag.

The topic has stirred up alot of heated debate about how instancing ruins immersion and gameplay.

However, instancing in itself is not the problem. There are many factors that can cause a player to lose immersion.

It is these factors that ruin the moment not the instancing itself.

For example, when entering a new city or area, most instances require you to view a load screen. These load screen's are reminders that you are playing a game, and definately ruin your sense of being in the moment.

Secondly, Groups, Guilds and Friends.

When entering an instanced zone if any of the above are in the same zone as you but not the same instance, you immediately become aware of what instance you are in. This also takes you "out of the game".

While instancing provides a more lag free gaming experience, I believe developers have taken the ez road as far as instancing is concerned. Development needs to take into consideration the social aspects of the game and put in place filters of some sort that better determine what instance to spawn a player or group in.

I would place a priority on a persons Group, then friends, then Guild as far as determine the best instance for each character. While this may not always be possible to have all of your guild or friends in the same instance, it would help to know you would see a friendly face most of the time.

Instancing allows for alot of the design issues with mmo's to be alleviated, spawn camping, overrun dungeons, item collecting, lag issues, can all be avoided with a seemless instancing system.

As technology evolves and become better, the ability to create virtual seemless graphically intense worlds will exist. However, I believe it will not be used as it exists now.

The upgradeability and reusability of instanced areas offers too many advantages over current open world systems to be ignored. The ability to re-use older instances as the game population ages. Controlling alot of the lag issues associated with overpopulating zones as well as easier content upgrades.

I believe the future of mmo's is to have instanced worlds that are seemless and transparent to the user.

Dynamic instance generators that create the next closest instance in flash memory to avoid loading screens.

Instances smart enough to know what friends/guildmates should be prioritized in sharing the instance with you based on level, skills etc.

Hopefully, soon we will have the technology that can make instancing seemless and behind the scenes.

Perception is reality.

If it feels like an open world, it will be an open world, whether its instanced or not.

But thats just my 2 cents. What do you think?

AOC OPEN BETA REVIEWS UP!

Funcom official site has links posted to a couple of open beta review articles.

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&&func_id=2426&table=CONTENT

For all those having trouble logging into the beta, maybe this will tide you over a while

AOC NDA LIFTED FOR OPEN BETA!

There will be no NDA for age of conan open beta that starts tonight!

Great news!

AOC CLASS COMBOS UPDATES!

Ten ton hammer also has some more details and classes and combos in the game. You can find them here -

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/30805

Enjoy!

AOC NDA LIFTED FOR U.S. REPORTERS!

Great news! Hopefully more details about the games mechanics will be arriving soon. You can check out the story here!

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/31789