PropheT wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 23:33:

wtf_man wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 18:09:
Only now with GW2 do we have an MMO that encourages cooperation without forced grouping... and it's been what? 13 or 14 years since EQ came out.

Warhammer did that with public quests years ago and Rift does it with zone invasions and open grouping for events. That sure as hell isn't something revolutionary that they came up with for GW2. Honestly, even the implementation of it has been done better elsewhere.

WAR PQ has people queuing around hubs, and forming a party capable of actually finishing the quest. After the quest is over, everyone leaves. They also aren't as well worked into the story. Rift just turns into a big craziness with everyone on the map going to one place. It also interrupts the flow of normal questing.

Both games still have the same tagging mobs and exp sharing nonsense outside of their public quest side systems. When you make a claim that something's been done better, you need to say where and how. GW2 events are local, so you don't have everyone on a map rush them, only whoever is around. They discourage camping like warhammmers version. And they chain, encouraging people to stick together a bit longer to see as many events as they can see. Plus, even outside of events, you don't have to decide whether it will be worth the exp loss or loot drop loss to group with someone.

PropheT wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 23:33:
Vanguard had some revolutionary designs in its gameplay that weren't copied until well after it went live, as far as I know. Defensive target mechanics were something I'd never seen prior to Vanguard, for example, and I still don't know why that hadn't been implemented into WoW since it was always flat out better than focus targeting.

Yeah vanguard was trying a lot of new things. I really liked the political mini game. I think there are things in that game that still haven't really been copied. I also liked the wide open world with no instances, although that wasn't entirely new. The problem was it's implementation fell far short of expectation, and I think it even didn't live up to what the developers had been trying to make. And bugs, so many bugs

Gnolt wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 09:17:
"Vancrash Saga of Desktop" is what we used to call it.

Some friends and I used to call it "Vangrind Saga for Zeros"... but you'd have to understand the deep disklike for Brad McQuaid that went with it.

"Vancrash Saga of Desktop" is what we used to call it - lots of eye candy for the day, lots of exploration, tons of bugs. I loaded it back up late last year and tooled around seems to run much better now hopefully it will finally get a decent playerbase

This game should of been moved to F2P years ago

Mac wrote on Aug 6, 2012, 04:17:
It was a horrible broken mess upon release which resulted in people playing (or trying to) it for the first 30 days then dumping it hard as it was so broken.

By the time the dev team made it into a very playable and enjoyable game people had already been tarnished by it.

Why do MMOs still continue to release before they are ready? - the MMO crowd isn't patient at all, and given the examples shown by Horizons, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Star Wars:TOR, etc if you blow your first chance it is nay on impossible to recover. You would think they would learn ...

It's not just MMO. A lot of softwares. This is why I never buy the newest/latest stuff. It's because companies always want to ship before the products are ready.

I blame the player base; did anyone see the Diablo3 ( I know, not MMO but still a valid point) forums before release? Second, it takes a load of money to make an MMO, sometimes they run out of money before it is ready.

It was a horrible broken mess upon release which resulted in people playing (or trying to) it for the first 30 days then dumping it hard as it was so broken.

By the time the dev team made it into a very playable and enjoyable game people had already been tarnished by it.

Why do MMOs still continue to release before they are ready? - the MMO crowd isn't patient at all, and given the examples shown by Horizons, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Star Wars:TOR, etc if you blow your first chance it is nay on impossible to recover. You would think they would learn ...

PropheT wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 23:33:
Warhammer did that with public quests years ago and Rift does it with zone invasions and open grouping for events. That sure as hell isn't something revolutionary that they came up with for GW2. Honestly, even the implementation of it has been done better elsewhere.

Well, I disagree.
Warhammer Public quests were tacked on, not really part of the inherent design.

Rift... I couldn't say... never played it, but they seem to be an evolution to WAR's Public Quests.

GW2 from the ground up *is* designed around Dynamic Events, and it has a fairly natural flow of participation with players constantly reacting to the environment circumstances... but if you like... we can even say it is a further evolution of the "public quest" concept.

The point is... it is not anything that Brad would have come up with in his self-proclaimed "The Vision (TM)".

wtf_man wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 18:09:
Only now with GW2 do we have an MMO that encourages cooperation without forced grouping... and it's been what? 13 or 14 years since EQ came out.

Warhammer did that with public quests years ago and Rift does it with zone invasions and open grouping for events. That sure as hell isn't something revolutionary that they came up with for GW2. Honestly, even the implementation of it has been done better elsewhere.

Vanguard had some revolutionary designs in its gameplay that weren't copied until well after it went live, as far as I know. Defensive target mechanics were something I'd never seen prior to Vanguard, for example, and I still don't know why that hadn't been implemented into WoW since it was always flat out better than focus targeting.

Game crashed like clockwork for me, was the major reason I stopped playing. It didn't perform very well either, but the crashing and fairly heavy death penalties and equipment retrievals got old pretty quick. Dunno how many times I crashed ran across the zone and died by falling into a pit or location I had never been before. Just made it infuriating to try to play when an hour of shitty crashes would reset your days worth of play.

I sorta remember taking a look at this when the original beta started, but never touched it. Did they at least make their money back?

I played its beta, but wasn't that impressed. Has the game improved since then?

Vanwhat?

Oh, okay...

NKD wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 16:22:
I really wish McQuaid had come in to work at some point during the last 8 month of development.

Why? He's a complete and utter idiot. The worst thing that happened to the MMO genre was his initial success... we've been stuck with basically EQ clones, and now WoW clones since.

And as for Vanguard... he was too busy doping it up... which shows you where his head was... directly up his ass.

He has some decent ideas on creating worlds, and that's about it... but keep his ass away from the gameplay mechanics / design. Only now with GW2 do we have an MMO that encourages cooperation without forced grouping... and it's been what? 13 or 14 years since EQ came out.

I've had plenty of good experiences with Sony since they started F2P'ing their titles. EQII worked out well (got a 3x points sale and a 1/2 price SOE shop sale so managed to pick up 12 months of sub for 20 bucks...), didn't mind DCUO as a bit of a time sink, and I've still got a pile of points leftover for any of the Sony games, so I might give this a whirl at some point (between TSW, PS2, MWO, WoT, GW2 and my backlog from the Steam summer sale... sigh, I need more time...)

nin wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 16:40:
Had no idea this was still running...

Same here. I figured it fizzled out years ago. It didn't release to a very warm reception if I remember right...

One of the better mmos since EQ really.

WyldKat wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 16:33:

Cutter wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 15:57:
I checked this out again a few months back and it's a good game in a lot of ways. Had they done this properly out of the gate this game would have been a major success. I still love their variety of races, mounts and classes. Love their bard.

The housing/decoration system, as well as the diplomacy system was pretty cool too. Oh and you could own and sail ships which hasn't been done since what, Ultima Online?

Ultima Online in its prime had a lot of stuff that MMO designers could really learn something from. A fantastic and hardcore open world PvP system, boats (if you're in a fantasy setting), housing, little reliance on gear, basically zero grind of any kind unless you were really power leveling a skill, and encouraging players to play with each other instead of run off and pretend it's a singleplayer game. The PvE was a bit sparse, but house decorating (and later building) and rare collecting was more than enough to keep the carebear population happy. The crafting wasn't bad either, for its time.

Had no idea this was still running...

Cutter wrote on Aug 5, 2012, 15:57:
I checked this out again a few months back and it's a good game in a lot of ways. Had they done this properly out of the gate this game would have been a major success. I still love their variety of races, mounts and classes. Love their bard.

The housing/decoration system, as well as the diplomacy system was pretty cool too. Oh and you could own and sail ships which hasn't been done since what, Ultima Online?

I really wish McQuaid had come in to work at some point during the last 8 month of development.