The Daily Grind: How was the first weekend of AoC's open beta for you?

With the exception of some serious balance issues present at this low level, and a few technical issues mostly fixed with yesterday's patch, I've been having a blast.

My load times are still very long, and even with all settings turned to low and switched to only one CPU to run the game I am still unable to actually play the game. I have read a ton of fixes for the lag issues and none seem to work enough to let me actually play for more than a few seconds without locking up.

It does worry me a good deal. If this is an old beta client and these issues are fixed as such claims have been made on the forums, good, but without actually seeing the current client and knowing that I can run the game, I will hold off on purchase at this point.

I hardly think this open beta was anything other than a demo for people, why release an 'old' client for testing when the bugs are fixed already in the closed beta? If this was to sell me on the game, it has and has not. I like the more adult style of the quests, the blood, and the overall feel of the world. I do not like the inability to play at the moment! The only real good thing that has come out of this beta is that I will now add ram to my pc, which I have been meaning to do for months anyway.

Game is enjoyable but the newb tutorial to lvl5 and the subsequent development to lvl13 doesn't really give time to flesh out the different classes (little heavy armor for the soldier classes for example). Graphics are good. However I think the new combat system is being oversold. Directional attacks just replace auto attack. Feats are a direct rip from wow talent trees (even starting at lvl10!).

I wonder if the experiences of TF2, COD4, ETQW and GTA4 et al have moved the goalposts for MMORPGs, and it is to those online experiences not copying WOW that will provide the inspiration for the true next gen of MMORPGs.

I am enjoying the experience very much although I have not had the major technical troubles I have read everywhere. The graphics and the music are wonderful while the quests are actually interesting and without excessive grind. I had to get used to the combat as it is a little different than the automatic attack many others use, but after that it was fun. I'm definitely picking up the CE if I can find one.

Saying directional attacks are the whole of the new combo system is over simplifying things by a ton.

First off you have the shielding system which has a huge impact on your damage which actually puts some weight into the directional attacks.

Second there's the active dodging/blocking which adds a really nice layer to the combat.

Finally there's the whole positioning/AoE factor to melee which can allow you to dish out some serious damage by hitting multiple targets.

Anyways being less of a fanboy I'm mostly having a blast in the beta. My Guardian has almost finished up all the quests and some of the locations and quest stories are just very well down. I really enjoy Funcom's willingness to design some vertical gameplay and climbing up the temple in the ruins zone or the volcano is incredibly enjoyable for the scenery alone.

The PvP combat is great fun and there's a lot of depth to it. One of the moments that really sold me on the PvP was on the Hallow Vaults CTF map. Our teams were colliding for the first time near the middle but more on our side than theirs. I stepped out ahead and took a big nuke from a caster class (oops). Damaged I backup and an assassin pops out and starts nailing me. At 20% hp by this time it's looking grim for me to survive... or is it. I do a quick strafe around to the side of the opponent, ready up my sheild slam (knockback), connect, and send him flying off the ledge to the ground below. Unfortunately it wasn't very high so the fall damage he took was minimal but it certainly saved me from dieing. I can only imagine what kind of things like that you will be able to do on maps with more vertical gameplay like blood ravine.

That said I do have a bunch of complaints from minor (Each new character starts with the default UI layout) to major (glitching through the map on the pvp battleground can let you hit people when they can't hit you back). The biggest worry I have though is that the PvP system (gain XP for kills/assists/wins, lose it for deaths/losses) is going to be a major source of frustration rather than fun and advancement. It seems like to advance in PvP you are going to have to have a pre-made group and anyone left trying to PuG is just going to constantly be setback in experience from bad groups.

Frustrating! Before the patch starting game and load times were insane. Never experienced a game take that long to load.

In game the stuttering made the game not enjoyable. And it did not matter what setting I put it on, low, med, high, it was still very bad.

The patch the next day made the loading of zones faster. However, I lock up about 30 seconds of game play.

Not worth playing on my end until they release a new patch. To frustrating to play at the moment.

I am playing on a lower end system but once I found the cntl\ i was uble to get almost 20fps. To bad the patch seemed to remove this functionality (I mainly disabled foliage).

I was able to have long play times before the patch but after the patch my client has been very unstable and crashes often.

I am enjoying the game dispite its "beta" condition.

I've enjoyed the instanced newbie totorial which has run OK for me, (not great, but playable), but outside of that, the game has been virtually unplayable do to the insane lag, stuttering, and crashes.

I really don't get what they're trying to do here. An older, poorly performing client as an open beta this close to launch? This is going to turn alot of people off about the game.

I was really dubious about this game and have been a critic in the comments of several AoC posts.

But by Saturday afternoon, I'd pre-ordered. I'm having a good bit of fun so far. The combat system doesn't feel that different to me, really (maybe that changes at higher levels). In most MMOs you use certain skills depending on the situation, and the same is true here. No auto-attack isn't going to have that big an impact unless you're trying to chat commands while fighting. Because generally in a modern MMO you have enough skills that you're always doing something and rarely relying on auto-attack.

That said, combat here is fun, I love the look of the world, and what got me to pre-order is that I was getting sucked into the storyline. I'm primarily an "Explorer" type in MMOs and the world was intriguing enough that I didn't want to miss out on it.

I was fortunate in that the game ran fine on my system, once I updated my video drivers and ran in windowed mode (although full screen).