Acidbaron

Bought the regular pre-order, the rest might or might not come depending on my experiences in the week-ends.

safest bet

The UI is something that has to be high on the list of revamps, cause while knowing the new engine is a major improvement and the profession revamps (hurray for engineers getting TS skills as Nano Skills)

The UI is still a major pain point and truely something that has been changed majorly since the start of the game.

For the rest beter F2P and i'm all game again, used to have multiple paid accounts and still would pay for it, considering the lack of decent sci-fi mmo's out there, yes there's EVE and currently running 2 accounts there aswel but it's a different ball game then AO completely.

Just hope they don't go too far with a streamlined quest approach a la AoC, was never one of the main attractions of AO and isn't one of the main things i'm hoping for.

In my opinion,

The major difference is that you can spend real life funds to enrich your character, much like in EVE.

What simplified means you have a way of buying gold legally - this has and still is a controversial point in any mmo.

Anyone who believed something like this wouldn't be in was honestly being naive.

The game has no subscription - there will always be something there to create a stream of revenue after the purchase on regular basis.

This also cuts out third-party sellers for a big part - and that will probably be used as a line of reasoning to justify it with those that are outraged.

Clothing and social gear simply would've not generated enough revenue based on their GW1 numbers or they simply wanted more, depends on what glasses you look at it.

But honestly something like this was always to be expected, wether you like it or not or find it money grabbing compared to the first game is something everyone will have their own opinion about.

Neither defending or cursing this.

If you never played anarchy online before, it's fairly brutal once you hit mainland and the 'new' new player experience isn't in yet.

@(Unverified)

The CEO has never been gone. You might be thinking about the Game Director but that person has left the MMO scene completely after AoC - he was responsible for the launch and early development of both. Gaute Godgar. (SP)
The person (Tornquist.) in charge of development also has a beter track record under funcom.

I was what they called an first hour tester amongst the first 100 community picked.
You were in the week-end beta events - my beta acces was unrestricted servers were up all time and we could level all the way to 80 even when the combos and spells weren't fully implented yet.

Not saying i justify the focus on tortage and neglecting the rest.
A lot of things went wrong with AoC and they admitted it in detail before TSW full scale production and now during. They literally said what mistakes were made.

Two things went wrong ignoring the obvious too early launch.
Major game changes during beta - what cost both time and resources, one can argue why such features were developed to an advanced stage and then changed rather then the otherway around.
One the reason i speculate crafting was never shown in beta as it was finished on the final sprint to launch.
A too ambitious plan, new type of combat, large scale PvP with buildings, guild cities, complete inhouse engine with all the bells and whistles.

So i have no doubt resources simply ran dry. Again not justifying anything, simply explaining it from things i saw.

Now however they are much more moderate in what they plan to offer also they say flat out no "it will be in after launch" nonesense if things get scratched and the engine is already up working and stable as it's an upgrade from the AoC one.
The marketing is also not what it was from AoC, where there was a lot of hype building what was then fueled further by the community and lead to expectations that weren't met.
And their goal is to release a game as stable and well made system wise as Trion's rift, which is objectively the best made mmo system wise since as long i can remember.

Reason i will get the game in addition to Guild Wars 2 what my guild is mostly looking forward to.

For the rest reliable sources and beta footage, while keeping a healthy dosis of critism to how bug free it all will be makes me a lot less worried then either AO or AoC.
After the beta events start around may when more people get the chance to play i know my final verdict but currently the light is on green.


Now to the subject at hand, i hope the game does well despite the game company mistake and flaws in both AO and AoC, they atleast try to do something new while taking big risks - where other game companies play save and also fail to deliver.

Too few independant game companies left to keep holding on to a grudge, that's not to say i would buy the game if red flags showed all over the place, cause i wouldn't.

Engine could've been out earlier but they reworked it a couple of times.

Glad to see it's still being worked on and the game hasn't been dropped like many other mmo companies tend to do when a game hits a certain age.

Let me first say that i'm a casual player, my game time is fairly limited.
And that my guild is one that is a close group that wasn't just created for this game in particular.

Bioware said their game would have PvP and PvP support and that they would have a good system in place backed up by people with experience in the industry.

So the defense of it being just a PvE game is nonesense, No mmo is just a PvE or PvP game nowadays. As for your opinion on mmo PvP being just based on FoTM, Real PvP games..., i thought you wished to have an adult conversation? Same goes for the use of generalisations.

I'm not going to go into detail here but let's just say that each form of PvP in each genre is different and cannot be measured, labelling one PvP form more true then another is a childish remark and a piss poor defense. If i want to play a fps i'll play one of the many available to me, if i want a strategy game i'll play that and so forth.

Perhaps it's just your lack of experience that you never was part of a well organised PvP guild in a mmo and therefor dismiss it all so easly.

The difficulty level of PvE, your assumption that i previous was a hardcore raider few years back is correct, yet my issue is that the game offers no challenging gameplay, majority of the bosses can be writen of as "tank and spank" - a lot of thinking is not really involved.

WoW is casual based aswel, yet there they made sure there was a normal and heroic raid version, also the normal raid design at let's say the start of cataclysm was beter made and more challenging then swtor on nightmare mode.

Their difficulty is even too low for casual players, it's more an introduction to mmo's difficulty even including the harder difficulty settings and when also looking at the harder version it is a lazy design where things are just scaled up and no extra factors are being added in, one more person getting the same debuff or a bit more adds is not spicing up your content.

Nitpicking, the game has such glaring holes that if it was the titanic it would not even need an iceberg to sink it. The starwars franchise are the remaining compartments that keeps it afloat.

But people who are fine with biowares end result and are glad with it all the beter for them. All the beter if they can improve their game and keep it going. I have no deathwish for the game.

It's however not for me and not for the majority of my guild, i paid for a mmo and basically recieved a co-op game.

Still looking forward to it,

And i look forward to massively's future coverage to see how it all advances, got good hopes more so then AoC looking at the beta developments compared to back then.

I'm glad that they are moving away from hand holding on a lot of levels and the joy of experimenting is back missed that since AO and haven't really found it anywhere else yet.

The way they introduce mechanics in dungeons is good aswel the quicker people learn the beter they'll play when things get harder.

I don't want this game to be the next big thing, i simply want it to succeed to carve out a ninche in both setting and gameplay style.

My concerns are as most the quality on release and the amount of content, however the latter is less of an issue if the PvP is worthwhile.

Or people like me, simply don't bother with the forums due to the amount crawlers there with a defendist attitude, that have been dismissive of all complaints and critism on the game and since i'm long past my teenage years, discuss to simply discuss things with anyone is not my favourite past time.

In addition people who cancelled don't complain on forums my guild went from 100 +regular actives to now 25 actives, to around 40 when a PvP event is hosted by the guild something that's not biowares doing as extra efforts have to be made to make something of the poor out pvp support that is present.

The number is still declining and it's no longer the main game on the list for the future. Now you can say it's not a PvP guild, but the PvE was just as disappointing comparing it's development to Rift and WoW, it has voice over and a bit difference if you take dark or light but difficulty even in harder settings and in raids idem is laughable, it's all just bit more dps and healing needed. None-excisting challenge.

But yes, let's keep saying everything is fine and dandy, i look forward to the actual numbers of subscribers around the 6 month mark.

The next big patch only puts in a first layer of concrete of a basis that should've been there by launch.