Darammer

Vanguard never had 300k subs. The highest number ever quoted was "150k," and that was VERY carefully worded as "registered users," not "subscribers."

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Flaming Homo

No denying that WoW has a huge number of subscribers, but I've also heard that their subscription model in Asia vastly inflates their numbers. Apparently Asian players pay by the amount of time played rather than on a fixed monthly subscription rate, making it cost the same amount to have multiple accounts with one character each as we pay for one account with multiple character slot.

So take that 6 million and divide it by how many? 4? 5? 6? 10?

Zahne

To what extent though? You know Edios didn't just close up shop and move to Norway. Funcom is based out of Norway.

Just because you gave the chimp a gun, doesn't mean it's going to win the firefight.

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Zahne - 80 Warlock
Rikko - 80 Guardian

Odinn

If the game is successful enough to make money and sustain the staff that they do have, they won't need to fire anyone.

valnas

The only way i can describe the performance issues and how AoC differs from eq2, is that this game engine is like an fps, if you have a machine that can run it without stuttering and get your settings in line, there is NO lag. In eq2 i could play it on a shitty computer with low settings or a rocketship with all the goodies on. but there was always combat/spell lag. Didn't matter if i turned that brand new computer down to low and looked at pixelated faces and no particle effects, there was still that hesitation and delay on raid mobs. Thats a big kudos to this engine.

That alone might make this game fly on the PvE end, and current info states there are 9 raid zones in game, and the devs will be adding a number of non-expansion raid zones as we go to fill out the tiers. I know all the cynics will scream 'never trust a dev', but i'm glad the game is out, plays well, and has enough waiting at the finish line for them to add that content before people are sitting on their hands.

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Fuck Your Couch

Kelstat

Personally I think this game is on it last leg and will need some sort of tuning if they want it to survive.

The lower tiers are terrible, a good 70%+ of content up to RoK is group orientated, however good luck finding a group. Its possible but not without quite a bit of effort or waiting around.

I think some model or mechanic to allow cross server grouping would be a vast improvement. Ive played on a couple servers and the LFG interface is always bare or with maybe 1 group looking (maybe 10 players individually from level 1-80). This would at least address 90% of the zone population issues.

I also conversely believe they need to refine old world content. Loping Plains is a perfect example. You cant move 5 feet without aggroing 3 mobs because the mobs are so densely populated and no one is out killing them. Essentially these zones are designed to host many players at once when in reality your lucky if you see 4-5 people populating old world zones.

Hoss

Bah, I play an assassin now. The little I was able to play AoC, I actually found it to be a much slower pace of button pushing. It queues up the same as EQ2, but the attacks take longer to land than my combat arts, so when I pushed at the same pace, I was skipping attacks.

Sorry, was that a typo? Did you mean to type SOE and put funcom instead?


-h

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Let us Pray the Pimp's Prayer.
Lord, please pray for the soul of this bitch and guide my pimp hand and make it strong Lord, so that she might learn a hoe's place.

Amen

Wozamil

EQ2 lacks the excitement to bring in more subscriptions. The number of active subs will only decrease. The game reached it's peak a long time ago. Without new subscriptions, the game will decline slowly. It will not completely die, but developer support will decrease as the revenue's drop.

People looking to get into an MMO will choose one that has a positive buzz, good marketing, and large player base. Three things EQ2 does not have.

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Wargore

thats what a programmable keyboard is for. i have the merc stealth. makes everything simpler.

Combat has a rhythm in this game I find.

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AoC Unrated

Kall

lol.

People didn't start bashing Vanguard until like 2 weeks to a month into the game when it was blatantly obvious that it was a piece of shit. The first week I remember a lot of people saying it was good and how they liked the additional complexity of the combat and other nonsense.

I like all the people who are only level like 30 claiming AoC is the savior to MMOs when they haven't even experienced the end game yet. If you started a toon in EQ2 and leveled to 30 I'm sure you'd say it's "fucking amazing", too. Get to max level, raid a few raids, do the heroic shit, and then your comments about how amazing AoC is might hold a little weight.