Post
by xyz123abc » Sun Jun 26, 2011 7:13 am
(please dont be harsh on my spelling, grammar and formatting. i am on a 240px phone screen, tiny whiny thumbboard, missing letters AND words)
i have only played two games besides this: WoW and runescape. I very much liked warcraft. I just didnt wow it as much. also, the fee is disproportionate to the fun i could get :/
Then, runescape. I started playing that because it was free, but i got bored of grinding, so i went paid, for paid grinding. this, i wasted 3 years in this... I could have started anarchy online instead! anyways, I played for 3 years, so i can compare:
runescape is a fairly populr one, why?, second only to wow, and why is wow on first, inthe first place?
runescape had a rants forum, always topped. they closed it, reopened years later. again topped. closed in under a year (this year) the game is not bad. It is TERRIBLE. I played out of custom. It was great the first three days, i didnt enjoy it anymire after the first week.. i found out myself playing while using two bots in my back, mining for me (by bots i dont mean pets, i mean scripts i wrote for dummy players i used)
I would have continued that crap i didnt enjoy and cost money, but then i realized i was alone. everybody played one or two hours, and left the accounts botting the rest of the day. I, and my bots, were in a sea of bots. i hadnt realized such thing as a community was so virtual, a falacy. there lots of accounts, but like 1/10 of players, many of which were botting anyways, too.
on the bright side: frequent updates (one a week or more), frequent content addings (once a month or more), 200 quests, lots of people in forums, and a fair amount of real online players
on the shabby side: very heavily gold farmed, sick. impossible to play without botting the rest of the day and or with multiple accounts, very elitist community: be maxed skills or left out, a big part of the community are kids or peterpans (tantrums, mod wannabes, ragequits, elitist nerds, one day quits, treacherous) the Player moderators treat players like if they were crap, game moderators, i never saw one in 200 days of gameplay (yes, over 4800 hours)
and, on top of that. The game is terrible! beyond comparison! it is like a text only MUD that has graphics and only uses the mouse! no kidding! (dont believe me?: blind people manage to play it. Dont ask me how they do it, i am not blind!)
HOWEVER: this game has way over a million subscribers at any given time, how does it do it? so far, learning from runescape, the following things can be esily discarded:
-player support
-gameplay experience
-detailed graphics (runescape is dropping details in favour ofr more complex textures. they are upgrading during this year)
-achivements and diversity (most people are happy with just w/e the best is. everything else is junk for them. you could have one item ingame, they will be happy as long as they have it.)
- community (most people dont give a rat's ass. they will team with anyone who is up to teaming. they will flame you if you dont fill their standards, but will not thank or appreciate you for good work/attitude. this is the rule with the most exceptions, thank god)
- fair play (people will cheat, exploit, scam, and start using their brain if needed. unfair advantages are not a problem until someone finds out he cant use one. they re happy while they dont know and for a while when you tell them there is no such thing)
people rant, but they keep playing
my conclusion is that the big chunk of player like games to be simple. unfortunately, it is not possible to have such a great game as ao if you go simplifying everything.
maybe froob could be oversimplified, and deeper stuff be made subscriber only (but this would require a very long and hard work)
or maybe you could make tutorial island longer, with a less steep learning curve, reaching the basics of all aspects of the game, and with no possible grinding
Last edited by
xyz123abc on Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
