patient

It saddens me to hear that Keen and Graev’s left AoC. i really liked their insights on the game. The really did try to avoid the hype trap. still I wonder. They are running one of the serious blogs in the MMO scene. Quitting in the middle of the game won't give them the full picture of AoC. You need to play until the end game to know and explore the various aspects of MMO. No, they don't need to suffer. They are just bloggers. Still I hope that every blogger or a computer magazine that wishes to review fully AoC will have the patient to wait until he fully covers the whole game.

An unbiased and un hyped review : AoC Average Final Score 6 / 10

Hi all, sorry for not posting in the past six days. Work and real life were kind of hectic:) Anyway a quick update of me. I'm supposed to get a copy of AoC tomorrow or on Monday and write a review on it for TheMarker. In the meantime, although i said i still enjoy WoW end game, I'm kind of fed up with Daily's and Heroics, which leaves me nothing to do other than raids. Moreover, since we don't raid more than 2-3 times a week, WoW has become a little boring...Therefore, I'm waiting for AoC even though I know it's not a superb game. I encourage you to read this lengthy review. This is one of the most unbiased and un hyped review i read lately on the game.

It takes too long to reach the real world in age of conan

If you follow the launch of AoC you probably know it has raised a lot of emotions by fan boys and haters. Still, the fact remains: the Open Beta launch was a PR fiasco. That is why it is good to read a lot of reviews from people who entered the game until the present time and think AoC is a good game. Now that the technological issues are behind us, we can discuss on how well is AoC in terms of content.

I can't summarize the entire views i read other the web in the last two days. Nevertheless, i get the feeling most of them are positive (as long as your computer specs are good). One thing still puzzles me. AoC is an MMO first of all, why the hell to develop a 1-20 lv zone (Totrage) which is based mostly on single player. I really think this decision was a mistake and maybe Funcom needs to address it in the coming patches. Why? because first impression is everything. Furthermore, you can't allow players to feel they need to follow a tedious phase in order to reach the real open world of AoC.

Stay tune as i will post more on AoC in the next couple of days. , hopefully i will get the chance to play with it when it reaches Israel.

It's actually good to take a break from your favorite MMO

It is now few months before the release of Wrath of the Lich King. I feel that now is one of the periods of time i really enjoy WoW. It's weird. A lot of people are burned out from WoW. Waiting for AoC or WaR and probably Wrath of the Lich King. I genuinely believe one of the reasons i hadn't burned out until the present time is on account of the fact i took a break from WoW.

Yeah, I truly believe taking some time off from MMO is actually a good thing. I had two major breaks from WoW. Each one for several months. One was after I reached lv60 and one accured recently, after my wife gave birth to my beautiful twins. i got back to wow three months ago.

I still have a lot of end game to explore, although i don't have much to do other than raiding (I'm not much of PVP man). Therefore, take my advice, and don't be afraid to leave ur favorite MMO from time to time, only to get back and c if spark still exist.

I need the Adrelanin rush.

I have played in AoC open Beta. didn't really had any fun. it was ok. nothing more. i had trouble running the game with only 2 gigabyte memory and windows vista. Accidently my computer got broke so i had to put him for repair. At the same time i snatched 2 more 2GB of memory and added a extra 160 GB for my hard disk. I now hope AoC will run much smoother. I can't help it but i feel an excitement in the air. Funcom just released the server list. Seems quite a long list. Still you can find people like syncaine who arn't very excited, but i am. AoC won't be in Israel for 8 more days. I have pre ordered it and Although the game still needs to meet some critiria regarding his technical stability and level of perfomance, I'm happy there is a new MMO around the block. why? ye, because of the burnout from WoW (Although i still have a lot of end game to do there). Furthermore, because if you are a true MMORPG fan, you always have the craving and urge to try new worlds and to duplicate past positive experiences you had in other MMO's. I can't help it, but since WoW was my true serious MMO (Although I am playing video games from the 80's), i wish i would have the same fun i had in places l visited before, like deadmines, Black rock spire etc. Actually, i had more fun time at the world of Azeroth than the one in TBC. So, to Summarize, I hope AoC would stirr up the same feeling. i need the Adrelanin rush.

why did i get the job? i'm experienced guild manager/player

I have to tell you, i'm, huge fan of these studies. WoW insider has just published a great story, not something we haven't seen before, but still a good one. So what is all the fuzz? IBM and Seriosity publishded a reaserch saying players who are able to organize and lead guilds can use those same skills to succeed in the workplace.
I'm still hoping that one of the days my future boss will ask me in the interview: "ok son, now i see you wrote you have speciall experience in World of Warcraft. you have been raiding MC, ONY,UBRS,LBRS, SSC,MAGGI, Grull etc. Do you believe this would help you in your next job?". mmm....Gulp....

But seriously, when you think it thru, I don't see the connection between managing Guilds in MMO'S and accuaring managerial skills.
Even so, i got two stories related this subject. the first one was published few days ago. the owner of the blog Acid for Blood will be joining Guild Wars as a community Manager .Now i'm not saying he that got the job because he was in a guild. still he played MMO's before. Did it helped him to get the job? not sure, it probably did.

Another story i wish to share comes from my own personal experience. I'm working as a Hi-tech Reporter and few months ago i was laughing with one worker at microsoft Israel on WoW. he told me an unconformed story that a guy got his job after he told he managed a big guild in WoW. While managing a guild is a hard and Sisyphean duty, still i'm not sure if you could describe it as a "job". whether the case is true or not, I do beleive when you got 10 million people playing a game, it really helps that your job interviewer is also a fan of WoW. somthing to think about.

AoC: it's not the 250 hours that matters, it's the stickiness

Tobold has just posted a new post on a news story I saw yesterday. Funcom believes that the average gamer will reach lv 80 (the lv cap) after 250 hours. Is it a lot or not? I can relate to many aspects Tobold pointed out. Still he lacked to mention one important issue which needs to be addressed. The lack of social and community online support in MMORPG games. That is why I salute to EA Mythic. MMORPG published an unconfirmed story that Mythic has just bought Rupture a social network start-up. Whether this is case or not, I truly believe that MMO's will have to do a lot more to support and offer their gamers with an online features.
Let the guilds establish their own website with their own closed or open forum. The minute a player will join a guild he will automatically join the guild network. As matter of fact, why not just build a MMORPG social network for each MMO. Community Is what gives a player a motivation to continue even though the game content is boring or start to repeat on himself.
So for me the big question is not if u finish the game in a short period of time or not. What does it really matter is the stickiness of each user to the application (the game).

AoC and the Devil’s Advocate Approach

The Launch of AoC is fascinating. In the MMORPG scene, you observe a Tripel AAA titel launch every three - four year or so. Following that Logic, WoW (which was launched at late 2004) was the last one. Nevertheless, 2008 (or probably the beginning of 2009) will be a different year. WaR, Wrath of the Lich King, Aion, Stargate Worlds and The Chronicles of Spellborn - have high ambitions. All of them will be launched in the coming year.

There a lot of growing issues which surrounds AoC. The Game play VS Graphics (As keen and Graev's mentioned in their last post). What is best, to launch a game with an uber graphics or to ease the requirements and hope to attract more players.

The Performance issues is another matter. Another question Is There a Miracle patch, and how come Funcom needs a Miracle Patch few days just before the launch. More questions rose regarding the world. Is it really open? Is it more linear than what the players expected? There was a fierce debate regarding the open beta. Was it wise to use unpatched client beta? everyone knows ( even Funcom) that public beta is a Marketing and PR tool to accumulate new gamers.

I probably didn't touch many issues which were brought by many Advocated players in the last weeks. I found myself surfing the officaisl forums of the game and MMORPG website forums in the last weeks, only to discover that still many many subjects haven't been answered.

An idea pops into your mind after so many unsolved issues, Did Funcom used the Devil's Advocate Method. Devil's advocate is someone who takes a position for the sake of argument. This process can be used to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure.

What that's got to do with Funcom? A lot. The launching of AoC is like any other technological project. I won't describe the workflow of a typical technology project. A lot of reading stuff regarding the matter can be found all over the web. Still, one cannot ask himself what would happen if Funcom had taken the Devil's advocate appraoch. I guess they would avoid a lot of the critisim which was pointed to them by a lot of gamers lately.

Practically you can take each of the common issues I mentioned earlier in my post and use the Devil's advocate approach on it. Imagine to yourself an imaginary board meeting at Funcom offices (four years ago…). “So guys”, says Gaute Godager, the AoC director, “we need to decide. Are we going to make a game for the High end machines and astonishing graphics or make some compremises? Offer mainstream graphics, none which you could describe at the next Generation MMO. Nevertheless, it would be playble by many”. “Listen Gaute”, says Erling Ellingsen (AKA – the devil's advocte). Do you know what is the main characteristic which defines all of the top MMO's? The one's that shine in the sales charts are the one's that not require from the gamers to upgrade their machines and to have an uber Rig?”.

Now only history will tell what would happen to AoC. But I'm pretty sure that if Funcom had used the Deviles advocate method in the game life cycle development – they would be pretty sure avoid a lot of the significant issues that we see now been raised by many critics.