Where do the "this game will die" people get their info?

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

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No one knows the subscription numbers besides Cryptic, and to my knowledge they haven't divulged that to the public.

As far as naysayers, I'm sure a fair amount of them are just raging, others might just be seeing what's wrong with the game in its current form, and how many people is has already driven away.

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So your happy with the direction the game is going? I dont mind balancing. Feel the game has been tweaked into a grind fest to deal with early dev mistakes. but that is just my opinion.

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good.

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post respectfully removed by poster. thank you

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So your happy with the direction the game is going? I dont mind balancing. Feel the game has been tweaked into a grind fest to deal with early dev mistakes. but that is just my opinion.

You're right. That's MERELY your opinion. There's no facts to indicate when the game will die.

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Good thing your not in a hurry to 40 actually. Most of the endgame content either doesnt work right, is plagued with bugs, or is just wtf badly designed.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

OP here. I have absolutely no intention of this thread being an "I like the direction this game is going" vs. "I hate the direction this game is going." Many people will fall on either side of that one.

I just wonder if there are any facts that predictors of the game's demise (or predictors that the game will do just fine) can point to, or are posts like "This game will die in 6 months" simply based on emotion.

The poster who wrote about 5 friends leaving the game is relevant. Anecdotal evidence isn't statistical but it's definitely real.

Just wondering if we're seeing the usual ebb and flow of a new game finding its audience and losing people who were never going to be happy or if we're really in Matrix Online territory.

As much as AoC and WAR are touted as failures, they're both still running, and LOTR has sort of clawed out a little niche as the little game that could.

I don't care if this game is ever huge. Just concerned if people who really think it's a goner have any data to suggest that beyond their opinions.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

There's this guy that sits on the corner of my street, and if you pay him a gold coin he tells you the future. That's where I heard it anyway.

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What do they base their doomsaying on?

I'm going to go with 'Wishful Thinking.'

If they truly believe the game was doomed they wouldn't need to say anything. It would just happen. Really the only point of doomsaying posts is to convince others to leave too. There's always an ulterior motive involved. That motive could be anything from 'get people to play xx instead of CO' to 'Really want to see Cryptic fail badly because I'm still bitter about Hellgate.' ;)

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It's like this with everything in gaming that is some sort of establishment. There are still people that claim that Nintendo is going to go under with every new console generation despite that their worst console (N64) made them more money than their competitor and that the company itself is much older than people realize. MMO's are plagued with the same issue since they are a genre that requires a game to become established if it plans to flourish.

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Two points.

#1. The Odds of the same person making the same mistakes twice is highly unlikely. It is a widely accepted fact that people learn more from their failures than their successes so we're not likely to see another repeat performance of Hellgate London.

#2. The game is in fine shape for an MMO which is coming up to it's first month. It has issues, yes. But not enough of them to take long to fix or severe enough to require the whole game to be torn down and rebuilt. The game will only fail if they cannot provide enough alternative routes through the game so that each play through is relative repeat content free and they need to really get the teaming situation sorted out.

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Some of it is based on past history of other MMORPGS that actually have been canceled. This game is heading down the same path as Tabula Rasa and others. It has the potential,and probably someday will be an awesome game. By that time though, it might be too late to save. Much like TR, CO is suffering from a buggy broken launch, massive character unstability, and not enough grouping activities.

It doesnt take much to get snubbed these days with all the competition. Fallen earth and several other games are on the way which are bound to attract disenchanted fans. Personally, I like this game somewhat and think it can go places, but with all of the unstability and constant knee-jerk nerfing, I am really really tempted to look elsewhere, and i probably will soon if things don't improve, because while this game isn't as horrible as people make it out to be, there is no doubt going to be something *better* out there.

There's a point where if the population dips too low, and the game is too solo friendly, that it will pretty much become a single player MMORPG. You'll no doubt still encounter people in the wild, but there will not be any sense of community to hold players together and the game will die shortly afterwards because people are going to get tired of playing by themselves all the time. Solo play is fun for a while, but seriously these games are all about multiplayer, and without it they become hollow when you run out of alts to solo to 40, and have done the same quests 20000000 times getting there. Friends make this game fun when content runs out, as i'm sure the person who lost 5 or 6 of them will tell you.

This is what occured in Tabula rasa, and having played that game from release to termination, I see the same pattern happening here. Cyptic may not be as evil as NCSoft (/spit i HATE ncsoft so much now that i will dance and set off fireworks if they go out of business), but i have my doubts about the game's future already.

Let's look at this from another angle really quickly... pretend for a minute that you love this game and it's better than slicing bread with a power sword. That's all well and fine. I loved Tabula rasa more than any MMORPG i have played to date. I put a solid year of time into it, building up my character and having a good time. I did not care about the Internet whining one bit, and figured well let them leave if they dont like it - i'm having a blast! Well, one day i logged in to see the announcement that the game is closing... and all that time and energy i put into my character is now essentially wasted. I could have taken that gaming time and put it into WoW (for example) and still have something to show for it.

Occasional complaints are going to happen anywhere. I've been MMO gaming since original everquest 1, and NEVER have i seen a more unhappy player base than i have here. This should concern you, because even if you do like the game, if enough people don't like it, it will not survive and you will be left with only wasted time and effort.

Sadly, i'm afraid as a player there's nothing you can do about it either. When it came to TR, i tried everything I could possibly do to keep the game alive and populated. I ran leveling groups for hours, showed people the tricks to making the game fun and accessible, helped get people geared, wrote user guides on forums, and launched an all out player run campaign to try to repopulate the dieing servers. To some degree i was successful, but ultimately the plug was pulled.


My advice is:

Play the game. Enjoy the game and support the game. Do not get too attached to a game like this though, because there's a very real chance that if you do, you will get burned in the end. It's happened before, and it can happen again. When the ship starts sinking, get off of it, and get off of it FAST.

This is what i base any Doomsday posts I make on. How about you :) ?

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Occasional complaints are going to happen anywhere. I've been MMO gaming since original everquest 1, and NEVER have i seen a more unhappy player base. This should concern you, because even if you do like the game, if enough people don't like it, it will not survive and you will be left with only wasted time and effort.


Ive tried to make this point before and fanboys just never get it. Some people really believe the game revolves around them and them only and everyone else needs to just get lost and leave their world without regards as to what happens when theres noone left to keep the game going.

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So your happy with the direction the game is going? I dont mind balancing. Feel the game has been tweaked into a grind fest to deal with early dev mistakes. but that is just my opinion.

Yes I'm not seeing this "grind" people talk about. But then I started playing in the days when it took the hard core players months or even years to get to the level cap. That isn't true anymore in an MMO. Frankly I'm being very casual about leveling and after 3 weeks I'm level 30 without much effort. Even if I do wind up shot on missions I can't see it being a 'grind' to advance. It is easy and takes little effort in this game.

So yes I'm happy with the direction it is going. It would be a grind if the hard core players needed a week or more to make a level. That is what is meant by a grind.

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Log into the game and flip through the zones add up all the people in the shards i have never seen more than 5 thousand people logged in at one time and those numbers normaly go way down after the free month and months that go on. Then figure how many of those people have lifetime subscriptions and are not generating any revenue anymore. Then look at the public opinion of champions online most reviews have been only luke warm and some have been poor. Also cyptic has yet to prove itself as a developer the last game they made really did not become good till they sold it to someone who knew what they were doing. Next up is all of the competitors coming out soon these are big titles which have brand recognition. Dc universe is probably going to be the one that hurts cryptic the most as it does what cryptic is doing but is coming from a newly remodled soe the people who made mmo gaming what it is today.

Last but certainly not least cryptic is not doing enough to get people to keep playing and tell their friends q out this game. During launch everybody who had this gam should have been telling their freinds how awsome it is but instead it was the opposite. They keeping working on crap nobody wants fixed instead of fixing what the players want fixed. They should be begging people to play right now they need every single person they have. People dont like respecs make them free people want to have awsome defense let them have it at least for now fix it later when you can afford too. As is cyrptic is ****ing everyone off so much they will all quit before the game gets a chance of being good

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I'm going to go with 'Wishful Thinking.'

If they truly believe the game was doomed they wouldn't need to say anything. It would just happen. Really the only point of doomsaying posts is to convince others to leave too. There's always an ulterior motive involved. That motive could be anything from 'get people to play xx instead of CO' to 'Really want to see Cryptic fail badly because I'm still bitter about Hellgate.' ;)

That and apparently some people just can't admit they don't like a game and move on to a different one. So they work to sell the concept that the game is failing to validate their own dislike of the game. ::shrug:: That is my take on most of the doom saying.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Well, im my experience the game will do fine with a small piece of the cake for quite long. But it will not do great, but I think it will survive. The reasons for it not doing great are several, but to mention a few:

1. They are unexperienced and have proven many times that they have failed to counter that by looking at other games mistakes and learn from that.

2. Instead of releasing a finnished game, they made huge changes to it one day before release without testing those changes. Now we have content gaps and tons of broken powers.

3. Their customer support is just rubbish. They still post their server outages in some strange time format none understands, instead of doing the conversion and listing it for all of their customers in a way they understand. It's clear that all players outside of their own country are secondary customers.

4. Downtime always hit a lot of people during their prime time instead of having localized downtime.

5. The whole game and UI feels unresponsive at times. Inventory management is sub par todays standards.

6. Retcon is broken, and their vision of how it should work is not going to fix that either.

7. Basically, even though the game has a lot of dowsides it's a fun game and will only get better. But by then, other better games will be available. Games like **** and the new Starwars will most probably blow this out of the water. And if those fails, we always have Blizz new secret mmo in the works.

8. The manual is a joke. The experience for inexperienced gamers can be very horrible. There's just so many things the game takes for granted, but not all players are uber smart and can read the devs minds to manage to figure out how things work.

9. The global chat name is a good idea on paper, but horrible in practice. There is no option to toggle this off. There is no privacy. There is no secret identity in a super hero game, wtf?

So, it will be around for a long time due to having monopoly on the super hero theme. But it won't be very big, depending on what you compare with.

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I'm going to go with 'Wishful Thinking.'

If they truly believe the game was doomed they wouldn't need to say anything. It would just happen. Really the only point of doomsaying posts is to convince others to leave too. There's always an ulterior motive involved. That motive could be anything from 'get people to play xx instead of CO' to 'Really want to see Cryptic fail badly because I'm still bitter about Hellgate.' ;)

The most probable reason they are doomsaying is becouse "I dont like the game therefor nobody else could possibly like this game! And if they do and even are having fun playing it I am going to have to put a stop to that! Couse there cant be a game out on the market which brings fun to others and not me!"

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Because they want to believe in a fair and just world.

In a fair and just world, failure is punished and mistake have consiquences. In a fair and just world, games like this would not be released before they are finished because if they weren't finished, then nobody would buy them. Likewise, in a fair and just world, a game that's broken by its developers through shortsidedness and neglect would not survive past its first month.


But the world is not fair and just. As long as the market continues to support the sale of crap then crap will continue to thrive.

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This game will absolutely not last a year..

All of you know why too. You just logged off of it to post here. .Its called World of ********. And it has an expansion coming out next year and you all know damn well you'd amputate your legs, sell a kidney and eat your children to keep laying it. It wouldnt matter how amazing this game was . ..it could give you 24/7 orgasms and even that would not pull people away from wow. You could be promised eternal bliss in heaven. .. . . ..or full tier 9. ..and you'd pick tier 9. .. Blizzard could make a quest that would grant the most uber rewards ever possible ..all you have to do is kill yourself IRL . .and you'd probably do it.. .12 million people. .many of them divorced, evicted, even in jail due to that game. ... ..and you expect this game to live??? lol no

This is the customer base that C.O. has to contend with. ..and they have no prayer. ..

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good.

I know how that feels I am the only person left playing out of a forum group I have been a part of since Ruins of Kunark came out for EQ1. This group has tried just bout every MMO to date, and at least a few people have played all MMOs since EQ to current date.
This game was labelled as AoC 2.0 not too long after release, and when "creating challenge" was translated from dev speak to english meaning "creating boredom, and monotony" most of everyone dropped out.
After the dev chat a peaked a few with interest only to surely completely turn away for good by the latest nerf fest on the test patch.

At this point I have run out of ways to defend the game. What was action packed combat is now perma block boredom. What was the "feeling of playing a superhero" is now at best insert class from other MMO + travel powers. What once seemed casual turned out to be a game where there is the largest gap in power between researched min/maxer vs a truly casual player.
This game feels like you get the most chances possible to mess up your character while trying to make a concept, that if you are lucky will end up the as viable as whatever class your character will end up emulating in the tired quest to be viable.
The most basic of all MMO principles risk VS reward is not even close to feeling balanced. By my last guess while rounding very much in favor of the dev in this risk vs reward evaluation
Per lvl 39 Henchman kill you get .0347368421% of level 39 exp need to get to 40 that is almost 2.9k kills... I guess that is why there are so many 5k kill perks.
Terrible agro system... the list just goes on too long to matter anymore.

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...
It doesnt take much to get snubbed these days with all the competition. Fallen earth and several other games are on the way which are bound to attract disenchanted fans. Personally, I like this game somewhat and think it can go places, but with all of the unstability and constant knee-jerk nerfing, I am really really tempted to look elsewhere, and i probably will soon if things don't improve, because while this game isn't as horrible as people make it out to be, there is no doubt going to be something *better* out there.

There's a point where if the population dips too low, and the game is too solo friendly, that it will pretty much become a single player MMORPG. You'll no doubt still encounter people in the wild, but there will not be any sense of community to hold players together and the game will die shortly afterwards because people are going to get tired of playing by themselves all the time. Solo play is fun for a while, but seriously these games are all about multiplayer, and without it they become hollow when you run out of alts to solo to 40, and have done the same quests 20000000 times getting there. Friends make this game fun when content runs out, as i'm sure the person who lost 5 or 6 of them will tell you.

This is what occured in Tabula rasa, and having played that game from release to termination, I see the same pattern happening here. ...

Let's look at this from another angle really quickly... pretend for a minute that you love this game and it's better than slicing bread with a power sword. That's all well and fine. I loved Tabula rasa more than any MMORPG i have played to date. I put a solid year of time into it, building up my character and having a good time. I did not care about the Internet whining one bit, and figured well let them leave if they dont like it - i'm having a blast! Well, one day i logged in to see the announcement that the game is closing... and all that time and energy i put into my character is now essentially wasted. I could have taken that gaming time and put it into WoW (for example) and still have something to show for it.

Occasional complaints are going to happen anywhere. I've been MMO gaming since original everquest 1, and NEVER have i seen a more unhappy player base than i have here. This should concern you, because even if you do like the game, if enough people don't like it, it will not survive and you will be left with only wasted time and effort.
...

...

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I think this post bears repeating. People who are enjoying this game and truly want to see it survive and succeed need to start paying at least some heed to the complaints and quit telling people to 'just leave'. If that truly happened; if people just left, then you will see a closure of the game.

That said, nobody has the real numbers so nobody can say whether the game is doing well or poorly. Neither side can back up any of their claims with any sort of metrics. The only thing that people can use in their attempts to gauge where the game is going is past experience, and really, after the TR and HG:L closure as well as the server consolidations of WAR and other MMOs in recent years, it goes to show that MMOs, regardless of what sort of name is backing it, are all vulnerable.

Enjoy the game. Try to convince others to give the game a chance instead of telling them to walk off a cliff. Work to improve the game's community and be an advocate for it, but not in a way that drives away players. That's key. There are plenty of supports of the game, but their behavior to the people who have complaints (which are mostly valid) will only serve to drive this game into the ground. CO does not exist in an MMO vacuum. There are already good MMOs that exist, and there are plenty more coming out this year and next year; all of which will be competing for the attention of the MMO playerbase and Cryptic/Atari need to be proactive about not only the quality of their game, but their community in order to succeed.

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They pull them from a certain body part basically.

Really the people saying these things are those people that bounce from MMO to MMO and don't expect any of them to last because they aren't WoW. I personally feel that these people just don't like MMOs in general and instead of accepting the fact that a MMO is a ever changing game, they become bitter and start doomsaying.

Essentially, just ignore them.

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He's not wrong. The only reason I'm playing Champions is because my guild in WoW is stalling out and I've hit that 'bored now' phase that I hit every six or eight months.

I don't expect to stick with this game. In fact, after the way the game has been handled since launch, I don't expect to stick with it past the 30-day trial. Even though I'm bored with it now, I'll go back to WoW. If not soon, than certainly when the next content patch comes around. And I'll be waiting in line for the midnight release of Cataclysm next year, no doubt.

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He's not wrong. The only reason I'm playing Champions is because my guild in WoW is stalling out and I've hit that 'bored now' phase that I hit every six or eight months.

I don't expect to stick with this game. In fact, after the way the game has been handled since launch, I don't expect to stick with it past the 30-day trial. Even though I'm bored with it now, I'll go back to WoW. If not soon, than certainly when the next content patch comes around. And I'll be waiting in line for the midnight release of Cataclysm next year, no doubt.

And there you have it.

This is 9/10 subscribers right now.

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And there you have it.

This is 9/10 subscribers right now.

So one agreeing reply equals 9/10 subscribers? I hope you don't do statistics professionally. ;)

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

See Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

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And there you have it.

This is 9/10 subscribers right now.

Hyperbole is hyperbole.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

It's just a stupid 4-chan raid. Ignore it.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

They're basing their doomsaying on the same thing that the doomsayers in the WoW forums base theirs on: Absolutely nothing. A change was made that they don't like, and they're so arrogant to believe that anything they don't like will kill the game.

As for HGL, it's failure came from putting trust in the wrong investor. HGL didn't actually fail: Flagship did. HGL is still running and fairly well in Korea after Hanbit "legally stole" it from them.

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good.

just canceled two accounts myself an hour ago till i see where they are going with their patches. note first that i do not pvp in this game and have no care to.
most powers arent worth taking anymore IMHO for pve, and i dont like being narrowed into a path of specifics to have a decent super hero who can kill more than henchmen or having to beg for team help for just a super villan. i made a toon that CAN, but i was forced to follow certain powers to do so. my others that i just made for the fun of making cant.
want an example?

try making an archery only guy, then do sinister in desert by yourself with it at the same level. no dont take regen. take quarry and such. i did. died three times badly to the girl at the end and at best got her downt o half.
huge difference than lets say an ice or electric based character.
made an electrical one and not only ate sinister quest for breakfast but did every other quest as well even Fight Club two levels under its suggested requirement by myself.
so whats next? just nerf electrical into the ground?

i surrender and will go play something else for now.
doing my last peruse of the forums before i go to bed. i recently saw someone post to someone else 'dont let the door hit you in the arse' to someone else who made some suggestions.. lovely stuff.
the most common excuse ive heard has been 'every mmo goes through this' and 'it needed balancing'.
when i see my pet dismiss bar get a 15 second timer added to it... my particle mine being nerfed as if it was some sort of minimine... some of my other powers take more energy to use.. others having less damage. or im forced to group my cooly designed 'super' hero to kill some unepic villan. yea.. well whatever. cya when star trek comes around.

im not going to say this game will fail. its just gotten unfun for me.

on a good note.
my eve account will get more attention this month. :)

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And there you have it.

This is 9/10 subscribers right now.

That was was this thread was about originaly. Where did you get that statistic? Um let me take a guess. You made it up, didnt you?

And so what if it was true? Why does everyone think that if an mmo arent showing the same numbers as WOW it is failing? Im sure that there will be lots of people leaving this game. Just as belive that will be others that take their place.

And compairing it with TR are in my mind a bit too early. To me what made that game go under (besids NCsoft jumping the big red exterminate button to early) was that they made lots of promises of changes and improvments that never happend.

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That was was this thread was about originaly. Where did you get that statistic? Um let me take a guess. You made it up, didnt you?

And so what if it was true? Why does everyone think that if an mmo arent showing the same numbers as WOW it is failing? Im sure that there will be lots of people leaving this game. Just as belive that will be others that take their place.

And compairing it with TR are in my mind a bit too early. To me what made that game go under (besids NCsoft jumping the big red exterminate button to early) was that they made lots of promises of changes and improvments that never happend.

I liked TR. =(

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This game will absolutely not last a year..

All of you know why too. You just logged off of it to post here. .Its called World of ********. And it has an expansion coming out next year and you all know damn well you'd amputate your legs, sell a kidney and eat your children to keep laying it. It wouldnt matter how amazing this game was . ..it could give you 24/7 orgasms and even that would not pull people away from wow. You could be promised eternal bliss in heaven. .. . . ..or full tier 9. ..and you'd pick tier 9. .. Blizzard could make a quest that would grant the most uber rewards ever possible ..all you have to do is kill yourself IRL . .and you'd probably do it.. .12 million people. .many of them divorced, evicted, even in jail due to that game. ... ..and you expect this game to live??? lol no

This is the customer base that C.O. has to contend with. ..and they have no prayer. ..

Um...no. I don't like WoW and never have. I've seen some good posts on here but I don't agree with this one. Haven't seen too many people on the forums who like WoW either. IT seems there are way more ex CoHers than WoWers here.

I guess the consensus opinion and one I can agree with is that there are a fair number of unhappy players here and it seems like there are more than normal for an online game at release. Many won't be coming back after a month.

But without any numbers we don't know whether they're able to keep pace with what they need to be profitable or not, so we will just have to wait and see. Thanks for the info. I guess the hard facts I wondered about don't exist.

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******** can die i a fire.
started playing at day one before it was 'popular'.
quit playing it at their first expansion when my hard earned raid gear and epic bow was replaced with 5 minute quests.

far as im concerned anyone buying the next expansion has amputated their head.

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See Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

Not sure if you ment that as look they are still around or look these are going down and so will CO.

But they are still around. I might not have heared every game rumor out there but as far as I know there arent any real talk about these two games shuting down. AoC have even announced their first expantion so it doesnt really look like its going down hill for them.

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good.

People tend to be friends with those who share similar tastes, points of view, and opinions. It should come as no surprise when a group of friends all make the same decision regarding a particular game.

I've heard statements like yours made in every MMO, WoW included. "Me and all my friends" quitting doesn't mean the game is doomed.

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I liked TR. =(

I did too mate, I did too.:(

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Here's the truth. There is a vocal minority, and they have a desire to feel self-important and as usual, beleive they speak for everyone. Anyone that disagrees with them, no matter what about they are disagreeing with, is instantly labelled a fanboi. Despite the fact these individuals do not have a single shred of evidence to back up their facts at all. And it's still, always, the same people posting these people are leaving with no proof to back it up.

Ironically, these are the same people that post this same drivel on other game forums, paying a monthly fee, just so thy can post their vitriol and bile.

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I counted.


During the Headstart Weekend, Primetime 8PMish EST there were 4,231 people in Candaian Crisis Instances.
There were BUNCHES of maxed out instances.

Then the 9/1 patch came out... and some people left... then more nerfs came... and more people left... now we have on the horizon more nerfing, And more people will leave.

That is where they get the doom from, wether or not it is warrented only time will tell.

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Here's the truth. There is a vocal minority, and they have a desire to feel self-important and as usual, beleive they speak for everyone. Anyone that disagrees with them, no matter what about they are disagreeing with, is instantly labelled a fanboi. Despite the fact these individuals do not have a single shred of evidence to back up their facts at all. And it's still, always, the same people posting these people are leaving with no proof to back it up.

Ironically, these are the same people that post this same drivel on other game forums, paying a monthly fee, just so thy can post their vitriol and bile.

personally, while not speaking for others perhaps, *i* did give my proof.

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im sure some folks have leveled and are in other places since then too.

I counted.


During the Headstart Weekend, Primetime 8PMish EST there were 4,231 people in Candaian Crisis Instances.
There were BUNCHES of maxed out instances.

Then the 9/1 patch came out... and some people left... then more nerfs came... and more people left... now we have on the horizon more nerfing, And more people will leave.

That is where they get the doom from, wether or not it is warrented only time will tell.

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im sure some folks have leveled and are in other places since then too.

Shh, don't try to use logic.

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Here's the truth. There is a vocal minority, and they have a desire to feel self-important and as usual, beleive they speak for everyone. Anyone that disagrees with them, no matter what about they are disagreeing with, is instantly labelled a fanboi. Despite the fact these individuals do not have a single shred of evidence to back up their facts at all. And it's still, always, the same people posting these people are leaving with no proof to back it up.

This.

Just ignore them. They were all over the AoC forums as well and despite a bad release that game is getting better than ever. CO had a good release, and the devs seem to be very good at what they are doing, so I think this game will definately be one of the best MMOs in a few months when they have added some more content.

Added: Some people seem to be very happy when things fail. I don't know why, and it can't be very fun for them, but that's just the way things are.

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I counted.


During the Headstart Weekend, Primetime 8PMish EST there were 4,231 people in Candaian Crisis Instances.
There were BUNCHES of maxed out instances.

Then the 9/1 patch came out... and some people left... then more nerfs came... and more people left... now we have on the horizon more nerfing, And more people will leave.

That is where they get the doom from, wether or not it is warrented only time will tell.

Fewer people in the Canadian Crisis couldn't possibly be because people had leveled out of it, of course.... :rolleyes:

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Lots of people are quitting/cancelling their subs.
That is where people get the doom.

And people are joining. Hey, look! It's going like a normal MMO!

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Lots of people are quitting/cancelling their subs.
That is where people get the doom.

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Log into the game and flip through the zones add up all the people in the shards i have never seen more than 5 thousand people logged in at one time and those numbers normaly go way down after the free month and months that go on. Then figure how many of those people have lifetime subscriptions and are not generating any revenue anymore. Then look at the public opinion of champions online most reviews have been only luke warm and some have been poor. Also cyptic has yet to prove itself as a developer the last game they made really did not become good till they sold it to someone who knew what they were doing. Next up is all of the competitors coming out soon these are big titles which have brand recognition. Dc universe is probably going to be the one that hurts cryptic the most as it does what cryptic is doing but is coming from a newly remodled soe the people who made mmo gaming what it is today.

Last but certainly not least cryptic is not doing enough to get people to keep playing and tell their friends q out this game. During launch everybody who had this gam should have been telling their freinds how awsome it is but instead it was the opposite. They keeping working on crap nobody wants fixed instead of fixing what the players want fixed. They should be begging people to play right now they need every single person they have. People dont like respecs make them free people want to have awsome defense let them have it at least for now fix it later when you can afford too. As is cyrptic is ****ing everyone off so much they will all quit before the game gets a chance of being good

Good thing you have done a check at all the numbers, across all of the zones, 24/7. Or how else would you know how many are online at any given time. In CoH, there was a way to remain hidden from searches, I wonder, has that not been implemented for this game? If so, then it would be much harder for a player to get the actual numbers at glance.

Even then, there are mission instances which would skew any shard numbers searches.

How many times such reasoning was used on CoH but was constantly refuted? I could've become a billionaire, at least, by now if everytime 'number of people online' excuse for doomsaying was mentioned that I'd get a dime.

CO won't die whether it's because it's less of a household name or for the fact doesn't have the backing of SOE/DC Entertainment/Disney. Cryptic is just as ready for CO to be a niche game or better, like CoH before it.

Cryptic/Atari already know how popular DC Entertainment is, after all, the CO team reads up on comics from across the board. If done right, DCUO could rake in big bucks and numbers, but then again, the bigger they are the harder they fall. If hype/expectations fall short of potential players for DCUO, you can bet that they're going to get an ear full of howls of doom. And you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to have their own problems at launch.

Anyways, considering the amount of money saved by lifetime subscribers (and what are the exact numbers? Do you know?), there's going to be more money freed up to use microtransactions as time goes on. There's also a number of people who took up the 6th months subscription offer. And the people who bought the regular subscription plans, what about them? Did you factor them in as well?

SOE, remodelled, you say? Sorry, but that doesn't evoke confidence in the product just because the players have changed. Until they come out with a real solid game under the new management, such words ring hollow. SWG (and other games) memories still run deep. Devs were called Nerfherders, whether it was called for or not.

There's plenty of changes coming along, anyways. And no, it's not about what people don't care about. Just as CoH is evolving, so is CO. Considering how new it is, there's going to be a lot of changes yet. And it would be the height of foolishness to believe that DCUO will come out on the shelves without it's own kinks and gremlins.

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i just want to say i've been playing sense closed beta the whole rebalancing is anoying but it still didn't kill it for me. And as far as will it be around question i think it will stick around look at matrix online that game stuck around for 5 years. And i played that game for few months and IMO it was much worse than TR and some other games. I hope this game is around but only time will tell. And you can't judge it yet it hasn't been out for even a month yet.

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If Cryptic has a business plan that is viable with a playerbase of around 100k subscribers, CO will probably 'make it' as a niche market game, in the way AoC and WAR and LOTR are still 'making it'... but it won't be wildly successful. Where do I get my information? Cryptic has told us that they only really expect about that much, and it looks like 100k subscribers is a realistic goal for them to accomplish... but that may not actually cover their overhead. Only time will tell.

As to the 'Bill Roper won't make the same mistake twice' comment, well, that's just as much wishful thinking as those saying the game won't last a year. I consider myself a fairly open-minded gamer, and I picked up Champions so I could play with some RL friends of mine... but the fact is, as soon as I found out Bill was in charge of things my faith in this game was severely shaken. That isn't any kind of shot at Bill Roper, but I can't get the word 'flagshipped' out of my head after being so sorely burned in HG:L, either.

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I liked TR. =(

Oh so did I. I've been fondly remembering some of the areas lately and wishing I could play them again. :p

Anyway TR didn't actually fail, or rather it only failed in that it wasn't a WoW killer. NCSoft sacrificed TR to get a huge tax break for 2008 and balance out the economy crashing that fall.

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I don't think the game is doomed, but I am a little bit concerned at this point.

My personal reason for concern is the number of people I play with who have completely dropped the game.

Sure, a certain number are always going to play for a bit and then decide that it isn't exactly what they were looking for. In this case, the quantity loosing interest before the first month has passed is alarmingly high compared to anything I have experienced in the past. The reasons vary, some are dissatisfied with the available content, a number are upset about difficult (though I've felt the game to be pretty easy myself - having reached level 28 thus far), and quite a few have expressed apathy as a result of their powers being drastically changed. Even I'm getting a little weary of the constant changes that completely rewrite how characters function and I'm generally forgiving having been used to balancing in other games (in fact I expect balancing, but some of these changes feel like they never even made it past a basic quality control pass before being implemented).

So while none of these things alone are 'kill factors', collectively they seem to be setting up to take a heavy toll on the population of active subscribers (which translates to less income, less development, and possibly eventual stagnation).

I'm not a negative person, I think the game has great potential and some genuine appeal - but it'd be a lie to say that I'm not a bit apprehensive about whats going to happen in the next month or so. Perhaps the coming content will dispell the pall of all the changes, nerfs, problems and what have you that have created the cloud of gloom .

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This game will absolutely not last a year..

All of you know why too. You just logged off of it to post here. .Its called World of ********. And it has an expansion coming out next year and you all know damn well you'd amputate your legs, sell a kidney and eat your children to keep laying it. It wouldnt matter how amazing this game was . ..it could give you 24/7 orgasms and even that would not pull people away from wow. You could be promised eternal bliss in heaven. .. . . ..or full tier 9. ..and you'd pick tier 9. .. Blizzard could make a quest that would grant the most uber rewards ever possible ..all you have to do is kill yourself IRL . .and you'd probably do it.. .12 million people. .many of them divorced, evicted, even in jail due to that game. ... ..and you expect this game to live??? lol no

This is the customer base that C.O. has to contend with. ..and they have no prayer. ..

I good lord, not everyone plays WoW. I've played it before and couldn't stand it. It's like Fisher Price's My First MMO. Cartoonish graphics, boring as hell go-make-dinner-while-you-fight combat, the same old fantasy story lines and quests that a million other MMOs do too, and better.

The only reasons so many people play WoW are:
1. It's easy. If you want easy mode combat and being able to grind to level cap in a few days, look no further.
2. Marketing. I hated WoW when I tried it yet even I laughed at Mr. T and William Shatner's WoW commercials. The one thing I'll give WoW props on is their marketing. It's the best marketed MMO out there. How many others have TV commercials?
3. It'll run amazingly well on your old Commodore 64. Well, maybe an exaggeration, but you get my point. Not everyone has a top of the line PC, and chances are if your PC is less then ten years old, it will probably run WoW just fine.
4. For a lot of people it was their first MMO, for the above mentioned reasons, and so they feel a special attatchment to it and constantly compare every new MMO out there to it. These people I tend to refer to as WoW kiddies since I've been playing MMOs since long before WoW came out.

Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately, depending on your point of view), mainly due to reason number 4 the MMO player base, which used to be fairly small and relatively mature is now huge and flooded with people who only started playing MMOs with WoW and now expect every new MMO to come out to be another WoW. I've got news for you, UO, EQ, and **** all came out loooong before WoW did and all are still going.

/end WoW rant and cue the WoW fanbois to tell me how wrong I am

To the OP: I've been through plenty of MMO launches (EQ2, CoH, SWG, LotRO, DDO, WAR, even WoW and I'm sure I'm missing a few) and it's ALWAYS the same- every... single... time, yes even with WoW. The doom sayers come on and tell us all how it'll never last and it always does with very few exceptions (Shadowbane, Earth and Beyond, Tabula Rasa, Matrix Online, probably a few others and no I don't count Hellgate London, that wasn't exactly an MMO).

In the end it's simple: if you like the game, keep playing; if you don't, go find something you do like, or even *gasp* go outside or something.

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On that point, Everquest use to actually market, long ago, but it didn't last long. WoW marketting didn't start up till just before the Burning Crusade hit. Unlike the other MMOs, WoW is jsut a household name now, which gives it a supreme advantage.

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Log into the game and flip through the zones add up all the people in the shards i have never seen more than 5 thousand people logged in at one time


By the way, I just counted too. It's 3:45AM CST. By far the slowest time. MC alone has 33 instances, each with 40-100 people in them. Even if we average that out, it's more than 1500 people in MC alone. Then there's Canada, Desert, the crisis versions, tutorial, Monster Island, Lemuria, mission instances, and PvP instances.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say there's more than 5k people on at this moment.

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On that point, Everquest use to actually market, long ago, but it didn't last long. WoW marketting didn't start up till just before the Burning Crusade hit. Unlike the other MMOs, WoW is jsut a household name now, which gives it a supreme advantage.

WoW marketed since before it launched. It just started marketing a -LOT- more heavily from BC on.

But, they never really -needed- to market. Blizzard already had such a rabid following that record numbers were a sure thing.

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Average gametime for a not WoW game at peak time is roughly 15k to 25k concurrent users on at once.

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You're right. That's MERELY your opinion. There's no facts to indicate when the game will die.
the lack of service, lag of payment systems and the mistake on making this US-only on many ways is already an indication it's gonna die.

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By the way, I just counted too. It's 3:45AM CST. By far the slowest time. MC alone has 33 instances, each with 40-100 people in them. Even if we average that out, it's more than 1500 people in MC alone. Then there's Canada, Desert, the crisis versions, tutorial, Monster Island, Lemuria, mission instances, and PvP instances.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say there's more than 5k people on at this moment.

Shhhh... Don't spoil his imaginary world were the game is crashing and burning. The rest of us will just have fun and continue along enjoying the game.

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Average gametime for a not WoW game at peak time is roughly 15k to 25k concurrent users on at once.

Given what I see at this moment, I don't doubt that CO sees in that range at peak times. I've seen 60+ instances of MC all at 75-100 people in each... Again, that's just one zone...

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the lack of service, lag of payment systems and the mistake on making this US-only on many ways is already an indication it's gonna die.

Service is about what I expect out of most MMOs. Could definitely be better, but, unfortunately, par for the course in MMOs is pretty slow. Other than response times, no complaints.

What lag of payment systems?

US-only? Tell that to the European, Canadian, and Aussie players. The last group having posted a rant about the downtime schedule just over the past couple days... The first having complained loudly about regional retailers having a delay on delivering the product and missing their grace period, which was extended due to the complaints being brought to Cryptic's attention...

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Oh, I know, the 15k to 25k is also in reference to games with a 200k+ subscription base to. EVE, for instance, has 250k subscriptions, and averages about 15k to 20k at peak times, with recording the highest concurrent users online for a single server earlier this year due to the whole Goon/BoB affair that went on, peaking at a little over 50k. The event itself caused CCP to actually get newer servers, I believe the statement was.

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I good lord, not everyone plays WoW. I've played it before and couldn't stand it. It's like Fisher Price's My First MMO. Cartoonish graphics, boring as hell go-make-dinner-while-you-fight combat, the same old fantasy story lines and quests that a million other MMOs do too, and better.


Wait, are you sure you're not talking about CO?


In regards to the OP, they obviously aren't basing their determinations on real data. The thing is, hyperbole plays a lot better on the forums then reasoned critisism. If one was to say "I feel that ChO will be a modest but lackluster sucess" then that person's thread would not last nearly as long as the countless "I quit" or "this game is gonna fold in a month" threads.

The thing is, both the fanboys and the haters can claim they're right. Subs will almost definitely fall in the coming months. This is pretty much to be expected except with truly groundbreaking games like EQ, WoW, and EVE. (And yes, no matter how much you hate these games, they were definitely groundbreaking in their time.) The simple fact is that people play a game for a while, and then decide that they don't like it, or they get bored. This sort of thing is almost universally expected in the non subscription game world. How many people still play Half Life? Some, but not many, and that game was one of the very best.

On the other hand, the game will probably not go offline any time in the immediate future. As has been pointed out, even real stinkers like Horizons, TMO and Shadowbane lasted for years. Horizons is still around as far as I know.

I personally do not foresee ChO being especially successful. I doubt the devs will pull the plug, but I don't think it will ever generate the same numbers as CoX. The game simply doesn't have enough content and replayability. I also don't think the content patch in October will help much; unless they add a couple of zones the size of Monster Island and raise the level cap it will not be enough. The character development system is too shallow for there to be any meaningful progression past the cap, and additional 5 person instances will not be dynamic enough to keep people entertained past a couple of runs.

The funny thing is, a few weeks ago it used to be blasphemy to compare this game to AoC. Now I think achieving AoC's level of success is optimistic at best.

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By the way, I just counted too. It's 3:45AM CST. By far the slowest time. MC alone has 33 instances, each with 40-100 people in them. Even if we average that out, it's more than 1500 people in MC alone. Then there's Canada, Desert, the crisis versions, tutorial, Monster Island, Lemuria, mission instances, and PvP instances.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say there's more than 5k people on at this moment.

Go ahead and check the other zones you are wrong everybody is in mc because there is nothing else for them to do id be willing to bet lemuria has less than 100 people and monster island less than 200 with canada and the desert being around 600 Even if your right and twice the amount of people are on than i guess congrats they have enough peeps to half fill one wow realm.

I am not comparing how i think co is going to do compared to wow. Wow is a anomaly and its not a game for everyone. I am comparing it to the launch of aoc warhammer lotro vanguard champions online is not keeping up with those games. why would i start to compare them to wow if they cant even keep up with other less than steller games. The only launch i think that may have been worse was aoc and tr and in lotro defense i think its doing ok as is warhammer.

I intend to call customer support on monday and beg for my 200 back as do two of my friends that is the problem we felt the game was good enough to pay 200 for and play for a long time but now it is a diffrent game and i want my money back so i can purchase a diffrent game i know that i am not the only one.

And what i ment about soe restructure was not about there games soe was previously not part of sonys game division it was lumped in eith the movie part. The restructuring within sony and recent push for online gaming on the console has made sony move soe to their game division and get them in gear. I expect pretty cool things from them dc universe and the agency being my most anticipated but i always hope for eq3 or eqoa2

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You do realize that a game doesn't need 12 million subscribers to be commercially successful, right? And "I don't like the game" is not a sufficient reason for it to die, either. From what I can see, it's fairly populated at the moment. Whether or not it will end up having a stable population is waaaay too early to tell. People yelled "Age of Conan is soo bad, it will die, die die" all over its forum, too. Guess what - the game is still there.

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You do realize that a game doesn't need 12 million subscribers to be commercially successful, right? And "I don't like the game" is not a sufficient reason for it to die, either. From what I can see, it's fairly populated at the moment. Whether or not it will end up having a stable population is waaaay too early to tell. People yelled "Age of Conan is soo bad, it will die, die die" all over its forum, too. Guess what - the game is still there.

Aoc is barely there if at all there is little new content being made the popularion is not growing. The game does not have to be closed doen to be considered dead its dead when only the fanboys are left high fiveing each other and calling everyone with a complaint about the game stupid or wrong. Again you do not have to compare this game to wow to see what is going to happen it is not doing as well as other games that are considered dead did at their launch. So if it is doing as bad as other dead games this one seems like it willfollow the same path

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There are few MMOs that have actually died because they didn't have enough subscribers. "Enough subscribers" differ from game to game, though. CO's goals are pretty modest, and from what I can gather it's gone ways past Cryptic/Atari's original expectations. The game's doing very well according to the numbers we can actually see.

We'll see in a couple of months how many subs the game can retain, and how fast Cryptic can come up with good new content and fixes the game needs.

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Aoc is barely there if at all there is little new content being made the popularion is not growing. The game does not have to be closed doen to be considered dead its dead when only the fanboys are left high fiveing each other and calling everyone with a complaint about the game stupid or wrong. Again you do not have to compare this game to wow to see what is going to happen it is not doing as well as other games that are considered dead did at their launch. So if it is doing as bad as other dead games this one seems like it willfollow the same path

Actually replace fanbois with haters and you ahve the actual people decalring something dead. The real facts to that hyperbolic statement.

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I believe that when a person writes a doomsday post it may be a seemingly overdramatic way of communicating that they themselves are dissatisfied with the way the game is headed. I know the preceding statement is an obvious conclusion. However, the obvious can sometimes be overlooked. Unless such doomsday posters have an intimate level of access to all the facts, they are opinions. The posts cannot be based on anything other than opinion when facts are absent. Different people have different ways to communicate their opinions. The opinions are based on different levels of emotional investment in the game and in M.M.O.s generally. While I think it is unhealthy to be immensely emotionally invested, it is important for people to be able to have a voice. Regardless of how the post comes across, one can infer that the writer is concerned that the game will not do well.

It is up to the readers to use or discard what the writer has to say. The reader may be a developer whose lively hood or their professional reputation depends on the success of the game. The reader could be a customer (player) who is reading the forums for fun or for information. We will view what the poster has to communicate and use it the way we see fit.

I can only hope that Cryptic will be able to use our input to make adjustments to the game that will satisfy as many players as possible. Currently my opinion is that it is too early to tell whether the game will fail. I am willing to give Cryptic a chance. I hope that others are willing to do so as well. If not I can find something else to do. Only time will tell. ;)

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Actually replace fanbois with haters and you ahve the actual people decalring something dead. The real facts to that hyperbolic statement.

Im not even sure what your trying to say there the game is dead when only the haters are left high fiving each other. Why would the haters be playing? The only way that statement makes sense to me is the game is dead when only the haters are left on the forums and hats pretty much what we have here. Every post about the game is negative.

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Im not even sure what your trying to say there the game is dead when only the haters are left high fiving each other. Why would the haters be playing? The only way that statement makes sense to me is the game is dead when only the haters are left on the forums and hats pretty much what we have here. Every post about the game is negative.

Considering haters are the ones constantly declaring game X is dead everywhere they post, deespite evidence to teh contrary. And no, every post in here isn' negative, you just have the same group of people creating similar threads all over the forum. Hell, if we were to use that evidence as your facts, then WoW is fuggin doomed then. The forums don't even represent 10% of the player base, statsitically proven, for an MMO.

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Considering haters are the ones constantly declaring game X is dead everywhere they post, deespite evidence to teh contrary. And no, every post in here isn' negative, you just have the same group of people creating similar threads all over the forum. Hell, if we were to use that evidence as your facts, then WoW is fuggin doomed then. The forums don't even represent 10% of the player base, statsitically proven, for an MMO.

That is true wow forums do have about the same amount of qq as here. I could be completely wrong i a
just one person and may be part of a vocal minority. But i know that i want my lifetime subscription money back im not trying to say that as a threat or that anyone should care i only say it to illistrate the problem. People that were very happy are now very mad qnd want to play something else. Co is not a game worthy of a subscription right now maybe in the future.

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Aoc is barely there if at all there is little new content being made the popularion is not growing. The game does not have to be closed doen to be considered dead its dead when only the fanboys are left high fiveing each other and calling everyone with a complaint about the game stupid or wrong. Again you do not have to compare this game to wow to see what is going to happen it is not doing as well as other games that are considered dead did at their launch. So if it is doing as bad as other dead games this one seems like it willfollow the same path

And you clearly are one of the butthurt haters towards AoC that possibly felt Funcom ruined your life. The type of person that will go around saying "I will never buy another Funcom game again!", because one game from the company didn't live up to your expectations. Sorry to say, but AoC is hardly dead - it's not WoW-populated obviously (more or less no game is), but it's not dead either. I guess that makes me a high-fiving fanboy though (even though I am not going to say there aren't shortcomings/issues with the game - like with any other game on the market).

Most MMO's tend to stay alive - and the people that play it usually enjoys it (or enjoy complaining and voicing their opinion since they are the center of the internet universe). There are a few of these games that has 'died' too, but most has more than (or just) enough revenue to keep alive.

Although it might not seem like it with this post, I do respect anyones opinion about loving/hating a game - but I wish people could respect the other side of their own view and just leave their comments to themselves unless they plan on being around and wanting to constructively provide feedback on how to fix what they see as issues. This comment is not directed at anyone specific: YOU are not the center of the universe. YOU are not special. What YOU think about a game I enjoy, does not make me feel differently about it. This is the internet, everyone's a nobody hiding behind usernames and avatars.

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And you clearly are one of the butthurt haters towards AoC that possibly felt Funcom ruined your life. The type of person that will go around saying "I will never buy another Funcom game again!", because one game from the company didn't live up to your expectations. Sorry to say, but AoC is hardly dead - it's not WoW-populated obviously (more or less no game is), but it's not dead either. I guess that makes me a high-fiving fanboy though (even though I am not going to say there aren't shortcomings/issues with the game - like with any other game on the market).

Most MMO's tend to stay alive - and the people that play it usually enjoys it (or enjoy complaining and voicing their opinion since they are the center of the internet universe). There are a few of these games that has 'died' too, but most has more than (or just) enough revenue to keep alive.

Although it might not seem like it with this post, I do respect anyones opinion about loving/hating a game - but I wish people could respect the other side of their own view and just leave their comments to themselves unless they plan on being around and wanting to constructively provide feedback on how to fix what they see as issues. This comment is not directed at anyone specific: YOU are not the center of the universe. YOU are not special. What YOU think about a game I enjoy, does not make me feel differently about it. This is the internet, everyone's a nobody hiding behind usernames and avatars.


I kind lold im not trying to be rude but yeah assuming i am a butthurt customer is a little strong. I have no harsh feeling i actually just tried it again during the free week not to long ago it has come a long way i think im just too far out of tje loop but i still feel like i got my moneys worth out of that game

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Service is about what I expect out of most MMOs. Could definitely be better, but, unfortunately, par for the course in MMOs is pretty slow. Other than response times, no complaints.
if they have at least half the service NCsoft has, then they would be 50% better then currently

What lag of payment systems?
where is click&buy?
i only see credit card crap, nothing international.

US-only? Tell that to the European, Canadian, and Aussie players. The last group having posted a rant about the downtime schedule just over the past couple days... The first having complained loudly about regional retailers having a delay on delivering the product and missing their grace period, which was extended due to the complaints being brought to Cryptic's attention...

i am from europe, i can see trough the eyes of a European so i know how it is.
also, i was not talking about down times, i was talking about how they handle the game.
just go to your nearby record shop, champions online is right there in the shop.
now go to any shop in my neighborhood, not even a sign.
i only get weird looks when i ask for the game, only some have to order it in order to get it, the rest never heard of the game.
so all and all, it's not international friendly, a.k.a. US-only

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before I made my "is Co going to die post" I did gather facts from other MMO's that have had issues with subscriber numbers, and had similar issues that CO is currently having as a new MMO.

My facts are from a old MMO, things they did at the beginning that they themselves admitted to causing some subscriber issues.

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i am from europe, i can see trough the eyes of a European so i know how it is.
also, i was not talking about down times, i was talking about how they handle the game.
just go to your nearby record shop, champions online is right there in the shop.
now go to any shop in my neighborhood, not even a sign.
i only get weird looks when i ask for the game, only some have to order it in order to get it, the rest never heard of the game.
so all and all, it's not international friendly, a.k.a. US-only

I think it might depend sometimes on what country you originate from too, in Norway, all releases coming out has always been in all the PC-game selling stores in my town (it's actually a somewhat small town too). PS: last I checked, VISA was fairly international (I might be misunderstanding you though) :)

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

1) It's a video game.

2) It's based off people's unattainable fantasies.

3) It's an MMO.

4) It's by an established company staffed by experienced people.

5) It's the internet.

6) It's lack of/too much communication of any sort.

7) It's a molehill.

8) It's now a mountain.

9) It's kneejerk paranoia.

10) It's not kneejerk paranoia, it's just that devs hate everyone.

11) It's the truth.

12) It's lying greedy corporate people that want your soul and firstborn.

13) It's unattainable expectations by the consumer base.

14) It's comparing apples to oranges.

15) It's comparing the same thing to the same thing.

16) It's playing something that's A while hoping/expecting it's something B.

17) It's expecting everything to work.

18) It's expecting everything not to work except for what works for you.

19) It's not Y.

20) It's just like Z.

21) A is better.

22) Statistics don't mean anything.

23) Statistics mean everything.

24) A little information and a lot of unpleaseable fans means everyone hates game developers.

and so on in some combination of the above.

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I think it might depend sometimes on what country you originate from too, in Norway, all releases coming out has always been in all the PC-game selling stores in my town (it's actually a somewhat small town too). PS: last I checked, VISA was fairly international (I might be misunderstanding you though) :)

visa is credit card, credit card is unsafe, unsafe means a no go.
so in short, yes it's international but also just as unsafe as it's widely used>_<

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

From having seen other MMOs start out the same way that this one has that have servers becoming ghost towns 2-3 months after launch.

Hellgate, War, AoC, Tabula Rasa, etc...

Dev teams that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Their posterior waste ejectors. Every MMO is going to kill WoW, and every MMO is going to die a horrible death.

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I suppose if this game can survive with around 10k subscribers then sure it'll be fine. Right now you're seeing the most people online that you will ever see here. .This is the "hey I'm gonna try this new game when we're not raiding Naxx" period. And most of them are not going to stick around, cancel and just keep playing WoW. Its happened in every single launch since. If they can keep this thing alive on a very low subscriber base fine. .now thats keeping the servers up. .we're not even talking about . .ya know. .adding content, coding new stuff etc. .

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I have used a Visa card for the past 19 years of my life, and havent had anything bad happen.

Why do people here keep saying "unsafe" ?

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I read the same stupid crap all over the AoC forums when that game first launched. AoC definitely lost a lot of subscribers (including myself), but it's still around.

The people you're referring to are either stupid or they're trolling, and not worth reading in either case.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Also have to realize, that is a new super hero mmo on the horizon... DCUO boasts all custumization of this game, and does most of it better. Acrobatics sticking to walls, super speed running up walls. Alot of doom sayers are saying it because they foresee the coming doom. Right now are 2 super hero mmo's Coh/v and CO but what happens when DCUO hits market, looks better, plays smoother, has same customization and! pvp and end game from start? add in whole "no subscription fee" and are gonna be alot of players switching over.

Does this mean DCUO is better? we don't know that yet, but from looks of things i will be honest! as an avid MMO player, i've played everything from UO to WoW to Vanguard and back again trust me when i say most mmo's don't last, and ones are still running do so because of a good player base. I don't think CO will go under but i see it going way of SWG and Vanguard and losing most of its player base reducing its server base and becoming a shadow of what it should have been and alot of that is dev's fault. As it stands CO devs have to wise up, and realize got competition on horizon and there chasing there player base away right now... may think " ahh that guys not quiting" when see a post but 9/10 he is, and if one guy quit made a post you can bet 10-12 more quit didn't bother with posting. People can flame me all they like just way i see it...

DCUO...something to fear in coming days for CO.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Played enough good/bad MMOs to say that this game has potential....but unless they hurry up and fix the end-game (lacking), Economy (Lacking), Crafting (Not very fun), More Zones (rather small for an MMO), and stop with drastic nerfs...that fun-to-play factor wont last 60-90 days at best

I imagine that the player base will sink next month drastically...after the first month of realease..

Heck...I dont even consider myself a hard - core gamer (anymore) and im pretty close to end game w/in 3 weeks of playing. I imagine that those that a hard core gamers are already complete with what this game has to offer in its current state

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Go ahead and check the other zones you are wrong

The times I've been in other zones during peak hours, there've been 30-40 instances with similar population levels as MC.

Sorry to ruin your trolling rant by actually checking up on your BS and bringing in facts....

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if they have at least half the service NCsoft has, then they would be 50% better then currently

NCSoft is arguably the peak of MMO customer service. Calling everything less than theirs "bad" is like calling any MMO with a lower pop than WoW a "failure".

where is click&buy?
i only see credit card crap, nothing international.

So, like almost every other MMO on the market....

i am from europe, i can see trough the eyes of a European so i know how it is.
also, i was not talking about down times, i was talking about how they handle the game.
just go to your nearby record shop, champions online is right there in the shop.
now go to any shop in my neighborhood, not even a sign.
i only get weird looks when i ask for the game, only some have to order it in order to get it, the rest never heard of the game.
so all and all, it's not international friendly, a.k.a. US-only

Well, there's your problem. You're looking for PC games in record stores....

But that's beside the point. The game IS available internationally.

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They went over 1000 Life time subscribers, at $200 a pop, I think this game will last well over a year.

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edit: removed

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Some of it is based on past history of other MMORPGS that actually have been canceled. This game is heading down the same path as Tabula Rasa and others. It has the potential,and probably someday will be an awesome game. By that time though, it might be too late to save. Much like TR, CO is suffering from a buggy broken launch, massive character unstability, and not enough grouping activities.
...

There's a point where if the population dips too low, and the game is too solo friendly, that it will pretty much become a single player MMORPG. You'll no doubt still encounter people in the wild, but there will not be any sense of community to hold players together and the game will die shortly afterwards because people are going to get tired of playing by themselves all the time. Solo play is fun for a while, but seriously these games are all about multiplayer, and without it they become hollow when you run out of alts to solo to 40, and have done the same quests 20000000 times getting there. Friends make this game fun when content runs out, as i'm sure the person who lost 5 or 6 of them will tell you.

This is what occured in Tabula rasa, and having played that game from release to termination, I see the same pattern happening here. Cyptic may not be as evil as NCSoft (/spit i HATE ncsoft so much now that i will dance and set off fireworks if they go out of business), but i have my doubts about the game's future already.

Let's look at this from another angle really quickly... pretend for a minute that you love this game and it's better than slicing bread with a power sword. That's all well and fine. I loved Tabula rasa more than any MMORPG i have played to date. I put a solid year of time into it, building up my character and having a good time. I did not care about the Internet whining one bit, and figured well let them leave if they dont like it - i'm having a blast! Well, one day i logged in to see the announcement that the game is closing... and all that time and energy i put into my character is now essentially wasted. I could have taken that gaming time and put it into WoW (for example) and still have something to show for it.

Occasional complaints are going to happen anywhere. I've been MMO gaming since original everquest 1, and NEVER have i seen a more unhappy player base than i have here. This should concern you, because even if you do like the game, if enough people don't like it, it will not survive and you will be left with only wasted time and effort.

Though the original poster said they've never seen an online community so negative, it's funny that CO's online community seems almost identical to City of Heroes online community right after it came out. I recall many rants about nerfs that happened, how so many people were upset with the constant nerfing, how there was nothing to do at max level, how grouping wasn't very good and that you could solo most of it, how people were saying that they were leaving and that the game would be doomed.

I find it really rather amazing that I'm seeing pretty much the exact same thing here.

I also have something to say about the original poster's Tabula Rasa experience. OK, so Tabula Rasa ended and all of the characters were deleted. OK, so the player's have nothing tangible to show for how much time they spent in the game. But how exactly does that equate to wasted time? Seems to me that if one has fun and enjoys the experience, then the time was not wasted. I've played in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns that ended. Does that mean my time was wasted? I don't think so. I have some great memories and I had a lot of fun. Though I am positive that CO will not end in the next year, if it did, I would not think I watsed my time. I would enjoy the memories and the experience.

--Sir Grail

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The biggest reason I would say people are spelling doom and gloom for the game is because they are having similar experiences as the guy on the first page that said 5/6 of his friends that started the game with him have quit.

I have had the same experience myself. I and 4 other guys that I work with that all play mmos (eq, wow, war, lotr) all decided to buy the game when it came out and play it together. All of us had the similar experience of being bored and frustrated with the game after about 1 week of playing. 3 of the guys have already stopped playing entirely (they made it into their mid 20s) and the 2 of us that are left have decided to cancel our reoccurring subscriptions and are just going to play till our free month is up.

We all have different ideas on why we think the game didn't work for us but it comes down to the fact that all 5 of us agreed that the game just wasn't interesting or exciting enough to want to keep playing. Where as in previous games we would all stay up late and work on our characters and try to get to the next level, in CO most of us found that after lvl 20 or so, we just were not interested in taking our hero's any farther.

A MMO is supposed to keep you interested for month and even years playing it. This one couldn't keep 5 of us interested for a week. That spells doom and gloom.

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I'd like to say two things. First I here this doom and gloom everytime there is a change to any game (not just MMO). Let us look at WoW the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Go back and read the posts for when DK's were added, then nerfed and nerfed again. Look at how many said the game sucked, will fail now, etc. It happens when something is changed that someone liked or was enjoying the way it was before. Wait until Cataclysm comes out and the hail storm hits becasue the changes that comes from that (it has already started go read it is 'interesting')

For CO I can say that the super hero genre is a small genre in general. Look at the RPG world and look at how many Super RPG's there are, not as many as fantasy that is for sure. So to say that people left is not unusual. I have always had a hard time getting players for P&P Champions or Paladiums version. It was always easier to get a group for either modern or fantasy games.

I'm just saying that the first few month of any MMO will weed out those not interested in play a super hero and find it's market and as long as they don't change the game like SWG did then I think they'll have a large enough player base to not only maintain the game but to continue to add content.

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EVERY game has a significant portion of it's FORUM audience claim that 'This game can't survive".

And like the Prognosticator who was just guessing based on slight evidence - sometimes they get one right. The thing is - most of the time, they are completely wrong.

Of the games I have beta'd, not ONE had a happy forum community. EVERY game had it's share of "If it goes live like this, it'll fail!"

And only 2 were actually doomed. I leave it to the reader to figure out which two.

Long story short - judge a game by those actually playing, not those who wish to engage in Forum PvP.

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good.

welcome to my world.

i'll probably keep playing eve, no matter what other games i play. my eve buds are back to eve only.

i have irl friends that have played wow, for far too long. were REAL bored with it, but um, they also have already returned.


a lot of it... from what i gather in talking with my friends -

1 nerfs.
2 no explanations for, well much of anything. you really CAN take a block, a passive def, a passive off, an active/clicky defense, pick appropriate super stats, pick gear that should benefit your playstyle/powers, take a couple of aoes -- and if you're picking the wrong specific powers... you can have all the right power "types" and have a totally gimped build.
3 tired of having to search for every possible mission person, or tired of having the character that can barely fight three even level henchies, and stuck dying constantly vs +2/+3 missions.


there's a lot of basic gameplay flaws with the game.



stuff that should've been caught in a closed beta, or before.


there's other reasons; but really, not everyone WANTS to wait and watch nerf after nerf. 100 nerfs and 100 retcons to make up for the nerfs... really DON'T make up for the nerfs, nor the lack of content, nor the powers without descriptions or that don't work as described, or blah blah blah.


tldr: game has problems that should've been caught at closed beta or before, and fixed.

[Archived Post]

EVERY game has a significant portion of it's FORUM audience claim that 'This game can't survive".

And like the Prognosticator who was just guessing based on slight evidence - sometimes they get one right. The thing is - most of the time, they are completely wrong.

Of the games I have beta'd, not ONE had a happy forum community. EVERY game had it's share of "If it goes live like this, it'll fail!"

And only 2 were actually doomed. I leave it to the reader to figure out which two.

Long story short - judge a game by those actually playing, not those who wish to engage in Forum PvP.

you forgot only one tiny detail, if someone is just unable to play the game because cryptic is not doing there job right, it's a bit difficult to blame the one complaining.

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Here is my reason for thinking the game is doomed. I logged into my level 30 last night and started Monster Island quests. It was a little off prime time, about 6ish Pacific, and on a Saturday, yes, but there were only 4 MI instances, and only one of them had hit th 100 person cap. The other three were 75/75 and 50. That's a grand total of 300 people, in pretty much the only level 30ish zone in the game. And remember that's all servers, everyone that's playing. That's pretty bad, even worse than Warhammer at this same stage of the game.

The game's just shallow. I have 3 abilities I use, and that's it. I have 2 powers I haven't even bothered to take because I just don't need anything else, and I don't even have any of the OP abilities. Spamming the same 3 buttons all the time to do the same "save XXX hikers" or kill XXX mobs quest again and again just sucks.

[Archived Post]

Also have to realize, that is a new super hero mmo on the horizon... DCUO boasts all custumization of this game, and does most of it better. Acrobatics sticking to walls, super speed running up walls. Alot of doom sayers are saying it because they foresee the coming doom. Right now are 2 super hero mmo's Coh/v and CO but what happens when DCUO hits market, looks better, plays smoother, has same customization and! pvp and end game from start? add in whole "no subscription fee" and are gonna be alot of players switching over. ....DCUO...something to fear in coming days for CO.

1: With SoE involved, many gamers will never switch over.

2: My experience is to never buy into the PR marketing before a game is released. YMMV, but in any case ... I doubt it will be as sterling of a release as you are making it out to be.

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... I have 3 abilities I use, and that's it. I have 2 powers I haven't even bothered to take because I just don't need anything else, and I don't even have any of the OP abilities. Spamming the same 3 buttons all the time to do the same "save XXX hikers" or kill XXX mobs quest again and again just sucks.

This is interesting. I am wondering if you can name me titles in any platform/pc game where this is not true.

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I have used a Visa card for the past 19 years of my life, and havent had anything bad happen.

Why do people here keep saying "unsafe" ?
a credit card can be ripped in a few seconds, a pin pas is like a 20 feet door for your money.
that's why it's unsafe, you just got lucky or are extremely careful on what you're doing.
you only need the number or adress of the card and it's empty in a sec, something like IDEAL is so save that it's close to impossible to crack it.
you need the pass first to get in to the bank account, then when you buy something with it, you need a tan code.
this code is unique on 2 ways
1.) it has a number before the code, and it needs to be the exact right number
2.) it has a code completely separated from any digital things
the best thing of all is that when you enter the wrong number, you need an entire new number with code.

in short, if i would compare any credit card with IDEAL, the credit card is like an open book.

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From having seen other MMOs start out the same way that this one has that have servers becoming ghost towns 2-3 months after launch.

Hellgate, War, AoC, Tabula Rasa, etc...

Dev teams that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Hellgate didn't die because of it's launch. It died because it's Korean partner stabbed it in the back so they could loot the corpse. Mind you Roper and the others made mistakes that made this possible but it was improving when it was murdered.

WAR - Umm, last I looked it was still going.

AOC - Last I looked it was still going.

Tabula Rasa - Vastly improved and was killed by NCSoft so they could claim it as a massive tax write off when the economy collapsed in 2008. Because huge amounts of money had been invested in it they could get a very nice write off out of it.

I don't think that your claim stands up to actual examination.

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you forgot only one tiny detail, if someone is just unable to play the game because cryptic is not doing there job right, it's a bit difficult to blame the one complaining.

Interesting point, but flawed.

ALL companies like this have been guilty of the above. Not every single one has closed as all were predicted to - in fact, it's a VERY minuscule amount that have indeed folded when the doomsayers proclaimed it would.

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There's this guy that sits on the corner of my street, and if you pay him a gold coin he tells you the future. That's where I heard it anyway.

This quote cracked me up! :D

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Hellgate didn't die because of it's launch. It died because it's Korean partner stabbed it in the back so they could loot the corpse. Mind you Roper and the others made mistakes that made this possible but it was improving when it was murdered.

WAR - Umm, last I looked it was still going.

AOC - Last I looked it was still going.

Tabula Rasa - Vastly improved and was killed by NCSoft so they could claim it as a massive tax write off when the economy collapsed in 2008. Because huge amounts of money had been invested in it they could get a very nice write off out of it.

I don't think that your claim stands up to actual examination.

Both War and AoC are still "going" but their server populations are just a shadow of what they were at launch.

Not really good examples of healthy MMOs either.

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Interesting point, but flawed.

ALL companies like this have been guilty of the above. Not every single one has closed as all were predicted to - in fact, it's a VERY minuscule amount that have indeed folded when the doomsayers proclaimed it would.

...and Flagship, you know, the one created by the lead developer of this game, is one of those 'miniscule amount' that have, indeed, folded. It's legitimate reason for concern, and a shadow that will justifiably follow Bill Roper around for the rest of his career.

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Both War and AoC are still "going" but their server populations are just a shadow of what they were at launch.

Not really good examples of healthy MMOs either.

By what definition are you using the word "healthy"?

Do you know their internal numbers exactly? Do you know their (And yes, ALL companies have one) break-even point where they begin taking a loss by staying open? Do you know their payroll, utility and server costs?

If the games are still running, it's because they are still making a PROFIT. No company keeps a service running at a loss for long - unless they are a Charity of some sort, or the US Government.

YOUR definition of 'healthy' has no bearing on anything. Only THEIR definition does.

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...and Flagship, you know, the one created by the lead developer of this game, is one of those 'miniscule amount' that have, indeed, folded. It's legitimate reason for concern, and a shadow that will justifiably follow Bill Roper around for the rest of his career.

It's actually an illigitimate reason for concern considering the fact Bill Roper, since this is the person you are referring to, has actually quite a long list of successful titles under his belt. But then again, this is the internet. Bill Roper has been the lead for several of Blizzards hit titles. By your logic, using that, all of those titles must of sucked.

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...and Flagship, you know, the one created by the lead developer of this game, is one of those 'miniscule amount' that have, indeed, folded. It's legitimate reason for concern, and a shadow that will justifiably follow Bill Roper around for the rest of his career.

If you do some research into it you'll find out why it folded. They made some serious errors in the launch and pricing of Hellgate that impacted their cash flow but even that wouldn't have killed the company and it might well still be going and doing well if not for their Korean partner. That company acted in a way that allowed them to kill flagship and loot the corpse for the game under development and Hellgate. I'll note it is doing very well in Korea still where it is being run by the company that looted it from flagship.

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when the defense is "dude AoC is still around" it's getting pretty pathetic.

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when the defense is "dude AoC is still around" it's getting pretty pathetic.

When the defense is "I am going to **** cause they got less grind" then you know it's getting pretty pathetic.

You see that works well.

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...and Flagship, you know, the one created by the lead developer of this game, is one of those 'miniscule amount' that have, indeed, folded. It's legitimate reason for concern, and a shadow that will justifiably follow Bill Roper around for the rest of his career.

Fair point - but then again, what about the games he worked on that were phenomenal successes? Do they not enter the equation, or is the law of the land to be "Forget the good, elevate the bad?"

Roper is answerable to those who sign his paycheck. If he fails to do his job, he will be replaced by someone else. And the benchmark for his continued employment is based upon whatever the company decides.

What we have on these forums however are people claiming he should go because of his past - and yes, a failing MMO is bad. So why can't people give credit where it's due for other projects?

That's rhetorical by the way - I know the answer - giving him credit for anything makes their "Roper is Evil" argument null and void.

[Archived Post]

Here is my reason for thinking the game is doomed. I logged into my level 30 last night and started Monster Island quests. It was a little off prime time, about 6ish Pacific, and on a Saturday, yes, but there were only 4 MI instances, and only one of them had hit th 100 person cap. The other three were 75/75 and 50. That's a grand total of 300 people, in pretty much the only level 30ish zone in the game. And remember that's all servers, everyone that's playing. That's pretty bad, even worse than Warhammer at this same stage of the game.

The game's just shallow. I have 3 abilities I use, and that's it. I have 2 powers I haven't even bothered to take because I just don't need anything else, and I don't even have any of the OP abilities. Spamming the same 3 buttons all the time to do the same "save XXX hikers" or kill XXX mobs quest again and again just sucks.

Well, that's everyone who was on Monster Island anyway. I don't even have a hero that is 30th level yet. My highest is level 24, so you wouldn't have seen me. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of doom.

And personally, I use all of the powers my hero has.

-- Sir Grail

[Archived Post]

By what definition are you using the word "healthy"?

Do you know their internal numbers exactly? Do you know their (And yes, ALL companies have one) break-even point where they begin taking a loss by staying open? Do you know their payroll, utility and server costs?

If the games are still running, it's because they are still making a PROFIT. No company keeps a service running at a loss for long - unless they are a Charity of some sort, or the US Government.

YOUR definition of 'healthy' has no bearing on anything. Only THEIR definition does.

From what I can tell the doom, gloom, and hate crowd only consider a MMO a success if it has numbers equal to WoW.

As has been noted before the industry as a whole considered any MMO with 100K+ subscribers a success. The ones that do better than that are raging successes.

[Archived Post]

Somewhat off topic, although **** has been mentioned - but I just laughed my butt off seeing the queue of 2300+ people on every single server and a wait time of nearly 2 hours for each, just to get into the head start. Don't get me wrong, I actually like ****, but that is just - hah! Guess it proves it is pre-ordered by alot of people like they advertise, but I also see it as poor planning, when you know the potential amount of people going to try log in, and not having servers (enough) capable of handling it. I just worry now how it'll play out in 2 days time when the game launches properly live - I guess they got time to upgrade their servers and add new ones though. Still, let me add a big fat Lol to it.

[Archived Post]

Well, that's everyone who was on Monster Island anyway. I don't even have a hero that is 30th level yet. My highest is level 24, so you wouldn't have seen me. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of doom.

And personally, I use all of the powers my hero has.

-- Sir Grail

Hehe, using Monster Island as a benchmark. Buahahaha, that's liek using a blind man's eyewitness account as credible evidence in a court of law.

[Archived Post]

This is interesting. I am wondering if you can name me titles in any platform/pc game where this is not true.

Any other MMO. Even WoW has more abilities, and it's dumbed down. In EQ2 my illusionist had 6 hotbars with 10x skills per hotbar. At least one was buffs/pets, but in any particular fight I'd use a mix quite a few of those abilities: stuns/dots/DD/crown control/roots/debuffs. In an instance I'd probably use all 50 of the non-buff abilities at least once.

The only game simpler than CO is a FPS.

[Archived Post]

From what I can tell the doom, gloom, and hate crowd only consider a MMO a success if it has numbers equal to WoW.

As has been noted before the industry as a whole considered any MMO with 100K+ subscribers a success. The ones that do better than that are raging successes.

You are 100% correct. People just don't seem to understand that 11 million players is an anomaly, not the standard.

[Archived Post]

Well, that's everyone who was on Monster Island anyway. I don't even have a hero that is 30th level yet. My highest is level 24, so you wouldn't have seen me. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of doom.

And personally, I use all of the powers my hero has.

-- Sir Grail

From 28ish to mid 30's, Monster Island is the only place to go. That means there were only 300ish people total in that level range. That's not many. I'm not even a power gamer, just play 2-3 times a week for 3ish hours a run, and I'm 30 already. That puts me on/behind the curve. Having only 300 people total in that level range on a weekend night is pretty bad.

And at 24 you have how many powers? Like 5 total counting defensives and passives? And what else would you get if you had more power points?

[Archived Post]

Any other MMO. Even WoW has more abilities, and it's dumbed down. In EQ2 my illusionist had 6 hotbars with 10x skills per hotbar. At least one was buffs/pets, but in any particular fight I'd use a mix quite a few of those abilities: stuns/dots/DD/crown control/roots/debuffs. In an instance I'd probably use all 50 of the non-buff abilities at least once.

The only game simpler than CO is a FPS.

In other words, more buttons to press = game is more fun. Gotcha.

Too bad I hate MMORPGs that have a cluttered interface. To take WoW for example, all those multiple hotbars that cover the entire bottom and side of the screen, with each little button that does something entirely different, actually makes for a slow and confusing game to me. Every time I want to pop off the exact situational power I have at a given moment, I've got to go hunting through all the rest of those icons that are useless in that particular moment. That's not my idea of fun, that's my idea of a "cluttered interface".

And before you tell me to download a UI mod that essentially clicks all those buttons I need for me, I won't on the principle that I equate that to botting. Besides, some of those third-party mods are either buggy since they're not officially supported or else they're intentionally loaded with viruses.

[Archived Post]

When the defense is "I am going to **** cause they got less grind" then you know it's getting pretty pathetic.

You see that works well.

Maybe you are right, let's see how often either of these are being used.
Crappy MMOs still exist vs New MMOs will be better



O
As much as AoC and WAR are touted as failures, they're both still running, and LOTR has sort of clawed out a little niche as the little game that could.

Not sure if you ment that as look they are still around or look these are going down and so will CO.

But they are still around. I might not have heared every game rumor out there but as far as I know there arent any real talk about these two games shuting down. AoC have even announced their first expantion so it doesnt really look like its going down hill for them.

If Cryptic has a business plan that is viable with a playerbase of around 100k subscribers, CO will probably 'make it' as a niche market game, in the way AoC and WAR and LOTR are still 'making it'... but it won't be wildly successful. Where do I get my information? Cryptic has told us that they only really expect about that much, and it looks like 100k subscribers is a realistic goal for them to accomplish... but that may not actually cover their overhead. Only time will tell.

You do realize that a game doesn't need 12 million subscribers to be commercially successful, right? And "I don't like the game" is not a sufficient reason for it to die, either. From what I can see, it's fairly populated at the moment. Whether or not it will end up having a stable population is waaaay too early to tell. People yelled "Age of Conan is soo bad, it will die, die die" all over its forum, too. Guess what - the game is still there.

And you clearly are one of the butthurt haters towards AoC that possibly felt Funcom ruined your life. The type of person that will go around saying "I will never buy another Funcom game again!", because one game from the company didn't live up to your expectations. Sorry to say, but AoC is hardly dead - it's not WoW-populated obviously (more or less no game is), but it's not dead either. I guess that makes me a high-fiving fanboy though (even though I am not going to say there aren't shortcomings/issues with the game - like with any other game on the market).

Most MMO's tend to stay alive - and the people that play it usually enjoys it (or enjoy complaining and voicing their opinion since they are the center of the internet universe). There are a few of these games that has 'died' too, but most has more than (or just) enough revenue to keep alive.


I read the same stupid crap all over the AoC forums when that game first launched. AoC definitely lost a lot of subscribers (including myself), but it's still around.

Hellgate didn't die because of it's launch. It died because it's Korean partner stabbed it in the back so they could loot the corpse. Mind you Roper and the others made mistakes that made this possible but it was improving when it was murdered.

WAR - Umm, last I looked it was still going.

AOC - Last I looked it was still going.

Tabula Rasa - Vastly improved and was killed by NCSoft so they could claim it as a massive tax write off when the economy collapsed in 2008. Because huge amounts of money had been invested in it they could get a very nice write off out of it.

I don't think that your claim stands up to actual examination.



Crappy mmos still exist defense



Versus



Also have to realize, that is a new super hero mmo on the horizon... DCUO boasts all custumization of this game, and does most of it better. Acrobatics sticking to walls, super speed running up walls. Alot of doom sayers are saying it because they foresee the coming doom. Right now are 2 super hero mmo's Coh/v and CO but what happens when DCUO hits market, looks better, plays smoother, has same customization and! pvp and end game from start? add in whole "no subscription fee" and are gonna be alot of players switching over.

Does this mean DCUO is better? we don't know that yet, but from looks of things i will be honest! as an avid MMO player, i've played everything from UO to WoW to Vanguard and back again trust me when i say most mmo's don't last, and ones are still running do so because of a good player base. I don't think CO will go under but i see it going way of SWG and Vanguard and losing most of its player base reducing its server base and becoming a shadow of what it should have been and alot of that is dev's fault. As it stands CO devs have to wise up, and realize got competition on horizon and there chasing there player base away right now... may think " ahh that guys not quiting" when see a post but 9/10 he is, and if one guy quit made a post you can bet 10-12 more quit didn't bother with posting. People can flame me all they like just way i see it...

DCUO...something to fear in coming days for CO.


7. Basically, even though the game has a lot of dowsides it's a fun game and will only get better. But by then, other better games will be available. Games like **** and the new Starwars will most probably blow this out of the water. And if those fails, we always have Blizz new secret mmo in the works.


Newer games will be better defense



Will let you count them up and see which crappy defense is more popular.

[Archived Post]

No, I'd just say you need to stick to Pac Man, or maybe FPS's.

MMO play should require strategy. More buttons = more strategy options. Wow is actually simple and dumb compared to most MMO's. I mean, what else is there to a game besides either strategy or reflexes. FPS's require reflexes and map knowledge. Other MMO's require strategy. Knowing the right counter to what your opponent is doing. CO requires nothing other than you read the forums so you can avoid the gimp abilities. My usual fight is: 1. turn on energy builder 2. tap frost breath 2x 3. spam shatter. If anything is still alive, use icy blast. That's any fight, and any powerset has the equivalent. No strategy, no reflexes.

[Archived Post]

Any other MMO. Even WoW has more abilities, and it's dumbed down. In EQ2 my illusionist had 6 hotbars with 10x skills per hotbar. At least one was buffs/pets, but in any particular fight I'd use a mix quite a few of those abilities: stuns/dots/DD/crown control/roots/debuffs. In an instance I'd probably use all 50 of the non-buff abilities at least once.

The only game simpler than CO is a FPS.

hmm... WoW ... as a hunter for four years, I think I had a rotation of three shots total I used on Raids and a rotation of 3 shots for my PvP rise to High Warlord ...

as a Rogue .. pvp consisted of: Sap, SS, Blind and the finisher (not recalling the name atm) ...

you may have numerous hotbars set up in WoW, but you rarely used more then four on any particular encounter.

[Archived Post]

No, I'd just say you need to stick to Pac Man, or maybe FPS's.

MMO play should require strategy. More buttons = more strategy options. Wow is actually simple and dumb compared to most MMO's. I mean, what else is there to a game besides either strategy or reflexes. FPS's require reflexes and map knowledge. Other MMO's require strategy. Knowing the right counter to what your opponent is doing. CO requires nothing other than you read the forums so you can avoid the gimp abilities. My usual fight is: 1. turn on energy builder 2. tap frost breath 2x 3. spam shatter. If anything is still alive, use icy blast. That's any fight, and any powerset has the equivalent. No strategy, no reflexes.

Strategy in a MMO?!

Strategy is for titles like: EU3, HoI, Making History, and any of the TW games ... MMOs are not strategy games... they may involve using some tactics, but once you have the knowledge any MMO is only about utilizing that knowledge ... not about strategy ...

"reflexes" is another joke threshold for a MMO ... because so much of your "reflexes" depends on things outside of your control... from ISP compression to whether you own a "gaming keyboard" ...

Other MMOs do not require strategy.

[Archived Post]

hmm... WoW ... as a hunter for four years, I think I had a rotation of three shots total I used on Raids and a rotation of 3 shots for my PvP rise to High Warlord ...

as a Rogue .. pvp consisted of: Sap, SS, Blind and the finisher (not recalling the name atm) ...

you may have numerous hotbars set up in WoW, but you rarely used more then four on any particular encounter.

You never used rupture for high armor targets, or kick to stop casters, or finishing throw (or whatever it was called) to kill runners? Or gouge? Or vanish? Or whatever that armor removing ability was? Or blade flurry? Or evasion? Or cloak of shadows? Adrenaline rush? Shadow step? Mutilate? Fan of knives to AE? Shiv? Shadow Dance? Feint? Cold blood? Cheap shot? Kidney shot? Various poisons? Slice n Dice? Garrote?

Seriously?

I had a rogue and I'd use all of those, and even more on my priest. Pick a CO build where you'd both have and use that many abilities.

[Archived Post]

By what definition are you using the word "healthy"?

Do you know their internal numbers exactly? Do you know their (And yes, ALL companies have one) break-even point where they begin taking a loss by staying open? Do you know their payroll, utility and server costs?

If the games are still running, it's because they are still making a PROFIT. No company keeps a service running at a loss for long - unless they are a Charity of some sort, or the US Government.

YOUR definition of 'healthy' has no bearing on anything. Only THEIR definition does.

not really....haelthy population is not having to do server merges...and allow for free transfers off dead servers.....and even then......not all that healthy...

[Archived Post]

Strategy in a MMO?!

Strategy is for titles like: EU3, HoI, Making History, and any of the TW games ... MMOs are not strategy games... they may involve using some tactics, but once you have the knowledge any MMO is only about utilizing that knowledge ... not about strategy ...

"reflexes" is another joke threshold for a MMO ... because so much of your "reflexes" depends on things outside of your control... from ISP compression to whether you own a "gaming keyboard" ...

Other MMOs do not require strategy.

Ah, invasion of the fanboi's. Nothing more to be said here. This game will be empty in 6 months, just like Warhammer was, no matter how irrationally you defend it.

[Archived Post]

Ah, invasion of the fanboi's. Nothing more to be said here. This game will be empty in 6 months, just like Warhammer was, no matter how irrationally you defend it.

you resort to the fanboi argument because you can't refute what is said.

[Archived Post]

OK...the thread I think has outlived it's usefulness. Basically, we've found:

A. There are no hard facts or numbers about the game's playerbase.
B. Some people genuinely don't like the game and are leaving. This number is unknown but seems large for a release to some people.
C. Others think this is is well within the normal range.
D. Some MMO's have indeed failed, but it is a small number. No one knows if the numbers of player of this game would put it into that category as no one knows what they are.
E. Most MMO's do continue to be played, even ones like AOC and WAR that are thought of as failures due to a high volume exodus in the early life of the game.

Now that people are arguing in this thread about what their rogue could do in WoW in 2007 I think there's not a whole lot left to learn about the possibility of Doom for CO.

[Archived Post]

You never used rupture for high armor targets, or kick to stop casters, or finishing throw (or whatever it was called) to kill runners? Or gouge? Or vanish? Or whatever that armor removing ability was? Or blade flurry? Or evasion? Or cloak of shadows? Adrenaline rush? Shadow step? Mutilate? Fan of knives to AE? Shiv? Shadow Dance? Feint? Cold blood? Cheap shot? Kidney shot? Various poisons? Slice n Dice? Garrote?

Seriously?

I had a rogue and I'd use all of those, and even more on my priest. Pick a CO build where you'd both have and use that many abilities.

I didn't need to. I doubt very much you used more then 3 or 4 of those on any one encounter ... most trash never survived long enough to use many of those abilities, and Bosses were scripted to ignore things such as poisons in any case ... so even if you did use them, a lot of those were useless.

[Archived Post]

Interesting point, but flawed.

ALL companies like this have been guilty of the above. Not every single one has closed as all were predicted to - in fact, it's a VERY minuscule amount that have indeed folded when the doomsayers proclaimed it would.

just saying NCsoft, because making an entire story will never get trough.

[Archived Post]

not really....haelthy population is not having to do server merges...and allow for free transfers off dead servers.....and even then......not all that healthy...

So, you are using your self imposed definition, and do not have any actual knowledge of the things I mention. Oh, that and anecdotal evidence.

Got ya.

Now to clarify - I am *not* saying you are wrong. I may even agree with your analysis - but I admit that I don't know all the answers,.

[Archived Post]

Maybe you are right, let's see how often either of these are being used.
Crappy MMOs still exist vs New MMOs will be better

Crappy mmos still exist defense

Versus

Newer games will be better defense

Will let you count them up and see which crappy defense is more popular.

It's not a defense, it's a simple fact. AoC still exists, even though a bunch of dumbasses trolled game forums with hysterical "AoC will be shut down in X months" posts.

I'm not defending bad games, I'm criticizing hysterical dumbasses.

[Archived Post]

Both War and AoC are still "going" but their server populations are just a shadow of what they were at launch.

Not really good examples of healthy MMOs either.

It's the only standard that matters. A game is either healthy enough to remain online, or it is not. Anything else is just speculation and arbitrary definitions of "success".

The title of this thread refers to claims that "X game will die". You're trying to blur the standard because past claims were so demonstrably untrue.

[Archived Post]

*Snip*

To stay a little on topic, a problem I often see in most of these MMO forums are the 'hype' and high expectations that users put into future titles - "Star Wars will smash anything in the MMO genre out of orbit!" (I admit it does look very interesting and fun, but could still become a meltingpot for complaints) - "DCUO will be the best superhero game ever! You can run up walls and it will have PvP and end-game out of the box!" (Can be very bugged for all I know and in what degree of balance and end-game will it provide on launch though? Another title that can become a meltingpot for complaints). People tend to overhype things and expect much more than they are given. I see that personally as a fact, but nobody needs to agree with me on that. I respect your opinion and I have mine. That doesn't mean we shouldn't expect more (Note: I hate using words as 'we' as I don't mean to speak for everyone). I expected more diverse content from CO and more areas, better end-game, but overall I am happy with the product I have purchased and are having fun playing. I can only assume it gets fleshed out like other titles in the genre, and I have patience since I play other games as well on the side.

Also, I personally strongly dislike (or read: hate) when people refer to other games as crappy just because they personally don't like it. I try my best to refrain from uttering the words "*x game* is crap" - but I probably do every now and then, although I try to make a point that it's because I personally don't like it, not as a comment to speak for everyone that's not a 'fanboy'. I also try not to use the word 'hater', but in some cases I do use the word if I find something someone has posted somewhat offensive and unjust - stinking of someone filled with animosity towards a game.

Another note: I am probably also contradicting myself towards some other posts with this one. And I apologize if I come off as rude in my quotes and utterings.

"Off topic" again: I find it somewhat hilarious that something that could have been better executed is happening right now in the head start of ****. My queue time jumped from 1hr 47min to 3hrs 53mins - even though my position in queue from 2337 has gone down to 2076 (although the "out of" number has gone up so I guess it's just calculations that are weird).

[Archived Post]

Maybe you are right, let's see how often either of these are being used.
Crappy MMOs still exist vs New MMOs will be better


Crappy mmos still exist defense



Versus


Newer games will be better defense



Will let you count them up and see which crappy defense is more popular.

Hey look, a strawman argument. Wonderful, love your lack of facts and logic.

[Archived Post]

you forgot only one tiny detail, if someone is just unable to play the game because cryptic is not doing there job right, it's a bit difficult to blame the one complaining.

And just who is "unable to play the game because Cryptic is not doing their job right"?

[Archived Post]

not really....haelthy population is not having to do server merges...and allow for free transfers off dead servers.....and even then......not all that healthy...

Actually in the case of WAR and AOC it is a case of anticipating more subscribers than they got.

[Archived Post]

a credit card can be ripped in a few seconds, a pin pas is like a 20 feet door for your money.
that's why it's unsafe, you just got lucky or are extremely careful on what you're doing.
you only need the number or adress of the card and it's empty in a sec

And that money is right back in your bank and law enforcement is tracking the thief with a simple phone call to your bank. Assuming, of course, you have a competent bank.

something like IDEAL is so save that it's close to impossible to crack it.

Nothing is "close to impossible to crack".

[Archived Post]

Both War and AoC are still "going" but their server populations are just a shadow of what they were at launch.

Not really good examples of healthy MMOs either.

Covering running costs and turning a profit. That's "healthy" by any reasonable definition.

[Archived Post]

At this point, I think it's obviously all just speculation. But big name MMOs don't tend to die easily, (by die I mean get shutdown), despite large numbers of game flaws. The last 3 relatively big MMOs that I can think of that closed their servers are Matrix Online, Hellgate: London (let's call it an MMO for the moment), and Auto Assault.

Even in the case of Auto Assault, which was pretty obviously a flop after (or even during) the first month, it took over a year for it to 'die' and have its servers shutdown. Now, by my personal opinion, this game is much better than either Auto Assault or Hellgate: London. I never played the Matrix Online, so I can't comment on that.

Of course, it all comes down to subscription numbers vs operating costs in the end, but using those games as a measuring stick, if the devs didn't end up fixing a lot of the issues this game has, I would still not expect this game to actually die for 1-2 years. And that's what I'm considering a pretty much worst case scenario.

[Archived Post]

it's just a little blues song they sing, for them it requires nothing to support their speculation.

and I believe the total is probably near 100,000. But nonetheless, by Christmas it shall be 2 or 3 times what it is now :D

[Archived Post]

Ah, invasion of the fanboi's. Nothing more to be said here.

When there's an invasion of haters, why not? The haters are no better than the so-called "fanbois".

[Archived Post]

Well unlike WAR and AoC this game never meant to be a wide appeal mmo. Its a niche genre game and will probably drop off quite a bit after the first month and coast along just fine for years.

The In game store, or cryptic store specifically will allow them to generate revenues from a smaller passionate pool of players to help sustain the game as well. (including revenue from the lifers you think wont generate them money anymore)

WAR and AOC are still going albeit with less servers. The market can sustain multiple games and all of them can still have 100k subs or more and survive on that.

[Archived Post]

I've read this thread up until about page eight, then got bored of reading all the hater posts.

What do you call someone who hates games so passionatley and wishes they fail? What exactly do you call the opposite of a fanboy?

A hateboy? Bileboy?

Or just nubs?

[Archived Post]

No one knows the subscription numbers besides Cryptic, and to my knowledge they haven't divulged that to the public.

As far as naysayers, I'm sure a fair amount of them are just raging, others might just be seeing what's wrong with the game in its current form, and how many people is has already driven away.

there are countless naysayers in lotro too, saying that the game was doomed, it was going to flop big, this and that.

that was 2 years ago. lotro continues to flourish, memberbase sound and happy.

[Archived Post]

Well unlike WAR and AoC this game never meant to be a wide appeal mmo. Its a niche genre game and will probably drop off quite a bit after the first month and coast along just fine for years.

The In game store, or cryptic store specifically will allow them to generate revenues from a smaller passionate pool of players to help sustain the game as well. (including revenue from the lifers you think wont generate them money anymore)

WAR and AOC are still going albeit with less servers. The market can sustain multiple games and all of them can still have 100k subs or more and survive on that.

actually this game has much bigger appeal than war or aoc. actually war and aoc are niches, catering to a small segment of the gamer base. even conan comics themselves appealed to a very small niche in their heyday.

this game is apparently about superheroes. a thing that almost EVERY person on the planet either knows about, or interested in. leave aside almost entirety of the netizens out there.

women and men, adult and kids, any demographic, any group can have an interest in this.

[Archived Post]

actually this game has much bigger appeal than war or aoc. actually war and aoc are niches, catering to a small segment of the gamer base. even conan comics themselves appealed to a very small niche in their heyday.

The Conan movies and books, on the other hand, are a different story. As for WAR, Warhammer is pretty huge on its own, and marketing itself as a PVP-centric competetor to WoW helped a WHOLE lot.

[Archived Post]

I am a bit disappointed that the game changed so radically from Closed -> Open Beta -> Headstart -> Now . Especially since all this happened after I got my Lifetime Subscription.

I...that got me very upset as a customer. There were never these huge content gaps before, the difficulty was totally different....it was almost a different game than what happened at launch day. You could Retcon waaay back if you wanted to with the resources that you collected.

I feel that the approach to addressing the bugs and shortfalls are all wrong, and the methods used disadvantage and frustrate the player base.

None of us can tell where Champions will end up.

I would say that it would be completely pointless writing any sort of character guide, or investing time into creating information for new players. In a patch next week everything could change completely. Defense is apparently still being silently adjusted in the background on Test Server.

This level of change is not what I expected at this point in the game.

To me there are very real issues, and I can easily see why players would be disenchanted and chose to leave for other genres, or maybe come back later after monitoring the game for a while to see how things turn out. And I don't know if a company's cashflow projections would take that into account.

Even with the problems, consensus is that there is a great game here inside Champions online waiting to get out. Some people are prepared to wait, others don't want to wait, and still others will prefer to leave and come back when its all settled.

It's much too early to make any sort of predictions about Champions Online.

To those pointing toward DCUO, I don't know when they think DCUO is going to be released, but if you think you will be playing the game at retail anytime before 4th quarter 2011 you need to re-evaluate your expectations. The game is currently in PRE ALPHA. Read those previews that are hyping it up. The last I read they feel that they are close to slapping some parts together and calling it an Alpha.

That means it has at least TWO YEARS of solid development to go before a launch.

So if you think Champions Online will be threatened by DCUO, it has a full year,probably TWO years before people can be drawn away. So it's safe from that threat.

As to why people post DOOM? Frustration...disappointment...anger. I've made angry , frustrated posts that probably sound like whining :o . It happens :)

The other reason is Schadenfreude. Another aspect of the human psyche that you can't get away from.

[Archived Post]

I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Why do you feel players need a reason to doomsay? Players in CoX were crying DOOOM! on pretty much every update since ED rolled out and that was what 11 issues ago?

People come to a conclusion and assume they are right because they came to their conclusion with faulty and circular logic but it has to be correct because that is the conclusion they came to.

And Bill Roper. If you have no good reason for your rant just throw his hame in and people will nod in agreement simply for no other reason than you threw mud at his name.

[Archived Post]

The Conan movies and books, on the other hand, are a different story. As for WAR, Warhammer is pretty huge on its own, and marketing itself as a PVP-centric competetor to WoW helped a WHOLE lot.

Agreed. War and CO both come from outside IP, but the marketing and follow-through is what will or will not make a difference.

I really think WAR's big Release Patch that changed PvP and its reward structure did a lot to kill off the positive wave it was in the middle of building up.

That and War's reliance on Fan-sites for communicating.

[Archived Post]

They get their information from Chicken Little, he is a celebrity and knows things. :D

[Archived Post]

Why do you feel players need a reason to doomsay? Players in CoX were crying DOOOM! on pretty much every update since ED rolled out and that was what 11 issues ago?

Since launch....before, actually.

I remember a guy named "PuffyShirt" on the forums in the early days going on about how he ran his own MMO and could say for a fact that CoH wouldn't last 6 months. Turns out the guy's "MMO" was a mud with less than a thousand players.

[Archived Post]

The Conan movies and books, on the other hand, are a different story. As for WAR, Warhammer is pretty huge on its own, and marketing itself as a PVP-centric competetor to WoW helped a WHOLE lot.

conan movies were hollywood productions, distributed by the distribution machine they have. they filled a slot in that season's theaters. thats it. the majority of the world wouldnt care for it more than they would care for any random summer 'blockbuster'.

[Archived Post]

I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Just think about what kind of person would hang out on the forums for an MMOG they have decided is horrible and will fail.

Think about what you spend your time in your life doing and how your prioritize it. Think about how you would get to the place where you would spend not just a few minutes, but significant time attacking a game and a developer.

Doesn't make sense right? You know you would never get there, because your time is precious and important to you, and you don't have the time to waste on something you have decided is horrible and is going to die. So right there we know there is something abnormal about people who do this.

Now ask these people about their MMOG playing history and ask them when ever they have seen this strategy of being rude a-hats to the players who enjoy the game and the developers has ever worked to make the game more enjoyable for them? I can answer it for them, as the answer is never.

So now you know they are doing something really abnormal and something they 100% know will not have a desired impact.

Once you take all of that into consideration, you just have to ignore them.

UNFORTUNATELY THE FORUM IGNORE FUNCTION IS BROKEN 90% OF THE TIME! Screw game buffs and nerfs, please fix the Forum Ignore function so I can properly ignore the stable and potentially clinically insane people who are living in an alternate universe where people have no value on their time and no comprehension of cause and effect or how to get things accomplished.

Thanks.

[Archived Post]

Every post about the game is negative.

Welcome to an MMO forum. Have you seen WoW's cesspool known as general? I would guess not if you honestly think that people complaining about a game is exclusive to CO and CO alone.

[Archived Post]

well,

i was there at aoc launch, and even before launch there were people who were doomsaying. aoc went upside down, a lot of stuff was half finished, yet the game still continues and holds itself up, despite losing a lot of subscribers.

i say you should just treat those doomsayers as trolls and keep busy with your gameplay.

[Archived Post]

OK...the thread I think has outlived it's usefulness. Basically, we've found:

A. There are no hard facts or numbers about the game's playerbase.
B. Some people genuinely don't like the game and are leaving. This number is unknown but seems large for a release to some people.
C. Others think this is is well within the normal range.
D. Some MMO's have indeed failed, but it is a small number. No one knows if the numbers of player of this game would put it into that category as no one knows what they are.
E. Most MMO's do continue to be played, even ones like AOC and WAR that are thought of as failures due to a high volume exodus in the early life of the game.

Now that people are arguing in this thread about what their rogue could do in WoW in 2007 I think there's not a whole lot left to learn about the possibility of Doom for CO.

This should be edited into the first post to save people time. Maybe add in Some people like the game, just really dislike recent events. Particularly don't like being told the time for sweeping changes is over followed by more of the same.

[Archived Post]

conan movies were hollywood productions, distributed by the distribution machine they have. they filled a slot in that season's theaters. thats it. the majority of the world wouldnt care for it more than they would care for any random summer 'blockbuster'.
I guess Robert E. Howard (who first wrote Conan in 1932...) is rolling in his grave.

[Archived Post]

I guess Robert E. Howard (who first wrote Conan in 1932...) is rolling in his grave.

Isn't it amazing how illiterate computer nerds can be?

[Archived Post]

poeple are just affraid its going to be another hellgate london!
another great game ramed into the ground!

[Archived Post]

Isn't it amazing how illiterate computer nerds can be?

Very sad, but true.

[Archived Post]

Isn't it amazing how illiterate computer nerds can be?

IT DOESN'T HELP ME FACESMASH IN AOC NOW DOES IT?

(No but if it wasn't for him you wouldn't be playing that game anyway...)

[Archived Post]

MMO play should require strategy. More buttons = more strategy options. Wow is actually simple and dumb compared to most MMO's. I mean, what else is there to a game besides either strategy or reflexes. FPS's require reflexes and map knowledge. Other MMO's require strategy. Knowing the right counter to what your opponent is doing. CO requires nothing other than you read the forums so you can avoid the gimp abilities. My usual fight is: 1. turn on energy builder 2. tap frost breath 2x 3. spam shatter. If anything is still alive, use icy blast. That's any fight, and any powerset has the equivalent. No strategy, no reflexes.

oh please. 1vs1 FPS games are about refexes and skill (map knowledge you get in 10 mins). 1vs1 MMOs are about intimate game mechanic knowledge.

Large scale fight in FPS games are much more about strategy than any MMO I have ever played. Why? All players are equal, and both teams have the same number of players. Twich factor become less relevant the more players become involved. Teamwork and communication become vital.

Large scale MMO fights are never equal. Differences in levels, gear, classes, powers and numbers all play a role before even skill of the player in the fight itself ever comes into it. It adds an additional dimentionality to the gameplay sure, but most of the skill behind a successful pvp team comes in knowing which fights can be won and which fights cannot. Great in theory, but in practise has the result of reducing most fights to a Zerg fest, or to which side has the most healers, or the greatest sustained dps etc. You will hardly ever see greater strategy than someone calling out a primary target. Crossfires, positioning, formations, fireteam advance/withdrawal, ground/air coordination, etc - all things that are are simply not feasible in the majority of MMOs.

If I told you MMO skill is all about pressing 1, 2, 3 while occasionally hitting tab, and that it is all about ganking people who have no chance to fight back, you would see this as evidence of me being completely ignorant of higher levels of MMO play. Please think twice before making statements like that yourself.

[Archived Post]

im sure some folks have leveled and are in other places since then too.

Nah couldn't be that most players out leveled Canadian crisis.

Well you know I checked wow and I checked that tauren newbie area and there was a lot less people then in 2004. So I suspect it is dying any day now.

Too many people here over-complicate their simplistic lives.

If it is fun for you and you enjoy playing it then do so.

If it is not fun go do something else that is fun for g-m-f-g-q-r-crying out loud.

Take control of your life and start acting normal for once.

[Archived Post]

Ive tried to make this point before and fanboys just never get it. Some people really believe the game revolves around them and them only and everyone else needs to just get lost and leave their world without regards as to what happens when theres noone left to keep the game going.

I'm sorry I forgot... the world obviously revolves around YOU! How could I be so naive!

That's really funny how you say that as if you KNOW that the doomsayers represent some sort of majority. It's a laughable statement.

I loled.

[Archived Post]

FFXI actually used quite a bit of strategy things as small as the wearher would effect your battles but that doesnt really matter everyone decides what they think is strategy qnd what they think is button mashing.

I was thinking about why so many people are leaving or are mad and i thought of one thing. Maybe this game is just not what we thought it was supposed to be. When i started i thought it was going to be a long game with lots of action in a big world with lots of group stuff. I fully expected to take months or even a year to lvl up to the cap and i thought i could do that in a group of friends in dungeons or street sweeping.

As this game is right now it is a very short single player game with a small world it just so happens you can see other people playing the same single player game as you. The game is just small fallout 3 dwarfs this game. If you dumped other people into fallout 3 you would end up with a game much like co.

I dont know why i expected it to be like most mmos i guess when you assume....... I think plenty of people will like this game and they can be successful with a small player base maybe that is what they planned all along maybe they never planned to have a lot of players or a large world and this just want asmall group of dedicated few there is nothing wrong with that. Just dont be surprised if the complaining goes on for a long time because i think a lot of people thought this game was going to be a real Massivly multiplayer game not a small online single player game

[Archived Post]

*opens one eye*
*opens the other eye*
*lifts head and look at the commotion*

Humans.

*goes back to sleep*

[Archived Post]

This game will absolutely not last a year..

All of you know why too. You just logged off of it to post here. .Its called World of ********. And it has an expansion coming out next year and you all know damn well you'd amputate your legs, sell a kidney and eat your children to keep laying it. It wouldnt matter how amazing this game was . ..it could give you 24/7 orgasms and even that would not pull people away from wow. You could be promised eternal bliss in heaven. .. . . ..or full tier 9. ..and you'd pick tier 9. .. Blizzard could make a quest that would grant the most uber rewards ever possible ..all you have to do is kill yourself IRL . .and you'd probably do it.. .12 million people. .many of them divorced, evicted, even in jail due to that game. ... ..and you expect this game to live??? lol no

This is the customer base that C.O. has to contend with. ..and they have no prayer. ..

FYI never played WoW and never plan to.

I know it introduced kiddes to the world of mmos and made huge buckos on subcriptions due to Blizzards name, the well known IP (********) being used, etc.

But Blizzard also is a big-time thief. They steal IP ideas all the time in even their best games and if you don't see it your just being blind. So I refuse to support their mass $$$ maker *shrug*

[Archived Post]

FYI never played WoW and never plan to.

I know it introduced kiddes to the world of mmos and made huge buckos on subcriptions due to Blizzards name, the well known IP (********) being used, etc.

But Blizzard also is a big-time thief. They steal IP ideas all the time in even their best games and if you don't see it your just being blind. So I refuse to support their mass $$$ maker *shrug*

if that makes a game bad than this game is terrible along with most other mmo's.

[Archived Post]

conan movies were hollywood productions, distributed by the distribution machine they have. they filled a slot in that season's theaters. thats it. the majority of the world wouldnt care for it more than they would care for any random summer 'blockbuster'.

The majority in the world, of course. Mainly because the majority of the world doesn't even watch Hollywood movies. But we're not talking the world. We're talking the market AoC is primarily sold in, which is mostly US and, to a lesser extent, Europe. The movies, while a bit old now days, are beyond "niche" popularity. And I notice you skip over the books, which are fairly popular as well.

[Archived Post]

Hi, OP. Have a look at my signature. I don't know about others but one guy uses crystal ball to get his info.

[Archived Post]

poeple are just affraid its going to be another hellgate london!
another great game ramed into the ground!

Hellgate London was improving and was only killed by Flagships partner so they could loot it and their other project in development. If you check it out you'll find that partner is running HG:L just fine in Korea.

[Archived Post]

my experience about this game was that i was being overcharged to beta test an unfisished product.
its true that ALL the mmo i've played on lauch needed improvement when they where released(even wow) but this is just too much, especialy if you consider what is being offered on the market today, you need to learn what other mmo did to be successfull and then try to be even better. i mean why would i pay 15 buck a month for this product when i could pay the same amount for a better game/product?

as for the where do i take my info for that game will die doomsaying, i might not have actual statistic or number , but then again you can make statistic say anything you want to ear anyway(and i did custumer service and markeeting long enough to say that)...
what i can tell you tho is that i have started to play mmo in the time of ultima online and i have played many mmo since that time so i believe that i have at least a general idea of what i am speaking about and a can definitly see pattern that ive seen in other mmo that failed. and dont tell me that because a game still exist it cant be a fail(war aoc etc..), a bad game is still a fail and it is my opinion that if your game only apppeal to hardcore fan who would buy anything anyway from you then it is my opinion that you can consider this a bad game.

i think the game will be alive for some time but will never be what it could have been. unfortunatly some of the cryptic's move are just ******** and will transform a game with a lot of potential into some ''ghostown'' mmo where only the hardcore fan will remain, and even if i am wrong and the game improve to unexpected greatness level(and that would be very cool) i still feel that cryptic are jerk for selling me that **** in the unfished state it is today.

-to all the people that use the: if you dont like it dont play it -i say:
i wont but i still had to pay for a bad game that i will only use for 1 month (and for mmo standard its f-ing bad !!)
-to all the people that say if your going to complain dont bother to write: its not by ignoring a problem that will make it go away, and constructive(or not so constructive) feedback from us the consumer should be used as a tool for the dev to bring this game to the level it should have been with the potential it had/have(depending on how you see thing)

to be honnest i like the gameplay in general of this game and there is new and cool idea in this game that ive never seen elsewhere but it could have been a solo console game and the general experience would have been the same exept that i would not have to give money for it each month... there is simply not enough to keep me interested(and not just me ALL my friend who buyed the game and some buyed the permanent subscription)

what i believe now is that in the next few month the dev have to come up with something fast to keep people here and some of the thing they need to improve(not specificaly in that order)

-avoid shutting down server at random time espacialy during prime time.

-if they have to nurf and do some balancing(wich is normal for mmo) at least they should come up with a better retcon solution especialy if one of the selling point of this game is the way you are supposed to get attached to your caracter, getting that same caracter nerf hammered is already unpleasant enough but having to lose all your money to retcon is even worse and its easy to lose interest here

-retcon as it is just not fun and bring nothing to the game, what make this game special is the way you can make ANYTHING with your caracter, wich also mean you are bound to make mistake especialy for less hardcore player who dont want to spend 4 hour of reading before writing a build.

-not enough content for a mmo and if you dont like one of the chain of quest or if it is bugged then you are stuck with grinding and grinding exist at some point in most mmo but the grinding here dont pay enough xp and is way too repetitive(spam 2 button and win) to keep me wanting to pay for it(btw,just because there is worse game grindwise you should not complain IS NOT a valid argument to make this grind more intersting that it is)

-inventory management is bad, aunction house is just awfull and not user friendly at all(browsing trough 15 page of gear to find 1 piece of gear when there is not even an option to sort the page(ex:from less expensive to the most)

-the pvp is not playable at all(even if i know it wasnt meant to be a pvp game) the game type of arena just suck(just kill X player with no objective is boring for the lower level pvp) and there is too few of them and if i want to be any good in pvp i need to start a new caracter with the power of the week and it will be a long and boring spamming attack at non dieing caracter while they try to kill me too but i dont die too unless someone from one of the 2 team get a ''twink'' with all the broken power and then its boring for every one including the winning team who now have no chalenge

the list is long and soon the population that will thin more and more...

as a final word i respect their opinion and i am happy for those who say it is a great game, but i disagree strongly with them on the great game part so after the next month ill go back to a better game and maybe in 1 or 2 year when you will have payed to beta test and improve that game ill be back if its truly a good product.

p.s. before some smart ass point it out, yes i know my english suck as it is not my first language, but then again do i post on a forum or do i write a f-ing resume ?

[Archived Post]

I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

They pull all their facts from the same place: Their rears. Oh, and Xfire, which is pretty much the same thing.

[Archived Post]

my experience about this game was that i was being overcharged to beta test an unfisished product.
its true that ALL the mmo i've played on lauch needed improvement when they where released(even wow) but this is just too much, especialy if you consider what is being offered on the market today, you need to learn what other mmo did to be successfull and then try to be even better. i mean why would i pay 15 buck a month for this product when i could pay the same amount for a better game/product?

as for the where do i take my info for that game will die doomsaying, i might not have actual statistic or number , but then again you can make statistic say anything you want to ear anyway(and i did custumer service and markeeting long enough to say that)...
what i can tell you tho is that i have started to play mmo in the time of ultima online and i have played many mmo since that time so i believe that i have at least a general idea of what i am speaking about and a can definitly see pattern that ive seen in other mmo that failed. and dont tell me that because a game still exist it cant be a fail(war aoc etc..), a bad game is still a fail and it is my opinion that if your game only apppeal to hardcore fan who would buy anything anyway from you then it is my opinion that you can consider this a bad game.

i think the game will be alive for some time but will never be what it could have been. unfortunatly some of the cryptic's move are just ******** and will transform a game with a lot of potential into some ''ghostown'' mmo where only the hardcore fan will remain, and even if i am wrong and the game improve to unexpected greatness level(and that would be very cool) i still feel that cryptic are jerk for selling me that **** in the unfished state it is today.

-to all the people that use the: if you dont like it dont play it -i say:
i wont but i still had to pay for a bad game that i will only use for 1 month (and for mmo standard its f-ing bad !!)
-to all the people that say if your going to complain dont bother to write: its not by ignoring a problem that will make it go away, and constructive(or not so constructive) feedback from us the consumer should be used as a tool for the dev to bring this game to the level it should have been with the potential it had/have(depending on how you see thing)

to be honnest i like the gameplay in general of this game and there is new and cool idea in this game that ive never seen elsewhere but it could have been a solo console game and the general experience would have been the same exept that i would not have to give money for it each month... there is simply not enough to keep me interested(and not just me ALL my friend who buyed the game and some buyed the permanent subscription)

what i believe now is that in the next few month the dev have to come up with something fast to keep people here and some of the thing they need to improve(not specificaly in that order)

-avoid shutting down server at random time espacialy during prime time.

-if they have to nurf and do some balancing(wich is normal for mmo) at least they should come up with a better retcon solution especialy if one of the selling point of this game is the way you are supposed to get attached to your caracter, getting that same caracter nerf hammered is already unpleasant enough but having to lose all your money to retcon is even worse and its easy to lose interest here

-retcon as it is just not fun and bring nothing to the game, what make this game special is the way you can make ANYTHING with your caracter, wich also mean you are bound to make mistake especialy for less hardcore player who dont want to spend 4 hour of reading before writing a build.

-not enough content for a mmo and if you dont like one of the chain of quest or if it is bugged then you are stuck with grinding and grinding exist at some point in most mmo but the grinding here dont pay enough xp and is way too repetitive(spam 2 button and win) to keep me wanting to pay for it(btw,just because there is worse game grindwise you should not complain IS NOT a valid argument to make this grind more intersting that it is)

-inventory management is bad, aunction house is just awfull and not user friendly at all(browsing trough 15 page of gear to find 1 piece of gear when there is not even an option to sort the page(ex:from less expensive to the most)

-the pvp is not playable at all(even if i know it wasnt meant to be a pvp game) the game type of arena just suck(just kill X player with no objective is boring for the lower level pvp) and there is too few of them and if i want to be any good in pvp i need to start a new caracter with the power of the week and it will be a long and boring spamming attack at non dieing caracter while they try to kill me too but i dont die too unless someone from one of the 2 team get a ''twink'' with all the broken power and then its boring for every one including the winning team who now have no chalenge

the list is long and soon the population that will thin more and more...

as a final word i respect their opinion and i am happy for those who say it is a great game, but i disagree strongly with them on the great game part so after the next month ill go back to a better game and maybe in 1 or 2 year when you will have payed to beta test and improve that game ill be back if its truly a good product.

p.s. before some smart ass point it out, yes i know my english suck as it is not my first language, but then again do i post on a forum or do i write a f-ing resume ?

Very well said, I applaud you for your patience in writing this lengthy feedback . I agree with all the points you have made and have to add one more thing myself.

Being forced to put my face on my keyboard and roll out of a hold is the dumbest idea in the history of MMOs.

[Archived Post]

my experience about this game was that i was being overcharged to beta test an unfisished product.
its true that ALL the mmo i've played on lauch needed improvement when they where released(even wow) but this is just too much, especialy if you consider what is being offered on the market today, you need to learn what other mmo did to be successfull and then try to be even better. i mean why would i pay 15 buck a month for this product when i could pay the same amount for a better game/product?

as for the where do i take my info for that game will die doomsaying, i might not have actual statistic or number , but then again you can make statistic say anything you want to ear anyway(and i did custumer service and markeeting long enough to say that)...
what i can tell you tho is that i have started to play mmo in the time of ultima online and i have played many mmo since that time so i believe that i have at least a general idea of what i am speaking about and a can definitly see pattern that ive seen in other mmo that failed. and dont tell me that because a game still exist it cant be a fail(war aoc etc..), a bad game is still a fail and it is my opinion that if your game only apppeal to hardcore fan who would buy anything anyway from you then it is my opinion that you can consider this a bad game.

i think the game will be alive for some time but will never be what it could have been. unfortunatly some of the cryptic's move are just ******** and will transform a game with a lot of potential into some ''ghostown'' mmo where only the hardcore fan will remain, and even if i am wrong and the game improve to unexpected greatness level(and that would be very cool) i still feel that cryptic are jerk for selling me that **** in the unfished state it is today.

-to all the people that use the: if you dont like it dont play it -i say:
i wont but i still had to pay for a bad game that i will only use for 1 month (and for mmo standard its f-ing bad !!)
-to all the people that say if your going to complain dont bother to write: its not by ignoring a problem that will make it go away, and constructive(or not so constructive) feedback from us the consumer should be used as a tool for the dev to bring this game to the level it should have been with the potential it had/have(depending on how you see thing)

to be honnest i like the gameplay in general of this game and there is new and cool idea in this game that ive never seen elsewhere but it could have been a solo console game and the general experience would have been the same exept that i would not have to give money for it each month... there is simply not enough to keep me interested(and not just me ALL my friend who buyed the game and some buyed the permanent subscription)

what i believe now is that in the next few month the dev have to come up with something fast to keep people here and some of the thing they need to improve(not specificaly in that order)

-avoid shutting down server at random time espacialy during prime time.

-if they have to nurf and do some balancing(wich is normal for mmo) at least they should come up with a better retcon solution especialy if one of the selling point of this game is the way you are supposed to get attached to your caracter, getting that same caracter nerf hammered is already unpleasant enough but having to lose all your money to retcon is even worse and its easy to lose interest here

-retcon as it is just not fun and bring nothing to the game, what make this game special is the way you can make ANYTHING with your caracter, wich also mean you are bound to make mistake especialy for less hardcore player who dont want to spend 4 hour of reading before writing a build.

-not enough content for a mmo and if you dont like one of the chain of quest or if it is bugged then you are stuck with grinding and grinding exist at some point in most mmo but the grinding here dont pay enough xp and is way too repetitive(spam 2 button and win) to keep me wanting to pay for it(btw,just because there is worse game grindwise you should not complain IS NOT a valid argument to make this grind more intersting that it is)

-inventory management is bad, aunction house is just awfull and not user friendly at all(browsing trough 15 page of gear to find 1 piece of gear when there is not even an option to sort the page(ex:from less expensive to the most)

-the pvp is not playable at all(even if i know it wasnt meant to be a pvp game) the game type of arena just suck(just kill X player with no objective is boring for the lower level pvp) and there is too few of them and if i want to be any good in pvp i need to start a new caracter with the power of the week and it will be a long and boring spamming attack at non dieing caracter while they try to kill me too but i dont die too unless someone from one of the 2 team get a ''twink'' with all the broken power and then its boring for every one including the winning team who now have no chalenge

the list is long and soon the population that will thin more and more...

as a final word i respect their opinion and i am happy for those who say it is a great game, but i disagree strongly with them on the great game part so after the next month ill go back to a better game and maybe in 1 or 2 year when you will have payed to beta test and improve that game ill be back if its truly a good product.

p.s. before some smart ass point it out, yes i know my english suck as it is not my first language, but then again do i post on a forum or do i write a f-ing resume ?

What's a failure to you? If a game is making enough money to stay in the black, how would that be a failure?

[Archived Post]

Most people like to see other people fail.

Most MMO players like to see any other MMO games fail so thier perfect game doesn't fail.

[Archived Post]

Here's the truth. There is a vocal minority, and they have a desire to feel self-important and as usual, beleive they speak for everyone. Anyone that disagrees with them, no matter what about they are disagreeing with, is instantly labelled a fanboi. Despite the fact these individuals do not have a single shred of evidence to back up their facts at all. And it's still, always, the same people posting these people are leaving with no proof to back it up.

Ironically, these are the same people that post this same drivel on other game forums, paying a monthly fee, just so thy can post their vitriol and bile.

I think this game is indeed in trouble. You ask for empirical evidence, I can only point to greatly reduced instance populations, wiped out SG's and friends of mine who have all hit the exits. When you log on, it becomes really evident, the numbers are well down.

I do however think the game will survice. A game has to really tank for it to close their doors altogether, AOC, WAR, DDO, all are still carrying on.

What upsets me the most though, is CO had the potential to be a truly great game. No not on the level of WOW, but a good niche game that one could play casually and enjoy.

Unfortunately, the amateur developers has made one mistake after another, the cardinal sin releasing a game that wasn't even close to being complete.

[Archived Post]

What's a failure to you? If a game is making enough money to stay in the black, how would that be a failure?

because you make money by selling sh*t does not make it a good product it make you a good business man, thats a diferent thing.
i am not concerned about the profit cryptic make about this game. i am concerned about getting a fair deal out of the money i paid. some had good experience with this game and i am happy for them but personaly i dont believe that the experience i got worth the money i payd for and from what i read i am defenitly not the only one here...

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This game is F2P right now.

My subscription ran out on october 8th and I can still log in and play for FREE.

Anyone who had their subscription ran out is still able to log in and play for free.

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Well, I look at it this way, I have 6 real world friends who started this game at the same time as me. I'm the only one still playing. Those numbers aren't good. Likewise, I have two real world friends that started this game with me and of the three of us, none of us are still playing.

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A lot of the evidence is anecdotal, but it really does seem like the game is hemorrhaging people right now. I bet we see some people come back for Blood Moon, but I'm not sure how long that will sustain their interest.

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OK...the thread I think has outlived it's usefulness.
Actually, I do have one thing to add that you might find useful... it's about extremes.

You'll note how seldom anyone in these forums really states something to the effect of "CO has its problems, and a lot needs fixing, but there's also a lot there that's decent." People with a moderate or pragmatic viewpoint tend to be shouted down by people on either side with an axe to grind or other ulterior motive... like proving that they're right. Effectively, it's a black and white situation... if you aren't for a POV, you're against it, crash or soar, friend or foe.

The doomsayers prophesize doom because... mostly, they're upset by the game, or annoyed by something, or whatever; a negative response, which extremism amplifies to the point of unreason. Likewise, the fanboys, agitated by the (usually) more aggressive doomsayers, rise up to do battle against the negatives of the game, also driven on by extremism. Actually sitting back and analyzing, approaching things from a rational standing, tends to get attacked by both sides... friend or foe, yeah?

Me, I'm an extremist against stupid, except when I'm apathetic. I just tend to notice more of the all caps "I HAET TIHS GAME CRPYTIC SUX" posts than the "I WATN CRYTRPC'S BABEEEES" ones. ;)

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mostly everyone I know tried it for 30 days... and left when they got 2 character to level cap and had nothing to do.

Its almost like cryptic has been in a BUBBLE for the past 5 years and didnt realise that PAYING subscribers want more to do than 5 zones and some repeatable missions...

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I might sound like a doomsayer but I'm not, I plan on returning to this game sometime in 2010. I figure in 6 months time this game will be playable to _my_ standards. As you can see from the large number of people discontent with what they paid for, I am not alone.

I was just stating the fact that as of right now, october 13th 2009 this game is F2P. I say this because I purchsed this game september 7th 2009 and my trial period ended on october 7th 2009. I just logged in again for 30 seconds just to see if I still could.

I am not the only one, every single person who had their trial period expire has been able to keep logging in long past their trial period. I have never seen a professional, successful company let players keep playing for a full week after their subscription runs out.

I truly sympathize with the people who got conned into purchasing a lifetime subscription because quite frankly it will be worthless sooner then it will be profitable. They defend their purchase because naturally they don't want to admit the fact that this game isn't what it was advertised to be and they spent over 200 bucks on something that at the time they thought would be a good idea. I'm sure as the rest of this month rolls by even more of the player base will start voicing their concerns.

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mostly everyone I know tried it for 30 days... and left when they got 2 character to level cap and had nothing to do. Its almost like cryptic has been in a BUBBLE for the past 5 years and didnt realise that PAYING subscribers want more to do than 5 zones and some repeatable missions...
1) How many people do you know? Of those, how many people played CO? Of those, how many people quit? Specifics, or it's little better than rumor. I bet the quit numbers are less than 10, but admitting that wouldn't convey the right level of smug negativity, would it?

2) Yeah, I imagine CO and its extremely thin content, which I agree about, is going to be rather sparse for the sort of person that chooses to get to level 40 in 15 days. Twice. Maybe it's just me, but... you think that, just perhaps, these alleged people might have a slightly different outlook from the rest of the world? Out of curiosity, were they all using identical FotM builds?

(... and no, please read this before calling me a fanboy. I said one thing about the game, and it's negative. What I'm responding to is yet another useless, contentless vague doom post. Sheesh.)

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I was just stating the fact that as of right now, october 13th 2009 this game is F2P.
Yes, you said that. At the top of this page, no less. And no one responded.

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aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghhhhtttt............

*keeps charging beam cannon*

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mostly everyone I know tried it for 30 days... and left when they got 2 character to level cap and had nothing to do.

Its almost like cryptic has been in a BUBBLE for the past 5 years and didnt realise that PAYING subscribers want more to do than 5 zones and some repeatable missions...

If that's the case, it must be an absolute fluke that CoX survives and has been running 5 years. About 10 of my WoW friends came over and are still playing, along with me, and a few even find PvP fun. And as for endgame, CO still has more of one than CoX ever did. That said, CO does need MORE of an endgame (imo); and there are prenty of good suggestions in the suggestions thread.

As for the 'player hemmoraging; don't really see it as during peak U.S. playtimes most zones have 17 - 20 instances at 75+ players, which is about what it's been averaging since tne first 30 day period ended. That said, it usually takes 3 - 6 months before any MMO starts to stabalize; and with all the competition, I suspect turnover and people coming and going is affecting all MMOs (although I doubt WoW's turnover affects Blizzard too much ;)).

Bnyhow, I'm sure as long as CO has 150K or so subs on a regular basis; which is what most MMOs (with the exception of WoW) are averaging, it'll chug along like every other MMO that's still active. Time will tell, but I don't see any 'DOOOM' on the horizon just yet.

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Im not one to cry doom on any games but the population has definitley taken a dive. From 20-30 friends online at most times down to 2-3, and thats just my list. I'll stick it out another month or two, if they dont release a decent amount of content or fix the useless powers, I'll hold my sub off for a few months.

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-avoid shutting down server at random time espacialy during prime time.

For me, it is the perfect time. Either I'm still asleep, or I am at work. Hooray for GMT+2! :D

That said, this is a virgin game. All MMOs have these kinds of problems at the beginning. When everything stabilizes, then emergency maintenance will not be necessary.

As for doing it on prime time... well, they live in California. 3AM is not prime time for them.

-if they have to nurf and do some balancing(wich is normal for mmo) at least they should come up with a better retcon solution especialy if one of the selling point of this game is the way you are supposed to get attached to your caracter, getting that same caracter nerf hammered is already unpleasant enough but having to lose all your money to retcon is even worse and its easy to lose interest here

They did handle out free retcons, you know.

-retcon as it is just not fun and bring nothing to the game, what make this game special is the way you can make ANYTHING with your caracter, wich also mean you are bound to make mistake especialy for less hardcore player who dont want to spend 4 hour of reading before writing a build.

Unfortunately, that is an effect of allowing almost anything. A lot of options means a lot to read in. If you want casual, you should go for the Holy Triad: the Healer, the Tank and the Striker.

-not enough content for a mmo and if you dont like one of the chain of quest or if it is bugged then you are stuck with grinding and grinding exist at some point in most mmo but the grinding here dont pay enough xp and is way too repetitive(spam 2 button and win) to keep me wanting to pay for it(btw,just because there is worse game grindwise you should not complain IS NOT a valid argument to make this grind more intersting that it is)

There are two points here. One is that there is not enough content. I agree on that, but they're working on it. Most MMOs have far too little content at launch, but they also shape up quickly.

The other point is repetitive button mashing and how boring it is: I would say that thanks to the speed of Champions and its tactical challenge, this game is actually less button mashing than most. It has a great element of positioning, you have to know how your enemies attack and take appropriate measures, and you have to time your attacks to when the opponent is open. You also have to be aware of your surroundings. Crowd control doesn't only mean spamming aggro, but also holding the guys running off for reinforcements. Selection of the correct target is paramount.

Compare this to the ordinary MMO's button mashing, where you hit the same attack keys on one second intervals, as if by clockwork, to activate your attack chains. I find my eyes drifting to the web browser on other monitor while fighting in these. They're not in Champions.

The fluidity of combat in Champions Online is one of the most brilliant aspects of the game.

-inventory management is bad, aunction house is just awfull and not user friendly at all(browsing trough 15 page of gear to find 1 piece of gear when there is not even an option to sort the page(ex:from less expensive to the most)

Agreed. But I'm sure this will be addressed.

-the pvp is not playable at all(even if i know it wasnt meant to be a pvp game) the game type of arena just suck(just kill X player with no objective is boring for the lower level pvp) and there is too few of them and if i want to be any good in pvp i need to start a new caracter with the power of the week and it will be a long and boring spamming attack at non dieing caracter while they try to kill me too but i dont die too unless someone from one of the 2 team get a ''twink'' with all the broken power and then its boring for every one including the winning team who now have no chalenge

I haven't noticed.

On the other hand, I don't PvP, because PvP in MMOs is more GvG, BvB or SvS (gear vs gear, build vs build or spreadsheet vs spreadsheet) than PvP, which might explain why I haven't noticed. :D If I want PvP, I play a game dedicated to PvP from the ground up, such as Team Fortress 2. I'm happy that CO is a PvE game, and I hope this priority never changes.

I know that not all players agree with me, but that's fine. No game can be perfect for every player, but so far, Champions is ... well, not perfect for me, but very very good save for some hiccups. There are games that have PvP as the major feature; I'm sure one of these should satisfy the regular PvPer.

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For me, it is the perfect time. Either I'm still asleep, or I am at work. Hooray for GMT+2! :D

That said, this is a virgin game. All MMOs have these kinds of problems at the beginning. When everything stabilizes, then emergency maintenance will not be necessary.

As for doing it on prime time... well, they live in California. 3AM is not prime time for them.

-by prime time i meant at 8 pm just like it happened this week for an example and if the game was more in a finished state there would not be need for that many emergency maintenant(altho i'll agree with you that on the beginning there will be some issue on game like this)

Unfortunately, that is an effect of allowing almost anything. A lot of options means a lot to read in. If you want casual, you should go for the Holy Triad: the Healer, the Tank and the Striker.

-no this is stupid, i am the kind of person who will read 3-4 hour of forum before even starting my first toon
but as a game dev its would be dumb to assume every player r like this and also the first levels in this game are the level where you have the most chance to screw up your build because you dont have the experience yet to understand the subtility of the game so it is stupid to punish the player the more they go back in the power tree, at least it might leave you the option to change power anywhere on the build not just the last one even if it would meant making you pay a litle more ressources( it would be less expensive than to remove all the power's you took just because 1 or 2 power wasnt the good choice)


There are two points here. One is that there is not enough content. I agree on that, but they're working on it. Most MMOs have far too little content at launch, but they also shape up quickly.

-like i said i have payd for an unfinished product that as not enough content that content imo should have been there already, its not normal even for a new game(the successfull at least) to see so many person leaving after the fist month

The other point is repetitive button mashing and how boring it is: I would say that thanks to the speed of Champions and its tactical challenge, this game is actually less button mashing than most. It has a great element of positioning, you have to know how your enemies attack and take appropriate measures, and you have to time your attacks to when the opponent is open. You also have to be aware of your surroundings. Crowd control doesn't only mean spamming aggro, but also holding the guys running off for reinforcements. Selection of the correct target is paramount.

-honestly if you call this game a tactical chalenge there is sumthing that i have missed because this game is rly not chalenging at all for me maybe its just because of my build.

-Compare this to the ordinary MMO's button mashing, where you hit the same attack keys on one second intervals, as if by clockwork, to activate your attack chains. I find my eyes drifting to the web browser on other monitor while fighting in these. They're not in Champions.

-well the gameplay is cool ill agree but its doesnt make it more fun to kill that much minnion to level(as example when i was lv 25 it took around 250 000 xp if i am correct to level and the mob (henchmen lv 27-28 gave around 130 xp and the vilaint like 450xp 1400 for supervilain lv 28 correct me if am wrong its from wath i recall for the numbers) wich mean i need to kill 1923 henchmen or 555 vilain, and even if the gameplay is cool its still killing a lot of similar enemy to level, at it would not be such an issue(as ive need worst to be honest) if there was content but like i mentioned unless you never drop any quest(altho some are broken or just not fun) you are bound to grind, if there where more patway or more quest available than needed to get to 40
it would be ok but i dont have that many option, yes you could say then its your problem if you dont do the chain but no its not, a game that rely on so little quest is not complete in my personal defenition


Agreed. But I'm sure this will be addressed.

-ok come on, we are in 2009 and there is enough other game that was made before to set standard for this, they dont have to reinvent the wheel here, its stupid that the game came out with such a poor item management and auction house and think it would be ok,

I haven't noticed.

On the other hand, I don't PvP, because PvP in MMOs is more GvG, BvB or SvS (gear vs gear, build vs build or spreadsheet vs spreadsheet) than PvP, which might explain why I haven't noticed. :D If I want PvP, I play a game dedicated to PvP from the ground up, such as Team Fortress 2. I'm happy that CO is a PvE game, and I hope this priority never changes.

I know that not all players agree with me, but that's fine. No game can be perfect for every player, but so far, Champions is ... well, not perfect for me, but very very good save for some hiccups. There are games that have PvP as the major feature; I'm sure one of these should satisfy the regular PvPer.
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-agreed at some point, i honnestly think that pve should be priorized from the dev before pvp too because that gamme was desined for pvp but if there is such a great gap between spec in pvp it also mean that the power tree at some point are unbalanced in pve too and thats why some people do the content so easily and others dont.
all the game will have their broken class but here the gap seem to be worst from my point of view
and yes a game will adjust with time but wtf the beta tester did all that time before it came out ? why some of the worst aberation came out like this in the first place(tk shield that a lot of person asked to be nerfed is an example) and for the pvp matter it would not have been so complicated to add more fun option or objective to those arena that just kill 15 player(at least for the lower level arena)

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I was on at about 11pm GMT yesterday. Maybe a bit later. That strikes me as as pushing towards prime time.i went to the powerhouse and was shocked and disturbed to find only two instances up. And 9 players (from a world population) in both!!

I hope the game survives. I really do. I enjoy it, despite certain things that have (and continue to) irritated the heck out of me.

But, for me, looking at it commercially, the launch of the game was a total, unmitigated disaster.

Surely at launch you want your players fresh and enthusiastic. Yet those nerfs...

Can you imagine buying a new car and on the day of delivery a mechanic comes round and says "sorry sir I have to lower the speed to 90 mph max and instead of 0-60 in 7 seconds it'll be 0-60 in 10? " I kind of think the dealers would be getting a lot of returned cars.

What I found equally astounding was the lack of a user manual. I can't speak for everyone butI find this game requires getting your head round, big time. It strikes me that your no1 concept for a hero is usually the one you first put out there. But because you don't know what you're doing this means a lot of gimped characters and playstyles. So, this hero you invent is a waste of space and it's possible you don't even know why. ( I didn't realise you have to put your passive in the box for example. Spend days getting wiped, got really frustrated. i do use the forums so I asked the question but not every one does. Would I still be playing if i never found the answer? I can't say.)

And the respec they put out won't really accommadate that because you're too busy fixing gimps they created. So i think a lot of people throw in the towel and move onto something that's a little more user friendly.

All because they, for some reason, never bothered to put out a MANUAL. And, when they did, they put it on the website. What about all those players who don't bother with the website?

i think it's an extraordinary gaff and it has sto be costing them casual players.

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

Those same predictions were made about just about every mmo ever including WoW...:eek:

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I was on at about 11pm GMT yesterday. Maybe a bit later. That strikes me as as pushing towards prime time.i went to the powerhouse and was shocked and disturbed to find only two instances up. And 9 players (from a world population) in both!!

ONE observation does not constitute stastically relevant data.
What's your timezone?
And, what was the populace in other zones? After reaching lev 40, you're not going to spend much time in the PH, don't you think?
Yesterday at 11pm GMT+1 I jumped into powerhouse desert #28. NERF had about 20 online players.
So... what?

What I found equally astounding was the lack of a user manual. I can't speak for everyone butI find this game requires getting your head round, big time. It strikes me that your no1 concept for a hero is usually the one you first put out there. But because you don't know what you're doing this means a lot of gimped characters and playstyles. So, this hero you invent is a waste of space and it's possible you don't even know why. ( I didn't realise you have to put your passive in the box for example. Spend days getting wiped, got really frustrated. i do use the forums so I asked the question but not every one does. Would I still be playing if i never found the answer? I can't say.)

Yeah that's true. I took targeting computer for my first and Superstatted weirdly (Dex/Int for pa)... ends up I was so gimped I scratched the character outright and started anew. They surely need to put some serious effort in documentation - GOOD and RELIABLE documentation - seeing a power like Teflon Coated Rounds you ge the idea:
"The power grants 10% damage resistance debuff" - Advanced description: "7.5% damage resistance debuff". :confused:

The wiki also needs love, but this can be done by us, actually.

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Those same predictions were made about just about every mmo ever including WoW...:eek:

True but WoW ( I played since beta) has never had so few people as CO, not even close, not by a longshot. CO has had a significant drop in active players there's no question, no one can refute the instance list and players within them. I'm not saying this MMO will "die", there are several MMO's out there that many had no doubt they would fail hard and still plug along but at this point and the direction Cryptic is taking I can't see CO being any kind of significant sucess for a long time, if ever.

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mostly everyone I know tried it for 30 days... and left when they got 2 character to level cap and had nothing to do.

Its almost like cryptic has been in a BUBBLE for the past 5 years and didnt realise that PAYING subscribers want more to do than 5 zones and some repeatable missions...

See now here's the thing I've been here since beta and started my first character during head start he's only just hit 20 I also have another couple of toons about the 20 mark but nothing any where near 40 and I'm liking the 3 zones i' can get into my only bug bear is that I cant spend the majority of my life in a single zone.

But then technically im not a paying customer so maybe i don't come under your statement.

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-by prime time i meant at 8 pm just like it happened this week for an example and if the game was more in a finished state there would not be need for that many emergency maintenant(altho i'll agree with you that on the beginning there will be some issue on game like this)

If it is an emergency, then it is an emergency. Emergencies cares little about prime time.

-no this is stupid, i am the kind of person who will read 3-4 hour of forum before even starting my first toon
but as a game dev its would be dumb to assume every player r like this and also the first levels in this game are the level where you have the most chance to screw up your build because you dont have the experience yet to understand the subtility of the game so it is stupid to punish the player the more they go back in the power tree, at least it might leave you the option to change power anywhere on the build not just the last one even if it would meant making you pay a litle more ressources( it would be less expensive than to remove all the power's you took just because 1 or 2 power wasnt the good choice)

I wouldn't go as far as calling it stupid. Actually, it's quite well known in pen&paper RPGs: either you have a lot of options and hence a lot to read on - the pen&paper version of Champions is actually well known for this, as is its cousin GURPS, both which excelled in available options - or you have a more limited number of options and just pick a package and go. It is a design choice, and I can even see where it is coming from.

Although every player wouldn't want to spend time studying the options beforehand, there are some that would pay for this flexibility. Champions, as I see it, is a game that cater for them; the casual player that just want to pick a character and go are better served by the gazillion of other MMOs out there.

Still, Cryptic has made a marvellous job of making the game as accessible as it is. You can pick a powerset, randomize a costume and throw yourself into the invasion zone in under a minute, and you would be having fun and learn the game until you exit it and have to get your next powers. The rest is up to balancing the powersets, and that's the reason for the nerfs in the past.

-like i said i have payd for an unfinished product that as not enough content that content imo should have been there already, its not normal even for a new game(the successfull at least) to see so many person leaving after the fist month

Actually, it is normal. Age of Conan had this, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning had this, and I'm not particularly surprised that Champions has this as well. If you look at any subscription rates chart, you see a spike at the beginning, a sharp drop after the first month, and then steady drop for three months before the curve flattens out. The exception is World of ********, but... well.

-honestly if you call this game a tactical chalenge there is sumthing that i have missed because this game is rly not chalenging at all for me maybe its just because of my build.

It depends on what you compare Champions to, of course. If you compare it to the tactical challenge of just about every other MMO, where I can mash my attack button chains while drowsily reading an online newspaper or a forum on the other monitor, Champions excels. If you compare to a game like Rainbow 6, it falls short.

Still, as far as MMOs goes, Champions really impresses me.

-well the gameplay is cool ill agree but its doesnt make it more fun to kill that much minnion to level(as example when i was lv 25 it took around 250 000 xp if i am correct to level and the mob (henchmen lv 27-28 gave around 130 xp and the vilaint like 450xp 1400 for supervilain lv 28 correct me if am wrong its from wath i recall for the numbers) wich mean i need to kill 1923 henchmen or 555 vilain, and even if the gameplay is cool its still killing a lot of similar enemy to level, at it would not be such an issue(as ive need worst to be honest) if there was content but like i mentioned unless you never drop any quest(altho some are broken or just not fun) you are bound to grind, if there where more patway or more quest available than needed to get to 40
it would be ok but i dont have that many option, yes you could say then its your problem if you dont do the chain but no its not, a game that rely on so little quest is not complete in my personal defenition

The game is quest oriented - you're rewarded a lot more for completing quests than for grinding. I had a short snag at about 17-20, and another at 30-31, but otherwise, I've had enough quests to level me all the way to 34 (I haven't come further because I don't play the game 24/7 unlike some others). And as I've missed a lot of missions and XP - of which more than 600k permanently - I would say that there is enough content for one journey to 40, maybe two. More is needed, of course, but if you look, it is adequate.

-ok come on, we are in 2009 and there is enough other game that was made before to set standard for this, they dont have to reinvent the wheel here, its stupid that the game came out with such a poor item management and auction house and think it would be ok

The reality of game production in 2009 is that a developer often finds himself in a situation where he has to release now, despite the condition of the game, because the publisher demands it. In those cases, you throw in what you can and make the most basic user interface for it, to fix it at a later date. The publisher demands a date for the release, and often sets it; and since a lot of other resources are set - box production, disk pressing, distribution, marketing - there's no way in Hälsingland that they will extend that date just because the auction and inventory UI is a bit clumsy.

So the standard way of handling it is to simply release as it is now and fix it later.

yes a game will adjust with time but wtf the beta tester did all that time before it came out ? why some of the worst aberation came out like this in the first place(tk shield that a lot of person asked to be nerfed is an example)

Testing the maps, mechanics and infrastructure - the things that take time to fix.

Then there's testing of powers and economy, but they can't be tested in beta properly as beta players are so nice and well-behaved and do what they are told. These things can only be tested in the "real world", and have to be adjusted after release. These are also a lot easier to adjust. Generally, you just have to adjust a number in a text file.

The tricky part is knowing what to adjust the numbers to. That often requires a lot of data-mining of its use in actual play - and beta testing is not entirely trustworthy for a lot of different reasons. You can make some adjustments, but the fine-tuning has to be done based on real play data.

That's why every game - not only Champions - have their snags and nerfs and boosts in the months after release.

If you want a finished MMO, never play it in the first months!

The only exception that I've seen to this is ****, and that's only because it has been online for ten months in China and Korea and was patched to version 1.5 in US and EU, so we've basically had those first months fixed for us before we ever saw the game.

and for the pvp matter it would not have been so complicated to add more fun option or objective to those arena that just kill 15 player(at least for the lower level arena)

It's another thing that would be on the "fix this later" list if I were doing a PvE-oriented MMO.

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The only exception that I've seen to this is ****, and that's only because it has been online for ten months in China and Korea and was patched to version 1.5 in US and EU, so we've basically had those first months fixed for us before we ever saw the game.
You'd be amazed how many people refuse to acknowledge this.
Not being a player of **** myself, but having some experience with Asian-market MMOs which have been opened up to the international community, I can also say: good luck getting the **** devs to acknowledge the suggestions/issues of anyone outside the MMO's primary market area. Cryptic may have its problems, but at least they respond to people eventually. ;)

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LOL @ Hellgate. That game got no interest from me. I remember the insane advertsing that game recieved. Have any of you ever noticed that the more a game is advertsied to death, it generally spells it's doom? Anyone remember John Romero's - Daikatana?

I also laugh at the folsk who quote some sort of tool named X-fire for Champion Online's numbers. Now from what I gather from X-fire... for that information to be useful, don't players need to download and install the client and actually use it? LOL. I've never used X-fire, nor do I have an interest to. So there goes that theory. :rolleyes:

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Well I purchased the lifetime after the bait but before the switch they pulled on the last day of open beta. That combined with the game bearing no resemblance to its previous form in all but the most superficial ways I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already paid for it and I will get my moneys worth.

Every time, and I mean every time I see any discussion in game regarding either “patches” or Cryptic in either /group, /zone etc it’s entirely in the negative, on the very rare one off occasion nearer launch time someone liked what was going on it was approximately a 1:30 ratio, I myself although I do believe Cryptic to not only be incompetent but also unjustifiably arrogant tend not to get to deeply involved with these discussions as frankly there is no point in it.

As for observations, the vast majority of my friends are already gone or simply no longer log in, the same can be said for some others I hung out in game with, they are awol from this title with the “real world issues” excuse but they seem to have plenty of time available to play other recent titles like Operation Flashpoint DR for example although most haven’t left to play other MMO’s as they are all pretty awful options at the moment. Recent releases are simply bad games and older titles have the “Been there don’t that” problem.

Another issue, some say a dwindling user base doesn’t equal the death of a game, I disagree, there are fewer and fewer shards on a weekly basis for each and every area as my mains 40 and I have alts in every other area, this also including instances like the Powerhouse as they don’t have enough people to justify having as many shards, instead of a large stream of “full” instances and a few half filled I now see on average approx 2 full shards and the rest no more than 50-75% at best, this is in either US or everywhere else peak play times as my log in times vary significantly.

Combining the above with the issues with the community, e.g. the “Cryptic are the second coming” crew trolling endlessly but no action being taken against them by again the incompetent staff it does not speak well to the future of the game as they smaller player base are going to be made up of the same people that swallow whatever Cryptic lackeys decides to give them to chew on.

As again for the community, its amazing how much some of these larger threads shrink in size when you add just a few names of the as described above users to your ignore list for their incessant "I Love Cryptic" spam.

I may also like Cryptic too if they hadn't decided to change the game into an entirely different game from the one they sold after purchase although some of their staff clearly aren't capable of doing the roll they have been assigned, they will never be respected when they continue to take a ham fisted approach to their job’s.

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[Archived Post]

Most of the naysayers are raging because:


They got owned in PVP (team or duel)
Over nerfing
Obvious Mission/Power bugs (MR & Conflag)


I'll be honest and admit that I've raged a couple of times, while the issues can be annoying I've come to understand that it's a fairly new game and it really is a lot of fun.

I went from canceling my subscription to renewing it.

The last dev-chat gave me confidence they want to do the right thing.

[Archived Post]

True but WoW ( I played since beta) has never had so few people as CO, not even close, not by a longshot. CO has had a significant drop in active players there's no question, no one can refute the instance list and players within them.

Nobody can compare to World of ********. It is pointless. World of ******** is a phenomenon. It is unique in every aspect, including growth (it has one) and market share (it is the market), except possibly gameplay that either was imitating its predecessors or is imitated by its successors. It is no wonder that MMOGchart.com called the present times "the Age of ********". It is simply the Beatles of computer games, and everyone else is up for the scraps that falls off its table.

[Archived Post]

I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

It is basically because of the posters personal opinion. They speak as if they are the authority on the matter and they are right. They speak saying since I say this is a doomed game you must say I agree and thank me for my profound wisdom. Then do what I do is quit and play game x.

Some get their facts from the fact that they do not see their friends online anymore. Question here is have their friends really quit or are they playing at different times? Since they have been playing for about a month have they learned enough about the game that they feel that they do not need to play as much so they devote some of their time doing other things in their lives? Do they play more than one MMO? These are just some of the questions that I can think about.

Some say it is doomed to failure because in their opinion they see this game going down the same path as game x. But you must ask is this game fixing those issues that the poster is addressing? Did game x really fail due to what the poster said? Are there any successful games that had similar problems?

Some say that this game will fail because of things like a lack of content, teaming issues, broken missions, broken powers. Here they say all of these things should've been fixed in beta. But they forget that this game did not have the budget or the 4-5 year development time that WoW had.

Finally some say this game is doomed because it is not designed the way they wanted it to be designed. They want it to be designed where they are uber leet gods with an I win button.

[Archived Post]

Actually, it is normal. Age of Conan had this, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning had this, and I'm not particularly surprised that Champions has this as well. If you look at any subscription rates chart, you see a spike at the beginning, a sharp drop after the first month, and then steady drop for three months before the curve flattens out.

That's - in my opinion - because releasing a game unfinished means burning out lots of people before it stabilizes. It also is due to the flavour-of-the-month gamer, who plays the game for a month or two till the new fotm comes out and he moves.

The reality of game production in 2009 is that a developer often finds himself in a situation where he has to release now, despite the condition of the game, because the publisher demands it. In those cases, you throw in what you can and make the most basic user interface for it, to fix it at a later date.

So the standard way of handling it is to simply release as it is now and fix it later.

Yep, that's true for almost all PC games. It wasn't true for console, since there was no patch options. Of course, microsuck's entering the market threw us all into a new winbloze 95 nightmare: release it, who cares, we'll fix later.
Treating this as normal has only one effect: we will get worse and worse products till we will finally end up buying the idea that one day we might have a working game.
Complaining for an early release is not only in our rights, it's mandatory. The industry is and will be customer driven, and if customers start complaining and avoiding, then industry will have to acknowledge this trend and fix it. It's just like grind-driven MMOs: there's no game now that doesn't try to mask it some way or give options or have other paths. Why? Because players were burned out and complained about grinding.
Saying "every game is like that" is certainly true, but it is no excuse. CO is a great game with good basic mechanics, but curse me if I ever buy another atari product before 6 months have passed since release.
See what I aim for?

Testing the maps, mechanics and infrastructure - the things that take time to fix.

MAps - yes. UI -yes. Missions? Yes. Mostly because problems here are not systematical or easily reproduced. Balance? By all means, that's the hardest part, and requires paying and hardcore customers.

Mechanics? No! That is something that needs to be addressed in beta. You can't just push out a game with half the powers not working as intended for ALL players. That's the EASY part (and anyone who developed anything will tell you that).

If you want a finished MMO, never play it in the first months!

Finished doesn't necessarily mean balanced, although GW was finished AND balanced mostly. Some quirks had to be adjusted, but it was mostly working as intended.
But finished does mean:
- documented in a reliable way;
- basic mechanics complete and working;
- solid QA and patching procedures.;
Which CO did not have - and still does not, mostly.

[Archived Post]

I myself sometimes feel like not touching the game at all, due to over-playing or whatever reasons were present at the time.

So the solution : Do other things. Get away from the game a bit. And in a day or two, everything is rosier and the game does not look so "grindy" anymore.

The time we spend out of the game can also be used to think of new characters' concepts or ideas, which goes a long way towards loving your character. And when you love you character to bits, nothing much about the content of the game will faze you. Just the joy of seeing you character in action is enough.

Just my opinion.

[Archived Post]

Some of it is based on past history of other MMORPGS that actually have been canceled. This game is heading down the same path as Tabula Rasa and others. It has the potential,and probably someday will be an awesome game. By that time though, it might be too late to save. Much like TR, CO is suffering from a buggy broken launch, massive character unstability, and not enough grouping activities.

It doesnt take much to get snubbed these days with all the competition. Fallen earth and several other games are on the way which are bound to attract disenchanted fans. Personally, I like this game somewhat and think it can go places, but with all of the unstability and constant knee-jerk nerfing, I am really really tempted to look elsewhere, and i probably will soon if things don't improve, because while this game isn't as horrible as people make it out to be, there is no doubt going to be something *better* out there.

There's a point where if the population dips too low, and the game is too solo friendly, that it will pretty much become a single player MMORPG. You'll no doubt still encounter people in the wild, but there will not be any sense of community to hold players together and the game will die shortly afterwards because people are going to get tired of playing by themselves all the time. Solo play is fun for a while, but seriously these games are all about multiplayer, and without it they become hollow when you run out of alts to solo to 40, and have done the same quests 20000000 times getting there. Friends make this game fun when content runs out, as i'm sure the person who lost 5 or 6 of them will tell you.

This is what occured in Tabula rasa, and having played that game from release to termination, I see the same pattern happening here. Cyptic may not be as evil as NCSoft (/spit i HATE ncsoft so much now that i will dance and set off fireworks if they go out of business), but i have my doubts about the game's future already.

Let's look at this from another angle really quickly... pretend for a minute that you love this game and it's better than slicing bread with a power sword. That's all well and fine. I loved Tabula rasa more than any MMORPG i have played to date. I put a solid year of time into it, building up my character and having a good time. I did not care about the Internet whining one bit, and figured well let them leave if they dont like it - i'm having a blast! Well, one day i logged in to see the announcement that the game is closing... and all that time and energy i put into my character is now essentially wasted. I could have taken that gaming time and put it into WoW (for example) and still have something to show for it.

Occasional complaints are going to happen anywhere. I've been MMO gaming since original everquest 1, and NEVER have i seen a more unhappy player base than i have here. This should concern you, because even if you do like the game, if enough people don't like it, it will not survive and you will be left with only wasted time and effort.

Sadly, i'm afraid as a player there's nothing you can do about it either. When it came to TR, i tried everything I could possibly do to keep the game alive and populated. I ran leveling groups for hours, showed people the tricks to making the game fun and accessible, helped get people geared, wrote user guides on forums, and launched an all out player run campaign to try to repopulate the dieing servers. To some degree i was successful, but ultimately the plug was pulled.


My advice is:

Play the game. Enjoy the game and support the game. Do not get too attached to a game like this though, because there's a very real chance that if you do, you will get burned in the end. It's happened before, and it can happen again. When the ship starts sinking, get off of it, and get off of it FAST.

This is what i base any Doomsday posts I make on. How about you :) ?

While your post has some merit. I did some research on Tabula Rasa. I learned that the announcement really took everyone by surprise. Not just you personally. Next I learned from gamespot that Tabula Rasa (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201550.html?tag=result;title;0)did not catch fire. They did not sell well. Their chief designer Richard Garriott went on a $30 million dollar space jaunt to the Space Station to help promote the game. That article said that only 61,000 copies were sold in the US. Now did they have players outside the US. If so how many? Finally that article basically said thet the game did not give NC Soft their ROI that they needed.

Several game delays which no doubt increased cost of development. This game had only one delay. Tabula Rasa's several delays which no doubt had raised the ROI needed to make a profit. Since it raised development costs.

[Archived Post]

I think this post bears repeating. People who are enjoying this game and truly want to see it survive and succeed need to start paying at least some heed to the complaints and quit telling people to 'just leave'. If that truly happened; if people just left, then you will see a closure of the game.

That said, nobody has the real numbers so nobody can say whether the game is doing well or poorly. Neither side can back up any of their claims with any sort of metrics. The only thing that people can use in their attempts to gauge where the game is going is past experience, and really, after the TR and HG:L closure as well as the server consolidations of WAR and other MMOs in recent years, it goes to show that MMOs, regardless of what sort of name is backing it, are all vulnerable.

Enjoy the game. Try to convince others to give the game a chance instead of telling them to walk off a cliff. Work to improve the game's community and be an advocate for it, but not in a way that drives away players. That's key. There are plenty of supports of the game, but their behavior to the people who have complaints (which are mostly valid) will only serve to drive this game into the ground. CO does not exist in an MMO vacuum. There are already good MMOs that exist, and there are plenty more coming out this year and next year; all of which will be competing for the attention of the MMO playerbase and Cryptic/Atari need to be proactive about not only the quality of their game, but their community in order to succeed.

While it is true that the community it important. But what do you do with someone that says I am quiting and still stays around for no apparent reason other than to get others to join them? What do you say to convince those that make these I quit posts to stay and give the game another chance?

[Archived Post]

I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?They are 13 year old kids most likely and get their info from the same place most of their "dates" come from ..... sock puppets.

[Archived Post]

See Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

The trouble with that is both games are still around.

[Archived Post]

While it is true that the community it important. But what do you do with someone that says I am quiting and still stays around for no apparent reason other than to get others to join them? What do you say to convince those that make these I quit posts to stay and give the game another chance?
Nothing, if you ask me. If I've learned one thing in my life, it's that people that act like this should be allowed to go their own way - if you do somehow convince them to stick around, expect a knife at some point. It's kind of like being cheated on in a relationship with someone who has cheated on every other relationship they've been in... it's a nature thing, and few people change their natures. If the game improves in time, they'll be back... miraculously without memory of their past behavior, too. ;)

[Archived Post]

That was was this thread was about originaly. Where did you get that statistic? Um let me take a guess. You made it up, didnt you?

And so what if it was true? Why does everyone think that if an mmo arent showing the same numbers as WOW it is failing? Im sure that there will be lots of people leaving this game. Just as belive that will be others that take their place.

And compairing it with TR are in my mind a bit too early. To me what made that game go under (besids NCsoft jumping the big red exterminate button to early) was that they made lots of promises of changes and improvments that never happend.

Also selling only 61,000 copies in the US had something to do with it too. ;)

[Archived Post]

Um...no. I don't like WoW and never have. I've seen some good posts on here but I don't agree with this one. Haven't seen too many people on the forums who like WoW either. IT seems there are way more ex CoHers than WoWers here.

I guess the consensus opinion and one I can agree with is that there are a fair number of unhappy players here and it seems like there are more than normal for an online game at release. Many won't be coming back after a month.

But without any numbers we don't know whether they're able to keep pace with what they need to be profitable or not, so we will just have to wait and see. Thanks for the info. I guess the hard facts I wondered about don't exist.

You are correct without the numbers we do not know much. The forums are only small amount of the player base anyway. So it does not truly reflect the true state of the game.

[Archived Post]

I counted.


During the Headstart Weekend, Primetime 8PMish EST there were 4,231 people in Candaian Crisis Instances.
There were BUNCHES of maxed out instances.

Then the 9/1 patch came out... and some people left... then more nerfs came... and more people left... now we have on the horizon more nerfing, And more people will leave.

That is where they get the doom from, wether or not it is warrented only time will tell.

The numbers at headstart does not necessarily prove anything. Have those players really quit or have they just settled down to a normal play schedule that includes work, family, other hobbies, maybe playing other MMO's? There could be a whole lot of different reasons for those lower numbers. Does the fact that this game is in other languages have something to do with it. Maybe during head start it counted all instances with all players regardless of language. Now it may only show english speaking players playing on english speaking instances.

Heck most of the players that are not playing now may be because Cryptic has dropped the ball as far as giving more ways for those in other countries to pay for their subscriptions. I have heard that some will not be able to pay for their subscriptions because Cryptic rejected their CC information.

[Archived Post]

Good thing you have done a check at all the numbers, across all of the zones, 24/7. Or how else would you know how many are online at any given time. In CoH, there was a way to remain hidden from searches, I wonder, has that not been implemented for this game? If so, then it would be much harder for a player to get the actual numbers at glance.

Even then, there are mission instances which would skew any shard numbers searches.

How many times such reasoning was used on CoH but was constantly refuted? I could've become a billionaire, at least, by now if everytime 'number of people online' excuse for doomsaying was mentioned that I'd get a dime.

CO won't die whether it's because it's less of a household name or for the fact doesn't have the backing of SOE/DC Entertainment/Disney. Cryptic is just as ready for CO to be a niche game or better, like CoH before it.

Cryptic/Atari already know how popular DC Entertainment is, after all, the CO team reads up on comics from across the board. If done right, DCUO could rake in big bucks and numbers, but then again, the bigger they are the harder they fall. If hype/expectations fall short of potential players for DCUO, you can bet that they're going to get an ear full of howls of doom. And you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to have their own problems at launch.

Anyways, considering the amount of money saved by lifetime subscribers (and what are the exact numbers? Do you know?), there's going to be more money freed up to use microtransactions as time goes on. There's also a number of people who took up the 6th months subscription offer. And the people who bought the regular subscription plans, what about them? Did you factor them in as well?

SOE, remodelled, you say? Sorry, but that doesn't evoke confidence in the product just because the players have changed. Until they come out with a real solid game under the new management, such words ring hollow. SWG (and other games) memories still run deep. Devs were called Nerfherders, whether it was called for or not.

There's plenty of changes coming along, anyways. And no, it's not about what people don't care about. Just as CoH is evolving, so is CO. Considering how new it is, there's going to be a lot of changes yet. And it would be the height of foolishness to believe that DCUO will come out on the shelves without it's own kinks and gremlins.

Me I do not give a rats behind about DCUO. IMHO you will never be more than a lackey or a sidekick. If you are a hero most of your missions no doubt will be go help Superman beat x villain. Go help Superman twart villian x's plans by doing x. Same will be no doubt true for all of their heroes in the game. Villian wise things will no doubt be the same. I would like to carve out my own niche as a hero. Helping out their Iconic heroes at times would be great. But if I can spend most of my heroic career doing my own thing apart from their iconic characters it would be great.

Next PvP to me seems it could wind up being forced gankfest. Whether you want to PvP or not anyone of the opposite side could attack you whether you wanted to fight or not.

[Archived Post]

If Cryptic has a business plan that is viable with a playerbase of around 100k subscribers, CO will probably 'make it' as a niche market game, in the way AoC and WAR and LOTR are still 'making it'... but it won't be wildly successful. Where do I get my information? Cryptic has told us that they only really expect about that much, and it looks like 100k subscribers is a realistic goal for them to accomplish... but that may not actually cover their overhead. Only time will tell.

As to the 'Bill Roper won't make the same mistake twice' comment, well, that's just as much wishful thinking as those saying the game won't last a year. I consider myself a fairly open-minded gamer, and I picked up Champions so I could play with some RL friends of mine... but the fact is, as soon as I found out Bill was in charge of things my faith in this game was severely shaken. That isn't any kind of shot at Bill Roper, but I can't get the word 'flagshipped' out of my head after being so sorely burned in HG:L, either.

I can understand that you were burned. But do not make the mistake that i have seen some do. That is label Bill Roper a complete and utter failure because of one failed company. Actually Hellgate London did not fail. Flagship Studios failed at helping Hellgate London succeed.

[Archived Post]

Wait, are you sure you're not talking about CO?


In regards to the OP, they obviously aren't basing their determinations on real data. The thing is, hyperbole plays a lot better on the forums then reasoned critisism. If one was to say "I feel that ChO will be a modest but lackluster sucess" then that person's thread would not last nearly as long as the countless "I quit" or "this game is gonna fold in a month" threads.

The thing is, both the fanboys and the haters can claim they're right. Subs will almost definitely fall in the coming months. This is pretty much to be expected except with truly groundbreaking games like EQ, WoW, and EVE. (And yes, no matter how much you hate these games, they were definitely groundbreaking in their time.) The simple fact is that people play a game for a while, and then decide that they don't like it, or they get bored. This sort of thing is almost universally expected in the non subscription game world. How many people still play Half Life? Some, but not many, and that game was one of the very best.

On the other hand, the game will probably not go offline any time in the immediate future. As has been pointed out, even real stinkers like Horizons, TMO and Shadowbane lasted for years. Horizons is still around as far as I know.

I personally do not foresee ChO being especially successful. I doubt the devs will pull the plug, but I don't think it will ever generate the same numbers as CoX. The game simply doesn't have enough content and replayability. I also don't think the content patch in October will help much; unless they add a couple of zones the size of Monster Island and raise the level cap it will not be enough. The character development system is too shallow for there to be any meaningful progression past the cap, and additional 5 person instances will not be dynamic enough to keep people entertained past a couple of runs.

The funny thing is, a few weeks ago it used to be blasphemy to compare this game to AoC. Now I think achieving AoC's level of success is optimistic at best.

Tihs game has a little over a year to get where it needs to be as far as content goes. I think that they can do it if they get to work on developing new content. Handle the issues concerning teaming. Fixe the bugs and broken powers. They have to use their time wisely.

[Archived Post]

The biggest reason I would say people are spelling doom and gloom for the game is because they are having similar experiences as the guy on the first page that said 5/6 of his friends that started the game with him have quit.

I have had the same experience myself. I and 4 other guys that I work with that all play mmos (eq, wow, war, lotr) all decided to buy the game when it came out and play it together. All of us had the similar experience of being bored and frustrated with the game after about 1 week of playing. 3 of the guys have already stopped playing entirely (they made it into their mid 20s) and the 2 of us that are left have decided to cancel our reoccurring subscriptions and are just going to play till our free month is up.

We all have different ideas on why we think the game didn't work for us but it comes down to the fact that all 5 of us agreed that the game just wasn't interesting or exciting enough to want to keep playing. Where as in previous games we would all stay up late and work on our characters and try to get to the next level, in CO most of us found that after lvl 20 or so, we just were not interested in taking our hero's any farther.

A MMO is supposed to keep you interested for month and even years playing it. This one couldn't keep 5 of us interested for a week. That spells doom and gloom.

But you and others like you are only a small crowd they are no doubt adding in new players everyday. So what they have lost they will get back later. If they can get an average of 100k subscribers which I think that they will accomplish they will be fine.

[Archived Post]

8 out of 9 of the last posts are yours, gloomwalker... and you quote a wall of text to add 2 lines.

Why not use the "multiple quote" function, and quote only the sentences you're answering to? That would make the thread easier to read for us.
Not to mention the forum and netiquette rules.

[Archived Post]

my experience about this game was that i was being overcharged to beta test an unfisished product.

Was it really necessary to necro a thread that had been dead for, what, 3 weeks now? Nothing you posted hasn't been said in other threads and more recently...

[Archived Post]

What do they base their doomsaying on?

For the most part, absolutely nothing.

Consumers feel that their grievances will garner more attention if headlined with some portent of game/server-wide doooooooom, be that attention from the staff (who probably wont fall for it, as they are in theory privy to 'real information) or by other players (who by posting in response increase the likely hood staff will pay attention to dissatisfied rant threads).

A few fringers point to things like Xfire as the barometer by which to measure public perception. Which is tantamount to basing election results on an anonymous internet poll (hint: Rick Astley/ Stephen Colbert always win these).

[Archived Post]

They get it directly from their 4th point of contact.

Honestly, they read reviews and others' comments on review sites and think the game will fail. I have read some reviews of **** that state it is simply not worth the money, yet I don't think it will die soon. A similar review of CO has the Hate Club yelling that the sky is falling.

[Archived Post]

1.) My experience about this game was that i was being overcharged to beta test an unfisished product. its true that ALL the mmo i've played on lauch needed improvement when they where released(even wow) but this is just too much, especialy if you consider what is being offered on the market today, you need to learn what other mmo did to be successfull and then try to be even better. i mean why would i pay 15 buck a month for this product when i could pay the same amount for a better game/product?

2.) As for the where do i take my info for that game will die doomsaying, i might not have actual statistic or number , but then again you can make statistic say anything you want to ear anyway(and i did custumer service and markeeting long enough to say that)...
what i can tell you tho is that i have started to play mmo in the time of ultima online and i have played many mmo since that time so i believe that i have at least a general idea of what i am speaking about and a can definitly see pattern that ive seen in other mmo that failed. and dont tell me that because a game still exist it cant be a fail(war aoc etc..), a bad game is still a fail and it is my opinion that if your game only apppeal to hardcore fan who would buy anything anyway from you then it is my opinion that you can consider this a bad game.

3.) To be honnest i like the gameplay in general of this game and there is new and cool idea in this game that ive never seen elsewhere but it could have been a solo console game and the general experience would have been the same exept that i would not have to give money for it each month... there is simply not enough to keep me interested(and not just me ALL my friend who buyed the game and some buyed the permanent subscription)

4.) If they have to nurf and do some balancing(wich is normal for mmo) at least they should come up with a better retcon solution especialy if one of the selling point of this game is the way you are supposed to get attached to your caracter, getting that same caracter nerf hammered is already unpleasant enough but having to lose all your money to retcon is even worse and its easy to lose interest here.

-retcon as it is just not fun and bring nothing to the game, what make this game special is the way you can make ANYTHING with your caracter, wich also mean you are bound to make mistake especialy for less hardcore player who dont want to spend 4 hour of reading before writing a build.

5.) Not enough content for a mmo and if you dont like one of the chain of quest or if it is bugged then you are stuck with grinding and grinding exist at some point in most mmo but the grinding here dont pay enough xp and is way too repetitive(spam 2 button and win) to keep me wanting to pay for it(btw,just because there is worse game grindwise you should not complain IS NOT a valid argument to make this grind more intersting that it is)

6.) The pvp is not playable at all(even if i know it wasnt meant to be a pvp game) the game type of arena just suck(just kill X player with no objective is boring for the lower level pvp) and there is too few of them and if i want to be any good in pvp i need to start a new caracter with the power of the week and it will be a long and boring spamming attack at non dieing caracter while they try to kill me too but i dont die too unless someone from one of the 2 team get a ''twink'' with all the broken power and then its boring for every one including the winning team who now have no chalenge


1. As far as studying the success of other MMO's how much time do you devote to studying? Do you add feature x because you see it as a successful feature in game x? What makes any feature successful? How do you know what company has done feature x right? If feature x is successful does that mean you must add it, even if you have to force fit it into your game? Like taking a square peg and making it fit into a round hole.

2.) Since you have played alot did WoW and other successful titles have the same doomsayers? Did they have the same problems that this game has? Can you prove that game x that failed truly failed because of following whatever pattern you are saying that this game has? Also show us what pattern you are talking about. Are you saying that the pattern is Tabula Rasa. If so then you would be wrong. Becaus Tabula Rasa failed because the game did not catch on according to gamespot. It only sold 61,000 copies in the US.

3&5.) You do realize that the same was no doubt said about CoX. But that game is still going and will release a new expansion called Going Rogue. I guess that some would not be happy until an MMO company decided to make an MMO where every mission is a team only mission.

I guess if I made a superhero MMO based on Mutants and Masterminds PnP game. I would be an instant success if I made it where you must team all of the time. Also you must be on a full team. A team of two just will not do. I would say what is soloing if anyone would want to solo. I would tell them why even bother to play an MMO if you want to solo. What superheroes do not solo they team all of the time anyways. Hey Batman that thug minion will knock your head off with that baseball bat unless you have the enitre JLA with you, you know. Saracasm off.

All Cryptic needs to do here as far as teaming goes is the following. First make sure that the rewards for teaming are worth it for those that team for just the rewards. I know that some team primarily for the rewards. I do not but since others do it is important to have good rewards. Also make more missions that are team only. Do this by not taking solo content and turning it into team content. Because if you did then soloist will complain and say okay then the only thing left is either grinding or forced teaming which both are bad.

Some of the team content could be more instance missions where you could solo them or run them on a team. This way they have made more content for both. Add to it the ability to share all missions. Finally add it the ability for all on the team to get the mission xp bonus and resources for helping their team mates complete the mission. I would also add team only story arcs.

4.) I agree with you that retconning is not where it should be. I would implement a retcon system similar to WoW's. Where it would cost x amount for a full retcon. That would be well within the players ability to retcon. But if they do it too often, the cost would go up. I would set the first retcon to 10 global and it would double until it reaches about 160 global. If you wait for about one to two weeks it would reset to the 10 global.

6.) The only thing I wanted to say here is that when I team or PvP I do it mainly because I enjoy playing this game with other players. Yes the in game rewards for teaming and PvP are good. But not as good as just simply playing this game with other players. I cannot truly put it into words how I feel. Maybe someone can do better than me on this point.

To those pointing toward DCUO, I don't know when they think DCUO is going to be released, but if you think you will be playing the game at retail anytime before 4th quarter 2011 you need to re-evaluate your expectations. The game is currently in PRE ALPHA. Read those previews that are hyping it up. The last I read they feel that they are close to slapping some parts together and calling it an Alpha.

I am not interested in DCUO. I am afraid that in DCUO you will be the Iconic character's lackey or sidekick. Hey <insert hero name> go help Superman. Hey <insert villian name> go help the Joker. IMHO this will make up the majority of your career as a player in that game. PvP looks like it will not be consentual. Which if true is a big turn off. Even if that is not true. I highly doubt that you will ever be seen as a hero that have done heroic things outside of helping their Iconic characters. I would rather carve out my own niche as a hero or a villian. Helping out their Iconic characters is good but if it is what you are doing the majority of the time then no thank you.

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I may also like Cryptic too if they hadn't decided to change the game into an entirely different game from the one they sold after purchase although some of their staff clearly aren't capable of doing the roll they have been assigned, they will never be respected when they continue to take a ham fisted approach to their job’s.

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That's just severely illogical rhetoric. It is EXACTLY the same game it was in closed and open beta, the only difference is that the difficulty and leveling time were turned up. Whether or not they needed to be is a matter of opinion, but I'm getting seriously tired of people using the phrase "bait and switch" so incorrectly. Bait and switch would be installing your Champions disc and discovering that you've actually installed Madden 1993. This is the exact same game it was in beta, only the difficulty and experience curve were changed.

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It is EXACTLY the same game it was in closed and open beta

No, not exactly. It's a lot better now.

Difficulty is better, improvement curve is better, UI is better, robustness is better, content is better et cetera. In my not particularly humble opinion, of course.

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No, not exactly. It's a lot better now.
Difficulty is better, improvement curve is better, UI is better, robustness is better, content is better et cetera. In my not particularly humble opinion, of course.


Aside form difficulty, which I am unable to gauge (have only one char over 20, and it seems it gets much easier from there on), I fully agree.
In my not even remotely humble opinion, of course. ;)

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No, not exactly. It's a lot better now.

Difficulty is better, improvement curve is better, UI is better, robustness is better, content is better et cetera. In my not particularly humble opinion, of course.

Well, I completely agree with you on that. But I'm speaking of the game itself. WoW isn't even close to the same game as it was at launch, but it's still WoW. It still has the same basic gameplay mechanics, the same leveling methods, the same sorts of endgame content, etc. Every MMO changes with time, that's the nature of the genre. But as far as it goes, Champions Online is still the same Champions Online it was during the beta. Champions Online hasn't morphed into Castlevania 64, so "bait and switch" doesn't apply.

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In my not even remotely humble opinion, of course. ;)
"Something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term 'In my humble opinion,' which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, 'These are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed.'" - Terry Pratchett

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I will start by admitting a vested interest as a lifetime subscriber. I am a bit concerned when I read angry posts that are confident that this game will not last a year. It seems like Cryptic's subrscriber goals of over 100k are fairly modest. Are we not even hitting that total?

What do they base their doomsaying on? Bill Roper's Hellgate failure or something more concrete than that? Any one have any idea how serious the prospect of this game simply going down in flames is or are these people simply throwing mud at a game that has made them angry, from nerfs or whatever?

The latter.

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This game is currently F2P(free to play)

My subscription ran out over a week ago, and I can still log in and play for free. I've mentioned this to GMs through petitions, and by PMs on these forums, and they are well aware of it. Apparently anyone who didn't subscribe past their trial period is still allowed to play.

Even AOC, AO and the other games on the short bus never went F2P in month two of release.

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This game is currently F2P(free to play)
My subscription ran out over a week ago, and I can still log in and play for free. I've mentioned this to GMs through petitions, and by PMs on these forums, and they are well aware of it. Apparently anyone who didn't subscribe past their trial period is still allowed to play.
Even AOC, AO and the other games on the short bus never went F2P in month two of release.
Yes.
Thank you.
You've said this.
Still not relevant.
What part of "this is a mistake we're fixing" isn't getting across?

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What part of Free to Play isn't getting across to you?

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What part of Free to Play isn't getting across to you?

I will pay DOUBLE my monthly subscription if Cryptic will fix that bug and kick you off these forums once and for all. God, you have got to be the most stubborn, obsessed person I have ever seen post on an internet message board. What exactly is lacking in your life that you have to fill the void by trolling an internet forum devoted to a game that you don't like? In all of your life, you can't find one single thing more productive, entertaining, or useful to do than come here and whine incessantly about a game you don't like? God, Champions must really have its claws in you deep if you can't just move on. Well, I'm not a religious person, but I'll say a prayer for you that you find whatever it is your life is so sorely lacking.

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Clearly you haven't actually read any of my posts otherwise you wouldn't be calling me a "troll"

I do like this game, I've said that repeatedly. I want this broken, beta of a game to be fixed sooner then later. I know you're doing your best to turn this game into a ghost town so you can enjoy it all by yourself but I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will be resubscribing, eventually.

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Clearly you haven't actually read any of my posts otherwise you wouldn't be calling me a "troll"

I do like this game, I've said that repeatedly. I want this broken, beta of a game to be fixed sooner then later. I know you're doing your best to turn this game into a ghost town so you can enjoy it all by yourself but I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will be resubscribing, eventually.

If you want the game to improve, try not whining so much. The single biggest thing this game lacks is a solid community. There's way too much whining and immaturity on this forum, and you're just adding to it. If you have something to say, say it in a way that (a) doesn't insult other people and (b) could potentially help Cryptic actually improve the game. In a month, I have YET to see you post anything that was even in the same calling area as "worthwhile". You just whine, and complain, and take potshots at the game and anyone who likes it.

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You just whine, and complain, and take potshots at the game and anyone who likes it.
And post that the game is F2P. Which doesn't get any more relevant with each post. Or correct.

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Why don't you spend a couple minutes and read my post history. I have _never_ taken pot shots at anyone who likes this game.

After I purchased the game with the false premise of a game fit for retail, I spent the first two weeks of my free trial as a beta tester, filing bug reports one after the other. Since they got ignored completely, I have every right to point out things that are out of place such as:

This game is FREE TO PLAY in month two of release.

Just like you have the right to voice your opinion on how everything is just wonderful! and how Grateful you really are 11! It gives me great joy to see you so happy, I only wish me and the rest of the let down community was so easy to please.

If what I say doesn't float your boat, I suggest using that ignore feature. I haven't posted anything that is out of line and I haven't attacked anyone or anything personally.

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Since they got ignored completely, I have every right to point out things that are out of place such as:
This game is FREE TO PLAY in month two of release.

Yep. Every right. In the CORRECT thread. Which is not this one. Create one, point out all the flaws you see, have fun. Many will comment. Some will flame you.
This is a thread on another thing.

So you ARE out of the line in THIS thread.

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Yep. Every right. In the CORRECT thread. Which is not this one. Create one, point out all the flaws you see, have fun. Many will comment. Some will flame you.
This is a thread on another thing.
So you ARE out of the line in THIS thread.
Thank you for saying what I'm evidently too blond to convey tonight.

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Hmmmm...Where do people get the Doom report?

Well truthfully, for me, and I can only speak for myself on this and would not dare to speak for the rest of the community, but the Doom comes from.....*Quiet Gasp* The community it's self.

Im one of the players who is always effected by the maintenance. Which occures every weekday. I work early mornings. So I wake up at 5:00 am in Canada. I then turn on the game, to find it going down for two hours....which means it comes up right when I am brushing my teeth to go to work.

I have had the game for my free 30 days. I like it, but never get to play it. Save weekends when they minimize the maintenance. So I get weekend play.

Sad thing is, is that on the 17th my 30 days expire. With no other payment option available, other than Credit Card, and no time cards available in our stores (I was told that the game was unpopular so they would not be getting them in) the population will dwindle.

So during the downtime, people come onto the forums, which we all know is laced with anger hate and more importantly, Ticked off Aussies, Early riser Canadians, and Americans alike...Oh and the occasional nerd with insomnia, all screaming DOOOMMM!!!

Personaly, if Cryptic could get off their Tushies, and give me some other way to pay them for their game, they would have at least 6 months of my time. Im not a content burner. Im an altaholic, and I enjoy trying out tons of things. I am the type of customer that they would want, but one they apparently cannot reach.

Even with the downtimes, Im still ok with paying them.

The community is weeding out. Meaning you are getting your regulars, and diehards, the people who sucked in the community are leaving. They are heading to other pastures and overall the community is becoming a better one.

Im not a Doom Girl. I am annoyed yes. Annoyed with not being able to play my game, but ill get over that.

Rant complete.

If you can call it a rant. It's more of a concern really.

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So your happy with the direction the game is going? I dont mind balancing. Feel the game has been tweaked into a grind fest to deal with early dev mistakes. but that is just my opinion.

Yes a total grind fest when it takes a week or 2 to hit 40.

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Thank you for saying what I'm evidently too blond to convey tonight.

Imagine how *I* feel, I'm blond AND drunk. After a certain point, Hennessey stops making no sense and starts looking like a delicious Irish ale. So arguing with him is immensely frustrating, nevermind that he keeps asserting that the game is F2P when it isn't, nevermind that he claims he's never insulted anyone for liking the game when he's insulted me directly. But I can't keep track of all that, the Jagermeister is going straight to my head. =D

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Imagine how *I* feel, I'm blond AND drunk. After a certain point, Hennessey stops making no sense and starts looking like a delicious Irish ale. So arguing with him is immensely frustrating,

Never. Ever. Argue. With a pint.

That's the good thing about pints. You don't have to argue - if you like 'em you just grab them. And the colder they are, the better. And you can even have more than one in the same night: they don't mind.

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Never. Ever. Argue. With a pint.

That's the good thing about pints. You don't have to argue - if you like 'em you just grab them. And the colder they are, the better. And you can even have more than one in the same night: they don't mind.

Calimar, I like you. You're thinking on my wavelength. /salute

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Imagine how *I* feel, I'm blond AND drunk.
I'd say "you're surprisingly coherent for being drunk" but I'm one of those annoying types that only really starts losing diction when I'm having trouble standing at all. Yeah, that's me... I'm the one that talks the cops away from the door, who comes up with stories to placate the authorities, who ends up on the porch listening to the drunk girl that's sobbing about her jerk boyfriend. Says a lot, really.
Oh, Jaeger's not my drink of choice... prefer cider, whiskey or vodka. Never developed the taste, I guess.

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I'd say "you're surprisingly coherent for being drunk" but I'm one of those annoying types that only really starts losing diction when I'm having trouble standing at all. Yeah, that's me... I'm the one that talks the cops away from the door, who comes up with stories to placate the authorities, who ends up on the porch listening to the drunk girl that's sobbing about her jerk boyfriend. Says a lot, really.
Oh, Jaeger's not my drink of choice... prefer cider, whiskey or vodka. Never developed the taste, I guess.

What can I say? I'm a word nerd. Even THIS drunk, I'm still coherent enough to formulate a thought. Either that, or I have an annoyingly high alcohol tolerance. Or both.

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I have told my friends about this game and they have all tried it and loved it. i dont know about doomsaying or whatever, but i do know that i enjoy this game alot

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Calimar, I like you. You're thinking on my wavelength. /salute

Hey we can be friends but not THAT kind of friends. ;)
But you can buy me a pint and I'll say "slainte" and "failte". Not necessarily in that order.

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What can I say? I'm a word nerd. Even THIS drunk, I'm still coherent enough to formulate a thought. Either that, or I have an annoyingly high alcohol tolerance. Or both.
Not to try to 1-Up you or anything... just sharing a weird quality of mine:
I answer the phone in my sleep, as well as hold conversations, to the point where I apparently, while completely asleep, told a really good friend of mine "I'm going to have to call you back, I'm not currently capable of linear thought."
So, I guess I qualify as a word nerd as well. Given that I can apparently be more coherent in my sleep than half the English-speaking population of the world is while awake, I think I'm justified. ;)