Looks like this iteration of the series will require an upgrade of my hardware, so I suppose Rebirth is quite a good fit as a name.

That'll be the end of the longest stretch without an upgrade since 1991. The current setup did its job since shortly after the release of Age of Conan in May of 2008. That's 64 months at 10+ hours a day, slaving away as a gaming rig and HTPC. It was the 8th CPU since '91, the 12th video card -- and they're still running just as smooth as ever.

Maybe I'll get some more Cat 5 and use this box as a dedicated HTPC...

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Age of Conan -- Zero Punctuation Review. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

>> ^Xax:

>> ^Shepppard:
... a fully voiced MMo with a potentially (and being as it's Bioware, I'd say I'm more prone to say likey) epic storyline that varies from class to class...
Pretty sure that's innovative.

I'm pretty sure that hiring more people to speak the lines isn't innovative in the least. It's cool for sure. We'll see how the epic personal storyline part turns out. As far as the actual gameplay, I haven't seen anything impressive or new or interesting.
I'm much more interested in Guild Wars 2... if you want to see innovation in MMOs, that's where it's at.


They've brought the radial chat wheel to an MMo, and added in the option to have multiple people in a storyline conversation.

I'm interested as to how that'll work, because I like being the good guy and the friend I generally play games with tends to be a dick. So I'm curious as to how the good-cop bad-cop thing is going to play out. However, I think you're dismissing a fully voiced MMo a little too hastily. Adding voices into a game adds in a completely new level of depth, instead of just skipping through quest text you actually progress and converse with the world around you.

I'm curious as to what you see in GW2 as innovative, as far as I can tell the only semi new thing is dynamic combat, and dynamic quests to a point. The ability to dodge attacks or hide behind a shield is interesting, but I'm not commenting more until I've seen balancing addressed. Age of Conan already partially touched on that with its shielding and dodging mechanics (you get 3 shields and 3 places to put them, front, and sides. The more shields per side, the less damage you take when hit from there, but it opens up a weakness on an unshielded side. And sidestepping gave buffs towards attacking or defending depending on which way you went.)

Dynamic quests as it was described to me sounds like Besieged from FFXI, Open Quests from WAR, and Rifts.. from Rift. You're sitting in town, or out in a forest. Suddenly, the enemy is upon us and there's a call to arms. You spend the next however many minutes slaughtering mobs and trying to save NPCs. If there's more types of quests then that, that's a horse of a different colour, but if that's it then that's also not innovative.

Not having traditional "Tank" or "Healer" roles is also going to be in SW:TOR, and is in FFXIV to a point.

And although FFXI has covered this, too, the party system in SW:TOR (with NPC's, not players) means that you never have to actively look for a party, you'll be able to have one of your own to continue to tackle content.

The way it goes now is basically, there IS next to no room for innovation, most of the stuff has been tried, and unless it's in WoW then it's likely flopped. The game that realized this and embraced that is Rift, which seemingly took the "best of" a lot of MMo's out there and refined it into their own.

So don't take this post the wrong way, I'm actively looking for your input on the subject, but why do you feel Guild Wars 2 is innovative?

TL:DR edit.

@harry, you're right man, since buying guild wars one (garbage), seeing how STO progressed (garbage, luckily i didn't buy), age of conan, and so on and so forth, the descent of mmos, i have absolutely no belief in any hype of a game.

I'll never ever buy an MMO for launch day, i will only ever buy it several months later if everyone (EVVVVERRYYYONNNNEEE) is raving at how amazingly amazing it is. And cos of that, i'll never experience another amazing mmo launch/first few months. You'll spend 2000 quid and 5 years trying games to get just one of those experiences. And i blame mmo companies.

Fixed.

In reply to this comment by geo321:
*dead

Fixed.

In reply to this comment by therealblankman:
seems to be *dead

>> ^Farhad2000:
look now you made Zifnab cry
These are starting to suck


This is actualy the first one ive felt like voteing up in quite a while.

>> ^syncron:
I hate how he says muh-mor-puh-guhs -.-


It's quicker than saying dark-pit-of-addictive-home-wrecking-crap-that-you-get-to-pay-for.

>> ^syncron:
I hate how he says muh-mor-puh-guhs -.-


Yeah, what the hell was that? Does that mean I like playing FiPS? Too bad I'll be looking at prawn later. Oy vey, please don't let this be the next fad.

You should have seen my reaction when I learned that only Bronze Diamond or above can post these directly. I was staring at the embed code, wondering why it wouldn't work. *shakes fist at your diamond*

Don't let Zifnab burn you to a crisp, human.

>> ^arvana:
I'm just happy to FINALLY get to submit one of these first!

Upvote for mention of Lord and Master Richard Garriott, not that he's produced anything worthwhile since Ultima 7 but still.

Despite it's self proclaimed hardcore dorkmeister critics, World of Warcraft does indeed get the storyline immersion thing right. i lub WoW.

Age of Conan, meh. Warhammer Online - oooooooh.

>> ^Shepppard:
The way this works is Age of Conan has made it so you CANNOT pass through another player in the game, that's for realism, Thus why they have to go behind the horse.
The horse can use the knockback because that's how mounted combat works, it's not actually physics, if they were on level ground it would only kick him back about 3 feet.
This is also impossible to do on a PvE server... It's reasons like this that it's near impossible to level on a PvP server. You zone in somewhere, your avatar goes first, and you're ganked. You rez, and at the rez point your avatar goes up first...


You lost me at hello.

The way this works is Age of Conan has made it so you CANNOT pass through another player in the game, that's for realism, Thus why they have to go behind the horse.

The horse can use the knockback because that's how mounted combat works, it's not actually physics, if they were on level ground it would only kick him back about 3 feet.

This is also impossible to do on a PvE server... It's reasons like this that it's near impossible to level on a PvP server. You zone in somewhere, your avatar goes first, and you're ganked. You rez, and at the rez point your avatar goes up first...

I will definitely try this if there's a trial. I loved DAoC and it's pvp system. Although I do have a yearning for something different in the MMO scene. Since before Everquest not much has changed in terms of innovation. Age of Conan has me much more excited for the genre than any other MMO this year.

Age of Conan has been hotly anticipated for months. When I left World of Warcraft, many people were saying either that they were leaving gaming until Conan, or staying with Wow only until Conan. From what I hear, I would find the game uncomfortable, but then I've given up gaming altogether except as a spectator. My school has a CS game design major, so I continue to be very interested in them academically. I'm very interested to hear what women playing this game think, because they only have two choices, from my point of view: be untrue to the canon, or make the place very uncomfortable for most women.