Speaking of Vanguard...

The Age of Conan forums over at mmorpg.com are reading nearly identically to Vanguard's forums last year. "The game runs terribly!" "You do realize this is still beta don't you? It will be great in a couple weeks." blah blah blah

Being a Fileplanet member, I spent two nights downloading AoC. Only saw black screens when I attempted to log in last night. Finally made it in this morning with my resolution at lowest setting and all graphic settings as low as they can go. Knew I was in for trouble when I had lag and delays at character creation. Five minutes after hitting play I still wasn't in so cleaned house for awhile. Finally logged in and couldn't move. Took a couple steps....freeze....a couple more steps....freeze. Seeing as everything was cut down to minimum, world was just a blur. Logged out and deleted game. I could almost hear my computer rejoicing at gaining more breathing space.

Performance is worse than Vanguard ever was. Yeah they may optimize it some but doubtful it will be playable by the majority of gamers.

One Down, Two to Go

I finally gave up and canceled LOTRO. I had taken three weeks off while playing SWG and came back for a few hours after the most recent update. I just can't bring myself to play anymore. So many seem to proclaim this as the game for casuals, but I see it as just the opposite. If you like to raid, but would rather do it with six people instead of 40, this is the game for you. If you like to solo or play in small groups, forget getting any sort of armor upgrades. That's just part of what was bugging me. But really it's just that I had no fun, and the quests felt like a chore. I was going to try to stick it through until the housing this fall, but based on how everything else is setup, I have this sneaky suspicion it's going to be ridiculously expensive to buy and to maintain.

Two games in the news this week pretty much sealed the deal I won't be playing. I was already a bit ho hum about Age of Conan. It just seems that everything coming from the dev's mouths lately is pushing the sexual features of the game. So sex gives you a buff now? Judging from the amount of posts that have been deleted on the forums regarding this topic, they continue to attract more of the crowd I want to avoid. I'm not a prude and don't mind sexual undertones. Heck, I used to run a virtual roleplay world based on the Gor series. But I think they would have been better off to let players discover those features themselves and promote the better aspects of gameplay. These guys seem so focused on this, they come across as giggling virgins. If anything, they've alienated more adults and particularly females.

I pretty much had assumed a few weeks back that The Agency would be operating under the "pay for your loot" model after hearing Mr. Smedley discuss moving away from subscription models for future games. But now it's official. No thanks. I will never play an MMO that operates under this model. And if this is the wave of the future as he seems to think, then I guess I won't be playing much. But I honestly doubt everyone else will be joining the bandwagon anytime soon. So if you're rich, you can have all that you want, and if not.....hmm this sounds sort of like the real world which I play to get away from.

They most likely will be successful in the Asian market with this model, but it will be at the expense of the North American and European market. Yeah they'll have their elitists who can buy their way through the game, along with those who never pay for games and beg the rich guys for their stuff.

Ok time for more coffee. I'm feeling a bit cranky.....

Can Your Computer Run That Game?

Yeah I know I could probably just read the side of the game box and figure this out myself, but I found this site pretty neat: System Requirements Lab

I already knew my system wouldn't run Vanguard well, but seems I'm even worse off for Age of Conan. The recommended specs are for beta, so the final recommendation may change. I just hope for their sake they haven't created another pretty game that few can play.