"Look like they got punched in the face by a car accident." Made.my.day!

Playing on hardcore PvP server is fun. Ganking, blood, bones and madness everywhere. Feels like at home

So I played AoC back when it launched and ended up leaving because of what a mess it was. I came back recently to give the F2P a shot and it does seem like they fixed it up.

First of all, nice vid, gives a decent look at the game. A few things though, first is about the priest you were playing. As you said in the video, you suspected that you were doing something wrong, which you kind of were. You see, aside from the talent tree there's a small menu when you press P that has a subset of skills you can invest points in. Things like hiding, climbing (yes, you need a skill to climb ladders and stuff...), threat generation for warrior classes, etc. As a caster class you need to invest points into the "casting concentration" category. When playing without it, your spells will be constantly interrupted, making it impossible to play as you found out. When you rank it up, your spells won't be interrupted anymore. I can totally understand how you missed it though, why they make a separate menu for skill points and not put it under the talent tree listing is beyond me.

About the F2P model, I do have some major problems with it. The one critical thing I believe you overlooked is that for a free player, you actually have to pay for much more than other F2P/hybrid models out there. For example, you have to pay for dungeon access. It isn't an all encompassing pass either, you have to pay for each individual dungeon you want to play lol. I really think that it separates the premium and F2P player base. Some of the area passes they sell in the cash shop aren't even permanent, you pay for like a 7 day access and then you have to pay for it AGAIN if you want to keep going. That's really terrible IMO. You also don't get access to Alternative Advancement (AA) points if you're a F2P player. I hear that seriously cripples you in the long run. I've heard from current players that if you're a PvPer you NEED AA in order to be of any use. Otherwise the premium players will roll you. A smaller point is that as a F2P player you have a money cap of 2 gold. I can understand wanting to curb gold farmers, but with a cap that low it's impossible for a F2P player to participate in the economy in any meaningful way. I hear that some of the nicer culture gear goes for 15g or so on the AH. You aren't getting that as a F2P player lol.

They also pulled a fast one on previous subscribers. If you bought the Rise of the Godslayer expansion, but don't have a sub, you can't play it. That means that any F2P player who has a boxed version of the expansion literally can't play it despite paying for it lol. The only way to get access is to either sub or buy an expansion pass from the cash shop. Oh and when you buy the access pass from the cash shop, you still have to buy the dungeons in the expansion, those aren't included in the pass.

In short, the game itself is fine, but the F2P/hybrid model they chose to use is complete garbage. I can't recommend playing AoC unless you sub for it. It punishes the free players instead of rewarding the subscribers, and that's a bad thing IMO.

Edited, Jul 21st 2011 1:27pm by Lantesh

Edited, Jul 21st 2011 1:30pm by Lantesh

Some people don't like AoC, and that's fine. I quite like it, so I thought I would enjoy watching a review. This was hard to watch.

Way too much of what was said was just.. inaccurate, misleading, or simply not thought out (didn't read tool tips, or really look at the game closely).
The most glaring example of this was, not every city has a 'Night mode' only the first city does. This is clearly aimed at helping new players get used to a totally foreign, non-wowclone interface. Thus you are only compelled to complete single player content at the beginning of the game. Later on there are optional side quests which follow up on this intro story that you can complete. You do not NEED to complete them to progress in level or area.

Admittedly the biggest shortcoming of AoC is extent to which griefing is almost encouraged by the game.
That said... The reviewer is playing on the hardcore rule set pvp server, and struggling with the pvp. So yes, you drop loot when you die. You drop money. You can't make alts. You have to think about what you do, the kind of name you make for yourself, what you're carrying in your pack. In short you have to think. I have loved playing on this server. Way more fun than the normal rule set IMO.

Either way that server was created after compiling loads of player feedback. Veteran pvp players wanted a more hardcore environment to play in. Thus, someone who is new to the game and clearly does not enjoy being able to be attacked out of the blue (as is known to happen on pvp servers in every MMO) does not belong there.

Get ganked on PvP server, complain about it a lot? Good review otherwise but the joke (if it was supposed to be one) with you being ~~so annoyed~~ at people trying to gank you was pretty trite.