What games are you going to play before Arcanity is released?

[SylvanHistorian]

I'm going to play diablo2, UO, Warcraft3 and ohters.Will you tell me your recommendations other than FPS?Mainly I play RPG and Strategy.

[Kintoun]

Heh, I've held myself back in anticipation for Arcanity. Altho if I had the chance I would play another MMORPG (besides EQ, I played that one out) before hand to quell my thirst. But for the time being I'm not going to be playing any games before Arcanity http://members.chello.nl/~deleeuw3/smile.gif

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Right now I am playing Asheron's Call, I started playing it about a month ago as I got it for free, but it hasn't held my attention. I tried Diablo2, playing it as single player I got so bored with it by the 3rd act that I quit and didn't even finish it and the cheats online are already so rampant I have know interest in trying it.

So I guess I'll continue to fool around with AC as I have some RL friends that play it. Continue to watch the developement of Camelot since I didn't make it into Beta3 and anxiously await the start of Beta0.

[Saint Faucet]

Currently, my computer free-time is split between Asheron's Call and Baldur's Gate 2. I have Conker's Bad Fur Day plugged into the N64 and King of Fighters: Evolution in the Dreamcast. The Playstation has a growing stack of RPGs I should really get to when I have the free time...

[SylvanHistorian]

AC seems popular in US, but I didn't know it until an announcement of AC2 was made recently.I like Dark Age of Camelot in that players can make magical items although I'm poor at PvP combat, especially 1 on 1.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Yeah I have been following Camelot almost as long as Arcanity. They went to E3 and we just got a boat load of screenshots of Camelot City. The graphics look awesome. Been trying to get into one of their Betas Since Beta2. They do some weird stuff when picking Beta Testers. No one with a free e-mail account, they just threw all those apps right out. They took most of the testers from one message board The Vault, even though theres a huge following at the Stratics board and the posters there seem more mature and serious about the game. Oh well, maybe Beta4 I'll get in.

[SylvanHistorian]

Hmm, will they still throw applications by freemail people out in Beta4?If so, it maybe impossible for me to take part in Beta because I'm always using freemail.

[Wrentia]

Bah, Camelot City is buggy and laggy as hell right now. Spent some time roaming around there yesterday. Some gates you enter the city from have horrible graphic glitches and you can't really get to the city. You can from the Camelot hills zone, but the city is VERY laggy. It does look good, but the size is not all that huge. Probably about the size of North Freeport for you EQers. The game has improced alot recently, probably due to the showing at E3. However the game won't kill EQ by any stretch of the imagination, and the amount of money they have spent on development and will be spending on advertising tells me they expect 100k + subscribers fairly quickly. I doubt they will get them, and if they do, they won't keep em all.

I had high hopes for camelot when I first got involved in the beta, and it might prove to be a decent niche MMORPG if they lower thier subscriber expectations. But if the go the mainstream route, they will fail.

-Wrentia

[SylvanHistorian]

I was very interested in Anarchy Online because I'd never heard of SFMMORPG at that time.Camelot and AO seems alike.It is said that AO is not so enjoyable as expected(at least my friends say).But they are at beta stages and I hope great improvement will be made.
I heard AO's trading skills will be implemented after release.If it's true, unbelievable.

And now I'm more interested in Midgard than AO.

[Edited by SylvanHistorian on 05-20-2001 at 01:59 AM]

[z_man93]

While waiting for Arcanity I'm not trying to start any new account with pay games so I've been looking into games that are free or in beta. Just in the last week I started playing Redmoon Online. It reminds me a lot of Lineage.

[Kintoun]

LOL yes I just spent a whole day playing RedMoon. OMG it reminds me of Lineage, cept it's better. Only prob is that Lineage was extremely terrible, so RedMoon is only very terrible in comparison. Don't waste your time with that game...

Hey nice sig pic z_man ^_~

[SylvanHistorian]

I wanted to play Redmoon, but I couldn't for it will take more than eight hours to download 200MB.

[Dogmeat]

Well, I've been playing the DAoC beta, Black & White, Shining Force 1/2 and FF6/Chrono Trigger on emulators...

I tend to have a more optimistic outlook on DAoC than Wrentia but I do agree that they might need to have slightly lower expectations for their subscriber base.

And don't even bother with Anarchy Online. That game has little to no redeeming value, and the packetloss/framerate are terrible (on a 1.2ghz athlon/cable modem no less).

Just a few thoughts :)

[Kintoun]

Shining Force!!!!!!!!! That game is STILL a favorite of ine! Man I love those games! I just wish I was able to play part 3, but I think it was Dreamcast only =(.

O, and no comment on FF6 and CT, cause everyone knows those are the 2 greatest RPG's ever. I have yet to play a game that can dethrone FF6. FF7 came close, Xenogears came close, but nope.

[Dogmeat]

Shining Force 3 was saturn only, and is extremely rare...

BUT, there is a campaign on the web to get Sega to make a new version of Shining Force... :)

And FF6 had the greatest villain ever...Ultros! G'fa ha ha!

[UBIK]

FF6 was the greatest everything. period!

[SylvanHistorian]

I like FF2.But I haven't finished it yet.One of my characters' HP went beyond the upper limit and was displayed like ‚ H‚­‚¡, and sometimes Goblins killed him at one blow.Probably I will buy FF2 for Wander Swan.

[Kintoun]

Well I just started playing a new game and I seem to be addicted as hell. It's counter strike. I've played it before for awhile, but for some reason I seem to be playing this one again as if it was the soon-to-be Arcanity. Lottsa fun, but the skill difference is easily seen in that game. Altho it turned into a Quake =(. People can use hacks and cheats to kill alot easier. Such as infinite health, wall see-thru, auto aim, etc. No idea how many people use these, but people sure do accuse each other all over. Heh I got accused yesterday. I took it as a compliment since it means I'm so good that people think I cheat.

/emote gloats, and flexes his muscles!

[z_man93]

Hey Kintoun, whats the address of their homepage? I'm lookin for something new to kill some time until I get let into Beta. Assuming I get let into Beta, and if not, then I'll really need something to keep me busy for a while. I was hoping that Redmoon would keep me interested til Beta, but that game is so boring. I can't play for more than 10 minutes at a time. I get so frustrated because all you can do is stand there and shoot at bad guys. And that gets real boring real quick.

[SylvanHistorian]

Any game has at least one good feature I think, I hope.Will you tell me what's good about Redmoon?

[Kintoun]

LOL thats almost as hard as saying whats good about Lineage. Hmm whats good? Is it the fact that you don't get a new spell besides your starting one until lev 50? Is it the fact that some characters can't use any weapons and so are severly handicapped? Is it because everyone only uses one weapon, the gun? Is it because kill stealing is more rampant than in any other game I have ever seen? Is it because to start with you have to kill bandits, then hooilgans, then spy's, then err one more but I forgot, AND THATS IT!? And you have to kill hooligans/spy's until you can reach well over lev 30? And doing that takes much longer than it would in Diablo 2? I'd have to say about 3 weeks to do that. I got bored of killing bandits/hooligans/spy's within a few hours. Sorry but the only thing good about the game is that it's a MMORPG. Thats why I tried it and gave it such a huge chance.

http://www.counter-strike.net <-- heres a real game for you. The skill differnece is phenominal and easily seen from one player to the next.

[z_man93]

LOL, as I was reading SylvansHistorian's post all that I could think to say good about Redmoon is that it's better than Lineage. That's too funny. Hey Kintoun, great minds think alike.

And after spies come thugs. Once you've wasted an ungodly amount of time standing around killing thugs then you can go kill cyborgs and jesters. But be careful because where theres jesters there are mutants. And jesters are too easy but mutants will kick your arse, don't ask me why they're in the same areas.

Personally, after playing Redmoon for the last couple of weeks, I think that Lineage is more entertaining. As shallow as Lineage was I think it has one characteristic that makes it better than Redmoon. In Redmoon you are very restricted to certain zones. And these are very small zones. This means that all you do is sit in one spot shooting the exact same monster, wait for another to respawn then kill it again. And if your lucky only about 10% of the time will someone steal the kill from you.

Now, I will try very hard to say something good about Redmoon.

Well, I honestly thought for a while and didn't come-up with anything. There are people that do enjoy Redmoon so they must find something of interest, but I find it hard to believe that they're RP fans.

[SylvanHistorian]

Your replies are enough to make me decide not to play Redmoon and Lineage.Thank you anyway.I was just curious but no more. There are a lot of games that attract me.So I'll look for another one.

[z_man93]

I just thought of something that makes Redmoon better than Lineage. It's free, you actually have to pay to play Lineage. Even though you'll waste your time at least you won't waste any money playing Redmoon. I think you have the right idea, you would probably be happier somewhere else.

Here's a fun game that I stumbled across. It called Infantry. It's really not much, its a different genre, and a whole different caliber than Arcanity and other games that we normally discuss. But its fun as hell. And it's free. I guess it would be classified as a strategy game. It's a 2D, 3rd person strategy game. Basically you are a soldier and you battle in a number of arenas. The most simple is a deathmatch with 2 teams and everyone for themselves, not much strategy involved. There's a trench warfare map where people tend to work together a bit more. The next level of difficulty puts you in capture the flag games. There's a number of these with different maps and some involve mechanized units that you can control. I generally play the capture the flag, which is a blast. Once you start the game you can play a number of roles with different abilities from Commander, to Heavy Weapons, Medic, and more. The thing I like is everyone works together really well. The game goes quick and each time you win you get money so that you can buy better equipment.

Not everyone on our boards would probably like this game, but I'm definately playing it a lot while I wait for Arcanity.

Here's the address - http://www.station.sony.com/infantry

[Talka]

Its an MMORPG, features anime-ish looks, featuring ancient korea. Sounds strange, but its great.

Download it from...

http://www.nexustk.com/

the game itself isn't that great, and I would not suggest paying for it, but it is a free download, with a free trial. You might meet me as, "Lucibus." Whisper me if I'm on =)

The game's VERY good practice for role-playing

--Talka

[SylvanHistorian]

I was surprised to hear that you have to pay $30 as monthly fee to play Lineage. Ture?

[Kintoun]

Anime-esque?!?!?! I'm there!!!!!!!

[Talka]

Perhaps "Anime-esque" was a poor choice of words. But its still worth checking out.

--Talka

[vilk]

To get a nice, shiney burnish on my roleplaying skills I'll be investing time with various MUSHes, taletop RPGs and taking the occasional break with Startopia (Have you played the demo? OH MY GAWD it's awesome. It's kind of like Dungeon Keeper in space.), and possibly going through FF7. I grew up in a cave (apparently) and never played ChronoTrigger or any Final Fantasy games before 7.

[Kintoun]

Ok then I am making this a requirment right now. The music, story, and game quality STILL cannot be beat mt CT and FF6 (USA's FF3) IMO. Go and play/download those now then get back to us. Ask me if you need help in finding the game/emulator as I have them both.

[vilk]

I could use some help obtaining the game itself; thanks for the offer. I'll contact you on AIM, if that's OK.

[SylvanHistorian]

What do you call my favorite FF2 in USA?
If someone finished this game, I would respect him.:)

[z_man93]

Here's another great rpg from Nexus, like what Talka mentioned. It's called Dark Ages. Nothing great as far as graphics, but the roleplaying is fantastic and its a great community. It costs $15 monthly but there is a 5 day free trial. www.darkages.com It's worth $15 but even if you only play for the 5 days you'll still have fun.

On another note, is anyone playing Anarchy Online?I registered on their boards like 2 years ago, I haven't been participating at all but I got an e-mail the other day that I was now allowed into their beta. Having a 56k connection I wanted to see how long it would take me to download the client...86 hours. LOL, needless to say, I am not downloading the game. At least Lineage and Redmoon mailed me a CD, AO will not do that.

[vilk]

A friend of mine has been a participant in the AO beta for a while now. He's say it's fantastic, so much better than EQ and UO. That's coming from a diehard EQ fan, too. Plane raids on all that. Rumour is that AO will finally topple the three biggies: EverQuest, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call.

[SylvanHistorian]

Hmm, a friend of mine is saying the opposite. After all I might have to play AO myself to know what it is like. But I couldn't. I just can't download 400MB.:(
By the way, many are looking forward to Star Wars Galaxies and FF 11 in Japan. What do you think of the two promising MMORPGs?It is said that FF11 is going to be an EQ-like game.

[Kintoun]

FFXI will topple them all. Everyone will play it just cause it's Final Fantasy. I'll pay money to play that game, and I'll pay a lot more. Sorry BHT but my fealty was sworn to SquareSoft much much longer ago! I mean cmon? What other company produces such a awesome % of games and is so well recognized?

[vilk]

I don't know; I sure do love FF7 and FF8, and not to mention all things Star Wars, but with the craze around those two worlds imagine how many terrible players will come out of the woodwork. Every freak who can't tell the difference between Star Wars and reality (Go to a convention and you'll see what I mean.) will get Galaxies.

Sorry, it's been a long day at work and I'm grumpy. ;-)

[haerik]

I've played the most recent AO beta for an hour at the most but if
they plan to charge for the game on the 27th as is planned there
will be many unhappy people. It seems they have numerous
stability issues yet unresolved and the latest patch won't even
allow me into the game. Arcanity is still the game I am looking
forward to and I have plenty to do aside from games in the
meantime.

haerik

[SylvanHistorian]

Yes, I cant wait FF11 until April 2002. So I hope to be chosen a beta tester but I cant guess how many there are who want to get into beta.

As for AO, I'm afraid many of developers' concerns are already moving to Midgard. You know the world of AO is going to last only four years. Despite what haerik says I'm still interested in AO. I'd like to hear what the game is like from someone in the near future after the game is released.

[Dyson]

Personally, Iàve been looking forward to games that will allow a more D&D-esque experiance for a DM and a small group of people. To that end, Iàve had my eye on the World of Darkness Mod for Vampire: Redemption, and Iàve also been following NeverWinter Nights pretty closely.

Arcanityàs the next MMRPG Iàve been looking forward to; the others seem a bit too big-company (ala UO) for my tastes.

For example, Ive heard of a newer one called ShadowBane thatàs making a lot of claims about a truly "dynamic world," but their E3 video made a lot of claims that sounded like bullshit to me ("shadowbane is at the forefront of the developing MMRPG market" or somesuch; thought this was funny because Iàd never heard of it until then, and because the MMRPG market isnàt exactly "brand new" in the way they implied).

again, sorry for the weird punctuation- it shall be fixed within a week.

[z_man93]

Aye, I have heard some negative things about AO as well. Of course I do not follow it much so basically I have hear 1 negative thing and 0 positive. The law of large numbers is working against me here. But as I was waiting for Arcanity Beta I decided that I would pay the ten bucks to have BurnaDisc mail me a copy of AO. I figured that it would be worth it and give me something to do while waiting for Arcanity. So if anyone has my problem of it taking like a week to download I can mail you the CD when I get it.

[Lordosis]

From what I've seen, Camelot is the only non-Arcanity game I want to play of the next gen coming out. If the devs keep their current attitude after they start getting customers, I'd play Camelot over EQ for that reason alone. Plus the regional war thing sounds fun.

ShadowBane is going to do well, but it won't be out much sooner than Arcanity. It's very pro PvP, in case you didn't know, so it's going to attract a different player base than the others. I don't think I'm going to like that player base, but that might just be me jumping to conclusions.

Anarchy Online just doesn't look fun to me. Maybe that's just because I tend to like medieval fantasy more than futurstic. It will definitely not replace EQ and UO, that much I guarantee.

I honestly hope Star Wars turns out to be a good game. Only because I'm a huge SW fan and I'd hate to see a failed MMORPG make people give up on the idea of an online star wars world. That said, you have Verant behind the wheel of this one, so.... Also, it's not going to be out for a LONG time I'd wager.

I don't think anything besides Camelot and AO will be released this year (Arcanity will if we get our butts in gear)... I'll comment on the 2002 games some other time.

[SylvanHistorian]

Now ASDL is available, I could move from ISDN to ASDL to download AO or others much faster. But I've heard many experienced slower pings than ISDN while download speed was incredibly increased. So I will not move to ASDL untill ASDL of a big ISP that is reputed to be fast and stable is available.
I wonder how beta testers of Arcanity got the client programs. I fear downloading it is almost impossible in my current situation.

[Morte]

I assume everyone downloaded it, I did anyway. Then again, I have a really good Cable internet provider, with a huge bandwidth capacity, so I'm in luck there. I even have the option of switching to an ADSL provider that is almost as good. Broadband internet is very good around here, so you could try that, if you don't mind moving to Europe. Alternatively, you could ask one of the beta testers if he could mail it to you on a CD. At least a few of them have a CD Writer, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[SylvanHistorian]

I thank you , and envy you.:)
It seems that broadband is going to be everything. But it will take a little more time for me to get a good ASDL service because of dull NTT.

[LagunaJohn]

I have been playing AO since I was confirmed for Beta4. While the game is interesting, what has me really turned off (besides getting dropped ten or more times an hour because of the crashes) is the chat that is coming across the chat channels. OMG, you won't believe how many people are pissing and moaning about how disatisfied they are with the game.

Now, being a software developer for many years - I understand why the game (in it's beta state) is soooo slow. Funcom is working with the game client and server in debug mode to collect all the bugs they can. But, from what I can see so far. There is no way that the game should have gone gold for the release next week with it in it's current state.

Of course, I may be completely surprised by the difference from beta to gold release. But, I highly doubt it - and I think that Funcom will be lucky to retain 5% of their beta testers as paying customers.