Semjaza

I actually picked up Age of Conan today. So far all I have to say is this has been the world's longest game install... and I've not even started patching yet. EDIT: OK, be prepared for about a 60 minute plus install then around 700 MBs in patches. Anyway, the game is a lot of fun. I'm only level 7 so I'm not terribly far into it, but it's been very enjoyable. I'm actually liking the "instanced island" aspect. Essentially, the first 19/20 levels take place on this island and you move off of it once you complete a certain quest line. This takes place at night, but you can talk to anyone to shift back to day time where you'll run into other players. I thought it would be jarring and bizarre, but it really allows you to get used to the game's mechanics (which will similar to other MMORPGs, are still definitely more rooted in action games). It also allows you to get better acquainted with the game's universe and the storyline. To help with this, there are actual dialog choice when talking to important NPCs, much like you'd see a traditional computer RPG. The NPCs are fully voiced, although honestly it's still obvious this is a MMORPG... there's no realistic facial movements or anything. The game is also pretty gorgeous. I have a Radeon 3870 HD, which runs Direct X 10.1 and it definitely takes advantage of it. Lord of the Rings Online has DX10 support, although it was added later and is still not horribly smooth (although it adds really nice shadows from everything, including tree leaves)... but this is the first game I've personally played that really takes advantage of it (I've not played Crysis lol). I'm impressed by how well it runs. Of course, I realize not everyone has my card... the game recommends at least a Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX, but it will run on a GeForce 6600 or better. I started out as a Necromancer, so I can summon monsters and cast spells. It's been fun. Most of this plays out like in other MMORPGs, although the game's combat is more action-based. You attack straight, left or right based upon cues that appear around enemies. Hitting them at the right times in the right spots deals increased damage. It's minor, but it's interesting. Anyway, if anyone has any specific questions about it let me know.

There have been a few "every mmorpg coming up!" threads here... even those have only gotten a few posts at most. I think it's safe to say that most people here simply don't even play them. And unfortunately those of us that do seem to play entirely different games or have radically different playtime schedules. I've not been able to meet up with [I]anyone[/I] from here since FFXI was new. I was in the Age of Conan stress test, but I didn't even get to log in during it. I wound up deleting the game entirely after the [I]second [/I]5 GB patch (and this is after an almost 10 GB download) because I couldn't even get the game to load the title screen at that point (and it's definitely not that my computer is underpowered, it's not). That and Funcom apparently didn't want to let me into the general beta. Of course, the next day I get a message saying I (and all stress test testers) would be allowed to play in the general beta. Oh well. The game looks promising in various ways. The combat sounds fun and the game certainly looks good. My main concern is that I'm just not sure how the instanced "newbie" zone will work out in the scheme of things. Essentially the first 20 levels are so are almost entirely played within a main quest line that's single player. You can leave this to access the main MMORPG with towns, shops, crafting and so forth... but the juxtaposition of it is odd, to say the least. It almost makes me wonder why I should have to pay a fee to access that portion of the game. And it also makes me wonder how many players will find the transition from what is essentially a single player RPG to a MMORPG incredibly jarring, as well as how many will never want to make the move to begin with... but then again, who knows why they'd be buying a MMORPG in that case lol. Warhammer is way too far off for me to make any real comments. It does look really similar to WoW at this point, but I'm [I]****ing tired of WoW[/I]. I finally just gave my account to my brothers. Like you said, a lot of WoW fans could potentially move to it, which is ironic since they ***** about wanting something "new" when all they want is something [I]just like WoW[/I]. I don't know how that works. I signed up for the beta on that one too, but I doubt I'll hear much about it again until the release nears. Last I heard it wasn't hitting until October. In the meantime I'm still completely happy with Lord of the Rings Online and the only MMORPG-related thing I'm 100% buying is its expansion, The Mines of Moria, which is supposed to come out in the Fall.

I think Yuko winds up being one of the more interesting ones, honestly. By the way, the FES additions to the main game have been great. The new Personas are cool, there's new test questions and dialog, some small additions that make things come together a little better, etc. I enjoyed the little excursion I had with [spoiler]Elizabeth[/spoiler].

By the way, this is a LOT easier to find than the last one. Places are carrying it that didn't carry the original Persona 3 whatsoever. I picked my copy up at Best Buy.

[url]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014CN2H6?ie=UTF8[/url] FES is in stores now. For $30 you get a package of the original game and the new FES expansion with hours and hours of completely new content. [B] Thirty dollars.[/B] If you like console RPGs (or even if you don't, it's arguably the most interesting one in many years) and you don't buy this then there's just something wrong with you.

In Perfect Drug you mean? I think that was a nice touch, it gives the guitar player a bit more to do in an otherwise rather dull stretch. I picked that up and March of the Pigs. I [I]can't stand[/I] The Collector, so I didn't bother. I also picked up El Scorcho. Whenever Harmonix FINALLY gets around to full album releases (where the hell is Who's Next?), I really hope Pinkerton gets added.

I definitely understand that mindset. I think with pay-for MMORPGs you have to just be sure to find ones that make it worth the investment. The sheer amount of work that goes into WoW can help ease the blow I think... but on top of this, the users receive regular updates to the game. Not just bug fixes, but new options, quests, areas, etc. WoW might be $15 a month, but even before the expansion pack it had increased significantly in content, modes and the sheer amount of places to go. The same is true of LotRO. They've added player housing, refined the raids, adding player costume options, tons of quests, new enemies, massive new areas. I bought the game for $20 and I really just don't mind paying $30 every three months for all of it. By the time I add it up, it's the cost of two or three games, which I feel pretty much equals out with the sheer amount of things that get added to these titles. Of course, some are significantly more lazy. FFXI has had like four additional expansion packs at like $30 apiece, some containing things that WoW or LotRO would have arguably done for free for paying subscribers. You just have to be careful.

Guild Wars was quite awesome when it came out and I don't think you can underestimate the appeal of free online play... but I re-installed it last month and I was just amazed by how dated and uninteresting it seemed. GW is really MMORPG-Lite in so many ways. From character customization, to actual ability usage, to challenge. Really, it barely fits into the MMORPG genre to begin with in many ways since every single area outside of hub towns (which could basically just be called a lobby since they offer little of importance beyond a clear meeting place) is instanced. Instances are generally very small components in other MMORPGs. That's a tangent, I apologize. There's been a couple of threads on MMORPGs similar in nature to this recently. They mostly concerned themselves with upcoming MMORPGs and there's a few of those that look pretty interesting. Currently, I've tried several on the market now. Several free and free beta ones have come and gone (particularly Korean ones), but I always find myself completely turned off by them within 15 minutes for one reason or another. Guild Wars, as I mentioned early, is completely drained of its appeal for me. Tabula Rasa was a good concept, but it hasn't been capitalized on yet. There's been some decent updates since its release, but it has a long, long way to go. I'd go so far as to call it a complete failure at this point. The world is uninteresting, there's little reason to want to advance. MMORPGs have to have a solid structure upon release. WoW had this, LotRO had this, Everquest had this, EVE Online had this and so on. Tabula Rasa really just did not and I don't see it recovering. The interesting combat components can only go so far. World of Warcraft I don't play anymore. I keep trying to get into it and have been trying to since I bought the original version years ago. It's an excellent game and it's been tweaked so much since release that it's really pretty amazing. There's no shortage of people to group with, for obvious reasons (there's over 8,000,000 subscribers, a total anomaly in this genre). My interest in it finally died somewhat recently. I was running around as a Blood Elf, trying to get 8 Lynx Pelts. Over two dozen dead lynxes later I had three. THREE. This had happened so much over the course of my playing this game over the years that I just decided enough was enough. Blizzard have become the kings of artificially extending the life of MMORPGs, something that seems completely unnecessary given the sheer amount of quests in the game and how many characters you can possibly create that can be almost completely different. Dungeons and Dragons Online has some interesting concepts. Its menu systems are almost completely different from the traditional MMORPG designs. Unfortunately, not many people play it anymore... although its following seems devoted. Personally I play Lord of the Rings Online. You can get the game for as little as $10 now, which helps immensely, obviously.I just think the game is fun, progression is rewarding and the story is integrated into the main game play in a way that's generally unheard of in MMORPGs. You don't have to be a Tolkien freak to get into it (I sure am not), which is also a plus. There's a thread here on this game if anyone has more specific questions about it. The main thing I love about it is that the WoW-style 100 kills for 10 animal parts is almost completely nonexistent. Every so often I run into a quest where the drop is maybe 80% instead of 100%, but even that's barely comparable. If it seems bad, chances are you're in the wrong area. There's trials of all of these (except maybe Tabula Rasa). I think the best thing to do is to find someone to play with in each of them and give them a try for a week. It's the only way to figure out which one suits you.

Every night at midnight something known as the Shadow Hour begins. Basically, at this point, monsters known as Shadows attack the surrounding areas. Most people are transmogrified into crystallized coffins, but those who are able to summon Persona remain fully conscious. Most of them just wind up being killed, but a special group of kids (their main difference being that they know how to summon Personas at will) at a local High School have formed a force with the help of the the head of extracurricular activities. Their mission is to find the source of the Shadow and defeat it. It gets far deeper than this (tons of turns, hidden connections, additional enemies that have their own motives, etc), but it's a very entertaining story and the character development is excellent. I can't see anyone being disappointed with it, particularly given how dull console RPG stories usually are. [B]PS, this game is being re-released [I]with [/I]the Fes expansion pack (two new stories, about 30 hours of gameplay) in the US for $29.99. If you have a PS2/PS3 and don't buy this, you're officially going to be thrown off a cliff.[/B]

In his defense, Kaim did have hundreds of years in which to become angst-y. I'm not entirely sure that Cloud's excuse compares lol. :animeknow

I half expected (OK, way more than half) this to be yet another game just like Disgaea from these guys. I actually checked it out and it looks pretty interesting. I actually had never even heard of it before, although I've completely turned off my PS2 radar aside from the hope of a Persona 3: Fes release in the US. I'll have to look into trying this one.

It's possible your modem doubles as a wired and wireless router. I have a 2wire modem that has four ethernet ports on the back and also handles wireless internet. It's all a single unit. That might be why you're not finding a router specifically. Nintendo has a page about that error, but it doesn't seem especially useful: [url]http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/wfc/en_na/ds/results.jsp?error_code=32004&system=Wii&locale=en_US&action2.x=27&action2.y=36[/url] There's more options here: [url]http://www.wiierror.com/wii-error-32004.php[/url]

It seems like other MMORPGs have at least improved that. LotRO very rarely has that issue, nor does Tabula Rasa. WoW seemingly still hasn't learned its lesson... I was playing it the other day and I had to kill arguably 30 lynxes for 8 pelts. It's just plain boring and it's not like there's a shortage of things to do. There's some decent in-game videos of Warhammer out if anyone wants to see them: [url]http://www.incgamers.com/2/article/6943.html[/url] Use IE, though. I never got the videos to load in Firefox.

Your trial is probably up by now, I imagine? Unfortunately we never seemed to be on at the same time. Oh well, enjoy Rock Band (I do!).

I play LotRO mostly now. I've tried a handful of the new ones, such as Tabula Rasa, but LotRO is the only one I feel is generally engaging and interesting (far more than any I've played, but that's just my opinion... and I'm not exactly a Tolkein freak). I play WoW from time to time, but only when friends are subscribing as well. Warhammer had a lot of things going for it, but like most MMORPGs these interesting and potentially innovative concepts have largely been dropped in favor of being more WoW-like for mass consumption and hopefully larger sales. I'm not as interested in it as I was, but like anything I'd have to try it. As for other new ones, I think that Conan RPG has some promise, but it's hard to say. The last beta apparently went kind of badly and they're restructuring the combat and changing some things related to class specifications. We'll see what happens, but I did find it interesting that it was rated M. That's insanely rare for these kinds of games. But I think the universe is interesting if nothing else. Aion looks kind of neat, but I find myself disinterested in many of the things NCSoft puts out. Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes (aside from character creation). I'll give it a shot if I can, though. You really never know with MMORPGs... WoW had a lot of issues its first year, for example and even in the short time LotRO has been out, it's improved drastically.

The weird thing about bashing the single player is that it essentially just is Guitar Hero. You progress through the songs and that's it. I noticed this in reviews... but to ***** about that not being enough is like saying GH3 isn't enough either, really. It's the same system minus the absolutely horrid guitar battles. There seems to be this general idea that the timing is off in it too... I've heard this from several people andi it's almost taken on this mythical quality where every other person interested in the game thinks its an issue. As long as you calibrate your TV, it's fine. If you don't, well, it can be really bad. I noticed it particularly on LCD TVs. Guitar-wise it's nowhere near as difficult. At the same time, I don't know that that's the point. It's far more a furthering of the social aspects GH started and I think the developers knew enough to keep it at some point where it's always accessible and not simply just frustrating. I imagine it's very rare to find four people who can handle instruments on expert simultaneously and do well. Either way, I don't think anyone who is amazing at GH should be approaching this expecting the same thing... it's not really focused on shredding. Beyond that it's a lot of fun and, at least personally, I prefer the actual track listing. As far as I'm concerned Deep Purple's Highway Star makes this game. I do play guitar against people online in this if anyone wants to hit me up on Live: Lime Balthazar. I usually do hard or expert.

That's really weird. I looked on the forums and no one else seems to be experiencing the issue... Could it be firewall related?

Great, just post your name in here whenever you're started. I play as a few characters and would have to log in to even check the spelling on a few, so that might be easier lol. Glitch wise it's a lot better. I was in the beta too... for me the main issue was simply that it took a lot of power to run it well. It's greatly improved in that regard. I remember there were NPCs that had hair floating two feet off their heads. All that sort of weirdness is ironed out, although sometimes you happen upon a floating item. I can't say I've seen anything that just seemed lazy or detrimental though. Hopefully downloading the latest one won't require a lengthy patch either. Edit - Actually, I forgot: If you add one character from a friend you can see all of their characters when they're online. I almost exclusively play as Branson on Gladden, so if you add him and let me know who you are we'll be set. Otherwise feel free to IM me or PM me if you need to.

So I wanted to bump this in hopes that more people would be interested in playing this game. I don't run a guild or anything and I'm not trying to "recruit"... It's more that I think this is a really solid title and I'd like to play with more people I at least somewhat know. Plus it gives a good place to talk about it. LotRO can easily be found now for $10 to $20 new. This includes a free month of play. Typically a month of play is $15 for five characters per server (and you can use several servers if you wish to). Right now they're offering a deal that allows you to pay for 3 months at once for $10 a month. Basically it's kind of buy 2 get 1 free at the normal price. If you absolutely love it you can also buy a lifetime subscription for $200, which will probably last a long time... the game is doing well, they're constantly making significant upgrades and I'm sure expansion packs are inevitable. You can download a free seven day trial from [URL="http://www.lotro.com"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][U]www.lotro.com[/U][/COLOR][/URL]. This doesn't require a credit card or anything else to be entered. Anyway, I play on [B]Gladden [/B]if anyone wants to try it out. They also have a nice referral system, so if anyone feels like they'll sign up you can give me your e-mail you registered with. Helps me out and technically I AM referring you lol. I'd also be more than happy to answer any questions anyone has about it, how it compares to other MMORPGs (assuming I've played them) and so forth. I don't want to write tons of stuff up if no one is interested. I typically barely play MMORPGs at all and grow tired of them quickly (WoW included), but this one has really caught my attention and I think even those who typically dislike the genre will like it.

They're far from major issues, which is really why even after bitching about these things most reviews are still 9s and up. There's some minor framerate issues, but they've never hampered the gameplay for me. The texture pop-up thing is hardly a deal breaker. The friendly AI works fine if you play the game from a more tactical standpoint (and specialize the characters more) and don't just run in like an idiot. I think most people can get over these things. They're no worse of problems than what we've seen in games we all still managed to enjoy before, really. Oblivion comes to mind. They shouldn't have been issues at all and I think given what's been on the system it's clear this isn't a case of the 360 being overloaded. I think it just came out slightly earlier than it should have.

[quote name='DeathKnight'][color=crimson]Two to three hours into Mass Effect, I have to say I am very impressed. BioWare titles are usually superb story, mechanics, and characters. This time the visual aspect of the game is astonishing. They stress the 360's capabilities at times. Character armor pops in a second or two after a scene begins or a location loads, and similar textures on landscapes take only a slight second or two. I would say that is a testament to their beautiful nature, and the graphical slowdowns are not too annoying..[/color][/QUOTE] Lacking another place to talk about this game, here I am. I have to say that I am wondering if this is more of an issue with the Unreal 3 Engine than anything else, as Bioshock had the same issues. It's happened to me only once so far. I actually don't mind the load times either. Aside from elevators they're not terribly frequent or terribly long. In fact, I'd say it's significantly less annoying than in a lot of recent games I can think of or titles like Oblivion. Revews made it sound like it would be constantly loading for minutes at a time even outside of elevators and that's definitely not the case. Some of the elevator loads are ridiculously long though, which is really odd considering if you take the transit system to the [I]same places[/I] in the Citadel it's far faster. Don't ask me. There are some minor framerate issues at times, mostly things that seem to relate to syncing issues, but they're not enough to get worked up about. The game is otherwise absolutely gorgeous (the turians, in particular, are really impressive). The conversation is WAY more intuitive and seamless than I ever expected. The actual gameplay is enjoyable, although I imagine some people expecting combat to be like a regular 3rd person shooter will get annoyed. The storyline and sidequests are setup, explained and integrated even more impressively than they were in KotOR. And while you might not get to explore every last inch of other planets, it's still pretty awesome to be able to fly almost anywhere in the galaxy when you want to. If nothing else, I'm glad to finally see a bunch of aliens that aren't humanoid. It seems like that's all you see in sci-fi shows and games.

Honestly, it sounds like your friends are a bunch of wimps.

The very fact that this has to be discussed at all kind of negates any attempt to undo the uptight image OB may or may not have. The place is starting to get uptight about being too uptight.

Personally, I just go to reloaded.org or abandonia.com. The first is freeware new games and the latter is really old stuff no one bothers to persue any longer.