Over at Chez Grouchy we have a week of AoC under our belts. In spite of a bad case of Alt-itis (and the fact that we got GTA4 this weekend and have been messing with that and yeah, I know I’m a latecomer) we’ve got a couple of characters out of Tortage and off exploring the rest of the world. Tarkheena and I are both explorer/stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of players so it’s not surprising that we haven’t hit the level cap just yet. I wanted to share some thoughts with you all on what we have seen and what our experience has been so far.
Funcom is reporting that there have been 400,000 units sold (and presumably activated) in the past week. That’s a pretty good week by almost any definition. Even with all of those players the launch went pretty smoothly. They even added 9 servers over the weekend to accommodate the additional players. These included 5 new PVE servers and 4 new PVP realms. With that in mind, you have to give Funcom’s launch high marks for being catastrophe-free. You’d have to say that overall their launch is one of the smoother ones we’ve seen.
This week, with the release of Age of Conan, we’ve seen what I think is a pretty huge spike in interest for a different MMO. One that is different from WoW. When I talk about “different” here I don’t mean completely different. I mean that it’s just not WoW. Whether or not AoC turns out to gain a sizable foothold in the market, for me, this is one of the first danger signs for the health of Blizzard’s Golden Goose.
I promised you all a dispassionate and thoughtful follow up to the Beta Impressions articles that I did earlier. So here is round one. I want to start by saying that I’m not a professional game reviewer. Far from it. I’m a player with an opinion. What you will see here are the observations of one person. Disclaimer behind us, let’s dive in.
So I’ve been challenged. Some of my readers have read my beta impressions and let me know that wasn’t how it was going to be once the game went live. Like an underachieving basketball team, they are going to flip the switch on launch day and be great. That may be. I wasn’t planning on finding out for myself on this one. But my journalistic integrity has been challenged and so I went out and bought two shiny copies of Age of Conan. I’ll be playing the game, at least for a while, and I’ll post here what I find.
One year ago today, Operations Manager Andy Platter asked everyone to come out to the Sigil parking lot and fired basically everyone who worked for Sigil Games Online. Sigil, who was to be the savior of the TRUE MMO fan, would be laid to waste. The next day, about half of those people would be hired by SOE to work on their newly-acquired property. Brad McQuaid would be put out to pasture, presumably at a nice stipend, to not mess with any of their games. I’m going to attempt to chronicle some of the events leading up to and following that day, and see where Vanguard is now. This is mostly going to be written from the perspective of a community manager/fansite operator, because that is what my involvement was. This is going to be a little long, even broken into three parts, so be forewarned.
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