Myria

@MGTrey

Pretty typical for MMOs, sadly. The devs promise the moon, the fanboys lap it up and multiply it by ten, a few carefully controlled demos "prove" it's all real, then release day comes and a month or two (if even that long) later the honeymoon is over, reality sets in, and people move on to the next big thing.

This happens with most genres of games, of course, but it's several orders of magnitude worse with MMOs.

The gaming "press" is a big part of the problem. The mostly reprint press releases and pray that gets them an "exclusive". A bigger part of the problem is the gaming public who doesn't demand better of the press or the devs and then wonders why 99% of those "going to change everything!!!11!!!" games that are promised turn out to be utter crap.

As far as GW2 is concerned, there's a pretty much a direct correlation between the hype meter and the size of the crater the game eventually leaves behind when it falls to earth. GW2's hype meter is inching past 11, the crater should be quite spectacular.

Frankly nothing could live up to the level of hype Anet and its fans have managed to delude themselves into.

@draknahr

I have to agree, definitely preferred the first. Not sure what the hate is about where these games are concerned, I enjoyed both of them quite a lot and thought the animation in the first one was some of the most fluid of that type.

As for this new, supposedly "not sucking" version, looks like massive suck to me -- of an unfun variety. Unless the screens just seriously don't do the game justice, and I'll grant that's at least possible, I think I'd rather go dig out my old Blood Rayne disks and have some actual fun -- sucking and all -- instead.

AoC's map I always found less than useful because you mostly just need to know where the transport nodes from one zone to another are, and that's often not clear from looking at the map.

GW's map I always found depressingly deceptive because, like so much of that game, you can't go to most of what you see and it hints at much cooler things than anything you can go to.

In all honestly Aion's map made so little impression on my I can't even remember what it looked like.

Eve's map is, like pretty much every thing else about the UI, rendered nigh unto unusable but a font size that was apparently hardcoded back when displays were typically 640X480. I mouse over a system and I can kinda tell that the little box has text in it... Or maybe that's a dust speck... Hard to be sure.

FE's map is both good and bad. Firstly it has always annoyed me to no end that you need two maps open all the time. The mini-map to see mobs, allies, and your mount indicator (among other things), and a small version of the overland map in the corner so you can see nodes -- which are often well outside the mini-map range. Beyond that, the overworld map is nice looking, but also more than a bit annoying to use if you don't already know where you're going. If you do know where you're going, well you don't really need it. I'd happily trade all the funkiness for a more functional implementation.

Rift's maps might be okay if they weren't so buggy. Can't count the number of times I've looked on the map to see no tears in Shimmer when there's half a dozen in sight. Or gone to where there's an invasion to see that said invasion was way off from the map and long dead. Okay in theory, but in practice not so much.

WAR's maps were fine, the zone arrangement... Not so much.

The beauty of WoW's map isn't in the default, but in how with mods you can make it into anything you like. If there's one thing I miss about that game, it's the ability to make the UI I like, rather than the dreadful garbage most MMO designers try and pass off as a UI.

I've never understood why people refer to rifts as "dynamic", frankly they're anything but. I run around the beach in Shimmer with a friend or two trying to farm the mount and all we have to do is look at a rift after opening to know *exactly* what is going to happen -- exactly how many mobs in exactly what order with exactly what abilities. Hardly seems dynamic to me.

Rifts are PQs, honestly not even as well done as WAR's were, and certainly less varied. They're zerg content, that's all they ever can be. Despite the game's name -- and, seriously, do you people think The Legend of Zelda must be about Zelda? -- they aren't and can't be the center of the game.

Zerg content never can be anything much, by its nature it is easy and gets boring fast.

Enjoy rifts for what they are, a minor diversion, ignore them once they get boring, and move on with it. Just as has been the case in every game that has tried "dynamic" content, just as will be the case in every game that does try it (yes, even the current holy grail of gaming, GW2, may its fall from fanboi grace be an amusing one) for the foreseeable future.

@Haldurson

Honestly I have characters on Faeblight guardian side and I'd rate the community there merely "toxic". The server I mostly play on, Deepwood (Defiant side), used to be a lot better, but since transfers and the influx of vagabond players looking for a server with greener grass, it's gotten pretty bad. Fifty chat, which used to be okay, is now a cesspool of near AoC global chat proportions. Been pretty sad to see it go downhill so fast.

Either way, the forums are some of the worst I've seen and the in-game community (at least on the three servers I've played on) in my opinion now rates far below FE, LoTRO, or even WoW, if still generally above AoC or Eve.

@Fakeassname

I believe we have a winner...

S4 has been coming "SOON!!!11!!!1!!" since shortly after release. At this point it doesn't even matter when, or even 'if', it's going to be released, what matters is the question of whether or not there's anything meaningful past it in the pipe. Frankly I'm doubt it, and the piecemeal handout of bits of S4 and the eternal "SOON!!!11!!!1!!" don't look good.

If there isn't anything major in the pipe -- as in, S5 being mostly done -- they're in even more trouble than people seem to be aware.

As for the rest, Factions aren't going to matter. Seriously, they've long since neutered what little there was about them that did matter and made it easy to swap, it's too late to turn back now. Clans, meh, they come and go like the wind -- the half life of a clan in FE is measured in picoseconds. Economy? Hahahahahaha! Even ignoring that the vast bulk of PvErs could give a rat's arse about driving the economy (Seriously, do they think their playerbase is made up of CPAs or something?), FE isn't built to have a meaningful economy, quite the opposite. And RPers will still be utterly and completely ignored, despite -- and, mind you, I'm not an RPer -- being the one and only meaningful and loyal playerbase the game has.

Oh, and to those who think the item store won't turn into pay-to-win? I have a bridge to sell you..

I hear the Eve devs -- and god knows the current crop of FE devs (what, the fourth or fifth, I've lost count?) desperately want FE to be post-apoc Eve (I suppose the "drive the economy" stupidity makes sense in that light) -- have some great ideas for housing and item shops.

@Liquidfingers I'm female and strongly prefer playing female characters, and honestly I think BG&E is probably the most overrated game I have ever played. The plot was infantile, the execution poor, the characters cardboard at best, and the ending... What in god's name was that about?

Horrible game, IMHO, I have never understood why there were so many people who thought it was perfection itself. Different strokes, I suppose, but to me redoing Syberia, for instance, would be great. Redoing this abomination is a crime against gaming.

I'm continuously stunned by the slack the geek set constantly cuts Google, I see nothing whatsoever to justify it and every reason to be as suspicious -- nay. more so -- as I would be of MS. But, hell, it doesn't really matter how many dick moves Google makes or how often one of their execs flat out tells you that as far as they're concerned you have no privacy, all they need to do is hand out some half-arsed "free" service that exists for no other purpose than to collect more information on you and all is forgotten.

And frankly Chrome became a hell of a lot worse in my book than IE ever was when I discovered that it, without warning, installed updaters for itself every bloody where I looked in my system. Including in Firefox. Seriously, wtf? Why would I ever, ever, ever want a memory wasting plug-in in Firefox just to update Chrome?

I suppose they know most people wouldn't, which is why they don't ask.

At least with MS or even Apple I know they're trying to sell me a product. Google feels I, and everything I might ever do, say, or think, is theirs, I am a product for them to sell.

That's a pretty good definition of evil, if you ask me.

Pride cometh, and all that...