Now, I have played Funcom’s AO on and off for the past seven or eight years and I have to admit that one of the main hooks for me was the storyline. Most of the time I never got a character above level 100, but for me one of the greatest achievements in AO’s story was the uncertainty of the future events. Before I logged in everyday, I read the newslines and checked out the boards on some of the more heated debates that were currently raging. I remember talking with a friend right after the Dust Brigade attack on Omni-1 and trying to figure out what this would mean to the storyline.

The original content of the game was amazing for the sheer fact that it was immense and diverse, and it drew people into the politics of the game. I remember many political debates about different factions and their actions in the game during the first few years. I loved participating in these, even though i generally dislike Roleplaying.

So what happened? Shadowlands helped break this storyline for me. While still immersive, and more involved the further you go in, it took away a lot of the focus from Rubi-Ka, which in my mind should have continued to thrive in tandem.

In another of his interviews, Ragnar said that AO is a hardcore game, meant for hardcore gamers. This is absolutely true. The amount of options you have in the game is staggering, and if you decide to delve outside of the cookie-cutter gaming guides, AO has some of the deepest stats interaction I’ve seen in a game.

I believe this is what TSW will try to bridge. The game will still be an immersive world with player-driven content as well as Dev-created main story arc, and will still have indepth character “twinking,” but will be made to be more accessible for newer players. In this way, a character can be hand-crafted with very obscure or specialized objects/bonuses/whatever to make a character perform exactly the way you want, or you can keep a more casual pursuit of character growth with easier to obtain items which may not give the same kind of edge. I believe the story will be similar.

If you wish to be involved in the story, then you may join event-cabals that may very well be opposing other payer-cabals in an esoteric and conspiracy-based system. That “cliff-hanger” could well be the set-up for multiple cabals to try and influence their ideals and agenda upon the storyline. In this way, even though the main-events may well be known throughout the player network, small wars and offshoots to this story, dev-created backstory to investigate, and player-driven “grudge”stories could still all be lurking behind the scenes, rarely talked about until they do affect the outcome of the story, and others go back to try and investigate what happened.

Something like this in a smaller aspect has been shown by the Council of Truth and the Omni-board being handed over to player RP guilds to try and choose what the future of their society will be. I haven’t been involved in any of the meetings, nor do I know if it’s still up and working, but it was a great idea to see clanner and OT interests on Rubi-Ka being decided by players.

I can see a similar system to this being introduced into TSW. Funcom also encouraged player-produced RP heavily in AO, and have shown that they are willing to respond to Player interests and opinions when they hired players to help produce new content.

All-in-all, I see a lot of FC bashing for their release content, and against TSW for being story-driven, but FC has shown a remarkable talent at being flexible and responsive to their players’ needs. The whole idea of the game is to give story to those who crave it, and to allow an immersive experience for the players in general. If this means you want to go out and twink your character, then I’m sure you’ll be able to, just as I’m sure they will make it so casual gamers can still stay competitive to the specialized few.

I for one applaud Funcom for their attempts at immersive and complex gameplay, and as long as they keep this game deep enough for the “hardcore” gamer in addition to their hopes of making it accessible for the casual gamer, I will be waiting with anticipation for this.

And for those who keep saying the game will fail just because it’s made by Funcom, keep in mind that this is their third MMO. AO was their first, and had huge technical problems at launch. AoC was rushed, and realeased too early, that’s true. The launch went pretty well, but soon the lack of content became a problem, at least for those who had already participated in the beta. Many also suffered because they didn’t have a powerful enough computer, personally the game ran very smoothly on mine. So what would Funcom have learnt by this? Don’t release an unfinished game. And this time they can take their time, no release date has been announced. And also, they have freedom to do what they want, unlike with Conan, which was a franchise.

Will the game be successful or not? Time will show. But it’s sad to see that some gamers wish for less variety. Although sheep are concidered stupid, there is strength in numbers. If the leaders of the sheep community keep saying bad things about a company, the rest usually follows. Sad but true.

(Copy/Paste)

Does this one still have a single-player mode (assuming it ever really had one to begin with)?

From Wikipedia: “Tørnquist assured that the game can also be played in single-player mode, should a player be uncomfortable or unable to play with a group. According to him, the game is story-driven and there will be an overarching linear plot, as well as numerous side-quests, ranging from investigation to sabotage and hunting, since diversity of the gameplay will be another central point.”

Is this still the case? If so, I might actually care about this. If not, then it’s just another MehMehOh, as far as I’m concerned.

(End Copy/Paste)

I was one of the folks who got suckered into playing AO with the promise of a four year story line.

While I appreciate you trying to put words in my mouth (it saves me a bunch of effort!), unfortunately you picked the wrong ones.

This game’s not going to do well is all I’m saying. And there’s a damn good chance it won’t even work for the first few months, considering it’s from Funcom.

So clearly every developer should cease and desist any attempts to try a new and interesting formula in order to attract a different audience than the norm. Why? Because they wont sell as well as WOW. So from now on, every single MMO must be a direct clone of WOW with no deviations on the formula lest they dare anger the deities of the comments sections.

Bah! And nice use of out-of-context quotes with Levine there. I note you don’t insert the part thereafter where he went on the say that the issue isn’t the stories themselves, but the way they are told that’s the problem in his oh-so0humble opinion.

Me? I applaud Tornquist for trying something new. It will likely never sell even half as well as WOW, but people need to pause and consider for just a second that you don’t *need* that many people. EVE is one of the most successful MMO around and it’s less than a tenth, a twentieth even of WOW’s playerbase.

The entire genre has gone backwards since UO/AC1 (except for the odd niche game here and there like eve, swg). Good to here secret world is trying to bring the genre back in line… I just hope that funcom don’t stuff up another potentially awesome game, and that they also realise that PVP need’s RISK, not just reward.