in early previews the devs said the “game is based around players that have less than 10 hours a week to play.” and it was expected that the “general path for advancement is gonna take people around ten days of play.” so 240 hours of gameplay, at 10 hours per week, gives six months of pre- endgame content for a casual player.

if they stuck to marketing towards this niche market segment, the devs might have had time to finish (or add) an end game. it seems that the marketing efforts worked too well. the game attracted huge numbers of players at launch, and not of the ~10 hr/wk variety. the 10 hour/day crowd capped quickly, felt cheated, became vitriolic and left in droves.

it seems like a case of too much “success” killing a game. or maybe it’s a case of players buying a casual game without doing a bit of research first.

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

No one felt like they were taken advantage of other than for buying the game. It was boring at the start and it never changed and never promised to change as you leveled.

There are lost of ways to drive away players. But if you want to make players really mad you have to do 1 of 2 things.

1 Have an end game that is separate but less fun than the leveling experience.

2 Promise a specific end game experience and then not deliver.

Somehow AoC managed to do both. They had an early leveling experience loaded with content – then a lame leveling experience to follow – then a broken end game. So players got to taste the good life and they were punished with a grind – both before they became angrey in the end.

Agreed on the “tortage experience”. Funcom really threw everything at that part, and it worked rather well. Then you ended up finishing that part in a week or two, only to realize that the rest of the game felt unpolished. The first thing to go was the voice acting; most of the male voices sounded like Norwegians doing their best Scottish burr, but it gave a tremendous feeling of immersion.

After that it was all downhill. More quests, and in the end I was getting the impression I was merely playing a first-person RPG with a monthly subscription fee and an out-of-whack Internet bill. Why should I bother with those, then, when I could just as quickly waste my time trying to master the incomprehensible user interface of the Gothic series?

As for the “MMO” part of the equation, it always seemed to be missing somehow. I remember joining a clan which boasted 400 members at the time (close to the end of the first month), but I rarely saw any of them “in person” although I could see them chatting. When I went to gather resources — and I never knew why exactly, since I never saw my numerous guildmates — I always went solo. I once visited our “guild village”, which was completely empty. This was on a PvE server, where apparently the plural part begins at level 80 (made it to 40 before getting utterly bored); and on the PvP servers, high-level gankers camping resurrection spots was apparently the norm. Either way, not a game I’d rather play.

Name one EX EQ or EQ2 player that claims they enjoyed those games?

The polling of current EQ and EQ2 subscribers will yield the exact opposite result.

People play these games with devout passion and love right up until they hate the game.

Hahahahahaha no doubt. That was the best part.

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

-Many people enjoyed the end game of DAoC for years (then ToA came and changed it)) even if they hated the grind to get to it.
-DDO had an end game that played exactly like leveling up and never suggested otherwise.
-EVE has no grind to get to an end.
-PlanetSide starts at the end.
-Even EQ/EQ2 play rather much while leveling as it does in the end.

Between all those games lost of people have enjoyed them

I Think WOW is the most conspicuous example of a game with an end that is startly different from the leveling and left many people disappointed. But even so many people enjoyed the leveling in WOW the first time through and plenty enjoy the end(not me).

AoC takes this to another level. Many people feel taken advantage of because they didnt enjoy the leveling the end game is nothing like like the devs promised.