Pc format review of NF LOL

[protvanglad]

is it a scandinavian magazine?

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthread.php?t=47167

 

[Vasconcelos]

Bet he has not played it more than me, and I bet his review is complete bollocks.

And how do you know that??

Wot if the guy played the game from Classic DAOC (Autumm 2001) n didnt like wot it has turned in?? The article represents the feelings of a good amount of DAOC players (or ex-players). Its just an opinion, like the movie critics, you can take it as valid or ignore it.

 

[gervaise]

There is no debate these days that lots of people left after ToA.
Others stayed however, some defended or semi-defended Mythic and out of the darkness and gloom comes the great hope: NF. A release designed to right the balance between PvP and PvE. There was hope, a few worrying posts in the ultra-brief period between beta and release but Defenders of Mythic (no guild house yet) fought the good fight. DAoC will live on.

There is no debate these days that - in the US - lots of people left. Expectations were high and as a result it was probably difficult to fulfill them. NF was, afterall, the saviour of PvP for many - or so they hoped.

And I say no debate because the server numbers went up briefly after release and then fell and then WoW took over.

So it mat come as a surprise that some reviewers do not like NF but a lot of others didn't like it either. Was 50% a fair score - you need to know how the magazine scores but from memory I think 50% in PC Zone was OK but not brilliant

 

[Illtar]

the reviewers heavy realm bias kinda makes the review pointless.

 

[Chrystina]

There is no debate these days that lots of people left after ToA.
Others stayed however, some defended or semi-defended Mythic and out of the darkness and gloom comes the great hope: NF. A release designed to right the balance between PvP and PvE. There was hope, a few worrying posts in the ultra-brief period between beta and release but Defenders of Mythic (no guild house yet) fought the good fight. DAoC will live on.

how about you open your eyes and realize that MORE people left after NF went live then people left after ToA?

 

[Shike]

And how do you know that??

Wot if the guy played the game from Classic DAOC (Autumm 2001) n didnt like wot it has turned in?? The article represents the feelings of a good amount of DAOC players (or ex-players). Its just an opinion, like the movie critics, you can take it as valid or ignore it.

dont you prefer if reviews on things are unbiased and written with some professionalism? If its in a magazine you buy specifically to get a good opinion about something that you want to rely on at least a little?

Example:

Karl goes and buy a monitor, he has some bad luck with the monitor and it breaks during 1st week. Next day, Karl who just happen to work at a large reknown PCmagazine that do alot of reviews of things types down a review in anger since his monitor broke down and call the monitor complete shit. The fact that the monitor actually is a good monitor, that it has great colourreproduction, excellent sharpness doesnt matter, it broke down. The fact that Karls electricitysupplier has some problem with surges and killed the monitor doesnt matter does it? The fact that Karl got a brand new monitor some day after that function for 10 years doesnt matter? All we see is Karls biased angry article about the monitor. Think you get what I mean.

Reviews must be unbiased and professionally made imo, otherwise they are shit worth, and it also reflects bad on the company that publish the review if its a bad one, since they loose credibility for every bad biased review they make.

The reviewer seem to be very young, and very whiny, and the fact that he even drags in his own biased opinion on realmbalance shows he has nothing to do as a reviewer for a magazine, it doesnt matter if his bias is towards mid, hib or alb, thats irrelevant. If it was some shitty internetsite I wouldnt bother, but this is a papermagazine that people buy. Thats why I think the review is shite and nothing but shite, not because I happen to play alb atm.

 

[Gamah]

And how do you know that??

Wot if the guy played the game from Classic DAOC (Autumm 2001) n didnt like wot it has turned in?? The article represents the feelings of a good amount of DAOC players (or ex-players). Its just an opinion, like the movie critics, you can take it as valid or ignore it.

Maybe if it was a nice objective well written article..but it's not its just a 100 words of whine.

 

[gervaise]

how about you open your eyes and realize that MORE people left after NF went live then people left after ToA?

What a strangely hostile post - no matter.

I didn't actually say how many had left after ToA and how many had left after NF - deliberately.

We actually don't know because what we are really talking about is subscriptions. Sir_Bruce's numbers haven't yet been updated post-NF either.

What we do have however are numbers for how many people have been logging on and the general assumption is that there is some link between players numbers and subscriptions (with subscriptions lagging behind player numbers). Sir_Bruce did a nice write up on this topic as it applied to DAoC some weeks ago.

As far as people logging on: Europe and US numbers at the start of 2004 were around 32k. There is a historical thread on Freddy from c. last February on whether European numbers had pased US numbers. Now the start of 2004 in the US was months after ToA had launched. There were tens of thousands of posts on VN - most trying to sort out the horrendous number of bugs - but within them were people who announced that they were quitting. Lots of counter posts that ToA was wonderful and that the numbers were now 36k (some said even more). Others said 32k, 29k etc etc. So many numbers. Hence the tracking graphs we have currently are very helpful (US down atm of course).

Whatever they were they dropped in the US and eventually settles at about 28k prior to NF being launched. So they certainly dropped by 4k and maybe by as much as 8k. NOTE: we are talking max population numbers only here. Not subscriptions and not average numbers. Its a valid metric but its only one window on the world.

In the US after NF there was a slight increase after it went live which lasted all of about 5 days followed by a drop - fairly soon after - of about 2k (emotive territory again here). The big drop came when WoW was launched and the numbers fell sharply to the 20k figure they are currently (+/- a few). Again these are max numbers, the average is probably still falling a little and there is still some lag in the system.

In Europe it is harder to judge. The decline was pretty gradual throughout 2004. ToA when it eventually launched had had the benefits of thousands of hours of 'live' testing and the aforementioned tens of thousands of posts. People remember the gripes but one look on the ToA forums will show just how much help Mythic had. Consequently the impact of ToA on the European community was less dramatic - but it didn't stop the decline. The same applies to NF. There was a short blip when it went launched and since the the population numbers have settled into the same pattern of a slow decline. A slow decline until one realises that peak population is 10-12k down from the start of 2004. There has been a third factor in Europe of course - server performance.

If European numbers are impacted in the same way that they impacted US numbers then a drop of 40-50% is on the cards and a peak population of 10-12k. All European numbers have followed the same trend since launch so they will all move together as well. It is possible that it could get very bleak indeed in europe when compared to the US.

Like I said above I didn't want to talk numbers - they can be emotive and we only have trend data to go on really. The trends are clear: a lot left after ToA; a lot have left after 'NF'. Mythics own posts make this clear. How many - especially when you include free accounts and churn ... not a path to go down.

 

[Helme]

its just a 100 words of whine.

How would you explain how it is bad, if you didn't whine?

 

[Vasconcelos]

how about you open your eyes and realize that MORE people left after NF went live then people left after ToA?

How about you explain wots the relation btwn the above n my post?

Comprehensive reading my friend...

 

[Vasconcelos]

Maybe if it was a nice objective well written article..but it's not its just a 100 words of whine.

I dont see whine. I see a guy writing about stuff of the game he dislikes, and tbh, its the same old has been repeated in forums over n over: lotsa ppl dont like NF n how it has changed DAOC. Hes just one part of that grp.

 

[Zedenz]

He failed to mention 2fg of stealthers waiting at every bridge.

The roaming comment was a bit silly, as a previous poster said thats what the map is for.

 

[Hawkwind]

Shite review tbh

Givf "Hoe of the Badger".

Written by a hib judging from screen shot and comments. Not a whine at all just slightly one sided comments from the reviewer. Have to agree with his whine on lag though, it was bloody annoying.

 

[LawBringer]

They obviosly do not play, tis' not NF that messed up the game but ToA - some of the arti's have put certain classes out of the game. Take a Bard - why level a bard? Just get your old 50 out with Croc ring and you got aoe songs for all - just park him/her up. FoP's etc so you don't need MR an more - too many arti's and overpowered ML's - ditch that lot and NF is the least of our worries.

 

[Xxcalibur]

the review is pretty ok , and the truth hurts

 

[Edaemos]

Read the article and realized it was wrote by someone who reads the vgn boards alot while running fraps/winamp/windows defragger/daoc on a amd duron 350 with 256mb of ram. Only points worth discussing are the range points but then that can be negated by the amount of insta CC the other realms have *shrugs*

Found it a poor review overall, its like when one of the championship manager games (cant remember if it was 2 or 3 or a yearly update) was released and every mag gave it 80%+ and quite a few 90%+ then one guy who hated football manager games without nice graphics (go figure) gave it 49% whining that there was no graphics during matches etc.

 

[Dorin]

maybe biased review but represents alot of player's oppinion about the current state of daoc.

 

[Darzil]

Harder to find other people in the frontiers than it used to be ? I guess it is if you're trying to avoid areas where there are lots of people. Either that or he just tried to port to Emain and couldn't find the realmwar map.

Can tell he wasn't on Prydwen with the comments on Albion dominating everyone.

Just looked a badly written review by the sort of reviewer that thinks that being sarcastic in a 'clever' manner is more important than saying useful things. I suggest he listens to Mark Kermode's film reviews, and works out how to do both.

Darzil

 

[Maleg]

how about you open your eyes and realize that MORE people left after NF went live then people left after ToA?

More people probably did leave after NF, my guess would be ToA killed the game for a lot of people but they were holding out for some kinda of massive salvation from NF (which it never could be). ToA pissed people off, NF couldn't rebuild peoples expectations so they moved on.