Firstly I should say that I am still enjoying AoC, and I belive my guildmates are also. As I get further into the game though, I am coming across more and more cases of things being done half-arsed. Funcom has time to fix these, and there is a patch taking place right now which may help (No patch notes released yet). Here’s a few of my major quibbles.
The Trader made it in finally, but unfortunately the Auction House does not show stack numbers, so you do not know whether the leather that is for sale at 5 silver is a single unit, or a stack of 20. You have to buy the whole lot, either way, and the price is for the whole stack, regardless of size. Needless to say, no-one feels much like buying crafting resources under these circumstances, and I am confused as to how anyone never noticed this. Also, the mail system has been routinely swallowing any mail, items, or cash that anyone tries to send via it, so I would suggest not using it right now!
Crafters are also hurting from a bug that was introduced last week. Cotton and leather from before that patch no longer work in any of your recipes. Leather found now does work, but cotton harvesting is completely broken. There are also issues with some sorts of resource nodes not refillling. Gem cutters cannot advance their crafting quests, though it is just as well, as if you mouse-over an item that has a gem installed it in, you will immediately crash to desktop.
The bug which caused structure building to fail, costing you your exceptionally pricey ingredients, has been squashed, but at this time no city building gives any benefit, so there is little point in making them other than for bragging rights. Fortunately bragging rights appears to be enough for many guilds, but my own is going to wait until they are working correctly. There are still reports coming in from the PvP servers of folks managing to use exploits to destroy eachother’s PvE guild cities.
Speaking of exploits, with great fanfare there was a mass suspension of many accounts earlier this week. Mostly Guildmasters and Architects who, as mentioned, have to deal with vast amounts of money in order to build their towns. Since then, most seem to have had their accounts reinstated with rather less fanfare, so I’m a little unclear as to how many people caught up in this dragnet actually turned out to be exploiters, rather than just having been flagged for having a bunch of cash donations from their hundred guildmates.
I have been finding more and more unfinished areas. Take the Treasury of the Ancients. Nothing in this small dungeon drops anything at all, even money, and the two ladders at the end of the corridor, should you climb them, drop you outside of the world geometry on a long fall to your death. The nearby Pyramid of the Ancients, while at least dropping some basic loot, is also completely bugged, with the main quest uncompletable, and the whole area giving a feeling of menace, not because of the enemies, but because you never know if what you’re doing is going to break something. Now, as you know I level slowly, so the usual argument that the high end content doesn’t have to be in at launch does not stand. I am talking about level 30-40 content, which is reachable even by the most casual players by this point. Even in the Outflow Tunnels underneath Old Tarantia, the numerous human opponents down there once again drop nothing, ever (With the exception of one Boss).
There’s also some profound game engine issues, but I’ll go into them in depth in another post.
Basically, polish is rather hit and miss once you leave Tortage, and I would strongly recommend that new players be in no rush to leave that island, to give Funcom some time to sort out the problems with the mainland.
In short, those who claim this is the best launch ever are wrong. It is a pretty much average MMO launch with the sort of bugs that make anyone who has ever been involved in software production, such as myself, boggle with disbelief. Seriously, MMO companies, hire some real quality control people, and stop taking advantage of our patience. We older MMO players are starting to get grumpy about it.
An update on my guild’s progress. We have booked our City Spot in instance 7 of the Lacheish Plains, but we’re still a little way away from being able to afford to build our first building, the Keep. Architect is a fiendishly expensive profession, and it is going to be difficult for small guilds to build very often. Difficult, but not impossible! In any case, for now we’re just going to build the keep until the other buildings start giving the bonuses they’re supposed to.