I played for about 5 minutes. meh.
 

Awesome on the lack of NDA, hopefully the game is good and some good blog writings come out of it.
 

Nice to see that you can evaluate a game in 5 minutes.

I would recommend actually playing a game before passing judgment.
 

aocha, 5 minutes of AoC gives you the same gameplay you will have after 100 hours. Its repetitive, stupid clicking, full of quirky movement and bugs. Lets not go there.

The first five minutes of a game are everything. If it sucks players will not continue. Thats fine for single player games, but sort of defeats the point in a monthly sub MMO.
 

Its repetitive, stupid clicking, full of quirky movement and bugs.

Sounds like pretty much any other MMOG in beta.
 

I'm going to need a new keyboard with all this button smashing. something about the graphics reminds me of LotRO.
 

Sounds like pretty much any other MMOG in beta.

This is more of a stress test and free preview than a beta. The game hits stores in less than three weeks. If the control and movement are awkward, if for the love of God there are that many bugs after this long from the people who practically invented learning that lesson the hard way, things probably aren't going to change after 100 hours.

(I'm not hating on the game. It's really depressing to hear of this and I intend to buy the game anyway.)
 

"aocha, 5 minutes of AoC gives you the same gameplay you will have after 100 hours. Its repetitive, stupid clicking, full of quirky movement and bugs. Lets not go there."

I am convinced that you and I are playing extremely different games, Heartless.
 

The first five minutes of a game are everything. If it sucks players will not continue. Thats fine for single player games, but sort of defeats the point in a monthly sub MMO.

Very true. There were several things I noticed in my first half hour of play about EQ2 that I disliked. I had some RL friends playing so I stuck it out for a couple of weeks and hoped I would get used to them. I never did and I quit playing after maybe 80 hours played.

Why do I feel dirty whenever I agree with Heartless?
 

My first 5 minutes in the AOC beta reminded me of my first 5 minutes in Vanguard.

I was able to play more than ten minutes a few times before the game froze or crashed.

So far the poor game quality (quest text, level 50 items with level 1 stats found on level 1 mobs, jerky npc animations), client performance, memory leaks and frequent BSOD crashes remind me of Vanguard.
 

It's a stress test beta, c'mon seriously did none of you read the notices about the debugger running? It's going to crash plenty and run with a horrible framerate from the very nature of the beta.

Don't any of you recall how horrible WoW, EQ or UO were during beta? By all accounts beta WoW was night-and-day different from release. Even then, Penny Arcade removed their game-of-the-year award from WoW because three months after release the servers still weren't stable.

I'm sure the game isn't for everyone, but if 5 minutes or even three weeks of beta is your idea of whether a game is playable or not, you wouldn't play much of anything. This stuff is for highlights, general impressions and to *gasp* actually help them stress test, not knee-jerk reactions from people eager to get their Vanguard-revenge on.
 

i played it for about 20 minutes from the time the stresstest was started. with one of those Set people, i was able to one shot everything, even the bosses.

after that, it's just crash, crash, 10 minute loads times, crash, lag, crash, lag, lag...

meh, back to WoW !