Friday with Means - October 23rd, 2009 - Perpective and Party

[sultryvoltron]

And if a Placard went into game saying that 'Notrals r Dum' would that also be true then?

Yep.

Not everything written on an placard is true...

Nope.

[SoldiTwo]

"As of now the 3 month subscription offers a 20% discount, 6 month subscription yields a 30% discount and 12 month offers a 45% discount vs the regular one month plan. This is more than twice the discount than before.

In addition, it is now possible to purchase additional gametime and immediately get the veteran points. Veteran points is a system where players are rewarded for each month they have subscribed, and can be used towards a variety of items. Veteran points will launch with the coming update which is due very soon, and will work backwards in time towards all gametime you have purchased."

For AoC!

@Means/Funcom staff:
Any plans like that for AO - or maybe even better plans?

[Windguaerd]

"As of now the 3 month subscription offers a 20% discount, 6 month subscription yields a 30% discount and 12 month offers a 45% discount vs the regular one month plan. This is more than twice the discount than before.

In addition, it is now possible to purchase additional gametime and immediately get the veteran points. Veteran points is a system where players are rewarded for each month they have subscribed, and can be used towards a variety of items. Veteran points will launch with the coming update which is due very soon, and will work backwards in time towards all gametime you have purchased."

For AoC!

@Means/Funcom staff:
Any plans like that for AO - or maybe even better plans?

Are you kidding? where do you think they got that idea from? AO!...

Monthly AO is $14.95, 3 months is $35.95 ($11.98 a month), 6 months is $59.70 ($9.95 a month), and on a yearly sub is $95.40 which makes the monthly fee down to 7.95!!!

Let me calculate that for you. The price goes down to 53.17725752508362% which means you get a discount of almost 47%, which is BETTER than AoC.

[SoldiTwo]

Are you kidding? where do you think they got that idea from? AO!...

Monthly AO is $14.95, 3 months is $35.95 ($11.98 a month), 6 months is $59.70 ($9.95 a month), and on a yearly sub is $95.40 which makes the monthly fee down to 7.95!!!

Let me calculate that for you. The price goes down to 53.17725752508362% which means you get a discount of almost 47%, which is BETTER than AoC.

LOL, actually I assumed FUNCOM used the same subscription plan for AoC and AO, my fault.

Sorry and thanks for quick clarification.

PS:
The large number after the -> . <- tells me something calculated it for you!

[Windguaerd]

LOL, actually I assumed FUNCOM used the same subscription plan for AoC and AO, my fault.

Sorry and thanks for quick clarification.

PS:
The large number after the -> . <- tells me something calculated it for you!

Well I said that I calculated, because a calculator without a user.... doesn't do the math on it's own.

[andriod]

The club was really nice so we get our new engine now?

[Windguaerd]

The club was really nice but so we get our new engine now?

Get it? YES

Now? NO

Simple enough to answer.

[Tazalanche]

The club was really nice but so we get our new engine now?

Soon™

[vallikat]

Of course I have nothing better to do in friday night than sit in a virtual nightclub and watch people moving loads of pixels with copy-paste dance scripts..

Yeah I know what you mean!! That's why I'm so glad I didn't do that. Doing that would have been pretty boring I think. So instead I decided to participate and that was so much more fun! I danced (I make my own scripts, thank you very much), I chatted, I did giveaways, I made people giggle (I daresay I turned some on), I listened to some awesome tunes spun by the fabulous DJ's of Gridstream Productions, and I took some time to look around and really appreciate the awesome job that they did on the new club. It really was a fabulous time!!

[Alternity]

I was there, I danced, I had mah red light sticks, I gave away 3 VIP passes, I went to a real life party after and broke a fall wih mah face, it was awsome man!

[Iriche]

First!

Edit: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

You so utterly failed Kintaii!

[Artyomis]

Party was pretty cool, except the fact that good attendance caused pretty big lag and people with even strong computers had barely over 10 fps around there.

Anyway gj on club, wtb rebalancing now

[Boltgun]

Are you kidding? where do you think they got that idea from? AO!...

Monthly AO is $14.95, 3 months is $35.95 ($11.98 a month), 6 months is $59.70 ($9.95 a month), and on a yearly sub is $95.40 which makes the monthly fee down to 7.95!!!

Let me calculate that for you. The price goes down to 53.17725752508362% which means you get a discount of almost 47%, which is BETTER than AoC.

Also the purchase of vet points is a bad idea, except if vet and paid points are the same in aoc.

[meatybtz]

Well just as predicted the day after the party the Grind is emptysauce... like the game itself.

You guys need a bigger dev team, or the engine will be released when we have 100 players left.

Step 1. Merge the Servers
Step 2. Advertise new game engine
Step 3. If, and I stress IF AO gets enough people to warrant a second server again simply reactivate the turned off one and offer paid-points xfers.

Nothing like empty servers to ensure that new players do not stay around long. Who wants to play a MSOG vs an MMOG? Its just human nature that people are more likely to stay if they feel there is a healthy pop even if its only on one server. Its about perception of the population rather than actual population that determins the psychological impact of when a new player comes and sees an empty world where even at busy times OOC barely moves and there usually only 3-4 people in sight. Ghost Towns tend to drive people away.

[Esproc]

Well just as predicted the day after the party the Grind is emptysauce... like the game itself.

You guys need a bigger dev team, or the engine will be released when we have 100 players left.

Step 1. Merge the Servers
Step 2. Advertise new game engine
Step 3. If, and I stress IF AO gets enough people to warrant a second server again simply reactivate the turned off one and offer paid-points xfers.

Nothing like empty servers to ensure that new players do not stay around long. Who wants to play a MSOG vs an MMOG? Its just human nature that people are more likely to stay if they feel there is a healthy pop even if its only on one server. Its about perception of the population rather than actual population that determins the psychological impact of when a new player comes and sees an empty world where even at busy times OOC barely moves and there usually only 3-4 people in sight. Ghost Towns tend to drive people away.

Yeah, but the lag from the times our population is actually doing ok aren't so great for keeping new players either...
That's something to be worked on as well.

[meatybtz]

Yeah, but the lag from the times our population is actually doing ok aren't so great for keeping new players either...
That's something to be worked on as well.

The lag you experience is Engine based. The new engine will end it for everyone with a good computer. OTOH I was at both Grind Parties and had very GOOD FPS even when it was PACKED and zoning in took a goodly long time. Its time to ditch the dino computers and WinXP people.

[Esproc]

Truly, geif credz plox?
My dino needs to be put down and a hot new model brought in xD
But I guess my PC is like me, if it was a car it'd be totaled and if a horse it'd be shot.
Ah well there always tetris...

[meatybtz]

Truly, geif credz plox?
My dino needs to be put down and a hot new model brought in xD
But I guess my PC is like me, if it was a car it'd be totaled and if a horse it'd be shot.
Ah well there always tetris...

ATI perhaps?
or more likely..
XP?
Database Fragmentation?
HD Fragmentation?

All of the above induce horrible lag in AO because it accesses the disk for every instance of an object in visual and in some cases appears to not cache the object properly so a view change requires a reload of the resource if a previous object that was on the screen then off then back on wasnt cached and thus needs a full instance reload. GG Ancient AO engine. AO thrashes at the disk without mercy. Players can do alot to mitigate it. Get a modern OS that caches commonly used data into RAM (Vista, Linux, Windows 7). Keeping your AO database defragmented (depending on your luck may require a tool I posted in the Help Section). Just keeping your harddrive defragged. Not using some DRM heavy Music Player while Playing AO (CPU load issue and Process order issue... i.e. Itunes and WMP) with an equally DRM heavy OS (Vista/Win7).

Like I said, while I was at both Grind Parties I had no "freeze lag" or "1FPS" issues. My wife did. I didnt. Shes running XP. I am running Vista. My computer is a run of the mill HP Media Center PC with an NVIDIA GFX card. Nothing special or powerful. Just dual Core.. only 3GB of ram.. only 32Bit OS. Not only was I running AO while at the Grind Parties.. I was also running EVE in the background and alt-tabbing. It really wasnt a problem.

[Esproc]

Windows XP, on a Dell that went on bargain sale the week after I bought it.
In 2003.

So yeah I need a new one. but considering I can run Oblivion and etc with no trouble one would think standing in Bor wouldn't be an issue xD

[meatybtz]

The issue is AOs Game engine. Oblivion or not Oblivion has no real bearing on the problems AO has.

AO runs completly off your CPU and as I said doesnt seem to CACHE the data correctly forcing it to reload from the harddisk for every instance of an object... ever time you see the object after unseeing it (camera) rather than having object in a zone cache or all objects in a radius rather than destructing and constructing instances of an object over and over again.. or at the least have a single instance of lets say the Egina Shirt and all Egina Instances reference that memory loaction preventing the odd need of AO to load and load and load again each one unique, its also why for an old game AO is a RAM EATER. Which is what causes most of the "lag" an framerate loss people have.

AO is primitive by any modern standard.

Most of us hope that even older computers will run much better with the new engine. There is no real good reason for such a simple game to load the same texture into memory MULTIPLE TIMES! If you have 100 people in Epeen Shirts in your ram you have 100 copies of the Epeen Shirt! If you turn away and look back .. it destructs the 100 copies and REMAKES! THRASH TRASH goes your harddisk. At least this is how it used to be a while back when I bothered to see what this game does. Its not very efficient.