For me, i was getting frustrated with the bugs, and wanted to take a break from MMOs in general. I could see going back in a few months, but they need to iron out some kinks first.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/40536

There are my thoughts and to why i quit.

After seeing tier 2 PVE and 48v48 siege battles FunCom has revealed this game was not ready for launch and honestly the issues i saw can not be fixed in a short amount of time.

FunCom also proved patch after patch to be F'n idiots and not know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to priorities and fixes.

the fact that they never once fixed anything that didnt break something else was so pathetic it was sad.

Also AoC Buddy a hacking program that is rampant around the servers that is stupid what it allows you to do. Speed hacks, no fall damage hacks cast spells why running. Rez shield on demand + teleporting.

So you're saying you have commitment issues?

That's why I used "abandoned", but in retrospect "stopped playing" would've been less value-loaded. In the era of 10 hour games, if you're done with a title after 40 hours it's still beating the pack.

I notice that a lot of people have already covered this topic in Wired's thread. I'm not surprised that put you off! MMOs are bound to be buggy close to launch, but if one of the main draws of the game doesn't work then it's a bit more of an issue.

I actually love the game a lot, but the above issues were too much for even me. I can run Crysis on (mostly) high/very high settings at over 30fps yet in town I can't get AoC to even run consistantly. If I can get over 120 fps in closed instances why can't I at least get 30fps in towns? It's awful.

I was finding myself spending more time attempting to make my PC an AoC friendly environment than I played some days. I was removed from my guild due to inactivity, they were cool about it and I understand why they did it, but as soon as that happen I realized that I need to wait and come back to AoC later. I moved over to WoW because that's what the wife plays, and I started up a new character. I constantly feel like AoC did so many more things right by me than WoW does, but at least WoW runs like a champ on my PC (mostly). I mean, the speed (lvl progression and movement), atmosphere, look, classes, and especially combat are all better than WoW in my eyes but the engine is a pile of dog sh*t.

I'm going to probably get back into it during the holidays and see if its fixed. I can say with a straight face that I got every penny out of that game that I paid for it, I just wish I didn't have to work so hard at making the game work properly. The game really wasn't out of beta yet, it needed at least 6 more months of cooking.

Sanctum was a big highlight, Devil stick. I think that was the instance everybody in Dethwisper ran most.
My reasons for leaving were:
--a pretty puerile community in general (including parts of thr guild we merged with)
--lack of content 64 onwards
--More and more bugs every patch
-- The lack of goodjers past 50 due partially to alt-itis and people who charged straight to 80
--Balancing issues that went totally nuts every patch, which had a pretty huge impact on the PVP server
--Moving to Boston
--TeamFortress 2 also became a factor

One of the primary problems I found with AoC was the lack of real strategy in group encounters. Admittedly I only made it to 63 so all I really saw was Sanctum and Cistern, but it all seemed very shallow and rough to me. Sure, at first the novelty of franticly pressing buttons for each attack and triggering off mad combos made the combat seem innovative at first, but over time, say the length of a dungeon, it just seemed like nothing really mattered. Everyone just ganged up and pounded on mobs, and for the most part it worked.

I still maintain that Deadmines in WoW was more complicated and taught class roles better than anything I witnessed in AoC. It required creative pulling, crowd control, and generally gave each class a chance to shine and feel like an individual that brought something unique to the group. Considering this is usually the first instance in the game for most Alliance members, it doesn’t reflect well on the AoC content I played through.

To top it all off, the gear was worthless and brought miniscule upgrades that were only appreciable by heavy analysis of your combat log, and sometimes not even then. Some people like that, but for me it just pretty much ruined the drive to actually acquire anything. So the dungeon encounters were shallow, and the gear you received from those trials was weak leaving you with not much else to do except VILLAS!!!

I’m not bitter though I actually enjoyed the game in the beginning until all the flaws started to become too apparent to ignore. I doubt I’ll return to the game after seeing the way Funcom attempts to balance and patch their games. It’s just not worth it.

The economy on Deathwhisper took a huge hit recently, because you can dupe gems.
I made my 200+ gold durring the life of this game from gem crafting.
the same +physical damage gems that i was selling for 20+ gold were selling for 25silver when I quit.

One of the many reasons why I quit.

There were a lot of things I loved about AoC. I still think it has the best MMO combat system out there, and I thought a lot of the classes were really well designed (imbalanced perhaps, but the classes themselves were interesting). I also thought the Destiny quests were a great way to make you feel like you were an important part of the story rather than some random grunt. That said, the following issues finally made me decide to give up on the game:

-Terrible QA. I'm OK with a patch introducing the occasional bug, but you know something's wrong when every single patch seems to break more things than it fixed.

-No sense of exploration. With a couple exceptions, all the zones are very linear: follow the road from point A to point B, almost everywhere else is impassable terrain. This combined with the instanced zones completely eliminated any sense that you were in an open world free to explore.

-Not enough variety. I know this is low fantasy, so you can't expect too many magical monsters running about, but when you hit level 60 and you're still fighting the same Picts and Vanir you were fighting at level 1, things start to feel a little stale. As a caster, you'll also be wearing the same clothing from 1 to 60 - sometimes it changes color, but that's it.

-Uninspired dungeon design. I ran most of the dungeons from 1 to 60, and they all felt like a chain of big empty rooms with a couple mobs wandering around. No real sense of atmosphere or story, and very few interesting boss encounters. Instance quests all seemed to be of the form "Kill X", "Kill X of Y", or "Collect X of Y". Also the public instances (e.g. Cistern) were terrible. Nothing breaks immersion like having to wait in line to kill a boss.

You never played Anarchy Online did you? If you had, you'd have known this was coming. When they used to patch AO, we would EXPECT at least 2 days of several OTHER things being broken because of what the patch tried to fix, in addition to whatever they were trying to do either being wrong or not working. I am not surprised to hear that hasn't changed.

Is it a staffing or monetary issue? Is the problem we're expecting Blizzard levels of polish from a QA team 1/10th the size?

There's a difference between expecting 'polish' and expecting 'competence' though. Bugs like the tradepost vendor aren't polish items.

I know, it's just hard to understand from a logical perspective on why major bugs slipped. There is obviously a reason for the incompetence.

I'm pretty sure all companies exist to make money, that's what their shareholders want. When people leave in droves, situations are evaluated. It almost seems like Conan was either a "pump and dump" to generate cash based on the pre-launch frenzy, or it was determined early on by the execs that it was a dead end, and would not receive the funding to make it polished, yet just enough to keep it afloat and appease the smaller user base that is left so they could focus on new projects.

Who knows?

I'm not blaming the testers, I'm just saying Funcom's QA process is flawed. We don't know why these new bugs keep being released: it could be poor testing, incompetent developers, bad check-in practices, or managers who decide to release the patch without fixing known bugs. Maybe the bugs are caused by sunspots, voodoo, and Russian spy satellites. Whatever the cause, if their patches keep breaking things then Funcom is not assuring quality.

I am really high right now fyi so take that with a grain of nitrous oxide.

I love dental hygine