one-year-later
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One full year of being a Champion
If you read about Champions Online in its first days, you would not have thought of it as a triple-A title. The game was full of bugs, the community management was not the best, and it just seemed like the devs were intent on shoveling out more broken stuff that barely worked. I think that, in particular, the first three or four months were the worst. If you were to go back in time and ask me about whether or not I thought CO would make it to its first anniversary, my response would have been: "Maybe, but it'll be bleeding subs if it even makes it that far." Since then, a lot of things have changed. I talked about the first six months of CO, but it's been a full year since that painful launch day patch. I'm not sure I'm even playing the same game anymore.
The Daily Grind: What do you expect from an MMO one year later?
Frank over at Overly Positive wrote a blog post about Warhammer Online's time capsule project. Basically, a year ago, a bunch of forumites over at Warhammer Alliance wrote down their collective hopes and dreams about the game and stored them in a time capsule post to be opened up a year later. He comments: "It's interesting to see a lot of people feeling very idealistic about WAR's prospects – many of the opinions in the thread are ones that frankly would belong in this blog. Three million subscribers? WoW toppled from its perch? Sixty servers? It warms my already sunny heart to the core."This got us wondering: What do you expect from an MMO one year later? Are you full of optimism and ideals? Are you cynical? Do you sit on the fence by remaining cautiously optimistic? MMOs have come a long way since the late 1990s with releases getting smoother and smoother. On the flip side, competition is increasing exponentially. Have MMOs become much too hard to predict nowadays or have we been around the block enough times to spot the diamonds in the rough?
Age of Conan: One Year Later video
It's almost the first anniversary of Age of Conan's release, and Funcom's Glen "Famine" Swan was reflecting on the past year when he found the "One Year Later" video. Although it's a fairly well-made piece, it doesn't come from Funcom; a community member called "CptHeatSink" is given the credit on Famine's MMORPG blog. The video encompasses a lot of the changes that have gone on in-game and quite a few guilds pitched in to help with the footage. There's a slow build for the first couple of minutes, but after that it's all about the combat. Hit the jump to check out the video. Make sure to click the HD button in the bottom right corner after you've hit play for a higher quality version. This won't be the last you'll hear of AoC's birthday -- expect more soon as the actual date rolls around.
