Goodbye Storyline! I wish you would have lived

The end of the storyline thread means that now there is no doubt that there will be no storyline. For all those people like myself that were hanging on for the smallest chance there would be one as promised, it is truly over. Another broken promise by Funcom added to the list. This one for me is particulary hard to take. The story was what was supposed to set AO apart from all other MMORPG's. They failed to support it and now it is no more.

AO is now truly a level to combat and combat to loot game.

I'm exactly the same as you Travesty. I have spent the past 2+ months constantly asking FC for an answer on the state of the "storyline" post-Ragnar.

I will admit, I was a lot more optimistic after JHp posted his - and hence FC's - take on whether or not it still exists; unfortunately, that was either blatantly misleading or yet another portion of the "world" of AO that is burried under a large stack of PvP to-dos and nerf-calls.

What I find particularly interesting (for lack of a better term) is that, since JHp stepped in to the forums to post his reponse, there have been NO official storyline updates whatsoever. Even if the story revives at this point, I doubt many people will care (and if they do, it will take a great deal of time and EVENTS - whatever those are in AO).

- we received almost no reasoning from officials to the introduction of NW
- we received no response from ANY "storyline" characters about NW
- we received no response from anyone to the Sentinels' invasion of Tir
- the timeline hasn't been updated
- there is obviously no more purpose to the Dust Brigade, aside from ub3r l3wt

I could certainly continue, but these are the key points. I truly, deeply enjoyed the storyline, and to those who initially conceived and developed it, you do deserve some credit. However, to those of you who abandoned it, realize that you have disappointed a vast number of your subscribers. Even those who didn't RP and who spent their time camping Tarasque or exploring knew of the storyline, and almost all were interested.

Also, I don't know if any of you have clicked the "German" version of the main AO site, but oddly enough, there is no section on that page for the main storyline. Granted, this could have to do with the nature/demographics of the server itself, but is nonetheless disheartening.

"Interesting times", indeed.

First they nerf the game, then they nerf the players, now they nerf the boards. I doubt they know the blow they are doing with all their "billiant" ideas :(

Yes...

Benjacrat shakes his head and disappears back in the quietness of his apartment

This may perhaps go down as the second-darkest day in AO history.

The first? When Gaute or JHp (or when either of them task it to Cz) either officially declare the story dead or try and post another lengthy "may you live in interesting times" post.

Nonetheless, we have a little less than 30 hours until this forum goes dead. The consensus within the community seems to be that there is no more storyline; no more storyline events.

If this is not the case, then FC has about 27 hours to set the record straight and declare otherwise.

Their failure to do so will most certainly demonstrate their lack of concern in this regard, and confirm all of our worst fears.

They can say 'it is not dead' all they want. Without somewhere to talk about it and to give out of game cues and clues, then it IS dead. I dont want to see another thread of lies that will attempt to keep me waiting for something to start. The death of the forum means no player feedback is needed or wanted, meaning there will be no interaction between them and us. How can you have roleplaying within a storyline without that?

I don't mean for this to sound like Im blasting you, Alamexis. I am not. Let me make this very clear. I'm saying that it is over.

The announcement of the forum's cancellation clearly ends any question that the story is dead. They would not have even considered it otherwise.

No statement will bring it back.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Travesty
They can say 'it is not dead' all they want. Without somewhere to talk about it and to give out of game cues and clues, then it IS dead. I dont want to see another thread of lies that will attempt to keep me waiting for something to start. The death of the forum means no player feedback is needed or wanted, meaning there will be no interaction between them and us. How can you have roleplaying within a storyline without that?

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I agree with you completely on this point - sorry if I was a bit ambivalent up to this point.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Travesty
I don't mean for this to sound like Im blasting you, Alamexis. I am not. Let me make this very clear. I'm saying that it is over.

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Never thought you were, no worries ;).

All I'm hoping for is a response - from FC or Cz on their behalf. And nothing like what we've had to date. The storyline is either fully active, visible - both in-game and out, and explains the world around you or.....it is how it is now.

./me sighs in dissapointment

Over the last 2 moths I have seen more events on Rubi-ka than I had in my last year online. I have seen more event characters interacting in the world, and have seen a lot of great RP situations, with a lot of great RP'ers. I hardly think closing a forum is the death of anything.

There are other forums, and if everyone decided to stop complaining about the death of the forums, and work together finding a new regular forum for these discussions, then everything would be fine.

This is not meant as a slam or anything, but these forums are not the only resourse that has been available for us, and for funcom. I don't recall anything in the article that says "because we are cloing the storyline and RP forum, we won't respond to forums that are similar on other sites"

I have been given no reason to believe that they will ignore the comunity completly if on a different forum. I know, you will say that they ignore the community alraedy, but we have seen them post here, so why wouldn't they post somewhere else? They specify in the article that they will..

anyway....I'm going to digress before I am flamed to death. Got to go start up some forums...maybe that can help somehow

I wouldn't flame you and I wish you were right.

Actually you're all jumping to conclusions, the Storyline forum was for comments on the storyline, by us the players, not to hand feed you every detail of what is happening, that is why we have in-game and the Storyline News, hence the loss of the forum is not an issue at all, it is just a redirection of focus, it means we have to spend more time in game, actually doing things, and utilising the news feeds, as opposed to just logging into the forums, to save ourselves a bit of time.

To close, I just want to say, everything you do on the forums, could be done in game, and really should, your stories? Act them out. Your suggestions and comments? Feedback@anarchy-online.com or use a fansite, they have already said that they read these sites.

Remember Funcom is a pioneer in this area, no other gaming company has attempted and succeeded in actually designing and successfully running an MMORPG with live Events and a Storyline, the storyline is supposed to be a 'special' thing, if they did an event more than once a month, chances are it would take the awe away from it, and yes it has been a little over a month since the last story update.

I am not worried at all, they know what they are doing, they have a revolutionary game by online standards, and I am impressed as a business man with what they have accomplished.

I challenge each of you to go out there and find an MMORPG with the richness in environment, Customer Service and Roleplaying.

You say Funcom is useless, I saw KUDOS to Funcom, and Thank you for the game you have given to us.

Focus on the good people, the glass should be half full, not half empty.

Cayll

So the storyline is alive and keeping a forum around for feedback wasn't worth the effort means nothing.

As far as a roleplaying game with better events and a story, try Gemstone by symtronics(sp?).

I never said Funcom is useless. I have said that they did not deliver on the story. It was truly active from november of 2001 to febuary of the following year. From then on, it was "off again, on again" with inconsistant moves(I won't even call them plot points). I wish I had a link to Lorekeep's old thread. That summarized everything nicely. Its much too late for me to drag all that back up just to make a point on a dead forum over a dead game feature. Yes, there will be more events, but nothing sweeping or earth shaking.

But really, I don't think you see the bigger picture. I've never seen a computer game that chopped its forum dramatically that wasn't on a downward slope.