Friday with(out) Means - Aug. 14th, 2009: Now with 60% more content!

[Sebinoxx]

I wanna know what that teaser image is I refuse to believe it's the Double AS Tigress!

[Zeephonz]

how goes the revamp of the beginning sequence of the entire game? to make it more user friendly/make sense? I think Means mentioned it awhile back...

It's not a revamp to make it more friendly unless it's got the Arrival Hall in it

[trousers]

It's not a revamp to make it more friendly unless it's got the Arrival Hall in it

Bring back the Arrival Hall!

[Troxxor]

Didn't Mean say the arrival hall was a big drop off for new players & it wasn't coming back? (personally I loved it )

Maybe they could do it as part of the intro before you get control of your character, people who don't care or whatever could just press escape to skip it.

Or the arrival hall could even be part of toon creaction... I always liked the thought of picking my character from a group of different people on their way to RK, each with their own story n stuff

[Xenotric]

If a new player can't get through whats essentially a tutorial area without getting bored, lost or ragequitting then how do they cope with the rest of the game?

[trousers]

Didn't Mean say the arrival hall was a big drop off for new players & it wasn't coming back? (personally I loved it )

Maybe they could do it as part of the intro before you get control of your character, people who don't care or whatever could just press escape to skip it.

Or the arrival hall could even be part of toon creaction... I always liked the thought of picking my character from a group of different people on their way to RK, each with their own story n stuff

Yes, Means did say that, and some of us believe his opinion of the arrival hall is closed minded.

What we've seen is what I would call 'typical FC'. If they believe something is broken, they'd rather remove it then fix it (Like placing Items on the Ground >_>).

What needs to happen is they need to bring the arrival hall back, and link it back into the vision I believe it had related to the Pw/oH novel...

The Arrival Hall is supposed to be located in Omni-1. Immigrants are supposed to arrive at the Morning Star, be processed, then shipped via shuttle to Omni-1. The "Arrival Hall" in all reality would be the Primary Omni-Tek Shuttle port in Omni-1, and as such I think it should be expanded in size and have more NPCs to dole out Information (Or even make some initial 'true newbie' quests on how to move, how to spend IP, etc. which can be given out by minor quest NPCs in the hall.

The Only problem is, The Arrival Hall clashes with the current Training Grounds (ICC Shuttleport) since a Shuttle from Omni-1 to almost anywhere would not go out over the ocean. A revamped Arrival Hall would need to be part of the new "New Player Experience" which Means has said is needed, but is not a priority

[Mistiz]

What they really need to do is rework the very first image of the morning star in front of Rubi-ka. I mean seriously...that picture by itself is enough to scare people away...

[-Plexor-]

Hi Kintaii,

I've just returned to the game after about 3 years...I quit after getting to 220 because I couldn't face the grind of levelling another character (back when it was a real long slow grind) and because there wasn't much to do. So first off, I think the new high level content is great, plenty of things to do that don't need a full raid force and lots of things to aim for. I particullarly like the way things seem to be being added regularly now. The idea of having daily missions sounds great...I don't have time to level another character now, so hopefully it will give a reasonable rate of advancement thats a reasonable alternative to grinding for hours.

My question to you though is what's the plan regarding customer support? For example, when re-subscribed my forum username and password no longer worked, even after my first payment went through. I e-mailed the customer support dept using the link on the forum, and to date about 3 weeks later I haven't heard anything back, which is pretty poor to say the least.

I tried putting in a new username and password, but it didn't seem to work, so I tried again a while later. Now most of the time it won't log me in, says wrong username or password, sometimes it logs me in with one of the new usernames, sometimes the other...seems totally random...but all I want is my original username to work.

From what i've read you are planning a drive to get more customers, but customer service and support needs to be functioning properly first I think.

Keep up the good work though, i'm loving being back!

P.S. When doing this post my username changed halfway through, then it said I wasn't logged in when I was, then I wasn't logged in and couldn't for the whole afternoon...now I am automatically logged in again

[SoapTarder]

Didn't Mean say the arrival hall was a big drop off for new players & it wasn't coming back? (personally I loved it )

Maybe they could do it as part of the intro before you get control of your character, people who don't care or whatever could just press escape to skip it.

Or the arrival hall could even be part of toon creaction... I always liked the thought of picking my character from a group of different people on their way to RK, each with their own story n stuff

I still remember the first time i logged into ao, created a character and ran through the arrival hall, got into the shuttle for rubi-ka, and then all hell broke loose, narrowly escaping up a ladder and having to swim to shore. that intro really gave meaning to the story and gave me a feel as to why i was on the island.

in the past year i have gotten a couple friends to play ao (briefly), and one of them was puzzled about newb isle. when i explained how the start of the game used to be and how they changed it, he said to me "phht, that was stupid, why'd they do that?." i just shrugged