Looking for a guide in person

I have been listening Neocron music for years, without playing the game, but i now decided to play.
The game is empty, i have been exploring for half an hour and never met anyone alive.
I would like to immerse myself in the experience but the game is too empty/overwhelming. I don't want to grind or level up too much, just to explore and listen to the music, do some interesting quests.
Are there any areas in the game that are populated so that i could ask someone about the game or he could make a little intro to the game? Where are they? How to get to them? How many people are playing this game in peak hours? Are any of you willing to meet with me in the game and make me a little tutorial?

Sincerely
damazy85

Quests? :D

Get the fuck out of here

Welcome to the community. The greetings are normally a little more friendly than Teal`c's...

Be sure to activate the HELP channel in your RPOS (UI) chat window. Do this by pressing F1 and ensuring there's an [X] next to HELP Channel. This is the best place to ask for help in game and get a response. If you're new people usually take the time to say hello and help you out.

I hope you have a great time in Neocron's gameworld, the atmosphere of the game is one of the reasons many of us are still here after over a decade online. If you have no luck finding help in game, please do come back to the forums and we'll help you out as best we can!

Also do a search on the forum for terms like "newb" or "starter" and see what threads pop up. These come up every few months when a new player arrives into the game and makes a thread. People come out of the woodwork to help as that is human nature and is not a time dominant response. Best place to ask questions is, as triv said, the help channel but failing that stick your questions into this thread if you dont find what youre looking for elsewhere and people will reply.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by damazy85

I have been listening Neocron music for years, without playing the game, but i now decided to play.
The game is empty, i have been exploring for half an hour and never met anyone alive.
I would like to immerse myself in the experience but the game is too empty/overwhelming. I don't want to grind or level up too much, just to explore and listen to the music, do some interesting quests.
Are there any areas in the game that are populated so that i could ask someone about the game or he could make a little intro to the game? Where are they? How to get to them? How many people are playing this game in peak hours? Are any of you willing to meet with me in the game and make me a little tutorial?

Sincerely
damazy85

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I remember between 2001 and 2006 there was 400-600 players. 24/7. The Neocron ost and the experience I had changed my life. It was by far the best gaming experience with ww2online. I've asked for them to greenlight it on steam. The problem with Neocron is that it required 500 active players 24/7 to have the proper experience.

You only experienced a deserted mmo. I feel bad for you. There was Politics, corruption, economics, war, trade, etc and you had to be informed. I don't know what happened with gaming but I found nothing that comes even close. It was like having a real cyberpunk character in a real alternate universe. I don't understand to this date how this game could have died.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by REVKhA

I remember between 2001 and 2006 there was 400-600 players. 24/7. The Neocron ost and the experience I had changed my life. It was by far the best gaming experience with ww2online. I've asked for them to greenlight it on steam. The problem with Neocron is that it required 500 active players 24/7 to have the proper experience.

You only experienced a deserted mmo. I feel bad for you. There was Politics, corruption, economics, war, trade, etc and you had to be informed. I don't know what happened with gaming but I found nothing that comes even close. It was like having a real cyberpunk character in a real alternate universe. I don't understand to this date how this game could have died.

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REVKHa, small word, I also came from WWIIonline to neocron. Got spoiled with the 2 best mmos of all time. Everything else is garbage. With the exception of Ultimate Online. Just started playing on a new Shard.

I just installed it today and played for like an hour or so.
Just tutorial stuff really. I actually only like to play games with friends so not sure if
the lack of a big community is a deal breaker yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by REVKhA

I don't understand to this date how this game could have died.

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Aside from the issue(s) of support, the MMO landscape has changed immensely in the last ten years.

The rise of the 'casual' gamer - a result of a greater proportion of the population being involved in gaming - has had several marked impacts on collective gaming.
People increasingly want 'pick up and go' experiences, with knowledge of how to play to be laid out explicitly so that they don't 'waste' time learning the game mechanics.

Despite the fact that NC characters level far quicker than many other MMOs, the learning curve is very high and the game doesn't inform you - the intention being that you learn from other players. Even with a high population, both of these are off-putting to a lot of people. That the game doesn't do a great job of teaching you by playing it does not help matters.

Also, cyberpunk is still a niche atmosphere. Distopian futures of any type have a limited appeal (people prefer to be part of a 'good' or 'evil' side battling a specific threat than exploring the ethical quagmire of something like NC's intentionally vague megacorp/terrorist/criminal setup) and a fantasy setting has more imaginative potential for storytelling.
This is why of Star Wars and Firefly (both Space Opera/Future Fantasy settings), the former is more popular.


That said, with gaming reaching an ever increasing audience, the potential number of players that would possibly enjoy NC can only increase.
If it can be sufficiently modernised and the mistakes of the late KK era can be sorted, I think it can draw more people.

The glaringly obvious thing I think many of us also missed is the lack of a huge population; it was a double edged sword for the game.

On the plus side it allowed everybody to be a Somebody(tm) because reputations were hard-won and harder to lose if you had a bad one. In a huge sprawling metropolis this wouldnt necessarily happen for real as group identities would probably supercede the individual. In NC1 however, it was like everyone lived the life of an outlaw like the stories we read of the "Wild" West. I admit, it influenced my name choices significantly.

The problem came for NC I think in that they didnt attract enough new people to retain that sweet 400-600 people in the population and so as more and more left for their various reasons (other games or whatever else) not having that extra person around to poke you, shoot back, talk smack or repair/steal your gear was a detriment to both the community and the game as a whole.

In my mind the single biggest issue was DOY, they just got it massively wrong there and that signalled the death knell for NC, the single biggest loss of population when it should have been the 2nd coming and the time when player pops would finally regularly top over 1000 players.

I dont think the designers of this game EVER envisioned having thousands of players online, there was only 1 MC5 after all, a handful of "high end" dungeons for the PVE experience and dozens of Ops to fight over. The basic concept of the PVE side of the game seemed only designed for a couple of hundred max ranked players at most. However with 20+ Ops to fight over it seems to me that pvp was and still is the primary focus of capped players.

That all said, it would be really nice to actually find out how new players arrive at the game as there must be some form of advertising which draws them in? I fail to see how in an age of social media that this game could not mount a successful, completely free advertising campaign to draw in players. It just needs, as many before me have said, the infrastructure to keep those players playing and that comes from the NST.

Well I for one who started playing 5-6 days ago actually tried to get into neocron, although I didn't manage to get in at all since you couldn't register an account although I do seem to recall that at the time it was a priced product but I do seem to remember that I couldn't buy since the process didn't go through I think.

I'm probably not a 'good example' but basically I've known of this game' existence for some years now and I suppose it's only now that I've come around to check it out, although I'll admit that I didn't expect to keep playing since I figured it was a dead game which I suppose it 'technically' is now compared to back in the day when it seemingly were very much more populated a decade ago give or take.
I will say this though, I would most likely not have kept playing if NO ONE was ever online other than myself to help me out with questions and gear, yes it might be a 'tall order' but I actually didn't ASK for gear but was given gear all the same and I'm VERY thankful for that so I don't have to level up a droner, 'respec' said droner and then have a crafter to do weapons etc. before I can actually play the rest of the game.

Now with all that said I do believe that it's a question about getting fresh blood in and in order to do that you need to let people know that Neocron has gone free to play (for real) and all you gotta do is sign up and download the client files, although it is a VERY steep learning curve and all but me having previously been a WoW zombie who once grinded a sh*tty repeatable quest that gave like 55 silver for what must've been 7-8 hours while listening to U2' "Windows in the skies" without pause or anything, I can do neocron EASILY been someone who's been through some 'tough sh*t' both when it comes to grinding and working with 'non-streamlined interfaces'.

Long story short though as 'lame' as it may sound I do believe that a proper beginner's guide is in order with some screenshots so people will know what the heck they should be looking for in the first place, like I said I wouldn't had kept playing if no one was around to give me hints/help me out etc. every once in a while (in-game that is) and it wouldn't hurt to just make said guide have 'short facts' written like "weapon lore" = accuracy(?) or "high-tech combat" = increased damage with high-tech weaponry(?) and if there are people who really wants to dig deep into the whole calculations of all that then links can be provided or whatever works best for said beginner's guide.

PS: I'm currently with a group called "quant" who actually did play way back in the day but it's a bit of a 'splintered' group now and atop of that they had a 'traitor' who stole all their items etc. along with their clan apartment(?) so even though I sit with a few people who did play back in the day, they don't want to come back so I dunno if it's just me but I think perhaps it's a sign that those who used to play neocron isn't really going to care that they could start playing again, probably just in the quant group' case but still something I think has something about it nonetheless.

Ehm hem what I meant to say at the beginning of my post was that I only started playing a few days ago and didn't expect to keep playing, although I actually did try to get into Neocron some years back although as said above I couldn't seem to register an account nor purchase the game as was required(?) back then.

do you drink a lot of coffee? or do you just prefer not to use full stops? :)