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Funcom and Eidos announce massive evolution plans for Age of Conan

Massive PvP update in June – New areas and dungeons – Powerpoints and Guild Alliance warfare to come

Durham, USA – June 13, 2008 – After the incredible initial success for Age of Conan, a whole world of MMO players are eagerly anticipating the future plans for one of the most popular online games ever released. While Age of Conan has already evolved massively since launch, numerous expansive additions are yet to come. Funcom and Eidos are therefore proud to lift the veil on Age of Conan’s promising future, and today the two companies reveal selected features which are now in production.

"While we have enjoyed the initial success for Age of Conan, we know that a solid launch is but the start when it comes to the MMO genre,” said Gaute Godager, Game Director on Age of Conan. ”As we look ahead we are preparing a huge amount of new content, and what we are presenting today will evolve Age of Conan even further. It’s naturally an incredibly ambitious update plan for a live MMO game, but we are certain our players would want nothing less.”

Without further ado, here are some of the cool things to expect in the months to come:

PvP evolved – To the Death

The great combat system in Age of Conan has taken MMO fighting to a new level of fun, and Player versus Player combat plays a major part in this. As a result, a massive new PvP update is planned for late June. Aptly called To the death, this update brings more consequence and rewards to PvP, and an important part of it is the Fugitive system. The more lower level players you kill, the easier it is for others to hunt you down. In addition, ten PvP levels with additional ranks will be introduced, as well as specific gear and weapons for PvP.

Guild Alliance Warfare

Preproduction has started on a MASSIVE free update which will come later this year. Currently titled "Kingship!”, large clusters of guilds will be able to form alliances, and rule and conquer on a massive scale. Everyone in a guild alliance will play a part in this system, and together they can even erect unique looking alliance Battlekeeps. The alliances can also fight over, and build, culture-specific "wonders of the world”, with a direct link to higher powers! As part of the system Funcom will also facilitate larger amounts of players in massive battles.

Powerpoints

This fall, a unique reward and character evolution system called Powerpoints will be introduced. This rewards active in-game behavior, and allows for gathering points through numerous methods, including owning a Battlekeep, playing the end-game at level 80, winning PvP matches, or simply being an active guild member or subscribing to the game. There will be many ways to obtain Powerpoints, and numerous rewards, ranging from exclusive Powerfeats to weapons, armor and potions. Powerpoints may even allow you to level faster!

New areas and dungeons

You won’t need to wait for an expansion pack to explore exciting new areas. In the next period, Funcom will include several new areas, as well as evolving already existing areas. This includes a brand new dungeon in Aquilonia, reshaping three dungeons in Stygia, and an entire mountain range in Cimmeria!

Improved player-made villages and Battlekeep systems

While the guild alliance system brings a whole new level to the game, Funcom will continue to expand the existing player-made areas and the systems running them. A focus on evolving the massive elements of the game even further continues, ranging from placing NPC’s in the cities to more choices and benefits.

Social updates

An MMO is nothing without a good social scene. While Conan is all about crushing your enemies, social enhancements are also getting some love. A fun example is the combo-based dancing system which is now coming to the game, and it’s entirely motion captured by professional dance artists.

More adventures

Age of Conan has received tremendous praise for immersion and the great voice-over quests. This is but the start of the adventure, and numerous new quests are coming into the game, spread across the entire world and across the level ranges. Soon 60 additional quests will also get full voice acting, further improving immersion.

Embracing community feedback Since launch several enhancements and fixes have been implemented to Age of Conan, and Funcom has continuously staffed up the service departments to improve customer satisfaction. This has already resulted in a better game experience, but the work will continue. At the heart of all of this stands the Age of Conan community. A lot of the upcoming improvements to the game will be based directly on community feedback, and the wishes and concerns players have when it comes to the future of the game will always be taken into account.

By reading the community websites, official forums and the monthly Clan of Conan newsletter you can expect additional information about upcoming features and released updates, as well as an arena to give your feedback. A new Clan of Conan newsletter is also going live today, with more detail on the upcoming features. http://funcom.cachefly.net/WebFiles/Newsletter/Issue17/

ten PvP levels with additional ranks will be introduced

Source (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&table=CONTENT&func_id=2535&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=online&utm_campaign=Clan_of_Conan&utm_content=issue17)

PvP consequences – the fugitive system

No longer will evil misdeeds go unpunished. Of course, Hyboria is ruthless and barbaric so don’t expect anyone to deal out justice just because someone smacks you about with a very heavy axe, but some justice is actually now being introduced to the world.

This is where the fugitive system comes in, presented in a set of colors defining your fugitive status – from blue to orange and eventually the deadly red.

Everyone is by default classified as “blue”, but your actions as a player killer will affect your fugitive rating. If you kill someone way under your level, you will notice that you will very quickly move to red. So will actions such as killing someone repeatedly, or other general unfairness. The more serious the crime, the quicker you rise in fugitive.

Obtaining red status will be quite painful to you. This means that other players can kill you without rising in fugitive level, and if they manage to kill you while you have red fugitive you will actually drop one of your better items and gold that they can loot!

Of course, turning red will be a double-edged sword. Sure, it will get you a lot of attention and many will probably see you as a danger to be avoided. But at the same time, people will hunt you down for your items and your gold so be very, very careful!

I think I will have to start leveling my RP-PVP alt here soon ..

Btw, has anyone tried the PvP arenas at all?

I wonder how they're thinking that will work with the insane amounts of AoE in Conan and being indirectly griefed by low-levels as you're fighting mobs. Hi Tempest, I'll go stand a bit in your lightning storm, then I'll come gank you with my main when you've turned red.

Unfortunately, I'm finding it very intriguing. Which usually means I'll try it with way too high of hopes, get ganked during some quest I wanted to get done before going to work, get some smarmy poorly written tell from said ganker, be pissed off the rest of the day and quit when I get home.

Wow. I think I just talked myself out of it in a single post.

where everyone carried around multiple packs full of usless but expensive loot to act as "drop items".

I wonder how they're thinking that will work with the insane amounts of AoE in Conan and being indirectly griefed by low-levels as you're fighting mobs. Hi Tempest, I'll go stand a bit in your lightning storm, then I'll come gank you with my main when you've turned red.

Don't cast Fire field :) l2play

That's completely uncalled for forum trolling.

Don't like it? Stay on your PvE server.

No, its a valid point. If you don't want to get caught like that...be aware of your surroundings. There is so much fucking handholding in games these days, to me it's refreshing when you basically have to use your head. Don't like it? Stay on your PvE server.

Yeah, and don't melee or play a ToS or ever use AoE when there's a lowbie nearby that can potentially ruin shit for you. :uhrr:

Here's the thing; why the heck should I have to care about not ganking suicidal lowbies? That's artificial bullshit. It doesn't help "PvP morals" at all.

Actually, your last 500 posts have pretty much been shit. You actually think some people are carebears when really we just hate design ramifications and changes based on a vocal minority that effect the gameplay of people who like professionally designed content more than CREATE UR OWN content. There's a reason I always have a REAL skill-based game (for example, MGO right now) to play along with an MMOG. It's because people of your kind that think FFA PVP is the shit are just the most untolerable fucking people in gaming.

I mean seriously, learn to play another instrument. You suck at this one.

Edit: By the way, if MMOG designers didn't take the short-sighted jackhammer approach to development, odds are none of these posts would have been made from either of us. Unfortunately, Funcom - like every other company, nearly - has decided to let the PvE game suffer due to imba in PVP. Which is, admittedly through no fault of you or I, THE WRONG WAY TO DO IT. Unfortunately, you seem to keep trying to validate it. Which means you do things like call me a carebear (which couldn't be further from the truth) and sit around validating such design decisions. Essentially, your entire minority needs to shut the fuck up and go away until developers can get their head out of the fucking sand.

Who knows, really. I wont really care if I turn orange on accident anyways. If you get griefed excessively, l2report maybe...who knows.

You don't want to be like Nija. He's an exploitive, griefing jackass with a completely singular playstyle. If you want to be more like Hoax, go play spreadsheets in space.

But the problem is, you actually think I'm a carebear when I'm on a PvE server specifically because I want to BUILD A CITY AND THEN GO PVP IN THE BORDER KINGDOMS. I pvped as much as ANYBODY in SWG. I, in fact, built my entire city placement around easy access to PVP. But shortsighted design decisions fucked all of that up (I'm talking way prior to NGE).

Point being, you are indeed a generic frothing mouthbreather and need to tone that shit the fuck back. Also, cluebat, motherfucker.

Edit: We give grief titles to people we like and people we devestatingly hate, not one-note predictable white noise.

Viin, in a utopian society maybe. But you just coughed up more bullshit in 10-12 sentences than I could've in a year. PVPers are the first ones to whine when something is OP or totally imba. They're the first ones to whine when nerfed. And they're the first ones to whine when they're ignored. They're loud, obnoxious and know jackfuckshitall about actual design. They don't "get it" and nor do they want to. They want to be catered to and loved by devs and want to shit on all the other players. If for even one moment you think otherwise, you haven't read official forums or a PVP Guilds forums and are, indeed, doing it wrong. God knows I think you're fucking fantastic, but you're absolutely deluded here. Unless you meant to post it in the Eve forum.

P.S: Yes, we are the minority. So what?

Viin, in a utopian society maybe. But you just coughed up more bullshit in 10-12 sentences than I could've in a year. PVPers are the first ones to whine when something is OP or totally imba. They're the first ones to whine when nerfed. And they're the first ones to whine when they're ignored. They're loud, obnoxious and know jackfuckshitall about actual design. They don't "get it" and nor do they want to. They want to be catered to and loved by devs and want to shit on all the other players. If for even one moment you think otherwise, you haven't read official forums or a PVP Guilds forums and are, indeed, doing it wrong. God knows I think you're fucking fantastic, but you're absolutely deluded here. Unless you meant to post it in the Eve forum.

In short, you don't get to vote. This isn't real life. This is a business. One where minority and majority make ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. Minorities should be treated as they are, not worth enough money to matter.

Then why have a PVP+ server at all? If they aren't going to support the playstyle then they shouldn't have even bothered.

I am just worried that they are trying to implement all this big shit, when so much of the core game is still not working correctly. Many class feats are so horrible or just straight up dont work. Core crafting elements are broken.

They really need to get all the class feats working first, and THEN start balancing. Otherwise its a moot point.

I really like this game, but I will leave if they dont start fixing the broken shit in the game before they start adding a lot more stuff.

I really like this game, but I will leave if they dont start fixing the broken shit in the game before they start adding a lot more stuff.

The majority of people are going to hit level 80 within the next couple months, they are scrambling to try and give them something to do so they don't quit.

blah EQ WoW switches blah.

you see it's all about time sinks and what we choose do to with them. I've heard slayerik say he hates rep grins but i bet you the minute tos get the nerf stick hard he will reroll to something better and that's ok. for pvp'ers it will always be flavor of the month or adapting and spending your time maxxing talents or grinding honor or getting corpse camped all day. For pve'ers its farming and raiding and gathering consumables and rep grinding. They are both different in their ways but also both timesinks and how people wish to spend their time.

Yeah, I'm an ass.

I'm usually so surrounded by so much PvE love here I get a little pissy at times. My last like 5 posts have pretty much been shit.

Anyways, I heard they're implementing this fugitive system in Conan later this month, anyone got any details on that?  :-)

Fixed it for ya, you messed up on the scary part.

edit:darniaq, you say the game was built as pvp first? i call bullshit, everything from the ground up screams its another eq clone. it was 'marketed' as a pvp game perhaps but that was funcom pissing on your head and telling you it was raining.

The alliances can also fight over, and build, culture-specific "wonders of the world”, with a direct link to higher powers! As part of the system Funcom will also facilitate larger amounts of players in massive battles.

Oh hay.  http://travian.wikia.com/wiki/World_Wonder

Kingship revealed - Huge upgrade planned!
Posted: - 13.06.2008

We will be doing a lot of improvements and additions to Age of Conan in the weeks to come, and we will be sure to tell you about it. But let’s also take this opportunity to gaze deeper into the glass ball, to see what awaits us in the future – later this year!

Okay, so we’re not ready to give you all the juice on it just yet – this is, after all, some months away from going in the game. But we want to lift the veil a little bit, as we feel that this is such a powerful community builder that it deservers some anticipation!

The tentative name for this update is Kingship, but that might change as we move close to patching it onto the servers. This is basically an update that will introduce some very groundbreaking new features into Age of Conan, such as guild alliances, legendary battlekeeps, and so-called Wonders of the World. And some other, secret stuff!

The Kingship upgrade will also be rooted in the Powerpoints system, and we will be introducing several new features and content. Here is some of what you can expect!

Guild alliances

We want to allow guilds to get together and form alliances, creating strong accumulations of power that can take on some of the biggest challenges on the server, and we will be employing various tools for them to create a strong common identity for the alliance.

Here is a list of some of those tools:
Alliance flag – you will be able to acquire a flag that you can carry around on your back, and this flag can be customized for you alliance.
Alliance cloak – you will also be able to acquire a cloak that you can customize for your alliance, showing everyone what gathering you hail from.
Alliance chat – of course, just as with guilds you will be able to share a common chat channel with all members of all the guilds in the alliance.
Alliance name – you will be able to select a name for the alliance, and that name will be shown after your guild name and your character name.
A guild alliance will be quite a political entity, and this among other things involves holding elections to choose alliance leaders and such. Rest assured, guild alliances will have plenty of tools at their disposal when they set out to conquer the known world!

Legendary battlekeeps

Already in the game your guild have the opportunity to build player cities and eventually also conquer battlekeeps. We will, of course, be improving these functionalities as well as we move ahead in the coming months. Kingship will also expand on this feature.

Situated next to the three big cities – Conarch, Khemi and Tarantia – will be something called legendary battlekeeps. Massive constructions that can be seen from inside the major cities themselves, and there will only be three of these in total in the online world – one for each capitol city. Conquering these battlekeeps will be the ultimate challenge!

Guilds will effectively have to team up with each other and become alliances if they want to have any chance of conquering a legendary battlekeep. These will be gigantic battles, and we are aiming for over 300 players to be involved in the battle simultaneously!

That also means we will be doing some technical improvements to the massive battle system to allow for this great number of players in one battle at the same time.

Wonders of the World

These battlekeeps will all have different benefits to provide the alliance that owns it, and they will all be visually very different from each other. You can customize and build upon your legendary battlekeep, just as you would with the “ordinary” battlekeeps.

Another feature we will be introducing with this upgrade is Wonders of the World. These are powerful constructions rooted deep in the identity of that nation (e.g. the “Golden Lion of Tarantia” for Aquilonia) and they look epic and magnificent. Each nation has two of these wonders, and they can be built in the legendary battlekeep for that nation.

Building these wonders is a huge effort for anyone in the alliance, and will involve a lot of team work. Once you have built the shell of the wonder in your legendary battlekeep, other guild alliances can steal it and bring it to their city – so you need to protect it!

The benefits of owning one, two or more of these wonders (can you steal all of them?) is beyond anything you can imagine, but those details are to be revealed at another time!

First off, we are introducing a dueling functionality. This allows players to duel each other, both on PvP and PvE servers, without any serious repercussions. It also allows players on PvE servers to engage in PvP without having to go into the PvP mini-games, allowing them to test their grit (or solve an argument) against each other directly!

Other changes you will observe are for instance improvements to the “charge” ability that all soldier classes have. If you charge someone you will stun them, making it much more useful. Casters will also see major improvements, so keep your eyes out for more news!

Schild digs Age of Conan.  Conan decides to include old-school gankfest PVP complete with a barely-retouched version of the UO murder count system.  Schild proceeds to get into "lol carebear" fights with guys like Slayerik and Sinij after they call him a pussy for not wanting to partake of it.

WUA laughs.  And laughs.  And laughs.

...Massive constructions that can be seen from inside the major cities themselves, and there will only be three of these in total in the online world – one for each capitol city.

...You can customize and build upon your legendary battlekeep, just as you would with the “ordinary” battlekeeps.

Battlekeeps are in the border regions, which are the pvp areas on every server connected to the resource zones where your normal, unattackable cities live.

The Legendary battlekeeps will be attached to the main cities, they aren't built, they're already there, but I read it as players can build up a city or someshit around the legendary keep.  Wonders can be built by the takers of the legendary keep, give bonuses, and can be stolen by other alliances and moved to their cities.

Thats how I read it, at least.

I don't think they'll stay carbon copies forever, it's quite obvious that pvp was tossed in at the last moment and not really fleshed out, and copying the resource zone was just the easiest way to get the border kingdoms in at launch.

Since border regions are just copies of resource regions it makes sense. the battlekeeps seem to already be built afaik, hence the big buildings in the center of each resource zone. you'll probably be able to build cities in the border region just like the resource zone but those are the pvp+ cities? seems pretty lazy though since they essentially just made two copies of each and says one is pve one is pvp.

Everyone got annoyed by your flame but me. I thought it was all in good forum fun.

That out of the way, I was trying to point out how AEs - something that AoC thrives on as opposed to what was a throwaway spell in UO - will destroy the fugitive system as currently described.

No, its a valid point. If you don't want to get caught like that...be aware of your surroundings. There is so much fucking handholding in games these days, to me it's refreshing when you basically have to use your head. Don't like it? Stay on your PvE server.

Keep battles sound like city battles from SB. If I recall, you could waste anyone's tiny town whenever you wanted, but had to schedule a bane/tree event for he most improved cities. Going by vague memory here so I'm probably wrong. But if not, then the only difference between what AoC will be and what SB was is that in AoC you need to schedule all Keep assaults.

I can see players stocking up now for the inevitable land rush that follows, so they can build a Keep and other buildings/walls all roughly at the same time before getting attacked.

What we don't know is the details like:

How long do the recipients of a siege letter get before they need to respond?
Can they back out by paying off the attacker?
What if any are penalties for a failed siege?
What prevents siege spamming?

Again, its part of the game they want players to mange themselves

i love it too. i was wondering if anyone read my post, lol.

i have to say this game doesnt seem to be designed well with friendly fire in mind. it seems like every caster is loaded down with aoe's and what about melee swinging their big broadswords? im not against the idea of friendly fire, i do like it but could it really work well with all the spells and abilities in aoc as is?

Remember that that dagger or whatever in a casters hand is not useless as in other games.

Green plz. Pure casters in other games melee when everyone else is dead and they don't want to go down without a fight. And even then it's usually evadeevadeevade because few games require casters to train in the weapons they only need for the stat adjustments anyway.