f13.net

Experience the World of Conan! :roll:

Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures is an Online Action RPG scheduled for Windows in the first half of 2006. A mix of a deep, story-driven single-player experience and a massive and brutal multiplayer end-game brings forth the ultimate representation of the Age of Conan. Now you can enter the brutal domain of the world’s greatest fantasy hero.

In Conan the players will encounter a dark, lush, violent and sinful universe, presented in fantastic graphics and stunning 7.1 surround audio. In a world filled with cruel gods, mythical creatures, lost civilizations and a struggling human race, the mighty barbarian has finally seized the throne as king of Aquilonia. But Conan’s rule is on the brink of chaos, spiraling towards the doom of ancient evils.

In this twisted fantasy world, dark magic and brutal combat lurks around every corner, and each man and woman must carve their own unique destiny under Conan’s reign. In the true vision of Robert E. Howard’s dark universe it’s now time for you to become a messenger of death.

    * Explore Hyboria, the legendary world of Conan, presented in incredible graphics and sound.
    * Emerge as a hero from a story-driven single-player experience and embark into even greater adventures in the multiplayer part of the game. The branching single-player story is created by the award-winning writers behind The Longest Journey, Dreamfall and Anarchy Online so expect a rare treat.
    * Experience Funcom’s revolutionary “Real Combat” engine. A new multi-point melee system allows the players to swing their weapons where they direct it, in real-time, going head-on against the formulaic nature of online RPG combat.
    * Create player-made battle formations, and command both NPC’s and other players in epic multiplayer battles.
    * Form guilds in the multiplayer game and lay siege to hostile castles. Let the catapults sing their merry song of death as the enemy is brutally crushed to a pulp.

Age of Conan has a plethora of additional features, as is expected from a Funcom online game. A presentation of the game, including more information about its features, will be held at E3 in May.

What do you mean by Formation Combat?

This is a completely new, aspect of multiplayer gameplay. In previous RPGs with indirect point-and-click movement you have seen party based formations, as in the “Baldurs Gate” series for instance. In Conan you can for the first time not only have a formation, but be in direct control of both your character, NPC’s and other players..

The leader of the formation can decide on different formations and the degree of freedom the various players and NPC’s can have within the formation. The formation also serves as a cooperative travel system, yielding beneficial effects to the team as the collision of the formation itself protect the members at the rear. Formations yield beneficial bonuses to members, and offer a new type of depth to a RPG. In some cases it will be essential to pick the right formation to survive.

So what is "Real Combat"?

This is our revolutionary multi point melee system. This unique aspect of this system is that you swing your weapon where you direct it. This system will let the players direct, and combine, the swings of their weapon to create fancy, brutal and effective slashes and thrusts, or combine them in combos or special attacks that do additional damage. You should really “feel” the power of your character when you fight, feel the power of each and every blow.

"Real Combat" is easy to learn, and allows for a very different experience to both the slow studious nature of RPG combat and the ‘twitch’ nature of a first person shooter. When you pick it up the first time you might not even notice it as you happily slash and thrust away. With experience you might see certain attacks swinging better together. As you learn to string it into combos you become a dancing machine of brutal death. The same multipoint system is true for ranged combat and spell casting. In both cases the Real Combat engine allows you to string hits or spells together to form new fantastic effects.

The Real Combat will also work with mounted combat.

Seriously, it all SOUNDS great. And the screenshots are nice. But past history has not been kind to Funcom. Prove it with beta slots, bitches.

What's the endgame?

What's the endgame?

You crush your enemies, have them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Alternately, you lose and get to contemplate your sins on the Tree of Woe.

Heh, if this game doesn't have PvP, then it'll be the biggest injustice to a franchise yet.

Another thing I'm wondering: What will magic be like in this game? I'm not familiar with anything but Howard's books and the two films, but is there any room for "common" magic users? As far as I can tell, they're either super powerful or basically just mind controllers (Thulsa Doom).

Also, it seems like the powerful ones aren't even "magic users" per se, as they are just priests of some sort. It's tied to channeling/praying, while games like D&D give magic a more "scholarly" bent...Which works easier for a game.

Magic in the Howard universe was influenced to a great degree by Lovecraft, they were friends.  Thus most of the practitioners in the stories where diabolical and bent by evil.  In the RPG, magic is best used by NPC's, as it is ritualistic and does not lend itself to quick paced combat.  For the most part, Howard's vision was one of blood and steel, not Magic and Elves.

Why would he need that when he had Grace Jones' crazy Nubian warrior by his side?

In the comics at least, Conan hates/fears magic, though in the Destroyer movie he did /invite a magican. Why would he need that when he had Grace Jones' crazy Nubian warrior by his side?

What's a Nubian?

Probably because the wizard played by Mako(who also narrated the two movies) healed him back to life and fought on his side in Conan the Barbarian.

Like in the back of a volkswagon?

I still harbor an awful lot of hate for funcom over that, this game would have to be absolutely brilliant and run flawlessly for a couple of months after release before I even considered signing up.

Try this for Nubia (http://library.thinkquest.org/22845/introduction/ancient_nubia.shtml).

(http://www.muzieklijstjes.nl/Tips/BrandNubianOne.jpg)

Is that Steve Urkel in the front?

Conan himself is a Cimmerian, from the land where the bronze people live?

Aboard the slave galley, you will get your first taste of the "Real Combat" engine. This is the core, the essence of the Conan game. This is how we turned the vision of Hyboria - "grab a sword, crush your enemy" into gameplay. We needed to leave the indirect, auto combat behind to really give players that adrenalin pumping bloodshed an action combat game would give. Having indirect combat would simply never cut it for Conan, if you get my drift. Basically, you have six directions to chose from, when you swing your shackled chains around. Each direction will give an advantage and a disadvantage. Aiming for the head is harder, so perhaps you should choose the soft of the slavers belly for an easy hit, etc.

Stringing directions together might lead to a special move. Imagine raising your hands, holding the long heavy chain, and swinging against the right-side neck of the bloated slaver - as he is grinning at you with his blackened teeth and cracking his wet whip, soaked in slaver blood. Would it not, after slicing his right neck, make sense to swing against the left side of the neck, one second after? It would seem easier than swinging at his legs, would it not? It comes with the motion of the weapon I would think, and players will learn this instinctively as if they held the chains themselves. "Real Combat" analyzes (with our help - hehe) the motion of the professional fighters we used for motion capturing the animations, giving players room to let instinct and feeling guide their moves! When I pick up the rumble-joypad, it almost, almost, feels like I am there. There in the lush, sinful and brutal Age of Conan, crushing skulls. When the deck rumbles as the slaver gut crumbles the floor, you will know you chose correctly.

The development team has always been a strong believer in pushing people together in a friendly way, in the online game. There will be team match making, guild match making, PvP match making, formation gameplay for teams, PvP mini-games, social building of villages, massive RTS-like guild encounters and so forth. There will be substantial experience point bonuses for teaming, though it is not the only option. You can solo all the way, if you want.

FAQ here:

http://www.ageofconan.com/conan/faq.html

They have had over 4 years to learn how to program non-fucked netcode. At lot of the features like the villages, and terrain-acquisition stuff are things they are probably porting over from AO's last expansion.

That article made the game sound very good. The action combat thing will be the real seller or deal-breaker. How good they pull that off will make or break the game.

As you can see it is a clear goal for me as Game Director to give players a real choice on how they create their character, and allow for difference and personalization.

(From the IGN article)

There can never be enough character customization in a MMORPG. I detest having my character be like everyone else. This sounds good. *hopeful*

Considering AO's high level cap I would not be surprised by 100-120lvl's at launch, but the question isn't really will you have to grind to get those lvls (you will) but is the combat system level based.

Damn, I totally forgot about that. I stay away from AO for that very thing. Good game or not. Just the number "120" makes my jaw drop.

Damn, I totally forgot about that. I stay away from AO for that very thing. Good game or not. Just the number "120" makes my jaw drop.

AO is 200 + 15 Shadowlevels if you have Shadowlands + 30 AI levels if you have Alien Invasion. However, you don't start earning SL until you hit 200 and start camping mobs, and you gain Alien XP separately from normal exp. And IIRC the Alien levels don't "add" to the normal level, just gives you perks and allows equipment.

So, 215 it is. Pretty high, that.

Magic in the Howard universe was influenced to a great degree by Lovecraft, they were friends.  Thus most of the practitioners in the stories where diabolical and bent by evil.  In the RPG, magic is best used by NPC's, as it is ritualistic and does not lend itself to quick paced combat.  For the most part, Howard's vision was one of blood and steel, not Magic and Elves.

*pulls out his diabolical and evil union card*

So, it appears evil bloodsucking mages will be included as characters.  Bet this could grab the over 50 market. Baby boomers for Krom! :)

Our goal is to create a system where you can PvP with your main character when you want to, without any permanent penalties. There won't be dedicated PvP servers in Conan. PvP will be available to your character if you want to participate -- or you could shy away altogether. You can roughly divide (Age of Conan's) PvP into three categories. First, you have one-on-one PvP traditionally found in arenas. Second, you have team based "mini-game" type of combat. The essence here is a GUI-driven match-making system which will allow you to form teams with players from all over Hyboria. You will fight it out in instanced "mini-areas" with concrete goals. Finally, there's "siege PvP"

PvP is consensual. Our aim is that you will never be killed unless you ant to participate. PvP should be fun and exciting, not filled with griefers and exploiters. In the darkness of Hyboria, though, and its hidden alleys and grim battlefields everything should be seen as a legal tactic to crush your enemy!

There will be no more "open PVP" RPG games made by anyone that expects a user base larger than 10,000 players. Ever again.

There will be no more "open PVP" RPG games made by anyone that expects a user base larger than 10,000 players. Ever again.

There will be no more "open PVP" RPG games made by anyone that expects a user base larger than 10,000 players. Ever again.

Spellcasters are different in Age of Conan than what you normally see in online games. First of all, only Stygians will use arcane magic -- this foul form of power is not used by the saner Cimmerians or Aquillonians. Second, magic will look, feel and handle differently than in other games. There aren't any magic missile tossing clowns with funny hats. Instead we have more "real" magic, manipulating reality, shaking the Earth, and summoning the odd demon from an unspeakable Hell.... [more, read it]

Shows the designers are paying attention to the world's mechanics, the author's intent and spirit of the books. Note the "funny hats" reference.  No more tu-tu's and figure-skater outfits for your spellcasters.

-Safe/Flag on/off zones:  We can assume everything else falls into this catagory, which is basically a way around designing a good player justice system.

Mounted combat is a major thing to these guys, with formations and all that jazz. The video we got to see had about 20 people riding in formation with the leader of the formation [ he had his colors/standard as well ] deciding where the group went and the players controlling their weapons.

Pvp, large scale combat was also discussed and the technology being used to prevent “lag” looks promising. Part of the movie showed “group attack formation” on horses (can’t wait for that) and yes you will be able to break away from the formation and will be in control of the direction of you attacks, one person will be able to direct the direction the group is going but that is all that person can do with the group formation, everybody is responsible for their actions while on formation

In the same way that fighters will use their swords to slash at certain places on their enemy's body, so too will the magic user, or the archer, have to learn another skill when they need to fight. They'll trying to either do a shoulder level, or an fps style thing. Well, I can't really describe it the way he showed me, but it makes it sound like I need to reup my Planetside subscription. (Of course, I said, well, what if I'm not very good at that, and someone yells, "Better start practitcing!")

Characters will change over time. You can get battle scars. There are other details that went up on that screen about how amazing the character models were, how they're using motion capture to generate them, and it went so fast, I couldn't get it all

The character creation system is going to be FAR more detailed than AO's.. and yes, that will include sliders. weight, height, skin tone, those are just a few that were mentioned. They didn't mention what could be changed on the face or anything, but I tend to think some changes will be available.

You can build your own cities. NPCs will build their own cities as well. These can either be in the border lands, or they can be further in, for more safety, and roleplay.

As far as cities go, it was mentioned that you will be able to “rent” npc’s to guard cities, homes, etc (not quite clear on this). Don't remember what different kind of npc's they said you could have.

Mobs AI will be very intelligent reacting to your level and situation. A single wolf might not attack you but a pack of wolves will come after you. What I gather from that is that agro will not necessarily be a result of level, area, location, etc but a combination of all. Mobs will react to your position, so a mob that is attacking you will try to get you even when you climb a rock a wall or whatever. Also mobs will be able to "hear and smell" you.

Jorgen briefly mentioned how they were aiming to get rid of the static mob mentality [where you pick off one in a flock of three and that one charges and the rest act like nothing is happening]. Things thrown about were NPC's having social cycles, sleeping, eating, raiding, partying, drinking, killing for plunder.. etc [ maslovian need pyramid was thrown about with much familiarity].

The mob AI doesn't really seem to be anything all that new, but at least they're putting some focus on it.

Stolen from mmorpg.com, Funcom has released the E3 trailer for Conan:

http://dl.ageofconan.com/conan/conan_e3_final.wmv

There are some very beautiful environments (the castle) but the animations are horrid, same for the colors on the characters and textures.

God I hate mocap.

God I hate mocap.