f13.net

Any thoughts on this? the game is free(of course you gotta buy the box) until lvl 40(maximum level about 80?) everything up to lvl 40 is considered the single player part, the story. everything after that means the rest of the game is free to you (advance to new class etc). The combat will also have some FPS elements. Finally a game online i can swing my sword and cut a person in half ! (yes this game is going to be an 18)

I've been cautiously interested since they announced it. But as with most MMOG's, I'm in wait and see mode until beta reports start coming out.

true true. I hope they dont start pumping out expansions too quickly, SOE style.

Given that it comes out in a year's time, I am sure more thoughts will appear once beta starts - hopefully earlier than in the case of AO.

But keep in mind a lot of pre-release hype about Anarchy Online was dropped, like underwater cities and stuff. Same could be the fate of AoC:HE.

I love the Conan stories....

However, I think it's a shitty premise for an mmo.

[edit]

Hyboria is not a "world". It is a simple backdrop to illustrate Howard's ideas about barbarism vs civilization, through the character of Conan. There are no other tales worth telling, unless they speak in relation to that.

Of course, you can ignore everything that the creator of the stories cared about. It's been done before.

If I can turn in to a snake, and have hundreds of virgins at my beck and call.... So sold.

As a playable character in the Temple of Set, the chances of you ever being Thulsa Doom will be next to none. There's very few guys who have that power. Hell, there's very few who know magic in any sense. Period.

If you pick Set, you're only choice will be to play one of those virgins. Not the pimp.

Seriously though, Magic sounds like a problem. And even if you were a mage, it's hard to imagine anything that would resemble typical DnD or MMO mages. Hyboria's magic is rare, more about ritual conjuring....And most importantly, there's a total lack of guys pulling fire bolts of their asses.

Playing as one of the virgins is actually more in line with the stories.

Well, here we go then:


Geez, how lame.

3 Races. No Hyrkanians (A more common race in the stories. See: Subotai from the first film), but yet, you can play Stygians (Temple of Set. Rare and isolationist. See: Thulsa Doom). Stupid.

No Asgardians either (a well known, well traveled Norse like race), but Cimmerians are playable (the rarer of the North races, of which Conan was from).

The fact that one can play Cimmerian is silly, but understandable (people want to be Conan, right?....). The funny thing is that he himself rejected much about them. Now Funcom is probably going to write things into the game like Cimmerians are what Conan is all about. They're not.

[edit] Lastly, Class systems make baby Conan cry.

Stop being faggy purists.  The title of the game has nothing to do with trying to stay true to Howard's vision and everything to do with cashing in on the Conan name.  The game could  have elves and dwarves and it doesn't matter.  There are about twelve people alive who have read a Howard novel, nobody will notice all this trivial minutiae about Cimmerians and the Temple of Set.  If the gameplay is tight, who cares?  There's a good premise for this game and it will be awesome if they pull it off.

Which premise is that? The part that you can level offline? Okay, I'll grant that.

But there are things worth considering "good premises" besides game mechanics. Like wanting it to actually be....Y'know...Reflective of the "Age of Conan". It's not merely being a purist. It's wanting something more rich, that in turn, leads to be better gameplay. What does it matter to me if I can level to 40 offline through a storyarc if, in the end, the actual story sucks?

[edit] I forgot to mention:

People do read Conan. That's why it's still here. If people didn't care about it, then it wouldn't even be considered an idea for a video game 70 years after it's creation.

And that trivial minutae isn't trivial at all: Cimmerians were miserable fucks that rarely left their homelands. Conan, for all intents and purposes, kind of disowned them. Now they're considered worthy enough to be among the 3 playable races? It just takes the entire meaning out of who they are.

Like I said about Set: Mages are barely even heard of, like they are in other fantasy stories. How is that trivial?

I saw the demo at E3 last year.  It looked good and it looked interesting.  It has a lot of interesting aspects that occur based on time of day as well to make things as interactive seeming as possible and also has collision detection so when you run an army formation to protect your mages in the back, it really will protect your mages in the back.  It also has you use combo moves etc by using your mouse or keys as directionals for actual actions.  All in all it was a very intriguing design.

Who knows how it will actually play.

My Mom has heard of Conan the Barbarian, but she hasn't read any Howard.  Don't kid yourself, nobody reads Howard.  I'm not saying Howard is a piece of terd, I'm just saying.  Cimmerians and Set Mages are in the game because they will make the game more fun.  Magic is good in a fantasy action RPG.  Cimmerian barbarians are also good. 

But aside from that, I'm not one of those people who get really into the 3rd rate "lore" in computer games.  That's why arguing over how true to the novels a particular feature set in the game is isn't important to me. 

Also, the single player/multiplayer angle is indeed good, but I'm more enamored with the premise of a dark, violent, mature, fantasy-action RPG MMO with twitch based combat and good graphics. 

Fair enough, if you just play games for mechanics. What I mention though isn't a simple matter of lore for lore's sake. It's that the parts of lore I'm mentioning are game defining.

A statement like "Classes make baby Conan cry", for example, isn't meant as an attempt to just a whine for it's own sake. It's literal. Every character in this world, even "magic" users, are too versatile for something like "classes": Conan was a thief, a barbarian, a King, a fucking patron of the arts for crissakes. He was many things. And, more importantly, he wasn't unique in that aspect. A "mage" like Thoth-Amon or Doom would have a bow or axe in one hand, and an enchanted skull in the other (and they'd use the Axe or Bow more!).

Also, Hyboria is not even "fantasy" in the sense that Funcom is trying to impose on it. Howard was a writer of historical fiction before he fleshed out the Conan stories. He found it too limiting, however, for allowing commentary or theory.

What he was attempting to do with Conan was trying to create a platform to discuss theories on history and barbarian people in an entertaining way, but without having to follow the rigid rules of "accuracy" like he would with historical fiction. By creating his own world, he could invent characters instead of base them off historical facts or situations.

That he "created" an imaginary world though, doesn't mean he was trying to create anything "fantasy like" per se. It was created in mind to be similar to our own real ancient world, and without half of the oddbal, fantasical stuff one would see in other fantasy fiction. "Magic" was written to be more akin to how "magic" is written in, say, ancient Egyptian or Chinese texts. Men, were still at their core, men who wielded steel, who caused death in more traditional means, who did not in any fucking sense shoot fireballs out of their ass.

Saying it is "good" for the game is like saying Rome Total War should have Gryphon riders with machine guns as playable units. It just doesn't fit. It's not EQ. It's not DnD. It's barely even fantasy.

Ah fuck it. I'm a purist faggot for wanting Conan to be Conan. So be it.

Yeah, nobody gives a shit about lore. Gameplay is king. That guy who works on the UT engine who says graphics are king has to say that, because the only thing they have is a graphics engine. It only attracts graphics people really. How many people here played the excellent mod Air Buccaneers? Alien Swarm, another excellent game that nobody plays. List goes on.

Remember that article I wrote about conflicting desires recently? That's part of it. There are a significant number of people who play video games purely for the mechanics, and they tend to clash rather violently with people who want story or roleplaying.

And the thing is, I have no problem with someone desiring only gameplay. There's nothing that says if one followed the lore that gameplay still couldn't be interesting. What I want doesn't necessarily bar them from reveling in game mechanics. What they want though, can sometimes bar me.

Think of all of the games that a player, such as dusematic, would think has "good gameplay": Do all of them have mages (for example)? It's highly unlikely.

So why is it a preresquisite for "good gameplay" here?

Because mages are cool.






OK I surrender, that was laugh out loud funny dude. 

Damn. The one time that I'm not trying to be funny, and now someone laughs!

To talk about more game "mechanics" though:



Still undecided on PvP systems, BUT, there will be Seige combat against A.I.?

Rofl.


In other words, "Conan will be a nice guy, and no, there won't be titties."

Morphiend will have his (now common, for some reason) Mage, but he won't have hundreds of virgins at his side.

C'mon people! The Lore is at stake here!

I love the Conan stories but let's face it yes there will be Mages. I don't think "mages were rare in Conan stories" is a great argument because in most MMORPGs literally EVERY living person is an adventurer whereas in books 1 person out of a thousand are. If they were going to be true to the stories most people would be playing as peasants and whores.

That said, there shouldn't be any orcs, trolls, elved or any of that tired shit.

I think it still stands. Warriors, thieves, assassins, swashbucklers, knights, archers, etc.. compensate for the idea that "everyone is an adventurer in mmo's". There are plenty of these guys (and gals) to go around in the stories as well.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a virtual peasant game (nor would I want that either). It just has to be what it is: A slightly fantastic version of our own ancient world. I still stand by what I said about this not being the best setting for an mmo to begin with, but if it is going to be done, at least try to make it reflect what the world is about. Don't transform the game and adjust it to the biases of generic fantasy fans. The true Conan world has left a 70 year legacy....And it's traded in for generic-ness? That's sad.

Just because there isn't much magic doesn't mean there'd be a lack of heroic types to play. What if this was a game based on the Odyssey or the Illiad? We understand that these stories have mythical elements, like Gods, Medusa, or the Nympths, but who would we, as players, expect to be playing in a game like that? The soldiers, that's who. These are the central elements of those stories, these are what comprise the heroes and villians. Not the mythical stuff. It's no different with Conan.

[edit] Oookay. Time to stop! I think I stated my point clear enough  :-D

Just make mages have to work their way through 9 or so different professions before unlocking a quest from a blue ghost granting them the power to toss fireballs out of their arses.

I agree with you about mages, but I think making it a melee only game is going to alienate some people who must play finger-wigglers. That is, unless the melee combat is the OMFGAW-SOMENESS.

Conan killed at least one mage per book.  At that ratio there should be 5 or 6 times as many wizards as there are barbarians in the game...

Wake me up when the game enter at last pre-alpha stage. Geez, getting so excited over a game that's still on drawning boards.

It's not getting excited so much about this particular game as it is of a larger issue: Few developers care to design things with the license in mind so much as they do some preconception of the market.

See also: Warhammer Online

Besides, just because the game is on the drawing boards doesn't mean it can't already offer something attractive. Actually, I would hope that they would get the general idea right as early as possible. How does a game become good otherwise?

If you were a purist faggot you wouldn't be using characters from the movies as examples.

I did it for their sake.  8-)

I mentioned Thoth'Amon at least.

Not to pick on you Stray, but:


Not all Conan stories were about barbarism vs civilization.  Some stories like "Tower of the Elephant" and "The Frost Giant's Daughter" were just good "fantasy" stories that didn't really have a message.  Howard was selling these stories to pulp mags to make a living.  They didn't all have to have deeper meaning.

Well, actually, only Frost Giant's Daughter qualifies as being the one among the two that sits in the pulpy category. Tower of the Elephant was one the first stories where he started fleshing out the ideas around Conan, where he started commentating on the barbarian vs civilization aspects:


Besides, the main point I've been talking about here is that Hyboria was far more down to earth than typical Sword and Sorcery. The barb vs civ thing is a bigger subject, but right now, I'm just raising the issue of magic. And even in the pulpy stories, magic was rare, alien like, extremely powerful, and didn't take a big place in the life of the world.

Tower of the Elephant, again, can be used to show that as well. I speak of magic being "alien like": The Elephant in the story IS an alien! Heh. And Yara, the priest, who enslaves him, is another example of the rarity of mages -- In the story, the people of Zamora didn't quite know who lived in that tower, or what he could do. It was a mystery.

And that is how mages are always written -- they live in a land of rumors, of secrets, that there are few any will come by, that they are so rare people question if they even exist. And when people do come by them...When they do come by them, even someone like Conan is barely a match for them (he had to use the Elepant's power in this particular story to kill Yara).

For damn sure there weren't dozens running around the cities going "LFG". Even in the pulpy stuff. Contrast that, say, with Warcraft, where you have entire cities comprised of mages and sorcerors (like Dalaran), and the idea of having dozens, even thousands, of mages running around makes sense. To impose that idea though, on a world where a lot it's richness and vitality lies in NOT having those things common, is what ticks me off.

[edit] Typos

I agree with all that about magic.  It's a fairly rare thing, and nowhere near an exact science, not to mention the fact that Cimmerians, as one of the playable races, would likely not group with someone openly using magic (to say nothing of the fact that Conan seemed to be one of the few Cimmerians that actually left Cimmeria).  There will be a lot in the game that doesn't fit in with Howard's work.  So it goes for just about any licensed property like SWG or MEO.  Even WoW has trouble sticking to the established lore, because first and foremost you have to make games fun and balanced even if it means not strictly following the continuity of the stories.

If they can make the combat take skill and the player conflict meaningfull instead of taking part in resetting instances who really gives a fuck if they are butchering the IP?

I mean frankly after the quite passable storyline of AO I'm not sure why Funcom had to get on the established IP bandwagon, unless they are planning on making another set of Conan movies and we just dont know about it yet.

Actually, there was talk of John Milius making a new film based on Conan's King/Later period.....Then Ahnold became governor.

Now there's some rumors of the Wachowski's (gasp) taking over the reigns and ridding of Arnold entirely.


We touched on that a bit: Not everyone is concerned exclusively with just game mechanics.

Yeah but we are talking about REALLY REALLY good sounding promises on paper here Stray, not just kind of good really fucking good.  I mean I would suffer a complete butchering of the Warhammer 40,000 IP (but admittedly not Battletech it has suffered enough) for a MMO that actually worked the way they make Conan sound.


-M&B anyone?  But with shiney, loot, AND smashing lances into the heads of other players?  Yes please.


-The first game since ShadowBane to try large scale pvp siege pvp against targets that are player made, not just static forts or bases (Planetside/DAOC I'm looking at you) designed to change hands periodically.

Every time I read their FAQ, not to mention the early sneak peaks on like Gamespot or wherever I get a hard on for the return of Play to Crush...   :-D

Yeah, but they're still pretty quiet on what exactly the PvP rules are. When they mention the seige system, they tout it as fighting against A.I.  Maybe fun in it's own right, but if they're going through all the trouble of designing a decent seige and combat system only to be used for cooperative battle, then I'm going to have to laugh a bit.

Unless I'm reading it wrong?

I've learned more about the books in this thread than about the game, and it was unexpectedly interesting. Thanks, Stray.

I wonder what effect if any this will have on the game?

THQ, Paradox Entertainment and Conan Properties International announced a worldwide, multi-year licensing agreement for games based on Conan. The agreement covers development for all current and next-gen systems as well as PC, wireless and handheld platforms.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1573&Itemid=2

Stray makes a good point.

Why use an established license with backstory and nuance to make a game that has little to nothing to do with that backstory except using similar graphics and ideas?

Sure mechanics can be amazingly awesome, but why not use your own ideas on the backstory, like Warcraft does, to build it the way you want it. Then you are master of the Lore and can make it match the mechanics you want to implement.

Like a Star Wars game without Jedi or space combat, it seems doomed to fail to the fans. The fans of the franchise are going to be the early adopters and if they see a generic game that ignores many of the subtleties of the franchise, they are going to be turned off, regardless of the actual mechanics.

The only reason I can think that you would really need to use the franchise instead of calling it Barbarians: The Chopping is that your ideas are based on that franchise and may legally be seen as derivative and you would have to share the loot. To head off the Marvel Comics v. NCSoft sort of lawsuit before it happens.

I'm wondering when the all-pvp, all the time game called Highlander is going to be made. Level up chopping down the noobs while every K0nn3R in the game yells out "There can b only 1!!21!!1!"

Why do people who make arcade shooters spend years correctly modeling ww2 weapons, locations, outfits, vehicles, etc? At the end it just ends up being bunnyhopping bullshit, huge crosshairs, glowing icons over enemies heads, etc etc etc.

I'm not being sarcastic! I'd really like to know. "Some people think that arcade combat is fun and that's why they like those games!" Sure, nice fucking argument random made up person, but wouldn't be better if they created their own world, their own backstory, and their own conflict?

That's the thing that bugs me the most about big name franchises being used to make mmorpg games. I just know that Middle Earth online is going to be dumber than SWG. That's a bold statement too; SWG is very dumb.

Turbine needs to go back to REWTZ, and that's Asheron's Call. Their own made up shit. Hey, look how AC1 turned out. Who did Turbine answer to when they made that? Didn't they make the game and get scooped up by MS? Who shoved AC2 out the door? Who is the driving force behind D&DO? (I don't know, it might be Turbine and if so - I'm disappointed as most people know) Who is going to be the RULE CHECKER when it comes time to work on MEO? Is it even called that anymore, or is it something like "Peter Jackson - Hobbits and Other Awful Shit That Should Not be Portrayed in Online Worlds"? Anyways, so far the only thing Turbine did that was A++ would play again is early AC1. Matty robes ONWARD, downhill. "Game is too complex guys you need to make it accessable to the 80 IQ xenophobes. Yeah take those buff spells that were balanced to have to be cast on 8 items and just give everyone a single item that covers all areas."

And that's Nija's weekly rant. Toss a few nickels in the hat, I'll be here for a few more hours.

Because most game developers aren't nearly as talented at writing as people like Howard or Tolkien?  Better to base a game around writing that's a thousand times better than anything they could come up with on their own, even if it has to be tweaked in order to make a balanced and entertaining game.  Hell just think of how many characters and how much backstory the Marvel and DC games have available to work with.  It gives the devs a basic starting point to go with rather than trying to come up with a bunch of shit from scratch before they can really begin development.

And as a side note I think MEO is pretty much vaporware at this point.

Is it?  Why?  Not that I mind all that much... I'm sick to death of elves.

I agree with what your saying, but the fact is this license pickup is doubly stupid.  The only thing they can expect the avg gamer to be even remotely familiar with is Arnold the Barbarian.  Like I said earlier though if they can do a robot jesus impression with the mechanics they can shit on whatever license they want.    except battltech you fuckers its been through enough!

Just a hunch really based on past delays, changes in the MMO market, and the fact that they've long since missed the chance to capitalize on the success of the movies.  Reading the web page, I don't get a sense of any sort of hook that makes this game different from any other fantasy MMO other than the license, and in the post-WoW market I think it would be financial suicide to release this game and hope fans of the license keep it afloat (we've seen how well that's worked out for SWG and Matrix Online).

Much like when Warhammer was canceled, I wouldn't be suprised to see bean counters take a closer look at the development costs and compare them to the probable numbers this game will get, and decide it's not worth it.

I don't predict the game to be a huge success.  If they can get sieges and PVP right though without sb.exe type issues I think they could probably decent subscriber base.  I think the thing about the Conan license is that people at least recognize it as sort of a fantasy type world without all the elves, halflings, and fireball tossing wizards.  The general populace knows it's more of a brute force style setting rather than Tolkien-style fantasy, even if they don't know the particulars of the stories.

If we are to assume that the information presented earlier in this thread as far as the 4 classes is correct and that what you have explained about what people recognize in the license is correct, there is already going to be problems with the game as Stray has pointed out.

When the developers start taking liberties with the license to balance it for gameplay and fun, they seem to not care that it messes with what people expect from the world. Seems like it sparks that whole game vs. world debate again.

Meh, Conan is pretty much all name recognition. Although the "problems" with the setting are overblown.

Conan stories don't have wizards all over the place. True. But then again, in crappy D&D novels very few of the characters are wizards either, and I don't hear anyone saying "but a wizard like Raistlin should only be like 1/1000 people!"

In any fantasy setting the vast majority of people are peasants, pig farmers and such. MMORPGs make everyone the exception, because playing a pig farmer is not fun. The population of WoW is 99% adventurers - that make any sense to anyone? It doesn't and it's not supposed to. Aren't there people in the WoW universe who just stay home and raise kids? Apparently not.

What I would hope for in Conan is that they stay true to the general tenets of the stories - darker and grittier than elves wearing pink dresses, no Orcs and Dwarves and that tired shit. A gloomy, baudy atmosphere. Anything else is just icing. Asking for the proper ratio of spell casters to adventurers is silly because no game makes any attempt to portray an actual society realistically.

For most people the Conan name is nothing more than some movies involving a guy with a big sword or a comic book they've glanced at. It's not a license I would pay a lot for, and hopefully they didn't. There doesn't seem to be much point other than "Age of Conan" sounds better than "Age of Bob". But hopefully some of the people are actually Conan fans, that is why they went after the license, and the game will reflect their respect for the material at least a little bit.

----

I agree that MEO is probably close to dead. It has been a long time without any press, and it doesn't appear to offer much of anything interesting. The world of Middle Earth is pretty damn close to WoW already - you have your elves, dwarves, etc. I don't think the world needs another fantasy MMORPG right now that doesn't bring anything new to the table. At least Vanguard will appeal to a somewhat different audience. Who does MEO appeal to?

I do feel sorry for the Matrix guys though - I'm sure at the time the license sounded like a great idea. How were they to know that the 2nd and 3rd film would basically obliterate the Matrix name?

I feel sorry for them because they designed a pretty unique game but they didn't design it well.  I wanted to like it but it couldn't even get passed the "does the game work?" phase of my MMO testing regimen.

The Matrix is actually a really nice setting for a MMORPG. You can have a FFXI type of "job system" and just explain it away as downloading new programs. The thing I never understood though is who are the enemies? I think that is one thing fantasy games have going for them. You can put the head of a billy goat on the body of a hippo, call it a Goappo, and put it in your game. (I hereby declare to have invented the Goappo and will agressively prosecute anyone who steals my creation) Plus there are tons of standard monsters to choose from. Fantasy creatures, overgrown crocodiles, rabid raccoons, etc.

In a game like the Matrix who are you fighting exactly? All humanoids with just different abilities? It sees like fighting agents and other humanoids all the time would get old. And you can't just go and throw in a Goappo without it being a bit odd.

Anyone who has played care to elaborate a bit on that?

Well, I haven't played since Beta, but I would assume that not all of the Merovingians would be strictly humanoid (if you remember from the films, the Merovingian, when he had the job of overseer of the Matrix, shaped it into a world where all kinds of fucked up creatures roamed around. Vampires, werewolves, aliens, etc..).

They just announced playable classes in Lords of the Rings Online:

http://lotro.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=109

Most interesting part: No mages.   I guess they are trying to stay true to Tolkien lore.  Or they are trying to build a lead balloon.

It's funny.  We were chatting about MEO about six months or so ago here and then it just all stopped and I've not thought much about the game since.  I think the last thing posted was the name change.  Cal or someone would stop in and say things about the game but even he stopped commenting.  Other games have posted little blurbs of news right up to the day they announce the closing and it wouldn't really surprise me, I guess.  Maybe all their focus is aimed at DDO right now, though I think that might be a mistake.  After all, EVERYONE AND THEIR GRANDMOTHER has seen those Hobbit movies, but only some geeks play D&D... right? 

I wouldn't be surprised at any game closing anymore... AC2, SWG, MEO... everything that isn't WoW seems to be having at least some worries.  Since WoW it appears people have raised their expectations and I'm not sure game companies have reacted the same yet.  Maybe these theme games, and there seem to be quite a few on the horizon, are just a bad idea.  Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, Conan... we have pictures already in our heads.  Something like WoW has never been anything but a game world.  DDO might have a chance, always having been some sort of game, but I don't think it's going to be easy.  They have some weird rule set they HAVE to follow or alienate what is probably their target audience. 

MEO has Hunters. They didn't call them Rangers, I suppose because only Aragorn's followers were "Rangers" per se.  If there's one thing I can thank WOW for it's that fantasy MMOs from here on out will have a melee/ ranged hybred that actually does ranged damage.  Hoo-fucking-ray.  Nothing pissed me off more than playing EQ and discovering my Ranger was a melee gimp.

You ever play a Champion at launch in DAOC that has to be the most terrible light tank hybrid ever...  I still have the mental scars on my fucking brain from being that gimped.

@Margalis:  That was part of MxO's problem, the sights and sounds of the game were not impressive.  I like urban landscapes, but if your whole game is urban you better make sure you dont repeat your textures a bunch of times.  There should have been more parks, more water, more variety.  It was a decent game visually you could turn on cars and pedestrians to really make the game world seem to hum around  you.  But the way npc's were was SOO STUPID basically each area had several gang spawns.  Each gang had a stupid name, and dropped some stupid items that collector npc's would give u something for.  Yeah, umm ok?  It was grind those assholes, or the Mero-guys who were in this static dungeons ploped all over the place.  Oh and you could grind contact missions that illustrated how NOT to create random content, think AO's missions but fucking worse.

Really I dont know what they did while they were in development so long.  Create interlock combat?  But not even give it enough animations or perfect the system.  Oh wait, they didn't even make it not lag to shit and look stupid 75% of the time.

Urban maps just make me stabby.  The way buildings interact and the lack of access for services, utillities, loading docks and parking concerns just underscore that the people creating the maps are just geeks and artists who think they know what goes into a city.  It really stands out to anyone with some kind of understanding of buildings and planning, but it niggles at the back of everyone's minds as visible by the comments made about urban maps.

Map builders would be better-served just ripping wholesale parts of cities and modeling them than trying to create a 'believable' city.. and with some of the larger cities it'd be easy to rip-out pieces that very few people would recognize.   Then just tweak and balance the map from there.

"Level designers" are usually very very bad at making any kind of believable urban map. One of the worst is, albeit a good game, Bloodlines.

Wow.

So we have 3 flavors of melee tank, one of whom sounds like a non-healing paladin (Captain), one of whom is a straight taunt machine and one of whom is a weapons master type. Then we have a Ranger, excuse me HUNTER, and a rogue, excuse me BURGLAR, who is of course not a fucking thief but a backstabbing assassin. Great. We got your bard, the buffer and general bitchbot of the lot and the Loremaster, who will be the rarest and most sought after class for groups, as he will not only be the only healer, he'll also be the only blaster.

The Loremaster does sound interesting, but the cynic in me can't help but map these classes onto the typical unoriginal holy 4 of the MMOG design book.

Prediction: the 'gameplay' bores will be more disappointed with this game than the 'lore' bores. Anybody who thinks this is going to be the panacea for virtual hooliganism is going to fall as flat on their faces as schild did with SW:G NGE.

I'm really sick of that book.

Yeah, I think that one is deserving of the Farenheit 451 treatment.

I like the lore-ish names of the classes that LotRO is using, but Haemish is right (as usual)- not much, if any innovation there.

I find it innovative that there is no PvP in a game setting that is being ripped apart by a struggle between light and darkness with the very fate of the world is at stake.  But I'm just a stupid griefer so ignore me...

I noticed that too.  Also, no crafting?  The lack of PvP with an advanced twitch combat system is odd. 

How do you feel about the zone design in CoH and CoV?

--GF

It has a nice vertical landscape...

Down below, it's not exactly bare bones, nor is it detailed enough. Kind of nice if you don't glance too close. Some things stand out though: How many cars varieties are there? Where are the services (except one big police station in each zone, I can't think of anything else)?  Why is there a freeway running through some zones but not others? Why is there basically one restaurant spread about the entire city ("El Super Mexicano").

I'm joking on that last one...I think there's more....But still, not enough.

GTA does an urban setting 20 times better, and even that isn't the greatest.

[edit] And btw, I'm not saying "OMG CoH sucks!!" or anything like that. Out of Mmog's at least, it does the urban setting better than everything else.

Man, I love the GTA. Any urban landscape you can't drive through and jump over stuff is always going to pale in comparison.

What stray said about verticality holds true for me.  It's beautiful to see a highway actually going across the top of some buildings.  Buildings with different massings, soaring verticality and differing heights to form a skyline.  You can tell someone had at least an understanding of cities.

  As far as actual buildings and urbanscape, however, it doesn't quite make it.  While the buildings all meet the sky wonderfuly they fail at the ground level.  The skyscapers all have these huge plazas but no means for trucks, semis, etc to get to them and deliver goods.  There are no allys, allyways and back lots with the mess and chaos that makes a building and a city actually work.  Parking and parking structures I can ignore, because who wants to model a 3-story below ground structure.  But there are dead-ends, hidey-holes and "Backs" to most building masses.  COH is lacking in these.

Tony Hawk games do the best urban landscapes imo (as cartoony as they can sometimes be).

Actually, I prefer urban map that is player comfortable. That is, I prefer Q4 where you just can't get lost, over F.E.A.R pseudo-realistic silliness.
If they wanted to make realistic map, they would have to take care for realistic player interaction first. It's totally ridiculous when triad-rocket launcher armed commando can't get past plaster cube wall, not to mention things as fragile as window curtains (F.E.A.R, I'm looking at you!). Want realistic urban map - fine, but I want to be able to break thru every wall, squeeze through every hole, open/break every door and jump/climb through every fence!

New trailers up (http://www.ageofconan.com/conan/media/videos/index.html). Sure makes it look sexy. Though a bit dark.

Ok, watched it.
They finally added blood! You can all see how sucky it was without blood.
Now, they're talking about groundbreaking graphic, WHY NOT RELEASE HI-DEF TRAILER? Can't afford hosting 70 mb file? Even Earth Simulator can't run it in 1280x1024? Nero encoder too hard too handle?

Seriously, I demand HI-DEF trailer. We got PCs and broadbands to download, you have bandwith to release it. 480 x 272 trailers we're good 10 years ago, why the hell force us to watch 5 times shrinked video of your gameplay. PO released full HD trailers and they got GREAT publicity for that! You claim groundbreaking grahpic, so why won't you show them to us?

.mov is the same as .avi now? crazy.

Edit: By Crom, I wish that was a console game.

What's with the trend of "groundbreaking" graphics all having that clayish look to them (EQ2 and Doom 3 would be other examples)? It doesn't look very attractive imho.

I do, however, like how trailer begins with a naked guy on a mountain, then ends it with a armor clad guy on a mountain. That's a nice touch.

Trailer = meh

I think the game may be more popular if they make it Gor Online rather than Conan Online.

Gor?

How bout Groo Online, now THAT I'd play.

That's exactly what I thought when I read the above posts. Also, Transmetropolitan online. Someone needs to make THAT city.

The video told me nothing other then Funcom has balls.  The greatest online endeavor or something like that, not to mention the use of the word groundbreaking like 8 times.  You know I'll be railing against this video when we finally see the playable product and it is yet another Diku clone.  Although I have to say, that AO's classes were pretty unique/cool so I have some degree of hope in their ability to do something different. 

Here's hoping...

For it's time AO was pretty cool. Really an under-appreciated game.

I would not say I have high hopes for Conan, but it has potential. The movie didn't do anything to turn me off, like have an interface with 15 different floating windows in it.

Think a infamously bad ripoff. Over 40(?) novals and 2 really bad movies.  Type it into google. Started off as a bad SF series about a earthman thrown onto a parraell earth where men are men, women are weak and swords rip people apart with really bad diagloue. As it continued, the SF and fantasy was dropped for more "Men are strong and Women deserve to be in bondage and heres a 40page descirption of that".

Lots of Sex and Violance, but not nearly as we'll writtin as Conan. Hence more popular I suspect.

Until the author was blacklisted by the publishing industry for his very non-PC opinions on women.  I ran into him on a panel on 'Women in Sci-Fi/Fantasy', panel was him, David Weber(for Honor Harrington), the woman who wrote the 'Chicks -n- Chainmail' books, and one other woman.  It was an... interesting... discussion.

Alkiera

"trailers" like that just don't do much for me. I'd rather see something FRAPS'd with the actual user interface and a character going about his business.

Someone page me when something like that happens and is actually hosted on the official site for any game. I really hate the noclip flybys and other Hollywood shit.

I am looking forward to Age of Conan.  Trailer looked okay, and I really liked how they presented the world.  I just hope they dont have terrain walls, I hate terrain walls.

I bet they don't have interface yet.
Trailers are good, they show you what devs aim for.

With all of the buzzwords that trailer used, this better be one hell of a groundbreaking, stunning, BESTEST MMORPG EVAR! Smoke and mirrors; I saw nothing in that trailer of any substance.

How anyone can expect anything positive out of this is beyond my comprehension.  We were all thinking "WOW, OMG, YES" when SWG announced their new twitch system.  Some of us forgot to remember how incompetent the devs were at putting any changes into the game.  Did anyone here play AO's launch or the first half year?  Anyone still have the scars from the 12.6 patch? This looks to be very ambitious and well beyond the means of Funcom. 

I wonder what the Vegas odds are on the launch of this game being an abject disaster and the beta being an unstable mess.  Themis must be salivating in anticipation.

I think that Funcom is uniquely poised to do it right though, if they can.

They suffered for their shitty launch.  I'm sure they look at DAOC and CoH's numbers and think if they hadn't stumbled so badly out the gate they would have had that for AO. 

Either that or they think AO failed because it was too unique and interesting, in which case we'll get another lame-as-fuck EQ clone.

The thing that worries me about it being from Funcom, "game-wise" (I won't mention lore), first and foremost is the fact that AO became a Super Grind. There's like 220 levels in AO, if I recall. I fear for Conan.

Secondly, that they've seemed to have put a lot of thought into seige combat, yet, they're ambigous about PvP. Their descriptions of the seige game speak only of the cooperative aspects, against enemy AI. That's a shame.

AO was pretty much a lame-as-fuck EQ clone (I kind of like some lame-as-fuck EQ clones, see: WoW).  It ended up having an interesting social atmosphere but otherwise.. it's your standard DIKU with guns.

AO has more interesting classes and skillsets than your average EQ clone imho.....Or maybe that's just because it's Sci Fi.

That's about the only good thing I can say about it.

-they tried to do an actual storyline
-they didn't skimp on classes
-they tried to make multiple builds viable (although the penalties for taking lt. and dark blue skills were so great it did not quite work)
-huge item diversification, although again some items were so unbelievably superior that it didn't quite matter
-complex crafting system -not my thing so I never bothered to figure it all out
-lots of different armor looks
-they included as much in-game humor as any blizzard game
-the world was quite large and diverse even more so now with the expansion areas I suspect

I really wanted to like AO but the grind + the brokeness of much of their content at launch made me un-sub and I never really committed to going back.

I don't know, I guess I just find it pointless to be cynical due to a company fucking up it's first MMO launch over 4 years ago.  I guess if Age of Conan sucks when it comes out you can do the whole "I told you so" thing, but I'd rather just wait and see.  Worst thing that could happen is the game is complete crap with no redeeming qualities and I'm out a few bucks.  Such is life.

I just want to make it clear that I am copywriting the tag line - "Hyperboring Adventures" and no one may use it without my permission (and a small donative).

I know gamers and what they like to complain about and I have faith that I will be a millionaire within days of release.

Failed and gave up

-they didn't skimp on classes
Most of which were just bad sci-fi reskins on standard EQ/Diku-esque classes only IN TEH FUCHUR!


Yet still focused on Tank/Mage/Healer formulas


Most of which couldn't be found by the player without using a 3rd party plugin to juggle missions or a borked crafting system


From all reports I've heard, it was borked, and may still be unviable or unrewarding


Yes, they did, and the engine couldn't handle it until well after release.

The other stuff they got right. I'm sure AO turned into a decent if unspectacular Diku-esque game. But nothing about AO makes me hopeful about Age of Conan. I WANT it to be good, and the graphics engine looks good. But they are going to have to let me play it before I'm convinced.

RPG Vault put up five arcticles last week:

Interview with Game Director Gaute Godager (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/668/668319p1.html)
Music (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/668/668434p1.html)
Art Direction (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/670/670087p1.html)
Technology (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671195p1.html)
Combat (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671579p1.html)

The interview is probably the most interesting of the bunch.   There's a lot about combat (which sounds like it will be more fun if you use a gamepad), a bit about PVP including Drunken Brawling, and at the end of the Combat article is a 2 minute video showing parts of the Jungle area where I think part of the single player game takes place.

For Stray's benefit, Seige PVP:


And now I really want an Elephant mount:

I don't believe it.  It'll never happen.  If they make a game, it won't have half the features they've listed.  Even if it has all the features and does exactly what they say it'll do... it'll be crap, you wait and see.  All these new fangled games are crap... just ask anyone here.  Anyway, the internet is just a fad.  It'll be long gone by the time we get elephants.

You couldn't just let me have the dream of an MMO with Elephant mounts for even just a half an hour?

No.  Get those sugar plums out of your head and replace them with cob webs... like me.   :-) 

I'm with Signe (but thanks for pointing the seige stuff out anyways, Vel  :wink:).

What is it with Americans and double wovels? SIEGE. THIEF. THEIR. WEIRD.

See? Easy.

That Age of Conan stuff reminds me about the "underwater cities" spiel about Anarchy Online - not to mention the Clan vs. Omni war that was MIA until a twisted version appeared in Notum Wars in the form of the tower battles.

I think you are right in not taking everything Funcom states as truth. They are selling their product first and foremost.

From the age of 5 we are told, 'when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.'  Later we're told "except when they don't."  From that point most of us say, fuck it I own a dictionary and a computer with spellcheck.

Q4 2006 for GM is a long way away.  This is hype over an incomplete and as yet publically invisible Alpha.  Haven't we been here before?

Edit: there's some impressive stuff here, particularly Combat.  Hope if anything they can pull that off.  Graphics be damned.

"Siege" it is then.

Whatever. You knew enough of what I meant to correct me, and ultimately, that's all that matters on video game message boards.

There have been much bigger offenders as far as hype goes, especially if you're going by how far away the expected release date is.  How long have we been hearing about games like MEO and Vanguard now?

Fuck I don't really care if Age of Conan ends up being a complete failure as long as they fail at some new shit.  Some people here can manage to get excited over some half-assed attempt to add pseudo-twitch combat to SWG.  Seems to me that if nothing else there should at least be some interest here in how the Conan combat system turns out.

Heh, sorry bud. I don't know Signe's excuse, but at this point, I honestly, truly hate all mmog's thoroughly. I'll laugh at all of them with equal measure.

That being said, yes, it'll be nice if they actually do something new and interesting with the combat. It'll only be interesting to me, however, when it actually happens.

I've noticed that, but I much prefer the "usefully cynical commentary", rather than just the cynical.  One leads to conversation, like some of your other posts in this topic.  The other just leads to "MMO's suck".

But...but....They do. That's my commentary for the time being. It's not the commentary that I want to do per se, but I don't see much to get excited about here yet.

The fact that the combat system is being touted as revolutionary is telling on why I am the way I am. This kind of attack system has been done in console and arcade games for generations now (And not just with fighting games...With beat-em-ups as well). Also, none of the descriptions really chart out anything about Defense, which is what I think really makes a combat system shitty or not.

Stack that on to the fact that mmo's never really produce what they promised they would when it comes to combat. Especially what they promise in an (pre?) alpha stage. I don't know why that is, but everything usually ends up being borked or nonexistent. And who exactly is assigned to work on the combat anyways? A bunch of rpg coders from Funcom?

I don't what else to say except "Thanks for the links" and "MMO's suck". Sorry. It was originally in lighthearted jest anyhow (Signe started it!).

[edit] Take comfort in the fact that I'm only cynical when it comes to mmo's.

I've said myself in other topics here about Age of Conan that I'd be surprised if a lot of what they're talking about makes it into the game.  That said, as far as hypothetical bullshit goes, the stuff I'm reading here at least sounds more entertaining than most of the hypothetical bullshit I've heard about most other upcomming MMO's right now.  Hell as long as they keep the first 20 levels free like they say they're going to, then you at least get a "single player" game out of it that you don't need to subscribe to.

Did they mention how they're going to combat hacking? By providing single player game, they give everything to players. Not that smart thing to do.

It may still require a server connection. When Phantasy Star Online came out for the PC that's what they did, even the single player parts stored the character on the server. Single player != no internet connection.

Yeah, they've said that you'll still be on the server.  There'll just be little to no interaction with the other players, and you'll be able to play those levels without a sub.

I'm sorry.  I don't have an excuse.  I just say stuff.

Here:

(http://www.luangwa.net/news/images/RPS%20Images/zambia_RPS_baby_elephant.jpg)

Could there be anything cuter?

Yeah, but that's the secret of your charm.  Stray... not so much   :wink:

My suspicions were correct. Gosh....If Vel, then who else?

Don't get me wrong Stray, you're actually one of my favorite posters here (even if you guys lose me when the talk shifts to physics and thermodynamics and the like).  I just like your reasoned MMO hate much better than the blind MMO hate.  I was there with you in Severance.  I know WoW did bad things to you, but you have to believe that there'll be better times to come.

Or something...

It wasn't just WoW, but something else (heh can't say).

But anyways, I admit, most of anything I say about mmo's hasn't been constructive lately. I'll keep myself in check from now on.

Well it doesn't seem like there'll be much of substance to discuss until DDO releases at which point I'm guessing you'll have plenty of "constructive" things to say about it.

Maybe the real problem I'm seeing though is that "teh hate" seems more extreme when we don't have batshit insane posters like SirBruce, DV, and WindUpNutsack here to put it in perspective by acting even less rational.  To that end I think that every banned poster should be allowed to post again during Raging Douchebag week and other special occasions.

I don't think we can put SirBruce or even WUN in the same catagory as DV.  If an asshole could be an outie... that would be him.

Ooo, that was a good one. Well, I mean a bad one. But it was good. But also bad.

Can I just say that I view the hype about Age of Conan with what can most nicely be described as "carefully guarded interest" as opposed to out and out cynicism?

It's a new set of things to fuck up spectacularly. Funcom has not done anything to prove they could actually pull off the things they are talking about here, but it sounds fun enough that I'll keep watching with the above-mentioned CGI.

Haemish wins again.

But look at their impressive lineup of Genesis, Saturn, and SegaCD games! (http://funcom.com/funcom/products/older)  You trying to tell me that the company that made Casper for the Saturn can't pull this off?

Y'know, I had no idea that they had that much console experience (Casper or not). I can't tell which are the ports and which aren't, but still, it's somewhat encouraging.

That might be the worst selection of console games I've ever seen!

Then again, Blizzard console games were nothing special either. Rock and Roll Racing was kind of fun I suppose.

Umm...Samurai Showdown?

Granted, it's just a port.

I love Samurai Showdown but it's just a port, and while I haven't played that one most SNK ports in those days were pretty terrible.

Don't make me poke you with Charlotte's standing B...I will!