f13.net

http://www.ageofconan.com/common/classList/classList.html (http://www.ageofconan.com/common/classList/classList.html)

Didn't see this posted anywhere else, and it probably deserves its own thread for class discussion.

I find the list is very impressive with some fairly original classes. Remains to see how well they will be fleshed out and how much the differ in playstyle.

Meh... pretty standard fare. I had to chuckle at this in the rogue description:



Will somebody tell these guys that they need to proofread this shit?

I'm interested in the game, but the concern I have always had is their archetype system. Even EQ2 abandoned that (earlier this year). You're asking people to "discover" their preference, and even if you have a system in which they can change their mind, they have to do a bit or lot of the same content over again.

This is complicated by the PvP switch at level 20, which while not a universal world-wide rule is arguably one of the main features of AoC. Nobody's going to know what's good or gimped in PvP until a critical mass of players make their real class choice the moment they can get attacked by other players. Doesn't seem right if they want the game to be more than niche.

I've been holding out hope over the course of this year that they'd dump the archetype>sub-choice thing. Ah well. They can always do it a year after launch I guess...

In some respects it has been dumped, or to put it another way it's just not really a problem the way they're doing it.  From what I remember in reading past interviews, once you finish the single player mode (which takes you up to level 20 when you choose your class), you never have to go through it again when you start new characters.  So it sounds to me like with every character after the first you can choose your final class right away.  They also got rid of the later class choice which was supposed to take place at 40 or 60 or something I think.

Im pretty sure this was posted like 2 or 3 months ago. But more Conan is a good thing.

I like the Rogue / Necromancer hybred one.

Morph, stop being hopeful.  You know what happens....

This is correct.

If it came down to playing habits in determining my class, I'm gonna end up being a Reaver.


Not really.

Scion of Set -- Healer with snake forms and poisons. Fucking Thulsa Doom man!

Priest of Mitra -- Healer with AoE repulsion/knockback spells

Liberators/Conquerers -- Plate Warriors with Flags/Morale Buffs

Dark Templar -- Plate Warrior with Life Taps

Halberdier -- AoEing Polearmer

Let him pretend the usual won't happen this time.

Scion of Set -- Snake form is just another shapeshifter (been done and is a novelty at best) and the poison attacks is just standard shaman fare. Can you say cave spec'd shaman in DAoC?

Priest of Mitra -- Most of the healers I PUG with are downright repulsive, agreed. Repulsion (turn undead) and knockback... wheee! At least my boring stare at the party heath bars and click one button is now spiced up with the flying Wallendas.

Liberators/Conquerers -- Uh, paladins, hello? So, now instead of carrying something useful like a SHIELD, I get to carry this ghey assed flag with me? Make it rainbow colored to match my flouncing melee style.

Dark Templar -- EQ's shadowknight, back from the dead. Get it? Back from the... oh never mind.

Halberdier -- All the love of a DAoC armsman, with out the damage potential. C'mon, someone swinging a six foot polearm with two hands isn't going to do a hellalotta damage? Puh-leaze.

First off, you said "standard fare". To me, that means the Big 3 (Healer, Mage, Warrior), and the other common variants. Just because a class has been done before in one other game doesn't mean it's standard fare. Give me more examples than "Lame, that was in DAoC!" Fuck man, there's only so many "purely" original fantasy combatants one could invent. That doesn't mean they're all standard fare though.

And besides, a lot of these ideas are from the Conan stories. REH predates fucking Tolkien, let alone EQ or Dark Ages of Camelot.


It's an entertaining and effective form of crowd control that hasn't been done anywhere except CoH (as far as I know). Be sarcastic all you want, but it does liven up the healing or buffing game a bit (Force Field and Kinetics from CoH come to mind). Stop teh hate. At least the damn engine even allows for knockback. That's more than I can say for most games.


I was thinking something more along the lines of standard bearers I've seen in single player rpgs (a recent one would be Titan Quest). And telling just by the general feel of the combat mechanics, something a hell of a lot more dynamic than the shitfest that is the WoW Paladin class. Don't even mention WoW Paladins. From what I can tell, that kind of automated gaming experience isn't even possible in AoC.


Eh, I have no idea what you're talking about here. You win, I guess.

Assuming you have a good dev team, I disagree.  Better to have people playing classes they actually like in PvP, rather than whatever's flavor-of-the-month, because at the end of the day they'll balance things out somewhat.  I highly doubt most people's real preference for PvP is 'whatever's powerful' - they have a certain playstyle they like, and not having a million "OMG CLASS X IS CRAP CLASS Y IS GOD" posts to swim through right out of the gate helps people feel uninhibited about their class choices.

Another thing, AO sucked on many levels, but I think Funcom did a great job with their class system (granted, it was sci-fi, so they had more to work with there). If anything, I think they'll execute fantasy class ideas in more interesting ways than what you've seen in EQ or DAoC (this goes without mentioning the combat system itself).

Secondly, if anything deserves to be called "standard fare", it's any game (or any future game) with fucking Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs in it. The Conan world stands out on that basis alone. It's more rooted in Bronze Age culture and myths than it is "high fantasy" or medieval/renaissance styling. Cities, armor, weaponry, etc., are more like something you'd see in Troy than Lord of the Rings. Magic is based around religion and divining than it is wizardry or scholarship. There are no warring races. Just warring civilizations.

Can we at least wait until beta to start bitching over classes?

I really like the idea of the variety of Rogue kits.

NO. It's on. Now. The thread title shall not go to waste.

I reserve the right to bitch about anything I want. Thank you very much. Having said that I followed the link. And.. If they can implement it theres diversity there. I did say "if"

So, you have a healer with poison, healer with knockback. Tanks with flags, tanks with polearms. Casters with pets, casters without. When you get right down to it, they all go back to that big three. Add whatever gimmick you want, those three exist for a reason. Even the modern military has those three archetypes -- infantry, artillery and medics.

The flag wavers, gonna have to see that in action, but I don't have much hope for it. Call me a cynic for sure, but I have been through too many disappointments to hold my breath for long.

And, I am not young enough to cry "Lame!". I was just pointing out that they don't necessarily qualify to be called "original". Can you even get original these days? At some point, all the songs have been sung. Although, it might be worth noting that I liked DAoC's class variety the best so far.

The classes are way more original than the line up I've seen in MMOs for the last couple of years. Look at Defiler as well, cloth wearing melee class that seems to drain essence from kills, which is then used for granting "unnatural powers". Herald of Xotli also sounds fairly original from the description, melee mage which summon weapons and turns into demon form. The Lich seems to be somewhere along the same lines but with undead powers instead of demonic, not what I would call your normal fantasy Lich.

So far there's very limited information on how the classes really are though. There's no information about the thieving abilities of the Master Thief for example, which would be a little strange if left out entirely.

If the combat is as twitchy as described in the FAQ ( http://www.ageofconan.com/conan/en/faq.html (http://www.ageofconan.com/conan/en/faq.html) ), then even the classes we've all played before hopefully will feel renewed.

EDIT: Just found this one  http://www.conan.ch/conanonline/interview_quotes.htm (http://www.conan.ch/conanonline/interview_quotes.htm). Fuck, I'm geting drawn into the hype machine, there's some really intresting shit in there  :-P.

Awesome. Assuming playing to 20 is not like playing to DAoC 50 (time/boredom-wise), this'll be a great thing.

Otherwise, I agree with this thread. These are inventive class combinations. I am concerned with the number of classes though, same problem I had with DAoC. I did think DAoC had too many classes as well, mostly because of the arbitrary assignment of abilities to individual classes forcing the same specialization that always happens. WoW's 9 classes (8+1 faction and 9 flatout shortly) are a better approach. Even the most perceptually-gimped class can still be relevant and fun.

But, also like DAoC (was a Smite Cleric), I'm leaning towards a Priest archetype in AoC, like Scourge of Derketo here. Based purely on description. I don't mind occasionally healing, but I want big damage. Or maybe a Mage>Lich.

Just because DAoC fucked up balance so bad doesn't mean we should settle for generic archetypes like the ones Blizzard did. IMO, DAoC colors too many people's perceptions on the subject of "class balancing". There are several games that have done, certainly not a perfect job, but a better job than Mythic has, when it comes to class implementation and balancing (Shadowbane and CoH come to mind, as far as Diku-ish games go). I think Dark Ages' balancing problems (both real and imagined) were more due to Realm segregation, not the variety of things offered.

It's not a question of balance, because I agree with you underlining "imagined" there (imbalance is assumed based on losses). It's about whether a Class matters at all.

For MMORPGs, I basically feel there's an inverse proportion between Class Relevance and Class Quantity. The more classes there are, the better the chance that a few of them are not going to be worth playing by enough people for the developers to support them. Yes, I'm thinking specifically of SWG here, though EQ and DAoC do apply as well.

It's not like AoC is offering some fundamentally ground-breaking new set up features for players. This is typical RPG stuff with some interesting twists most won't have seen before because they ignored (or don't know about) titles with under 500k players. But I feel they're making a mistake by arbitrarily separating these abilities across a more-than-needed number of classes. Why does on class need to do Fire-based AOEs and another Weather-based for example? Forced grouping? And while both offer Healing, which is better? Or is their version of Healing enough to supplement the lack of a dedicated Healer if one is available?

All of this is, of course, based purely on reading that site. I want to be wrong. I want 20+ classes to be relevant and interesting enough that all of them are played by the same percentage of players. But if history is a guide, it'll first be the PvPers that decide which specific classes matter, followed by the min/maxxers and then followed by everyone else who doesn't have time to read through terabytes of corrections-against-perceptions posts, thus relegating whatever-number-of-interesting classes to the curious... who are never the majority percentage of plaeyrs.

I won't argue for or against the "DAoC fucked up my world" comment. Who cares? It's not a matter of how many classes you have, how you segment the abilities or how balanced they may be in the rock/paper/scissor equation. It's the fact that it all goes back to the trinity mentioned at the beginning. Most players will want to increase their efficiency, find the straightest path, and reduce any risk in order to achieve their goals. This has meant and will mean that people will gravitate toward those classes that provide them the greatest potential to beat the game mechanic with the least amount of variation. For that to happen you need healing to mitigate damage, a DPS class to deal damage and a tank to soak up the damage. Is there anything I missed? And, if you are playing along at home, that means some kind of warrior class, some kind of priest class and some kind of mage. What you call them, how they achieve their role, and what abilities they use are just window dressing.

OK, I'll agree with that then. In a games with a lot of classes, there's bound to be at least 3 or 4 largely unplayed/worthless ones. Some ideas are probably better off being consolidated/merged with another class.

I suppose I could even point out some worthless ideas in a game whose class system I did like:

Shadowbane

Rangers and Huntresses were largely unplayed, and mostly outshined by Bards, Scouts, and even Druids to an extent. Furies weren't played much -- Channelers and Wizards were better, and Furies really only had one unique skill in their favor -- Group Flight -- Which was rarely used. Finally, Thieves should have been dropped. They had one thing that set them apart from Assassins -- "Thieving" -- and that could have probably been put in the Assassin skillset.

One could make an argument that Crusaders and Prelates should have been one class. The same goes for Templars and Confessors. So now, 4 classes become 2 extremely flexible ones.

I don't know much about the expansion classes (Necromancer, Doomsayer, Sentinel, and Nightstalker), but lets just throw them out anyways.

Finally, there were about 50 Runes in the game (or close to it). Half of which could be very useful and class defining, and the other half entirely worthless (Wererat anyone?).

So, even if all of these things were thrown out, there's still like 12 unique Classes, 20-25 Runes, and a skill system that blows away WoW's talent system (a lot of Talent trees are worthless anyhow, due to gear, general viability, or "raiding" priority concerns......While SB Warriors alone could be built in at least a dozen unique and powerful ways). This all goes without mentioning tweakable stats (unlike WoW's automated Str/Stam/Agi/Int distribution).

Lastly, it's not like WoW is very balanced either. Those guys are so fucking lazy they decided to just make "Horde Paladins" instead of actually fixing things. Classes get pigeonholed, entire Talent trees considered worthless --- Balance Druids or Survival Hunters, for example, are virtually non-existent. Ret or Caster Pallys are a joke. "Anyone who can heal, WILL heal -- Even that Shaman who does more fucking burst damage than anyone else).

Can we physically dodge projectiles?  If so, that changes my perception of how some of these classes might play.

Bullet time. Broken record.

On that I totally agree (and thanks for the insights into SB. I only played it a few months a few years into the game, and while I loved it, it taught me just how much I can invest into an MMORPG... not as much as SB required). It's not a paragon on balance nor Talent relevance. I just like that it forces players to make fewer "affect the rest of my life" choices. Even if a Talent template proves useless, at least that can be remapped without having to redo 1-60.

There could have been some changes since E3, but if I recall correct, yes, you can dodge. AoC is not the typical lock-target/throw-dice approach of EQ-through-WoW. It's not Planetside hyrbid-FPS either, but it's somewhere in between. Aiming is realtime and mouse/skill based. Again, this is months-old memory going here but I do remember dodging something manually.

I'm not sure how they could even begin to pull this off in a mmog.  With lag being such a universal constant in large scale battles, particularly in games where graphic glitz is par for the course, it seems the addition of player skill will equate to a means of using player lag to your advantage.  I see plenty of this in DAoC and wonder how lag would influence hit and dodge rates in a game of any scale.  It works in fps because you can limit the players present in any encounter.  As the encounters scale, this must become very difficult to control.

How many large-scale MMOG encounters do we truly see though. PS is one obvious example, and it sorta worked there pretty well. SB was another, but that was fast-action RPG really, and, well, not the best performing game tech wise. But aside from these, you generally don't have 40 on 40 mass encounters Braveheart-style. It's pockets of fights here and there, localized events.

Not saying AoC is going to, or not, pull it off. Just saying the parameters for success don't absolutely need to assume huge battles.

I guess I'm used to DAoC where it's not uncommon to see 80-100 vs 80-100 on a keep seige.  With all the spell effects and such, it can turn into Dark Age of Powerpoint on even the best of machines.  Granted, the game is almost 5 years old, but adding elements of twitch during those battles would leave a lot of room for cheese.  I hope that this title can pull it off... I'd be very surprised if they could. 

To be honest I have never understood the attraction of large battles.  It's always a lagfest and it's never about skill of any kinds - rather, it's about whether you get unlucky enough to be targetted by 15 people at once.

I can understand the general attraction of epic battles, but you'd think that there exists some way of breaking them into manageable chunks under the overall strategic leadership of one more more players.

Keep the twitch skill, and then just design the game so that it's rare to have a battle larger than 20vs20.

For instance, have people fighting in constrained areas (castles, dungeons, etc.) and then make sure collision detection is in at launch; at some point, a larger force means that your guys will be bunched up and unable to move/dodge from attacks.

1. Games that target larger audiences have the potential to make larger amounts of money.

2. Most people suck at or don't like PvP. 

3. Reconcile 1 & 2.

I'm sorry, but for most people PvP is like driving... everyone thinks that they're good at it.  The truth is, in pvp games the average player will lose an encounter far more than they will win it.  FPS games get around this by allowing players to get back into the action fast enough that losing doesn't sting (and they don't notice that they're losing so much).  It's my opinion from 4+ years of DAoC that large scale battles give the mediocre player a better chance of success in PvP.  This is the attraction of large scale battles to many (whether they realize it or not). 

To say that these battles take "no skill" is incorrect.  They take a different type of skill.  Small scale skirmishes are more about fast reflexes and quick thinking.  Large scale battles are about long-term strategy and attrition.  I think the gaming community has classically placed far more emphasis on the former than the latter and has lost an appreciation for the strategic element. 

I've stuck with DAoC because I can find small scale, group scale, and large scale battles any given night within the same game world.  Limiting the focus of pvp really has the affect of generating a niche game.  I couldn't imagine playing GW for 4 years for example.  Having only the option of small scale pvp gets boring very quickly and lacks any type of world-feel to it.  Of course these are personal tastes, but that's what a lot of this is about.

As an australian I have to say twitch in MMOGs, with servers located in the USA of course, has no appeal for me whatsoever.

I think someone already did that (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com).

PvP servers and Battlegrounds are segregation not reconciliation.

Do people really play WoW for the PvP?  It's terrible.  I always considered WoW a well crafted PvE game.  PvP... not so much. 

I would play WoW exclusively for the PvP. Especially with all of the supposed revamps in the expansion. Combat can be relatively fun (so long as you're not fighting twinks and epics, or playing a Paladin). I enjoy the feel of it more than DAoC, but not as much as SB. It's somewhere in between, and I think it could be even better.

I think WoW's PvE game is horrible though (to be fair, I think the PvE in all MMO's to date has been horrible). I hate it for it's own sake, and I hate it because I can't really PvP much without participating in it.

I find the PVP to be pretty fun, mostly playing defense in AV.  Personally I find PVE in the game to be broken since I'd be cockblocked into doing the guild thing to be able to experience most of the raid stuff.

Also, unless the guys from Funcom I talked to at the Age of Conan demo at Dragon*Con were wrong, 1-20 is a single player game.  There are 4 unique games/storylines (one per archtype), which they hope people will want to play through, but once you get past one of them once, you can jump to 20 and start the MMO immediately on any new character.

Edit: Damn its early for me... I should read before I post.  Anyway, as of September 4th, the game still works this way, and firing a bow is still mouse driven targetting.  Which they explained as "By allowing bows to be mouse driven and true projectiles, meaning you can hit or be blocked by your own group mates, it allows us to make bows more damaging and desirable."  Oh, and mounted combat is awesome... not just fighting from the horse, but you can actually run people over and trample them.

WoW PvP is not particularly relevant, but it's a lot more interesting for many than hitting MC over and over and over. MC never changes. Meanwhile no two AVs are ever the same.

The key to PvP in WoW is that you don't need to be awesome at it to have a good time. Unlike SB and Eve, there's nothing really to lose. That makes it more casual, something anyone can try. I've seen dedicated PvE/Raiders I've known since pre-Velious EQ who never did a day of PvPing in their lives bring their Tier 0/1 stuff to AV and, within a few days, have remapped their hotkeys, respecced, and done very well.

Just treat it like Raiding. Whether you win nor lose, you're still gaining something (faction, turn-ins, access to vendors in the zones, etc)

[/quote]
... Oh, and mounted combat is awesome... not just fighting from the horse, but you can actually run people over and trample them.
[/quote]

Why does this seem like a very bad idea?  Unless mobs can run as fast as a horse or dismount a player, this could make the game very boring...

Lol, mobs. Funny that was the first thing you thought of when picturing mounted combat.

Well, considering you can't get into multiplayer until level 20... and I don't think you can get a horse until then... he never killed anyone with the horse, just ran over them and knocked them down.  Now, he did some cool sword fighting from the mount, but he had to slow down for that... but was able to behead opponents from horseback.  Then mobs started shooting him with arrows and he dismounted in order to hide behind trees to escape them.  They didn't show it but did say there were manuevers that people on the ground could use to dismount a rider.

More fun from the demo... guilds will be able to create and manage non-PvP towns, but guilds at war with each other may be able to attack each other's towns.  Towns must be maintained, defended from mauraders, and the forests around them kept clean of bandits, if you don't, the NPCs will grow in strength and eventually attack your town.  They can burn down your town.  Player towns are instanced.  For PvP, there are Keeps that guilds can conquer and control, guilds can fight over control of them.  They were unclear how unguilded would be able to participate in towns and keeps, or if they'd even be able to.

You can outrun mobs on horseback in UO, but that game's not boring. (And you can always put mobs on horseback, too.)

Interesting about player towns, exciting that they're hubs for adventure, but sad that they're instanced. I'm tired of people keeping their things in an alternate dimension. AC did player housing the best, and all much emulate them, or else suck.

I wonder if destroying player towns is really going to matter, besides to piss off your enemies. It's fine if that's all it is; I'm just wondering.

I'm wondering if roguish characters can sneak into towns and pilfer things...

What other games allow a mounted player to damage another player or npc?

I do not remember that Ultima allowed for this, but I may have missed that feature.

You could fight from horseback in UO.

Oh gawd I hope so. I really REALLY want the good old days back when "rogues" were fucking thieves. Warriors could be tanks, or damage-dealers (holy crap I refuse to call them DeePeeEsses, who the hell started calling characters DeePeeEsses?!), or hybrids of both. Rogues can, I dunno, be all roguish and whatnot, and sit with their feet on the table and wink and flirt with a glass of wine in their hand. And the thieves can steal the pants off of ALL OF THEM.

In Conan, the traditional "sneak" from other games doesn't exist.  You can't stand in the middle of a well lit room and be invisible.  All characters can sneak (heck, Conan himself is a barbarian fighter thief), but rogues will be better at it.  To sneak you have to turn on the sneak skill and then stay close to other objects, like trees or walls.  They weren't clear on how rogues would be better at it, but we did see the warrior do the normal "half fade from view" while walking near the trees, but came back to full view once he got too far away from them.

"but you can actually run people over and trample them."

Yeah, being in a large guild of hardcore PVP'ers having mounted calvary, siege equipment and ranged mounted combat is going to be damn sweet....

The downside is that being in a large guild seems like the only way to enjoy most of the PVP in Age of Conan.  At the least you're probably going to a want a guild with a good mix of the prestige classes (Lord, Crafter, Commander, and Master).

What is meant by "large"? I was in an uber guild in SB at one time, and there was very little cooperation and community there. It wasn't uncommon to get screwed/ninja'ed/lied to/etc by your own guild members (and in turn, having no choice but to kill them and loot their corpses because of it). I hope it isn't that bad. Smaller guilds are better (50 or so...preferably less).

Besides that, it's kind of a strange choice for a game that kicks off the first 20 levels in single player mode.

From the FAQ (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=13l2bbed278fyddnyfbqbiu6mtpmz0&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1332&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT):


A good mix of the Prestige classes would seem to be ideal.  I don't know if alt's or inactive accounts count in regards to bonuses, if there's a limit to how many people can actually be in one guild, etc...  I can picture some guilds trying to get 30 of each class for maximum benefits.  At the very least though I'd expect a guild to need a handful of each Prestige class to function.

They released more info on crafting on Friday here (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=13l2bbed278fyddnyfbqbiu6mtpmz0&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1357&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT) (nothing really relevant to PVP though).  Don't know if they're going to post up more on the other 3 Prestige classes later.

So, for maximum extraction boni, you need 120 people in different prestige classes. That does not sound like a huge deal for a semi-organized guild.

I would be surprised if they tie the boni to unique accounts, "per prestige class online" would be more likely,but even that is not said in the FAQ.

And even if small guilds can't achieve the maximum boni, we do not know how big a deal these boni are.

I don't know if you are trying to be cute or not, but boni is not a word. Bonuses, plskthx.

Whoa, really ?  :nda:

Just checked an guess what, you where right.  Just in case you are interested, Boni is the German plural of Bonus, and since it is of Latin origin ...  :heartbreak:
 
You learn a new thing every day ...
:-D

Kind of surprised I didn't see anyone link this:

Age of Conan to be an XBox 360 Game as well as PC (http://www.linkbucks.com/Frameset.aspx?lbh=B7ED5601AF685F925EC0A105A86966B3&OrigLink=http%3a%2f%2fgameangst.blogspot.com%2f2006%2f12%2fcrom-age-of-conan-gets-greenlight-for.html&lid=19512&ia=False)

I wonder if they'll be able to put both 360 users and PC users on the same server. This was the only AOC thread I could find in the first 2 pages.

I think that's mostly because they had more or less unoffically announced it a while back.  In fact when I read about this, the first thing I thought to myself was "Didn't they announce this a long time ago?".

First I'd heard of it. But the press release was issued today, so this is an official announcement on the non-official announcement you may or may not be thinking of.

Exactly.

Even before the official X Box announcement they made a point of saying that players could use a mouse and keyboard or could use a joypad for combat, which suggests that the game has always been designed with joypads partly in mind, even for the PC.

As far as PvP and guilds go - as I understand it, the keeps will also be bases for the guild's craftspeople, so possibly there will be an option to allow non-guilded people in shop. What I personally would like to see is a system where people can somehow become residents or "friends" of a keep, and have the option of helping to defend it even if they are not in the guild that owns it. It could allow soloists or small guilds to take part in the big wars and add some sort of political dimension, as big guilds would have an incentive to build alliances and friendships with others.

In any case, I am looking forward to seeing what Funcom come up with.

Linkbucks... really?

Money hats for Funcom, if they don't screw it up.

Mounted archers?  :heart:

lets wait and see.  M$FT failed on Mythica and may have screwed Sigil.  Who knows what kind of partners they are?

and frankly, is having an MMO on a console really going to add anything?  I'd figure it dumb things down. 

From memory, there was an unofficial demo of Conan on an Xbox 360 at some gaming convention and the devs commenting that porting it across to the console as a can-we-do-it? thing helped them tighten up some coding.

MS wants a big MMOG so badly, it's almost pathetic. Or funny. I forget which.

Dedicated audience in a nearly non-competitive environment.

When I played AoC, it was the first time I'd ever played an MMO where I thought using a controller wouldn't suck monkey balls (for me, anyway. I hate the arthritic-inducing non-intuitive poorly-molded-playdoh-looking things).

As if MMO's aren't already dumbed down enough...

They can only go up, I think.

-

I'm serious. Just about every console game made requires more attentiveness and coordination than any mmo made ever.

To anyone who has played it already: how does the mounted combat compare to mount and blade?

Only downside to that is.....No Hyrkanians.  :cry:

That may or may not mean something to you, but it's everything to me.

I'm sure it's somewhere in this thread.

But I'd just like to say about the 360 version...

"Told ya so."

Edit: By the way, there wasn't a 360 demo. He just demoed it with a 360 controller behind closed doors. Behind the same doors I railed on IGN when they talked about grouping with everybody.

When they announced the races way back when, I was more upset that there were no Picts.  Hyrkanians would have been great for archery though, I agree.

If guilds can allow other to use their facilities on a limited basis, it could encourage a sort of guild feudal system, which I think would be neat.

FFXI plays very well on a controller and is not a dumbed-down game. The only real difference between it and a game like WOW is that firing seldom-used hotkeys is more involved, you have to rotate through a couple menus and such. But again that is only for things you don't use that often, it really isn't a big deal.

I think they should make the console players the "bad guys". Since they dont have keyboards to do any of the good stuff in MMOs, they could team up and assault towns as monsters and the real players (us PC guys) get to pwn them for gold and prizes!

WOOOO

Dumbing down MMOs isn't necessarily a bad business decision. Simple and instantly accessible with a lower monthly fee could = pot of gold.

I think I like my MMOs small, though.

Standardized hardware
X-Box Live Communicator/Headset Voice Chat
More action-friendly controller (unless it's FPS style gameplay which fantasy MMOG's really shouldn't be)
Plug-n-Play (due to standardized hardware)
Bigger install base (good or bad thing depending on your view)
More rigorous QA standards (presumably)

Seriously, other than text chat, there isn't jack shit in any MMOG that couldn't be pulled off on a gamepad. The interfaces really just are not that deep. Now it might be more pain-in-the-assy with a game pad, seeing as how menu-driven most MMOG's are at anything other than basic combat, but they just really aren't that intense.

Well, with the amount of different abilities in WoW it would be a HUGE pain in the ass to try and hotkey those. I mean, with my warlock I have like 30+ hotkeys, and its still not enough.

Heck, unless you use CT_Mod et al to get an extra toolbar, you're going to play triage with WoW abilities, especially once the TBC set is in.

But that's only because the games are designed for keyboard/mouse. There's a reason why good console games don't require you have immediate keypress access to 60+ unique abilities every second. They compartmentalize the experience so you only need access a more limited set of controls at any given time.

Imagine not WoW but, instead, Guild Wars. THAT would work very well with a Controller. I don't imagine it'll be long until we see one for the Xbox 360. Considering that a core strategy for Vista is seamless integration of that controller with games within the Game Center in the OS, I expect many many more games, including MMO, to start refining themselves for a valid Controller-based experience.

It's not dumbing it down. It doesn't make someone smarter to have to juggle 60 unique buttons on screen. It just proves an old idea can survive forever without outside influences improving it.

Too many options can be bad, sure. But restricting options to what can be programmed to a gamepad?

That's dumbing down.

FFXI may not have been dumbed down, but on the PC, the UI was the most unintuitive piece of trash I've ever tried to use. Sorry.


Also:

keke....it would never get greenlighted, but I don't think that's a horrible idea. AND you would have a reason to buy the game twice, unless one purchase game with both versions. Which would be smart, but not business smart.

Think more of it as contextual relevance. You only need to access certain things at certain times. Are you going to start mining or crafting in the middle of a fight? Are you going to use a PvE-skill in a PvP-fight? Will you use your Fire-based damage/skill/debuff in a Fire-immune encounter?

WoW's 60+ abilities don't need to all be on screen at once. It's just that the keyboard allows them to not worry about it too much. The result is the impression of limitless options versus a "limited" set on a console game. But the reality is that, at the functional moment-by-moment level, you don't need access to 60 icons. You don't need access to more than 10 most times.

It's not dumbing down. It's designing the UI for the experience being had at the moment.

I guess he best example I can think of would be any console RPG versus using the old Flexbar mod in WoW. You could program Flexbar to pop only those icons you needed per specific event, even making them reactive (like, pop the icon to drink a health pot if below 10% health while the enemy has more than 30% health). Very powerful tool. I didn't need it because, well, I'm used to keyboard and mouse :)

I quickly bought a gamepad because of this and then had no trouble with the interface.  It was definately designed for one.

Unfortunately the need to group forced me to stop playing within a few weeks.

Im glad someone responded to my master plan ;)

Seeing as this topic has already derailed from the original topic, I'll chance posting a link to a new preview (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/750/750993p1.html) (Dec. 14th) with some sweet screenshots. Brad McQuaid, eat your words! I liked AoC's graphics (and the overall direction of the art style) better back when he claimed that Vanguard had a more advanced graphics engine (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70527&page=4&highlight=conan) (third post, page three), and right now I think AoC is blowing his game out of the water, visually.

I'm now quite excited after reading the preview.

Wow. Loving what I see so far.

I must remind myself. This is Funcom. They make pretty stuff. Let us all pray for a better release than AO. And a better game in general.

So say us all.

EDIT: And come on, it has an ASS SLIDER

Oh good.  Now I can have the ass I always wanted.  :roll:

Well, your milkshake will be able to bring all the boys girls to the yard now at least, right?

The Vanguard guys are high on their horrible engine that runs at 10 FPS on a super computer because it is theoretically capable of producing great graphics even though their modellers are mostly terrible and can't take advantage of it.

Ooooh!  Finally, I can make the rockin world go round.

The assshot was hilarious.

However, the rest of the piece read very well. This is really a good synopsus of why I have been following AoC for awhile. They are really trying some different stuff, not just moving stats around and calling that unique. What the article didn't seem to cover was the UI and control system. I think those are as important in highlighting the uniqueness as everything else they talked about.

I can't remember if they were shooting for a T or an M rating. Anyone know?

Otherwise, the thing I learned was about the spells system, info they really didn't have earlier this year. That read like pure luv. The better parts of Ryzom's brick system deliver in a more action-based way.

First one, now the other.

Mature.  In fact, I read there will be NAKEDNESS!  Woo hoo!

Conan is all about chicks in thongs, as stupid as that looks in a computer game.

Chicks in thongs is a Frazetta thing, not a Conan thing necessarily.

That being said, it's a good thing.

Downside to all this is that Funcom's artists kind of suck. They are not Frank Frazetta. Also, they've gone for a more realist look, and their engine has a play-doh problem.

It's not really Conan without nipples and decapitations.  And really, if your IP is going to lock you into something, it may as well be those things and not "Jedi must be rare even though everyone will want one!"

They seem to be doing a good job with the IP, it does feel like Conan. I like the fact that the game is not for kiddies.

I won't say I am looking forward to this but it seems like the most promising of the future MMORPGs I know of.

My expectations are dying down actually.

I am a fan of Conan, but simply being a Conan fan isn't enough to appease me about this game. Many of the features and options I'd like to see from the Conan world won't be implemented. Additionally, many of the features and options that have nothing to do with Conan will be implemented.

Also, I'm sick and tired of playing white people in video games (yeah, I said it). And the fact that my only alternative to bypass that are the Stygians just pisses my inner-Geek off.

Or in other words, this is a world that called for as much cultural richness as the real world (Howard pretty much modeled everything after real human races....Even to the point of using the original names at times). At the very least, they could have tried to attempt that with a few more options.

---

The things that are holding me off from complete hate have nothing to do with the actual license per se: The combat system and siege/city features.

But considering it's Funcom, those things will probably suck.

Also, I've never played a game with an engine that looked like that and that also ran well at the same time.

And considering it's Funcom, it'll probably end up even worse than I think.

Seriously....Why kid ourselves?

360.

I'm trying to think of a clunky PC game that remained clunky on the 360....But I don't have a lot of experience with that console yet.

What I do know is that console ports don't guarantee stability. I'm not sure what you're trying to point out really.

--------

Back to the race thing. I was wrong on the lack of options about skin tone and physical appearance....But now a new (even worse) problem pops up.

Apparently, the sliders allow one to make African American Cimmerians.

Insteading of laughing it off and dismissing lore, I think one should consider just how lazy that is.....And how indicative it could be on how many other corners these guys will cut.

There are several African based kingdoms in the Hyborian Age (Kush, Darfar, Keshan, Jumas). At the very least, implement Kush. They're modeled after the ancient Nubian kingdoms of our own world.

It's just extremely lame to allow Cimmerians to be that dark skinned though (I don't say that because I'm "racist". I say it because Cimmerians are basically the Celts).

Thinking about things, how much does 'following lore' in game mean to an MMO's success or fun factor? I am your average MMO junkie, I usually read 'some' background stuff on the games I play and I can't remember a time when I thought...'Well, that fight was fun as hell but I know in the lore it says X race never uses bows! This game sucks!'

Lore in MMOs basically are there to give the small RP crowd something to build off. I say screw lore if it is taking time away from making the game FUN and STABLE. Environment is important , I understand, but I can't think of a game where lore really changed my gameplay. I was in a (mostly) Minotaur clan in SB, and we followed some lore. Its up to the players more than the devs I think, as long as they give people some ways to follow it.  There were no virtues in Ultima Online FFS, didnt really bother me. Shadowbane had no real restrictions that followed their lore, and I didn't care. WoW? Hardly.

Hah, found me old SB sig...looks like im either about to pounce or takin a huge dump. You make the call! ;)

(http://www.tconl.com/~bcwhite/Slayerik.jpg)

Well, I'm usually not the biggest lore junkie, but I am with Conan. They're the only fantasy books I've cared about to date.

That being said, I generally care about lore to the extent that I care about the world I'm interacting with (but it just so happens that I care a lot about this world in particular). If I was in it purely for fun gameplay, then I would only play games solely based on game mechanics and puzzles (i.e. Chess or Tetris, for example).

Seeing that these games are a combination of mechanics as well as environmental activity though, then I'd like that environment to be consistent and make sense. I don't play rpg's, or any other games with "characters", just for the sheer sake of clickety-clicking and filling my loot bags..Or, alternatively, clickety-clicking on other players. I just don't get enough enjoyment out of that alone. There has to be a little more.


Secondly, I should explain something about Conan's lore...

It's not "lore" in the typical fantasy D&D sense. It's not a completely "made up" world, so to speak. It is Earth. The "Hyborian Age" which Conan lives in is a proto age where humans had advanced to about our 1200 AD level (say, plate armor technology). A "pre-civilization" civilization, if you will....A civilization that crumbled before ours took over.


The reason why "Races" are important is because they serve as prototypes of our own modern cultures. They are not "lore races" like "Elves" and "Dwarves" are lore races. They are humans. Cimmerians were the ancestors of Irish and Scots; Aquilonians predated the Franks; Nemedia the Germanic people; Zingara is Spain; Shem is the Arab and Jewish world; Stygia are the Egyptians to the South; Kush are the Nubians even further South;  Hyrkanians are Mongols; Zamora are the Slavic cultures; Corinthia the Greeks; Argos the Romans and Carthaginians. Etc., etc., etc..

If you take that away, then wtf is the point in using the IP at all? It's just a waste of money. Might as well take trees and sky out too. Might as well take weapons out. Even water and dirt. Just give me a fucking white screen with some scrolling skeleton code that charts out the combat system. It would be no different.

It's a DX10 game, so it's probably running on one of those 8xxx series nvidia cards - probably even SLI if that's an option with those. (I don't keep up with video cards > $300, so I don't really know the specifics of the 8k series geforces, aside from the fact that they are DX10 and $600+)

Throw a core2duo and two gigs of ram at it as well and you're running everything on the market.

I think you are taking the race thing a bit too seriously. What if I'm a black dude who likes to play black dudes but I want to be a Cimmerian? I can't?

Yeah. Why couldn't Nubians and Stygians be sufficient? Or any of the other half of dozen African based races?


What if Dwarves were tall in EQ or WoW? What if Orcs had tan skin and blonde hair, and looked like He-Man? What if Elves could look like Undead zombies?

What if I played a WW2 strategy game, and Stalin could be the leader of the Japanese, Churchill the Chinese, Roosevelt the French, and Hitler the Americans?


The setting has to mean at least something.

[edit] Something like the Eve morphing features would be ideal, I think. Each race has a lot of adjustability and diversity, but still within some parameters. A Gallente will always look like a Gallente, a Minmatar will always look like a Minmatar, etc..

I completely agree with Stray, though I don't know crap about Conan. If you're going to go through the trouble of using an IP, use the friggin IP.

The only reason I can see them taking the lazy way out is because they didn't set out to make a Conan IP. They set out to find some way to justify making a new MMO at all, maybe to try and kick the stain of AO they've been carrying all this time, and the Conan IP was the cheapest, or available. As in, they may like Conan, but only enough to let them expand their library of titles, not to iterate it the right way.

Not that I care any less about AoC because of this. It's nice not knowing anything about the lore. Ignorance is bliss :) It just rankles the inner geek.

IMO they are doing a very good job of sticking to the IP and they clearly like the IP quite a bit. You guys are talking about a slider that goes too far. Seriously. There is time to fix it but even if it isn't fixed, is it that hard to believe that a Cimmerian had sex with a Nubian and this guy was the result?

Cimmerians are just humans. Orcs are Orcs and Elves are Elves. Your comparisons are way off. Orcs don't come with bright orange skin but humans clearly come in dark shades.

I think there is a huge difference between saying an Orc can't be a black guy and a human can't be...especially when the races in the original IP are portrayed in very stereotypical fashion. Cimmerians are just humans.

No, Cimmerians were the most xenophobic race in the entire world of Hyboria. They loathed everything (including themselves), rarely traded, toiled all day, and rarely ventured out from their own territory (as a sidenote: It doesn't make any sense that they are even a playable race at all....But what the hell, that's beside the point for now).

Conan was the exception to the rule. Mainly because he was a fortune seeking thief. As far as cultural identity goes, he felt more affinity for the Asgardians (the Norse). He had a lot of misgivings about his own people -- for the very fact that they were unadventurous pricks. The only Cimmerian who would encounter a Nubian, let alone breed with one, would be Conan himself. And maybe a couple of other guys. That's not enough fucking to supply a sub-race.

Most importantly, and bear with me here, if that kind of cross breeding had happened, it'd have to have some small explanation in our own reality. There would have to be a race of real African Celts now to explain it (seriously...).

When I say the Cimmerians are the Celts, I mean exactly that. Not modeled after the Celts. Not symbolic representations of the Celts. Not like the Celts. They are the Celts. Or rather, they're what the Celts were before they were called "Celts". The "fantasy" part of Howard's story is that they were Proto-Celts, in a mythical age when humankind had been advanced somewhat. That there has never been a race of Nubian-Celts would indicate that there were no Nubian-Celts then. Not enough to make any difference at least.

===

Personally speaking, the lack of cultural richness pisses me off because I can't be a Hyrkanian. I want to be that Mongol guy that asks Conan: "What is good in life?"

*sigh*

Not this fucking game for sure. I can't even play a Mongol.....Unless he's Cimmerian.

Listen though, I don't expect them to implement the entire gamut of human proto-races. I just think Cimmeria, Stygia, and Aquilonia are too broad of a stroke.

That's Scotland-Ireland, France, and Egypt.

Call me a lore freak if you want, but it's just woefully dismissive.

One could still paint a broad stroke, and still manage to cram a few more races in there to represent things. When you have gigantic continents in the Conan world that represent dozens and dozens of Asian and African races, then at the very least, include ONE of each Asian and African race (Include Hyrkanians and Kush, for example). When you have Norse themes throughout the Conan stories (represented by at least 4 different nations), then at the very least, include one of them (Asgard).

It's good for content, and it's good for gameplay.


Hell, do you really think the "gameplay" will be all it's promised to be when they make decisions like this? If they are willing to dismiss major elements of the game world, then they can't be trusted with much else. Don't be blind. There has never been a company in the history of ever that made those kind of sacrifices, and at the time, delivered "good gameplay".

[EDIT] Also, you need the Nemedians in there. Aquilonia (modeled after the Carolingian Franks) makes zero fucking sense without Nemedia (modeled after the German Holy Roman Empire). They're constantly at war with, and define, one another.

I can't really get too worked up over black Cimmerians.  Just pretend they're Kushites or something.  It's not like they're going to have flashing neon signs over them in game saying that they're Cimmerians.  Besides, any feelings of immersion in the lore are going to dissipate as soon as the people in your group start typing anyway.   Or probably even before that actually when you see all the stupid fucking joke names that people give their characters thinking they're clever.  If the playerbase of pretty much every MMO up until now is any indication, a black Cimmerian is one of the smaller problems.

You're a better man than me, Vel. I want to go all pickaxe handle on their asses.

Besides Conan himself, the whole point of Howard's world was to place all the myths and most historical periods of human civilization into one time period and setting. Where Franks, Amazons, Norsemen, Classical Greeks, Mongols, Gypsies, and morbid Pharaohs could coexist.

That's the Hyborian Age. The way he envisioned it, it'd be one of the cooler MMO settings one could play in.

Instead, Funcom had to do it.

Dude, GET A FUCKING GRIP!

Seriously...what is it they did exactly? Left out some races (oh noes!) and let you move a slider all the way to the right.

No, they left out practically all races (just to give you the breadth, they amount to at least 40) -- and took out whatever identity the 3 included races had of their own. The entire cultural and political landscape, and reasons for giving characters any logical reason to exist, struggle, or build are being left out. "Cimmerian" doesn't even mean "Cimmerian" in any way in this game. It's been so watered down that even World of Warcraft looks deep in comparison.

You don't seem to understand that this world consists of more than the just meaningless combat activities between generic avatars. This is not "Age of Inconsequential Sword Swinging Stickmen". It's Age of Conan.

I don't need to get a grip. This site has witnessed the weeping and gnashing of teeth of ten million Star Wars fanbois crying about Jedis and Uncle Beru in 500 pages of posts. I'm entitled to talk about Conan in a motherfucking Conan thread.

[EDIT] And don't get me started on mages.

/Stray getting a grip

Margalis, I'm in such a state of deep seated jadedness and hate about mmo's I just can't stand it anymore. I'm not exagerrating or trying to be witty here. My jadedness is REAL. In one way or another, whether it be in terms of world, gameplay, or lore, I feel like I keep getting burned by this industry. Everything sucks so badly it hurts....But screwing with an IP I really adore is a burn of the highest order.

/Stray losing his grip

Now fuck this shit. Kill, Kill, Kill!!!!

You know what you must do!

Destroy
The Internet.

(also, destroy Hollywood and most book publishers. they seem determined to fuck up everything they can get their hands on. THEY SENT CROCODILE DUNDEE TO L.A.)

Update:

Whew. The bloodlust has subsided. I think it was the Pepsi I drank earlier. I usually stay away from caffiene.

Needless to say, but AoC is dead to me.

Also, Gods and Heroes and Fury seem to have interesting combat systems as well...But without the extra baggage of fucking with Conan. I guess I'll just divert my attention to them (if any MMO's at all).

Thanks for listening.

P.S. I still haven't seen Crocodile Dundee in L.A.

Well, thanks a lot!  I am starting my day confused!   :x

Here's one last try, I guess:

1) Margalis seems to be under the impression that "humans" are just as generic in Conan as they are in Warcraft. He says Cimmerians are "just humans" -- But it's much deeper than that. They are humans, but they are also Celts. Just like Hyrkanians are not "just humans". They humans, and they are Mongols. Asgardians are not "just humans". They are human, and they are Norse.

2) Since there aren't Orcs, Dwarves, and Elves in the Hyborian Age, ethnicity is the Conan equivalent of a typical fantasy game's level of race differentiation. You should compare human races in Conan as you would compare Gnomes and Trolls in Warcraft.

3) Further, instead of adding in an African race, Funcom decided to let Celts have superficial African features instead. It's a lazy and insensitive move. It's taking all the meaning out of both of cultures. And more importantly: There's more to wanting to be an African character in the Conan world than just skin color. It's the African culture represented that means something.

4) And lastly, totally leaving out Asian themed races makes me a sad panda. Or mad panda. Either/or.

I think it's simpler than that. Some people feel the IP should be more adhered to than others. That's really all.

For me, like I said, it's aggravating to me that they wouldn't follow the IP more. But it doesn't impact my potential enjoyment of the game. It's like DAoC. There was absolutely no reason that game needed to be called "Camelot". I think they merely used that to grease the wheels of entering the genre proper. It annoyed me that all they used from Arthurian legend were some general names, as nobody would have missed it if they hadn't.

I think the game to come closest to presenting a consistent view into the IP was SWG. We've argued the specifics of game mechanics already, but at least you knew you were in a Star Wars game, whether it was the medical center, a parked Tie Fighter, or a landspeeder.

I'm hoping AoC comes at least somewhat closer to that than it does DAoC.

I just know the guy running around named azzrap0r saying "lol that's gay" in general chat is more of a problem to me than seeing black characters who might be Cimmerians.  Not to mention the people naming themselves Connan, Thulssa Dooom, or Red Sonnja.  At least you might be able to enjoy the first 20 douchetard-free levels if nothing else.

You know, the more I look at this information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_Age), the more I have to grudgingly agree with Stray.

Looking at this map (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chrysagon_Hyboria_1024.jpg), it seems that the entire geography of the world was based AROUND Africa.

That said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Howard drew most of his lore from influences other than what can be generously called 'African'. Sure, he included Egypt, but seriously, what lore was coming out of Somalia or Zimbabwe that Howard could have honestly drawn from? Compare that to the well documented libraries filled with stuff on the Celts, Pictish, Franks, Arabs and Jews, and Africa sort of gets shouldered out of the equation, with the exception of Egypt.

So, I guess the question is wether you would actually prefer to have playable races that have a full rich book lore to draw from and then throw in African blacks with a threadbare politically correct nod, or would you prefer FunCom to be honest and simply not include a race that wasn't explored well enough by the author?

Blame the author if he didn't make enough use of the Munhumutapa Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munhumutapa_Empire), but don't blame FunCom for that.

And even then, it somewhat difficult from a historical standpoint to really call Egypt "African."

Understand that Howard lived in the same murky world of quasi-racist Darwinist theory that Lovecraft did. It informed his work completely. That's not a value judgement (different time, different place, I love the Conan stuff regardless and always will) but it's to give you an idea of why Cimmerians aren't "just humans" anymore than Sygians or Hyrkanians or Kushites are. They're all different. It's not some sideshow to the IP; it IS the IP. When he refers to a "mongrel race" he fucking well means it.

It only seems that way because the Pangaean geography resembles Africa. If you remember what each of those areas is supposed to relate to, the big subcontinent on the left splits at the river between Zingara and Argos, and the whole thing does some stretching. ZIngara becomes Spain,  Argos  ends up where Greece is, Aquilonia makes up Franco-Germanic areas, and what's south of that becomes Arabia and North Africa. But yeah, the Pangaea looks mike an Age of Exploration map of Africa.

I think segregating player races in a way that corresponds to real races would be trouble. Again, you can only play a black character if you come from one of the psuedo-African countries where every other player is black? I can't begin to imagine what kind of trolling would take place.

Robert Howard was many things but enlightened on race isn't one of them. It's hard to read Solomon Kane stories even though I like them because it is inevitably Solomon Kane schooling some black savages.

I think this is an example of giving players what they want. Allowing black players to only have avatars that look like them in they come from central-casting stereotype big black strong silent type may not be a great idea.

---
That said, how many black characters have you ever seen in any online game? I'm having trouble thinking of *one*. Seriously.

The best is Guild Wars: Nightfall. Set in some African analogue, all of the default player skins are at least slightly dusky. And yet all white folk upon entry. It was seriously fucking sad and (I think) says a whole lot about what people ACTUALLY think about race. There was no shortage of Asian avatars for Factions but playing a black dude? NO WAY!

But, again, the whole race thing in Howard isn't some sideshow to the story. The history of Hyboria ends when the world's taken over by savage half-men (read: Picts, non-white races). If you want to tone down the unpleasant underpinnings of that idea it's easy but you can't remove it wholesale and remain true to the source material.

Erudites in EQ were huge. I always resented EQ2 for making Erudites NOT black, just some wierd pasty skinned alien race. That felt like a betrayal to me. Anarchy Online (from FunCom again) had a way to make a black toon if you so wished. I think Asheron's Call also had this option, but I may be wrong.

DAoC didn't, for obvious reasons and Wow doesn't even fit the rubric.

What I mean was I don't think I've ever seen someone choose to play a black character in a game where they could just as easily play a white one. Erudites might be different as they have certain racial benfits, but as a purely cosmetic change I'm not sure I've seen any black character.

To me that isn't very damning though, mostly it says that not many black people play MMORPGs I would guess.

Demographic could be part of it. Milieu could be another. Outside of the Hiradrim (sp?), how many non-White Human races were there in Tolkien lore? And Arthurian? And Asian (for the Far East set)?

Then look at other genres, like, say, driving games, sports, and the GTA-esque RPGs. Much more multi-cultural.

So I don't think it says just something about player choices. I think it's based on what the designers get inspired by.

I played a Human Bounty Hunter in SWG. He was black. I did it purely for cosmetic reasons.

--

You could take a look at FacesofWoW and find enough black people who play it. Not a lot, but then again, not a lot of people post pictures of themselves on game boards either.

WoW has it's own lack of care as far as black human avatar options go though. Females are OK, but males can only look black if you go the Sam Jackson route (bald). There aren't any fade, dread, or fro hairdos. If you choose one of the hairdos available, with dark skin, then you just end up looking like an Indian (east Indian that is). That sucks.

Point being, one reason why you might not see many black avatars in WoW is because Blizzard hasn't really done a good job at making them look cool.


That's one of the cool things about REH though. He did try to pay tribute to other cultures, in a time when it wasn't even thought of much.

Well, CoH has the Back Alley Brawler working one of the newbie zones, and a sprinkling of black contacts, and of course you can make a black hero or villain, to varying degrees of seriousness. Frosty the Froman was running around the test server while the winter event was running.

--GF

It did, you were either White, Asian (more Japanese-like then anything), or Black.

As a mild aside, I think I've only played two MMOs (CoX, I think, and MxO) where I can have a character with a decent Hispanic tan-look. They'd either come out looking like a Native American, or like they have really bad sunburn.

The devs are already in dmg control mode.  Expect a rushed release with the usual "not  at release feature" and "to be fixed later" bugs and unbalances.  It's an other try at the classic : we don't have enough money to do the game, please help up by paying four our game even if 50% of it is missing.  In one year and half we'll add an other 30%.

No, I'm not in beta.  It's just very clear when you read interviews and browse the official forum.

Lineage 2 has no distinctly Asian looking characters in it, despite being played mostly by Asian people. On top of that, the only race with remotely black features are the orcs, who can wear dreads, corn rows, and other hair styles. Everyone else is Caucasian.

I tend to agree with Stray though. I don't think many people put much importance on their race's race, just whether or not it looks cool. If you could make a bad-ass lookin alaskan native, people would do it.

If your character looks like a white guy with dark skin and a bad wig, not only will he not look cool... but he'll look almost comically "wrong" compared to how people of that skin tone look in the real world. In short, it's more likely to be used for a tool of racist jokes by less than mature players because it looks, well, funny.

I seem to recall it being mentioned that Funcom focused on Stygia, Aquilonia and Cimmeria because those three were the dominant nations represented in the works of Robert E. Howard, which apparently is a required read for everyone on the AoC team, and which they are trying to "stay true to" as much as they can.

However, there are reputedly over 40+ sliders in the "advanced section" of character creation in AoC. Chances are you'll be able to make a black-looking character if you want to. Granted, it will still be of Stygian, Aquilonian or Cimmerian origin - but hey - dismiss the part of your character screen saying "Stygian/Aquilonian/Cimmerian" and leave the slave ship imagining your character being of other origins. Or wait for an expansion. *shrug*

Some quotes:

Nonsense. The lands of Cimmeria, Aquilonia, and Stygia weren't dominant themes at all. Funcom's choices are about as superficial as you can get. The only reason why they chose Cimmeria and Aquilonia is because "that's what Conan was". As if everything should revolve around him in a game with this many people. Conan had conflicts with Stygian cultists, but Stygia itself wasn't such an exclusive theme in the books.

Like I mentioned somewhere above, Cimmerians were a fairly uncivilized barbarian people on the northwest tip of the world and were rarely seen. They raided towns near the borders, but didn't venture out into the world much. They hated strangers. Only Conan stands out.

Aquilonians were one part of a pseudo civilized region modeled after western Europe in the late medieval period. Aquilonians were like Carolingian Franks (a bit more urbane and cultured though), Nemedians were Imperial Germans, and Zingarans were a sort of chivalric Spanish/Portugese race (the coastal areas produced some of the pirate stories though). There were also other regions that popped up a bit (Ophir, Argos, Brythunia, Corinthia). There was never a story in Aquilonia without some rival politician or prince from a neighboring region in it. It would be like trying to tell the history of France without mentioning the Normans.

Stygians are defined by their bordering nations as well (Shem and Kush). Conflict with them did't come because of poltics per se, but because they were the only group that embraced "evil" wholesale. They sought to subjugate others through religion and dark magic. Besides that, Conan had ONE major enemy who was a Stygian -- And he was a sorceror who was offering his services for rivals who sought to depose Conan when he was king of Aquilonia (Thoth Amon in the Phoenix on the Sword). It had nothing to do with Stygia.

Lastly, out of all the regions, I'm pretty sure there were more stories written about Zamora than anything else.

[edit] Another thing, I do not care about "waiting for expansions". Who the fuck waits for expansions? Expansions are for people who already think a game is good and have already made a home in it.

Also, if you don't get some fundamental things right from the start, or if you generalize too much, then the damage will be done by the time an expansion comes out. Having servers packed with thousands upon thousands of red bearded Horse Archer Stygians is not a good base to work from. Both for lore reasons, as well as gameplay reasons. Not if you want to make a Conan game at least.

It's almost similar to Blizzard screwing with class and skillset features from the original WC games when they made classes in WoW. They merged too many features from the original Hero classes to flesh out WoW's normal classes as to make a future WoW implementation of Hero classes not even worth doing.

Lastly, telling me about sliders is missing the whole point of this conversation. Did you even read the thread?

Did you honestly expect a game to follow your vision of the fictional world? Honestly?

Nope. Never. Following REH's vision wouldn't be a bad idea though.

Besides, I am not asking for much. I never said I wanted the entire scope of lore implemented. I said I wanted at least a few more races playable at launch. I said I didn't mind a broad stroke -- Just not one as broad as this. They need at least two races to represent the Asian and African territories better. Further, they need to make the currently existing races actually represent what they are supposed to fucking represent -- and not be the only options for people who want to play Asians or Africans. It's not unreasonable to expect Cimmerians to actually be Cimmerians.

[EDIT] You're acting like this is common behavior for game companies and it just isn't. Sure, games tend to be flexible with licenses, but not to this extent. The best analogy I could give is if there was a "Justice League" game, and it didn't include Green Lantern, Flash, or even Batman. Further, the version of Superman in it looked more like Lex Luthor.

No one has have ever fucked up a Justice League game to that extent though. As bad as some could be, they've never stooped that low. I expect fuckups, but not on that scale..

So to answer your question: Yes, I "honestly" thought they would make a Conan game. Maybe a shitty Conan game even....But not some completely wack, distorted piece of shit like this.

Another thing, 23 Classes and they can't take the time to make a few more races?

Maybe it has something to do with starting areas, and whether they are implemented or not?

Or maybe they're just trying to push right buttons to create hype. The average mmo fucktard probably responds to "23 Classes" more than "this or that many Races".

Besides, almost every game to date, except amateurish and/or generic crap like that Dungeon Runners game, has more than a few starter areas or races. It's almost fundamental for a game of this scale -- 23 classes isn't. Hell, most games don't even have that many classes after several expansions.

Stray man, would you listen to yourself for a moment? This game is about raping, pillaging, hard core violence and destruction. Is it THAT important to you that Africans be 'represented' in such a world? If the game were MMO United Colors of Beneton online, ok, fine, you'd have a point, since the whole issue would be to adequately represent the world in an attempt to simulate a happy fun fun kumbaya moment. But Conan?

Read everything Stray and I posted before bringing up Benetton, please. Summary: Race is more than just race in Hyboria.

I'm still going to check it out, though.

I'm guessing the lore is deep...

I'm also guessing that no matter what FC did, the guy following you around /azzraping you is gonna kill any real immersion! Now, back to the important stuff....

Like ASS SLIDERS.

Ass sliders are good. I'll agree on that.

The thing that bothers me more than anything is the 23 classes. Come on. There's barely 23 unique combat abilities in these games. So right away you're talking about heavily specialized classes that clash with the innate need for soloability at some level. I don't care if it's full PvP+ once people choose one of those 23+ sub-sub- Classes. They are going to want to solo, at risk, once in a while. Games that require groups fulltime are and remain niche, and for the money Funcom is throwing at this beast, I don't think they're shooting for the next Shadowbane.

So either they'll blend abilities across classes so much the need for 23 of them is subjugated. Or, they'll end up trying to arbitrarily keep them separate and end up with about 13 classes that fall below the threshold of developer attention, for the lack of play they get (whether that's caused by that lack of attention or just because they're bad doesn't change the outcome).

Yeah, it's a lot of wasted time better spent on developing content and making this game resemble the world of Conan more.


I say that as someone who likes a lot of class options in games too. IMO, Shadowbane is a good example of a game that had a good deal of launch classes -- and even they didn't go that far (I think they launched with 18 classes...a handful of which were pretty worthless and/or unused).

However, that game had zero "content" too. They could devote almost all of their time to class skills and interaction. Funcom doesn't have that luxury.

------

Back to races again for a second: I'll admit that Funcom has a bigger task ahead of them beyond just implementing "starter areas". From my understanding, each race in AoC has a "Border Kingdom" (i.e. the pvp/conflict zones...though they do contain pve as well). So that means that each race, in effect, has two big zones associated with them. Fleshing out a race in AoC might be twice as much work than what's required for the usual mmorpg.

I still think they should do this for a few more races though. Cutting down the launch classes to at least 16, or even 12 (4 or 3 for each archetype) would provide the time.

Classes are far more imporant than races. In most games races don't really matter in the end. You can use equipment and whatever else to make up for racial issues and special race skills are typically not that strong. Races making a huge difference is kind of silly as it just allows players to fuck themselves at the character creation screen.

Races are basically cosmetic, not a great way to spend time.

Dude....

OK, so you've mentioned a liking for Solomon Kane stories. I won't completely write you off....But.....I have to know if you've actually read any of Howard's Conan stories?

Because it seems like you value the entire license, and the situational contexts it dispenses, in the same way you would value the color in a deck of cards. Maybe that's because you develop games and view games on a more fundamental, protypical level. I don't know....But there's a lot more to Conan's world than just fluff.

Besides, even Funcom themselves thought races were important enough to make distinct classes for each of them.

[EDIT]

If you personally don't care about races, fine. I don't care. I do care if you try to make it out like races don't matter at all though. 

Secondly, what would it do to you if I got to play a Hyrkanian or Kushite? What's the big deal to you? If you can be happy with what's already there, then including extra races does nothing to you. It's not like making one group of people happy means no else will be happy as a result. I'm not advocating anything other than harmless options.

Given that characters are supposed to start on a slave ship, I'm not sure why each race would need to have their own starter area anyway.

There will be tons of players who play as Hyrkanian and Nubian and so on and so forth, even if the game systems don't support it. (Slight tangent here; I wonder if this sort of roleplay will be met with the same derission as elves and vampires in UO....)

If I was really desperate, I'd probably do that very thing. But I'm not desperate. I loathe the idea of playing anything else, except maybe Aquilonian (as an "Aquilonian" that is). It would nag the shit out of me if I was running around as an Asian Cimmerian or Norse Stygian. I'm just too obsessive for that sort of thing. Further, I'd want to grief anyone else who did it.

Hell, even little things in games can be gamebreaking for me. Say, the cleft lips on all human males in WoW. Or how Undead shoulders look lame compared to what they used to. Or that my character Matador in CoH doesn't have a matador hat. Or if I can get a name on a server that I'm absolutely settled on.

I can't even stand those little things. Fat chance I'll ever accept the whole no Hyrkanian/Black Cimmerian deal.

There is no way you will like any game based on an IP if you take it as seriously as you do Conan's.  You have too much of a preconceived notion of how it should be and any deviation from that is going to drive you mad.  Games have to take liberties if they are going to have any complexity.  Sorry, it must suck as you love the original, but it is going to be true for anyone with such strong feelings.

Roleplay? tons of players? come on :P  There might be one or two others like Stray that feel that strongly about race but to 99.9% of the people playing this or any other game the race choice comes down to looks/bonuses not roleplay or lore.

I didn't realize Conan had a hardcore fanbase.

Me either.  I've never read it and didn't even know it was something remotely popular.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I must say that some of you are making too much out of my advocating of lore. I'm not merely advocating lore. I'm advocating LORE. Not "lore", not "Lore" with a a captial L, but "LORE" in all caps.

I'm not talking about "lore" in sense of "No, no, no! Hobbit huts are shaped liked this!" or "Red crystals are only used in Sith lightsabers! Giving them to Jedis is a travesty!" I'm talking about lore as in "these are the most fundamental things Robert E. Howard's works rest on". His modus operandi, if you will. "The only fucking reason why he wrote the books in the first place" kind of lore.

I invite anyone here to read the works themselves to get a glimpse as to why I'm so adamant about this.  Besides that, it's good, entertaining literature to boot. It's the only fantasy literature this fantasy literature hater thinks is worth a damn at least.

Merry Christmas.

Any advise on how to get the whole series from 1 to xx?  Any great compilation? 

I'm talking about the books of course.

Try this first: The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-Cimmerian-Cimmeria-Book/dp/0345461517/ref=pd_sim_b_2/105-9274052-8417227)

It's Howard's first stories in the chronological order that he wrote them, and without tampering or emendations.

Ordered. Thank you. I hope to share your passion but not your frustration. But again ...Thank You.

Well the character has been around for 75 years now, and people still write Conan novels and comics.  Does it really surprise you that there's a strong fanbase?  I know when a lot of people hear Conan they think of the movies, but I can't stress enough how good Robert E. Howard's orignial stories were.  Hell, Lovecraft was a huge fan of Howard's stuff (the two became good friends later).

According to Wikipedia, the original Conan books (by Howard) fall into public domain in a month (at least in the UK), so you might not want to buy the full set just yet.

Hey, that's pretty cool news. Didn't know that.

Still though, it doesn't hurt to get a hard copy. Page turning is fun.

The Darkhorse comics are good too. They're just translations of Howard's original tales.....Though Howard's original prose is a thing to enjoy itself.

I haven't read all of them yet however, but I'm sure Velorath could tell you more.

As for everything else, the first Arnie flick is great, but even then, it's dumbed down pastiche -- though it might be the best example of it. Gotta love that movie. Some of the secondary stories I've read are OK as well, but for the most part, they are still crap compared to REH (I still haven't read those new "Age of Conan" books though). Even the best efforts have done a disservice to Conan, and have created all the wrong impressions of naked chicks, loincloths, and pointless skull splitting. It's a bit more than that.

Taking all that in account, Funcom isn't doing anything remarkable. Dilution is to be expected. I just didn't expect this level of it. Not now. One of the excuses for all of those bad stories in the past was that a lot of Howard's material wasn't easily accessible. That volume I linked above is the first time in like 70 years that the "true" Conan stories have been compiled in one collection. There isn't any need to fall back on imagination anymore.

I understood that people still found the stories amusing.  I didn't realize it was to level where people obsess over the details like Star Trek.

Well, seeing that it's retained it's vitality and relevance for 80 years should tell you something....

Actually, I share the sentiment of surprise. All I know of Conan is the Swarzenegger movies. I had no idea it was that old. I also had no idea Conan wasn't just created for the movies, but rather, movies created from the IP. At 80 years it even predates Tolkien, and yet incorporates fantasy-like elements right?

Kind of fantasy. The "real" hardcore fans would call it sword and sorcery. Whatever that means. His writing is more pulpy, rugged, and not quite so grand or heroic as typical fantasy though.

Also, Howard was writing historical fiction books before Conan, but he didn't like the idea of being bogged down by facts. So he decided to create his own world that incorporated all of these historical nations and legends into a singular myth. This allowed him to carry on his interest in writing and commentating about history, civilization, and barbarians, but not getting bogged down into too much with fact checking. And I guess he liked the idea of Egyptians, Mongols, and Frenchmen wandering around in the same world.

It doesn't have a lot of magic either (that's another thing I could gripe about AoC's class system, but whatever). Mages are barely seen, and when they are, they can shift an entire battle. They're rare and powerful enough that even Conan is afraid of them.

They're mainly associated with gods and religion as well, so it's not always "magic" per se.

It doesn't have any fantasy races either. Like we've discussed, it's just Earth in a long forgotten age.

There's a horror element to many stories too. I'm not sure if that's Lovecraft's influence or not, since Lovecraft himself praised him: "“For stark, living fear, what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”

I think it's partly due to the fact that it's taken so long just to get all of Howard's original, unedited work collected for various reasons.

Howard also wrote a decent set of Cthulu Mythos stories for various publications, which I picked up as a paperback a decade ago. One of those has a modern-day story with a protagonist who dreams/relives his past life as Conan.

Lol, that's awesome. I have to check that out.

I have read most of Howard's shit, pretty good stuff except when it gets overly strange, such as the Cthulu stuff. He was actually good friends with H.P. Lovecraft.

Conan is a bad ass character...pulls in lots of tail, shows no mercy, and just generally kicks ass.  Drizzt doesn't have 1/10 the testosterone that Conan has. 

Conan is fantasy but not what modern readers would call it with elves and trolls and shit like that. It isn't generic fantasy. It is dark, gritty, more realistic and an fairly original conception.

That's what turned me way from it. I hate that machismo shit.

I wouldn't call it machismo. Howard was trying to do a study on barbarism (vs civilization) with Conan. Pulp-ish though it may be, he had more sincere aspirations with it. Conan's attitude comes more from a sense of freedom, individualism, and barbaric simplicity than it does machismo.

In the words of Conan himself:

"Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultations of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

Also, there aren't as many scantily clad women as you may be lead on to believe. Some of his best stories have none. Others have very strong female characters (Queen of the Black Coast).

Howard also created the original Red Sonja as well, if that matters.

Howard himself was a rough individual though. He was a boxer before he wrote full time. So he did have some kind of insight into violence and "machismo" attitude more than the average writer, I guess.

The term I've generally heard used is "Low Fantasy" as opposed to "High Fantasy."  As far as I'm aware, High Fantasy is supposed to represent Tolkienesque stuff, with Elves and Dragons and Wizards and Knights and so on, and Low Fantasy is the catchall term for people who want to be less... prancy, I guess?  Anyways, in my experience, Conan is to Low Fantasy as Lord of the Rings is to High Fantasy, it's just that high fantasy has seen a lot more exposure in video games and movies (especially in the last ten years or so).

A quick googling around says that high fantasy, apparently, deals with epic themes, epic struggles, and usually entirely created worlds. ex. C.S. Lewis, Tolkien.

Low fantasy contains more personal themes, personal struggles, worlds borne out of our own myths or history (Howard), and even contemporary worlds (Gaiman).

Then again, low fantasy could have all the themes of high fantasy, but at same time, not take itself too seriously. Warcraft, Bard's Tale, or Discworld.

The Conan series is definitely in the theme of "Barbarism versus Civilization".  Conan is a much deeper character than the pulp "machismo".


Indeed, from the introduction of the The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian:

"Most of the more routine Conan stories - systematically featuring semi-naked ladies, which had been entirely absent from the series until then - were indeed composed between November 1932 and March 1933, at a time when Howard was in dire need of money"

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite with having their skulls split, as a general thing" - Conan, the Tower of the Elephant.

Based on what I'm reading here (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1472&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT) it sounds like there might not be too many problems with the character customization.


You can relax just a little bit now Stray.

Heh. Thanks for pointing that out.  8-)

Yea but doesn't that mean some people can choose wrong?  :evil:

I'd like to think that that page was created because of ME. Hehe. It was posted on December 22 (yesterday). How convenient.  :-P

AoC class list has been updated. (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=wv698gto8fobuaq8j6whb2qhan5tz1&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1501&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)

• Guardian and Halberdier have been merged, class name is Guardian.
• Barbarian, Reaver and Master Thief merged, class name is Barbarian.
• Conquerer and Liberator merged, class name is Conqueror.
• Zealot and Dark Templar merged, class name is Dark Templar.
• Defiler and Lotus Master merged, class name is now Assassin.
• Ranger and Waylayer merged, class name is Ranger.
• Stormcaller and Druid[/i] merged, class name is Druid of the Storm.
• Scourge of Derketo’s abilities have been merged across the Priest archetypes

Final line-up of classes:

• Priest Archetype – Druid of the Storm, Scion of Set, Priest of Mitra, Bear Shaman
• Mage Archetype – Demonologist, Lich, Necromancer, Herald of Xotli
• Soldier Archetype – Guardian, Conqueror, Dark Templar
• Rogue Archetype – Ranger, Assassin, Barbarian

This news makes me sad.

... but I got a laugh out of the Liberator becoming the Conquerer.

Translation: We aren't creative enough to make the number of skills needed to fill out the classes we'd like. So we chopped the number of classes in half and called it a day.

I've gotta laugh at their new screenshots  :lol:.

Apparently, this is only a DX10 game in name, not implementation.

(http://community.ageofconan.com/conan/frontend/files/CONTENT/screen6.jpg)

Now compare that to Crysis:

(http://www.crytek.com/images/gallery/xsis/crysis10.jpg)

(http://www.crytek.com//images/gallery/xsis/crysis6.jpg)

That's... pretty crappy.  I realize Conan was a Barbarian, a Reaver, and a Thief, but that doesn't really justify rolling them all into one class.  They've got 4 different Mage classes, and 4 different Priest classes, but we can't get just one basic Thief class in a fucking Conan game?

Still no lamenting woman class?

It doesn't bother me much that they had cut down the number of classes.  What I find stupid is how they said "aw fuck it, let's just combine some of these classes even if they're nothing alike."

That and the fact that there are now more caster classes than there are melee classes.  It makes me wonder if these guys ever actually read any Conan stuff.

That's what I was getting to in my previous rants. It's the little things that indicated that. It becomes more apparent over time.

Though, on the bright side of things, that's still more classes/skillsets than World of Warcraft.

What's up with comparing a DX9 screenshot of AoC (with the main character model cut out) with a DX10 screenshot of Crysis, Stray? :|

If you took that screenshot from the IGN article on the DX10 version of AoC shown at CES, then take note - none of the screenshot on IGN are actually of the DX10 version.

EDIT: And granted, the DX10 version of AoC will probably still not look as good as Crysis, but then Crysis is a singleplayer FPS (though supporting up to 32 people in multiplayer), while AoC has to support displaying a shitload of characters onscreen at once.

Oh, I forgot. LOL.  Conan's reign is going to be the greatest boon for the magic-users he hates so much.

It's not a bright enough side of things if I can play a fucking Bear Shaman but not a Thief.

That was a CES shot, taken from the updated Conan site. Not IGN.

Thought they were pimping DX10 (at least, that's what MS is using Funcom for).

Someone should caption the cows.

While the Crysis shots are beautiful, at least the AOC screens give me some hope that my computer could actually run it.

Ah. Well, no DX10 screenshots have been released as of yet, in any case. Cow screenshot was posted around Dec 28, if that's of interest. :P

I think it looks alright as far as MMOs go.

I agree. Crysis is not an MMO so not trying to drive as many variables as one. It does look hella good though, something I'll load onto my next computer. We don't need any more proof that MMOs targeting a lower common denominator is not only a good thing, but a requirement.

Otherwise, I realize the classes break lore and aggravate some, but I'm really happy they did it. Some call it less creative, but in an MMO, a zillion classes just mean the same abilities slightly tweaked across many of them, and the rest becoming bots or ignored by devs. Funcom probably looked at their CSR and live-team budgets and sizes and realized they couldn't support the classes as originally designed.

I still don't like the base class/archetype setup. EQ2 was much better after Pub 19 (when they dropped the sub-sub-class thing for a straight class roll at character creation). But at least in AoC, as I understand it, you only have to play through the 1-20 game once. After that you can /level to 20 all new alts. Anyone know if that's still the case?

Some screenshots look alright, but that was a mistake putting those cows on their site. I think it's hilarious.

Besides that though, an MMO CAN look good. Those trees do not NEED to look like shit, just because it's an MMO. And it's the last game Microsoft should be pimping anyhow.

That ss looks assy, like Titan Quest or somesuch shit.

The only game who did the class/archtype thing was shadowbane.  At least there you had a choice to become the same end class from different archtypes, like rogue/ranger vs warrior/ranger.  With no class overlap between archtypes theres absolutely no reason to not pick your class from level one.

EQ2 and DAoC too. In the former you chose your first class at 9/10 and the second at 19/20. In DAoC you chose your class at 5.

I personally feel GW and DDO differ in that they offer MULTI-classing.

Unless we differ on the definition of 'class/archetype'?

Woops, i meant to say the only game who did the class/archtype thing RIGHT was shadowbane, my bad.

I dunno, the cows look like...  cows.  While I agree that a screenshot of a building and cows doesn't exactly say 'Conan the Barbarian' to me, I don't really see anything in particular wrong with the screenshot.

I also love how schizo this thread/forum is about whether screenshots of MMOs should be CPU-crushingly awesome, or low-end enough to be widely playable.

--
Alkiera

Heh

Conan had plenty of cows and buildings. :-P

I'm only talking about the image quality.

I wouldn't pick on them so much if they didn't claim DX10 quality, "close work with NVidia", or that it'd be a 360 game. In that context, those graphics are laughable.

Just when I was looking at the max-settings Vanguard screenshots and thinking 'those don't look too bad' the AoC people release this[/url set of screenshots showing the game with DirectX 10. I'm pretty impressed. (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=eeygajjw0dq0p6vdr7v5ugpm0jpbdh&func=frontend.show&func_id=1036&template=inc_images&selected=1036)

Parts of the video looked good, but man that combat with the bat demon looked dull as fuck.

All 5 seconds of the combat looked dull? Granted, it wasn't the most awsome display of combat, but I've seen other footage that suggest that it'll be on par with current expectations.

Combat looked very conventional, yes. Also, not enough gratuitous use of bloom. Other than that, I'm impressed.

Particle effects are lousy too (hell, this is something even crappy looking games can do right).

Final Launch Date for Age of Conan (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=17477).

Read it and weep. Or cackle with crazy laughter. Or whatever.

Well thats good news for the health of the game i guess, bad news for anyone tired of wow and not stupid enough to play vanguard.

For the time-compressed: October 30th, 2007.

I could have sworn a late 2007 date has always been suggested.

Is anyone else surprised? I guess Funcom learned from their AO launch debacle, and will try to get some real polish and testing into this bad boy. I am very glad about this, much better than rushing it IMO.

EDIT: Wow, now that was some incredible insight by me :)

Still waiting to get a sniff at a beta.

Scion of Set (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=juh6xtkvu0a4haqopx0g2e1nmt0wdr&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1506&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)

Druid of the Storm (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1539&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)

Lich (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=juh6xtkvu0a4haqopx0g2e1nmt0wdr&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1540&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)

Herald of Xolti (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=juh6xtkvu0a4haqopx0g2e1nmt0wdr&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1541&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)

Useless vapor-info?  We've got it!

I have fond memories of reading about Conan and his shapeshifting, demon-tainted, undead, magic-using, Set-worshipping, companions.  Nothing says "faithful to the Conan license" like making spellcasting classes more common than melee.

Heads up against WAR?  Good luck with that.

Different audiences.



Heh, and no, I'm not serious. I just always like that kneejerk comeback :)

WAR is quite likely to work on my current computer. Conan is quite likely to require the new one I'll buy sometime in the summer, based on their barkings about DX10 and therefore Vista and therefore 2-4gb of RAM and a 512mb video card and all that.

I like both, and it would suck for me personally if they did launch at the same time. And I do agree it would suck for Funcom if they went up against EA's first real MMO attempt in over four years.

If Conan is remotely more functional than the latests MMOs, it'll have more chances for global success than War, simply because of IP recognition. In the US, I suppose its up for grabs, since Warhammer does have a solid following among the gee..er, intelligentsia. The only thing War can gain from having EA behind it is marketing, but I don't expect theatre trailers for it, so in the end, it may turn out more of a detriment than a boon, considering EA's track record.

I have no idea what you are talking about...

WAR > Conan by a massive massive amount in Europe.

WAR = Conan in US

Conan > WAR in Asia?  Since when?  How can you possibly know this?  I doubt IP penetration will be the determining factor for Asian gamers.

Seriously I'd love to hear some explination for this logic:

To me, the backstory is kinda meh for either one.  Neither is terrible.

For me, mechanics is king, and at the moment, Age of Conan sounds more interesting than WAR.

That said, polish is important too; it doesn't matter if you've got an innovative system if it crashes or just doesn't work.

The IP I could really not care less about.

--
Alkiera

The backstory for Conan is the history of the human race. You're not that apathetic, are you?

No seriously, the backstory is basically Celts, Romans, Mongols, Carolingians, Ethiopians, Norse, Egyptians, and whatever else all bundled in the same world and time.

To paraphrase Keyshawn Johnson: If you've got a problem with Conan, then you've got a problem with yourself.  :evil:

No, I'm just not a big history buff.  I'm all for history, it's just not something that fascinates me.  Hence, 'meh'.

As far as what I said before, my stance is that I won't play a terrible game even for the greatest IP in the world.  The IP has very little weight in my decision to play/not play a game.  To me, the stories in the game should make sense in the game, I should be able to learn the lore through the game, if there is little-to-no lore in the game, but it's fun, I'd probably play it anyway.  Master of Magic, for example.  There's 2 planes, a buncha races... no explaination of why or how or what the current status of the world is.  Pretty much no one gets along, so they just fight.  Backstory/lore is crap... but the game is fun, so I play it.   Versus, say, DDO, which has all this history regarding Eberron (which I know a fair bit about, I'm currently running a PnP game in that setting)... but the game itself doesn't translate well to online, so I don't play it.

--
Alkiera

Heh, fair enough. I need a good game too. No need to explain that.

AoC itself doesn't impress me all that much on either front yet though. It won't be Conan lore, and there's a few questionable things gameplay wise. So I'm just sticking up for the IP here, not the game itself.

DDO is a good example of illustrating your point though. I like Ebberon too. The game itself? No.

I think AoC has a larger chance of being truly great than WAR, however I also think it has a larger chance of failing. WAR feels solid but more evolutionary while AoC feels more revolutionary.

What is revolutionary about AoC?

It looks like VG with Lineage contested areas from a company who's only claim to MMOG fame was a game that deleted people hard drives.

Not sure why, but for my less junkie style gamer friends they have heard of AoC. Warhammer is mixed.

Looking at warhammer, I foresee massive population imbalances. WoW has shown us what happens to less 'pretty' races. They better make the bad guys look sweet in their own way, or seeing a greenskin might be as rare as seeing a Orc Female in WoW. I hope not.

Anyone have a ballpark release date on WAR?

On record I'll say AoC sells half a million boxes in October.  All those burned out WoW junkies will need somewhere to go...we all did after our firsts, didnt we? Very good planning by Funcom IMO, thats long enough to really let the burn out sink in :) Well, I'm buying a box anyways...499,999 to go!

I know this is all pre-beta hype, but....just quickly from the FAQ I saw a lot of things....here's a couple that deal with combat

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

"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.

 

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."

Will we feel the power of every swing when we're lagged?  I have my concerns about a system like this as soon as you introduce a) high traffic areas and b) pvp systems.  Can you imagine a system like this in CoH where just particle effects can slow you to a crawl? 

Considering the last Funcom launch, I have some serious concerns this will work as well in action as it does on paper.

Shadowbane had formations.  Just saying.

How'd that work out for them? 

That game was full of great ideas laced with shitty implementation.  So much wasted potential.

I'm still wondeirng why people are expecting different from Funcom.  This is so over their heads.

Sorry, this page needed a "Funcom LOL" on it.

I think we got a case of forest for the trees here. More people across the board have heard of Conan, the story, the books, the movie, etc than have heard of the game Warhammer. And as for your assertion that War is more known in Europe than Conan, I beg to differ; it may be the case in whatever particular neck of the woods you're from, but I had never heard of Warhammer till I moved to the states. That's over 15 years in Europe living in blissful ignorance of Warhammer. Conan, however, even my mother knew about.

Conan may be an influential piece of literature that's been around even longer some than some people's grandparents, but the Arnold movie alone would account for it's popularity.

You know?  I don't recall.  I think that there was some bonus to stats if someone with the leadership skill was calling formations but I'm not sure how it worked later on as I quit playing pretty early.

Yea, Conan is definitely a wider recognized brand. However, warhammer probably have a larger hardcore following.

I think funcom has a lot of chance to really create a great MMO, I think they have the competence and experience to really pull of what they're trying to do. I played AO for like 1 & ½ year I think, there's definitely things in there which are pretty unique, even if it's a diku in the core. Technologically AO holds up pretty well with it's expansion. The engine is certainly above average. When it comes to making games, having a previously released game in the same genre is invaluable. I'm sure all of you with some software developing experience know what I'm talking about here. Just look at any of your older decently sized projects and I'm certain there's ton of stuff you would do differently, and better, if you would give it another go.

I quit pretty early on as well.  To be honest, I don't remember much about formations at all.  

I'd agree with that. Though I wouldn't even say the word hardcore. It's just different types of popularity.

Conan's more of a general pop culture thing, but with Warhammer, there's actually a lot of gamer specific popularity and overlap. At least when it comes to RPG's. Conan barely has any presence in the gaming world.

So perhaps in the end, WAR has the better kind of popularity.


Anyways...

It's kind of a dorky thing to talk about though, isn't it? :lol:

A quick googel search for "Shadowbane Formations" brings us...  back to us!

Thanks Haemish!

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4892.msg127985#msg127985

Neither Warhammer nor Conan is popular enough to make any real difference based on name.

Shadowbane formations played absolutely no role in anything, it was just a way for one person to "drive" the group somewhere like autofollow on wow.  Without collision detection theres no point to formations, SB didnt have collision dectetion, apparently AoC will.

Usually I would say collision detection is good, but I could see it not just being a problem, but an absolute nightmare for large scale situations, especially sieges and city fighting (if they're going to be anywhere close to how I imagine they'll be in AoC). Mounted combat could end up being a big hassle too.

Bingo.

WAR is a game mechanic, both in IP and in execution. It feels like the lore was wrapped around that to justify the game experience, similar to Warcraft. I could be wrong about that though so would be interested in corrections.

Similar to World of Warcraft is the approach that the MMO has little to do mechanically with the turn-taking strategy miniatures game IP. But like WoW, it could survive that translation well, extending the brand fine,

Also similar to WoW is general user interface, and therefore general user experience. It seems to play just like it except in what players are motivated to do (which itself is enough differentiation).

AoC is none of these. It is a game with a pretty different play experience from standard diku, based on only a story IP. Last I played it the game felt a bit closer to DDO combat than anything else. So, story-based IP with a unique combat mechanic and a pushing-envelope graphics engine.

Sound familiar?

I think WAR is going to do MUCH better than AoC based on the above alone. If Funcom fubar's this like AO then that'll just be insult upon injury. However, AO was so long ago I can't imagine they haven't changed enough to know what to focus on.

You're pretty off about the Warhammer IP. It started off as an RPG, not a combat game. And it's one of the oldest PnP spinoffs to boot.

It's very much a world. Think D&D, but with the wretched filth and humor of a Monty Python movie (i.e. those muddy peasants in Holy Grail or Jabberwocky). There are, of course, civilized elements (Elves, Imperials) -- and even futuristic elements (more like steampunkish elements) -- but it's just a rougher and more comical version of D&D. It's also more focused on providing an atmosphere of political conflict and war (as opposed to inclusive bands of adventurers out to save the world).

I agree with Stray's summation of the Warhammer world and Darniaq's (misdrawn) conclusions.  WAR will most likely do better in the short and long term compared to AoC, as nothing has been said or released or shown to give me any faith that Funcom is going to pull a working game out of their ass this time around.  The IP for WAR will most likely draw more fans but Conan's IP will raise curiosity and gives name recognition as well.

WAR will also be bolstered by picking up everyone who still wanders around teh intrawebs talking about DAOC this DAOC that.

Either way execution trumps IP by a mile on these games, you have to do something better then WoW while maintaining Blizzard's level of polish and ease of access or you might as well go home at this point.

Thanks for the headsup on the IP. I identify WH40k by the miniatures, but had to figure there was more to it (particularly since WAR is based on the RP). This is why I think WH will do better though. It's got strong enough lore to make an RPG and a strong enough following from 40k to make for a ready audience, and a lot of cash from EA. These were some of WoW's main advantages. What they don't have is Blizzard's rockstar status, and I personally don't feel the omgDAoCisawesome crowd is anywhere near the size of the b.net one. But Mythic is at least competent and creative in many areas, and with the proper support can do good stuff. And so far it seems EA is giving proper support (money, resources, handsoff the design).

So WAR>AoC chances all day long. WAR vs WoW is going to make 2007 a fun year.

WAR vrs. WoW? Thats like me (WAR) walking up to Chuck Lidell (WOW) and spitting in his face.

WAR vrs. AoC might make 2007 a fun year. Thats more like me walking up to my younger brother and spitting in his face. Too bad the punk is bigger than me now.

Its interesting, the WAR vrs. AoC. 2 software houses, both having worked on MMOs before, and one that you know wants to have a non-assdebacle launch this time. I'm still with age of Conan doing 500k, I think their lure of the "Mature" rating, decapitations, player cities, and excellent timing for grabbing WoW burnouts will make it successful, as long as they dont repeat an AO launch. When is WAR's scheduled release (if any)?

Both teams are doing interesting things but I am more interested in AoC simply because they are just a bit more out of the box.  WAR still seems like DIKU++ to me.

I dunno. I'm fairly sure WoW has a lock on the 5mil+ subscription range for the foreseeable future, sure. And without EA, WAR would be an interesting diversion for a few hundred thousand people, most of them in the U.S.

But with EA, WAR has the same potential world-wide reach that Blizzard, with VUG had. That I feel is very important, particularly given WAR's competitive nature being in some ways WoW++ for cultures in the Far East that eat that stuff right up.

I don't know how well EA does over there. But they are very huge and do globalize in general. That's still fairly unique in this genre. Given the analagous theme, diku foundation, and PvP focus of WAR, I think it's got a shot at the multi-million paying subscriber/sub-licensed-Cafe-publisher accountbase that WoW has. Remember, more than 50% of WoW account holders are in China.

Will it win? I don't think so. But as long as the game doesn't suck (Maybe they'll have demos up at GDC), I do think it comes out of the gate with the greatest potential of any title out or known to have a chance of coming.

I don't know why you say U.S. Someone already pointed out it's popularity in Europe. Hell, it originated and is maintained in Europe.

I dont think f13's crowd realizes how little most 2X-yr olds and under give a fuck about Conan.  Anyone else from my age bracket (I'm 23) have a comment on this?  Everyone I know, knows of Conan but I dont know one Conan fan.  Warhammer will generate its own hype because it has fanbois.  AoC needs to generate hype via the regular hype channels or having a kickass product when the OB starts.  I wish I knew how well Dawn of War has done in terms of sales, because that has added a bunch of gamers to the WH brand.

Also to add to what Stray is saying, Gamesworkshop is MASSIVE in England.  I have no idea what its penetration is like in other European countries but Gamesworkshop is an English company first and foremost they are way bigger there then in the US.

I'm pulling for AoC because I dislike Mythic and think Funcom tries harder to make their own games, not just clone someone else's.  They need a good release or they are proper fucked but can they pull it off?  At this point I dont think they are going to get it right.  Deadline is coming up but no beta date announced, the latest class releases are still vapor-speak with no real skill descriptions except the max level stuff.  It just doesn't seem like their shit is together.

There are going to be a huge amount of people that have only bought WoW and a few other games in the last two years thinking, hrm I guess I can pay $50 and see what people are talking about.  These games are going to have to kickass from LvL1 but I dont think either of these dev's appreciates that.  I expect the newbie game to be boring and stupid "lets kill rats" in both games.

I was stuck in the Newb area along with thousands of others during Funcom's Anarchy Online end of beta event. 

I would have to stronly disagree with anyone that thinks Funcom knows what they are doing.

Agreed. Conan is not a huge IP. It's an interesting one, but I'd bet that most people who even know about it don't know the roots in real history as Stray as outlined them.

How much of EU? All of it or mostly England? I only ask out of curiosity, because my point wasn't about the appeal of WH40k to EU, but rather Mythic being able to canvas EU with a partner while focusing as they rightly would on US alone, without EA.

How well does DAoC do in EU and what percentage of accounts do they account for? I really don't know. It just always seemed to me US was their main focus with EU being a want-to-have.

How long ago was this again?

I actually got a kick out of their starting space, with the leets and E-leets or whatever that spammed 1337speak.

6 years ago?

AO's launch was the kind of suck that reverberates 6 years later and makes people think, "Right, I'll believe it when I see it."  That's a lot of suck.

But they did have flying mounts way before anyone else did! :)

All suck is good suck.

My character Xerr having a conversation with a leet.

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/leet.gif)

Get off my lawn!

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

Not true, WWIIOnline beat them to release

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

Suddenly AoC is sounding better.

Oh, I don't know how much. I don't play or follow WH much myself (had some friends from awhile back who did). I just figured it was pretty common knowledge that it's got a large fanbase in Europe. That's where it's started, and where you'll usually find the biggest fans from. It's like the RPG equivalent of soccer football or something. ;)

Not to say it doesn't have a lot of fans in the US too though.

Different to a standard diku and unique combat - sounds good to me. Good as in worth keeping an eye on (who really knows yet if it will turn out to be a good game?).

I've had my fill of dikus. I enjoyed LotR (beta) and Vanguard, but neither will keep me playing for the long haul. I don't know if WAR is another diku but if so, maybe I'll play that for a month or two as well, but no more. I'm all in favour of people trying something different. Eventually one of them will get it right, hopefully. I started with UO, then played Everquest, and then . . . lots and lots of Everquest clones. Even WoW is just a better executed Everquest. It's not different to EQ or DAOC in the way that EQ was different to UO. There are exceptions, ie Eve and SWG in its earliest incarnation, and they're the games I've had most fun with since I quit EQ many years ago.

I guess someone who makes a game not based on what has become the standard model is more likely to screw up, but good luck to them. It *might* be truly great at least.

By the way, Funcom proved they could make a solid, stable, working multiplayer game a long time ago, with AO. It was just that they proved it some time after AO had launched.

I've never read a Conan book in my life and I fell asleep during the film.  Still, I'd love to have an MMORPG with good PvP for a change.  So whatever.

When people say that, I tell him that they probably watched the wrong film.

Conan the Barbarian. Watch it.

NOT Conan the Destroyer.


Either way though, the books are where it's at. But that first film was pretty great. Still the best fantasy based movie in my opinion (yes, I think it's better than LotR. Don't ask me to repeat it).

Nothing beats James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom.  I was sad to learn from the 'passings clip' on the Oscars that Mako died last year (the crazy wizard/narrator guy from the first movie).

For me it wasn't only the novels, but also the hundreds of comics (Conan the Barbarian,  King Conan, The Savage Sword of Conan) that I collected in the 70's and 80's as a kid/teen.

I think if anyone under 30 thinks Conan is just 'meh', they probably watched too much of this:


http://imdb.com/title/tt0129673/ (http://imdb.com/title/tt0129673/)

Wow, I never realized WWIIO had the aircraft in its 2001 launch. My first "flying mount" was the Mosquito in Planetside during beta in 2003.

Oh absolutely. As a gamer, I'm very interested in AoC. All I've been talking about lo these past pages is what I think of its business potential.

AoC, WAR and TR, that's my near-term personal interest list.

I had no idea there was ever a tv series.  And I think Stray is right.  I remembered it when Ixxit mentioned James Earl Jones.  I did kind of like that one.  It must have been the second one.  I have to add that I'm not a big Arnie fan, although I can tolerate him in action films.  (as long as he doesn't talk too much and keeps most of his clothing on)

Ugh, I stayed away from that show. I am under 30 though. Just under 30. ;)

Didn't realize Mako died. That sucks. He was funny in whatever I saw him in, but he also had the perfect narrator's voice. I mean, just the intro to that movie + the title score is fucking genius. All intros in all movies should have Mako in them  :-D

It's kind of a guy thing, I guess. Conan. Though I've convinced a few women to like it. Now if only I get one to like that, the Road Warrior, Kung Fu flicks, and loud guitars, then I'll marry her.  :-P

Um, yeah. Darniaq's comment about WAR having a following due to 40k is a little misinformed as well. The Warhammer Fantasy IP is particularly huge in Europe. It's debatable whether WFB or 40k is more popular over there, but I can tell you that both are very popular in Europe, and that the IP there is plenty strong EA or no EA. I know quite a few (not all) of f13'ers have a rather US-centric view of the world, but what are the US and European WoW numbers again?

Also, Stray. WFRP came about at roughly the same time as WFB3 did. The warhammer world (aside from beginnings as a basement D&D campaign, etc) was first published in WFB1 to the best of my knowledge. Jackson and Livingstone imported and sold D&D rules and materials when GW started.

How the hell can you forget those awesome flying tanks?

So true.  God, I loved the first movie.  22 year old male here.  It had it all, from a sense of humor, to quite possibly the best movie soundtrack ever, to a whole lot more I can't explain.  In the top 10 movies I've ever seen.


Yet, I never read any books.  I suppose I just treated it as a self-contained experience and thus never explored the 'mythos' further.

Ding ding!

The movie was awesome. Arnie was at his physical peak, Conan's mom was a super-hot porn-star (no joke), the soundtrack was phenomenal. The movie had a very visceral feel.

Anyway I must be the only person in the world who liked AO. I'm looking forward to Conan. Just remembering all the cool clothing styles in AO gets me worked into a lather. I'll never forget the first time I walked outside the city and saw what had to be 50 people each looking really cool and dressed totally differently.

Conan is those movies where Arnold plays a barbarian and kills some stuff, yeah? I vaguely remember seeing a couple of those when I was little. That sums up my Conan experience; as a brand it means nothing to me at all.

I'm a 30-something and despite enjoying the two conan films a lot when I was younger, and still liking the first one today, am not exactly someone who knows or cares much at all about the IP.

There are a few of us out there. I know Numtini and I adored AO for a period of time. Stylistically and atmospherically it rivalled any MMO. Gameplay, was at best, functional during long periods of time. Rubber banding game play, non-intuitive ui, physics from hell, etc, all contributed to the game's lack of popularity. But the art and the story writing were there.

I'm looking forward to just about any FunCom release because no matter how potentially clunky and dated some of its features may be, the creative developers are clearly given a lot of influence in the design of the game. I'm hoping that they've learned from the past and can put out a game that's playable out of the box. And if they don't and we have howls of laughter, I'll just point to Vanguard and state 'They started it'.

I thought the AO class system was impressive, as was the equipment/gear (as someone already pointed out).

Pretty boring game though.

Funny though, it was the first MMO I ever played. Or at least, the first MMO I ever bought and stayed in long enough to get a feel for (dabbled with a friend's AC and UO accounts before though). I tend to dislike fantasy (.....Except Conan), and AO was pretty much the only sci-fi MMO I found at the store (then later on, I discovered Earth and Beyond, which sucked even more).

This was early 2003, I think? At that point, it didn't seem broken. Just empty and boring (To be fair, I later discovered this was not a unique feature to AO. Just about all MMO's are this way). And top it off, the minute I saw characters running around with high level numbers next to their heads, I wanted to quit (the level cap was extremely demoralizing, no matter how you put it. And I think it's up to lvl 220 now?).

Well, to be fair, levels in AO were not the same as levels in EQ. Each one wasn't a prolonged saga of whackafoozling. They performed a slightly different function, which was to let you to add points to your skills. They could have gone with an EQ model, making levels longer and have a lower cap, but that would have taken some of the fun out of point allocation, and probably made the potential for hosing your toon far more drastic.

Being an ex-Games Workshop Employee, I feel I should comment on this. In the UK, if you toss a stone, it'll hit a Games Workshop. If you're lucky it'll also bounce and hit yet another. Thoughout all of the EU, it's also pretty damn popular. Its all about Warhammer Fantasy, though, not 40,000. It started out as the fantasy/adventure board game Talisman (Traditional RPG-ish combat), which eventually lead up to the actual fantasy tabletop strategy game. The funny thing about all this is that in the States, W40K is the most popular. It also seems to pull in a much younger audience whereas in the UK the players are generally older. Its really interesting when you look at the difference in gamestyles and who their audience is. Warhammer Fantasy Battles is a large scale, slow paced, sit-and-think, tactical kind of game. Warhammer 40,000 is a small scale, quick paced, rush-in-and-blow-stuff-up kind of a game. Its just interesting to note that here in the US we love 40k, and Europe prefers fantasy. So for WAR, they're not only pitching mainly to a country that doesn't know much about the two games, they're also pitching the one they like the least. I think it'll be a hit in the UK, though.

And I kind of feel bad not knowing anything about Conan other than Arnie. But thanks to Stray and the like, I'll read some of the books. If anyways, it looks like it focuses on the kind of aspects I enjoy in a fantasy story.

Just got back from Best Buy and discovered that they had the "Complete Conan" DvD on sale for 9.99.   The Destroyer & The Barbarian for $10, woo. Just thought I'd let y'all know.

Yeah that's a good summary. I'm not sure if Conan will be a good game but I expect it to at least some interesting elements.

I'm mostly curious. Sure WH is huge in EU, but would Mythic by itself have been able to do a good job in both single-language/regulation US and 13+ language/multiple-regulation EU? I guess we'll never know, but to me Rithrin sums up my concern:

While the EU might have an assload of languages, you only actually need to manage 5 at most (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian). Once you have those five (arguably even Spanish and Italian are optional) your product will be accepted throughout the region (I'm not attempting to address the fairness of this - I'm just talking about how it is). Tbh, if you didn't translate at all, you'd still be able to sell everywhere bar France, Germany, and maybe Italy; many European markets would actually prefer no-translation because then they don't they don't feel that they are cross-subsidising a service they won't ever use (I don't just mean the UK, I also mean countries that will play on English servers because there will never be, for example, a Swedish language server).


And Mythic may not have the capability to market and host directly within the EU, but I'm damn sure there are potential partners  with a better record than DAoC has through the GOA/FranceTelecom/OpenTransit fiasco. If a more professional and capable organisation were running EU WAR, I can't see any reason it couldn't beat EU WoW numbers (Warhammer is a much stronger brand than Blizzard or Warcraft in Europe, and EU WoW numbers are not as dramatic as US or AP WoW numbers). But with GOA running the show it is really hard to see the marketing being able to deliver that sort of scale, or the infrastructure being able to support it. To fully deliver on potential of the warhammer brand in Europe you need a partner on the scale of Ubisoft - not an outfit that struggled to keep server connections running for DAoC numbers.


That said, the real issue is whether Mythic have the right Asian partner. Because being a success in the far east will automatically give you WoW numbers. WoW's US and EU successes are incidental by comparison.

Wouldn't it be EA{/i] that needs the right Chinese partner and not Mythic anymore? That's really what I've been wondering about, as I'm certainly no expert on globalization: Does EA do for WAR what Mythic by themselves couldn't (staggered worldwide launch).

How many MMOs are offered in as many territories as WoW? Yes, the Warcraft name carries weight, but that alone does not a partnership make. Finding a partner is easy. Finding the right one though... well, that's how they ended up with GOA. Maybe in their mind, GOA is fine. Maybe.

And I thought the EU had almost as many subscribers as the US, with China alone equaling the sum of the two? Could be wrong.

Well, yes, it would make sense for EA to have a strategic partner for the AP region. But given that the GOA contract was announced almost immeadiately before EA's acquistion of Mythic was announced, you'd have to assume that EA ok'd the GOA relationship. That being the case, it looks like they aren't yet ready to operate this sort of thing on a strategic level.

Re: WoW subs; afaik, Europe is running at a bit over a million. With the right partner, I think Warhammer could have got ahead of that. With GOA, I don't even see how they can support that many even if they could sell to that many.

This product ought to maintain more subs in Europe than in the US, that ought to be the yardstick that GOA are judged by.


I'm sure that in their mind GOA is fine.

Last I heard, WoW had 2mill+ in the US and 1.5mill+ in the EU with a total number of just over 8milll worldwide. This was before BC but I cant imagine they have changed that much relatively.

Edit: wrote something that didnt belong here

I'd be down for a new edition of Man O War that was a hella fun game. 

Wow, very cool.   Played and  enjoyed  this quite a bit back in the day,  and always wanted to pick up a copy.

Talisman was the best board game ever :)

We had quite a bit of fun with some programs they have out to create your own cards. Woot

I had a ton of Conan comics...err excuse me, graphic novels! I had a nice collection of the older stuff and was collecting the reprints when the band split up. I've got a couple dozen left, most were lost or stolen.

My girlfriend and I enjoyed the Conan movie in HD a couple months ago (I didn't know there was a second one). I really wouldn't call it a good movie, though. More funny than good with the horrid action acting, the stealthy character knocking over things, the odd editing.

Stealthy character? Are you talking about Tracey Walker (http://imdb.com/name/nm0910145/)?

He's in the second one. Sort of the comic relief character.


The first was made a few years before that. Thulsa Doom. Subotai. Mako. Nuff said. Go see it.

CONAN! What is best in life?

"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women! "

What's with me apparently not knowing what I'm talking about today?

Yes, that one. The first one. The chick Valeria, whenever doing her cheese 'stealth moves' bumps into stuff. I know which movie I'm talking about, it was hilarious.

Again, I'm Not Stray. James Earl in a bad weave < Vader.

That was the theory, but they never implemented it to my knowledge. It was just a way to autofollow the group leader.

Just making sure. When you said stealther, I thought you meant that other dude. Valeria was a thief though, so you're right (well, all of them were thieves...But whatever).

Thief isn't a class in Conan it was removed during the great "we can't come up with this many melee hotkey abilities" dilemma a few months back.

I'm going to be honest with you guys. I am turning 28 next month. I didn't know there were Conan books until I read this thread.

I liked the movies as a kid - I like all Arnold movies. I thought they were just that.

As far as Warhammer popularity goes - I've always wondered how those nerderies in the malls stay in business. I have "heard of" Warhammer, but I know nothing of the lore aside that there are Orks with a K, and they have one variation with mechs and futuristic pseduo-nazis.

To this day there's a guy in my guild, this native american dude with the soul of Jeff Lebowski, who'll sometimes come into Ventrilo, put on a loud gruff voice, and ask me what is best in life before so much as saying hello to anyone.  At which point I'll put on a pseudo-Austrian accent and scream the "lamentations of the women" line back at him, while anyone too new to the guild to have heard this before wonders what the fuck is wrong with us.

Good times.

Amazon.com has collections of Howard's original fiction. I read one and then left it on a plane. Grr.

..until someone who is new to the game points out that each player's turn consists of choosing to go clockwise or counterclockwise.

I used to LOVE Talisman, had two copies of the game, almost every expansion for it.  Looking back at it now, after all the experiences I've had with the new Eurogames, I just can't enjoy it anymore.  The game practically plays itself.

(http://i2.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/8a/e8/43cf_1.JPG)?

Yeah, pretty much.

One of my favourite comments on the board game messageboards I frequent was along the following lines:

"The only problem with the game was that I somehow can't seem to improve my ability to roll 6's more often than chance allows."

Just so as you know, only the far future version of orcs are spelt with a k, and they have way more than one variation with pseudo-nazis.

Pretty much everyone from every race in every warhammer setting is a pseudo-nazi.

Btw, for anyone who hasn't read any of Robert E. Howard's Conan-stories, you can get hold of many of them in .txt or .html format for free at the following location:
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterH (scroll down to Robert Ervin HOWARD).

So if you don't mind reading them on a monitor instead of on the pages of a good old book, the above site is a good place to get better aquainted with his works. =)

Hey, that's pretty cool. That's most of the same stories in that one compilation I linked to awhile back (at least most of the popular ones).

Note: He only wrote one novel for Conan, which was Hour of the Dragon (it's in that list above too). Everything else are short stories, so it shouldn't be too hard reading them on a computer.

For anyone planning on checking some stories out here, I'd recommend Beyond the Black River.

Was gonna say that too.  8-)

"A Witch Shall Be Born" has a crucifixion of Conan that makes his movie counterpart look like a pussy.

You mean like this?

(http://imgred.com/http://www.t-nation.com/forum_images/9270a-im2.jpg)

Next to Andre, everyone looks like a wimp.

--
Alkiera

Bombaata:  Boy, you look mighty cute in those leather leggings!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ytsp5YVRHq8

Figured it wasn't worth a new thread, decent homemade video by some guild.

Look at Wlit- you can tell he's wondering if he has fucked Arnold yet.

Some of those environments look really good!

...then you look at the gas-huffing character animations and combat interactions.  Usual MMO clunky looking combat.

But those environments!  Very nice.

Lol yeah, I saw the first bit and was thinking the game looks so awesome and then it shows the guy blowing the horn and the issusion was shattered. Looks pretty nice overall though. I especially liked the grabbing and stabbing animation even though it looked kinda comical.

Despite the imperfections, it looks better than swatting air. Glad someone is actually trying to improve combat. I would love to see a game that replaces autoattack/targeting with simple weapon arcs.

It looks fuckloads better than pixies and elves and cows all fanning each other with weapons in such a fashion that the only way to distinguish a hit from a miss is by looking for damage numbers.

Something tells me that in AoC a hit can be a miss.

Hit or miss, AoC is basically the one fantasy MMO I am really looking forward to. Its kinda scary and thrilling at the same time to have all my hopes riding on Funcom. I should have a very solid guild for it, people who are interested in joining PM me or something (it is a ways off yet, i know).

According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2007/03/24/495992.html), beta signups should be starting "sometime next month" - though a product manager at Funcom replied to a thread on the AoC forums about this article with the following...
...which can be interpreted whichever way you want.

EDIT: Oh, and I also found another interesting quote by said production manager:
Blood splatter on the screen? I'm unsure whether that would break immersiveness or not, but it sounds nice in any case... :D

For me that video showed just how important editing and camera work is.

I'm pretty sure the illusion is created entirely by only showing one attack cycle per cut and using lots of closeup fromtal shots that you won't automatically recognise as 'the usual' because you are used to a locked view from behind your character.

Personally, I thought the blood effects looked awful, but each to his own.

Being a graphics whore I thought it looked pretty damn good overall. I can nit pick it some of it but why bother. What I am wondering is how much of a beast of a graphics card I will need to get a smooth 30FPS and have it look good.

I couldn't detect any difference between that and EQ2/CoV/LotrO etc, so I imagine if your card runs the other recent MMOGs (excluding VG, naturally), you'll be fine.

I appreciated that they are going for a slightly different style of art mind you, that certainly can't hurt.

http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/771/771104/age-of-conan-20070307010228896.jpg

Like I said, EQ2. I'll bet you a cookie, if you can run EQ2 smoothly on high settings, you can run Conan smoothly on high settings.


Don't worry - it looks like floaty damage is in.

EDIT: I just watched that video again. There is only one attack in the video that doesn't look like standard fanning-animations with no animated hit/miss. It's one sequence that is intercut with a bunch of others to encourage you to think that it is a normal battle sequence, but I suspect it is not. I would not be surprised if it is a cut-scene or scripted quest event or somesuch.


EDIT2: Gameplay footage that makes my point...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEndk3fElu4&NR

If you're refering to the "hold character and stab him through the chest/stumache" thing, that's a fatality move or some such - the end result of a combination of moves, also known as a "combo" ;P Couldn't see any in the video you posted though.

I think you're refering to the same move as me - it was in the video posted by slayerik. The video in my post was just to point out that general combat seems to be the usual 'fanning each other with swords' affair.

Not that it is any worse than than any other mmog. I was just trying to douse the outbreak of baby-robot-jesuses.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17855
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17856


Age of Conan - GDC 07 Developer Walkthrough Pt. 1
and 2

Cool stuff

Those are very cool videos. WAR's competing for my head, Conan's competing for my heart. Decisions, decisions.

Since I seem to be the resident AoC fanboy, I compiled the links in this thread.

 Class List  (http://"http://www.ageofconan.com/common/classList/classList.html")

Age of Conan to be XBOX 360 (http://"http://www.linkbucks.com/Frameset.aspx?lbh=B7ED5601AF685F925EC0A105A86966B3&OrigLink=http%3a%2f%2fgameangst.blogspot.com%2f2006%2f12%2fcrom-age-of-conan-gets-greenlight-for.html&lid=19512&ia=False")

Screenshot Collection (http://"http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=eeygajjw0dq0p6vdr7v5ugpm0jpbdh&func=frontend.show&func_id=1036&template=inc_images&selected=1036")

Guild Homemade vid (http://"http://youtube.com/watch?v=ytsp5YVRHq8")

Gameplay Footage (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEndk3fElu4&NR")

 GDC Developer Walkthrough Pt. 1 (http://"http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17855")
 GDC Developer Walkthrough Pt. 2 (http://"http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17856")

Regional Profile (http://"http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/747430p1.html")
 Vids (http://"http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/743/743392/vids_1.html)

Questions:  If AoC is going to be on the x360, will there also be a pc version?  Will the pc and x360 versions have separate servers? 

Last I heard they had not decided yet. But I havent been following it for a little while and that could have changed.

For being a dev the guy sure sucks at the game. Also, despite putting it in '100% chance of fatality' mode, he sure does a lot of boring looking 'autoattacks'. Boring autoattacks are still boring autoattacks even if an arm or head goes flying.

He was afraid of leaving it in normal mode, so we wouldn't see him repeating the same series of 4 swings 9 times in a row for each critter.

Although I DID like that he hit some creature on the back swing of his sword, and the fact that you don't have to target anything to hit them. If they're in front of you and you swing your sword, it'll hit. Unless they block/dodge.

It seems like when he was attacking a single target instead of a group of them, it would do a fatality. He was killing them so fast, he'd kill 3 or 4 at a time. I don't think they have mutli-mob fatality animations.

My two cents. It looks amazing, though. The more I read about this game, the more I'm curious.

Warhammer or Age of Conan, two games fighting for my affection.

One thing I liked was the running swipe attack. a cool way to enter a battle already in progress (gank)

That whole six-directional attack thing looks pretty cool, but how will all of this play out for casters?

I was probably thinking of playing a healer, and it doesn't really seem like that will play into anything that much. I know on the class page it lists that people like the Bear Shaman can use 2HE and 2HB weapons.

I've heard a few times, including sort of in these most recent walkthrough vids that ranged combat and casting will be fps real-time.  But if that is the case I would think someone would have posted a video of that by now...

Im guessing spellweaving may be similar to the directional/combo stuff.

I could be way off here though.

Damn that look haut! With that sort of engine and stylistic treatment, I can't wait to see spellcasting. Druid or Demonologist, not sure yet which way I'll go for starters.

I remember reading something about targeting for healing spells being "cone-based", i.e. heals people within the area of effect which is created based on the direction your character is facing. Was some time ago, though, so they could've changed that.

FROM: http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/774/774968p3.html


"I've never been a huge fan of MMOGs, especially those ones with elves and beards, so how about one about a dude who decapitates his foes and takes no shit from anyone, would that pique my interest? It sure would!

Running in DX9 mode on Vista at the event was the game, though those in attendance were only allowed to observe, so I'll simply run down a list of observations:

- At present the game will ship on 3 DVDs
- The unoptomised install footprint is 20GB
- Expected PC release date October
- May install onto the Xbox 360 hard drive to avoid disk swapping
- 360 version not out before Mid 08
- No exclusive content for 360 version as previously reported elsewhere
- Game starts with avatar on a slave ship that is attacked or crashes into rocks. Avatar wakes up on a beach with no memory (where have I experienced that before?) and a mysterious tattoo. Must hack 'n' slash way off island
- First hour is spent online, but in a completely instanced zone where you are the only player
- Then till level 20 you are an instanced version of the island with a small number of other players (100-200)
- Once off the island the entire world is available to explore
- 4000-5000 people per area at this point. All can group together in one spot if desired, though it'll likely crash the server
- World so big that loading between zones had to be implemented
- Some sections of each zone 4x4km
- Draw distance is infinite, so no fogging unless it's meant to be there. Details like trees and rocks will be LOD'd out
- Main quest line will take players through to level 80, though there are of course other side quests and quest lines
- As part of the main quest players will meet Conan. Not voiced by Arnie or even someone with an Arnie accent
- Other main NPCs will be voiced, rest will be text
- Multiple dialogue choices similar to those in Knights of the Old Republic. Example - you come across a farmer whose wife has been eaten by a croc and he requires her remains to bury and save her soul. Players can tell him to suck it up, and go get a new wife, blow him off completely, be sympathetic, or offer to help by gutting the crocodile and returning whatever parts of his wife haven't been digested
- This is no Teen rated game
- Game will be different in Germany due to the USK Rating Board and their dislike of excessive violence. Whether Germans can play on the same server as the rest of Europe remains to be determined
- Combo fighting system relies on hitting attack directions. First move lights other directions and by hitting those before a timer bar expires initiates the combo. Successfully stringing the combo for long enough creates a fatality attack
- Fatality attacks were not meant to be shown in case German sensibilities were hurt, or the USK sent German special forces into the conference room
- They were however, accidentally
- Fatalities consist of the avatar chopping heads off (cue arterial spray), impaling enemies with swords before head butting them off, and other such fun things
- Each weapon has a different number of possible attack directions, and fatality moves
- If equipped with a shield avatar can select a block icon during combat if it's displayed. Blocking successfully will temporarily open enemy up to attack
- Combos difficult to do with mouse as each icon has to be clicked. Easier to do with numpad or some other keyboard layout, or the 360 controller that has to be supported for GFW certification
- Magic also in game. There's basic magic that takes the form of clicking the icon and clicking the enemy, and more advanced magic that has to be comboed like melee attacks. Screwing up a difficult, lengthy combo may cause avatars to pass out or be struck by their own magic, opening them up for attack by the enemy
- Guilds can own land in special sections of the world and build armouries and such that apply guild wide bonuses to their members, such as improved weapons
- These lands, which will typically be defended by player/guild built castles, can be attacked by rivals with siege equipment. If the attackers are victorious they will take all land, and all buildings that weren't destroyed, instantly boosting their guild. Castle will however be damaged and will have to be repaired quickly or the evicted guild can quickly retake what used to be theirs
- Horses easy to come by; no mounted combat at present
- Limited beta test presently scheduled to be in late Spring to early Summer. Will eventually expand to open test "

Fuck, we're going to be getting rolled by legions of Bemani players.

I know my hours of time on DDR pads, Harmonix games, and will finally pay off for my PvP skillset.

Actually, no. I had hoped those two skillsets would never coincide.

PvP, decapitations, mature rating, siege weapons, arterial blood spray... AND NO GERMANS!!!  It sounds dreamy.

(only joking.  I really love Germans.  Especially the ones from Austria)

Didn't one of the videos show mounted combat?

Trying to remember, but I could swear I road by some guys and cut their heads off from my mount at one of the E3s.

Otherwise that Voodoo Extreme list was cool. Magic that could be cast wrong is just very interesting to me, but only if it's not your-stats-can-kill-you SWG.

Yes, one of last year's E3 vids showed the decapitation ride-by Darniaq remembered.   We all ooohed and aaahed bigtime at that.

Check the ones labeled April 4th or 2nd. These are the first shots I have seen of a lot of these monsters. 

Screens:
http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/743/743392/imgs_1.html

Another Teaser Vid, this one showing Horse Riding:
(March 29)

http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/743/743392/vids_1.html

There was a video where he spawned those giants and a bunch of other cool looking mobs at the newbie beach.  It was from GDC and has been posted here somewhere.

 GDC Developer Walkthrough Pt. 1 (http://"http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17855")
 GDC Developer Walkthrough Pt. 2 (http://"http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17856")