f13.net

 ARNIE THE BARBIE TIME!  (http://beta2.ageofconan.com/beta_application/)

I think I'd be more interested if it were Age of Cohen the Librarian but, meh.

Thanks for posting that! As always, Signe is on the ball :)

This man speaks the truth. Thanks Signe. Love,

Resident AoC Fanboy

Thanks. Applications in.

Thank you, Signe. Application IN!

Man, I gotta wait until I get home to send in a proper dxdiag.txt file.

Brutal.

Ya...im hurting here at work as well.

Not like I have a chance in hell at getting in anyways, I never seem to land betas.

My app's in although I haven't closely been following the game.

Player made cities?  Now that's something I want to see.

I'm surprised they didn't put FFXI on the 'previous games' list.

I liked the Achiever/Socializer/Explorer/Killer question.

I also wonder if people who were most excited about the "single player experience" go straight into the circular file...

And lotsa PvP, Xanthippe.  We can kill our friends.   :lol:  Those bastards!

Hot damn! Thanks, Signe!

Oooooo.  Can we trade and dance and ride camels? 

That would be the perfect MMO.

I hope so.  I won't play a game if I can't jump, dance and trade. 

Guild Wars - Pick two.

Seriously, though.

Games where I can't jump make me want to stab something. I don't know what it is, but unless I'm able to have that nervous spacebar twitch, I can't play it.

I don't know what it is, either.  Even if it's a game where jumping doesn't do anything important, I get nervous not being able to do it.  It's nice to know I'm no more broken than other people!

I had fun busting 'em on Raph about being daunted by 2' high walls in SWG.

Count me as another sytmied by the dxdiag submission. Shaddap and let me list my hardware and OS.

dance2crush?

Too bad you can't kill someone and take their dance.

I love Real VNC.

I am hindered by a lack of static IP (for Remote Desktop), and a desire to put forth any effort to actually remember to write it down.

So, home awaits!


I think it has less to do with being broken people (we are, I'm sure) and more of wanting to look like a complete asshole.

One of my many and varied desires in a game is to be as physically annoying as possible, and jumping is one way to achieve that goal.

Who needs a static IP? http://www.dyndns.com/ (http://www.dyndns.com/)

I'm more of an UltraVNC type of guy, though.

You should be playing LotRO, then. Grab a lute and play such hits as 'Three Blind Mice', 'Chopsticks', and my favorite, 'Random Keypresses'. Maybe Frerajaka (hey, I'm not French) for an encore.

I was attempting to play Hootchie Cootchie Man, but the latency is a killer.

That whole system was destroyed for me when I saw that you could use a program someone wrote to convert MIDI files to keypresses. I would just bot myself in place playing 'War Pigs' on repeat, 24 hours a day.

Also, it involves playing 'WoW Lite in Middle Earth', which isn't exactly something I'm too keen with.

I disagree with the 'lite' part, but it is very similar to WoW in a lot of ways. Plenty of differences are apparent even to this newbler, though. If you're a huge WoW fan, nothing will change that, if you're invested in a WoW guild and are happy, chances are you'll stick to WoW.

But...linky to MIDI converter PLEASE! :) I'm thinking 'South of Heaven' for starters.

Eh, I enjoy the PvP aspect in WoW too much to swap over to 'monster play' or whatever.

As far as the MIDI converter, here's the original site:

http://community.livejournal.com/lotro_music/

It was shut down as a project because they don't want 'macroing' - of course. You can still get builds that work on the beta version, though.

Supposedly you'll be able to write songs ingame now, though, and share them as 'scripts'.

Someone will still figure out a way to import MIDI files, I guarantee it. ;p

I sended in my application as well...

We will see ...

I like the cut of your jib. Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?

Apped as well.

I've started listing F13 as my guild on these things.  I figure it's as true as any guild I join then discard 6 months later.

I just put F13 as "where you heard about it" .. they should get the idea.

I do, too, since CoH.

BY CROM! Thanks.

I applied.  Thanks Signe!

Can't wait for the decapitations... Thanks for the heads up.

Sent my app in.  At this point it already seems to have given up on trying to feel of Conan's world right, but maybe the game itself will at least be good.

Also, because, well, it's where you actually heard about it?

Or am I simplifying things too much?

I did too. Does that mean schild will buy me ice cream?

I surely hope so! Maybe a Dev will go "What the hell is that?" and do a google search on Immunofascism.

I've searched their site, but haven't seen anything about system reqs.  Am I just blind?

My guess is barely playable on 9800 pro 128 meg, 1 gig ram, 2.4 proc. Probably painfully playable. But...they have ASS SLIDERS, maybe they will have a decent detail slider too :)

Ass sliders will become a must have for all games I play.  Even if I don't enjoy AoC, it will be very difficult to play games without ass sliders in the future. 

It should really be simplified:

(http://www.thenonentity.com/ass-slider.jpg)

Well done, sir.

Thank you. I'm especially proud of the shading I did on my drag button.

Ditto

wtf b teh ass slider???????????????????????? AoC gots the ass slider??????? LOLOLOLOLOL  ok i signed up for the beta aoc will b a gud game

Ok, i'm betting this is Ironwood's smurf.

Despite not being able to run this, I'll fire an email off this week, see what happens.

I always go for the Slayer when midi conversion comes up. Goes back to when I was in music school, I used that song for my very first midi conversion in 8-track 101. The instructor (a pop guy) didn't get it, but the 3 or 4 metalheads were chuckling.

Makes for an extremely good orchestral piece, believe it or not, I layered the shit out of it while learning about track bouncing. Soaring violins and the kettles doing that BOM BOM part. I loved it, wish I still had it.

Nomination for post of the year?

I put f13 as my guild and as where I'd heard of it. heh. At this point you guys would be my guild, my last guild from WoW broke up months ago and the only other guild I'm in is still in SWG and sends me emails once in awhile.

I think we should start acting like a guild then.  Someone start telling me what game to play, how to spec, make up some reasons why I don't get gear, I want to see a 3 page essay about how much respect you deserve after all these years of selfless contribution to the benefit of others, we'll need at least 14 ranks above "member" installed ASAP, and by all means start the private messages agonizing about how bad the leadership is right away.

 

This post earns you -100 DKP.

In light of your attitude, we have decided to respectfully decline your application.  Good luck in your search for a guild and don't forget to bring a towel.

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/docs/jesusgldldr.gif)

SHUT UP. GET ON VENT. ONLY I AM TALKING!

This is probably a good example why any attempt at an F13 guild is doomed to failure.

That and the fact noone ever plays any single mmog longer than 2 weeks.

Que?  Schild would be a happy man if that were the case.  That's just a wierd comment, I don't know where you're basing that.

Multiple servers, play styles, prior guild commitments, maturity levels, and time zones do an ample job of keeping us split up. 

I've played WoW with some of you as a F13 thing. I've played CoH, GH, and ATiTD with some of you for small amounts of time.  To be honest, I can't say I've enjoyed any of it other than the small ATiTD stint and that was until Signe murdered my camels.   :|

Edit: We did the whole LOTRO thing, but nobody hardly ever grouped that I saw. 

The F13 Eve corp was doing well for a good 6-8 months, then tottered along for another 6 or so until people started reaching more end-gamey stuff. That brought playstyle and timezone differences to the fore and has resulted in a steady bleedoff of members, most of whom simply went to other groups in the game and are still active or semi-active.

I forgot EVE.  Don't know why, other than it's convenient to leave out successes when you're building a point for failure.  :-D Our forays into 0.0 just helped the invididual members crystalize what was most important to them.  Impossible to please everyone, although EVE does a better job than most of making that possible.

I'll use green next time.  I've been in guilds with you guys in atitd, EQ2, coh, and lotr.  I think the only time I actually had any interaction with anyone from f13 during that time was in atitd.  Perhaps you guys are more social when I'm gone.

The Shadowbane guild was a roaring success for a month or two, but I guess that was back in the WT.O days.

Well you have to keep in mind that SB was... "something" for 2 months. If you made anything out of it, you came out ahead.

I'm up for trying any game, but my play-style is very unconventional.

I might give this game a go when it comes out.  I'm not sure about a beta, however.  Lately, every game I beta test seems to thoroughly disappoint me.  Yes, I'm blaming beta tests.  Yes, I know it's silly.

Oh and to clear something up... I didn't kill any camels on purpose.  Everything I've ever killed, in a game or out,  has been an accident.  Everything.

I'll come out of hiding to try it out, I guess. I'm thinking it will disappoint me, but I set my expectations too high with mmogs in the first place.

Used f13 as guild/where I heard about it, I hope they don't find out that I heard about it first somewhere else.

We've got a few guys who are itching to try this game, but we'll hold off on announcing a guild chapter on it until we get a better feel for it. Needless to say when we got php errors the other day while signing up, it didn't leave a good impression on us that funcom had changed any.

According to this post (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=22360) in the "Developer Announcements" section of the official AoC forums, they received 100.000 signups to the AoC beta over the Easter holiday, with 50.000 of those signing up within the first 24 hours it was available. I don't know how that compares to other MMO/MMOG/MMORPGs out there (apart from WoW, which doesn't count =P), but it sounds like there's a decent amount of people interested in the title.

EDIT: Also, a post from Tarib the Community Manager:
I knew I should've signed up to the forums before April 2005 =P

Alas, no.  I wish I could aspire to such poetic genius.

April 2007! Yay!

-.-

Totally screwed then. I don't become a member of a community until I actually, you know, play the game. Screenshots and GDC movies don't count.

Yes, because the best way to beta test your game is to invite the people who have been giving you virtual blowjobs for 15 months.

Worked with shadowbane... err... wait a minute...

To a point, that's a true statement. You don't want to go doing that, you want a mix of fresh faces and community people.

The community guys are the ones that have been sucking on your teat for the past few months/years, and despite the fact that people say 'oh, I want the game to look as good as possible, I will point out every bug', the candy-coated vision of your game might cloud things that truly don't work.

Undoubedly, they are going to try to get that crack team of beta-testers from Anarchy Online to continue the testing of the secret client.

I can think of 4 beta tests I have been invited to without ever making a single post on the community forums.. For that matter I never even filled out a application to test Vanguard and got invited into beta 3.l I just registered on the boards the week they went up, then browsed the FAQ and deleted the link a week later when I saw what kind of community it was accumulating.  I have a feeling that community managers just post crap like that to stir up more hits on the boards, that way when they hit up the boss for a raise they have bigger numbers to back it up with.

I don't see why inviting active forum members to the beta ahead of other "random signups" is such a bad thing. The people on those forums have basically helped hyped the game. "spread the message" to their friends and kept interest up for months, if not years. And no, I'm not talking about myself - my contributions on those forums have been meager at most.

And whether they post a message like that to "stir things up" or not - it still sends a signal to those active forum members that, "Hey! We value your continued support, here - have a cookie" and whatnot. *shrug*

Yes, but it's a Beta Test.  The original use was to test the beta client before release to work out bugs and broken game mechanics.

IMO - STOP CALLING IT A BETA TEST IF YOU ARE JUST USING IT TO HYPE YOUR GAME.

There hasn't been a "Beta Test" of a MMOG since 1999 then.

Thats not true. There hasnt been an "Open Beta Test" since forever. But WoW actually used their beta test to do beta stuff. Then they used their Open Beta as a stress test.

Well, then you can explain why 90% of the bugs I reported during the closed WoW beta were still present when the game released.  I'm certain that I wasn't the only one that reported them and many were common knowledge.  It has been a LONG time since I was in a beta that was treated like a beta rather than a marketing ploy. 

1) Most testers I chat with in recent titles don't even keep a log.

2) When encountering bugs while grouped it takes minutes of convincing to get people to even submit a simple bug report. 

3) The forums are filled with so much hype that there's almost no constructive discussion of real issues. 

4) Many testers will opt to keep exploits to themselves to gain an edge at release.

Etc. 

Perhaps people need to accept that "BETA" doesn't mean what it used to and move on...

And EQ2. And DDO.

This game interests me basically for one reason:  No targeting.

A game needs a 'bug' feature for me to report anything.  If I have to alt-tab to a browser to report something, I'm not going to bother.

Betas have been marketing exercises since DAoC. Sometimes information gets through the noise and the devs get it fixed. But most times if it doesn't get fixed it's because they've got more important things to work on.

It's fine. People think they're going to impact the foundation of a game three weeks before launch (as in LoTRO) are niave. At the same time, developers are forced to get vertical experiences and polish done even earlier lest the later beta testers who come because they got a code in PC Gamer see a bug and screen about it on YouTube.

To me, open betas are stupid unless they start when the game is about done anyway (as in LoTRO). As long as you don't tell players you're ignoring most of their niave comments, they believe they matter and you're free to benefit from them stress testing your launch client.

I've been in several closed betas from when the servers are only up a few hours here and there and most of the features are still being hashed out yet I still feel as though I cannot help the situation because no developer is going to listen to me explaining that what the game really needs is less formulaic diku mechanics.  It's just not something they can do anything about by that point.

Sure, I can be a good little monkey and bug glitches and typos and other specific functional errors but so can a 12 year old with a good supply of ritalin.  I'm pretty much done with beta-testing I think.

If the game has a built-in bug reporter, I'll use it sometimes. But if I have to open a browser, or go on the forums, fuck it.

Once again something that Blizzard/WoW excels at. In a WoW beta, whether it be for expansion or just the next patch, every single item, every single quest, and every single NPC has a report. You can either write a report or complete a poll for every single thing.

IMO, I think the mass of players who sign for beta tests when all they really just want a sneak peak to the game is what caused the change in what beta tests really mean.  Most players don't have any intention of actually participating for the good of the game, report bugs they find along the way, or even provide their feedback of the game to the developers.  All they care about is "is this a game I would be willing to pay for at release," and usually the devs don't even get to know the direct answer to that question.

To be honest, I kind of stopped caring when I reported things over and over, easy things, and nothing ever changed.  I realize there are priorities, but there reaches a time when it is pointless to try and help if it is always ignored.  (50/30/20 for a freakin' year!  A display error that would take all of 30 seconds to fix.)

That's the problem. To REALLY affect that, you'd need to be in their office while they're working on their pitch to management/publisher/VC :) By the time a playable build is available, it's a diku or not, with it only getting completely rebuilt, canned, or launched as the only options.

As to reporting stuff, the earlier I'm in the more I report. If I'm in a month before launch though, I assume everything relevant has been noted. This isn't because I truly believe there's stuff not reported. It's because by then the live team's task list is so long it'll take them months to dig out anyway. Nothing says they can't pull a SWG and delete the entire bugs list for being so bloated as to be useless.

Most companies have forgotten what beta is supposed to be.

A beta test is when you have a small number of known issues but beyond that you think everything is working correctly, although you allow that issues will pop up.

If you put out a "beta" with a ton of known issues it isn't a beta. Beta is supposed to be largely retail quality but without the confidence factor. Also when you put out a beta with tons of obvious problems it really dissuades people from filing bugs because you haven't demonstrated any interest in fixing obvious problems. It's kind of an insult to ask people to "test" your game when you've given it to them with hundreds of simple issues.

With MMORPGs most beta tests are really alpha tests, and the finished product is the beta.

Most companies, or most game companies?  And how does that not mesh with the rest of the observations you professional coders have mentioned about games in general over the years?  I've always gotten the distinct impression from you pros that game companies are 'amateur hour' when it comes to software development.  Not adhering to standard terms and pushing buggy shit just seems to go hand-in-hand with that idea.

Most game companies, although in the software world it is getting worse with people like google putting out perpetual beta products that people actually use.

When your final product is beta quality (in the case of many MMORPGs) calling testing beta is humor.

I think it's fanboys on the forums that turned me off of bothering to voice my opinion during beta tests.

The devs not listening is a close second, but being attacked by a crowd of rabid jackals because I dared suggest their game de jour is anything other than pure gold shat from the arse of Gawd himself is far more irritating than being ignored.

On the other hand, I did get to do my little 'I told you so' dance after EQ2, and VGs releases.

To bring the topic back on AoC-track:

In his blog (http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5724372), the Lead Designer for AoC - Ole Herbjornesn - talks alot about the upcoming AoC beta-test. He touches on topics such as bug-reporting tools, the various stages of the beta-test they'll go through (two-part at least, technical-test and content-test), as well as what they expect from the beta-testers. I found it an interesting read and it at least sounds like they're expecting more from this beta-test than just giving their potential customers a sneak peak.

The guys name is Ole Herb?  Nice.

haha, good catch.

OLE HERB JORNESN, HE'S A SONOFABITCH! He goes about 8'3", 520.

I like how Ole Herb talks about beta players - in contrast to - oh god who was it, who talked about beta like it was some grand privilege to beta test and who had a list of expectations that I would only ever agree to if someone was signing my paycheck.  Was that the Vanguard guy?

Anyway, I like Ole Herb's approach - courteous, respectful, pleasant.  How long before the players beat it out of him, do you figure?

It's easy to have expectations.  Scary, but easy.  I'll believe it when I see it.  Considering the release of the last big Funcom MMOG, I should hope they do a bit more rigorous testing before opening this one up to the public.  The AO opening day was a disaster only topped by WWIIOL.

Ahh the AO beta/launch, fucking awesome.  I still haven't completely forgiven my friend for being an agent at launch and just using the soldier shield nano to ultra level...

One of the game designers for AoC, Athelan (aka Jason Stone) has put up a page where people can submit questions that he'll reply to right there on the site: http://www.askathelan.com/faq/faq.php

This should be fun!

Ya know, AoC tops my list for 2007, mostly because of the game, but also because I really want to see Funcom shed the disaster that was AO launch. They deserve the comments they got for that fiasco, which sucked even by then standards. AoC will launch over six years after AO. Even SOE has changed in that time.

Here's me optimistic.

AOC it look gud.  it look very very gud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11  i signed up 4 teh beta i hope i get in it + i hope u get in it 2.  i dont think tehre will be naked ladys in it tho no no no no no!!!!!  ok there mite b but i dont think so.

Sweet Buttfucking Christ...

He has replied :P

So he's going commando? :-o

Bah!  My question was better than his answer.  I would have said something snarky like, "a wife beater and a speedo.  You?" 

Well, the AoC technical beta has started (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=tgdl2imewm6kngioko4709zah9rquy&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1645&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT). They seem to be testing specific things at specific locations ingame for short periods at a time, crashing the servers and whatnot. =P The beta has also suffered it's first NDA breach (at least the first since the internal leak of the pvp combat video some time ago), where a guy was banned after revealing on the general forums that he was in the beta (posted his invite-mail even).

Oh, and Cotton Caps are implemented, but no one seem to be able to afford them. <-- (ignore this, or look at the screenshots)

That sounds interesting... Sounds like magic going to be a lot more complex than it is other mmogs. Seems like I read somewhere else that the magic scheme is going to have a combo system like the combat scheme as well.

Does that mean it made it in?  Or we just talking hypothetically here. 
I have been trying to determine what is actually making it into Conan while avoiding all the fanboy/dev hype but seems to be next to impossible when it comes to this game.  Most of the Dev speak seems to be a PR form of a Chinese finger trap attached to a Rubic's Cube.   I won't even get into some of the rampant fan-boy speculation I have read.

For anyone interested, Funcom has released their Q1 financial report, which contains both financial data (for 2006 and Q1 2007) and some tidbits about both AoC and The Secret World. Also mentions serverparks for AoC being hosted by "IPsoft" (anyone heard of them?)  in NY and Amsterdam.

http://www.newsweb.no/atmnt/070516-Q1-presentation.pdf?id=43522

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=1wzhxwb9wjl1tll80c9ah7v57fzara&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1667&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT

Letter from the Game Director #1 - Savage and sexy!


- May 21, 2007
Age of Conan's commander in chief, Gaute Godager, puts his thoughts on paper as he addresses the community in this first installment of a new "Letter from" series.





Most notable part for me: "Truth be told, after making MMOs for 10 years (Wohoo! An anniversary.), non-MMO games must be very very good to really capture my complete imagination. A couple of games per year, or something like that? Because I simply love the social aspect of the MMO games. Chatting, competing, co-operating and killing monsters and other players (Darn, marketing help me!). To me, non-MMOs simply often seem – empty.

This was my problem though: I saw myself getting more and more and more impatient. I stopped crafting. I always picked the DPS classes because I figured: quick kills equals fastest way to max level. I gathered as many quests as I could – never reading the “story” – to the point where killing a monster without getting a quest update felt like a waste of time. Yes, I felt depressed when I saw an NPC with the quest marker showing the available new quests. Oh no, more work! I stopped exploring the world and simply used an online service that taught me to run here and there to maximize my exp per hour potential. And God forbid, I admit to once buying grind gold from an online service (ooh the shame – don’t do it!!). I never used bots, leveling services or anything like that, though.

Yes, I know ;) The major blame for all this has to lie with the author. They were all excellent games with twists and individuality, full of creativity and love when they were made, and contained many excellent ideas I would never have dreamed up myself. Credit where credit’s due. The point was, I stopped doing what I loved. I was no longer social. I never read any quest descriptions or story. I didn’t explore. I stopped cooking dinners, I simply stopped believing! Another major point was that I never kept up with my friends, I couldn’t play with them. I have two kids, a loving wife and a demanding job. I could never play with my friends as they out-leveled me. I was in a precarious situation – I was a hardcore player with casual time budget.

This was something that forced me to become savage! Brutally I wanted to do something different when we started the pre-production of Conan.

The first thing we did was to tear down the norm of the combat system in MMOs. Out with the watch-the-hotkey-bar combat. Nothing wrong with it, except we wanted more location, direction, distance and hands on player skill to matter! In a Conan game combat must be more than a means to an end (to kill, gain exp) – it must be super-fun in itself. I am happy to say – we are finally close to this.

We didn’t need to pull the solution completely out of our own a***es though. Plenty of good fighting games out there -- especially on the console. And then the multi-direction hit system was born. BTW, have we told you we’ve reduced the number of directions from 6 to 5? More on that that later. To make distance, orientation and player skill matter we had to enforce some other changes too. Characters and monsters have collision. 50 characters won’t stack on top of each other in a raid all hitting the main boss. You must plan and choose. It helps being able to fight with a spear, halberd or ranged weapons though! I’m sure you can stack close to 20 welled planned melee fighters around a boss.

This is all about the feeling, the experience of combat. You feel those skulls imploding. You experience the joy of battle stepping around using speed and control to gut your opponents. "

Edit: Actually there are more good ideas following that. Lets just hope they can pull off half of what they promise, then I will be a happy man.

Thanks for the link

This seems a good place to ask:

Is there much detail known about Conan not provided by the official site, and if so, where's a good fansite that might have a neat summary?

Good link.  Thanks.  Does kinda get me looking forward to it again.  Plus "Killing your friends is never out of character" is an amusing quote.

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

Yeah, this could make this the best pvp game yet.  So far every organized pvp battle in every game boils down to assist training whatever target is called, if they make it so the mages cant nuke the guy surrounded by their own melee fighters without hitting their own team in the back ill be happy.  Make terrain matter also please.

Only if you can kill them too.  If you can't then you get assholes parking their toons in doorways just to be jerks.

Not if you have a red pot!

FOAD.

Yeah this is what devs want to avoid. Maybe it's possible to implement a non collision environment in certain safe areas like towns to prevent this kind of abuse.

Just offer push-through and you should be fine.

Is it October yet?

This is the game of the year, hands down....I hope Mcquaid is watching when it launches, that way he can see the literal demise of whats left of his screwy 'Vision' in this market, as MMO's evolve past his pathetic ideas of fun....

* Sets down the 'I'm a Bitter Vanguard GL' cup and leaves the bar *   :wink:

Heh being the pessimist that I am I will take a big dose of wait and see, possibly having to do with memories of Funcom's history. I know that AO turned into a really good game and that Funcom has came a long way since it's launch. Still when press releases tout new, innovative, and revolutionary it makes me skeptical.

I really do hope it has a smooth launch and offers a nice leap forward for the genre but I have to be a bit doubtful. All game look and sound wonderful in press releases.

 Projected release is Spring 08 isn't it?

As far as I know they're still on schedule for a October 30th release this year.

Last I heard this is correct. So yeah, spring 2008 sounds about right :)

Hmm... I really want to play this game... but I hope its possible to turn off that "Feel the skull crushing with your own hands" feature, or I'll never get my wife to play it. I sware to god the first time she swings her sword and someones arm falls off she's gonna freak.

...So you will hear the lamentations of your woman?

shit, I hear that all the time already

Dev interview:   http://www.actiontrip.com/previews/ageofconanhyborianadventures_ii.phtml

Most notable part IMO:

"As a part of the item system you can also craft your own items. This gives a whole new level of flexibility on what you can get out of the items, compared to what you can get as drops from monsters. Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot, but since we use a socket system (up to four sockets where you can place gems) you can modify the items according to your liking.

This system can also be used to create special PvP gear, which is a new thing to the genre. You will have "pre-made" PvP gear as well, but with the socket system players can customize their PvP gear to a greater degree. This means that those who want to spend most of their time on PvP can still get uber armor, dedicated to PvP, without having to raid."



They make it sound like they are innovating, but seems they are just tweaking some Wow systems (which to me isn't a bad thing).

Wow, a DIKU where "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot". Innovation!!.

Give me a break.

AoC is still very interesting to me, but mostly because of the UI and the very different way of breaking down class/archetypes (still smacks too much of something that'll eventually be redesigned, like, ya know, EQ2).

That's a weird system to call it. Sockets? only on craftables? If they're not as powerful, why bother picking up the craft skill when you can just straight up grind and gain drops as you level.

The innovation seems to come in being able to configure your crafted item for +stamina +agility +sex, creating something that may not be _more_ powerful numbers-wise than random +stamina +shit +crap item that drops off random monster_01, but infinitely more useful for intended purpose.

Which I don't really care if it's very innovative, but certainly damn handy.

EQ2 has developed something sort of similar, seeing as it is a mechanic that didn't exist at all when the game was launched it's interesting to see how it fits in there.

First of all the gear hierarchy in EQ2 goes something like, store-bought->regular loot->crafted->rare loot->enhanced crafted->major quest rewards->rare and enhanced crafted->raid loot or 'epic' level quest reward.  I'm not sure if raid loot or epic level quest rewards can be enhanced with crafting but if so then they would obviously be the top end tier.

Which now that I've written it out is quite the progression  :-D  But the point is that craftards can enhance create various tiers of gear for each major level range and 'slot' them for special abilities and effects.  Even to the point of being able to enhance and customize much of the best gear in the game.  How it works out though is that the rare crafted stuff is pretty much out of the price range of everyone but twinks at the lower levels and pretty much mandatory to make that next step into raiding.  There are essentially two slots for crafted gear, one that can be filled at creation and one that you can 'adorn' the item with later.  Non-crafted items can only be adorned.

It adds a bit of variety and complexity to the EQ2 loot system but it really isn't as dynamic as a fully functional slotting system could be.

Don't get me wrong. I like the sockets system. I liked it in Diablo 2. WoW has this now with the gems too.

The point I was raising was about yet another game where they pushing crafter for crafters while ensuring their l33t endgame 10-hour-a-day'ers don't feel like all their raiding time is going to be marginalized by some cutty/pasty who never ventures beyond the safety of town. I shouldn't be so jaded, because I actually am pretty hyped for Conan (I like the lore from the books I've been reading lately, the way they break down skills across archetypes, how big and rich the world is turning out to be, and the UI innovations Funcom has come up with). But it just seems a shame that we're getting more of the same when it comes to Raid_Loot>Random_Drops>Crafted. We know why this is of course. It just seems lazy.

Yup, I got that point, I just think we may be reading the original quote differently there... i.e when they say "not better than loot but flexible" you extrapolate it into "worse" while I read it as "not better" which could as well mean "equal" stats-wise. Now, reading it as worse does make sense given track records of other MMOs so far, but when their designer says lot of decision stem from their impatience with current game model, I'm rather hopeful they *may* make the crafting and drops equal power-wise if just because the designers themselves have no patience to camp mobs for 10+ hour straight for hawt lewt, and would rather have crafters able to provide them with it. And they probably realize there's lot of people like them (crafters included) that outweight the sense of e-importance of few catasses with too much spare time.

That reminded me, out of nowhere, of something from waaaay back pre-beta-WoW. Does anyone remember when Blizzard was promising that they'd be changing up the 'most powerful' equipment in a given area (leather armor, plate, axe, sword) in a varying pattern? IE: At level 20 the most powerful sword is dropped, at level 22 the most powerful sword is crafted, at level 23 the most powerful sword is purchased from a vendor ... of course, if I remember correctly this was around the same time I was reading about those awesome Hero classes they were going to have too.

Oh how the best of intentions go.

And the Demons were going to be a playable race in Warcraft III. And there was going to be Alchemy in UO... oh, wait  :-D

Tmp, you have a glass-half-full outlook on life. I applaud that :) Seriously though, you're right. "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot" could mean same but diverse. I'd actually like to believe that.

You can put one adornment (the crafted "enhancement") on most legendary and fabled gear. Adornments also have quality levels from Treasured to Fabled.

Did you mean to say Necromancy, or was Alchemy a promised feature at launch but patched in later? When I started playing on the first day of 1998, Alchemy was in. I think.

Yep, Necromancy. And that is how to officially kill a joke :)

Alchemy is Working As Intended.

That is all.

New interview with Gaute Godager, Producer and Director of Age of Conan:

http://aoc.warcry.com/news/view/72914


Notable from my perspective: "WarCry: Awhile back you made a forum post outlining many potential server options, has anything been nailed down yet? Or is this something we'll see going into beta?

Gaute Godager: No we have decided on two types of servers, and their difference being how we handle PvP. A) Massive glorious Siege PvP in the Border Kingdoms, Tier Based Mini-game PvP and Drunken brawling as the only PvP options on the "normal" servers. As in 100% voluntary PvP. B) RPvP servers. Here you find Roleplaying and free-for-all except in hubs.

This is our decision on this (and I'm trying to coin the RPvP abbreviation of course ;p) because in Hyboria (Conan's world) there is no Role Playing without being able to kill someone. It is as simple as this, killing your friends is always in character. To explain a bit more on how this is working in detail:

We have 4 basic level tiers in Age of Conan. 1-20 is tier one. 20-40 is the second, 40-60 the third and 60-80 the fourth. If you on a RPvP kill someone in another tier, or someone much weaker than you defined in another way if this is too liberal, you will increase the chance of getting a bounty placed on your death. This will result in very untimely visits from bounty hunters, and ultimately a possible jail sentence.

You might think that sounds boring, being a player character in a jail, and we have designed this not as an actual wait-until-you-are-free sentence, but more as being in the stock doing a repetitive in-jail quest to get out. The important point with this is: we need the consequences. When the ability to fight is this liberal there must be consequences for shameless PK'ing.

WarCry: What is the risk vs. reward for PvP, is there anything to be feared in death while PvPing in AoC?

Gaute Godager: We have a ranking system we have a blood coin looting system. We want to have item looting, but haven't yet decided the exact balance for this, so it is not something I can promise right now. Will we be able to loot everything, one item, items from the back-pack? We shall see.

We want risk. As to reward, this is much better ;) We have a levelling system for PvP. We have a ranking system. We have special PvP feats and equipment. You can revel in PvP goodness. You can build your own PvP battle keep, mine PvP only resources and focus on minor objectives.

You can even drink yourself into a near-stupor and hammer your friends in a proper bar-brawl through our drunken brawling system. Isn't that a sweet reward all in itself ;)

"


Ummm...I'm an AoC fanboy, buy all I gotta say is FUCKIN A

and..."please, make this halfway cool and I'll love you forever Funcom"

This game has in the last few months moved from completely off my radar to perhaps my most anticipated release. I miss the sense of danger of an open-PvP world, but I'm not interested in getting ganked every 10 minutes, so this open PvP with consequences sounds like it has potential. And the graphics alone are going to be what finally push us all to upgrade to Vista.

Not to mention that it's FunCom. With their reputation for quality, what could go wrong??

*cough* Anarchy Online *cough*

Jumping over the sarchasm with a unicycle is often a dangerous feat. You're just another victim.

I must be colorblind today.  Or my sarcasm radar is on the blink.  Or I just missed it.

Been known to happen.

Yeah, I don't do green, sorry.  :-P

The PvP options sound good on paper, I just hope that Funcom can actually get it all to work in game. I remember when Shadowbane sounded good on paper as well.

I like it. AoC has been on my radar since the last version I watched played (last E3? Can't remember, before they had magic in). I like everything they're promising, and have faith in some of what has been delivered. AO is so old I gotta wonder if anyone on the AoC team even was around then. Probably, but there's no blaming Funcom for AO anymore, unless you haven't played an MMORPG since then :)

Hell, I'm just glad they are going to try something a little more brutal. So many people are here don't think FFA type PVP will work. This game has the budget, and Funcom has the experience to hopefully give it a good run. If it fails, I will finally give in to all the haters. BTW, I'm going to make my prediction that if AoC launches on time, they will hit 750k to 1 million subs. Why do I predict this? The stars are aligning, the WoW burnout numbers are increasing daily. It is the one game that most of the people I talk to in LOTRO say 'yeah I'm playing this until Conan comes out'. My entire old WoW guild/community has been buzzing about it. The buzz keeps building up, and with PVP announcements like they made will continue to make waves.

Or maybe I'm just a fanboy who longs for some FFA PvP. :)

I read your WUA Trammel post multiple times a month for a good laugh, so I think this is pretty spot on.

Yeah, I'm a bad-ass and I know it...what can I say :)

Yes, you're fanboi-ing.  We've seen "yeah just playing until XXX comes out" stories since UO, just replace the newest game.  Fuck, I remember folks doing it in SWG for FFXI, two more divergent games I can't think of.

I expect Conan to do well (provided they don't AO on us), but not 1m subs.  Lots of folks say they want more FFA pvp but they've never really experienced it.  Hell, half my current guildies went to reroll on a WoW pvp server and were back inside of two weeks.  The dream is always different from the reality, and in PvP the reality is a harsh bitch with better reflexes and more time than you'll ever have, so find good places to farm because you'll be replacing early and often!

I fanboy because AoC seems to be the only game trying to step out of the box some. I give high points for that.

You're current guildies are carebears and should have stayed on the PvE server where they belonged. I did like your "pvp the reality is a harsh bitch" line...props on that one. Should be quite interesting to see how they proceed though. I will fly my fanboi flag high until then, dreaming the dream of PKing miners random FFA world PVP again!

Wait.  What?  This is what the features on the official site say:

How does this sound like FFA PvP?

Yes, they are.  That was my point.  They got a taste of PvP with the BGs and Arenas and thought, "Hey this is fun, let's do a PvP server where we can do it ALL THE TIME!"  Lots of folks THINK they can compete, until they try and find they were delusional.  At that point they can either suck it up and slog through in the middle of the pack somewhere, or find another game.

As time goes on, however, attrition of the lower end perpetual losers means the middle of the pack eventually moves beyond you and YOU become the perpetual loser.  That's the flaw I've yet to see full-on PvP anywhere game designers overcome.   Even EVE gives you some carebear space because folks need a break and place to reorganize.

The reality pvp line is something I've said since pre-Shadowbane when J. was all fanboi about it. (Just worded a little differently)  At one point the question came up, "well come on it's pvp, how long do you actually have to play to be effective vs time in the carebear pve games."  My answer was, "5 minutes longer than the guy sieging you."  It was taken as a 'ha ha funny' joke, but I was serious when I said it and it proved very true in the long run.  It's as true now as it was then. 

Signe , did you read my post from the Lead Director and Producer of AoC from like 3 days ago ? I would think he might have an idea where his game is going...but maybe some old FAQ is right on. ;)

I did but 3 days ago is like 3 lifetimes ago in my weary brain.  Sorry!   :oops:

How does EVE actually handle this? I know that have 1.0 to 0.0 space, but what are the mechanics that keep 0.8 space from becoming gank city? Basically, could EVE's system be applied to a land based game?

Basically 1.0 -0.5 is a CONCORD (police state). If you attack someone, they will WTFPWN you eventually (and usually very quickly). Im not sure if there are more concord that show up in 1.0 than .5 , but they will kill you.  .4 has no concord, but stargates are protected by sentry guns that will fire upon aggresors. Tankable usually for a time. 0.2 or .1 might have one sentry gun, that many ships could tank a long ass time.

It is one of the systems that I think would be great to steal...just make there less police state area. maybe 1.0 - 0.7 being "GUARDS!" kinda area.

Signe, I could never stay mad at you. You will soon post a korean Dress up Game MMO and all will be forgotten.  :heart:

I am a fan of EVE's system too, and it could quite easily work in any current game.  WoW basically does this when you go attack NPC's in a starter town...they insta-spawn guards who will eventually kill you.  Of course, in EVE death carries a MUCH larger penalty, as you lose your ship.

You need to have a place that is a) semi-protected and b) "away" from the frontlines in any PvP game.  That is yet another thing SB showed us.  There were NO areas that were "safe" (safe does not equal PvP turned off) and NO way to get away from your enemy.

Although you can be killed in "safe" space in Eve. If you transport expensive goods around, it's possible someone will kill you, perhaps suiciding by cop but having a friend pick up your cargo. I found this out the hard way. I kind of admire the fact that Eve allows players that kind of freedom, although it was one of the things that caused me to quit the game.

I'd respect a FFA PvP game if not only had permadeath, but uninstalled the client every time you died and wouldn't accept the same credit card number on your player account.

FFA PvP is just a war of attrition where the players willing to behave the worst dominate. That would happen in the above setting too, but suicide ganking would be a much more costly option.

I still think one of the reasons that Eve PVP works as well as it does is that it is dominated by older European gamers. The game has a high learning curve and a slow pace, which tends to eliminate a lot of griefer kiddies. That's a lot of what makes it work.

If you had the same PVP rules and put the average mmo player in it, it would be a cesspool like most places.

I still remember the polite completely PK-free Lineage 2 beta I did on the Taipei servers compared to the red cesspool of the American ones. Community makes a huge difference in whether or not something PK works.

Who wants polite, PK free stuff in their FFA MMO? Gimme a red cesspool anyday, cause I roll with friends and we enjoy fighting. You win some, you lose some.

Remember Shadowbane? I'm hoping certain things translate over to AoC. I always liked that if you PKed or got PKed, it could escalate into war under the right circumstances. Just because it was a FFA ruleset did not mean that you could kill with impunity, there are consequences to your actions that aren't even hardwired into the game. As well as AoC having additional consequences being planned, I'm doubting that its going to be a 'cesspool of reds'. But, fanboi blinders can distort. I havent played it, and I am not designing it. I have had a lot of experience in FFA games, from UO to SB to Neocron, and I'm excited once again at the prospect.

The community definitely makes a difference... but there are a couple of other things that make the EVE PvP work really well too:

1) LARGE cost to dying.  Losing everything is not something the average joe can do, and even your random ganker crews lose, which causes people to form alliances, etc.

2) Long travel times.  This is what keeps the above alliances from ruining the playground for all of the "other" people.  I have not spent a ton of time in 0.0 areas, but of the time I HAVE spent there I have never seen a group of more than 3-4 people ganking at gates.

FFA PvP works out just fine when you put a decent ruleset in place that promotes Consequences for Actions.

Boobage (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=avpld04ikobea5zb9ks0z1syfkhtra&func=publish.show&template=img_full&func_id=1700&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT) (from Friday-update (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=xxih7tcu3ny88i30v6k7yp7dry1u9x&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1699&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)). But will there be nipples? That's the question everybody is asking. For some reason this gives me a flashback to early Shadowbane days. Can't remember why though.

That's their definition of half-naked?

Something is wrong with that chicks leg

I wish Funcom would drop the half-naked shit and stay focused on giving us a good PvP game. Who gives a crap how much clothing is on a mob or character except cyberfreaks and kids. The artists should be making sure that the blood from decapitations looks right not whether both nipples are aligned on a given mob.

And they say Americans are too focused on violence.


If I haven't fallen into the sarchasm here, I can answer why it does.  I have this sensation of falling, though...

By all means, refresh my memory, Merusk. I honestly can't remember, it's just the succubus + breasts part that rings a Shadowbane-bell somewhere in the distance. :P

They are from Yurop. Though, in their defence, Diablo had topless succubi.

Those with interest in the actual Conan setting, for one. Conan without dark seductive allure is like Warhammer without skulls and thrones.

Shadowboobs?  You seriously can't remember the topless succubus from Shadowbane's PR?

What Murgos said, and now I can't find the damn pic.

There was also the whole GOD Games "lesbian porn at <game convention>" incident.  (I forget which convention it was)

(from memory) that was from a 2003/2004 E3 (2002?).  Although I'm remembering that they weren't actually inside E3 but were across the street or in the parking lot or some shit like that (not that I was there, just remembering from press at the time)

I tried to find the Shadowboobs pic as well, but was unable to. I'm sure someone has it stored on their machine somewhere. For posterior's sake, or sommat.

Question someone here may or may not know...

Is this game DX10 only (thus requiring Vista)?  Or will it be DX9 compatible?

IIRC, its 9 compatible.

Either 2001 or 2002. It was on a screen outside the convention and they were told not to come back for it.

Didn't you see the black band? :)

Ya know, that they're doing this in the context of everything else is pretty Conan-y. I applaud them for not wimping out on this aspect, immersive to the lore. Plus a good marketing gimmick ;)

I really hope they have an option to keep that black bar on in game! Some childrans could hack in and see those FILTHY WOMAN PARTS!

You can attack those filthy naked whores with swords, so that makes it alright and acceptable for young children to see.

I have no problem with naked women (although the guys deserve equal clothes optional time).  I'm nit-picking his choice of words.

Funcom Gains $30m in New Funding (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14482)

So a good marketing budget and maybe a bigger dedicated Live team? In either case, good for them. I truly hope AoC does for Funcom and their AO-image what LoTRO has done for Turbine and their AC2 one (yea, I know, not directly comparable, but I do feel Turbine has gained a lot of cache for how well they pulled it off).

No game will come out DX10 without DX9 backward compatibility for the next few years, that would be virtual suicide considering only a very small minority of gamers are running Vista and DX10 video cards. My biggest "will it work" on this game is the control system. I am hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Fixed it for you.

thanks  :-D

My big reservation is how will the actiony combat fair in a laggy enviroment i.e. seiges.

You just gotta keep your eye on the prize, man.

Worry more about crushing your enemies, worry less about the lamentations of the women.

Well - the large-scale battles in Planetside worked fairly well. Bandwidth and network optimization code has only gotten better since then.

But somehow Eve cant handle 150 players in one area without totally fuckin losing its marbles.

I pray for PS like netcode. They honestly did an awesome job when you look at how every other game performs when you get 100+ players in the same situation. And it even uses collision detection. Might have something to do with the client handling the hit detection side of it though eh? Either way, please pull this off FC :)

Something is wrong with that chicks face. Why can't we hire the artists from the KMMO's? Seriously. Their games are crap but their modeling is great. I'm not sure where the disconnect happens in most western games, if it's in the modeling or the texturing but for the most part, we suck at 3D people.

Everytime I see a KMMO or JMMO, all the men look like women.

And all the women look like schoolgirls.

Amen.

Yeah, but they at least look human. Pretty humans but humans indeed.

So hire the Koreans to make men, which we'll use for the female models, and they can also do the backgrounds.  The Americans can do the guys.  (Look like ass, or look like a girl.  Your choice.)

That's just crazy enough to be the right way to do it :) Reminds me of a quote from a buddy after seeing "300":

I don't know about your friend, but i would be hard pressed to call one of the depicted 'Spartans' a Metrosexual to his face.

If the Spartans are any gay stereotype, its the burly, lumberjack gay.

It wasn't about the Spartans themselves, just how they were depicted.

And anyone, much less Spartans, could crush my bud with a cross look :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wpa2Qplm8M (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wpa2Qplm8M)

The 305!

So the new newsletter came out, and had a nice article on ranged combat.  I forsee another game with a glut of the archer-type characters.  Now the question is how effective will they be vs melee.

Oh, and horse archery will be the first thing to get nerfed.

Damn Mongols! Ruining the game for everyone else!

Mongols weren't the only ones who were able to shoot from a horse... the Ranger class is.  The logic also doesn't seem to hold when they mention specific things they've implemented to minimize or eliminate kiting, but then go ahead and let rangers shoot while on a horse.

There's what I think is a new trailer up. It has no gameplay footage but gives some idea of the tone they are going for I guess.

http://uk.gamespot.com/video/927504/6173826/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures-official-trailer-9

Nice. Someday we'll actually be playing games at that level of fidelity :) Wonder if it was from the same folks (http://www.blur.com/) who did the EQ2 and WAR trailers.

The first guild for "hardcore roleplaying" as prostitutes in AoC is under construction (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=29983). O_o

Daddy, daddy, come look at my hooker!

Hold on son - let me fire up the other machine and I'll be your first john.

Two weeks ago I picked up a collection of Conan stories by Howard, and I'm making my way through it. So far, although Conan does have a harem of girls, they're props, not personalities. Conan is, from what (admittedly little so far) I've read, a very male world. I'm enjoying it immensely  :evil:

Who was the Conan expert here? Strazos?

In my view, yea, Conan is a very male/patriarchal world. There's a few strong female prescences, but befitting the era of history about which it references, it's mostly war, land conflict and personal power growth.

Me.

Oh wait...that was expert, not fanboi...my bad

Margalis.

Windup.

Fine. Make me look it up.

It was Stray. Here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8114.70). So it's a male world right?

Oh yes, Stray.  (Why did I think Windup?)

I've always take the male/female thing as a combination of the era, Howard's mental state, and the romantic genre. Some feminists get all excited about the issue, but I don't. It's an artficact of an individual and his time.

Obviously the 30s wasn't a bastion of feminism and the feminism of the early 20th century tended to be more about essentialist gender roles and the different and superior perspective that women might bring politically. Women were "naturally" pacifistic and therefore it would benefit society in the post-WWI period to pay more attention to us. One point against women warriors right there.

That fit right into romanticism of the type manifested in Conan, which has always been a reaction against modernist notions of "civilization" and tied with the masculine side of gender essentialism. The notion that things were better when we "followed our nature" and men were men and women were absent which tends to exacerbate traditional gender roles. In this sense, John Norman's Gor might be seen as the natural successor to Conan. That or one might regard Gor as heterosexual romanticism, where Conan is almost into Tom of Finland territory with its idealization of the male.

Most of all. Howard wasn't all there. Ok not all there doesn't even start in on it, the guy was absolutely out of his mind nuts. I'd guess there was a good chance he was gay. There's no evidence of any meaningful relationship with a woman other than his mother and when she died he blew his head off leaving the following suicide note.

"All fled--all done so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over and the lamps expire."

Can't wait for the game though.

I don't know if I'm an expert, but I've read all the Howard Conan stuff as well as the better knockoffs. (L. Sprague de Camp et al.)

The world of Conan is pretty male, although there are female adventurers. Belit, The Queen of the Black Coast, is the most famous of them, she was basically a pirate lord. Most of the women mentioned tend to be serving wenches, whores, servants, princesses, etc. All scantily clad of course.

Part of that is a function of who Conan came across. He was a thief, a fighter (dual class!), a hard drinker and had an eye for the ladies.

It's also worth pointing out that the Conan world is really not a world of adventurers. As in, there aren't many characters that amble around seeking out adventure. Most of them are normal folk or serve in some court or army, or perhaps as mercenaries. Conan himself was largely a mercenary. It isn't the kind of world like in LOTR where a bunch of disparate people team up to fight evil just because they are the good guys. There isn't a lot of heroism. Even when Conan is saving someone it's usually because there is some treasure involved or because she is hot.

Basically it's seedy. So a guild of seedy females is pretty awesome.

I just got to Queen of the Black Coast, and I take back what I said earlier about women not having a very good role. Sure, the Queen immediately wants to screw Conan on the spot the moment she meets him, but soon thereafter, she's calling the shots. To quote:

Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found life good.

Remarkably progressive for the 1930s, don't you think?

:roll:
Uh. No. That's just completely and totally false. Let's see who/what I can rattle off: Seneca Falls (1848), Susan B. Anthony (1870s),  Edith Wharton (1900s), Virginia Woolf (1920s). That's not even close to the entirety of famous feminist authors around that period. The quote, "Women were 'naturally' pacificstic and therefore it would benefit society in the post-WWI period to pay more attention to us," had better be in green because it isn't remotely or anywhere close to accurate. Many examples in art and literature are explicating the liberated woman enough that when WWII begins and females come to dominate the war-effort labor force, there is no turning back and telling them to resume their domestic roles. As far as your "One point against women warriors right there," statement goes, you might want to check out this link to see just how incorrect you are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Anthology_of_Literature_by_Women.

Also,

Let's remember which came first. Modernism is a reaction against the gaudy thoughts and feelings expressed in romanticism. Hence the avant-garde tradition that is begun by the imagists and vorticists, later by cubists and form-breaking writers. You're again totally wrong here. You might start by informing yourself with Dr. R.B. Kershner's book entitled The Twentieth Century Novel: An Introduction. It'll give you a good timeline as to which literary/artistic period comes before the other so you don't sound silly. Secondly, you might recall that many of the romantics needed a "muse" to enable their writings. Yes, there are later works by Robert Browning and Dante Rosetti that completely support your argument, but I'm not sure how much I believe in it being entwined "with the masculine side of gender essentialism." Maybe only halfway. On another note, what would you consider the modernist notions of "civilization"? T.S. Eliot published "The Waste Land" in 1922 which pretty much set the pace for the modernist notion of civilization. I haven't read the Conan lore, but it sounds to me like a broken, war -torn land is pretty similar to some of the points seen in "The Waste Land."

Finally,

I'm not so sure how this is an artifiact of his time. Remember that romanticism is more or less dead for about twenty to thirty years in the 1930s. If you want to read up more on the transition from romantic to modern writers, you might pick up something on Yeats.

For however wrong you might have been in your post, it made me wonder about the connections between Raymond Chandler and Robert Howard. I'm always into the pseudo-pulp and noir stuff. So sue me.

Edit: I had to have at least one typo in this post. Rawr.

You should've led with this sentence

Don't see how it makes any difference. The points are still accurate and valid.

You're absolutely correct if the purpose of your post was to show off that you know the beginnings of the Modernist movement in a semi-coherent screed.

You're absolutely wrong if you wanted to discuss Conan lore as it pertains to literary movements of the early 20th century since, you know, you said you're completely unfamiliar with it.

Look, Howard was an insane flat-earther with severe mommy issues and a penchant for sucking up to HP Lovecraft. He wrote purely escapist literature; vicious, racist, sexist literature but purely escapist. Conan was the fantasy HIM and that's part of the thing that makes Conan so compelling. It's a rich, varied, real feeling world because when he closed his eyes at night I've absolutely no doubt that he was seeing himself cutting a bloody swathe through crazy Africans to get the girl.

None of that is to say I dislike Conan. I fucking love Conan. But you really, really have to place it in this little corner of it's own the same way you have to with Lovecraft and some things in that corner aren't pleasant anymore than they were when Lovecraft was using codewords for his fear of Jews.

I suppose you are right. However, I tend to go off the deep end when I see misinformed people knocking the early feminist movement. I'm perfectly okay with literature that doesn't conform to the standards of today. Is Huck Finn racist? Hell yes it is. Is The Sun Also Rises racists and slightly misogynistic? Yes. Absolutely. Do I have to stick things I don't like in little corners so I feel better about myself? No. Actually, I'm quite piqued as to what this guy has to write. Didn't you read my last sentence of my post?

I'm hardly knocking the early feminist movement or feminist writing. I'm simply saying that it has absolutely nothing relevent to Conan's universe and provides no role models for the kind of characters one finds in Robert's writings. I'm pretty familiar with early 20th century women's literature and you don't find sentiments like "I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content" or "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind." (The latter, btw, is not a complaint about mankind, but is something to be celebrated in the virile naturalistic masculine violence of Conan.)

For the connection with romanticism, there he's not part of the mainstream of his time, he's a reaction against it. He's part of the romantic strain that survived the "end of romanticism." (Neo-romanticism if you will.) The same kind of individualistic naturalistic romantic strains that merge with social darwinism and in Europe end up feeding into fascism and nationalist movements. Wagner not Wordsworth.

(We should get an award for most obscure and academic thread derail ever.)

You guys lost me at feminism.

I'm interested in knowing the code words for Jews That Lovecraft used. Not that I don't believe it, but it is interesting that he married a Jew (granted, it lasted all of 2 years). Of course there are definite opinions in his stories that are racist... And he definitely was reacting against the literature of his time. He consciously wrote archaic prose because he loved it so.

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.

Weren't we talking about a game at some point?  I really never expected to use that 18th Century British fiction course from college on a gaming forum... but man maybe I need to go back and look at my notes so I can take part in this Conan discussion.

20th century fiction. And I think the Lovecraft stuff is more about general racism, including the Portuguese and other southern/eastern Europeans, than it is about Jews in particular.

There's a noted difference between early and late Lovecraft.  He came off as more open/tolerant in his later (post-marriage) period,  compared to the blatant xenophobia displayed in his early work.

He also had a couple stories with very negative depictions of the poor white trash living in the Catskills and the Vermont area.

To be fair Lovecraft also wrote some pretty disgusting things about fellow blue-blooded New Englanders.  Cannibalism, necrophilia and bestiality all come to mind.

You know, when you read Nietzsche's Hammer of the Gods, its probably wise to bear in mind his descent into dementia caused by syphilis.

On the other hand, when I read Conan, its so obviously sheer pulp, with only occasional flashes of redemptive talent, that bringing to bear his mother or his suicide or him being a malcontent seem somehow an uncharitable filter through which to read his work. One thing is completely clear from reading Conan; Howard did it to have a blast. Its not serious, its not literary, and its only important because, to this day, people still are getting wicked thrills from it.

Oh, and about white males in the late 19th or early 20th century being a bit racist, I'd have to challenge the lot of you to find me some author who wasn't. You just simply couldn't be born white in that time period and somehow not be racist. There were just waaay too many preexisting cultural filters in place for any man to escape them.

They had me at "scantily clad".

/duck

/highfive

Hellz Yeah!!

I have some interesting stuff you might should read on that if you're interested.

I prefer the more PC: "Occasional clothing".

Has there been any mention of what stage of beta this game is in?  Open beta coming up anytime soon?

"Technical Beta" currently. They better get the open beta by Aug 1 if they have any hopes of meeting their Oct. 30th release. I got 20 bucks on being a early december launch.

Oh wow.  Technical beta, still? 

Hrm.  I'll meet your 20 bucks and say Feb 08.

I say its 07 cause they HAVE to cash in on the WoW burnouts before xmas time, way too much money floating around not to.

I saw they either hit November 1 on shelf or wait until 2008. I've always felt the worst time to release a new MMO is at Christmas, when there's so much other shit to buy. MMOs are a relationship, not some crappy consumer good that gets forgotten before the bill is paid off. Imagine buying the box as a gift then the recipient seeing the fee, just when the December bills start rolling in :)

Even WoW was targeting early November, only missing it because of some last minute stuff. They were on their stress test by September.

Unless you're talking about Vanguard.  :mrgreen:

Anyone asking for Age of Conan knows it comes with a subscription fee. I doubt some mother of a 15 year old boy would go...Hmmm, Age of Conan, half naked wenches - M - Rating...LETS GET IT!

You wouldnt want to release an MMO right after Xmas either, because of the reasons you specify. At least at Xmas time, people are prepared to spend some cash and have time off to get hooked on your game. So basically, I'd say December 1st release would be the latest, or March 1st be the earliest in 08.  I honestly hope it is something like March, so it will be properly tested and 'balanced'. But if it comes out in 07 I'll be just as happy so I finally have something to play.

I dunno man. On the one hand, yea, there's a good chunk of the AoC adopters who'll be coming from the genre. On the other though, it is an IP that hasn't yet been in this genre. So like other licenses with a built in audience not already here, it's possible to attract through name recognition alone.

MMO vets will buy it the damned thing on Christmas Day if it's available and doesn't suck :)

As an aside, I wonder just how far they'll really push the M. Right now they talk big, but I wonder if they stick to their guns.

The IP is worthless. Nobody read the books, and the movies were released decades ago. Even if all the tweens were dressing up like Conan and Red Sonya for halloween, we have SWG to tell us that IP alone doesn't guarantee success. AoC will succeed or fail based upon its gameplay alone.

SWG proved IP isn't worth squat.

Hardly new news.

Double post?

Imagine the SWG game experience without the SW license, nor any license for that matter (because SWG without the SW was UO 2.0 ;) ). How successful would it have been? Imagine WoW without the "Warcraft".

Both would have gotten subscribers, but SOE wouldn't have thought they could get a million subscribers without the SW license and Blizzard wouldn't have believed they'd get over 8 million without "Warcraft".

IP will not make an MMO successful by itself. You need, like, a good game to do that. But IP can attract a lot more players than those who are already in a genre that talks about these games. Once you've got them, you need to a) ensure the IP is analogous to the expected game experience (where SWG was not but WoW was a broad enough IP to allow for single-character play); and, b) your game isn't a code trainwreck (which SWG was but WoW was not).

On AoC, there's a reason Funcom chose the IP, though I don't know what it is except to say it wasn't because nobody read the books and the movie activity has been dormant for decades. I imagine it's probably due to some upcoming activity against the brand. Otherwise, how could they justify the tens of millions of dollars they've spent on it?

It would have had far fewer subscribers and been far more successful. For that particular game, the IP was an albatross. If you tossed SWG out there without the IP, it could have developed more organically and it would probably have taken over the adventure/VW niche that UO has. And unlike Star Wars IP, it would have been considered successful at the 100-250k mark.

I think Conan is actually a very useful IP. Very few people have read the books cover to cover. Probably a lot of people have seen the movies on TV. But you also have comics. And just the fact that it's in the popular culture--Conan's the governor of California FFS! People hear Conan and they know what they're getting. That's the value in the IP.

And unlike SWG the gameplay probably won't revolve around Conan growing crops and raising beasts of burden.

Yes. But that is part of my point.

At that time, SOE would not have developed it. In their height, a "small" project like 100-250k was not in the cards. They wanted, and believed they could get, another 400k+ (at the time) success. And they thought their l33t dev skills plus one of the worlds biggest entertainment IPs would exceed their records. That sort of project gets the big budget, because they believe they'll make well in excess of that back. They first had to convince themselves, them management, then the licensor.

Meanwhile, setting out to make a slow-growth grass-roots games is entirely a different matter. You build that sort of project organically while people are playing it. Or you build it all up front on the cheap (ala Flash-based MMOs).

In neither case do you dump a AAA-budget into it before you've even invited people to experience it. And in most cases you're not a big development studio internalizing the entire development.

So, SWG without the IP probably would not have come from SOE for the same reasons UO 2.0 (and UOX) did not come. Smedley gets a bad rap for how people have interpreted him saying "virtual lifestyles" don't sell, but there is a grain of truth to that, from a certain point of view (couldn't resist ;). The POV is:

a) you're talking about a mega license like SW; and,
b) you're talking about the only type of gamers SOE knew how to talk to at the time.

Obviously, but that wasn't my point. Of course IP has real value. If they were making a Harry Potter MMO, for example, the IP would give them a great advantage in initial sales. Conan, not so much.

You're correct in that there's a possibility of future brand expansion. THQ is working on Conan single-player games, and WB has been planning to make the King Conan movie for years now, although it may have fallen into the pit. But that's all 2009+.

IP has two functions:

1. Built it promotion and advertising. 

2. Prebuilt lore/world/systems & design.

By taking the Conan IP, you get to pick and choose from 70 plus years of material about the world and lore,  as well as raiding it for story,  from the original Howard books, dozens of followups from other authors, a couple comic series, movies, etc.  This gives you ideas about geography, backstory for everything, huge amounts of your NPC dialogue, etc for free.

Not too mention the staggering amount of art resources that comes along with that.  Look at LOTRO,  or the LOTR movies,  for what you can do with visuals when you have decades of the best art to plunder from.

Hell,  it's not even like the IP is that insignificant promotion wise.  I remember two different Conan cartoons from the '90s,  and who hasn't played an MMO where lines from the first movie have been quoted?

I guess it all depends on how much control Paradox holds over their IP. Brand protection can be a real hindrance to creativity and can even dictate design in an unhealthy way. Again we go back to SWG; I certainly don't need to give examples to this audience.

You know, Cee, I thought the same, till I expressed my interest in the game to my current guild, who's been with me from EQ1, DAoC, EQ2, to WoW and other game. This is a guild of approximately 20 active people, over 70 or so come and go folks, and not a single cotton pickin one of them was intersted in Conan. On the whole, the main reason was that they weren't interested in that level of violence and carnality, but there was also an unspoken 'Conan, that's wierd stuff, not gonna touch it'.

I was flabbergasted. I kept saying, "Guys! Its Conan! Its like, the father of half of the crap you drool over in every Fantasy MMO you've played! How could you not be excited by it?!" Silence. Dead Silence. Then eventually someone spoke,"Well, its done by the same people that did AO, and man, that game was crap." Of course, the person that said this hadn't ever played AO, so they were just going on word of mouth.

So my conclusion is that to the average WoW/EQ player, who like it or not, isn't quite as nerdy as we'd like them to be, AoC currently means "Game made by flailing Foreign MMO company who everyone laughed at".

Don't get me wrong, I think AoC is going to do just fine, if your yard stick is EvE, or AO. But I think its going to fail capturing the American market.

I think Conan is a very strong IP for gaming because it has this very diverse and inconsistent IP. It's not SW or LOTR which are straightjacketed by lore-nazis. The Conan IP is about general look and feel and probably is as much about Frazetta as Howard. I think it has the right combination of publicity vs. freedom.

Provided the price was right. (And by right I mean low.)

While the Conan IP may not be huge, I would suggest that a generic fantasy game from Funcom would probably have three or four five post snark threads about it here and little other attention.

Yeah, and what is included in the price? I mean, Howard's Conan stories are out of copyright in Australia and probably some other countries as well. Doesn't that mean that the setting is free for all?

Wouldn't every game ever, though? Except perhaps if there was a release for the PS3, you'd see it on frontpage with Schlid going  :inluv: :inluv: :inluv: :inluv: :inluv:

Maybe. I would love to know if Funcom sought an IP for a new game they wanted to develop or if whoever handles licensing for Conan sought them out. In general, I do hope the former didn't pay much and that the latter doesn't expect much. Unfortunately, the amount of work they've dumped into the game belies a lack of expectation. I don't know for sure how much they've spent, they have spent quite a bit of time on very content-heavy graphics and a pretty-new UI for players. Even WoW didn't fundamentally change how players drive characters and activate abilities, and they were sitting on a guaranteed gold mine by virtue of the words "Blizzard" and "Warcraft" sitting in the same sentence.

Conan is not a huge IP in the West. But the game could play the IP/extension relationship in reverse. There's a chance the game can attract players to the IP by first attracting them to a somewhat-different game play experience.

I fully expect the majority of AoC reviews to feature that line somewhere.

Too bad Oliver Stone cribbed it from Genghis Khan....

Weird, my guild is kinda the opposite. Everyone is waiting for AoC to come out, WoW burnout is hitting hard.

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6175120/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32007_live

14 min gameplay kinda vid

/drool

As has been touched on above, the value of IP is giving the player some expectation of what they are buying when they grab it off the shelf. If an IP isn't clear or broad enough to give some kind of universal message, then it won't help sell the game. The Conan IP means one thing to those who saw the movies and another thing to fans of the books/comics. The literature is much darker than the movies so there is risk that if AoC is adopts the carnality of the literature, then the broader fanbase of the movies might have an IP vs expectation surprise, much the same as Star Wars fans got with SWG.

A good 30-40% of my EQ2 guild is women, mostly girlfriends and wives of other guildmates. AoC has a low attraction for them and we all know that if your wife wants to keep playing EQ2 then that is what both of you are going to do.

I am looking forward to AoC, but it isn't going to be bigger than EQ2. A smooth launch will help a lot. Funcom just got a fresh round of funding so maybe they can polish it properly in time for November.

Listened to an AoC fanbois recording of the E3 deal, sounds like there will be 3 types of servers...

PvE

PvE/PVP

FFA PvP

The guy doing the demo was like "I'm sticking with the PVE-PVP ruleset cause I dont wanna get ganked coming out of the city".

I don't know about that. Its not as if playing a woman on AoC means you have to be a naked ho by default. I seriously doubt that FunCom will be so short sighted. And if you think women aren't interested in internet sexuality, you may wanna read Lum's latest Second Life experience post.

Any IP is worthless if you fight against the essence of the source material (or simply ship a crummy game). SWG and UO are both near criminal in being handed the holy grail of IPs, and delivering far below what was possible. UO based on a game about 8 virtues, abandoned them in favor of wild PVP that was pretty much inescapable. SWG took epic Space Opera and gave us, uh, moisture farmers and dancers. Star Wars games did so well for so long, that it got to the point where I think some developers thought they could ship turd in a box with Star Wars printed on it and the masses would happily fork over cash.

So far Conan looks fairly promising, and even though it's been asserted that no one read the books - I did, and apparently enough people did to get two feature films made - and that while the movies are decades old both were recently re-released on DVD. Somewhere, it would seem that someone sees the IP as having value. Hell, someone at OSI did back in the day - they pretty much lifted the spirit of the entire intro sequence from the first Conan movie for UO's intro.

Wow. I'm definitely interested now. And it sounds like the pet class is monstrous (and I <3 a good pet class). I mean, up to eight bare-breasted demon chicks following me around. They better make a pimp mini-game. Think of the gold you'd rake in!

It wasn't the IP that killed SWG. It was 2 things:

1) Bad coding and odd design choices.
2) The game that we did get didn't fit the IP at all. A Star Wars MMO should've been about the action and the ships. We got Moisture Farmer SIM 0.5.


Damn though that'd be a fun world! I want to own some naked ho slaves!

The best news is that an Oblivion-level PC can handle it. Yay!

Looks good, but 80 levels? Gah.

80 is the new 50.

True. Why not just make the level cap unreachable?

I like the idea of sublevels better. Then there's no such thing as "gear that becomes obsolete."


Why do devs not do this more? :o

Least they dropped 120 levels from the AO cap ;)

I was seriously unimpressed by their demonstration of the raid game. I thought AoC was going in a different direction than that crap. What a bummer.

I'm not sure what you expected, sam_eggplant_01. I mean, a raid is a raid, no? Go to dungeon, find super bosses, kill super bosses. Or am I lacking in imagination here? Oh, and you did catch the part where they gave the player 99999 health and a 700% damage multiplier, or some such, so he could solo the content for the demo's purpose, yes?

Yes, you are profoundly lacking in imagination.

Another goddamned dungeon, another goddamned raid. The things that are interesting about AoC are the things they haven't really been showing much of. The UI (which got a few seconds), the sheer size of the cities, the economy. You'd think having been in this genre for so long, Funcom would know that showing yet-another-dungeon-crawl is only good for the few minutes you want to dedicate to your gaga graphics engine. Otherwise, it's just going to show yet again that there's no real collision detection and the outcome is driven by dice.

It reminds me of the TR videos. This genre needs an influx of video Directors.

How about a FRAPS or whatever-equivalent contest between everyone in the closed-beta. Winner gets a free year sub or something. Then put all the best videos together and tada!

There is no closed beta for AoC yet, so that would be hard. But in general, yeah, that's the way to go.

That sounds fun! I wish more games would let you do that.

WTF is this?! (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=33972)

Maybe someone confused the Pirates<->SOE announcement with Conan?

Or maybe SOE is now used to keep unruly children at bay. "If you don't stop whining now and go wash your hands I'll call SOE and will have them acquire your favourite MMORPG!"

Heh.

That'd keep me inline.

Speaking of SOE, I'm tempted to put together a re-review of SWG...

No.

On the AoC/SOE thing, I love this part:

Where did you get that info?

According to this (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=21386), they went closed beta last summer, and are now in 'technical' and 'general' beta.  They started accepting beta apps in April this year.

Actually reading your link, I guess it's accurate. I suppose it depends on how you define closed beta.

My guild is also in the "Christ AoC, please don't suck" camp. WoW burnout is in full effect and it's definitely time for a change. Signaled by the fact that I'm logging in for no other reason than to make sure guild goings on are in good shape, and it feels like work. Cue Big Audio Dynamite.

The major problem for us has been that we want people to be hopeful for AoC and the features it has, but the big ticket items that we are drooling over are, in fact, all MIA. Call me crazy, but at this point (actually well before this point) to hold back any and all details on these features at this late in development shows me nothing but a red flag. That red flag being a release feature cut, or another delay. For now, I'm inclined to lean towards the former.

It's getting harder and harder to try and "sell" my guildmates on AoC. Something the game should be doing for itself.

/doomandgloom off

Sounds very similar. They don't seem to want to show the stuff that we're all interested in. I'm growing weary , but remain hopeful.

If this game releases Oct 31 with everything advertised and in polished condition I will be shocked. I have a feeling that if they release this year it will make Vanguard's release look good. Put me on record as predicting massive graphic lag, lack of content, and buggy game play. A few months ago I was more of a AoC fan than a WAR one, but now I am thinking my next MMORPG purchase will have a Mythic label on it.

I thought AOC was being delayed until Q-1 of 2008?

We're watching AOC and Warhammer, but don't know which one we're gonna go for. If AOC has massive character grind, then we'll probably just go to Warhammer.

I just don't see how they could launch a polished title in 3 months without having even started closed beta testing. I also suspect that the release will be delayed.

Warhammer on the other hand looks like it's going to be HUGE. Nobody's breaking NDA, but their promotional and marketing materials are incredibly well done. That british producer guy Paul is just brimming with enthusiasm. Not only is he a fantastic evangelist for the title, but he also goes into detail on mythic's innovations in the genre, showing how they really understand and are addressing other games' failings. Really looking forward to it.

Yeah, if anyone hasn't seen Paul Barnett talking about Warhammer, look here - enthusiastic doesn't begin to describe it. And he does make it sound like great fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvAznIRVLA

That's not a bad example, but I like him in his british punk getup with the wide rimmed sunglasses. Check out the podcast #7 here (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/podcast/). Not only is Paul a great presenter, but the video has a ton of info about how the game works. EA/mythic is doing an unparalleled job with marketing. Only blizzard could beat it with their non-NDA closed beta.

Sorry for derailing from AoC, but we don't really know much about AoC, do we?

Funcom and Eidos announce new release date for Age of Conan (http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?session=7ms69bm1do5gwdspojpi3nppmw9swa&func=publish.show&func_id=1228&table=CONTENT&item=1004) (Again).

The new date? 25th of March, next year.

I vote we nuke those swedish cocksuckers.  Motherfucking sons of donkey ass raping bitches.

What, you WANT another Vanguard? Be thankful game companies are seeing the light, finally.

Duh, get your facts right. :roll: It is not Swedes that ass-rape donkeys. We got the mightily surperior elks. :inluv: We leave the donkey-loving to the Norwegians, so you were half right.

On the other hand, Vanguard was delayed for ages too. Delays, as far as my experience goes, means -nothing- for the quality of the game. It just means they realise it's still shit/incomplete, not that they will be able to clean it up before the next release date. There's a reason it was delayed to begin with, which usually spells incompetence or unrealistic goals. The former which they've proved before and the latter AoC seems to bolster.

This is no shocker, really.

I'm a little bummed, but at the same time I didn't realistically expect them to make their release date anyways. Another 6 months of development CANT hurt.

Anyone have an idea on specs to run AoC?  I assume it will drop my current computer to its knees ala Vanguard, so I am in no rush for it to be released right away.  I am excited for the game based on Robert E. Howard lore alone.

According to an E3 demo, one of the Funcom guys said 'Oblivion playable machines' is their target. Obviously, if you want the DX10 and all the bells and whistles you will need a monster. I think it would be playable on the machines described above, just not gorgeous.

I'd be willing to guess that anything that isn't around 3400+/2GB/7000+ or the P4/ATI equivalents will choke a bit.

That's pretty standard middling to low-end nowadays.

We should all be overjoyed it was delayed. AoC still isn't in closed beta as of today. With an additional 5 months of testing and development the title has an outside chance to not totally fucking suck. Funcom just got additional funding last month, so they can afford the delay. This is a good thing.

UGH.

Damnit.  March??  It's not as if we didn't know it was coming, but damnit.  And yeah, it's probably a good thing, doesn't mean I have to like it though. 

*shakefist*

Guys, this is Funcom. They have more than just other games with which to compete. They have their own past. They very much do not want a repeat of AO. And they can't even afford to just have it playable in the first month. They need at least EQ2 quality day one (better gameplay plzk) or the anyone who follows these games will bury the web in "they haven't learned shit since AO"-like posts.

And personally, I think it's better to NOT launch at Christmas unless you have a huge attention-grabbing IP. There's too many distractions. Better to launch when nobody else is. Or around one of the mini-Christmas-for-videogame periods like, say, GDC :)

I really don't think their primary concern is the diaspora of LtM dogging their footsteps. Posts on web forums and such don't actually matter. Primarily, they want to release a successful game. And as we've all learned, first impressions are critical.

I'm sure it isn't LtM-diaspora sites so much as just general word-of-mouth they want to avoid. AO was a monumental clusterfuck of a release, and it wasn't just rant sites that knew it. That shit stuck with them and the stigma is still there on AO, even if it's diminished. That same stigma still sticks to WWII Online.

A delay is a good thing, so long as they use that time to make sure AO isn't repeated.

Been reading their forums, and holy hell poop on a stick people are going apeshit.  Yeah, I was whining about it being delayed, mostly because I was really looking forward to it, but understand the necessity of the delay and I've already gotten over it.  But damn, some of those people have really lost it.

This the first MMO delay you've seen the official forums for, then?   It's been like that, along with contrasting "OMG they're fucked, this means it sucks hard, they can't fix it!"  and "Omg they're just going to make it that much BETTER now, SEE!!" posts, for every game I've ever seen.  Including WoW.

And yes, it's not the disapora at all. We're such a minority that we've been irrelevant ever since '01.  That doesn't mean that others don't share the opinion that AO sucked balls.  Ask in the global/ general chat of a few MMOs sometime.

It's going to be on the 360 also.  I might wait a week or two before picking it up.  If any company can brick my 360, it's Funcom.

360 version isn't dropping until ~1yr after pc release.
I take back my earlier comment about swedes, I have some swedish friends, and when I think about it, the guys at funcom probably just need to tone their drinking down.  On the other hand, maybe I need to move to sweden, being sober and responsible isn't all it's cracked up to be.

And Funcom is a Norwegian company to boot!

I withdraw my previous withdrawal.  Fuck norway.  What they have ever done for us?

More like snoreway.
(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/weeblskenyalion1186768445.gif)(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/weeblskenyatiger1186768501.gif)

It's been a while since I've much attention to prelaunch official forums, to be completely honest.  I try my best not to watch O forums until right up until launch.  I really think that companies should not have open official forums until the game goes into open beta anyway, so I steer clear of them.  You can keep customers and potential customers up to date just as well without engaging in dialogue with those outside of beta.

Vikings and Roald Dahl.  Plus Odin, Thor, Loki, Fenris, Frig and Freya and all that lot.

Also, if you count Lief Ericsson as Norwegian by way of Iceland, discovered America. 

That's nice.  What have they done for me lately?

Gravlax!

Boatloads of oil that doesn't come from the middle east?

So they're causing global warming.  You're not helping your cause.

It's part of Norway's plan to become the Florida of the north.

Unless those plans also include stealing Halliburton's hurricane machine and opening a mighty shitload of kosher deli's it's not going to happen.

Global warming is a NASA Y2K bug (http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+Finds+Y2K+Bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm).  If Norway had produced the data, this would never have happened.  FACT.


Also, they got Amy Whinealot to stop singing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6937778.stm) which is A Good Thing and makes up for any environmental damage caused by whaling, overfishing, oil production or discovery of America.

So AoC got pushed back to March 2008 I see.

Brave man stepping in front of a runaway derailment like that.

/flex  :evil:

N-N-N-N-NECRO!@!!

Some news (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1983&sort=PRIORITY,%20RELTIME%20desc&table=CONTENT) on AoC.

Highlights:
-Euro & US get different game versions and servers.  If you want to play w/ US you must find a way to get US copy.

-Germany's fear of violence in games will lead to server-side lockdowns for German players.  Fatalities will happen but you will not see their glory.

-More beta invites.

-No Open Beta before 2008.

P.S.  Sport pvp is for pussies.   :-P

You do realise that the internet is pwning you, don't you?

Nice link!   :-P

Rofl fucking windows copy pasta...

FIXT.

Would you believe me I came across that link from reading our Politics board?

Yes they finally started beta. Releasing in march that gives them ~5 months of testing. Got my fingers crossed!

I am excited! are you?  :evil:

You're freaking me out, man.

I love my country.

Unless there is a workaround, I will not buy this game.

yes there will be a workarround. Play on the english server :)

or if i correctly interpreted their text. you can choose any language on any server.  so play german version on UK server.

The way I read that the server will determine what version you see by checking your IP.

soz read over that part.
"they have server technology"
well there is always the US server you could try :)

Dr. Dre is making me confused.  I demand a refund.

I wonder if any of these studios are starting to grasp the concept that over-hyping their games while they are still in beta, or even alpha stage might be detrimental to their release when everyone is suddenly underwhelmed. Or, even worse, when they have to push out a release date like this or stop beta like in other games and destroy all the hope people had.

I wish they'd just STFU until a week before it's ready. Don't even give us a release date.

Ultimately it'd be a nice experiment to see a MMO only start spuiking itself when it was 95% feature complete and three months from an open beta stress test. The experiment would be to see if this builds a better community than the current "start the forums five years before the game even vaguely looks like coming out" ala Fallen Earth or Exanimus and actually attracts enough attention from MMO players.

I also believe that devs shouldn't be allowed to talk too much about their in-game systems before they can show in-game footage of them in action. But then again, what is sensible for community management may not be smart marketing.

For how derivative this genre has become in many ways, I am surprised how devs continue to talk about the game systems at all. 5 years ago when everyone was learning and the audience much smaller, it makes sense to continue the relationships and methodology from the MUD days, where the line between creator and consumer was fairly narrow. Nowadays, it's just too big and broad for people to think the same sort of interplay between both ends can exist. Even though dev studios have quintupled in size, the playerbased has only grown geometrically (once you consider the previously-unmeasured titles in the mix).

I'm a big proponent of stopping the noise of beta unless it's strictly controlled and only for a limited duration. And don't explain shit until the players are in the game. Having them dissect broad theory and/or systems out of context is only bad.

Who the hell is Soz?

The bullshit rendered "Trailers" they release should be just plain illegal.
"This is what our game looks like... actually, no it doesn't look anything like this at all. Even if you had the most expensive computer on earth it wouldn't look like this. But this is sort of what it would look like if you squint your eyes and pretend a little..."

But I want the bOObies as well, and I am quite sure there will be none on the US servers.

So what servers will have both blood and boobies then? :D

priv8 survurz!   :evil:

Actually, they're gonna have to restrict game content based on geographical location in the U.S. Can't have some lil' Wal-Mart shopping Bible thumper seeing naughty bits before he goes off to church and handles some snakes!

Actually, in a few released screenshots for this game, there were at least a couple that already featured boobies..

NSFW links included:
Direct from the Funcom site (http://www.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=img_full&func_id=1700&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)
Plus this uncensored one floating around the net (http://images.gamersyde.com/gallery/public/6032/1216_0003.jpg)

Yeah - releasing FMV and saying "Look how great our game is" is NOT acceptable anymore. If it ever was, for that matter.

Ya know, that screenshot bothers me. Sure it shows that AoC has boobies. But there's only one shot of them, and a throwaway one at that. If the game was truly "mature" in the soft-porn-to-Americans/normal-for-Europeans sense, you'd see it much more throughout the totality of the game. But right now it feels more like a "tee-hee, boobies" teenage angst thing, the very essence of immaturity, why it's so hard for people to take these games seriously.

If you're going to make a game mature, make it mature. Otherwise, do your market research first before potentially having to buckle to it.

I'd make that judgement when I see the final game, honestly. There's been a fair amount of talk about the 'mature' rating on the forums in the past but I admit I haven't kept up with it recently. It sounded to me like it would be fairly pervasive and not especially throwaway.

Issue 11 (http://community.ageofconan.com/conan/frontend/files/NEWSLETTER/issue11/) of the AoC Newsletter is out today. Some interesting bits there about character development (feats, abilities, skills, stats).

Also, in case anyone is interested, Funcom has released it's financial report for Q3 2007 (http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1250&table=CONTENT).

Thnx xuri much appreciate it.

When has nudity ever equaled maturity? Or death and violence equal maturity for that matter?

God of War did a good job with all 3 things. Nudity, death, AND violence.

And it doesn't necessarily = maturity. No one ever said that. Rather, there are things that aren't for kids. Those things that aren't for kids. They should be aimed at adults. Specifically, adult gamers. Specifically, violence, nudity, and death. This isn't a MORAL question of maturity. It's an age question. Over 18 folks like tits more than under 18 folks. It's just that simple. Also, we like killing. Particularly since we can't just go out into the streets and do it in real life. Games are supposed to put you in situations you couldn't possibly be in while living life in some normal society-acceptable fashion.

That said, I'll be over here with my tits and decapitations (not at the same time plz) while you're over there playing Let's Visit the Library IV: Late Fees. Or maybe you're playing Adult Independence: The Rite of Passage Part 9: Tax Season.

What schild said.

I don't want nudity to be treated like it does in tee-hee angsty teenage movies. If it's going to be used, do it for the immersion, the insights into the culture of the day, that sorta thing. I was previously concerned that Funcom was using it just to sell more boxes to anal retentives, the sort of tactic that perpetuates the myth of immaturity that Americans have for what Europeans deem as normal.

Those sound  :awesome_for_real:, will I have to upgrade my video card for them?

Srsly. I'm all about the blood and gore. As long as the game is fun. That's the bottom line, after all.

huh? You're kidding right?

In a generalization, I'm 100% correct.

Me? Personally? Tits have their place. They don't instantly make things mature. But there's absolutely no question that tits sell and sell lots. Look at Tomb Raider. It's always been a piece of shit. But for whatever reas... oh, tits. And folks over 18, hell I knew fathers who didn't play games who went gaga for Tomb Raider. Sure, anecdotal, but it's one of those believable anecdotes.

Schild, I think its more suburban morality moms, the tripper gores out there, that don't want to think of their precious under-18 year olds getting boners. I know for a cold-stone hard fact that all my peers were staring at tits like starving dogs at 12-14 on up.

Ya know what's funny... there are going to be dozens of players standing in front of these girls while /afk... and you're going to walk by and think "ewwww!"

or in Schilds case, just go /afk yourself =P

Who?

My apologies, silly typo corrected.

Rumor has it that the second non friends and family round of invites to general beta just went out today.

It's against NDA to say that you're in the beta. But a separate forum would be neat for those that did get in.

Don't think that's possible unless every single mod got in.   :-P

Damn... you guys don't have a relationship with funcom then. Oh well.

I care about this game more than Funcom does. I doubt they'd want me around.

I have a relationship with Funcom.  Do you want me to call them up and ask if you can be in  beta?  Ok.  I did.  They said no.

That's OK, I don't need one. I'm the guy asking about a forum, remember?

Funcom will always have a place in my heart as the company that made the Longest Journey and in which I was briefly a volunteer customer service rep before I realized Anarchy Online bored me to tears.  However, I'd be surprised if they can drum up a seriously entertaining MMORPG using the Conan license.  I'd be surprised if anyone could drum up a seriously entertaining MMORPG using the Conan license.  What are the players supposed to do?  Wear their hair long and complain about wizards?

Also funny hats and pretend sex. :awesome_for_real:

Hello  :angryfist:

It's Funcom's fault. Not Conan's. Eat shit.


[EDIT] Umm, excuse me. That was Conan Himself talking.

Seriously though. I've explained the merits of Conan quite thoroughly in this thread. Why do you think it's 11 pages long? "Eat shit" is just Conan's way of saying "do some research".

Here's one bit of info to start with: He didn't have that many wizards to complain about.

I deserved that.  I'm sure that Conan, like any good body of literature, does have a rich world to build on.  I just suspect the whole thing is going to go as smoothly as any other licensed game: Despite the lore, there's no way the developers can make a game that can fully satisfy the fans.

I think a case in point is LOTRO. Great ideas on paper, lukewarm execution. I suppose MMO production nowadays is a crapshoot anyways unless you happen to work for Blizzard.

That's good!  Because I was lying. (http://forums.fitnessreference.com/images/smilies/30.gif)

Fantastic Dev Diary #4 Video (http://www.gamespot.com/video/927504/6183430/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures-official-movie-6)

"We hope the players will be horrified... overwhelmed... and eventually destroyed, I guess."

The underlying philosophy behind Anarchy Online revealed.

Ok, I'll hand it to ya there geldon, that was good :)

Nothing against foreigners, but that was painful to listen to.

This seems like crap. Someone get me an account.

I'm glad you said all that.  Now I don't have to.

I usually try to stay on everyone's good side by not playing favorites, but I can't do it anymore. Signe is my favorite f13 sibling. There, I said it.

(http://www.invision.smileyville.net/smilies/girl%20(14).gif)

Crush their enemies, drive them before themselves, and hear the lamentations of their womenfolk?

But before they get to that point they need to spend twenty levels grinding and foraging berries.

So did anyone else get the Age of Conan newsletter today? I can't believe the one column had a caption saying screenshots, that displayed this image (http://community.ageofconan.com/conan/frontend/files/NEWSLETTER/common/pr/sbScreens.jpg).

/gasp
 :ye_gods:   :uhrr:

Strangely enough it's one of the NSFW pictures I had posted here a couple of pages back, cropped into a nice little banner ad size. I wonder if the same marketing campaign as Anarchy Online will surface.. "Come play with us" indeed.

Yeah, that was a weird-ass scene.  :uhrr:

That's the one image they've been using to show how "mature" AoC is. To me, this is the difference between "tee-hee puritan Americans see boobies" and "actual mature-culture European game". The rest is  :nda: at this point, but they need to trot out another few images either of "mature" (whether it's that or blood or beheadings, whatever) to really prove their point.

I clicked on that image and was disappointed to find pictures of houses and forests behind it. It was false advertising at its finest!

Are the ladies still gonna be able to alter the size of their asses?   :grin:

If female characters don't have a /lament emote I'm uninstalling it day 1.

Ditto if barabarian characters can emote at all. They should only get three options - stoic, angry and drunk.

Fixed.

Ass slider is my buy/not buy condition for this game.

You might want to check whatever email account you gave them to see if you have access to some weird sounding three hour event.  It's tomorrow and so you'd have to register/download/install pretty fast...

GMT times pin it exactly when I'm at work.

Shame.

Ug, I cant even get weirdo thingy invites.

Same here.  I guess it would be 2:00PM Eastern...

That's me as well.

Beta gods hate me.

I clicked on that link because you didn't put a NSFW tag on it.

Bad dog.

Why is that image not safe for work?  She's wearing some sort of strappy bikini thingy, no?  Do you work in a church?

I find it unpossibly disbelievable that Slayerik and SnakeCharmer can't get into weirdo thingys!

I was in class, actually, not work.  With people sitting behind me who probably have an odd take on what I'm reading during class. ;p  The point of 'NSFW' isn't "your particular IT department will object", it's more a general guide to the content involved useful in a variety of situations.  Hell, call it "semi-NSFW" then.  But some sort of warning would be useful.

Serves you right for surfing the forums during class, imo.

My original post clearly stated that it was a cropped, ad banner sized NSFW picture that I'd linked earlier in this thread. If you blamed anyone, blame this on Unsub for quoting me, and not quoting all of the text, as well as making you think it was of trees and not bush.

Oh, that's certainly fair, I blame UnSub. :)  Either way, no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Now if only I actually had a beta invite to the game in question...

I accept the blame that you had to see some foul pseudo-titillation instead of some hot hot hot house and forest action. That'll teach you for going to school in Utah.

I registered for the sake of asking those of you who might know the answer one question: is this legit? (For those of you who don't want to be spoiled, it's a post on the 4chan text boards purporting to be a report on the AoC beta.)


Please do not link to NDA breaking items here. Thanks.

Thanks Signe, I knew I'd have your support! Ummmm, I think.

Or are we weirdo thingys? Maybe I'm reading too much into this statement ! :)

The guy is breaking NDA in the worst way. If I were in the beta, I wouldn't compound his error by granting it legitimacy.

I'm pretty sure that if I click a 4chan link at work I'll be escorted from the building by 3 today.  Which sucks because I really want to click that link.

Here it is. All text.


Let's not repost NDA breaking items here, ok?

Ugh, I clicked it.

Nothing naughty, but I bet I'm on a list now.

I definitely would not grant it legitimacy by even quoting it like Nija did.

First, I think he's a NDA breaking douche. Based on his experience, however, there seem to be a lot of critical things left out -- what computer he's running it on, what type of beta is he in, when was this written and at what stage of the beta? Who knows. It's 4chan.

Anything on 4chan is circumspect for validity.

Sounds like a beta to me, with a hefty helping of biased opinions.

...The game has tits!

...and ASS!

And apparently dingleberries.

That have teeth?

I missed something!  (http://www.mommiescamelot.com/forum/images/smilies/gaah.gif)

The last five posts define the Internet.  Conan, however, remains the ever-ambiguous Funcom MMORPG mk. 2

All you have to do is invoke the name of 4chan and the peoples get stupids.  :uhrr:

A new, and in my opinion pretty awesome AoC trailer is available on Gametrailers:
Exclusive Bar Story Trailer HD (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28580.html)

Btw, since this seems to have become the thread for all things AoC-related, perhaps removing the word "Beta" from the title thread would be apropriate? *shrug*

Those are some beautiful landscapes, by the standard of any game. I just hope the gameplay can match the art direction.

This game is still worthy of our attention.  That's all I'm saying  :nda:

This game is still worthy of our attention.  That's all I'm saying  :nda:
[/quote]

Of course its stil worthy. It has Tits and ass  :woot:

Tits and ass, Tits and ass, Tits and ass, Tits and ass!

One of the few roles in which Jim Belushi was even watchable  :-)

the song goes... *clears throat* *does operatic scale*

ass...titties, ass and titties, ass ass titties titties, ass 'n' titties.

I love how they were trying to hype the game by saying how many beta testers they have. R00fles! Richard Garriott has said that they had too many beta testers play an unpolished game and that it hurt initial sales. Trying to use betas as marketing instead of testing usually turns out bad.

Every game uses beta as marketing. Including WoW.

Richard Garriott's too many testers is a load of bollocks. he can blame his beta schedule, but not the ability to his game to impress enough people that the beta could be considered a success.

It's only good marketing if there's no NDA.

And there's only no NDA if the game is actually good.

The NDA is more there to prevent people from popping out videos that show a crap loads of bugs and turn off the uninformed.
Trust me, Vanguard this game is not. Can't wait for open beta (if there is one)

He was right on the money. They let too many players in too early. The players saw that the game sucked, told their friends, and never came back. I was one of them.

Did it get better since? Presumably, but it would take a lot more than an EQ2 style turnaround to get me to even look at it again. I'm just not interested.

Richard Garriot made an FPS where ducking behind a wall means the bullets swerve around the wall to hit you.

He loses the right to speak on any topic other than castle ownership.

If your entire community is in early beta then you have more problems than trying to win marketing points. (http://antipwn.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/too-much-beta-spoiled-the-game/)

We've known this forever. It was "proven" in AO. Why is this news?

I stand by my original statements that Tabula Rasa's original incarnation was vastly superior and far more interesting.

But then reality came and slapped it around like the little bitch it was.

C'mon now. Do you really want to play a flying rainbow pooping my-little-unicorn in Garriot's hilariously off-target vision of a game designed by committee to appeal to both americans and asians, or was that hyperbole intended to emphasize how bland the generi-fi setting in the released TR turned out?

Yes, I want to play a flying rainbow pooping my-little-unicorn game.

Also, I want a harp.

All us girls have always wanted the game where you had a unicorn that cvould shoot stuff out of it's horn.  That version of the game was much more pink and sparkly.  They were fools to change it.  Me, Schildy, Voodoo, Xanthippe, Lantyssa and the rest of us girls would have SO played that game.  For weeks, even!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bBGKLrit5k

I would have played that just so I could name a unicorn Peter North.

I'll be your Ron Jeremy sidekick? Even after the game is long gone, I'll still hold onto the notion that I'm someone important.  :awesome_for_real:

As Froofy as it was, I preferred TR's initial rainbow brite art/game design to the shit they ended up putting out as well. Generic space marine sci-fi with boring game mechanics = boring game. At least the Froofy style would have differentiated it in the US market.

I haven't played any good projectile-spewing unicorn games, but I ran across this game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNm6M-82yxI&) when I was meddling with GameTap yesterday and thought it was some kind of kitschy Japanime awesome.

Ah yes. Twinkle Star Sprites (or something like that). NeoGeo game I believe. I had it on MAME years ago. Good fun.

Not sure if anyone has read the interview posted over at Massively yet.  http://www.massively.com/2007/12/14/age-of-conan-product-developer-interview-with-gameplay-video/

Anyway, according to developer Jørgen Tharaldsen:
 

No nipples? 

 :ye_gods:

Well, that's just not fair!  I might not play to protest the nipplelessness!

If only playing through a Norway proxy wouldn't fuck the latency to hell and back...

The time it'll take to get around that restriction is so small it cannot be measured by modern instruments  :wink:

It's not too hard to guess why: They want to the game to be able to sell in retail chains that don't stock nippily games. 

The good news is I'm nearly positive there will be some kind of hack you can perform to restore their artificial natural beauty.

If their models looked like the bit they did for the Dec issue of Playboy, I could see getting worked up about the lack of digital boobies.

As it stands, I'm more concerned that the game will be lagtastic crap than I am about a few nipple shots.  I do find it asinine that an M game, which means you need to be 18 to buy it as far as I know, is going to be censored.  :ye_gods:

Well, that works both ways. In the U.S., they'll censor out the toplessness. In Germany, for example, they'll likely have to censor out the chopped-off-head blood and guts. I'm sure as much as we look forward to the former here, there are folks in Germany who'll be pissed about the latter.

but Germany's system just makes more sense!  Nipples never hurt anyone!  FREE THE NIPPLES!!!

True.

Maybe the US version could have nipples if you were able to chop them off.

Compromise - it's the best of both worlds.

It infuriates me that the US is so backwards that seeing a head being chopped off in glorious technocolor is for some reason more acceptable than seeing a fucking nipple.  :mob:

Yikes!  Now I know why unsub is named unsub.   :ye_gods:

Come to Holland you'll get to see a female char smoking weed with one arm cut off and her perky tits bouncing up and down  :)

I love Holland.  And not just for the weed smoking and perky tits.

Well, maybe for the weed smoking....

I was only trying to cater to the desires of the US market. Does that make me a bad person?

Video-report from Funcom Offices (http://trailer.onlinewelten.com/videos,id2905,age_conan_entwicklerbesuch.html)

A behind-the scenes video that takes you through parts of the Funcom offices, showing off things like motion-capture, weather/environmental features, mounted combat and the first look ever of crafting in AoC. :P