Age of Conan: New site update. + Release date is set.

[Mrbloodworth]

game launches on the 20th of May 2008 <-- Corrected.

Rather cool, also contains new info, and vids.



EDIT: Added release info.
EDIT: Corrected info because i have failed you all.

[Signe]

I'm sorry.  What am I looking for that's really cool?  The site or is there something specific I should look for?

PS  The site really does look cool, by the way, although I hate having to stop to do the birth date thingy.

[IainC]

Not found....

[Signe]

They have probably banned anyone who has anything to do with WAR.

YOU ARE NOT FOOLING ANYONE, CONAN!

(oops)

[Mrbloodworth]

Not found....

Yeah, seems like they are having some sort of issues from time to time, but its there.

[dbltnk]

I hate flash websites but the embedded movies and the animated characters in the frame look very nice.

[Soukyan]

So if the launch of the new web site is experiencing problems with load, what can we expect of the game launch? Also, notice that AoC contains the letters AO. It's a sign! 

[HaemishM]

Also, notice that AoC contains the letters AO. It's a sign! 

IT'S A TRAP!

The siege video with mounted combat looks pretty hot.

[Mrbloodworth]

So if the launch of the new web site is experiencing problems with load, what can we expect of the game launch? Also, notice that AoC contains the letters AO. It's a sign! 

It was just announced like...every where and is most likely getting slammed. *shrug*

[Soukyan]

So if the launch of the new web site is experiencing problems with load, what can we expect of the game launch? Also, notice that AoC contains the letters AO. It's a sign! 

It was just announced like...every where and is most likely getting slammed. *shrug*

You mean like... launch day? 

[edit]
On a funnier note, while I dislike Flash web sites, I thought I'd give it a look. Entered my day of birth, entered my month of birth (February, misspelled as Febuary, made a mental note), proceeded to enter 2008 for birth year because for some reason I was thinking, what's the day today? Hit Enter and...

Code:

Sorry, but you are not permitted to view these materials at this time.

Aha... ahahahahaha...

Okay, so I clear the cookies, the cache, everything from Firefox. Still no dice getting back in. Persistent bugger. Clear it all again. Restart Firefox. No dice. Okay fine, I'll go try it with IE7. Guess what? Still no getting in. DID THEY WRITE THIS TO THE REGISTRY? Good lord. I think they might have logged the IP address. I can't help but laugh. Hopefully a restart will fix this, but really, is it necessary to include 2008 for those one month olds who might get to your questionable content? I'm off to use my Mac to check out the site. God willing I don't fuck up the date again.
[/edit]

[sidereal]

It's probably stored in your flash plugin cache via an LSO.
Go here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
Go to the Website Privacy Settings and Website Storage Settings tabs, find the AoC site, and pick 'Delete Website'.   Or just delete all if you're sure you don't need to keep anything flash has saved on your box (you almost never do.  They're basically cross-browser cookies)

[Mrbloodworth]

Release date is set to the 25th of March 2008.

Funcom and Eidos announces new release date for Age of Conan

Funcom and Eidos today announce a new release date for the highly anticipated Massively Multiplayer Online Game `Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures`.

After careful consideration, and analysis of recent feedback from Beta testing of ‘Age of Conan’, Funcom and Eidos have concluded that more development time is required to reduce the entry barrier to ‘Age of Conan’ and make the game even more accessible during the first hours of playtime.
 
The new release date is set to the 25th of March 2008.
 
The Company Management regrets the delay in the launch date, but believes the extended development time will increase the financial upside of the game and is therefore the correct decision.
 
For further details, please contact the Funcom management.

Linky

[tazelbain]

Good for them. Jumping out a few months ahead WAR will give them some time to establish a solid place in the market baring AO-quality launch.

[Xuri]

The above (about delay/release date) was announced in August last year, so not really news?

Anyway, check out the full-screenable version of the CES trailer (one of the three video trailers being shown on the new page), it's about their Dreamworld MMO engine and what it's capable of:
Linky to 720p-version (144MB)

(Hmm weirdness, the forum changes my link from ftp:// to http://ftp//)

[Soukyan]

It's probably stored in your flash plugin cache via an LSO.
Go here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
Go to the Website Privacy Settings and Website Storage Settings tabs, find the AoC site, and pick 'Delete Website'.   Or just delete all if you're sure you don't need to keep anything flash has saved on your box (you almost never do.  They're basically cross-browser cookies)

Thank you. That worked, but yet another reason I despise Flash. Fun technology, but I do not want to be tied to a vendor so tightly for my web browsing experience. Adobe is the devil.

Okay, back to exploring the pretty new site...

[HaemishM]

Release date is March 25th? Have they even done significant beta testing yet?

[Signe]

I think the timing is perfect.  If all goes well, I should be tiring of AoC just about the time WAR comes along.  I'm including a month or so of MMO break time in that.

[Viin]

If you click the British flag instead of the American one on the first page, it doesn't ask for your birthday.

[Merusk]

If you click the British flag instead of the American one on the first page, it doesn't ask for your birthday.

Thank you, Mr. Sneakypants.

[tmp]

Interestingly enough while their siege preview presented at CES appeared all smooth despite dozens of characters onscreen, the actual game visible in the interview parts chugged rather horriblly with way less on display ( http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29634.html )  Little birds also complain here and there that large parts of game content past first 20 levels are not yet in place, including the much touted PvP aspects. Can't say that 25th March launch date fills me with confidence the game will be anywhere near complete at launch, nor hopeful about the final performance on medium level hardware.

Remains to be seen, of course.

[dbltnk]

Some fansites have visited the FC HQ. There are lots of info snippets for those who can either read french or german. No, I'm not gonna translate it all. =D

French: http://hyboriancodex.hybes.org/forum/index.php?page=155

German: http://aoc.gamona.de/

[Special J]

Those character models look pretty sweet.  I hope there's a decent game to go with it.

[Falwell]

TTH just posted this...

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/21046

Seems like some pretty damn big changes being just eight weeks from launch. You can sense the cluster fuck gathering it's power.

[dbltnk]

Translation of the Gamona article:

Servers:
Still planning to have:
- RP PvP
- PvP
- PvE
on release.
On RP PvP Servers you will have slightly adjusted rules on how to behave and player/guild names.

PvP:
-Everyone not in your Group is your enemy. (Perhaps Guild Members will always count as friends – not decided yet.
-All Itemstats have 2 different versions – 1 for PvE and 1 for PvP. The PvP Stats are used for special PvP Equipment. There will be a ranking for pvp experience – you gain experience by killing others and loose exp by dying.
-Every few months, the currently highest ranked ppl will receive a small price (ingame item)
-There will be other CTF Arenas (you’ve seen the one from stygia). The Arena is chosen randomly, not sure if the other Arenas make it into the release version
-Modes : CTF & Team Annihilation still in

Crafting:
- Every Char can learn 1(!) crafting profession
- Right now you’ve got to be lvl 40 to start crafting, perhaps will be changed to 20 – not yet decided
- Professions: Armorsmith, Weaponsmith , Alchemy, Jewelcrafter, Architect
- Crafting lvls are gained by doing quests, it won’t help to build the same thing 1000 times
- Recipes don’t vanish after you used them
- You’ll probably reach max crafting lvl within a few hours
- Almost all Items are available in 2 versions, one version with usual resources and one version with rare resources. Crafted Items are the only items with sockets.
- Sockets come in different sizes and there’s a max of 4 sockets per item
- You can’t remove jewels if you’ve attached them to an Item before
- Most (perhaps all) crafted Items won’t have stats like int or str. The crafted Items define themselves through their basic stats
- Without jewels the crafted items will be weaker than dropped items, if you fight against enemies with special resistances crafted items with sockets probably will be more effective than dropped items
- High lvl crafting items can only be assembled if you’re a member of a guild which owns a guild city and the needed crafting building
- Crafting doesn’t need an anvil or sth like this next to you, you can craft everywhere.
- Crafting itself is completely automatic and there’s no risk of loosing the resources

Guildcities
- there’re 3 instanced zoned (can be copied without any restrictions – no max number of guild cities on one server) so every guild can build a guildcity. Those zones are: Lachleish Plains (Cimmeria), Poitain (Aquilonia) and Purple Lotus Swamps (Stygia)
- A guild needs at least 30 players to start building a city. Some of those players have to be 60+
- You can chose the desired country in the beginning, the instance and the slot are automatically chose by system though
- All buildings need a combination of metal, wood, stone and gold
- In the city you’ll find dozens of foundation stones of different size. A guild member with enough authorization and the profession architect can use those stones and chose the building he wants to be built. After you’ve paid for the building, construction starts automatically.
- The first buliding you have to build always is the keep
- Almost all buildings have different tiers (1-3 or 1-2)
- Upgrading your buildings will raise the lvl of your city
- Walls are also buildings. You can construct an inner and an outer wall (seems to be determined where you build them – not sure though,  my opinion). Towers and stairs can be built “relatively free”. If you build walls, there’s no way to get past them (so no climbing or walking around them).
- Every player will be able to teleport to the guildkeep. Not yet decided if this ability will have a CD

Harvesting
- there’re 4 basic resources
- every resource is available in (6-8) different tiers (bronze, iron …)
- if you’re harvesting resources, there’s always the chance of finding rare resources of that specific resource you’re harvesting
- resources will be shown on (mini) map
- most resources will be found in the three guild city zones (only few resource spots in the rest of the world)
- at the moment it’s not planned that you’ve got to specialize on one of the resources (everybody can harvest everything)
- next to the basic resources, there are special resources you only receive from specific enemies

Border Kingdoms
- still 9 Keeps per server, if there are some server with a smaller amount of players the number of keeps will be adjusted (for those servers)
- if you want to build a keep (seize a slot/take possession of a slot) you’ve got to have a player city @ lvl 3
- a guild can only have one keep, you’re still able to attack other keeps if you own one though
- the longer you own a keep, the bigger the received bonus for guild members will become
- a keep also can be upgraded but not as detailed as the player cities, the keeps are something like an outpost and not a second player city
- every guild can choose the time when their keep is attackable, there is a minimum amount of time you’ve got to make you keep attackable. The possible attack times depend on the region of your server (Europe vs USA for example)
- the longer the attack windows are, the easier it’ll be to defend your keep
- the max duration of a siege is 90mins at the moment, if the attackers don’t manage to win, the defenders win
- to attack a keep, you’ve got to “build” a tent in front of the keep (while the attack window is open), guild members of the defending guild receive an ingame msg if the attackers start to build this tent
- there are two ways to capture a keep:
- 1. “partial victory” – the keep is destroyed within 90 minutes, the defenders loose all the bonuses they received before for “holding the keep”, but the defenders don’t loose their battle keep
- 2. “total victory” – all buildings are destroyed within 90 minutes – the winners can take the slot and build their own keep (if they don’t already own another keep)
- siege weapons are constructed in the playfield during the attack, they’ll cost a combination of wood,stone,gold and iron (like buildings), there’ll be (probably) 8 spots for siege weapons
- there are siege weapons spots for the attackers and the defenders
- walls can be destroyed very fast (in a few minutes), so if you’re hiding in your keep, you’ll probably loose the fight
- next to the battle keeps, there’ll be other targets to fight for in the Border Kingdoms (for example towers). The rules for towers are the same as for battle keeps (attack window etc.). Those towers should encourage smaller guilds to participate in the combats of the Border Kingdoms. At the moment there is no limit on how many towers can be held by one guild
- it’s not decided yet if the towers will be upgradeable, if they’ll be, the options will be very small

Group Play
- groups get a small amount of bonus xp for killing enemies
- at the moment there are three different loot options (round robin, master looter and ffa)
- quest items will drop for all group members
- almost all caves and smaller dungeons (the maze, acheronian ruins etc.) will support a “hero mode” to provide a challenging group play experience, because they’re usually made for smaller grps or solo play (don’t muddle this up with real dungeons)

Mounts
- there’ll be a great variety of horses (5-10 different horse and those also in different colours)
- the mounts differ by HP, stamina, speed and mobility
- all mounts are able to attack and do different amount of damage
- many spells can be cast while mounted
- it’ll be possible to be thrown off the mount while engaged in combat
- due to balancing issues the war rhino and war mammoth are almost equal (rhino bit more mobility, mammoth more HP)
- mammoth and rhino still are still planed to be exclusive pre order mounts
- you’ve got to be lvl 40 to buy/use a mount
- mounts are items in the inventory (you can have more than one)
- mount equip will not make it into the release version but the idea still is there (-> addon/patch)
- not yet decided what happens to your mount if you dismount
- mammoths are big … veeery big

Stealth
- every class is able to use stealth
- there are different elements which determine if a stealthed player will be discovered or not : 1. stealth skill (your char) 2. perception skill (other char/npc  can also be trained by every char) 3. noise: there’s a difference between a soldier in heavy armour on grit compared to a rogue in cloth armour on grass (just examples) 4. Viewcone: if you’re in front of a player you’re more likely to be discovered than if you’re on the side of/behind a player 5. “light lever”: night vs. day and also shadows of obstacles vs. open field (very complex)  there’ll be a for the current “light level” added to the interface

Gameplay
- even if your latency is ~500 you’ll still be able to play AoC without any problems. Amongst other things FC uses an invisible “action queue” to ensure this. FC is aware of the concerns of dial up/isdn users and therefore built the engine in a way that let those players also enjoy the game.

Zoning/Travel/World Map
- while zoning you’ll see the your travel path on the world map, the travel path is also your loading bar
- there will be specific loading screens for all regions you’re travelling to (perhaps in the beginning some regions will have the same screen)

Audio
- the background music available for AoC has a duration of ~3hours. In combat the SIM Player will show his abilities (music mixed for combat)
- all music tracks are composed in 5.1 surround sound
- many tacks feature choirs and opera singers

Online Ranking and Database
- there’ll be a online database for pvp and basic server stats, comparable to WoW’s Armory, not at release though

Classes
- SoS got merged with the Stormcaller  new class Tempest of Set, ToS is a priest only available to stygians, his dmg mostly is electrical aoe dmg
- The more dmg the ToS does, the better his heal abilities become  counterpart of PoM (the better the healing, the better the dmg)
- Lich has been removed because he felt like HoX (only difference was the undead scheme) there were also problems with the lore, especially in tortage (Acheronian ruins !?  my opinion)
- The most interesting skills of the lich have been added to the Necromancer class  necro is able to transform into the lich form (for example) via feats
- Now there are 3 classes of every archetype (3 sodliers, 3 rogues, 3priest, 3 mages)
- Every race has its own specific priest (ToS  stygia, Bear Shaman  Cimmeria and PoM  Aquilonia)

Raids
- raidsize: 4 groups with 6 members each (24 players)
- loot usually will be items  no tokens
- raidgrps also can have a master looter
- raids will be a big part of PvE engame
- in the release version there’ll be ~20 (!) raidencounter
- those encounters are divided into 8 raid dungeons with different size
- most of the dungeons should be completed in 1-3 hours (if you play good enough )
- there are three “tiers” of dungeons, if you’re not 75+ you shouldn’t even think about getting near the easiest dungeon
- items from the lower tier dungeons will make it easier to survive in the higher tier dungeons (it does not matter in which dungeon of the tier you start)
- raidinstances will have a CD of 7 days (cd is for the players not for the whole guild

Localisation
- PEGI and ESRB already rated the game, USK not yet finished (only for interesting for us poor german players )
- German (therefore also other Europeans  my opinion) will be able to receive a mammoth/rhino via pre order, the sale partners are being searched and will be announced soon (following days/weeks)
- There’re also fatalities in the german version, some very brutal animations may be eased (don’t start to laugh, I’m going to buy the uk version :P)
- There’ll also be a Spanish localisation, Cm already hired

Spellweaving
- still ingame (omg omg omfg YES ) but it got changed a little bit. Now it works like the melee combo system  with the correct line of spells you’ll start a spellweave, those will not happen as often as the melee combos and therefore will be a lot stronger
- the possibility to kill yourself and even your team through spellweaving is still planned, there’ll be also other negative consequences
- hell is not in game anymore, too frustrating if a caster went to hell while his grp was still in the dungeon  they had to wait for the caster to come back

Tortage
- even if it’s possible to reach lvl 25 due to the amount of quests and size of tortage it’ll grow because many beta testers said that they were missing the feeling of travelling, there’ll be some other “trips” for example a trip with a smuggle gang
- you can exactly reach lvl 20 on tortage, if your 20 and still do quests etc. the xp will be lost
- after release there’ll be more starting areas but right now it’s more important to have one very good starting area

Last but not least
- Release date is fix  no more delays, the devs are working very very hard to present a preferably perfect product at release.

[sidereal]

Wow, that's a soulkilling feature list.  It screams 'WoW, except with half the features and 10 times as many griefers'.  Oh, but with beheadings. 
If you graphed my interest in AoC it would look remarkably like a chart of the Dow over the last 3 months.

[dbltnk]

Crap. =D WoW never had any kind of housing/sieges. To me it sounds more like a DAoC clone with open pvp servers.

[Rasix]

Funcom 

Anyone not expecting a disaster is a sucker.

[tmp]

Wow, that's a soulkilling feature list.  It screams 'WoW, except with half the features and 10 times as many griefers'.  Oh, but with beheadings. 

Also, tits. Except if your IP betrays you to be citizen of the US, then you won't get the nipples. (censor features are apparently going to be controlled by the server depending where you connect from, rather than be part of the game client version)

[Aez]

I haven't followed this one closely.  Why is everyone expecting a trainwreck?

- Simply Funcom?
- Released 6 months too soon?
- NDA information?

[Venkman]

For me it's none of those. It's that AoC is coming in a post-WoW world. It's just not different enough in what's launching.

[Lantyssa]

Also, tits. Except if your IP betrays you to be citizen of the US, then you won't get the nipples. (censor features are apparently going to be controlled by the server depending where you connect from, rather than be part of the game client version)

Ugh.  I have boobs.  I think I'll be alright if I see some nipples.  I'll only be scarred for life if I have to see virtual manparts.

Why censor a mature rated game?

[Venkman]

"Mature" in the U.S. is blood and guts. I believe toplessness according to ESRB is AO. And AO drops most mass retailers from distribution.

[Merusk]

Yep.it's like the movies. Blow people to bits, impale them, melt faces, show guts hanging out, curse, use drugs and you can get a PG-13 if you do it right.  One nipple and it's zomg R-land. Little more than that it's NC-17.   I love us. 

[tmp]

"Mature" in the U.S. is blood and guts. I believe toplessness according to ESRB is AO. And AO drops most mass retailers from distribution.

Yup that's what the Funcom people said if i read it right. A non-barbie breast warrants AO rating and that's something they want to avoid because few if any mass retailers would carry the game with such rating.

[Xuri]

Apparently, drunken brawling is now on the "patch in after release"-list along with "usable chairs/benches". Yay. My two favorite features won't be in at launch.