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

[Yegolev]

So... summary?

Server-side nipples
FunCom
Short Beta
Drinking Cape

I hope the CE also includes a Crying Pillow.

Nevermind that nipples don't get an AO (God of War).

[Draegan]

How long should a public closed/open beta be to be satisfactory?

[shiznitz]

Depends on how fucked up the code is going in. Note I said code, not game design. Beta is too late to fix game design.

[Signe]

AOC thread up on the FOH boards.

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/29675-aoc-masses-have-begun-grumble-95.html#post968943

That's the specific post.

Yikes!  I hate going there but thanks!   

[Venkman]

If they launch in May as planned, this would not be a short beta by most measures. And I say most measures because not everyone can afford Blizzard-length betas

[Nija]

2.5gig patch last week.

800 meg patch on one file plus a 5.99 gig patch on another file.

Christ.

[Draegan]

There was mention that in BETA there was only one art asset for swords and one for maces etc.  So it could be a huge art update.

[SnakeCharmer]

2.5gig patch last week.

800 meg patch on one file plus a 5.99 gig patch on another file.

Christ.

Yipe. 

[tmp]

2.5gig patch last week.

800 meg patch on one file plus a 5.99 gig patch on another file.

Christ.

They put huge textures on stuff nowadays. Usually with little consideration for the hard drive and gfx card that have to shuffle that shit back and forth, then.

[HaemishM]

That FOH thread said the client is 21 GIGS. That's just as fucking obscene as it was for Failguard.

[Venkman]

Ya know, for all the NDA bending, you'd think there'd be some legitimate complaints about the game. Fucking disk space again? That may have qualified as an omgepicfail for VG, but even then, it was just something else to pile on a long list of mockable sucktitude. If someone's worried about 21gbs of space they either a) have ADD so never ever uninstall anything for fear of a sudden resurgent interest; or, b) aren't playing on a computer geared for AoC anyway.

I've changed my mind on AoC over the last few weeks.

Want to complain about hard drive space? Someone tell me why a damned shooter needs 9gb of space for a bunch of individual maps.

[sam, an eggplant]

Ya know, for all the NDA bending, you'd think there'd be some legitimate complaints about the game.

Talking about disk space bends the NDA, yes. Saying "this game is crap" is akin to putting on leather overcoats and snappy military styled caps and breaking down the front door, sodomizing its sister, killing its dog, stealing its bible, waterboarding its mom, drawing and quartering with four wild stallions (would be into I V D A, I guess), burying the four pieces at four separate crossroads, then salting the earth so nothing grows for the next thousand years.

Difference of degree, really.

[Venkman]

Sorry man, wasn't my point. Let me clarify: with all of the NDA breaking of late, you'd think people would talk about stuff that matters. And there's no NDA "bending" about the drive space. If you know how much it takes up, and post about it, you might as well just throw in screenshots for good measure.

"Crap" is just an opinion. People have made that call just on the posted feature list

[stray]

Want to complain about hard drive space? Someone tell me why a damned shooter needs 9gb of space for a bunch of individual maps.

It is an age of high res monitors and more realistically detailed graphics, to put it simply.

[tmp]

Want to complain about hard drive space? Someone tell me why a damned shooter needs 9gb of space for a bunch of individual maps.

I'm not worried about the disk space. Now, when i see a video made during community meet and they show off all the new armour sets, and the game literally freezes for 10+ seconds while the guy showing the stuff off is simply moving around completely still NPCs in middle of Bummfuck Plains, Nowhere... well, that would make one question the game performance in real gameplay environment. These freezes are indirectly tied to size of files on the hard drive, btw.

[Soukyan]

Want to complain about hard drive space? Someone tell me why a damned shooter needs 9gb of space for a bunch of individual maps.

I'm not worried about the disk space. Now, when i see a video made during community meet and they show off all the new armour sets, and the game literally freezes for 10+ seconds while the guy showing the stuff off is simply moving around completely still NPCs in middle of Bummfuck Plains, Nowhere... well, that would make one question the game performance in real gameplay environment. These freezes are indirectly tied to size of files on the hard drive, btw.

This is the problem with added degrees of customization. There's a reason Second Life runs for shit (aside from the base engine being an abomination). Loading custom art assets every two steps is a performance killer. So what's the solution? Do MMOGs start to handle assets like multiplayer FPS with player mods. Enter a zone and wait for X minutes while all the new art assets are piped down to your PC? Or do they give you a 21 GB installation directory and monstrous patches to keep you up-to-date? Then what do they do about swapping those files from disk. They're getting bigger, so do they just bump the minimum memory requirements for users to 2GB or 4GB of RAM? Or do they cache the files in an optimal manner based on zone that you enter? Or... I don't know all of the options available, but the more customization you get in these games, the more this becomes an issue, especially when you get into large scale PvP with hundreds of player models on a screen at any given time.

[HaemishM]

21 GB isn't about running out of disk space, it's about how badly will my machine chunk the shit out of the hard drive trying to swap those gigantic texture files out, and how long is the fucking client download/patch going to take? It reeks of lack of optimization.

Or it could just be a humongous game. I just thought it, like Failguard, was excessive.

[Mrbloodworth]

21 GB isn't about running out of disk space, it's about how badly will my machine chunk the shit out of the hard drive trying to swap those gigantic texture files out, and how long is the fucking client download/patch going to take? It reeks of lack of optimization.

Or it could just be a humongous game. I just thought it, like Failguard, was excessive.

Only a % will ever be loaded at once. I think whats really going on is the shock of higher fidelity assets in MMO VS. What was considered standard before. Computers get more powerful, asset management gets better and learns new tricks, its inevitable that the disk space, and memory space footprint would increase.

Your right, it could be as badly implemented as vanguard, or, its not and its just part of the natural evolution.

I don't think it will be a problem.

[tmp]

Computers get more powerful, asset management gets better and learns new tricks, its inevitable that the disk space, and memory space footprint would increase.

Your right, it could be as badly implemented as vanguard, or, its not and its just part of the natural evolution.

I don't think it will be a problem.

The problem is with AoC they not only don't appear to learn new tricks, but go backwards. Even SWG managed to get basic multi-threading work and would load the textures without completely freezing your client until done, IIRC.

[stray]

Want to complain about hard drive space? Someone tell me why a damned shooter needs 9gb of space for a bunch of individual maps.

I'm not worried about the disk space. Now, when i see a video made during community meet and they show off all the new armour sets, and the game literally freezes for 10+ seconds while the guy showing the stuff off is simply moving around completely still NPCs in middle of Bummfuck Plains, Nowhere... well, that would make one question the game performance in real gameplay environment. These freezes are indirectly tied to size of files on the hard drive, btw.

This is the problem with added degrees of customization. There's a reason Second Life runs for shit (aside from the base engine being an abomination). Loading custom art assets every two steps is a performance killer. So what's the solution? Do MMOGs start to handle assets like multiplayer FPS with player mods. Enter a zone and wait for X minutes while all the new art assets are piped down to your PC? Or do they give you a 21 GB installation directory and monstrous patches to keep you up-to-date? Then what do they do about swapping those files from disk. They're getting bigger, so do they just bump the minimum memory requirements for users to 2GB or 4GB of RAM? Or do they cache the files in an optimal manner based on zone that you enter? Or... I don't know all of the options available, but the more customization you get in these games, the more this becomes an issue, especially when you get into large scale PvP with hundreds of player models on a screen at any given time.

I'm not sure if this answers your question(s), but you don't necessarily need a glob of memory if assets are being streamed.

That being said, I doubt that any mmo's are doing anything so sophisticated as of yet.

[Mrbloodworth]

Computers get more powerful, asset management gets better and learns new tricks, its inevitable that the disk space, and memory space footprint would increase.

Your right, it could be as badly implemented as vanguard, or, its not and its just part of the natural evolution.

I don't think it will be a problem.

The problem is with AoC they not only don't appear to learn new tricks, but go backwards. Even SWG managed to get basic multi-threading work and would load the textures without completely freezing your client until done, IIRC.

First sentence = What? How would you know what system they are using, and how are they going backwards?
Second = Apples and oranges and years apart.

[tmp]

First sentence = What? How would you know what system they are using, and how are they going backwards?
Second = Apples and oranges and years apart.

Whatever system they're using, it's emulating really well the behaviour of single threaded "everything in the main game loop" approach. One that old games like SWG managed to do away with. So in that sense not being able to do as well as few year old system = going backwards. Since the "hold everything Jim, i have texture to load" way is older than that.

[Soukyan]

Considering that AO had issues similar to this with textures loading in the game, I am not terribly surprised, but I should hope that they would optimize a new game engine to alleviate some of the problems of old.

[UnSub]

I'd say that 21 GB worth of textures is an issue if AoC is still meant to be playable on the Xbox 360.

It is still meant to be doing that, right? I haven't seen any official announcements cancelling the console version of AoC (unless I'm confusing it with WAR, which I may be).

[Venkman]

21gb could be due to multiple sets of texture files for different video settings on a PC, whereas on an Xbox 360, you'll end up just getting whatever one is optimized for the system.

I have no idea whether that's the case, and can't say whether 21gb is even right or not.