Age of conan, Open beta: May 1st 2008.

[Typhon]

It's been in development for 5 years, at some point you have to launch just so you can fire everyone.

[Simond]

One of the funniest comments about AoC I've seen was on the FoH boards - something like "I played Vanguard so I don't mind a little bugginess and missing content at launch. This is a bit buggier and has more missing content than VG, though"

 

[HaemishM]

I can't disagree with those comments, but  .

[Aez]

[Venkman]

Aez, is that first photo real? I soooo need that in hi-res to print at 60"x80" for work.

[Aez]

Google-fu :

http://www.cargolaw.com/2007nightmare_ital.florida.html
*scroll down for the story*

It's real! All abort the failboat!

[Tannhauser]

I hope the fetapults are in.

[CharlieMopps]

Oh come on, it's not nearly as bad as Vanguard.

It is pretty sad though that they are a month from launch and still pushing out 5Gig patches on a weekly basis.

[Triforcer]

My PvP weekend review:

Downloading:  Gamespot Download Manager showed me at least four different error messages trying to download this.  Replayability: 10/10.  Took over 30 hours to download from other sources.

Installing:  Only crashed my computer twice.

Setup:  I was informed by Funcom that my Nvidia card (8600 GT or somesuch) had drivers that were "known to react extremely unstably with Age of Conan."  Prompted to change.

Character creation:  The fifteen seconds before I was informed that "This is the wrong version of the client, please redownload" seemed to be good.  I liked the fonts on the error messages, and the music I managed to hear was excellent.
EDIT: Didn't realize I had to patch manually.  Perhaps I will get in after all.

[Venkman]

Wow, things have improved a lot. Even just within the PvP segment, they've come pretty far with completeness, usability, stability and even look.

[Cadaverine]

I never even got that far.  I saw I had a 6-9 hour download, plus god knows how long for patches, and realized it wasn't worth it.  I canceled the download, and went back to WoW.

Though, from the sounds of things, I didn't miss anything.

[Venkman]

AoC does not survive casual scrutiny. You gotta REALLY wanna check it out 

But it should also be axiom at this point that if someone is enjoying WoW, they don't need to check out any other MMOs. There is no "better WoW" out there. The only time to really give anything else a whirl is when you're looking for something mostly different in some key way (and window-dressing is rarely that "key").

[Schazzwozzer]

But it should also be axiom at this point that if someone is enjoying WoW, they don't need to check out any other MMOs. There is no "better WoW" out there. The only time to really give anything else a whirl is when you're looking for something mostly different in some key way (and window-dressing is rarely that "key").

Yeah, this goes back to earlier in the thread, when people were talking about comparing AoC to WoW, which has had over three years of refinements.  If you're creating a post-WoW MMO, I think you've really got to offer an experience that can't be had with WoW, because it's such an uphill battle.  I've only played a little bit of LotRO, but it seems that that may be it's fatal flaw — not distinguishing itself enough from WoW.

[DarkSign]

Well the question becomes does the user-base of WoW find it to be a treasure of refinements, entertainment, and surprises or have they seen about all there is to see, with additional content being less than entertaining.

WoW has never really done anything ground-breaking. It's just executed quite well; and with a distinctive style. Back when EQ1 was at 400,000 concurrent users people said they're never be an EQ-killer. Think we can agree that was wrong.

There exists the possibility for a WoW-killer...it's just pretty damn hard to achieve.

[Venkman]

I could open up my middlemanagement book of leveraging core competencies to target consumers with needstates they haven't identified, but eh, you've probably read the same ones

I've said before, and continue to believe, that the WoW killer will come when "success" is measured differently.

To me, WoW is the end of a cycle that began with D&D. A good run, but it could grow that way only because the type of people who loved D&D went off to become programmers who built their youth experiences into text, graphics and then 3D. They grew up while we grew up, happily traveling together apologizing for the tech along the way.

Today's kids though, they're not starting with D&D. Games have transcended the stereotypical basement dweller to become mass acceptable. And as it has done so, so have tastes changed. What they think matters is different. Consider just how many browser-based MMOs were not made by veteran devs with roots in tabletop gaming and RPGing.

By the time a new done-like-WoW game comes out, it'll be for the folks growing up through the younger games. When they hit late teens and college/university years, think they'll want more generic-fantasy for flat monthly fee when for almost a decade prior they were playing in IP worlds with much higher awareness, and for free?

I do not.

There's also the secondary and tertiary business partners to consider. Most current AAA MMOs are almost entirely vertical, save those that license engines/middleware, those that bring in some type of outside partner for specific tasks (e-comm, voip like from Vivox, etc), and the newer ones paying licensing royalties.

Meanwhile, newer browser worlds are most external service or licensing arrangements, themselves often run by companies specifically there to make work-for-hire worlds as marketing vehicles, brand extensions, etc.

Obviously this is not a cut and dry thing. There's a number of exceptions, and it's not like the old way is going away. In a genre with AC1 still active, it's hard to bet on anything.

But I would bet that the metric is going to shift. Because a lot of other newer companies with bigger IP and a lot more dough are too.

[Slayerik]

Darniaq, your posts always get me thinking.

I have to say I totally agree with what you are saying about growing up with DND and the boom of computers in general.

When I played UO for the first time, it was after me and my brother had talked about how cool it would be to have hundreds of guys all playing in a game like that. So, it coulda wiped out my whole PC and I still would have loved it. It's not such an amazing feat as it was now. The infrastructure/bandwidth now avalable to customers changes things greatly.

Ah well, was a good run.

[SnakeCharmer]

How many and what IPs transcend cultural differences the way WoW has/does, and appeal to gamers?  

Will it be something sci-fi?  Probably not.  US sci-fi usually doesn't translate well to Asian markets.  

Another fantasy?

What other single player RPG (besides Starcraft/Warcraft) is huge in Asian, European, and North American markets?

/naive rambling:
It would seem to me that there isn't another 10 million strong target base to go after.  Instead, the best strategy would be to target specifc audiences, budget and build a game to go after that group.  North America and Europe generally find the same thing appealing.  Don't worry about targeting Asia with that game.  Build another game to target them.  

Homogenize your engine where the same coders can work across multiple MMOs.  Vary artwork and stories according to the region you're targeting with that game.  Develop the core game engine so that it can be used for Starship Troopers, but also be used for Elves Gone Wild, with really nothing more than art asset changes, making sure the artists tools are the same for all artists across all games.

From the outside looking in, the MMO gaming industry seems to be very...well..bloated.  The same companies use different engines for different MMOs.  Why not streamline it?  Why not build 'one engine to rule them all', with art tools that can be used to generate a suit of warrior armor and also generate a SWAT uniform?  The only real difference (it seems to me) between a palladin whacking a foozle on the head with a stick and a soldier shooting a 9mm at it is the animation and distance.  The stick is essentially a 9 mm with 5 meter range, the 9 mm is essentially a stick with a 50 meter range (or whatever).  Mocap the animations into a database; use when necessary.

Dunno.  Just kinda spitballing....

[rk47]

Disney MMO would transcend cultural differences but would not be that 'desirable' among the higher demographics.
The reason WOW is a hit in Asia is due to its RTS roots. Realize this is an anomaly. Can you name a RTS lore converted straight to MMO? No, LOTR is different, it's a book first, then a movie, then RTS then MMO

[Dtrain]

Whahaha, that ship!

It reminds me of how during the Vanguard pre-pre-pre-launch hype, Brad McQuaid took a break from his pill popping regimen to photoshop 'Vanguard' and 'Conan' onto a pair of battleships (guess which ship was out in front!??!?!!?!) and post it onto a forum as a salient point in some asinine argument or other that he was having.

Damn, I wish I could find that picture. 

[Velorath]

What other single player RPG (besides Starcraft/Warcraft) is huge in Asian, European, and North American markets?

Your question is a bit off considering Warcraft was never a single player RPG.  The question is what video game IP's have enough worldwide appeal to be worked into successful MMO's.  Essentially you'd be looking at stuff like Call of Duty 4, Pokemon, Gran Turismo, GTA, a Final Fantasy MMORPG that doesn't borrow some of the worst aspects of EQ, or the Sims (I'm not into those games so I'm not sure what it was about TSO that kept it from attracting fans of the franchise).

[IainC]

.... or the Sims (I'm not into those games so I'm not sure what it was about TSO that kept it from attracting fans of the franchise).

Because The Sims appealed to extremely casual gamers as its core demographic. Players who load the game up to rearrange the furniture in their house or see how their guys are doing between rounds on Pogo or episodes of Montel Williams. Not the same demographic who will pay a monthly fee for a single timesink game. The Sims tops the charts because people who don't play computer games are into it.

To the rest of the topic, it's an interesting discussion and one that I've mused over before. There are a lot of basic assumptions that drive a lot of modern games (not just MMOs) that can be stripped away without lessening the experience at all. You'll need a combination of a visionary design team and a publisher willing to risk a lot of money on unknown territory to see it though. It might happen but money men prefer safer bets than that.

[tmp]

From the outside looking in, the MMO gaming industry seems to be very...well..bloated.  The same companies use different engines for different MMOs.  Why not streamline it?  Why not build 'one engine to rule them all'

EQ2 vs WoW engine. "we are planning for future tech" vs "let's just let people play on what they have atm" ... different tools for different goals, simple as that. That's of course extreme example but it applies to lesser degree to them all.

Though that said multiple new MMOs seem to opt for Unreal Engine 3 for the client and some other middleware to handle the server side. Guess we'll see how it develops.

[Typhon]

To me, WoW is the end of a cycle [...]
Meanwhile, newer browser worlds are most external service or licensing arrangements, themselves often run by companies specifically there to make work-for-hire worlds as marketing vehicles, brand extensions, etc.
[...]Obviously this is not a cut and dry thing. There's a number of exceptions, and it's not like the old way is going away. In a genre with AC1 still active, it's hard to bet on anything.

But I would bet that the metric is going to shift.[...]

At a high level I think you are dead on, but I don't think the focus on going to be on tech or experience delivery (except from a financial perspective-by the game developers and funders - browser-based games being cheaper to produce and deliver).  Rather, I think the next focus will be a shift in the what type of game will be "teh bestest".  I think video games at this point attempt to fulfill two major needs:

1) desire for entertainment:  evolution in this area will draw a close parallel to happened in the moving-picture business and how it diverged: Blockbuster/high budget flicks (WoW), made-for-T.V (browser) and, eventually, art-house pictures (currently there are many indie efforts, and some efforts to promoting indie-efforts, but these are mostly tech-demos rather then a particular group of artists saying something).
2) desire for competition:  an evolution of sporting games, and sport elements within entertainment games (e.g. WoW PvP).  This one fills the need for boys and girls (of all ages) to compete on a level playing field.

The fact that 1) is hard, and doesn't really satisfy 2) in any capacity says to me that the next winner is the game-maker that starts with a 2)-type game (i.e. a competition game), and adds in entertainment elements throughout (cutscenes, background story, etc).  To get the 2)-type game is not trivial either.  I think for it to be a WoW killer it must provide good player bracketing to keep people of like-skills competing against eachother, also it must provide good AI competition for those who would rather play cooperatively amongst friends (often friends want to play together, but have large differences in ability).  It also must be accessible in smallish chunks of time i.e. the ability to get on-line and play for an hour or two, and have persistence elements, and open up a tier for higher-level "pro" play is key.  Magic the Gathering is an obvious example of the type of gameplay that I'm talking about (persistence in this case is the deck/stockpile of cards a player owns).

I don't think the massive-content/massive-expense games will completely die out (and the 15-25 year old crew grew up with single player games, the way they play is still more heavily focused on entertainment), but I think that the 5-15 crew will expect more of the the sport-entertainment type of game (these types of games being less costly to run - lower cost of content, will also drive them to a large extent)

[Mrbloodworth]

So, lets hear some opinions on the beta weekend. Oh, and please post Comp Specs. 

[Venkman]

Not yet

While it's expensive in the short term, building your own engine can prove to be cheaper in the long run. If you expect a long run... and then actually achieve it

1) desire for entertainment
2) desire for competition

Completely agree. This is partly what makes Club Penguin so popular with the players. Much of the activities surrounding making the cash to customize your igloo(s) come from competitive sporting-type activities. It's also the same for Webkinz (which is more of a questionable-MMO than a real one, but ciest la vie). And is probably statistically the biggest force of retention in WoW.

This also raises the recurring point of IP. Not all IP is going to work of course, and as we've seen. WoW worked well because it started with appeal to gamers. This has been discussed before. I think the last time we talked about gamer-loved IP, we came up with things like Starcraft (before SC2 was announced), Diablo, and something else which was huge but it's slipping my mind.

But that's if you want to grow MMOs by getting more gamers. Which is a good strategy, there's just more to it.

There's also growing by talking to everyone else. When that came up before, we talked about Helly Kitty online, or a Pokemon MMO. Then someone produced a link for the former And since then we've learned that both Gaia and Neopets are getting persistent worlds. They won't make money the same way nor at the same level as WoW. But that's more because everything about them is different, including their audience.

Maybe in a genre of multiple playing fields, we need a meta-genre? Even back in the day I thought it silly to have Second Life and Guild Wars carry the same category tag. Today that's even sillier. Barbiegirls is as far away from WoW as COD4

[HaemishM]

So, lets hear some opinions on the beta weekend. Oh, and please post Comp Specs. 

If you don't have a computer built in the last year, don't fucking bother.

My computer: AMD FX 64 2800+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 (256MB)

It ran like shit in the PVE segments, and like total shit in the PVP section when there was more than 1 character on the screen. It also looked like monkey ass. The worst part was that it seemed like a fun enough game, had I actually been able to run it competently. I'll have more details and rage on my blog when I get the chance, but fuck, this is a PVP game. Performance has to come first and when you can't even get a decent framerate despite playing it on about as low a setting as it will go, you suck.

[Mrbloodworth]

So, lets hear some opinions on the beta weekend. Oh, and please post Comp Specs. 

If you don't have a computer built in the last year, don't fucking bother.

My computer: AMD FX 64 2800+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 (256MB)

It ran like shit in the PVE segments, and like total shit in the PVP section when there was more than 1 character on the screen. It also looked like monkey ass. The worst part was that it seemed like a fun enough game, had I actually been able to run it competently. I'll have more details and rage on my blog when I get the chance, but fuck, this is a PVP game. Performance has to come first and when you can't even get a decent framerate despite playing it on about as low a setting as it will go, you suck.

I'm not sure about your vid card, or if it is "equivalent" to the one posted on the min specs.

Minimum configuration (1024x768, detail reduced)

    * OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
    * Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
    * RAM:  1GB
    * Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better
    * Video memory: 128MB
    * DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
    * HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Recommended configuration (Up to 1280X960, most features on)

    * OS: Windows XP SP 2 or  Windows Vista
    * Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
    * RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
    * Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
    * Video memory: 512MB
    * DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
    * HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Online Gaming;

    * Broadband connection required.

Linky

I have head a lot of people say shadows (Nothing new here) and bloom are the major FPS killers... did you try turning that off? Just curious.

[sam, an eggplant]

It's not, the radeon 9600 is way slower then the geforce 6600, despite appearing to have 3000 less of something or other. It's two generations behind. The ATI is 2002 technology, the nvidia is 2004. Interestingly enough the "sweet spot" card right now is the geforce 9600. Yeah. Confusing.

[Mrbloodworth]

I really hate when they change numbers like that for hardware, may be why i don't pay attention anymore.

[Montague]

So, lets hear some opinions on the beta weekend. Oh, and please post Comp Specs. 

If you don't have a computer built in the last year, don't fucking bother.

My computer: AMD FX 64 2800+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 (256MB)

It ran like shit in the PVE segments, and like total shit in the PVP section when there was more than 1 character on the screen. It also looked like monkey ass. The worst part was that it seemed like a fun enough game, had I actually been able to run it competently. I'll have more details and rage on my blog when I get the chance, but fuck, this is a PVP game. Performance has to come first and when you can't even get a decent framerate despite playing it on about as low a setting as it will go, you suck.

I'm not sure about your vid card, or if it is "equivalent" to the one posted on the min specs.

Minimum configuration (1024x768, detail reduced)

    * OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
    * Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
    * RAM:  1GB
    * Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better
    * Video memory: 128MB
    * DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
    * HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Recommended configuration (Up to 1280X960, most features on)

    * OS: Windows XP SP 2 or  Windows Vista
    * Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
    * RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
    * Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
    * Video memory: 512MB
    * DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
    * HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Online Gaming;

    * Broadband connection required.

Linky

I have head a lot of people say shadows (Nothing new here) and bloom are the major FPS killers... did you try turning that off? Just curious.

Needs a 512 mb video card and 2.4 ghz CPU just to run at 1280 x 960? Please to be optimizing your code, kthx.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, the Radeon 9600 is way old shit. I was surprised it still ran. It just irks me that they can't even make a low-spec render run worth a shit. You'd think that making old tech work better would be easy, since it's so established.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah, the Radeon 9600 is way old shit. I was surprised it still ran. It just irks me that they can't even make a low-spec render run worth a shit. You'd think that making old tech work better would be easy, since it's so established.

maybe we have hit one of those cutoff points, as you can see, they are not supporting 56k as well. Broadband only.

Out of Curiosity, not that it truly compares, but can you run oblivion?

[HaemishM]

Yes, and it looks just about as shitty. But I get better performance on TF2 with the Radeon 9600 than the shitty Nvidia 6200 that I have lying around, which plays Oblivion like shit but looks better.

[sam, an eggplant]

If I were making a MMO I'd allocate significant development effort to gracefully scale down to intel graphics decelerators found in most notebooks. But hey, what do I know.

[Signe]

The computer I used is T6410, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7800 GT.  It's several years old but the video card is more recent and I added an SB Audigy 4.  It seems to run fine on this, although there was a wee bit of lag in the PvP mini-games.  Everyone seemed to have some of that though.  I can also run Oblivion with that computer.  I'll probably continue to play most games on it until it falls apart.  I'm sick of trying to keep up with it all.  When they release a game that I absolutely can not live without playing, I MIGHT piece together something else.   Maybe.  Or maybe I'll just buy some shoes.