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

[Slayerik]

Its amazing that 10 years after UO we are still like Wow!!! It has housing.

This genre sucks and I'm pissed that I have to go cancel my pre-order from best buy because of this, since I'm having it shipped (thus won't be able to get it for X days AFTER it launches).

I should have known better anyways.

[Viin]

Amazon had a key for me if you want to try them.

[Evildrider]

By housing he means an art book and a wooden box.

Also, I wonder if the wooden box is why the CE sold out so fast? 

I wonder if it's actually going to be a real wooden box.. and not cardboard with a wood looking covering.  

[schild]

Its amazing that 10 years after UO we are still like Wow!!! It has housing.

This genre sucks and I'm pissed that I have to go cancel my pre-order from best buy because of this, since I'm having it shipped (thus won't be able to get it for X days AFTER it launches).

I should have known better anyways.

Actually, its' because of SWG that I care about housing.

UO was an ugly unkempt poorly designed piece of shit. But I thought I'd gone over this. Oh, I have, like a thousand times. ^_^

[Evildrider]

SWG housing was awesome, I was totally blown away by some of the creativity that some decorators had. 

[Signe]

Me too.  O  housing.  All housing... my own, guild housing, other people's housing.  And crafting.  I like that, too.  And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

[Viin]

SWG house decorations were even more amazing because of the awful interface you had to deal with to do *anything* - much less something that looked good.

[Evildrider]

Me too.  O  housing.  All housing... my own, guild housing, other people's housing.  And crafting.  I like that, too.  And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

[WindupAtheist]

Unless I can design my house down to the point of placing every individual floor tile and doorway and segment of wall, it's inferior to UO housing of 2002 to present.  That UO house I posted pics of last year or whatever, the one split into two wings with catwalks connecting them, that wasn't some premade design.  I just sat down and decided I wanted bridges through the open air somewhere in my house.

[schild]

I don't give a shit what you can do. I don't care if it's static. If it's a white box with a good texture, it's superior to fucking UO housing because UO was uglier than my balls on a sweaty day.

[Venkman]

Jeezus, you serious?! LoTRO and VG have housing too!

[Signe]

But they don't come in a wooden box.

[schild]

Jeezus, you serious?! LoTRO and VG have housing too!

Were LOTRO and VG set in Hyboria?

Did they have women who lament?

[Tairnyn]

DAoC and FF XI had housing, too. Well, FF XI had a sweet multi-door to everywhere so I guess it doesn't really count.

Everything I've read about this game screams generic MMO clone with occasional breasts. Where you people find the energy for such irrational exuberance every few months is beyond me.

[WindupAtheist]

I don't give a shit what you can do. I don't care if it's static. If it's a white box with a good texture, it's superior to fucking UO housing because UO was uglier than my balls on a sweaty day.

Have fun with your generic brown RTS structure that gives +5 to mages.

[schild]

I don't give a shit what you can do. I don't care if it's static. If it's a white box with a good texture, it's superior to fucking UO housing because UO was uglier than my balls on a sweaty day.

Have fun with your generic brown RTS structure that gives +5 to mages.

I will.

[Nija]

It has housing? Not yet it doesn't. That's another missing untested thing.

[rk47]

  nice catch again, Nija.

Yeah these ideas are awesome, but can they test it in time for it to be actually 'playable'?

[Falconeer]

I'm surprised more than 10 people here preordered.

In all honesty Darniaq, and as I said earlier, if the game starts on your machine it's pretty fun (it must be for who preordered it).
It probably won't last too much, I know, but the first days? You play with a permanent grin of disappointment and cynic superiority and STILL the "active combat" somehow grows on you. And the atmosphere, with the weird accents and all, and a few other details, like yes the promise of a guild city and some kind of openly human random confrontation outside arenas and without autoattack buttons.

Did we preorder thinking it will be like 1998 and/or the first time all over again? I doubt it.

Did we preorder hoping it will give us a couple of weeks of dikuish-with-a-twist fun and everything over that is a welcomed bonus? Bingo.

[Tarami]

All I'm asking for is a few weeks of reasonable fun. I already got other games I enjoy so I'm not looking for a new fix quite yet.

[Venkman]

In all honesty Darniaq, and as I said earlier, if the game starts on your machine it's pretty fun (it must be for who preordered it).

Yea, I know. I probably am just burned out from it. I played this beta for longer than I have most other MMOs I paid for If anyone is even mildly interested in the title, it absolutely is worth the preorder and expectation of a few weeks of enjoyment.

What surprised me in this thread is the resurgent omgawesome! feel for a whole bunch of crap not yet put in the game, as if it is 1998 and people are all hyped for the fun stuff to be patched in later. There's a whole bunch of stuff missing, as outlined already, with only vague promises it'll come at some point. And yet it's still exciting. Shows the power of the promise, and at least Funcom is talking about stuff that Blizzard still hasn't ever.

So like I said, I think this is all about when this game launched this year (a lull in MMO activity). If it was four months from now, it'd be lost under the combined weight of other titles. Which makes Funcom very smart.

Did they have women who lament?

It's only player characters that do that. Everything else is standard stoic NPCs dispensing quests, with the difference-from-most factor being the letterboxing of the dialog events.

[Simond]

Jeezus, you serious?! LoTRO and VG have housing too!

Were LOTRO and VG set in Hyboria?

Did they have women who lament?

I think pretty much everybody involved in VG lamented.

[Vanifae]

Will the NDA be up during the early admission?  Or is the NDA gone now?

[shiznitz]

You will have a NDA "accept" button every time you log in - even after launch.

[Signe]

That probably shouldn't be in green.

[Mrbloodworth]

On the closed Early accesses:

Funcom has been working very hard towards setting up gaming server capacity to launch this game comfortably for all the people who want to play Age of Conan. We are estimating that on Day One, a very high number of gamers will want to enter Hyboria.

The Open Beta finished on Sunday and we have been prepping those servers to be used as Live game servers, with the first ones to be used for the Early Access Program. Once those are set up and ready, we’re doing final adjustments to the other servers to prepare for full launch.

We measured how much capacity we thought we would need for this program and registrations have been on pace for this capacity – until two days ago. On Monday the registrations spiked and on Tuesday they increased even more. Early on Wednesday the capacity limit was reached and automatically shut off. The entire program is now mostly sold out globally, with some local variation. We had no way of anticipating the spike we saw at the end.

Our goal for Early Access was always to provide the best possible gaming experience for the ones who would get into the program. We scoped servers and download capacity for the 15gb client for a set number, based on our best projections. Those have been soundly surpassed. We are of course extremely humbled by the fact that so many players can’t wait to play the game.

We understand that there’s been some unfortunate confusion about the pre-order keys in some markets. Early Access has been a special limited offer that was exclusively available through the Age of Conan billing pages once you registered your pre-order key. Just to clarify there are no ‘Early Access keys’, and all pre-order keys do of course give the exclusive mounts and item benefits to your account as intended.

Now we have few choices. We could shut down the Closed Beta and reformat those servers to set them up for Early Access instead, but the fact is that the Closed Beta is supplying extremely valuable information that we would not want to miss. Quality is always our first goal and we would not want to compromise that but rather focus on the experience for all of you at launch.

Our best course of action is to move as quickly as we can to finalize the adjustments of the full range of launch servers, and to concentrate on being completely prepared for launch. It is only a matter of days even for those who are not in the Early Access program to set foot in Hyboria.

We are looking forward to greet you there!

Yours sincerely,

Funcom Development Team
__________________
Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

The waves are getting rather high on this subject and I understand completely that many players are not happy about the fact that Early Access is sold out as of today and I'm sorry about the misunderstanding and the confusion this has caused.

We did limit the maximum number of possible registrations for Early Access from the beginning so it wasn't a decision we took later. We knew that a specific number of players would be willing to take the offer and get 3 days earlier access to the game. That the registrations would reach that set limit as fast as they did we didn't quite expect but that doesn't change the fact that the number was limited.

The limit was set to make sure that registered players would have the chance to download the client and access the game servers 3 days prior to launch. With an unlimited amount of players, that would not be possible.

We do take your feedback on this issue very seriously and will be back with more information about this as soon as new facts are available.

Thanks for your support and understanding.
__________________
Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

On the 48 x 48 topic:

This first one is referring to this.

Where Athelan  states clearly that the combat can go up to 500 people (i doubt it as this is their best number, in their best conditions) but actually you will only be able to see about a hundred people around you

a) I am not THE lead designer for Age of Conan, I am A designer for Age of Conan and one of the more senior ones, and was the designer originally responsible for the massive PvP design.

b) My answers are based on the discussions we had while I was in Norway and what our intentions were and what I knew of our technology, given that I operate on a 9 hour time difference now since moving back to the US and getting married I *gasp* could be outdated on my information.
__________________
Athelan -NPC/Monster Designer, Behavioral Control Center/Combat Guru, Age of Conan

The whole point of my even participating in this thread was to let you know that we certainly aren't trying to say one thing and do another. If I am wrong, then I am wrong, but I know that we did not want to put hardcaps into place in Massive PvP and if the decision was made to do so I am unaware of it, and from a design perspective as far as what I feel embodies PvP I don't really like it, but I know that its possible there were some issues in implementation that forced us to change things.

We never "cut" massive PvP. The implementation has been changed from the original design, how, I don't really know exactly. If you have never collaborated internationally on anything then I could never begin to explain to you how difficult it is to be on a 9 hour time difference. A 2 hour time difference impacted the production of SWG when I was working in QA for SOE, so much so that 16 people were sent from San Diego to work in Austin for 5 months on the game myself included. Again I repeat I have yet to hear about this 48vs48 thing. If that is the case then I am just as surprised as you but I am willing to understand the fact it probably happened for a reason and that I would rather see 48vs 48 as a last resort than not have massive PvP at all at launch.
__________________
Athelan -NPC/Monster Designer, Behavioral Control Center/Combat Guru, Age of Conan

To answer Darniaq. Why did i pre-order despite the games issues. Because its fun. Also, the NPC cinematic view is really nice IMO. Really nice, i dig it a lot.

[Lantyssa]

Funcom has been working very hard towards setting up gaming server capacity to launch this game comfortably for all the people who want to play Age of Conan. We measured how much capacity we thought we would need for this program and registrations have been on pace for this capacity – until two days ago. On Monday the registrations spiked and on Tuesday they increased even more. Early on Wednesday the capacity limit was reached and automatically shut off. The entire program is now mostly sold out globally, with some local variation. We had no way of anticipating the spike we saw at the end.

Huh.  Pre-order keys which give access to the special early access trickle in until the major retailers start sending them out in massive numbers.  Holy no duh, Batman!

[sam, an eggplant]

Have you ever considered the possibility that they might be telling the truth? I didn't expect AoC to be so successful in pre-sales myself. It might end up being the little engine that could.

[Falconeer]

This is something we kinda forgot to mention so far. Is Conan having a financial blast? Or were they just too conservative with the starting servers?

[Signe]

Sam is losing his edge!   

[photek]

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=K8yMNmhChOY&fmt=18

Spellweaving video. I imagined something far cooler, this is just meh.

EDIT: Maybe its better after I try it, but now it looks boring to stand in one place like a christmas tree and be allmighty. Any 10+ year old will know to not approach in PvP situations, but for raiding maybe its strong.

[SnakeCharmer]

Have you ever considered the possibility that they might be telling the truth? I didn't expect AoC to be so successful in pre-sales myself. It might end up being the little engine that could.

When I originally read that disclaimer - back when I pre-ordered - I figured it was just marketing speak to get people to think there was limited numbers available.

Surely they viewed the total number of beta applications and buzz surrounding the game as a litmus as to how big the demand would be.  Or, they set the bar low for availability in terms of investors:  "Our pre-orders sold OUT!!!"

Who knows.

Even if people are frothing with nerd fury about it being sold out, it's a good kind of bad publicity to have.

[Signe]

Funcom said somewhere in that official mess they call a forum, that the reason there was a limit to the early access is because the file is so big, and some people have been reporting problems with the download being slow, that they were worried people wouldn't finish in time if too many were trying to download at the same time.  Or something like that.  Right.  Because that's how torrents work, you know.

[Morfiend]

On the 48 x 48 topic:

This first one is referring to this.

Where Athelan  states clearly that the combat can go up to 500 people (i doubt it as this is their best number, in their best conditions) but actually you will only be able to see about a hundred people around you

I shudder to think what sort of computer you would need to be able to handle that many character models on screen at once. My computer which is pretty powerful grinds down to single digit fps when there is more than 10 people around.

[Falconeer]

Server names are out:

US Servers (Early Access 17th of May)

PvE Servers
• Set
• Dagoth
• Zug
• Omm
• Derketo
• Thog
• Wiccana
• Gwahlur (recommended Oceanic)
• Anu

PvP Servers
• Tyranny
• Bane
• Deathwisper
• Bloodspire (recommended Oceanic)
• Doomsayer

RP-PvP Server
• Cimmeria



European English Servers (Early Access 17th of May)


PvE Servers
• Crom
• Dagon
• Ymir
• Bori
• Astoreth

PvP Servers
• Fury
• Wildsoul

RP-PvP Server
• Aquilonia



French Servers (Early Access 17th of May)


PvE Server
• Ishtar

PvP Server
• Ferox

RP-PvP Server
• Stygia



German Servers (Early Access 17th of May)


PvE Servers
• Mitra
• Asura

PvP Server
• Aries

RP-PvP Server
• Asgard



Spanish Server (Early Access 17th of May)

• Zingara (PvE)

EDIT: Hello Feet of Death beat me on the proper forum.