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

[Musashi]

Perhaps his super computer has sucked a miracle patch out of the raw bit stream of the internets.

[slog]

So the consesus is that's it's going to be horrible at release?

Are we talking AO bad or Horizons bad?

[tmp]

What happened to Grunk? He should be here telling everyone that they are crazy and there is no way this game could do anything wrong.

He's probably out to sell some bottles, like all you lazy whining fucks should be doing if you want to enjoy this game proper. 

edit: oh wait, not fucks. Fuckens.

[palmer_eldritch]

The game's killer issue is that it crashes a lot. This has actually got much worse with recent patches, so hopefully they can fix it - it's something they introduced themselves. The game engine does work (or it did).

It's not like Horizons or Vanguard. The zones are generally well designed, and they have lots of content.

The classes are fun to play. For example, if you are want a change from the standard healer, you can play a bear shaman who is designed for melee combat and for healing his party at the same time (the first heal spell you get doesn't actually proc until you smash something with your club, so the rest of the group isn't going to be moaning at you to stand back).

It is a lot more demanding on your PC than WoW, but it does run fine on the 7000 series of Nvidia cards (and I would assume whatever the equivalent ATI card is), as that is what I was using for some time.

[waylander]

Yeah unless there's some patch on release day to fix stuff, this is going to be an unstable release. For the most part people running GF8 cards (due to some shader runtime error in the 169 drivers) and running Vista 32 (mostly hard drive indexing) are going to be the people with the most technical issues.  They can be tweaked if you know what you are doing, but this sorta reminds me of when Shadowbane launched that game optimizer utility.  If you didn't know wtf you were doing, you could seriously blow up the game.

All in all if someone doesn't at least have.....

P IV 2.8 Ghz
GF 6800+
2-3 Gigs of Ram (400 mhz+)

then they probably shouldn't bother to buy the game in the first place.  Otherwise most of the other issues can be resolved by updating Nvidia drivers and doing some manual tweaks, but its FunCom's responsibility to ensure people know how to do that.

I think 2.8 GHZ CPU's are about 4 years old, so that's probably the baseline barrier to entry for this game. Its not like WoW where you can play it on a 6-7 year old computer.

[Chenghiz]

gosh, I think I agree with everyone else. Looks fun, could be fun if graphics lag didn't get me killed all the time. Currently runs worse than The Witcher 1.0 but still better than beta Horizons.

[Ixxit]

Picked up BFG 8600 GTS for cheap on the weekend, and everything runs pretty smooth now (AMD 3800 dual core and 2 gigs of ram) at 1280 x 960 on MED settings <with bloom and 4x AA>.  Still takes forever to load intially and takes forever to let go  of system resources when you exit .  As mentioned before,  level changes are hampered by the cacheing for the first couple of minutes, but then it's smooth sailing.  The game definately looks a lot better  running on med settings.  Haven't tried high settings yet, as changing the graphics settings during play causes  cacheing and general pc coniptions  as all the shader stuff is re written.

No crashes or disconnects when I played last night (there were a few patches to download since I last played on Friday).  Will probably keep my preoder at this point.

Anyone know when the open beta ends?

[waylander]

[urlhttp://vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx?topic=107205723&brd=22995&replies=1]There was a tweak for slow zoning in this tech round up[/url]

Had something to do with indexing or searching, but people who turned it off went from several minutes of zoning to a few seconds.

[Ixxit]

[urlhttp://vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx?topic=107205723&brd=22995&replies=1]There was a tweak for slow zoning in this tech round up[/url]

Had something to do with indexing or searching, but people who turned it off went from several minutes of zoning to a few seconds.

Cool thanks.

[Mrbloodworth]

There was a tweak for slow zoning in this tech round up

Had something to do with indexing or searching, but people who turned it off went from several minutes of zoning to a few seconds.

[Signe]

I was roaming around the innertubes this morning to find my pink garbage disposal deodouriser and noticed that the AoC CE is selling for like $200 and up, even on Amazon, from private people of course.  Are they out of them already?  If so, I wonder how many they bothered to make?

[tmp]

Are they out of them already?

Maybe having seen the game some sellers decides to better try and beat the crowd.

[Signe]

I was roaming around the innertubes this morning to find my pink garbage disposal deodoriser and noticed that the AoC CE is selling for like $200 and up, even on Amazon, from private people of course.  Are they out of them already?  If so, I wonder how many they bothered to make?

Edited because I spelled something really strangely, even for me.

Umm... oops.  I no longer know what the hell I'm doing.   

[Pendan]

AO on release had big server problems. The server would not let you zone and rubberbanded you worse than any game before or after. The server would lose inventory and bank items. AOC does not have these server problems. Server performance appears quite good to me.

Horizon has vast areas of the world unpopulated. You could run for several minutes without seeing a single MOB or anything to do. The client had terrible performance in a city. AOC does not appear to have this problem either. My performance (with closed beta) in cities with lots of walls and chars is on par with my performance in the wilderness with MOBs and lots of vegetation. Long as I have restarted in last half hour that performance is quite playable.

Vanguard was just bad underlying technology. The client did not support more than one core. They are having to redo all the artwork to get acceptable performance in cities. The server zoning of the world did not work with major glitches both for players and MOBs at the zone lines. AOC does support multiple cores. They don’t try to do “seamless” zones. They do have issues with zoning times but my educated guess would be it is much easier to fix than the Vanguard technical mess.

[Mrbloodworth]

So the consesus is that's it's going to be horrible at release?

Are we talking AO bad or Horizons bad?

Honestly, i think the consensus is that the game IS fun, and different. But buggy performance wise, and that this fact may hinder the games launch.

Personal opinions:
All in all, i'm not sure you can compare it to AO's launch. But then again, i didn't experience it. I also don't think it can be compared to Vanguard, as it still birthed because of more things than performance issues (Lack of content, bad/old school design choices, not fun ETC...).

Just my take on things said in this thread.

[Engels]

There was a tweak for slow zoning in this tech round up

Had something to do with indexing or searching, but people who turned it off went from several minutes of zoning to a few seconds.

Sorry, but a fix that involves shutting down Indexing and Windows Search services on Vista is pretty lame. Its a minor feature of Vista, only really useful to folks with the requirement to do searches for files. You know, like, nearly everyone.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am assuming they were asking people to see if it really was the case, not that it would be the permanent fix for it. i am sure they were just testing or asking for people to test, to see if it was even an issue, to then go on to develop a real fix for it.

I don't know, but thats what i read like to me.

[Threash]

I don't recall using windows search in the past few years to be honest.

[Engels]

Wasn't really that necessary for XP, since file access in XP isn't a big woop. Vista, on the other hand, has an indexing service because doing raw file access is a heavy undertaking.

Don't get me wrong, I think this 'feature' of Vista is wrong headed to start with, since file access shouldn't require a whole separate indexing service to do what most computers do as routine. On the other hand, it does feel like yet another 'woops' on Funcom's part.

[Mrbloodworth]

Wasn't really that necessary for XP, since file access in XP isn't a big woop. Vista, on the other hand, has an indexing service because doing raw file access is a heavy undertaking.

Don't get me wrong, I think this 'feature' of Vista is wrong headed to start with, since file access shouldn't require a whole separate indexing service to do what most computers do as routine. On the other hand, it does feel like yet another 'woops' on Funcom's part.

Not trying to be sarcastic, but i thought thats what open betas were about, to get as many configurations trying to play as you can, and then making fixes for the "unknowns"..among other things. I even suspect thats why the shader cash wasn't included, maybe they are gathering them from all the clients, lol. Not very likely i'm sure.

That brings up a question. Bug submission system, hows it work? Is it one of those "when you crash" it comes up asking for info types?

[Nija]

The classes are fun to play.

I disagree but I cannot say why for a few more weeks.

[Engels]

then making fixes for the "unknowns"..among other things.

If Vista's Indexing Service is considered an 'unknown' by Funcom, we up the creek. More likely its simply the rush to get the product out the door. It must be hell to try to develop an MMO for two operating systems simultaneously, especially under deadline. I feel bad for the Funcom developers.

[Montague]

The classes are fun to play.

I disagree but I cannot say why for a few more weeks.

Thought they lifted the   ?

[Mrbloodworth]

then making fixes for the "unknowns"..among other things.

If Vista's Indexing Service is considered an 'unknown' by Funcom, we up the creek. More likely its simply the rush to get the product out the door. It must be hell to try to develop an MMO for two operating systems simultaneously, especially under deadline. I feel bad for the Funcom developers.

Yeah, i hear that.

The classes are fun to play.

I disagree but I cannot say why for a few more weeks.

Thought they lifted the  ?

Only for the closed beta, and even then only for reporting/news sites. Not testers. Open beta is NDA clear.

[shiznitz]

That is still not an excuse for launching a shit show. Running out of money is, though.

[Merusk]

That brings up a question. Bug submission system, hows it work? Is it one of those "when you crash" it comes up asking for info types?

It's like a MS or WoW crash.  It pops up a "submit bug report" window. You can enter additional information on what you were doing to make it crash, and then hit submit (or not.)

[Venkman]

So the consesus is that's it's going to be horrible at release?

Are we talking AO bad or Horizons bad?

Nah, not either of those "bad". I'd say it's got a chance of being like EQ2: a game that attracts through IP awareness of the "cutting edge" graphics but one that doesn't retain because there's holes in the core experience and people learn through the game just how not uber their computer is. And I say EQ2 because I believe it maybe would have done 10% better in a world without WoW (EQ2 alienated based on system requirements, bland graphics and way-contrived game mechanics).

I will say that AOC on lower-end systems looks better than EQ2 did on lower end systems.

[sam, an eggplant]

Only for the closed beta, and even then only for reporting/news sites. Not testers. Open beta is NDA clear.

Incorrect. All closed beta testers can freely talk about their experience up to level 13.

[Signe]

Of course you can't compare AoC to AO's launch, AoC hasn't launched yet! 

I thought the CB's NDA was lifted to level 15 or some such nonsense.  How that translates into talking about performance issues, I don't know.  I suppose you could start every sentence with "From levels 1 through 15, I noticed graphic stalling, lock ups and freezes, nippleless women and chemical smells coming from my Nvidia card."  Funcom is daft.  Fucking Scandies.  Makes me want to go to Bergen and kill my aunties.  Anyway, regardless of the fun factor, this launch will be rift with crappy bugs and performance issues and hysterically funny to watch.  Unless you're one of those people who end up in SAFE mode forever.  Then it's only funny to the rest of us.

Oh, ok, level 13.  That's 2 more daft than 15.

[sam, an eggplant]

Well it allows you to talk freely about performance, give general impressions, etc, but not to put up websites spoiling the level 80 barbarian epic quest for the golden loincloth.

[Hoax]

Performance has been gone over to death.  Your either going to put up with it and soldier on, ignore the game until the 2-3rd major post release patch then give it a shot or give it a shot so you can teeth gnash about how it doesn't work well.  If you fall into the third catagory I'd like to say fuck you in advance.

So with that said once the NDA goes away enough for long term deeply imbeded testers to answer these questions I'll know if I need to build my new machine for AoC or at the time of my choosing...

1.  Do they actually have the full game made yet?  Mostly do they have all the alternative to pve grinding content.  Bar Brawls, econ, play2crush, monster towns, battlegrounds etc.  I know they dont have it all yet, but how much and how polished/working is it?

2.  How bad is the content drop off in the mid-late pve portion?  How bad is the grind with weak content in the mid-late pve?

3.  How bad are the classes really.  I've always read the info they released about class spells/skills with dread, they have sounded very uninspiring and boring.  But I hear great stuff about the core combat mechanics from everyone and that + tits + blood might make up for bleh hotkey skills?

4.  How terrible is class balance?  How fleshed out are the classes?  On the scale of DAOC < SB < AO < WoW in terms of initial class viability where is AoC?

Until I know that I can't decide if I'm even going to buy AoC since I'm having fun in Eve & I dont play that as much as I might already.

[Signe]

EVE sucks. 

[Nija]

Incorrect. All closed beta testers can freely talk about their experience up to level 13.

Alright then.

palmer_eldritch, give me two more examples of cool things AOC does with it's classes aside from the melee-based bear shaman. There are a dozen classes, surely there is something else that is cool. If you can present a good case for +coolness, then I'll concede.

[SnakeCharmer]

Up to level 13, eh?

Ok.  Here goes:

Performance:
Up to level 13, the game suffers from memory leaks, severe hitching, and other assorted fun times.  Note this is run on the following system specs:  Q6600, 4GB RAM, 8800GTS 512 in SLI.  Changing resolutions and/or graphics settings (low, med, high) made no difference in visual quality and/or performance for my rig.  Cannot report that if after level 13 this is magically fixed.

Combat:
Up to level 13, it's a blast.  Programmable keyboards and mice put the game into easy mode for combos that require multiple key presses to fully activate.  Requires some advanced thought and setting your opponent up in terms of shield placement since a combo/special that has an 'overhead right' final keypress to activate won't do much damage if your opponent has full right shields.  As far as your shields are concerned, up to level 13, the activation of said shields is a bit suspect - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Again, programmable keyboard such as an old school G15 make this easier, and makes it a bit less redundant and lowers the amount of keyboard contorsionism greatly.  In my opinion, the best combat system of any MMO out there.

General:
Nice use of voice overs, beautiful worlds, outstanding character models, stunning animations.  Leveling curve (to 13) seems not overly ball breaking, but could use some speeding up.  Also, power advancement concurrent to level feels solid.  Does a good job of making the player feel powerful early.  UI is decent.  Not great, but decent - needs some clean up art-wise.

Final thought:
Fix the hitching, fix the memory leaks, and other graphical oddities, it's a blast.  If it ships with these problems, then....

[Threash]

Incorrect. All closed beta testers can freely talk about their experience up to level 13.

Alright then.

palmer_eldritch, give me two more examples of cool things AOC does with it's classes aside from the melee-based bear shaman. There are a dozen classes, surely there is something else that is cool. If you can present a good case for +coolness, then I'll concede.

The herald of xotli is a caster who turns into a demon to kick ass in melee.  Cloth armor + two hander + fire spells.  Here you can see one transforming and wading into a pack of baddies.