Can someone get me up to speed on state of game?

[chargerrich]

Played AOC at launch and quit at around level 32 or so because it seemed VERY shallow. Went to WAR which rocked until MJ got all "McQuaid" with Tier 3+ so I left that steaming pile.

Been playing WoW and having a good time, but always thought AoC had a good concept. Has it gotten better since month 2? And if so, how much and what has primarily improved?

Do Conquerers still suck balls?

Any updates are appreciated.

[Falconeer]

Sigh. I did this too many times, basically there's one *update post* by me in any other topic in this forum.

Very short version: MUCH better than at launch, but incoming item/stats revamp in June so I STRONGLY suggest to wait late may/june to try it again. Conqueror is a cool class now.


I can do better than this. Maybe later today.

[chargerrich]

I was not being lazy, I read the entire developer post and patch notes, but I wanted to hear from someone that is actually playing and not working for Funcom. 

Thanks for the brief update.

[Hawkbit]

Read the first 5 posts on the top right here because Falconeer has said the same thing about 18 times in those threads.  FWIW, there seems to be a lot of interest back in AoC right now.  I'm on the fence right now, just trying to find time. 

[SnakeCharmer]

Good game.  Plays well.  Awesome graphics.  Dx10 is 

A bit thin, not very deep in as far as crafting and such.  Stat revamp coming.  Needs more art for armor/clothing for player personalization.

Combat is the best of any MMG on the market.

[Engels]

DX10 makes a difference? I ask because those in-game movies posted in a recent thread looked very lackluster to me. I mean, I'm a graphics ho and I felt very very non plussed by the 'enhancement'.

I just uninstalled this from my machine. Needed those 25 gigs back :)

[SnakeCharmer]

Yeah, it does.  I'll load it up tonight if I get a chance and do a couple dx9 and dx10 comparison shots.  FPS is *about* the same, but lots of players in the same area causes a bit of fps chug at times.

[Falconeer]

To be honest, DX10 is behaving random, and some players are complaining about massive slowdowns. Apparently it is still a test version of the DX10 stuff. It looks definitely cool though.

[Falconeer]

And wait june!

[SnakeCharmer]

FWIW, rig is Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz, 8GB RAM, 8800GTS G92's in SLI.  I play with all settings on max except AA, but I play at 1920x1200 resolution so I've never noticed a difference.  Dx9, I average about 60fps in populated areas, 120fps+ in open spaces, instances.  For Dx10, my framerate drops about 25 percent across the board except when more than about 20 players/npcs are on the screen at one time.  Then it starts to chug at about 20fps.

To me, Dx10 *so far* has been about ambience.  The godrays, skies, and other environmental effects with light are spectacular, especially in snow areas, and the movement of the grass and trees adds so much life and realism to it, not to mention the textures used are absolutely gorgeous.  Spells and such are stunning, and the zoom blur effect with a fatality is just awesome. 


Resized Dx9:


Resized Dx10:

[Hindenburg]

Have any non resized screenshots?

[SnakeCharmer]

Yeah, but photobucket automatically resizes them.  The fuckers.  To be fair, they are about 5mb each.

[raydeen]

According to this article, AoC and Funcom in general is in trouble. (might have been covered in another thread)

http://www.onlinemassivelymultiplayer.com/mmo-news/funcom-age-of-conan-is-dying-subscribers-under-100k-23-million-4q-loss-cfo-resigns-plus-combat-tutorial-video/

Grain of salt probably needed. I'll more than likely be re-trying in a month or two.

[SnakeCharmer]

Ignoring the fact your post has zero relevance to the OP's question, I'll bite and educate you:

The article in and of itself doesn't tell the whole story, which you would have to read the financial report to draw the correct conclusions. 

Funcom didn't lose 23.x million, per se.  Reevaluation of their assets by their own accounting / money people resulted in the depreciation of value of certain assets - i.e. X wasn't worth what it was previously, therefore its value dropped, resulting in a loss of asset value.

Additionally what the article doesn't state is that Funcom is sitting on cash reserves of 30 million dollars to cover operating expenses for the next 2 years.

Whoever wrote the article saw '23 million lost!" and ran with it, without knowing what they were talking about.  They aren't bleeding cash; they aren't breaking the bank.  They're sustaining, which is about as good as can be expected if your name isn't Blizzard.

[Hawkbit]

I'd wager that if they get the base game in place with this next patch and launch a trial, they'll likely get quite a few new subs.  There's a few of us talking about going back because there's nothing left out there to play.  The game should be launch complete with the next patch, I hope.  If that's the case, I can look past the launch issues I had if the game is fun. 

To me, it's either this or EVE.  Or WoW for 6 weeks after a new xpac.   

[raydeen]

Ignoring the fact your post has zero relevance to the OP's question, I'll bite and educate you:

Fair enough. I felt the relevance was in the possiblity that the game was tanking and it would be better to avoid a sinking ship if that was the case. I did say 'grain of salt' based on the fact that someone like you would know better about the situation that I would and would inform if needed. Which you did.

[SnakeCharmer]

My post was more snippy than I meant to be (or should have been).  Sorry 'bout that.


Anyhoot, it's doing ok it seems.  It's fun, plays well, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of players.  But it's a cheap investment to (potential) fun, or otherwise.  I do think it's pointless to 'avoid it if it's a sinking ship', since you'd be denying yourself (or whomever) the chance to have a good time with it if they enjoy it.

[raydeen]

No probs. To be honest, I'm half tempted to jump back in before May as I liked AoC and would like to give them a tiny bit of a sub boost but I'm waiting for the free trial to come out so that I can test it without re-subbing. Things have been a bit tough financially due to the fact I broke my ankle in January and lost about a month of pay. Coupled with car and home repair bills, $15 more dollars a month is a bit more dear than it was in the past. 

[SnakeCharmer]

Yowch.

But anyhoot, just to expand a bit on the depreciation thing...

They can depreciate just about anything:  the value of the Dreamworld/Cheatah III engine and other proprietary technologies/patents they own, dev workstations, etc.  And when you depreciate it, it counts as a loss of asset, which *does* show up as a loss on your net worth as a person/company in as far as taxes and such - which is probably why it was done.  Depreciation/loss of property value if they own their building, that sort of thing.

It mostly goes towards limiting your tax liability.  They can show that net loss and still be profitable.  The fact that they have 30 million in reserves and anticipate being able to operate the next couple of years without any outside funding is actually pretty promising for a dev company of that size.  They're publicly held, but still an indie studio in a 'round about way.

There was a big hullabaloo last June about their stock price.  It showed normal growth towards the launch of AOC, then fell back to earth - all of which was normal, and uninformed gamers made all sorts of stink about it without knowing what they were looking at and the fact that it normalized after launch was lost on them.  People bought and bought all the way to AoC launch, then sold so that they could cash in on the rise that was a result of increased interest in the product, impending launch, positive initial reviews, and other factors.  After AoC launched and they started to sell, it caused a normal drop in the stock value.  It normalized.  If you look at their stock ticker you can see they're steadily climbing from a 2.68 NOK per share price on 02Jan09, to today's price at 4.25 NOK.  Which is a pretty sizeable, steady increase in stock value - around 65 percent if the math in my head is right.

They're doing fine.

[Falconeer]

and the fact that it normalized after launch was lost on them.

Normalized?

I know NOTHING about finances and stocks, but the fuss was about the fact that the stock TANKED to unprecedented low levels, while before AoC the price was kinda stable since 2005 and in full Anarchy Online era at about 14. It ramped up at about 55 with AoC launch and then went as low as 2.50! I shouldn't even talk here, but I guess people got scared by the fact that it was stable for years BEFORE AoC, so it's not like people had that 55 in mind when they said it was going horribly down, they had the stable and healthy 14 of the early years.

So if your norm is 14 and you go down at 2.50 (and it's 4,16 now anyway) how is that normal?

Believe me, I am just asking, not stating. I would be so glad to learn something here.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FUNCOM.OL#chart1:symbol=funcom.ol;range=3m;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

[Hayduke]

Admittedly I haven't been playing long enough to really judge, but it seems to me they'd try to run the game in maintenance mode before scuttling it and it's pretty obvious so far that they're still doing a lot of development on the game.  Also it's too good to fail.  Really.  I mean even if it sucks in the endgame there's so much good stuff I'm sure someone would want to pick this up if Funcom died tomorrow.  And I'm also encouraged by the progress that's been done.  Mythic on the other hand has pretty much only made WAR worse since the end of beta.

[Hindenburg]

Heh, now that's odd. Finally finished downloading the game through funcom's patcher. Total size is 17gig, movies included. Game is running (and most certainly looking) better than WAR. 

[Tarami]

Yeah, but photobucket automatically resizes them.  The fuckers.  To be fair, they are about 5mb each.

Bring it on. Make my connection hurt. In a good way.

[Xuri]

First trial keys are out on Eurogamer, 10k for European servers and 10k for US servers:
AoC Trial (EU)
AoC Trial (US)

[FatuousTwat]

13gb? Holy shit.

[Hawkbit]

After you download, unzip and patch it's only 28gigs.   

[Falconeer]

Oh I made a thread for it. Well I guess it deserves its own anyway. And Itto who downloaded it 2 days ago says it's 17 gigabytes.

[Hindenburg]

Mind you, I didn't download any installer, just grabbed the patcher from somewhere, it detected zero files in the system, and downloaded everything needed from Funcom. I'm quite surprised that it would take 28gig using the standard installer. Then again, if funcom had a functional brain, they wouldn't consider the opening  cinematic an essential file.

[Hawkbit]

Yeah, I installed off of disks, I forgot.  But my Funcom folder (no AO in there either) is literally 27.7 gigs.  Yowza!

[Morfiend]

Can anyone tell me if melee classes still need to use 5 buttons to do combos after level 40? 3 direction combos was ok, but having to use 5 different directions was just silly.

[Falconeer]

Nope, Morfiend. Revamped a few months ago. At level 80 the longest melee combo is 3 buttons. For all classes.

[Ashamanchill]

Nope, Morfiend. Revamped a few months ago. At level 80 the longest melee combo is 3 buttons. For all classes.

Awesome.  My friends and I have strongly considered going back, as we have heard about all the positive changes.  The one thing that is holding us back right now is scuttlebutt that melee is still as broken as it was at launch.  I mean, why have that wicked combo system when it's just a detriment?

[Falconeer]

Someone is broken here.

The melee combat is what puts Age of Conan in a whole, different, better level from any other MMORPG. Whoever thinks it's not good should have his or her head examined.

it's just not awesome in PvE, it is DOUBLE THAT AWESOME in PvP. Seriously, head examined.

[Ashamanchill]

I totally agree.  I love the combo system, I think it's a great improvement to static click skills. When you are fighting other melee combo users it really gets a chance to shine.  It's when it's a melee vs a caster, and the caster can just jump around avoiding your attempts to catch him in your moves, coupled with the fact that they just have to fire off one button to do a spell, which can't be dodged or parried, the system starts to fall flat.  I think if they are going to force melee into pressing three different buttons to fire a skill, then give another class set one button presses, they should make those combos alot more punishing.  This wasn't the case when I left.

[Falconeer]

PvP works fine when you know your shit. Seems unbalanced but it's not. Unless of course you are heavy into dueling and expect to be able to kill every class, forgetting there's plenty of anti-classes and that player skill matters more than any other MMORPG.