Age Of Conan

[Marku]

Any thoughts on this? the game is free(of course you gotta buy the box) until lvl 40(maximum level about 80?) everything up to lvl 40 is considered the single player part, the story. everything after that means the rest of the game is free to you (advance to new class etc). The combat will also have some FPS elements. Finally a game online i can swing my sword and cut a person in half ! (yes this game is going to be an 18)

[HaemishM]

I've been cautiously interested since they announced it. But as with most MMOG's, I'm in wait and see mode until beta reports start coming out.

[Marku]

true true. I hope they dont start pumping out expansions too quickly, SOE style.

[AOFanboi]

Given that it comes out in a year's time, I am sure more thoughts will appear once beta starts - hopefully earlier than in the case of AO.

But keep in mind a lot of pre-release hype about Anarchy Online was dropped, like underwater cities and stuff. Same could be the fate of AoC:HE.

[stray]

I love the Conan stories....

However, I think it's a shitty premise for an mmo.

[edit]

Hyboria is not a "world". It is a simple backdrop to illustrate Howard's ideas about barbarism vs civilization, through the character of Conan. There are no other tales worth telling, unless they speak in relation to that.

Of course, you can ignore everything that the creator of the stories cared about. It's been done before.

[Morfiend]

If I can turn in to a snake, and have hundreds of virgins at my beck and call.... So sold.

[stray]

If I can turn in to a snake, and have hundreds of virgins at my beck and call.... So sold.

As a playable character in the Temple of Set, the chances of you ever being Thulsa Doom will be next to none. There's very few guys who have that power. Hell, there's very few who know magic in any sense. Period.

If you pick Set, you're only choice will be to play one of those virgins. Not the pimp.

[stray]

Seriously though, Magic sounds like a problem. And even if you were a mage, it's hard to imagine anything that would resemble typical DnD or MMO mages. Hyboria's magic is rare, more about ritual conjuring....And most importantly, there's a total lack of guys pulling fire bolts of their asses.

Playing as one of the virgins is actually more in line with the stories.

[stray]

Well, here we go then:

For the first five levels you are a “commoner”, without class, but of Cimmerian, Aquilonian or Stygian origin. Then at level five you choose your base class from four archetypes: Mage, Priest, Thief or Warrior.

Geez, how lame.

3 Races. No Hyrkanians (A more common race in the stories. See: Subotai from the first film), but yet, you can play Stygians (Temple of Set. Rare and isolationist. See: Thulsa Doom). Stupid.

No Asgardians either (a well known, well traveled Norse like race), but Cimmerians are playable (the rarer of the North races, of which Conan was from).

The fact that one can play Cimmerian is silly, but understandable (people want to be Conan, right?....). The funny thing is that he himself rejected much about them. Now Funcom is probably going to write things into the game like Cimmerians are what Conan is all about. They're not.

[edit] Lastly, Class systems make baby Conan cry.

[dusematic]

Stop being faggy purists.  The title of the game has nothing to do with trying to stay true to Howard's vision and everything to do with cashing in on the Conan name.  The game could  have elves and dwarves and it doesn't matter.  There are about twelve people alive who have read a Howard novel, nobody will notice all this trivial minutiae about Cimmerians and the Temple of Set.  If the gameplay is tight, who cares?  There's a good premise for this game and it will be awesome if they pull it off.

[stray]

There's a good premise for this game and it will be awesome if they pull it off.

Which premise is that? The part that you can level offline? Okay, I'll grant that.

But there are things worth considering "good premises" besides game mechanics. Like wanting it to actually be....Y'know...Reflective of the "Age of Conan". It's not merely being a purist. It's wanting something more rich, that in turn, leads to be better gameplay. What does it matter to me if I can level to 40 offline through a storyarc if, in the end, the actual story sucks?

[edit] I forgot to mention:

People do read Conan. That's why it's still here. If people didn't care about it, then it wouldn't even be considered an idea for a video game 70 years after it's creation.

And that trivial minutae isn't trivial at all: Cimmerians were miserable fucks that rarely left their homelands. Conan, for all intents and purposes, kind of disowned them. Now they're considered worthy enough to be among the 3 playable races? It just takes the entire meaning out of who they are.

Like I said about Set: Mages are barely even heard of, like they are in other fantasy stories. How is that trivial?

[Sachant]

I saw the demo at E3 last year.  It looked good and it looked interesting.  It has a lot of interesting aspects that occur based on time of day as well to make things as interactive seeming as possible and also has collision detection so when you run an army formation to protect your mages in the back, it really will protect your mages in the back.  It also has you use combo moves etc by using your mouse or keys as directionals for actual actions.  All in all it was a very intriguing design.

Who knows how it will actually play.

[dusematic]

There's a good premise for this game and it will be awesome if they pull it off.

Which premise is that? The part that you can level offline? Okay, I'll grant that.

But there are things worth considering "good premises" besides game mechanics. Like wanting it to actually be....Y'know...Reflective of the "Age of Conan". It's not merely being a purist. It's wanting something more rich, that in turn, leads to be better gameplay. What does it matter to me if I can level to 40 offline through a storyarc if, in the end, the actual story sucks?

[edit] I forgot to mention:

People do read Conan. That's why it's still here. If people didn't care about it, then it wouldn't even be considered an idea for a video game 70 years after it's creation.

And that trivial minutae isn't trivial at all: Cimmerians were miserable fucks that rarely left their homelands. Conan, for all intents and purposes, kind of disowned them. Now they're considered worthy enough to be among the 3 playable races? It just takes the entire meaning out of who they are.

Like I said about Set: Mages are barely even heard of, like they are in other fantasy stories. How is that trivial?

My Mom has heard of Conan the Barbarian, but she hasn't read any Howard.  Don't kid yourself, nobody reads Howard.  I'm not saying Howard is a piece of terd, I'm just saying.  Cimmerians and Set Mages are in the game because they will make the game more fun.  Magic is good in a fantasy action RPG.  Cimmerian barbarians are also good. 

But aside from that, I'm not one of those people who get really into the 3rd rate "lore" in computer games.  That's why arguing over how true to the novels a particular feature set in the game is isn't important to me. 

Also, the single player/multiplayer angle is indeed good, but I'm more enamored with the premise of a dark, violent, mature, fantasy-action RPG MMO with twitch based combat and good graphics. 

[stray]

Fair enough, if you just play games for mechanics. What I mention though isn't a simple matter of lore for lore's sake. It's that the parts of lore I'm mentioning are game defining.

A statement like "Classes make baby Conan cry", for example, isn't meant as an attempt to just a whine for it's own sake. It's literal. Every character in this world, even "magic" users, are too versatile for something like "classes": Conan was a thief, a barbarian, a King, a fucking patron of the arts for crissakes. He was many things. And, more importantly, he wasn't unique in that aspect. A "mage" like Thoth-Amon or Doom would have a bow or axe in one hand, and an enchanted skull in the other (and they'd use the Axe or Bow more!).

Also, Hyboria is not even "fantasy" in the sense that Funcom is trying to impose on it. Howard was a writer of historical fiction before he fleshed out the Conan stories. He found it too limiting, however, for allowing commentary or theory.

What he was attempting to do with Conan was trying to create a platform to discuss theories on history and barbarian people in an entertaining way, but without having to follow the rigid rules of "accuracy" like he would with historical fiction. By creating his own world, he could invent characters instead of base them off historical facts or situations.

That he "created" an imaginary world though, doesn't mean he was trying to create anything "fantasy like" per se. It was created in mind to be similar to our own real ancient world, and without half of the oddbal, fantasical stuff one would see in other fantasy fiction. "Magic" was written to be more akin to how "magic" is written in, say, ancient Egyptian or Chinese texts. Men, were still at their core, men who wielded steel, who caused death in more traditional means, who did not in any fucking sense shoot fireballs out of their ass.

Saying it is "good" for the game is like saying Rome Total War should have Gryphon riders with machine guns as playable units. It just doesn't fit. It's not EQ. It's not DnD. It's barely even fantasy.

[stray]

Ah fuck it. I'm a purist faggot for wanting Conan to be Conan. So be it.

[Nija]

Yeah, nobody gives a shit about lore. Gameplay is king. That guy who works on the UT engine who says graphics are king has to say that, because the only thing they have is a graphics engine. It only attracts graphics people really. How many people here played the excellent mod Air Buccaneers? Alien Swarm, another excellent game that nobody plays. List goes on.

[HaemishM]

Fair enough, if you just play games for mechanics. What I mention though isn't a simple matter of lore for lore's sake. It's that the parts of lore I'm mentioning are game defining.

Remember that article I wrote about conflicting desires recently? That's part of it. There are a significant number of people who play video games purely for the mechanics, and they tend to clash rather violently with people who want story or roleplaying.

[stray]

And the thing is, I have no problem with someone desiring only gameplay. There's nothing that says if one followed the lore that gameplay still couldn't be interesting. What I want doesn't necessarily bar them from reveling in game mechanics. What they want though, can sometimes bar me.

Think of all of the games that a player, such as dusematic, would think has "good gameplay": Do all of them have mages (for example)? It's highly unlikely.

So why is it a preresquisite for "good gameplay" here?

[dusematic]

Because mages are cool.

Ah fuck it. I'm a purist faggot for wanting Conan to be Conan. So be it.

OK I surrender, that was laugh out loud funny dude. 

[stray]

Damn. The one time that I'm not trying to be funny, and now someone laughs!

[stray]

To talk about more game "mechanics" though:

Will there be PvP options?
Yes there will be PvP gameplay in Age of Conan, we will be announcing more details on the PvP systems closer to release

What about Siege Combat?
As a player you can cooperate with other players in building cities, with walls, towers and keeps, protecting softer targets like houses, inns and merchants. In the same regions you will have the forces of evil like the Picts not only building their own city, like a real-life Real Time Strategy AI, but with the ability to mount sieges against your city. With ample warning you must return home to protect the walls of your city against enemy catapults and hordes of monsters swarming through the breaches.

Still undecided on PvP systems, BUT, there will be Seige combat against A.I.?

Rofl.

How true to the original writings of Howard are you intending to be?
The world that Howard created was a dark and gritty place and we certainly aim to very true to that feeling and atmosphere. Obviously Howard wrote the original works in the 1930’s, a long time before world war two, Martin Luther King or the 60’s sexual revolution, and some of his themes and characters are very much creations of their time that do occasionally jar our modern sensibilities, so Age of Conan will not be done in a tasteless, exploitative manner. Rest assured however that the world of Conan will never, ever, be politically correct and we hope that the game will capture all the elements of Howard’s creation that make it what it is!

In other words, "Conan will be a nice guy, and no, there won't be titties."

Morphiend will have his (now common, for some reason) Mage, but he won't have hundreds of virgins at his side.

C'mon people! The Lore is at stake here!

[Margalis]

I love the Conan stories but let's face it yes there will be Mages. I don't think "mages were rare in Conan stories" is a great argument because in most MMORPGs literally EVERY living person is an adventurer whereas in books 1 person out of a thousand are. If they were going to be true to the stories most people would be playing as peasants and whores.

That said, there shouldn't be any orcs, trolls, elved or any of that tired shit.

[stray]

I think it still stands. Warriors, thieves, assassins, swashbucklers, knights, archers, etc.. compensate for the idea that "everyone is an adventurer in mmo's". There are plenty of these guys (and gals) to go around in the stories as well.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a virtual peasant game (nor would I want that either). It just has to be what it is: A slightly fantastic version of our own ancient world. I still stand by what I said about this not being the best setting for an mmo to begin with, but if it is going to be done, at least try to make it reflect what the world is about. Don't transform the game and adjust it to the biases of generic fantasy fans. The true Conan world has left a 70 year legacy....And it's traded in for generic-ness? That's sad.

Just because there isn't much magic doesn't mean there'd be a lack of heroic types to play. What if this was a game based on the Odyssey or the Illiad? We understand that these stories have mythical elements, like Gods, Medusa, or the Nympths, but who would we, as players, expect to be playing in a game like that? The soldiers, that's who. These are the central elements of those stories, these are what comprise the heroes and villians. Not the mythical stuff. It's no different with Conan.

[edit] Oookay. Time to stop! I think I stated my point clear enough  :-D

[HaemishM]

Just make mages have to work their way through 9 or so different professions before unlocking a quest from a blue ghost granting them the power to toss fireballs out of their arses.

I agree with you about mages, but I think making it a melee only game is going to alienate some people who must play finger-wigglers. That is, unless the melee combat is the OMFGAW-SOMENESS.

[Murgos]

Conan killed at least one mage per book.  At that ratio there should be 5 or 6 times as many wizards as there are barbarians in the game...

[JoeTF]

Wake me up when the game enter at last pre-alpha stage. Geez, getting so excited over a game that's still on drawning boards.

[stray]

Geez, getting so excited over a game that's still on drawning boards.

It's not getting excited so much about this particular game as it is of a larger issue: Few developers care to design things with the license in mind so much as they do some preconception of the market.

See also: Warhammer Online

Besides, just because the game is on the drawing boards doesn't mean it can't already offer something attractive. Actually, I would hope that they would get the general idea right as early as possible. How does a game become good otherwise?

[Velorath]

Ah fuck it. I'm a purist faggot for wanting Conan to be Conan. So be it.

If you were a purist faggot you wouldn't be using characters from the movies as examples.

[stray]

Ah fuck it. I'm a purist faggot for wanting Conan to be Conan. So be it.

If you were a purist faggot you wouldn't be using characters from the movies as examples.

I did it for their sake. 

I mentioned Thoth'Amon at least.

[Velorath]

Not to pick on you Stray, but:

I love the Conan stories....

However, I think it's a shitty premise for an mmo.

[edit]

Hyboria is not a "world". It is a simple backdrop to illustrate Howard's ideas about barbarism vs civilization, through the character of Conan. There are no other tales worth telling, unless they speak in relation to that.

Of course, you can ignore everything that the creator of the stories cared about. It's been done before.

Not all Conan stories were about barbarism vs civilization.  Some stories like "Tower of the Elephant" and "The Frost Giant's Daughter" were just good "fantasy" stories that didn't really have a message.  Howard was selling these stories to pulp mags to make a living.  They didn't all have to have deeper meaning.

[stray]

Well, actually, only Frost Giant's Daughter qualifies as being the one among the two that sits in the pulpy category. Tower of the Elephant was one the first stories where he started fleshing out the ideas around Conan, where he started commentating on the barbarian vs civilization aspects:

He had entered the part of the city reserved for the temples. On all sides of him they glittered white in the starlight -- snowy marble pillars and golden domes and silver arches, shrines of Zamora's myriad strange gods. He did not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora's religon, like all things of a civilized, long settled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essense in a maze of formulas and rituals. He had squatted for hours in the courtyards of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of the theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the head.

His gods were simple and understandable, Crom was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and death. It was useless to call upon Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian's mind, was all any god should be expected to do.

Besides, the main point I've been talking about here is that Hyboria was far more down to earth than typical Sword and Sorcery. The barb vs civ thing is a bigger subject, but right now, I'm just raising the issue of magic. And even in the pulpy stories, magic was rare, alien like, extremely powerful, and didn't take a big place in the life of the world.

Tower of the Elephant, again, can be used to show that as well. I speak of magic being "alien like": The Elephant in the story IS an alien! Heh. And Yara, the priest, who enslaves him, is another example of the rarity of mages -- In the story, the people of Zamora didn't quite know who lived in that tower, or what he could do. It was a mystery.

And that is how mages are always written -- they live in a land of rumors, of secrets, that there are few any will come by, that they are so rare people question if they even exist. And when people do come by them...When they do come by them, even someone like Conan is barely a match for them (he had to use the Elepant's power in this particular story to kill Yara).

For damn sure there weren't dozens running around the cities going "LFG". Even in the pulpy stuff. Contrast that, say, with Warcraft, where you have entire cities comprised of mages and sorcerors (like Dalaran), and the idea of having dozens, even thousands, of mages running around makes sense. To impose that idea though, on a world where a lot it's richness and vitality lies in NOT having those things common, is what ticks me off.

[edit] Typos

[Velorath]

I agree with all that about magic.  It's a fairly rare thing, and nowhere near an exact science, not to mention the fact that Cimmerians, as one of the playable races, would likely not group with someone openly using magic (to say nothing of the fact that Conan seemed to be one of the few Cimmerians that actually left Cimmeria).  There will be a lot in the game that doesn't fit in with Howard's work.  So it goes for just about any licensed property like SWG or MEO.  Even WoW has trouble sticking to the established lore, because first and foremost you have to make games fun and balanced even if it means not strictly following the continuity of the stories.

[Hoax]

If they can make the combat take skill and the player conflict meaningfull instead of taking part in resetting instances who really gives a fuck if they are butchering the IP?

I mean frankly after the quite passable storyline of AO I'm not sure why Funcom had to get on the established IP bandwagon, unless they are planning on making another set of Conan movies and we just dont know about it yet.

[stray]

unless they are planning on making another set of Conan movies and we just dont know about it yet.

Actually, there was talk of John Milius making a new film based on Conan's King/Later period.....Then Ahnold became governor.

Now there's some rumors of the Wachowski's (gasp) taking over the reigns and ridding of Arnold entirely.

If they can make the combat take skill and the player conflict meaningfull instead of taking part in resetting instances who really gives a fuck if they are butchering the IP?

We touched on that a bit: Not everyone is concerned exclusively with just game mechanics.

[Hoax]

Yeah but we are talking about REALLY REALLY good sounding promises on paper here Stray, not just kind of good really fucking good.  I mean I would suffer a complete butchering of the Warhammer 40,000 IP (but admittedly not Battletech it has suffered enough) for a MMO that actually worked the way they make Conan sound.

"Experience Funcom’s revolutionary “Real Combat” engine. A new multi-point melee system allows the players to swing their weapons where they direct it, in real-time, going head-on against the formulaic nature of online RPG combat."

-M&B anyone?  But with shiney, loot, AND smashing lances into the heads of other players?  Yes please.

"Create player-made battle formations, and command both NPC’s and other players in epic multiplayer battles.
Form guilds in the multiplayer game and lay siege to hostile castles. Let the catapults sing their merry song of death as the enemy is brutally crushed to a pulp."

"As a player you can cooperate with other players in building cities, with walls, towers and keeps, protecting softer targets like houses, inns and merchants. In the same regions you will have the forces of evil like the Picts not only building their own city, like a real-life Real Time Strategy AI, but with the ability to mount sieges against your city. With ample warning you must return home to protect the walls of your city against enemy catapults and hordes of monsters swarming through the breaches."

-The first game since ShadowBane to try large scale pvp siege pvp against targets that are player made, not just static forts or bases (Planetside/DAOC I'm looking at you) designed to change hands periodically.

Every time I read their FAQ, not to mention the early sneak peaks on like Gamespot or wherever I get a hard on for the return of Play to Crush...   :-D