Age of Conan Beta

[Lantyssa]

So he's going commando?

[Signe]

Bah!  My question was better than his answer.  I would have said something snarky like, "a wife beater and a speedo.  You?" 

[Xuri]

Well, the AoC technical beta has started. They seem to be testing specific things at specific locations ingame for short periods at a time, crashing the servers and whatnot. =P The beta has also suffered it's first NDA breach (at least the first since the internal leak of the pvp combat video some time ago), where a guy was banned after revealing on the general forums that he was in the beta (posted his invite-mail even).

Oh, and Cotton Caps are implemented, but no one seem to be able to afford them. <-- (ignore this, or look at the screenshots)

[FatuousTwat]

Will there be special formations for Mages? ……..example a group of Demonologists get together and use their combined powers to invoke a giant Demon to smash the walls of the battlekeeps.

This was one of the ways we wanted to see formations be used in Conan, ritualized magic we think is very Conanesque

That sounds interesting... Sounds like magic going to be a lot more complex than it is other mmogs. Seems like I read somewhere else that the magic scheme is going to have a combo system like the combat scheme as well.

[McCow]

Will there be special formations for Mages? ……..example a group of Demonologists get together and use their combined powers to invoke a giant Demon to smash the walls of the battlekeeps.

This was one of the ways we wanted to see formations be used in Conan, ritualized magic we think is very Conanesque

That sounds interesting... Sounds like magic going to be a lot more complex than it is other mmogs. Seems like I read somewhere else that the magic scheme is going to have a combo system like the combat scheme as well.

Does that mean it made it in?  Or we just talking hypothetically here. 
I have been trying to determine what is actually making it into Conan while avoiding all the fanboy/dev hype but seems to be next to impossible when it comes to this game.  Most of the Dev speak seems to be a PR form of a Chinese finger trap attached to a Rubic's Cube.   I won't even get into some of the rampant fan-boy speculation I have read.

[Xuri]

For anyone interested, Funcom has released their Q1 financial report, which contains both financial data (for 2006 and Q1 2007) and some tidbits about both AoC and The Secret World. Also mentions serverparks for AoC being hosted by "IPsoft" (anyone heard of them?)  in NY and Amsterdam.

http://www.newsweb.no/atmnt/070516-Q1-presentation.pdf?id=43522

[Slayerik]

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=1wzhxwb9wjl1tll80c9ah7v57fzara&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1667&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT

Letter from the Game Director #1 - Savage and sexy!


- May 21, 2007
Age of Conan's commander in chief, Gaute Godager, puts his thoughts on paper as he addresses the community in this first installment of a new "Letter from" series.





Most notable part for me: "Truth be told, after making MMOs for 10 years (Wohoo! An anniversary.), non-MMO games must be very very good to really capture my complete imagination. A couple of games per year, or something like that? Because I simply love the social aspect of the MMO games. Chatting, competing, co-operating and killing monsters and other players (Darn, marketing help me!). To me, non-MMOs simply often seem – empty.

This was my problem though: I saw myself getting more and more and more impatient. I stopped crafting. I always picked the DPS classes because I figured: quick kills equals fastest way to max level. I gathered as many quests as I could – never reading the “story” – to the point where killing a monster without getting a quest update felt like a waste of time. Yes, I felt depressed when I saw an NPC with the quest marker showing the available new quests. Oh no, more work! I stopped exploring the world and simply used an online service that taught me to run here and there to maximize my exp per hour potential. And God forbid, I admit to once buying grind gold from an online service (ooh the shame – don’t do it!!). I never used bots, leveling services or anything like that, though.

Yes, I know ;) The major blame for all this has to lie with the author. They were all excellent games with twists and individuality, full of creativity and love when they were made, and contained many excellent ideas I would never have dreamed up myself. Credit where credit’s due. The point was, I stopped doing what I loved. I was no longer social. I never read any quest descriptions or story. I didn’t explore. I stopped cooking dinners, I simply stopped believing! Another major point was that I never kept up with my friends, I couldn’t play with them. I have two kids, a loving wife and a demanding job. I could never play with my friends as they out-leveled me. I was in a precarious situation – I was a hardcore player with casual time budget.

This was something that forced me to become savage! Brutally I wanted to do something different when we started the pre-production of Conan.

The first thing we did was to tear down the norm of the combat system in MMOs. Out with the watch-the-hotkey-bar combat. Nothing wrong with it, except we wanted more location, direction, distance and hands on player skill to matter! In a Conan game combat must be more than a means to an end (to kill, gain exp) – it must be super-fun in itself. I am happy to say – we are finally close to this.

We didn’t need to pull the solution completely out of our own a***es though. Plenty of good fighting games out there -- especially on the console. And then the multi-direction hit system was born. BTW, have we told you we’ve reduced the number of directions from 6 to 5? More on that that later. To make distance, orientation and player skill matter we had to enforce some other changes too. Characters and monsters have collision. 50 characters won’t stack on top of each other in a raid all hitting the main boss. You must plan and choose. It helps being able to fight with a spear, halberd or ranged weapons though! I’m sure you can stack close to 20 welled planned melee fighters around a boss.

This is all about the feeling, the experience of combat. You feel those skulls imploding. You experience the joy of battle stepping around using speed and control to gut your opponents. "

Edit: Actually there are more good ideas following that. Lets just hope they can pull off half of what they promise, then I will be a happy man.

[Engels]

Thanks for the link

[lamaros]

This seems a good place to ask:

Is there much detail known about Conan not provided by the official site, and if so, where's a good fansite that might have a neat summary?

[DraconianOne]

...
stuff
...

Good link.  Thanks.  Does kinda get me looking forward to it again.  Plus "Killing your friends is never out of character" is an amusing quote.

[rk47]

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

[Threash]

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

Yeah, this could make this the best pvp game yet.  So far every organized pvp battle in every game boils down to assist training whatever target is called, if they make it so the mages cant nuke the guy surrounded by their own melee fighters without hitting their own team in the back ill be happy.  Make terrain matter also please.

[Murgos]

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

Only if you can kill them too.  If you can't then you get assholes parking their toons in doorways just to be jerks.

[Slayerik]

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

Only if you can kill them too.  If you can't then you get assholes parking their toons in doorways just to be jerks.

Not if you have a red pot!

[Murgos]

Not if you have a red pot!

FOAD.

[rk47]

Collision between players? Yes please. :)

Only if you can kill them too.  If you can't then you get assholes parking their toons in doorways just to be jerks.

Yeah this is what devs want to avoid. Maybe it's possible to implement a non collision environment in certain safe areas like towns to prevent this kind of abuse.

[Furiously]

Just offer push-through and you should be fine.

[Valant]

Is it October yet?

This is the game of the year, hands down....I hope Mcquaid is watching when it launches, that way he can see the literal demise of whats left of his screwy 'Vision' in this market, as MMO's evolve past his pathetic ideas of fun....

* Sets down the 'I'm a Bitter Vanguard GL' cup and leaves the bar *   

[Hound]

Is it October yet?

This is the game of the year, hands down...

Heh being the pessimist that I am I will take a big dose of wait and see, possibly having to do with memories of Funcom's history. I know that AO turned into a really good game and that Funcom has came a long way since it's launch. Still when press releases tout new, innovative, and revolutionary it makes me skeptical.

I really do hope it has a smooth launch and offers a nice leap forward for the genre but I have to be a bit doubtful. All game look and sound wonderful in press releases.

 Projected release is Spring 08 isn't it?

[Xuri]

As far as I know they're still on schedule for a October 30th release this year.

[Slayerik]

As far as I know they're still on schedule for a October 30th release this year.

Last I heard this is correct. So yeah, spring 2008 sounds about right :)

[CharlieMopps]

Hmm... I really want to play this game... but I hope its possible to turn off that "Feel the skull crushing with your own hands" feature, or I'll never get my wife to play it. I sware to god the first time she swings her sword and someones arm falls off she's gonna freak.

[Nonentity]

Hmm... I really want to play this game... but I hope its possible to turn off that "Feel the scull crushing with your own hands" feature, or I'll never get my wife to play it. I sware to god the first time she swings her sword and someones arm falls off she's gonna freak.

...So you will hear the lamentations of your woman?

[CharlieMopps]

Hmm... I really want to play this game... but I hope its possible to turn off that "Feel the scull crushing with your own hands" feature, or I'll never get my wife to play it. I sware to god the first time she swings her sword and someones arm falls off she's gonna freak.

...So you will hear the lamentations of your woman?

shit, I hear that all the time already

[Slayerik]

Dev interview:   http://www.actiontrip.com/previews/ageofconanhyborianadventures_ii.phtml

Most notable part IMO:

"As a part of the item system you can also craft your own items. This gives a whole new level of flexibility on what you can get out of the items, compared to what you can get as drops from monsters. Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot, but since we use a socket system (up to four sockets where you can place gems) you can modify the items according to your liking.

This system can also be used to create special PvP gear, which is a new thing to the genre. You will have "pre-made" PvP gear as well, but with the socket system players can customize their PvP gear to a greater degree. This means that those who want to spend most of their time on PvP can still get uber armor, dedicated to PvP, without having to raid."



They make it sound like they are innovating, but seems they are just tweaking some Wow systems (which to me isn't a bad thing).

[Venkman]

Wow, a DIKU where "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot". Innovation!!.

Give me a break.

AoC is still very interesting to me, but mostly because of the UI and the very different way of breaking down class/archetypes (still smacks too much of something that'll eventually be redesigned, like, ya know, EQ2).

[rk47]

That's a weird system to call it. Sockets? only on craftables? If they're not as powerful, why bother picking up the craft skill when you can just straight up grind and gain drops as you level.

[tmp]

Wow, a DIKU where "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot". Innovation!!.

Give me a break.

The innovation seems to come in being able to configure your crafted item for +stamina +agility +sex, creating something that may not be _more_ powerful numbers-wise than random +stamina +shit +crap item that drops off random monster_01, but infinitely more useful for intended purpose.

Which I don't really care if it's very innovative, but certainly damn handy.

[Murgos]

EQ2 has developed something sort of similar, seeing as it is a mechanic that didn't exist at all when the game was launched it's interesting to see how it fits in there.

First of all the gear hierarchy in EQ2 goes something like, store-bought->regular loot->crafted->rare loot->enhanced crafted->major quest rewards->rare and enhanced crafted->raid loot or 'epic' level quest reward.  I'm not sure if raid loot or epic level quest rewards can be enhanced with crafting but if so then they would obviously be the top end tier.

Which now that I've written it out is quite the progression  :-D  But the point is that craftards can enhance create various tiers of gear for each major level range and 'slot' them for special abilities and effects.  Even to the point of being able to enhance and customize much of the best gear in the game.  How it works out though is that the rare crafted stuff is pretty much out of the price range of everyone but twinks at the lower levels and pretty much mandatory to make that next step into raiding.  There are essentially two slots for crafted gear, one that can be filled at creation and one that you can 'adorn' the item with later.  Non-crafted items can only be adorned.

It adds a bit of variety and complexity to the EQ2 loot system but it really isn't as dynamic as a fully functional slotting system could be.

[Venkman]

Wow, a DIKU where "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot". Innovation!!.

Give me a break.

The innovation seems to come in being able to configure your crafted item for +stamina +agility +sex, creating something that may not be _more_ powerful numbers-wise than random +stamina +shit +crap item that drops off random monster_01, but infinitely more useful for intended purpose.

Which I don't really care if it's very innovative, but certainly damn handy.

Don't get me wrong. I like the sockets system. I liked it in Diablo 2. WoW has this now with the gems too.

The point I was raising was about yet another game where they pushing crafter for crafters while ensuring their l33t endgame 10-hour-a-day'ers don't feel like all their raiding time is going to be marginalized by some cutty/pasty who never ventures beyond the safety of town. I shouldn't be so jaded, because I actually am pretty hyped for Conan (I like the lore from the books I've been reading lately, the way they break down skills across archetypes, how big and rich the world is turning out to be, and the UI innovations Funcom has come up with). But it just seems a shame that we're getting more of the same when it comes to Raid_Loot>Random_Drops>Crafted. We know why this is of course. It just seems lazy.

[tmp]

The point I was raising was about yet another game where they pushing crafter for crafters while ensuring their l33t endgame 10-hour-a-day'ers don't feel like all their raiding time is going to be marginalized by some cutty/pasty who never ventures beyond the safety of town.

Yup, I got that point, I just think we may be reading the original quote differently there... i.e when they say "not better than loot but flexible" you extrapolate it into "worse" while I read it as "not better" which could as well mean "equal" stats-wise. Now, reading it as worse does make sense given track records of other MMOs so far, but when their designer says lot of decision stem from their impatience with current game model, I'm rather hopeful they *may* make the crafting and drops equal power-wise if just because the designers themselves have no patience to camp mobs for 10+ hour straight for hawt lewt, and would rather have crafters able to provide them with it. And they probably realize there's lot of people like them (crafters included) that outweight the sense of e-importance of few catasses with too much spare time.

[Zonk]

But it just seems a shame that we're getting more of the same when it comes to Raid_Loot>Random_Drops>Crafted. We know why this is of course. It just seems lazy.

That reminded me, out of nowhere, of something from waaaay back pre-beta-WoW. Does anyone remember when Blizzard was promising that they'd be changing up the 'most powerful' equipment in a given area (leather armor, plate, axe, sword) in a varying pattern? IE: At level 20 the most powerful sword is dropped, at level 22 the most powerful sword is crafted, at level 23 the most powerful sword is purchased from a vendor ... of course, if I remember correctly this was around the same time I was reading about those awesome Hero classes they were going to have too.

Oh how the best of intentions go.

[Venkman]

And the Demons were going to be a playable race in Warcraft III. And there was going to be Alchemy in UO... oh, wait  :-D

Tmp, you have a glass-half-full outlook on life. I applaud that :) Seriously though, you're right. "Crafted items might not be more powerful than regular loot" could mean same but diverse. I'd actually like to believe that.

[shiznitz]

  I'm not sure if raid loot or epic level quest rewards can be enhanced with crafting but if so then they would obviously be the top end tier.

You can put one adornment (the crafted "enhancement") on most legendary and fabled gear. Adornments also have quality levels from Treasured to Fabled.

[Xuri]

And the Demons were going to be a playable race in Warcraft III. And there was going to be Alchemy in UO... oh, wait  :-D

Did you mean to say Necromancy, or was Alchemy a promised feature at launch but patched in later? When I started playing on the first day of 1998, Alchemy was in. I think.