Age of Conan Beta

[CmdrSlack]

MMOs are a relationship, not some crappy consumer good that gets forgotten before the bill is paid off.

Unless you're talking about Vanguard.  :mrgreen:

[Slayerik]

I saw they either hit November 1 on shelf or wait until 2008. I've always felt the worst time to release a new MMO is at Christmas, when there's so much other shit to buy. MMOs are a relationship, not some crappy consumer good that gets forgotten before the bill is paid off. Imagine buying the box as a gift then the recipient seeing the fee, just when the December bills start rolling in :)

Even WoW was targeting early November, only missing it because of some last minute stuff. They were on their stress test by September.

Anyone asking for Age of Conan knows it comes with a subscription fee. I doubt some mother of a 15 year old boy would go...Hmmm, Age of Conan, half naked wenches - M - Rating...LETS GET IT!

You wouldnt want to release an MMO right after Xmas either, because of the reasons you specify. At least at Xmas time, people are prepared to spend some cash and have time off to get hooked on your game. So basically, I'd say December 1st release would be the latest, or March 1st be the earliest in 08.  I honestly hope it is something like March, so it will be properly tested and 'balanced'. But if it comes out in 07 I'll be just as happy so I finally have something to play.

[Venkman]

I dunno man. On the one hand, yea, there's a good chunk of the AoC adopters who'll be coming from the genre. On the other though, it is an IP that hasn't yet been in this genre. So like other licenses with a built in audience not already here, it's possible to attract through name recognition alone.

MMO vets will buy it the damned thing on Christmas Day if it's available and doesn't suck :)

As an aside, I wonder just how far they'll really push the M. Right now they talk big, but I wonder if they stick to their guns.

[sam, an eggplant]

The IP is worthless. Nobody read the books, and the movies were released decades ago. Even if all the tweens were dressing up like Conan and Red Sonya for halloween, we have SWG to tell us that IP alone doesn't guarantee success. AoC will succeed or fail based upon its gameplay alone.

[SnakeCharmer]

The IP is worthless. Nobody read the books, and the movies were released decades ago. Even if all the tweens were dressing up like Conan and Red Sonya for halloween, we have SWG to tell us that IP alone doesn't guarantee success. AoC will succeed or fail based upon its gameplay alone.

SWG proved IP isn't worth squat.

Hardly new news.

[cmlancas]

Double post?

[Venkman]

SWG proved IP isn't worth squat.

Hardly new news.

Imagine the SWG game experience without the SW license, nor any license for that matter (because SWG without the SW was UO 2.0 ;) ). How successful would it have been? Imagine WoW without the "Warcraft".

Both would have gotten subscribers, but SOE wouldn't have thought they could get a million subscribers without the SW license and Blizzard wouldn't have believed they'd get over 8 million without "Warcraft".

IP will not make an MMO successful by itself. You need, like, a good game to do that. But IP can attract a lot more players than those who are already in a genre that talks about these games. Once you've got them, you need to a) ensure the IP is analogous to the expected game experience (where SWG was not but WoW was a broad enough IP to allow for single-character play); and, b) your game isn't a code trainwreck (which SWG was but WoW was not).

On AoC, there's a reason Funcom chose the IP, though I don't know what it is except to say it wasn't because nobody read the books and the movie activity has been dormant for decades. I imagine it's probably due to some upcoming activity against the brand. Otherwise, how could they justify the tens of millions of dollars they've spent on it?

[Numtini]

Imagine the SWG game experience without the SW license, nor any license for that matter (because SWG without the SW was UO 2.0 Wink ). How successful would it have been?

It would have had far fewer subscribers and been far more successful. For that particular game, the IP was an albatross. If you tossed SWG out there without the IP, it could have developed more organically and it would probably have taken over the adventure/VW niche that UO has. And unlike Star Wars IP, it would have been considered successful at the 100-250k mark.

I think Conan is actually a very useful IP. Very few people have read the books cover to cover. Probably a lot of people have seen the movies on TV. But you also have comics. And just the fact that it's in the popular culture--Conan's the governor of California FFS! People hear Conan and they know what they're getting. That's the value in the IP.

And unlike SWG the gameplay probably won't revolve around Conan growing crops and raising beasts of burden.

[Venkman]

And unlike Star Wars IP, it would have been considered successful at the 100-250k mark.

Yes. But that is part of my point.

At that time, SOE would not have developed it. In their height, a "small" project like 100-250k was not in the cards. They wanted, and believed they could get, another 400k+ (at the time) success. And they thought their l33t dev skills plus one of the worlds biggest entertainment IPs would exceed their records. That sort of project gets the big budget, because they believe they'll make well in excess of that back. They first had to convince themselves, them management, then the licensor.

Meanwhile, setting out to make a slow-growth grass-roots games is entirely a different matter. You build that sort of project organically while people are playing it. Or you build it all up front on the cheap (ala Flash-based MMOs).

In neither case do you dump a AAA-budget into it before you've even invited people to experience it. And in most cases you're not a big development studio internalizing the entire development.

So, SWG without the IP probably would not have come from SOE for the same reasons UO 2.0 (and UOX) did not come. Smedley gets a bad rap for how people have interpreted him saying "virtual lifestyles" don't sell, but there is a grain of truth to that, from a certain point of view (couldn't resist ;). The POV is:

a) you're talking about a mega license like SW; and,
b) you're talking about the only type of gamers SOE knew how to talk to at the time.

[sam, an eggplant]

IP will not make an MMO successful by itself.

Obviously, but that wasn't my point. Of course IP has real value. If they were making a Harry Potter MMO, for example, the IP would give them a great advantage in initial sales. Conan, not so much.

You're correct in that there's a possibility of future brand expansion. THQ is working on Conan single-player games, and WB has been planning to make the King Conan movie for years now, although it may have fallen into the pit. But that's all 2009+.

[Johny Cee]

The IP is worthless. Nobody read the books, and the movies were released decades ago. Even if all the tweens were dressing up like Conan and Red Sonya for halloween, we have SWG to tell us that IP alone doesn't guarantee success. AoC will succeed or fail based upon its gameplay alone.

IP has two functions:

1. Built it promotion and advertising. 

2. Prebuilt lore/world/systems & design.

By taking the Conan IP, you get to pick and choose from 70 plus years of material about the world and lore,  as well as raiding it for story,  from the original Howard books, dozens of followups from other authors, a couple comic series, movies, etc.  This gives you ideas about geography, backstory for everything, huge amounts of your NPC dialogue, etc for free.

Not too mention the staggering amount of art resources that comes along with that.  Look at LOTRO,  or the LOTR movies,  for what you can do with visuals when you have decades of the best art to plunder from.

Hell,  it's not even like the IP is that insignificant promotion wise.  I remember two different Conan cartoons from the '90s,  and who hasn't played an MMO where lines from the first movie have been quoted?

[sam, an eggplant]

I guess it all depends on how much control Paradox holds over their IP. Brand protection can be a real hindrance to creativity and can even dictate design in an unhealthy way. Again we go back to SWG; I certainly don't need to give examples to this audience.

[Engels]

You know, Cee, I thought the same, till I expressed my interest in the game to my current guild, who's been with me from EQ1, DAoC, EQ2, to WoW and other game. This is a guild of approximately 20 active people, over 70 or so come and go folks, and not a single cotton pickin one of them was intersted in Conan. On the whole, the main reason was that they weren't interested in that level of violence and carnality, but there was also an unspoken 'Conan, that's wierd stuff, not gonna touch it'.

I was flabbergasted. I kept saying, "Guys! Its Conan! Its like, the father of half of the crap you drool over in every Fantasy MMO you've played! How could you not be excited by it?!" Silence. Dead Silence. Then eventually someone spoke,"Well, its done by the same people that did AO, and man, that game was crap." Of course, the person that said this hadn't ever played AO, so they were just going on word of mouth.

So my conclusion is that to the average WoW/EQ player, who like it or not, isn't quite as nerdy as we'd like them to be, AoC currently means "Game made by flailing Foreign MMO company who everyone laughed at".

Don't get me wrong, I think AoC is going to do just fine, if your yard stick is EvE, or AO. But I think its going to fail capturing the American market.

[Numtini]

By taking the Conan IP, you get to pick and choose from 70 plus years of material about the world and lore,  as well as raiding it for story,  from the original Howard books, dozens of followups from other authors, a couple comic series, movies, etc.  This gives you ideas about geography, backstory for everything, huge amounts of your NPC dialogue, etc for free.

I think Conan is a very strong IP for gaming because it has this very diverse and inconsistent IP. It's not SW or LOTR which are straightjacketed by lore-nazis. The Conan IP is about general look and feel and probably is as much about Frazetta as Howard. I think it has the right combination of publicity vs. freedom.

Provided the price was right. (And by right I mean low.)

While the Conan IP may not be huge, I would suggest that a generic fantasy game from Funcom would probably have three or four five post snark threads about it here and little other attention.

[tkinnun0]

Provided the price was right. (And by right I mean low.)

Yeah, and what is included in the price? I mean, Howard's Conan stories are out of copyright in Australia and probably some other countries as well. Doesn't that mean that the setting is free for all?

[cmlancas]

While the Conan IP may not be huge, I would suggest that a generic fantasy game from Funcom would probably have three or four five post snark threads about it here and little other attention.

Wouldn't every game ever, though? Except perhaps if there was a release for the PS3, you'd see it on frontpage with Schlid going 

[Venkman]

So my conclusion is that to the average WoW/EQ player, who like it or not, isn't quite as nerdy as we'd like them to be, AoC currently means "Game made by flailing Foreign MMO company who everyone laughed at".

Maybe. I would love to know if Funcom sought an IP for a new game they wanted to develop or if whoever handles licensing for Conan sought them out. In general, I do hope the former didn't pay much and that the latter doesn't expect much. Unfortunately, the amount of work they've dumped into the game belies a lack of expectation. I don't know for sure how much they've spent, they have spent quite a bit of time on very content-heavy graphics and a pretty-new UI for players. Even WoW didn't fundamentally change how players drive characters and activate abilities, and they were sitting on a guaranteed gold mine by virtue of the words "Blizzard" and "Warcraft" sitting in the same sentence.

Conan is not a huge IP in the West. But the game could play the IP/extension relationship in reverse. There's a chance the game can attract players to the IP by first attracting them to a somewhat-different game play experience.

[Simond]

...and who hasn't played an MMO where lines from the first movie have been quoted?

I fully expect the majority of AoC reviews to feature that line somewhere.

[Johny Cee]

...and who hasn't played an MMO where lines from the first movie have been quoted?

I fully expect the majority of AoC reviews to feature that line somewhere.

Too bad Oliver Stone cribbed it from Genghis Khan....

[Slayerik]

You know, Cee, I thought the same, till I expressed my interest in the game to my current guild, who's been with me from EQ1, DAoC, EQ2, to WoW and other game. This is a guild of approximately 20 active people, over 70 or so come and go folks, and not a single cotton pickin one of them was intersted in Conan. On the whole, the main reason was that they weren't interested in that level of violence and carnality, but there was also an unspoken 'Conan, that's wierd stuff, not gonna touch it'.

I was flabbergasted. I kept saying, "Guys! Its Conan! Its like, the father of half of the crap you drool over in every Fantasy MMO you've played! How could you not be excited by it?!" Silence. Dead Silence. Then eventually someone spoke,"Well, its done by the same people that did AO, and man, that game was crap." Of course, the person that said this hadn't ever played AO, so they were just going on word of mouth.

So my conclusion is that to the average WoW/EQ player, who like it or not, isn't quite as nerdy as we'd like them to be, AoC currently means "Game made by flailing Foreign MMO company who everyone laughed at".

Don't get me wrong, I think AoC is going to do just fine, if your yard stick is EvE, or AO. But I think its going to fail capturing the American market.

Weird, my guild is kinda the opposite. Everyone is waiting for AoC to come out, WoW burnout is hitting hard.

[Slayerik]

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6175120/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32007_live

14 min gameplay kinda vid

[SnakeCharmer]

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6175120/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32007_live

14 min gameplay kinda vid

/drool

[shiznitz]

As has been touched on above, the value of IP is giving the player some expectation of what they are buying when they grab it off the shelf. If an IP isn't clear or broad enough to give some kind of universal message, then it won't help sell the game. The Conan IP means one thing to those who saw the movies and another thing to fans of the books/comics. The literature is much darker than the movies so there is risk that if AoC is adopts the carnality of the literature, then the broader fanbase of the movies might have an IP vs expectation surprise, much the same as Star Wars fans got with SWG.

A good 30-40% of my EQ2 guild is women, mostly girlfriends and wives of other guildmates. AoC has a low attraction for them and we all know that if your wife wants to keep playing EQ2 then that is what both of you are going to do.

I am looking forward to AoC, but it isn't going to be bigger than EQ2. A smooth launch will help a lot. Funcom just got a fresh round of funding so maybe they can polish it properly in time for November.

[Slayerik]

Listened to an AoC fanbois recording of the E3 deal, sounds like there will be 3 types of servers...

PvE

PvE/PVP

FFA PvP

The guy doing the demo was like "I'm sticking with the PVE-PVP ruleset cause I dont wanna get ganked coming out of the city".

[Engels]

A good 30-40% of my EQ2 guild is women, mostly girlfriends and wives of other guildmates. AoC has a low attraction for them and we all know that if your wife wants to keep playing EQ2 then that is what both of you are going to do.

I don't know about that. Its not as if playing a woman on AoC means you have to be a naked ho by default. I seriously doubt that FunCom will be so short sighted. And if you think women aren't interested in internet sexuality, you may wanna read Lum's latest Second Life experience post.

[nosfentor]

Any IP is worthless if you fight against the essence of the source material (or simply ship a crummy game). SWG and UO are both near criminal in being handed the holy grail of IPs, and delivering far below what was possible. UO based on a game about 8 virtues, abandoned them in favor of wild PVP that was pretty much inescapable. SWG took epic Space Opera and gave us, uh, moisture farmers and dancers. Star Wars games did so well for so long, that it got to the point where I think some developers thought they could ship turd in a box with Star Wars printed on it and the masses would happily fork over cash.

So far Conan looks fairly promising, and even though it's been asserted that no one read the books - I did, and apparently enough people did to get two feature films made - and that while the movies are decades old both were recently re-released on DVD. Somewhere, it would seem that someone sees the IP as having value. Hell, someone at OSI did back in the day - they pretty much lifted the spirit of the entire intro sequence from the first Conan movie for UO's intro.

[raydeen]

http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6175120/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32007_live

14 min gameplay kinda vid

Wow. I'm definitely interested now. And it sounds like the pet class is monstrous (and I <3 a good pet class). I mean, up to eight bare-breasted demon chicks following me around. They better make a pimp mini-game. Think of the gold you'd rake in!

[Riggswolfe]

I guess it all depends on how much control Paradox holds over their IP. Brand protection can be a real hindrance to creativity and can even dictate design in an unhealthy way. Again we go back to SWG; I certainly don't need to give examples to this audience.

It wasn't the IP that killed SWG. It was 2 things:

1) Bad coding and odd design choices.
2) The game that we did get didn't fit the IP at all. A Star Wars MMO should've been about the action and the ships. We got Moisture Farmer SIM 0.5.

I don't know about that. Its not as if playing a woman on AoC means you have to be a naked ho by default. I seriously doubt that FunCom will be so short sighted. And if you think women aren't interested in internet sexuality, you may wanna read Lum's latest Second Life experience post.

Damn though that'd be a fun world! I want to own some naked ho slaves!

[WayAbvPar]

The best news is that an Oblivion-level PC can handle it. Yay!

[Viin]

Looks good, but 80 levels? Gah.

[Trippy]

80 is the new 50.

[cmlancas]

True. Why not just make the level cap unreachable?

I like the idea of sublevels better. Then there's no such thing as "gear that becomes obsolete."


Why do devs not do this more? :o

[Slayerik]

Looks good, but 80 levels? Gah.

Least they dropped 120 levels from the AO cap ;)

[sam, an eggplant]

I was seriously unimpressed by their demonstration of the raid game. I thought AoC was going in a different direction than that crap. What a bummer.

[Engels]

I'm not sure what you expected, sam_eggplant_01. I mean, a raid is a raid, no? Go to dungeon, find super bosses, kill super bosses. Or am I lacking in imagination here? Oh, and you did catch the part where they gave the player 99999 health and a 700% damage multiplier, or some such, so he could solo the content for the demo's purpose, yes?