PC Gamer offers exclusive Age of Conan item

by Akela Talamasca Jun 4th 2008 at 1:00PM

Filed under: At a glance, Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, Game mechanics

Readers of PC Gamer get a special gift in the July issue (currently on the stands): an exclusive Age of Conan item called the Totem of Origins, which lets the player teleport back to their home city once every 24 hours. This will probably make the July 2008 issue the best-selling issue of the year.

How do you feel about in-game items being distributed this way? Isn't it just a form of microtransactions? Would you like to see Age of Conan adopt an item mall scheme?

[Thanks, Yaisha!]

Tags: age-of-conan, in-game-item, microtransactions, pc-gamer, teleport, totem-of-origins

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

brandon said on 1:45PM 6-04-2008

Man, about fscking time, I've been wondering what the devs were thinking, not putting in a feature that allows instantly heading back to town...

double9s said on 1:56PM 6-04-2008

I think every character has a town teleport spell called Path of Asura or something like that. As far as I can tell it works just like a hearthstone.

Bissrok said on 1:57PM 6-04-2008

Not sure about the morality of all this, but I'm sure as hell going to pick up a copy on my way home from work today.

Dacool561 said on 2:03PM 6-04-2008

I dont even play AoC but this idea seems stupid for such a important item. I almost feel like i have to buy it now incase if some where down the road i decide to give Conan a try.

House said on 2:21PM 6-04-2008

"Isn't it just a form of microtransactions?"

Except that microtransactions conveniently take place within or just outside the game. I don't even know where PC Gamer is sold - GameStop? Barnes & Noble? I guess I'll figure it out, but you'd think Funcom would want to make it easier for me to give them my money.

Bob said on 2:29PM 6-04-2008

Once again the massively team seams to be unaware of anything past the last two weeks. This SAME THING happened with hellgate and lotro, and many others.

Henry said on 2:34PM 6-04-2008

I don't see what the point of this item is. As double9s mentioned, you can get back to town with Path of Asura, which has a half-hour cooldown time; the PC Gamer item only works once every 24 hours.

I guess it helps if you want to change the destination of your Path of Asura (talk to certain NPCs to do this) and then use the Totem of Origins to get back to your homeland.

Lemmo said on 4:55PM 6-04-2008

Or just leave it popped if you feel like hearthing (pathing?) more frequently than the cooldown, if only once per day.

Yaisha said on 5:11PM 6-04-2008

yay they used my tip! :D

The item doesn't seem game breaking or anything since like others have said you have a spell to return home and this totem can only be used every 24 hours. Also it will only bring you to your race's city and that can't be changed. It is just a small perk.
I think one of the past issues gave out a LotRO item but I can't remember what it was.

If it were the only way to teleport or if it could be used every hour that would be taking it too far since people would feel obligated to buy the magazine.

ScytheNoire said on 11:13PM 6-04-2008

It is useful though, and I've used it whenever it's available.

Say your Path is linked to some zone deep in Stygia and now you have a quest to go to another zone, like Cimmerian one. This gives you the chance to save time by warping to your home city, making it easier to travel to the other home city zones, and then you can always use your Path to travel back to where you were.

It's not a critical item, but a nice time saver if you have it and it's available for use.

As for where to find PC Gamer... what bubble have you been living in? It's the largest PC gaming magazine out there, if not the largest gaming magazine out there. They are available everywhere.

Origosis said on 2:08PM 6-11-2008

It's just a cute little item that can be helpful in certain situations. there is already a gate/hearthstone spell in the game, this just give you a way to port back if your port spell is still timed out, or if you wan to be able to port to 2 different locations... it's a convenience feature... which I think promotional items and the like should only be appearance changes and or convenience features.