Age of Conan: The siege warfare is a buggy lagfest

by Matt Warner Jun 20th 2008 at 10:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Bugs, Events, in-game, Forums, Game mechanics, PvP

Age of Conan players should think twice about partaking in the lag-ridden siege action this weekend; they're better off waiting until this coming Monday's patch. The naysayers concerns from beta were certified two days ago, when Sinister took part in Age of Conan's first full on siege since the game went live. If you want the quick recap it was buggy and the performance was terrible; however, Funcom deserves kudos for responding as quickly as they did. Unfortunately, the only viable solution at this time is for players to crank down the graphics and wait it out.

It's hard to tell from the picture but it shows 0.3 fps and a 3389 ping, with many players reporting similar results on their superior gaming machines. Since Funcom's response a player reported better performance on the second siege averaging about 15 fps on dual 8800 GTs.We'll see if Monday's patch improves the performance or not for all players involved. If you'd like to see some rough footage from the second siege battle Sinister has posted it on their website. (NSFW)

This also brings up an interesting question regarding graphics versus gameplay, and if current technology can handle a true dynamic PvP mmog. Age of Conan certainly isn't the first game to have these problems with wide scale player versus player events. Technical limitations and optimization issues have hindered PvP on this scale before in other MMOs like Shadowbane. Is the technology just not there? Can an intuitive and ongoing dynamic mass scale PvP MMOG with amazing graphical content exist on today's technology or is it simply not feasible?

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, battlekeep, bugs, client-performance, funcom, lag, massive-pvp, pvp, siege, siege-warfare, sieging, sinister-guild, world-firsts

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Merkur said on 2:29AM 6-21-2008

So first they crush our massive pvp hopes with limiting siege warefar to a matched 48vs48 and than they even donot manage to deliver the nessesary performance? man THAT sux!

Korriban said on 2:08PM 6-21-2008

If you take a second to look at the official forums, people have been decrying Funcoms lack of response to a growing number of issues for some time now.

Chief among these is the poor latencies being experienced by a large number of the playerbase.

That, in conjunction with the graphics perfomance problems being observed by players, regardless of their system specs, shouldn't have left anyone with a shadow of a doubt that the seige warfare was going to either fail epicly or be a pure lagfest at best.

Fanbois spring to Funcoms defence, citing that it's simply because AoC is still in its infancy. But really, how long should the average player wait for some sort of statement before writing the game off as 'released too soon' or 'should still be in Beta'?

http://onemorequest.blogspot.com

Leshrac said on 3:38AM 6-21-2008

Broken promises and broken features............people must be really bored if this game is still holding their interest.

Arabica said on 4:09AM 6-21-2008

Given the strides that have been made since open beta I'll give Fucnom the benefit of the doubt. NCsoft never did anything on time or on target and I am simply tired of playing WoW(good game, but nothing lasts forever), and AoC is fun so I am happy to see what Funcom has in store.

For all those folks that act like Funcom employees should be drug out into the street and shot for sieges not going well the very first time around? Try L2 jackasses. It's been almost four years since it was released and whole alliances "crit error" and crash to desktop because they were unfortunate enough to be on the siege field when the server decided to piss all over itself.

Four. F@$%ing. Years.

This crazed illusion of perfection that you imagined AoC(and probably every MMO before it) to be is an unreachable goal that no developer could ever attain. Sooooo you tar and feather your MMO of the moment and act like you're just the smartest kid on your block for figuring out how to complain on the internet. Bravo.

The game has technical issues galore. They're working on it...or something. That's kinda what happens with MMO's. Regardless, AoC's problems don't excuse your irrational need to swing open your gaping maw and spew bile just because you imagined that an MMO could fix all your problems in life or some shit.

Honestly, I have no idea what some of you were thinking. No, let me guess...Darkfall is going to prove everyone wrong. That'll be TOTALLY different. It will be released on time, ship bug free, and it's PVP will make up for that shitty job you have.

It'll be great. You'll show'em. You'll show them all. Until it disappoints you and the cycle starts all over again...

GenBanks said on 6:06PM 6-26-2008

Exactly. I get so tired of people repeating the same criticisms over and over again everywhere on the internet. It's like opinions are just some kind of out of control virus that people are powerless against. One person starts complaining and pretty soon everyone magnifies the complaints and is saying 'bla bla bla AoC sucks!'.

Bowman said on 6:20AM 6-21-2008

In before Nadril ^^

csavarda said on 12:28PM 6-21-2008

All anyone can say in defense of AoC is "give it time, it will only get better," but how come every time I hear something new about it it just keeps getting worse and worse?

Hades-LotD said on 1:50PM 6-21-2008

Sinister's video was from the perspective of the losing side, and did point out some good issues. We were fighting PFB in this siege and SIN only had a handful of people there, and obviously one of them made a movie they wanted to publish.

LotD won this siege, and we took the extra time to develop our own video. As you can tell we aren't having the same "technical issues" that others conveniently claimed.

You can find the videos here:

1. Hi-Res
http://dodownload.filefront.com/1073...30910057d7a687

2. Low-Res
http://files.filefront.com/Siege2avi.../fileinfo.html

Hades said on 2:14PM 6-21-2008

LotD won that siege and we made our own video. While there were some issues, we didn't have all the same tech issues that the losing side claimed to have.

You can find the videos here:

Hi-Rez
http://dodownload.filefront.com/10734579//280b15eb0adafb65b98e6f54e7b233b620fc672c0b9a58d650ddebac1a0c2c89c930910057d7a687

Streaming - Lower Quality

http://files.filefront.com/Siege2avi/;10734579;/fileinfo.html

Hades said on 2:15PM 6-21-2008

Those links pasted wrong here are the direct URL's.

You can find the videos here:

Hi-Rez
http://dodownload.filefront.com/10734579//280b15eb0adafb65b98e6f54e7b233b620fc672c0b9a58d650ddebac1a0c2c89c930910057d7a687

Streaming - Lower Quality

http://files.filefront.com/Siege2avi/;10734579;/fileinfo.html

briannewton said on 3:46PM 6-21-2008

I'm still confused Massively. Is this a news site or an editorial site? Look at your title. That's not news, that's opinion. The video I watched of Sinister's siege was pretty playable, even with like 60 people on the screen (albeit the guy had SLI'd 8800 GTs). Considering the meat of your article basically says people have been experiencing issues with the siege and that Funcom is planning to release a patch in 2 days to help with it, wouldn't something more like, "AoC users report siege issues, Funcom says patch incoming" be a little bit more unbiased than "Age of Conan: The siege warfare is a buggy lagfest"?

Matt Warner said on 4:02PM 6-21-2008

Thank you for your valid and constructive criticism. It is both, depending on the post. Interjecting our own personal opinion in a general news post is frowned upon. Usually posts with editorial opinion will be flagged as such via an opinion tag.