Craig Morrison's latest AoC letter discusses guild features in Update 6

by William Dobson Jul 24th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Guilds, Patches, News items

As July is coming to a close, Age of Conan's game director Craig Morrison has weighed in with his letter to the community for the month. The biggest discussion point this time around is a new 'Guild Renown' system that will be introduced with the next major content patch, Update 6. This system will allow members of a guild to contribute to its reputation on two separate scales. A guild's Renown Level will be increased by members earning Valor points (from PvE activities like questing and killing NPCs), Glory points (PvP) and Artisan points (crafting). Higher Renown Levels will mean access to better guild city vendors and other bonuses -- even a brand new building type that Morrison does not elaborate on in this letter.

The other scale that guilds will be measured on is their Renown Ranking. Renown Rankings compare guilds to each other in a competitive manner. Essentially, they show which guilds are earning the most Valor, Glory and Artisan points over a period of time; currently the plan is to reset the rankings weekly, but it may change. To make sure that smaller guilds have a chance, only the top 'X' contributors from each guild will count towards the Renown Rankings -- the number of contributors hasn't been nailed down yet. The rewards for having the best Renown Rankings will consist mainly of aesthetic bragging rights, like a gold, silver or bronze marker on a guild tag.

Morrison also used the letter to thank those who took up AoC's recent re-evaluation offer and to break the news that veteran rewards are coming some time soon. Special vendors will give Funcom's most loyal customers access to things like social status items and experience potions. His next letters will go into a bit of detail about some other Update 6 content, like new zones (Thoth-Amon's Stronghold and House of Crom) and new Tower-based PvP objectives in the Border Kingdoms.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, artisan-points, breaking, craig-morrison, funcom, game-director, glory-points, guild-renown, guilds, house-of-crom, letter, letter-from-the-game-director, renown-level, renown-ranking, thoth-amons-stronghold, tower-based-pvp, update-6, valor-points

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

THAC0 said on 10:17AM 7-24-2009

Sounds like a pointless system that no one will care much about.

double9s said on 11:16AM 7-24-2009

Ironically, it's just like THACO.

THAC0 said on 11:24AM 7-24-2009

You couldn't resist being a smart ass could you?

THAC0 was a simple system Roll high, subtract your roll from your THAC0. What AC did you hit? If you dint use that system how would you determine if you hit or not? It wasn't a pointless system. I don't know how a guild rating system that means nothing but a gold star is anything like an essential system to determine weather or not you land a hit on a creature.

double9s said on 12:05PM 7-24-2009

Haha, I actually don't have any feelings towards THACO (the system) either way. I just knew it was rule that got removed (you might say as if no one cared about it) and that today I'd like to be a smart ass.

THAC0 said on 12:10PM 7-24-2009

They did remove it yes. its completely irrelevant to the game now and no one cares about it. You are correct. When wizards of the coast got the rights to D&D from TSR they dumbed the game down a lot i guess.

I just thought you were making a snide remark about how you didn't like me tbh. I must be feeling defensive today.

FK said on 10:28AM 7-24-2009

And still I wouldn't go back to that "game" if they'd pay me.

wolfsterne said on 11:05AM 7-24-2009

Purge the Asshole community and maybe I'll try it again.

Hub said on 12:09PM 7-24-2009

The community is fine, if you had a hard time bad luck but move on or something. It's eighteen plus and with that kind of freedom that odd talking anus will appear, it's not the end of the world. Some people like more controlled environments, some folks like things a little more edgy. It's all good.

Even in the seemingly infamous /global I rarely see worse than the odd cry of go back to WoW, more usually it's some nerd-tastic discussion on ATI vs Nvidia (Nvidea FTW, ATIs linux drivers are a disgrace) Unless of course you find words like 'cache' or 'rendering' as being deeply offensive to you, then I can understand the horror.

Maybe it's just me and I've been lucky on the server I play on or something but I honestly think it's ... nice.

And THACO was way too much hassle, 3rd edition ruled ;) But, I'm the freak who thought the Spelljammer modules looked like a good idea, so what do I know.

Jason said on 2:05PM 7-24-2009

The community of AoC is definately not fine. Maybe I'm just spoiled coming from LOTRO and the community it has. Everytime I log into AoC, I see someone talking in global about sex, calling people names, shouting curse words, and other crazyiness. You say people are over 18, I say they are under 16. I'll take the 30+ year old crowd of LOTRO anyday.

chriskovo said on 1:15PM 7-24-2009

Hmm looks like they stole this idea from Warhammer :P

Hub said on 2:34PM 7-24-2009

@ Jason

Oh well, each to their own. :)

As someone who is 30+ (oh god, only just) I can tell you with some, darkly comic, sincerity that it takes an older crowd to do such things freely, on account of us all being so old. Whether it's in the workplace, an office, a shop floor, or whatever, that's how a lot of my peers I've known over the years have been like and have got steadily worse when joking around. The trick is not to pay the slightest attention, it's just talking crap, no one means it :) And if they do, well who cares. Price of freedom I guess.

Not that there is actually much grief on there. I've seen sex come up on there but it's really not that graphic or gross.... Depressingly restrained really. Crap, maybe I'm missing out.

And as someone who is a regular LOTR online player I would bet you a lot of money that the 'average' age on the servers I've played on is a lot younger than AoC. Average being the key word there.

starzzareblind said on 5:01PM 7-24-2009

I like the idea.

Digest said on 11:39PM 7-24-2009

I love the idea and the community in AoC is just like in any MMO's I've played before. It's a world mix with different types of gamers. I had experienced worst community than AoC. Play free to play games from Asia you'll know what I'm talking about because I'm from Asia.