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Age of Conan launch event includes fire-breathers, Spellweaving

Michael Zenke — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Launches

Earlier this week Funcom threw a giant bash in Oslo, Norway to celebrate the upcoming launch of their long in-development MMO Age of Conan. Ten Ton Hammer was on-hand to check out the festivities, and came away with a number of goodies showing off both the game and Funcom's ability as a party host. The event offered fire-eaters, rock music, and plenty of opportunities for game journalists to get a look at some long-hidden parts of the game.

Most fascinating for caster fans, Funcom finally uncovered the concept of spellweaving. TTH describes it as 'going into a trance', unlocking greater potential within the class. The Priest of Mitra, the Necromancer, the Demonologist and the Tempest of Set will all receive this ability, a restriction that we find kind of interesting; we were under the assumption that this was supposed to be something of an answer to the melee class' real-time combat; if not all caster classes are getting this, what's the point?

The site also walked away with a series of videos showcasing storyline basics and combat, followed by an interlude in the Thunder River zone to show off the real-time hack and slashery, as well as spellweaving. The final video is a whole piece touching on the lore of the game - with an appearance by Conan himself.

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Funcom's official response to the Age of Conan early access sellout

Michael Zenke — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Launches

Yesterday we discussed some surprising news: the Age of Conan early-access program you could pay to enter along with your box pre-order was "full". Funcom was, effectively, turning people away at the door. Today the official forums have a statement from the AoC team explaining why the program was shut down. It all has to do with server capacity, essentially. They're working right now to migrate their Beta servers to a live server footing, and they've only got a handful working right now.

The Open Beta closed up shop on Sunday, and since then they've been working to get their hardware setup squared away. The problem, and the reason the early access problem was shut down, is that registrations for the program spiked hard on Tuesday of this week. According to the statement: "Early on Wednesday the capacity limit was reached and automatically shut off. The entire program is now mostly sold out globally, with some local variation. We had no way of anticipating the spike we saw at the end."

What's interesting is that Closed Beta is apparently still running - they're milking that resource for data all the way to the end, evidently patching and fixing right up until launch day. In the meantime, disappointed early-access hopefuls are just going to have to wait for their chance at Hyborian glory.

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Funcom announces names for early access servers

Michael Zenke — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:15:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Launches

The official Age of Conan site has a bit of information we're sure you're going to want to read: server names for early access players! Despite the issues they've had with interest outstripping server capacity, it's great to see the company responding to a pressing community concern. At the moment there are a total of 31 servers slated for early access, spread across three server types, four languages, and five regions. There are sure to be more servers launched for the game's proper release, but at the moment these are what you've got to choose from.

US Servers (Early Access 17th of May)

PvE Servers

Set
Dagoth
Zug
Omm
Derketo
Thog
Wiccana
Gwahlur (recommended Oceanic)
Anu

PvP Servers

Tyranny
Bane
Deathwisper
Bloodspire (recommended Oceanic)
Doomsayer

RP-PvP Server

Cimmeria

Read on below the cut for the EU English-language servers, as well as servers for French, German, and Spanish-speaking players. So, quick: which server are you playing on?

Continue reading Funcom announces names for early access servers

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AoC video guide to emote animations

Shawn Schuster — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:30:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan, Culture, Game mechanics, New titles, Roleplaying, Humor

Ten Ton Hammer has done it once again, providing us with one of the most entertaining guides we've seen yet on Age of Conan: a video guide to /emotes! If you're still apprehensive (which has its own /emote) about getting that pre-order for AoC, this might just do it for you.

Seriously though, these emotes are not only entertaining, they're a testament to the amount of detail that has gone into this game. Mostly, emotes are useful in social roleplaying situations, but to find a game that has this many otherwise seemingly-mundane character animations this early before launch shows that either they got the important stuff out of the way first, or they decided emotes are more important than anything else. Um, we're pretty sure it's the latter. May we suggest the /chicken?

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Naming your AoC characters

Shawn Schuster — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Forums, Game mechanics, New titles

So there you are, sitting at the AoC character creation screen. You've just installed the game, created your perfect character that you will be playing for the next few months or years, but now you stare blankly at the little box with the blinking cursor asking for your character name. Argh!

Fret no more, my Hyborian friends. There is an easy way to create the perfect name for your AoC character without resorting to something like Chuknorissrulez or Ipwndurface. A simple, easy-to-use web-based name generator has been created around the infrastructure of the GE Name program. With proper permissions in place already, this generator can prove to be a valuable tool for those not as familiar with the Conan lore, yet eager to get started in the game.

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Building an Age of Conan guild city

Shawn Schuster — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Game mechanics, Guilds, New titles, Academic, Education

Another exciting aspect of Funcom's upcoming Age of Conan is the Guild City System. This is mostly unique to other MMOs, in that you build the guild city not as a hall, but as an actual city with multiple buildings within. Each building serves its own purpose for offense and defense against other guilds and attacking forces, and is upgradeable to different tiers, much like an RTS.

In a recent article at MMORPG.com, they run down the details of each of these guild city buildings, and their biggest advantages. Also in this article are some details on guild leadership itself. In order to create a guild city, your player will need to be a guild leader, level 40 or higher, and have a guild membership of at least 24 players. You will then have the choice of 3 environmental locations currently for your guild city. Let the land-grab begin!

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New AoC trailer promises gender equality in ass-kicking

William Dobson — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan, New titles

"They say it's a man's world -- is it, baby?" - Keaira, as she ruthlessly plunges a blade through a man's heart. A new trailer called "Femme Fatale" shows off the lethal women of Age of Conan, and why you will want to stay on their good side. Keaira is the star, and she and other Hyborian lasses do their part in making sure no one underestimates the fairer sex in AoC. Check out the embedded clip above (rated M for Mature), or visit the community site to download the trailer at a higher resolution. The time to shred the veil is here!

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AoC Early Access program sold out

William Dobson — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:15:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Events, in-game, Launches, New titles, News items

So it seems that a lot of people want to play Age of Conan a few days early. The Early Access program that was offered to those who pre-ordered the game has sold out for all English versions of the game, with limited spots left for Germany and France. If you have a pre-order code for your in-game items, that will still work, but if you didn't actually register and buy your early access by this point, you're out of luck.

This has obviously left many players upset and angry, and the forum thread that broke the news is filled with people lamenting their ruined weekend. Some direct their anger towards retailers who failed to provide their codes in time, others point the finger at Funcom. Regardless of Funcom's reason for restricting early access places, a number of forum posters have highlighted the community site's earlier mention of the limited availability: "Hurry though, because the Early Access is only available while supply lasts!". That won't help ease the pain though for those who had their hearts set on lopping heads off on the 17th.

[Thanks, ScytheNoire!]

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The Daily Grind: What's more important: content or polish?

Chris Chester — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Age of Conan, Bugs, Opinion, The Daily Grind

In a recent post, blogger Cuppycake asked a very prescient question that we thought we would relate to you. What's more important to the long-term success of an MMO title: the quantity of content at launch or a high-level of polish? The way development works these days, developers are often hard-pressed to finish a game on a deadline, and at some point they have to make the decision whether to keep implementing new features, zones, and graphical assets, or go back and refine the content they have to make sure it's perfect. Games like Everquest 2 exemplify that first path - pushing out huge quantities of content from the beginning, but turning off many with their initially slow refinement process. LotRO on the other hand is highly polished, but has to undergo frequent content updates to keep players interested.

With Age of Conan right around the corner, would you choose that it be refined but small or huge and a little buggy?

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One million signed up for AoC beta by the end

Samuel Axon — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Age of Conan, Launches, New titles, News items

Age of Conan's beta test has concluded, and the retail launch is only a few days away, so it's a perfect time for Funcom to start (or rather, continue) hyping the game to the Nth degree. What better way to convince people to play it that than to make the argument: "everyone else is doing it!" Funcom announced on the AoC community website that the AoC beta has surpassed 1,000,000 sign-ups.

A little over a month ago we reported that Warhammer Online had hit the same landmark, and our readers had some interesting comments about how much this landmark really matters. Now is an especially good time to ask that question -- some players might not be buying AoC because of performance and stability issues in the IGN open beta event. It's not a stretch to bring into question the true function of a beta (is it marketing, or technical testing?), as well.

Does it matter? We don't know, but we'll find out soon enough.

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Funcom fields tough quarter in anticipation of AoC launch

Chris Chester — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, MMO industry, New titles

We all know that MMOs don't come cheap. While we still chuckle a bit at the suggestion that it takes an investment of over $1 billion to make a truly blockbuster MMO, it does cost quite a bit to keep a team of highly skills programmers and artists housed and clothed for the daunting 2 year+ development cycle that they're subject to these days.

So when Funcom announced an earnings loss of $3.13 million during the first quarter of this year ending March 31, we can't say we were terribly surprised. They continue to subsist on revenues from Anarchy Online, which they've described as steady, while they gear up for the Age of Conan launch. While AoC is still less than a sure thing, they're confident that they'll have a strong launch, based on the million plus beta applications they've received and generally positive reports they've been getting from the experts.

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Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan's 250 hours

Cameron Sorden — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:30:00 EST

Filed under: Age of Conan, MMO industry, Endgame, Races, Player vs. Everything

It's going to take you 250 hours to get to level 80 in Age of Conan. That's the big news today, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, that tells us very little about the actual game. Saying you have 250 hours of content means nothing unless that content is fun content. On the other, it does let you know exactly what you're getting into as far as a time commitment goes (on average). It's also important to note that that's pretty close to World of Warcraft's benchmark, too -- most players can get from 1-70 in 6 to 14 days played. I think my first 70 took me about 7 and 1/2 days.

What's a good length of time for the leveling game to be, anyway? If you make it too long and drawn out, won't many players quit in frustration before they ever get to the top (EverQuest was notorious for having players that never capped)? Maybe. Let them level too quickly, though, and they'll quit if there's nothing to do at the top. Even if there is something to do when you're capped, for many people, leveling is the game. I'm probably one of those people. I hate structured PvP (like arenas) and while I dabble in raiding, I really have more fun leveling. So is 250 hours long enough to keep you interested? And why even tell us that in the first place? What does Age of Conan's 250 hours mean to you?

Continue reading Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan's 250 hours

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Average Conanite will reach level 80 in 250 hours

Samuel Axon — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Game mechanics, Launches, New titles, News items, PvE

Age of Conan game director Gaute Godager said at the launch event in Norway that reaching level 80 will take "on average 250 hours of gameplay," according to videogamer.com.

The first few levels will come lightning fast, but the bulk of them up to 60 will be comprised of between two and three hours of gameplay. After that, it will get a bit slower, thanks to some input from beta testers. By our math, that leaves five hours per level including and after 60, but who knows how that will be distributed.

Whether this ends up being faster than competing games like World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online by the end probably depends on your play-style. He said "on average," so does that mean the hardcore achievers will reach the top in 90 hours and the casuals will mosey on up there within 500 hours? There's been a lot of chit chat and speculation in the Massively office about this news. We suppose we'll get a good sense of it by midway through the summer.

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FPS gamers build skyscrapers, MMO gamers fling poo, film at 11

Brenda Holloway — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Game mechanics, New titles, Opinion

It's a little disconcerting to be told that your game genre of choice, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, is the last refuge of people who more or less play games in their sleep, unable to hack the action of a REAL game. As played by REAL gamers. Who are not us. How does AT Wire's Alex Taldren come by this startling conclusion? Keen of Keen and Graev's posted recently that Age of Conan's combo-based melee system just replaces a single keystroke with five, and that gamers will soon automate combos with macros or smart keyboards back to one key only.

This was the moment when Taldren threw up his hands and admitted something that should have been clear given his upright posture and relatively hairless body: He was not originally an MMO gamer. In fact, he had come from the realm of first person shooters, and looks in on us scratching his head and watching MMO gamers "wiping their asses with leaves". This is a man who loves his keystrokes with a fiery passion. And why aren't MMO gamers real gamers? Writes Taldren, "MMO gamers are people who generally don't enjoy playing their games."

There it is. Real gamers play because they love playing games. We MMO gamers play MMOs because we don't ... like ... games? We have to admit to some confusion. Maybe Alex will stop by and clear this up.

[Via MMO Gamers]

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An interview with Age of Conan's Andrew Griffin

Kyle Horner — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Age of Conan, Interviews, New titles, News items

Not too long ago Gamespot AU got the opportunity to sit down with Andrew Griffin, the senior systems designer for Age of Conan. They took the chance to pick his brain on a myriad of topics ranging from class archetypes to the ever-looming topic of the MMO grind. Of course, most of you know by now that Age of Conan's method of dealing with grind largely comes from its focus on story-driven quests and an active combat system.

Our experiences have shown us that the real-time combat certainly helps alleviate grind-fatigue. Then there's the quests, which are actually pretty interesting in the first 20 levels. Whether or not the combat and quest experience changes beyond the early levels is the big question. Will it change for the better or for the worse? Age of Conan's servers are only about a week away from going live, so we'll all be finding out these answers soon enough.

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Is this the age of the mature MMO?

Shawn Schuster — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:30:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles

In a recent interview with Funcom's Erling Ellingsen, he speaks candidly about the direction he sees MMOs taking in the near future, and how Age of Conan will soon be considered a pioneer in regards to more mature gameplay.

His valid points include the fact that the average gamer is well into the mature category, and the younger MMO players who started out with World of Warcraft four years ago are now considered mature. So not only is the market maturing, but he sees much more upcoming competition for AoC in regards to the mature genre.

Be sure to read the complete interview for more insight into the direction of the game, and how Funcom views the importance of a proper MMO launch, avoiding the mistakes of others.

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Funcom seeks volunteer forum moderators

Samuel Axon — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Forums, Launches, New titles, News items

Funcom posted a bulletin seeking volunteers to moderate the official Age of Conan forums. The game will be launching in just over a week, so if you're a particularly passionate member of its community, this is probably a good time to jump on board.

All you need: strong English language skills, an infraction-free couple of months of history on the AoC forums, "organization skills," and a little bit of forum moderation experience. It's too bad it's not a paying gig, but there's no doubt that there are people out there who are committed enough to the game that they'll help out for free. So if you're one of those people, head on over; Funcom has provided a application for you to fill out.

Just don't be too shocked when you end up spending hours every day battling level 80 elite trolls.

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Age of Conan newsletter #16 covers the basics

Michael Zenke — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:30:00 EST

Filed under: At a glance, Betas, Fantasy, Age of Conan, New titles

The latest edition of the regular Age of Conan newsletter delves into the fundamentals of the game. Erling Ellingsen has offered up a pair of weatherman-style videos, talking prospective players through the title's realtime combat system and PvP combat (a video we discussed last month). Now that we're closing in on launch, the Funcom folks are uncovering and going deeper on higher-end systems. The official site has up a post on constructing a guild city, the game's constructible element. Those constructions, player-made buildings, are the topic of another piece explaining more of the high-end guild game. Another article gives some background on the Poitain area of Aquilonia, a fertile land of tall grasses and hardwood forests.

The newsletter also features a developer profile of gameplay designer Per Storløkken, a preview of the Age of Conan comic book (featuring the Stygian chargers pictured above), a fan-created comic, and screenshots of the aforementioned Potain area. Great reading material for a (hopefully) lazy weekend.

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Petition for the black bar of censorship in Age of Conan

Colin Brennan — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, MMO industry, News items, Humor

Apparently people already want the black bars slapped on the chests of the fine ladies of Hyboria, as 1UP got wind of a petition being crafted to add a nudity toggle to Age of Conan.

Now, obviously everyone anticipated that the nudity would be a hot button issue - the developers already added an option to turn off nipples in the game. The source post in the forums though does add a decent option - simply a switch to give ladies bras for players who would like to play the game without the nudity.

1UP, however, went a step further and created some pretty funny ways of blocking out nudity in AoC. If you haven't dropped by yet, you should check it out. They have a considerable amount of fun with a simple black bar.

[Via 1UP]

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PDXMMO: get ready to party

Jonathan Northwood — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, EVE Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Events, real-world

Do you enjoy online gaming? Well, who doesn't, really? Do you like the idea of being surrounded by like-minded folks who're playing World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Age of Conan in as obsessive a fashion as you? Think you have the Bawls to play for three days solid? Want to hook up with friends -- and trash-talk a few enemies along the way -- in order to share the MMO love? If so, get ready to visit Portland, Oregon, because PDXMMO v. 1.0 is finally here. You'll need to create a PDXLAN forum account in order to register for PDXMMO, but you'd better hurry: seating is limited to 80, and 20 seats are already claimed.

From 6 p.m. Friday, 18 July, through 3 p.m. Monday, 21 July, the Portland Airport Holiday Inn Ballroom is being converted into an MMO-only space. For USD $60.00 -- or, if you prefer, just about the price of a tank of gas -- you'll get:

Internet connectivity via Comcast Cable (... by way of PDXLAN staffer Notoes)
3 Days of Non-stop MMOs
Admission to PDXLAN Schedued Contests
Admission to the PDXLAN Raffle (2 Tickets)
1/3 of a 8 foot round table for you and your computer
600W for your tower and space for your 24" or less LCD / 21" or less CRT
Admission to the World of Warcraft 1 person Free For All Tournament

So get your vacation requests in at work, stock up on the caffeine tabs and beef jerkey, and get ready to party. PDX is ready for you. Here's the question, though: are you ready for PDXMMO?

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