"No retreat, no surrender" for Age of Conan
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches, PvP, PvE
Age of Conan’s Game Director Craig Morrison recently had an interview at Gamespy to dicuss his game’s future. In the end though, he ended up speaking more about the past, and in particular, past problems and mistakes that have now been seen to. Technical game client issues, a lack of PvE content at certain levels, and an unsatisfying PvP system were all cited as causes of people turning their back on AoC — followers of the game since launch would agree with all of these things being issues — but Morrison went through this list and explained how his team has improved the game on each of these fronts. The embedded video, featuring Erling Ellingsen, shows off some of the current and planned improvements.
As for talk of the future, Morrison reminded us that Xibaluku is coming for the PvE junkies, and mentioned the PvP resource system, which should bring a new level of interaction to PvP gameplay. He believes that the biggest issue still remaining from launch is to do with a shortage of good gear, and an itemization overhaul is in the works to address this. We can also expect some more guild and community functions later in the year. The stage is set for a comeback; now we’ll just have to wait and see if the players come to the party.
“No retreat, no surrender” for Age of Conan originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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AoC’s Craig Morrison Talks PvP and Server Merge - Ten Ton Hammer
With server merges in place Hyboria is seeing a revitalization in game and nothing makes this more obvious than Game Director Craig Morrison’s zeal for moving forward. In a recent interview with GameSpy, Morrison had this to say:
According to Morrison, as the company worked through its opening-day problems, it also shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company would scale back when it needed to. “The server merges were done and dusted within 48 hours. We’re very pleased with how it went and the communities have come together pretty well.” Among other elements, Morrison cites the fact that all battlekeeps were deleted when the servers were merged, yet all the available spots were claimed and being fought over within a few hours.
“The bottom line is that players are happier when there are more players around,” Morrison said regarding the server merge. “The main thing we needed to do is focus on new content and improving the areas that launch players didn’t like. As we’ve done so and the game has gotten better, the community has become much more positive and started to spread positive word-of-mouth. The more that happens, the more people who have left might think that maybe they should give the game another chance and the more new players might decide to jump in.”
In fact, Morrison stated that only one major area from the launch remains to be addressed: the lack of decent gear. That, he says, will be addressed in a big itemization re-work that will help clarify item statistics and make gear more meaningful in the game. Going forward, he’s looking toward brand-new ideas and systems that the team can finally start thinking seriously about. “Just recently the balance has started to shift from fixing old things to working out new things to add to the game,” he said. “As we get through this year, we’re looking to add all sort of new community features and guild functionality. [Age of Conan] has so much potential that it’s finally beginning to reach. It’ll be nice to be able to move on to new stuff.”
Morrison also talks about Age of Conan’s PvP and consequence system and the tricks of keeping those balanced.
If you’d like to read more of this interview, stop on by GameSpy to get the full story!
Reply by Cyanbane :: Question of the Day (1/28) - Downloadable Vs Store Purchased
For me personally I enjoy the digital downloads IF I trust the company. One thing that in this economy that you have to think about is what happens if the infrastructure that you are using to download the game (just as an example, lets say Steam or SOE) goes under? With the physical product I still have the ability to utilize the game if I were to format my system or anything of that nature. I would not necessarily always have that ability if the company were to go under and the game I am playing is not a single player (non net) game.
The reason I asked this as question of the day (something I am gonna try my damnest to get on here and do every morning) is that I preordered Dawn of War II last night from Amazon (physical box) for $50 total. I was on Steam last night to download the demo and I saw that they will have the digital version on there on release day, but for the same price. I was tempted to order the digital version just so that I could start the download before heading into work and then have it ready when I got home, but the further I thought about it, with no discount incentive for the digital version, I thought I might as well just order it over Amazon and get the physical version. The kicker for me personally was what would happen if Steam were to go under? (not that I think they ever will, just utilizing it as an example) and I am unable to download the game after a system format if steam were no longer present.
Reply by Dardore :: Question of the Day (1/28) - Downloadable Vs Store Purchased
For me personally, I like to touch and feel the product. Plus getting the thrill out of the trip to the store, buying it off the shelf and manually loading it, makes me still feel more secure from a digital download. Most importantly, personal bandwidth issues prevent me from doing digital downloads, as I am on a Sprint Wireless Network Card, so it’s limited and capped (though I’ve never actually been warned about going over the limit). Ultimately though, as I think you are going to see possibly a continued increase in the percentage of Digital Downloads of products, the majority of products I would assume is going to be retail shelf bought.
However, if they can create massive incentive base to digitally download, I think you’ll probably see that percentage increase. Retail packaging does come with some overhead. Material Costs, Package Printing, Overhead in design, CD/DVD, printed paper mailing literature, and most importantly freight. This overhead is reduced by digitally downloading the product. Although you probably pick up some with the bandwidth and servers needed for storing and distributing the content. I am familiar with manufacturing costs of retail packaging costs, but not so much on the digital distribution costs, so I don’t know if that’s a wash or not.
Ultimately, I would think retail packaging still has the majority of the distribution method.
AoC: Letter from the Game Director - Ten Ton Hammer
It’s about that time again when we get an update from Game Director Craig Morrison. We get to hear details about the latest zones that are currently on test and what the future holds for Age of Conan.
Now that the server merges are complete and the new communities start to come together, in some cases alongside new allies, in others against new foes, I wanted to take some time out and talk a little about what’s coming up in the immediate future.
This starts with the next major game update, and with it some great new game-play and a host of new game-play updates and new features. The update is currently available on the test servers and we’ve been making good progress on getting it polished up and ready for the live environment.
I have enjoyed playing through the new Xibaluku dungeon with the dev team over the last few weeks and I wanted to share a little more in terms of what you can expect to see coming your way when this dungeon hits the live servers. Xibaluku is a six person instance for level 80 players found in Thunder River. That much we have already said in previous information, so more importantly – what does it play like?
With Xibaluku we have challenged the developers to make the dungeon an even more dynamic, interactive and challenging encounter for players that will stand up well to replay. I think the game-play we introduced with Ymir’s Pass in the previous update cycle raised the bar in terms of the fun factor of the new content and we wanted to take it even further with this dungeon.
Xibaluku contains up to a dozen boss encounters, some are essential to progress, some are completely optional but all have been designed to try and provide a really dynamic and changing experience in the dungeon. Some of the bosses may even appear with different abilities or in different forms across different visits! I also say ‘up to’ a dozen because not all the bosses may appear on any given single play through, some are rotated in and out, and there are even two very different end encounters in the dungeon. Which end boss you get will depend on factors relating to your progress through the dungeon itself (and no, I’m not going to provide any spoilers here as to what those factors are!).
Many of the encounters take the game-play challenge up a notch and require you to not just consider the boss itself, but also to consider the environment around you, and even to perform other challenging, even platform style, actions during the boss fight. I think the team has done a fantastic job on focusing keenly on the fun factor in this dungeon and I am really looking forward to what you all make of it!
Another major change that’s on the horizon with the next update that I wanted to mention in this letter are the new PVP resources. This new game mechanic means that after this update PVP Battlekeeps must be made from special resources harvested in the Border Kingdoms themselves. Open world PVP is a game element that many of you have said you enjoy, but we wanted to introduce more reasons for you to take the fight to the open spaces of the Border Kingdoms and give you meaningful resources to fight over. Want to restrict an opposing guild from building up their resources, and head off a challenge? Now you have the ability to do so! We will be keeping a close eye on how this element plays out and are prepared to continue to tweak and adjust the resources and their locations as we continue testing. We firmly believe that continually looking to add more meaningful goals for PVP is very important and we will continue to work on this area of the game over future updates!
Open world PVP is also only one flavor of the PVP available and we are also taking steps to make sure that the instanced PVP battles are also more accessible. The next update will bring with it a better sign-up process that should allow people to find games much easier, and result in more frequent games.
That’s just a few of the new changes and features that will be introduced with the new update. Remember you can check out the test servers for full details of what’s coming up, including full provisional update notes on the test server forum.
Last, but by no means least, the Direct X10 version is also starting to shape up nicely. While we aren’t going to allow it hold back the deployment of the rest of the update we are hard at work ensuring that we concentrate on optimizing the DX10 features and making sure it’s ready to launch as soon as possible. A huge thanks to everyone who has given us excellent feedback from the test server, it really does make this stage of the process much easier.
In my next letter we start to cover the upcoming item and statistic changes in a lot more detail. As soon as the latest update is live the attention will move to introducing you to the nature of these changes and how they will affect the game. All the core work is now done internally and we are currently working on converting all the existing items to the new system. We hope to move the items and statistics update to the test servers as soon as possible after the upcoming update is released to live.
So that’s about it for this update. Thank you all again for continuing to make Hyboria an exciting and dynamic world!
New dungeon, PvP options coming to Age of Conan
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches
With the server merges slated for Age of Conan complete, Funcom can now turn their full development attention to bug fixes and new content for their violent fantasy title. A brand new Director’s Letter from Craig Morrison has outlined new shinies that are coming to Hyborea very soon - so soon they’re already on the test server. The biggest chunk of newness has to be the Xibaluku dungeon. It’s a six person instance aimed at level 80 players, and located in Thunder River. The “goal” of the dungeon for the developers was to create a dynamic encounter that is eminently replayable. Depending on a given run-through, the locale might contain up to a dozen boss encounters. “Some of the bosses may even appear with different abilities or in different forms across different visits! I also say ‘up to’ a dozen because not all the bosses may appear on any given single play through.”
The other big focus for the next content drop focuses on PvP. Battlekeeps will now require new resources harvested from the Border Kingdoms to expand. The designers hope to focus open world PvP into these areas, giving PvP guilds not only specific areas to skirmish over, but also allowing them the opportunity to thwart their foes. They’re also introducing a new signup process for the PvP mini-games that should be joining and enjoying that content easier than ever. Read through to the full letter for all the details.
New dungeon, PvP options coming to Age of Conan originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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AoC Game Director Optimistic About the Future - Ten Ton Hammer
Eurogamer.net’s interview didn’t dig up anything surprising but it did ease the fears of many knowing that Age of Conan was still moving forward. With plans of a Xbox 360 platform launch and an expansion in the works, Game Director Craig Morrison is optimistic that players will give AoC a second chance.
Jockie asks: Historically, once an MMO begins to slide there’s no way back, given the calibre of competition on the market. How do you about-turn and convince disillusioned players you’re back on track when so many claim Age of Conan remains fundamentally broken?
Craig Morrison: I’m not sure that it’s completely true a game can’t come back, EVE Online for example has built itself up very successfully over the years, and our own Anarchy Online is still going strong almost eight years on from its poor launch.
So I firmly believe that if we focus on the right things and continue to provide that fun and engaging content I mentioned above then it does start to turn. Once players are having fun in the game and enjoying the content, they start to tell their friends and word of mouth improves and it can grow from there.
There will of course always be some players who simply aren’t into giving a game a second chance and will continue to mention only the launch, but I think the majority are fair minded enough to listen when they hear fellow players saying, ‘You know what? This came has really improved,’ because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what we say about the game ourselves, the key is what those playing it think and share with the community. To achieve that we need to keep that all important focus on improving the game and giving players the experience that warrants them telling their friends about the improvements.
Learn a little about what the future may bring in this great player lead interview hosted by Eurogamer.net.
Reply by Lomax :: [EQ2] Help me understand SoE and Steam
I’d agree too, using Steam sounds like a no brainer for distributing their game. I did hear of another company that was doing an all-in-one download just before Kunark came out, but also of problems with getting hold of them, maybe this move is to get a more reliable partner.
Now I just hope they can get some sort of strategy to get EQ2 back on the shelves, in comparison to WoW they actually have much better value game package now with the all-in-one boxes while WoW is stuck with escalating costs for new players. A big showy launch that grabs a display stand in summer or some other time when people have holidays to burn would work I reckon.
Changing the subject a bit, I wish they would fix some of the overly grindy parts of the game though, needing to create 40 shields just to level seems a tad excessive when I have 100% rested! And also unrewarding when your 10 levels higher then the item you are trying to produce. I’d like to see a bit more creative role playing feel go to these things, maybe where a NPC assesses your work for levelling up with maybe a serious undertaking like a quest needed every 10 levels to move on. The WoW tradeskilling is disappointing though in comparison since it feels simplistic, the EQ2 one has promise, but lacks that extra bit of magic for me at least so far.
![Reply by Lomax :: [EQ2] Help me understand SoE and Steam](http://aoc.wowgoldfr.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/1a195_Eq2DailyMainForum "Reply by Lomax :: [EQ2] Help me understand SoE and Steam")
![Reply by Lomax :: [EQ2] Help me understand SoE and Steam](http://aoc.wowgoldfr.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/1e8a7_517212297 "Reply by Lomax :: [EQ2] Help me understand SoE and Steam"){kind=small}
AoC Character Transfers Now Available! - Ten Ton Hammer
We’ve been waiting for it, and now it is finally here! Age of Conan Community Manager Famine has posted the announcement that character transfers are available and ready to be used. There are some stipulations though, so read carefully!
As announced before the server merges, we are offering a free one-use character transfer option for all characters. If you wish to join a different community after the merge than the one you were allocated you are free to do so. This transfer is free of charge and can be used once per character. The service is available from your billing pages (https://register.ageofconan.com) and it will be running for one month until 21st of February.
Some additional information about the character transfer that might be important to know:
* Every character is eligible for one free transfer.
* The time it takes to get the transfer completed will depend on the load. The standard transfer will take 30 minutes. If the load is very, very heavy it might take up to 72 hours for the transfer to complete so please be patient.
==> Please also note that you must not login to any character of the same account as long as a transfer is still running. You are able to check the status of a running transfer on the account website too (https://register.ageofconan.com). The character transfer would get aborted should you login with any character during that time and you would have to start it again.
* If one, or more, servers become too popular we reserve the right to stop transfers to the servers in question at any time.
* Transfers to or from the “fresh start” servers Ironspine and Agony are not allowed.
* Transfers to all other servers will be available for all characters, regardless of rule set and language. Please be aware though that the allowed chat language is defined for each server. So no other language allowed in the public chat channels than the defined server language (for example English on Fury or German on Mitra etc.).
Get more information and join the discussion on the official forums by following this link.
