Welcome to the first Age of Conan developer’s blog here on MMORPG.com. For the time being I will be the only contributor but as time goes on we hope some of the other dev team members get time to participate. Who am I you ask? Well that’s the very first questions I would like to answer. My name is Jason Stone, I am also known as “Athelan” both on these forums, in interviews and on the official forums. For the past three and a half years I have worked as a designer on Age of Conan. Some of my areas of responsibility have been with combat and PvP and being heavily involved in the design and iteration of those areas. Now I am only one designer out of many designers with different specialties and responsibilities and it takes all of us to produce a great game.
Funcom has always placed a high importance on being involved with our community. This is apparent in the ways we try to interact with them and keep communication open as much as possible. When the game was smaller and less popular this was relatively easy to do via the forums. Both Jayde (Evan Michaels one of our systems designers) and myself have spent a lot of time posting and trying to answer questions. Now I am not saying Jayde and I plan to stop posting, but one of the reasons Funcom was so behind this blog with our partners here at MMORPG.com was because we understood how it can be used as a communication platform with more clarity than the forums will currently allow.
Now just to tangent a little bit to give those who don’t know me a little background. I started work in the industry as an Everquest Game Master in 2000, after having worked as a Network Engineer and Admin for the Banking Industry. I spent five years at Sony Online and worked my way up as a Lead GM, Community Manager, and then into Quality Assurance where I got a chance to do a little design work with the guys on Star Wars Galaxies and then on Everquest 2. I am an avid “hardcore with a real life” MMO gamer. More or less that’s a recent transition for me as I am adjusting to being married which makes the real life use up more time than I was accustomed too. I also play loads of other games on many platforms and simply love co-operative gameplay. I have since 1997 played most MMO’s that came out in the western market to high level and actively engaged in PvP. I have played a few Asian MMO’s but not to the same extent. Jayde (as mentioned above) and myself ran a high end raiding guild in World of Warcraft while also working on Age of Conan during the time I spent in Norway.
Fortunately for me, and hopefully for the embetterment of the game itself as well, when I told Funcom over a year ago I would have to return to the US in June we were able to work out an agreement to keep me working on the project. The reason I had to return was my pending nuptials and I was married on October 6th of 2007. Being in the US now and on a different time zone definitely takes it toll on me being able to do some of the things it used to, but it also opened the doors to me being available in the US for questions and giving me time to work even harder on community issues as well as design.
The goals for this dev-blog will be to highlight the goings on in the Age of Conan community, respond to community questions and feedback, give you sneak peeks into my own Beta experiences, and share tidbits from my life as a lucky sap who ended up with every nerdy gamers dream job (and a cute wife to boot!) – Jason “Athelan” Stone
User Comments
Welcome abord, and I look forward to all of your posts, AoC FTW!!
ps. where is me beta key =D
I think I left it in my other pants in Vegas at CES. I will have to go back to find it :)
I just hope there won't be too many other devs posting, as i want as little time to pass by as possible before AoC is released.
Thanks for all the effort you have put in. Cant wait for the game and cant wait for more info from you.
Cheers
Oz
Are you certain you want to subjugate yourself to us? We love our sacrifices fresh and a little fatty... means the meat is yummier.
Are we allowed to pester you with questions aside from "where's my beta key"? How about... what's your top three favorite console games?
Welcome to the Blog section! It is always good to see you guys take an active part in the community. The fact that you are taking time to drop us a line on this site speaks volumes. I am also a Featured Bloggist here, and am a fan of Anarchy online. I hope you guys maintain the amazing level of customer service I experienced in that game in AoC.
Maybe if you get some time you should browse over some of the writings of community members here. Hopefully you will find some insight into the pulse of the MMO community and have a few laughs in the process :)
Looking forward to some interesting tidbits. Grats on the nuptials. :)
I am generally not opposed to questions about other topics as I feel part of being real is letting you guys know who I really am as an individual. I play so many games I am always afraid to say which are the top ones since I inevitably forget one I loved. At least one spot has to go to Gran Turismo 2. I loved Forza 2 and such but GT2 set the par for the course and sucked me into the consoles hardcore. Another spot has to go to Soul Calibur on Dreamcast.
My recent purchases have included Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Skate, and Forza 2
Nice. I probably won't be asking anything here, but I'll be reading daily. Thanks so much.
Welcome back Athelan, been a long time :)
Hope we learn some more juicy infos for Age of Conan. So for starters, two questions for you:
1) What is your favourite PC rpg?
2) What is your favourite console jrpg, assuming you play those.
Not AoC related, but those coming soon too ;p
Hi Athelan, thank you fo taking the time to come talk to us. I want to ask:
1.Do you guys have any plans to make storyline series quests similar to the destiny quests for end content?
<3 YAY!
Welcome back, I've a question...
When is this 'open' beta taking place that I keep hearing about?
Ahh you know what, i have another question! lol. what have testers in beta liked least about the character customization? Do they find it dynamic or fairly simple? Dull or exciting to work on.
Whats the highest amount of people that you have tested seigeing with, and how bad were the complaints by most players?
I wont be able to answer everything via comments but.
PC RPG is tough because Ultima is what lead me to Ultima Online and drew me into MMO's so it gets a special place in my memories. At the same time, I really enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor back in the day, and all the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter games have eaten large chunks of time for me.
For JRPG's I have to go with Vagrant Story followed by Chronocross, mainly because I liked the way Vagrant Story did combat.
Greetings Athelan!
*Bows*
Thanks for doing this, always great to have some more communication.
Humbled we be.. Do you have any intel on the status of EU preorder bonuses? If not, please.. Break out your large poking device and poke people till you get some answers!
*Raises from bow*
I would love to hear any details you are able to give about your FFA PvP ruleset servers.
Hello Athelan, if you can take some time out of your busy day, I think my question falls somewhere within your area of expertise.
I understand Rangers will have ranged combos as well as both first and third person shooting modes. How difficult will it be to perform combos from afar in first-person mode, and what about third-person?
do you know any thing more about the rogue classes. for example if they can duel weapons
This is great stuff ! A devoloper who talks about more then the game hes working on, my god, EVOLUTION!. Funcom or any other company in the world should have a payed PR guy doing nothing else but post on and read forums. You clearly are that person.
You will see you will get nuked by qestions, people would pay you personally by paypal for information.
Hello Athelan, Welcome back. I have been trying to follow AoC as best I can, the most interesting part ,to me, is the combat. I have not had alot of free time(to scour for info) and had one big question about it. So here goes.
In AoC combat, do you hit all enemies in a set radius arround your character when you swing your weapon, or do you have to target individual enemies before you can hit them?
Many thanks, and again welcome back.
Τhat is great, Vagrant Story was one of my favourites from the old good Square. Let's talk about AoC now, there are some explanations I'd love to provide if possible.
1) Can you talk a bit about Zoning/Instances that is used in Age of Conan? I haven't clearly understand how the whole mechanic would work apart from the fact that the world will not be "seemless" so to say.
2) I keep hearing that AoC would be solo friendly, which of course is great to some extend. I was wondering if the same applies for group gameplay, in matter of fact, are there any other dungeons, instanced or not, besides Black Ring Citadel and Sanctum of the Burning Souls, not only for end-game raids but for lower level standar group gameplay too? It isn't yet clear if you will have seperate dungeon content for seperate level ranges or you will have the same dungeon content but it will be scalable to party's size and levels.
3)Last but not least, this is possibly a far cry but I would love if you can clear up a bit the Classes issue for the sole reason that speculation will drive us nuts at the end hehe. I am talking about Lich, Scion of Set and Druid of the Storm and the speculation madness that follows whenever those names raise up.
Thank you in advance :)
It's great to have ya here bro, but I think your time in Norway scrambled your brain. As far as I know "embetterment" is not a word in the English language, although betterment and embitterment are. NOOB!
What's the biggest technology challenge you have to overcome before launch in your opinion? Are you on schedule to overcome that challenge?
HaHa! Were you one of the GM's that showed up at my Christmas Party outside of Halas in EQ eons ago? Party was so great it almost crashed the server. LOL! Good times, back then. :)
Anyway..
Welcome and hope to hear many more good things from yas!
cool cant wait till march 25th
I hereby declare embetterment my very own word in my own personal language then. And as a minority Athelandians demand recognition on the world front.
The single largest technological challenge will always be optimization. And I feel we are on track. As more information comes out about CES and the new engine, along with that engine hitting beta I think people will see massive frame-rate increases.
Do you play TF2 on the Funcom server at all?
I kicked around there for a while but not many FC guys ever chatted!
How far along is the Cheetah 2 engine? Any unofficial guesses as to when it may be hitting the beta?
Also, a semi-unrelated question I can't seem to find an answer to. Will pre-ordering the Collectors Edition grant players their choice between Mammoth and Rhino? It seems to have its perks, but no rhinos!
I am guessing (really) that the retailers with the pre-order mounts would be the ones needing to associate those with collectors editions of the game as well.
Glad to have you here Athelan!
welcome to mmorpg.com mate :)
Thanks for coming here Athelan I have been following aoc for a couple years now and can't wait till release (I just upgraded my pre-order to the CE btw) If I could ask you a question it would be when will you guys really know what types of servers will be available on launch i.e. ffa, pve, rp etc.. and what types of features they include. (for instance will ffa servers have the mandatory server lock down everynight? for no more sieging, or some type of item looting etc..) Thank you for your time and the amazing game!
PLEASE for raids make it so people DON'T insta respawn. When something as big as player cities are on th line make it so when they die they die. Make death send them home. It's real cheesy they just pop right back at a tent so they can just run right back in.
If you devs really want the feel as stated of your friends dying around you. Insta respawn is for kiddie games and FPS like Call of Duty.
Nothings more cheesy then the ability to just go suicidal because you know you'll insta respawn. Points don't justify this for me.
Please consider this because it's game breaking for me. Insta respawn=cheese. If this is truely a game for adults make death matter more. Make it more realistic at least sending them away from the battle. Once someones dead they should be out of the raid.
Hi Jason, I think its great you have come to set a blog up of sorts here.
Its most welcomed, and I am sure appreciated by the community.
Avery
I'm going insane day by day waiting till my pre order copy of AoC comes in can't wait. 1 1/2 months!
I just hope it's balanced not like some MMO's were u get pwned by a preist when your a fighter just don't make sense to me.
Hello, Thanks for doing this, always great to have some more communication.
Yess yesss goood goood, my plans are progressing as planned /evilhandrubbing. >:]
Thx alot, Jason, for this blog.
Will European customers get the preorder bonus too and how representative is the beta of AoC compared with the game released in March?
My biggest convern at the moment is that the game doesn´t seem to let you walk where you want in a zone, in every video there is path you have to follow and the freedome in a zone seems very limited.
nice work ;).. cant wait too see a family photo of you and your cute wife =).
Regards Aerodith
People that signed for the beta a year ago will prob. have now an other computer config. ( like me :p ) how will this effect the process to recruit beta testers ?
Haradeas if you followed the forum you could read that developers said that if you changed your computer config u have to send again you application. BTW now i don't know if there's enough time, wait for the open :)
Thx Drjack, following the forum for like a year now bah, how could I missed it >< :)
dude not cool!
now there is no way i'll ever be the most popular blog on this site again :)
oh well, guess i'll try and stay at #2
lol
Welcome to the blog hell, and please don't let people screw this game. I have some hope in it.
Greets Athelan...
a quick question. I was/am one of the December contest winners, but I still haven't got the beta key award. When can I expect it?
Thanx!
Good job athelan, I hope I'll see some info about spellweaveing- still don't get it if it work like melee combos or what..
Greetings Athelan and all from malta, crom's mound in the mediterranean
Is it possible to disclose which sites will be catering for us EU members so that we can pre order our copy of Collector's edition as well?
I can speak for my guild to be in AOC that many of uswould like to charge on mammoths and war rhinos.
Gamespy article only mentioned Bestbuy and Gamestop but these are probably for US customers.
Thanks
Great to have you back.
Question: Will we be Abel to re spec ...Attributes: Skills: Feats: ?
or will we be stuck whit what we pick at low level ?
Hello Athelan!
I am Kyle Gregory a former World of Warcraft two-time PvP Gladiator that really loved World of Warcraft PvP until the last 6 months or so.
When WoW was in its early years, any class versus any class', if extremely skilled at PvP, could easily take on 2 to 3 players at one time, with moderately relative gear. Since TBC Expansion Pack, Blizzard seems to have purposely made it less and less skill dependant, more specifically, Resilience. In the transition to the Expansion Pack Equipment players gained +350% HP + Resilience, and only +50% Mana and roughly +60% damage. This made PvP not about about fast reactions and skill anymore, but about who had the most HPs and Mana to outlast the other person. If you look on the rankings in Arena now, the majority of top teams are Mana Drain teams.
To get to the point, my question to you, a PvPer of Age of Conan, is actually quite simple:
Will Age of Conan PvP be long fights that will test survivability and outlast-ability, or will Age of Conan be faster-paced, skill based PvP where someone with far more PvP skill will be able to shine brightly and overcome the odds to defeat multiple players mildly reguardless of gear?
Sorry for the long post but I really believe your thoughts on PvP is important to a lot of people like myself that are saddened by MMO PvP these days.
Thanks,
-Kyle
Hi!
For me the most important question is "Will there be any PvP looting after I killed someone?" I hope that AoC will not be like WoW PvP. If there won't be any thrill in a PvP then it wont be a Conan Game for me. And to earn some bloodmoney is not enough for me its just like the honor system in wow. Dont make a carebear game of aoc.
Cylox.
Great work, especially in the area of respecting the lore of the Conan universe. Seriously, it is appreciated by the fans.
Hey welcome back athelan.
I feel for you being asked so many questions, many being answered before on the forums.
Hopefully you'll post some new info for us aoc forum dwellers here. you haven't posted anything interesting there for yonks. I too am curious about the PvP rulesets.
Consensus/banok
Hello Athelan,
Thank you for taking the time to cut through some of this fog of war and speculation about the game. It is much more satisfying to have developer answers then interpreted guesses.
Having said this, I do indeed have a question. After reviewing the world map for the Hyborian Age, I notice that it is quite large. I was wondering if the players will have full access to the entire world at launch? Also, if we players do have that kind of access how will expansion backs be handled? Will you create new lands? Build on old one? Or will you just focus on improving content?
Thank you in advance for any information that you may give us.
Lots of replies on here in the comments, you may have taken on more than you realised. :)
Thanks for another addition to AoC information, you can never have too many!