look @ 30's pin up models! they are smoking!! now look at our modern porn stars, most are malnourished tattooed skanks that you can TELL have drug problems. in conan lore the women would HAVE to be strong (after all they aren't posting on message boards and hitting the ch+ button on the remotes all day). for the game to stay close to true of the story they HAVE to eliminate emaciated crack-whores from the character creation process.

for women playing the game i suggest you read the books first since it is supposed to be based on that (not oily arnie) and you wouldnt want to give $ to a company that objectifies women. to take that statement a bit further i kind of like to think of this game as being made for the men, go play dreamfall if you want to get your sissy-on. if your the type of female gamer that plays aggressively and loves the games chances are you dont care too much what you look like anyways (theres also a stellar chance your a hellion in the sack).

as for kiddies im thinking they should sell the game in a black box just like a porn mag that says 18+ and nothing else. on the box should be a half naked barbarian chick with blood dripping from her loins holding up a head/spinal column dripping blood as well (but you gotta be able to see the look on dudes face) and a bubble saying "i should have fucked him while i had the chance". if THAT doesn't keep fucktard parents from buying little billy whatever he wants then billy has way bigger problems than any game can possibly cause.

AmazingAvery :

Good point and a good picture to use as an example. Look at this woman, she looks like a woman. Not much clothes on, but like a woman. It's not the nudity, it's the deliberate use and exaggeration of the female body as, like Dregger put it, a "sleazy trick" to get men's (young boys really) attention.

As a nerdy kid in 70's, I read all of the Conan books and all of the comics (my mother did too!) I expect and actually WANT the game world to mirror the stories. Prostitutes should look like prostitutes and they should look and dress like they might have back then. Fighters and priests should look like they would also....ya know with the appropriate gear on. However, NONE of them should have giant, gravity defying, beach ball shaped boobs and impossibly thin limbs. That's just stupid.

The shot of the booth babes at the convention directly illustrates the path that this leads to. Both of those women have had a lot of plastic surgery to look the way they do. Because women don't look like that naturally. The really good looking ones look about like the picture you posted above....and that's just fine.

Remember that Conan's main squeeze was the pirate queen, Belit. She was beautiful in the stories, but she had her own thing going and was kicking ass and pirating when he showed up. Although she ran around topless, there was no mention of her looking or acting slutty. Conan ran around in a furry loincloth, because he was a crazy barbarian, not because he was a man whore.

So, let's not equate an illustration of a naked woman with sexism. The presence of a naked person does not need to imply that their function is to provide cheap sexual titillation. I think the game industry can eventually get passed the adolescent phase they are in and move on to a more authentic mode of story telling provided players start asking for it. Around 38% of whom are female by the way.

Forums like these are a good place to start that dialog within the community.

I am in the army and I know alot of female soldiers who care about there look, its just natural.  So just because they are warriors doesnt mean they have to neglect there look.

bettie page is a perfect example, (did love yer pic btw) R. Crumb also had/has a knack for drawing women in a more voluptuous/realistic manner than most contemporaries (love boris and royo too, but they don't feel real, neither does olivia for that matter). i really hope they don't turn the game into some sort of fkn barbarian barbie fashion show, if the girls (and the guys who like to play blood elves in the back row there) want to play dress up let em play damn barbie games. can us men just have 1 game that isn't pansified?? like before the end of the world and stuff?

game companies need to stop caring what gamers think. i know it sounds ass backwards, but really they are supposed to be engaging in creativity, not catering to the desires of every simpering pansy who says "it should be like wow". the majority of the reason this past year has sucked so much is the input of gamers to developers, you cant please all the people all the time, so why would you even care what they think?

sure who doesnt want their character looking all bad-ass, to me tho if your playing an M rated game that bares this name you should be thinking all about the functionality and saying fk fashion. fashion wont keep you alive, tho you may look all pretty laying there dead minus your head.

you couldnt make LOTR without fkn elves how you gonna try to make conan without big titties?

btw: tkreep   what the hell are we looking at over there?

Originally posted by Ujaya

AmazingAvery :

As a nerdy kid in 70's, I read all of the Conan books and all of the comics (my mother did too!) I expect and actually WANT the game world to mirror the stories. Prostitutes should look like prostitutes and they should look and dress like they might have back then. Fighters and priests should look like they would also....ya know with the appropriate gear on. However, NONE of them should have giant, gravity defying, beach ball shaped boobs and impossibly thin limbs. That's just stupid. 

So... let me get this straight...

You dont want any of the features of the comic books / magazines changed, you think the prostitutes, fighters and whatever else should wear the correct style clothing.

Yet at the same time as not wanting it to be changed you infact do want them to change it because your complaining about the size of the boobs (which by the way are fictional so why the hell does it matter either way)

also, what is it thats so wrong about "giant, gravity defying, beach ball shaped boobs" as you put it, I bet u dont have a problem with them in real life so why whine about them in game...

and the 3rd and final most valid point is, why are you getting so wound up over something that is neither here nor there to anybody who has more than 2 brain cells due to the fact that

ITS NOT REAL... ITS A GAME.

Spend your time doing something more constructive... If you wanna play, then play, if you dont, then dont.

more breasts , violence, profanity, sexism, racism, debauchery, alcohol and drug use in games then please.

Oh well. If you follow logic, warrior women should look more 'body buildy' than 'porn star' if you ask me.
 And there was one saying earlier that there was few, if any warrior woman through our history. I beg to differ, www.lothene.org/others/women.html. And thats just one link. I can google alot more if needed, but that one should suffice for now.

Heh, and the wierdest thing, I do have a problem with death defying, gravity collapsing, over the top, huge boobs. Around a handful is more than enough for me . More attractive too. But thats probably cause I've gotten past my puberty, being an old fart and all

"warrior women" in history have mainly gotten by on treachery and deceit (hillary clinton & martha stewart being a modern day examples). personally i kinda dig the whole amazon/body building goddess thing, but when you look @ female body builders that haven't had operations they hardly have ANY breasts (certainly more than a mouth full tho). as a society we have for some reason shifted to scrawny broads over the more ample  sturdy ones. and i kinda hate it.

when i think warrior woman i think of someone i could wrestle with (ok in jello.. FINE), not somebody who i would have to worry about breaking. i really hope they dont dumb anything in this game down, if anything they need to set an example at a grade A adult game (as opposed to all the softcore/hardcore b/s that has passed for adult so far ex:valerie, 2 moons, plumbers dont wear neck ties, and leisure suit larry) to prove it can work.

alot of kids out there cant get into bars or clubs/venues , it doesn't stop them from making $$ hand over sweaty fist.

This really shouldn't turn into a sexism debate... The character models are being adapted to be visually appealing while sticking with the ideas of the original Conan story. So they're too thin - is that really going to affect your gameplay? Big breasts - oooh, wow. You're staring at their back most of the time anyway. Warrior-thongs...ok?

The people who are complaining about this would be the true Storyists (RPers or RP-sympathizers [I patent that name]) who care about making fantasy as realistic as possible to be more immersive. There is nothing wrong with this, though it is hard to find a game that is fully immersive.

A woman should be buffer if she can be just as powerful as a male Conan-esque warrior. Ok. We know she should, though this is a game where that isn't necessarily put out into the models concepts. These models are made to be visually appealing to the larger masses.

So basically, more people would rather stare at a warrior-vixen than a brute-woman. Sorry, but it is the sad truth that more people are affected by visually appealing objects.

A second note - I'll tie in my argument for movies and books (What are the chances [Insert Protagonist Name Here] would be [Insert Place] when [Insert Event] happens?) The truth is that you wouldn't want to hear a story about some guy who drove to the grocery store and DIDN'T end up in a high-speed chase. You don't want to hear about him complaining on which cheese to buy. And generally you won't want to hear a story about a muscular female warrior. Sure it might be interesting, but more people would want to hear about the girl who can kill four men with her bare hands while maintaining her groomed appearance and alluring another hero with her Victoria's Secret physique.

End Note: It's just a game.

As for the sex buffing - again, it's apart of the Conan world. If anything, it's comical.

Originally posted by slask777

Oh well. If you follow logic, warrior women should look more 'body buildy' than 'porn star' if you ask me.
 And there was one saying earlier that there was few, if any warrior woman through our history. I beg to differ, www.lothene.org/others/women.html. And thats just one link. I can google alot more if needed, but that one should suffice for now.

Heh, and the wierdest thing, I do have a problem with death defying, gravity collapsing, over the top, huge boobs. Around a handful is more than enough for me . More attractive too. But thats probably cause I've gotten past my puberty, being an old fart and all

I never said, "if any"  and most examples of pre gunpowder women actually fighting (forget the idea of crowned women running into battle) were desperation--not callings.  Find a thousand more examples and it will still be few

This 50/50 nonsense ruins immersion...even in straight up FRP games it's there with npc's.  The idea that women ended up with their function in society was NOT based on choice (but for rare exceptions).

So my biggest problem with what was written is that the little fellas who designed this game actually blamed women's roles in the original books on Howard's unenlightened writing period.  If anything, he was kind.  Why didn't they just say, "We are trying to have everyone on the planet with a computer buy this game and it takes catering to the most delusional of women (and p-whips)who would otherwise not play it...we feel that those who were suckered into thinking this was going to be brutal are still hyped for having no where else to go"

I love running into real female characters, but the idea that everyone's physicaly and socially equall in this kind of world (much less our ancient one) is pathetic.  Just watch, 10-50 percent of all npc warriors including town guards, mercenaries, blacksmiths or trainers will be women....oh Crom, they turned your world into Neverwinter Nights

I still say, why end here?  Lets make children as strong as grown men without the need for all that heavy muscle....they were subjegated in the stories too, but only because Howard was writing as a stupid man in the 30's

Originally posted by slask777

Oh well. If you follow logic, warrior women should look more 'body buildy' than 'porn star' if you ask me.

I think you and many others are forgeting/don't know the flexibility AoC have when creating a character. Its up to the player if he/she want theire female charactar to look like f.exa. Paris Hilton with huge implants. its just the matter of taste I belive heres a link to show some basic charatar creation www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6MPDhg4rhc

after thinking long and hard i have decided....

i WANT a PVP experience where i'm being attacked from all sides by scantily clad chicks with huge knockers!!! funbags of EPIC proportion!! nobody make males at all! i want all breasts on my screen all day long! i hope they have a jiggle factor like DOA!!

on a slightly less adult behaving like a child note: females are supposed to have higher pain thresholds than males anyways so the whole thing about them being apt warriois is fine with me, just wouldn't it make more sense to like raise their stats to counter a males? -1 str for +1 sta or -1 str for +1 agi (whatever the system i would feel better if it was done like that just for the realism. there has never been a world record held for power lifting held by a female (excluding of course the world record for female power lifting which is not infact THE record for most weight lifted)

other facts about females: their bones weaken easier/sooner, and PMS is a force to be reckoned with, not to mention the (generally) heightened emotions they deal with (except again those blood elf dudes in the back).

realism and immersion are great things, how much fun would it be to lop peoples heads off if flowers spilled out instead of  blood (SILENCE blood elves!)?

Hehe...with hearts, bunnies, peepoo and fluffy things

Say what you want, I still find it kinda sexist and stereotypical of FC to depict womens like that. But they all do. Oh well, they'll learn sooner or later.

its not like they are giving them +50 to cooking. just great glorious love globes.

For my part I think the new screenies simply indicate that this game looks to be heading down the same worn out path as oh so many fantasy games before with respect to female clothing.

If they really want to impress me, a female character in full clothing from neck down would be a start.  Don't get me wrong, it is nice to see female armour back in a game's design (UO had female only armour, what, 10 years ago now?  Then it just became an alternate graphic).  But there should be modest armour too, and there should be no reason at all for it not to look great at the same time.  Choice is good.

I also expect that they would increase the appeal of this game to female gamers (indeed all gamers) if they include a wide range of elegant social clothing.   SWG did that, and people loved it.  A screen shot of some female avatars not in armour would be interesting - something full length, flattering, modest, and silk (texture and light)... but I really do expect to only ever see illogical uncomfortable armour in this game.

Originally posted by tkreep

I am in the army and I know alot of female soldiers who care about there look, its just natural.  So just because they are warriors doesnt mean they have to neglect there look.

Completely agree.  Of course a lot of male soldiers care about how they look too, Adonis eat your heart out.  Effectively a free gym membership for life, used with dedication and skill over time can really get results

That said, I also have served with a female infantry officer who looked like she could crush rocks with her hands.  She wasn't a body builder or anything, she was just solid, which was hardly surprising because to have her platoon she had to be capable of all of the tasks expected of her soldiers - and she was.

Besides, if you are female in most militaries you need to care about how you look, because it's probably only a matter of time until you hit the glass ceiling and need to move out to civvy street, where that can be the difference between getting the job and not.  Fair or not, it just is that way still many places.

Aren't women still not allowed to be involved in ground combat in the US military? Kinda negates this whole idea of a woman soldier that still cares about her looks. Also, last I checked hygiene is an important part of military training, thus wouldn't you also expect any male to also care about his appearance (though unlikely to the extent of a woman, well, cuz men just don't care as much).

In reality, a big breasted woman swinging a 2-handed sword around is going to have some issues. Those thing are gunna get in the way, nothing you can do about it. Appearance, however, is not affected whatsoever. Your clear complexion, blue-eyes, soft-skin won't affect jack, unless she's fighting a typical man.

But it's not like you can take big-breasts out of a game. It's more unrealistic in their absence. So do you put controls in to adjust breast size during character creation? Sound like a great idea to me, and also some horrible publicity. Perhaps then we can have a setting to adjust the size of the bulge under my pallies' pants.

Or, rather than go down that road we'll just make all girls in the game reasonably large-breasted. Sure, not as realistic, thus not as ideal for role-playing. But seriously, have you ever met a girl who was like "damn, I wish I had a flat chest." I know of no girl that hates big breasts for their appearance. It's always the back pains, or how running a mile with a 20 lb. pack on the wrong side of your body is exhausting.

Its just a game...

And its commercialized, of course they are going to feature females as sex objects, afterall who is our target audience in COMPUTER GAMES, particularly hack and slash MMOs?  Guys...
Why else would you have booth babes at conventions???

Unless its a religious conference or feminist movement group...

Maybe some of you are looking at different screenshots than I am, because to me those images look quite demure compared to many games. WoW has numerous outfits that are far more risque than the AoC ones shown.

Yes, the arms look frail, and hopefully that can be adjusted when making a character. But I desperately hope Funcom doesn't listen to some of the more prudish comments here, as an irrational fear of anything mildly provocative led to DAoC and EQ2 both having some of the ugliest clothing (and therefore characters) in any game I've played.

As long as you have enough variety in your choices of body type and clothing coverage, I fail to see the harm in an M-rated game allowing a level of provocativeness prsent in both the source material AND the average modern community (go downtown at night or to a beach on a sunny day).

I find laughable the suggestion that the female clothing will be significantly more revealing than the male versions... have you SEEN how Conan dressed? :)

You have every right to find the female models and clothing in Conan to be as appealing or unappealing as you like. And I have every right to find your opinion prudish and irrational if you take issue with PG-13 level provocative content yet have no problem with the liberal amounts of violence in the game. But buy or don't buy the game, just give a rest to the demonizing of anyone that thinks skin does not equal EVIL.

Chances are that no matter what anyone says here, the game is going to be what it is and nothing is gonna change it so it's pointless to have a debate over. Although in my opinion, the women in the game look fine... Everyone has their own view of what's attractive so no matter what the women looked like, someone would probly be out complaining about it. 

Sex and violence sells and I doubt Funcom is working for charity. As long as this is the case, women in games are gonna appear as exaggerated sex objects.