Originally posted by chelan

does anyone have any clues as to when the f2p might be implemented?

Funcom wants to have the f2p ready for the movie premier so that is before August. As long as they do not waste time on junk like the ranger revamp, Funcom should be able to beat that date.

Thanks for the info! I'm actually looking forward to this. I hope it will play as well as Vanguard has been playing for me lately.

Well I was going to come back till I found out I couldn't play on EITHER of my 80s without going premium, since they are only allowing you to play 4 classes, and my BS and Assassin are Premium Classes...apparently. That's if they even save game characters, they could be just deleting everyones characters which means I completely lose everything I had before. 

Nevermind, they say if you ever were once a premium member you still get to play with all your characters. 

I am definitely coming back for this too. I always liked AoC, but I like a lot of games and cannot really see myself subsribing to games anymore. I like the variety and the possibility to play many games at once. (Though I will subscribe to the new Star Wars mmo, if that is required. Because it's Star Wars!). I really like the new F2P-models in Lotro and DDO, and I hope Funcom's model will work too. Lotro and DDO are PVE-games though, and developers really need to be careful what they provide in the item-shop in PvP-games. Everyone hates PTW-games! I don't like that they only make four classes available for F2P-players - and from reading the FAQ you cannot really tell if the other classes will be available for purchase (but I really hope this is the case, or else I will not play at all).

actually they say you will get to choose only 2 of your multiple characters and may purchase more slots if desired. all your characters will remain, but you will have to decide which 2 you want.

"where both free players and premium subscribers can purchase exclusive content such as weaponry and mounts "

Think I'll pass....

Originally posted by BribarianI

"where both free players and premium subscribers can purchase exclusive content such as weaponry and mounts "

 

Think I'll pass....

Heheh ... I'd have to agree.

Originally posted by LuckyDucky

Originally posted by Zoulz

Originally posted by LuckyDucky

Originally posted by Battlekruse

It was supposed to be a ‘WoW killer’. (I must admit.. ive played AoC too, so i know what I am talking about). But yet a another hyped MMO is broken against them. Age of Conan was probably the most hyped MMO in the last few years up to its release and while the hype helped Age of Conan to break sales records, it only lasted for a month.

Secondly Age of Conan did lose almost 9/10 of their potential subscribers. It’s not a rumor. They said as much in their reports  to investors which has been talked about in many messageboards and other news sources.

So what now. The only way Funcom can save Age of Conan is to switch to Free 2 Play and have a cash item shop. But F2P are for failed MMO´s. I am pretty sure that soon we will see in game advertising like we seen in Anarchy Online where you must read something like a Toyota adv. in order to complete a quest.

World of Warcraft is out there. It will always be out there for those who prefer playing a cartoon. WoW is a fine MMO, huge, lots of fun gameplay, but it is a cartoon.  Look at the elf and compare him to Conan. That is what art is all about. Conan is a low fantasy, largely realistic MMO.There is nothing else out there that compares to it. Playing AoC is nothing like playing WoW. They are both quest driven MMOs and that is about it. Imagine the combat AoC offers; decapitation, limb severing  going on in a game that has this realistic art style as shown by Conan on his throne. They call this game unrated for a reason. It's brutal, there is no getting around it. Then on the other hand you have all this beauty. The natural environments are stunning, mountains, rivers,  forests, birds, wildlife, fish jumping out of the streams. The towns and cities are lifted right out of Howard's stories. The production quality is top tier. Then there is the music. The music is not run of the mill video game fare. It is an award winning orchestrated score. You have to listen to it while playing  to understand how much it adds to the game.

AoC is worth a look especially now that you can play a large part of it for free. If you don't want to wait for FtP to go live there is still the totally free demo which allows you to play the starter area from level 1-20 . Plenty to do there, in fact there may be enough content to hold you over until FtP launches. It will give you a good idea of the gameplay and what AoC has to offer in general.  Also, it is a great test to see if your PC is up to the task of rendering this game. It is very demanding on PC hardware if you want to crank up the visuals.

Doesn't mean much if the actual game is boring though. Visuals only go so far. To keep playing it has to be fun. It's so obvious though that they put all their focus into the visuals and forgot/ignored the gameplay.

Oh, and I disagree about Wow looking like a cartoon. They have mearly used a stylized approach for their art. It's so distinct that you can instantly tell that it's a warcraft elf. That's more powerful than going for "realism" which never really turn out great in games anyway. The warcraft world is also a brutal place, riddled with war and destruction. That's my take on it. Of course, it's art so everyone will have their own tastes. There is no right or wrong with art.

AoC is not unfun or boring. It's a great Conan game. The great visuals, smooth motion quality, detailed environments, awesome music all add to the pleasure of playing the game, but that is not to say the gameplay is a bore. There is a lot about Conan's gameplay and game design that make it fun. It is just as fun as any other MMO out there at the moment, I'll say that much. The other thing about AoC is that there is really nothing comparable to it. It is very unique. I think it is a question of appreciating what the game has to offer. That's the bottom line.

When something is fun it succeds.So since aoc is fun why it failed and went F2P? Something about the fun part must be wrong right? otherwise its subs would raise to 3-4  milions instead going so low.

I am sad FC didn't chose Turbine- like F2P system. But ok. 

What really bothers me are INSANE prices on dungeons and locked instances. For example, if you want 7 days access to 3 zones of Khitai you will have to spend 900x3 FP =2700 FP. That's more than 20 euros. FOR 7 DAYS. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING

Installing AoC and Vindictus atm as iam so bored with current games.

1 thing realy sucks and thats weapons and gear for $$$, free accounts are going to be cannon fodder wich shoulnt be the case no matter how you look at it.

I can understand to farm weapons and gear for quite some time, like in Aion.

But realy sell best stuff for money is a massive failure of a businiss model -_-

BF3 comming out soon Diablo 3 and GW2 on the horizon its gonne be a fantastic year for us, and lots of other mmo's will pull the plug shortly after the releases of those said games.

Originally posted by Mothanos

Installing AoC and Vindictus atm as iam so bored with current games.

 

1 thing realy sucks and thats weapons and gear for $$$, free accounts are going to be cannon fodder wich shoulnt be the case no matter how you look at it.

I can understand to farm weapons and gear for quite some time, like in Aion.

But realy sell best stuff for money is a massive failure of a businiss model -_-

 

BF3 comming out soon Diablo 3 and GW2 on the horizon its gonne be a fantastic year for us, and lots of other mmo's will pull the plug shortly after the releases of those said games.

If it makes you feel any better, when I checked out the cash shop they had only one set of armor, and it was "cloth" for spell casters. So luckily, not all classes will be able to purchase epic items to dominate the other players. And the prices were quite prohibitive, like $5 per item, so I don't think many people are going to kit themselves out in store-bought epics.

First, because only a few classes can, and secondly, because it's so damned expensive.

Originally posted by tazarconan

When something is fun it succeds.So since aoc is fun why it failed and went F2P? Something about the fun part must be wrong right? otherwise its subs would raise to 3-4  milions instead going so low.

Fun wasn't AoCs problem. It was the minimal content together with the horrible buggy launch. FC have been really lazy adding content to it compared with most other MMOs and with such few and small zones it had a hard time keeping people interested.

At launch it had only one small max level zone and that one was 70-80, meaning people had to grind mobs for the last 5 levels.

The expansion added 4 much needed zones but it wasn't enough really.

3-4 million players is not realistic for even a fun game, only Wow have had more than a million players (Not counting Guildwars and the F2P games, they usually just measure number of accounts) and all other games havn't sucked.

AoC actually had a lot of potential but a MMO that expect players to stay for years just needs to offer a lot more to do.

And the guildcity is an excellent idea and if they had put more work into it that would in itself bring a lot of players. I don't see why I have to build axactly the same looking city as anyone else with the same spot, and the fact that it is a ghost town takes down the score. It could easily had playerhousing and stores, and should be filled with NPCs.

The collision detection is the thing AoC do best, I wish more games added a similar system. I love that melee classes just can swing their sword without aiming and hit everything in the way. 

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by tazarconan

When something is fun it succeds.So since aoc is fun why it failed and went F2P? Something about the fun part must be wrong right? otherwise its subs would raise to 3-4  milions instead going so low.

Fun wasn't AoCs problem. It was the minimal content together with the horrible buggy launch. FC have been really lazy adding content to it compared with most other MMOs and with such few and small zones it had a hard time keeping people interested.

At launch it had only one small max level zone and that one was 70-80, meaning people had to grind mobs for the last 5 levels.

The expansion added 4 much needed zones but it wasn't enough really.

3-4 million players is not realistic for even a fun game, only Wow have had more than a million players (Not counting Guildwars and the F2P games, they usually just measure number of accounts) and all other games havn't sucked.

AoC actually had a lot of potential but a MMO that expect players to stay for years just needs to offer a lot more to do.

And the guildcity is an excellent idea and if they had put more work into it that would in itself bring a lot of players. I don't see why I have to build axactly the same looking city as anyone else with the same spot, and the fact that it is a ghost town takes down the score. It could easily had playerhousing and stores, and should be filled with NPCs.

The collision detection is the thing AoC do best, I wish more games added a similar system. I love that melee classes just can swing their sword without aiming and hit everything in the way. 

I recall i was full of excitement when i 1st entered aoc. I recall after playing it on launch i havent encountered any bugs apart 1 crash after experimenting with grafix analysis details etc. It was hell of a fun at start when i did some pvp in he starting areas some guy came to bully my barbarian i chopped his head off blah blah blah...

What i recall most clearly though is when i finally made it to 36 lvl i saw 2 bears closing my way in the wilds.There was no other way cause i had to make a cyrcle.I looked at the bears waiting and said to myself pls god no more.

The problem is that i personally never managed to play aoc more than 2 hours in a row. Wanna hear why? My fingers were so much tired spamming combos to kill npc's for the various quests. For some reason also after 1 hour of playing aoc i felt stuffed.Didnt had the mood to play more.That was wierd cause i wanted to.I also was frustrated abit about the crappy parry/block style they made,quite clansky and unfriendly o use and meangless during fights. I almost forced my self to make it to 36 lvl. Keep in mind that im a big fan of manual style battles (oblivion /mount and blade etc),means i prefer this style of combat than the usualauto-attack and pew pew skills  L2/eq2/wow combat style.

Was it the farm quest situation and lack of instances or group gather to visit the instances? Maybe i dont know.

Surely a part of a problem (thnks to wow) was that im quite sick of the levelling proceedure. Especially the usual go kill 10 monstes quests style.

So was it fun? Aparently not to my taste cause otherwise id be still in there.

Could it hit 3-4 milions? With Conan's Lore background art and theme? Absolutely . Fact that only wow went more than 1 milion aint sayign nothing to me. If a game is really good and fun it can get 6-8 million copies as wow did over time.

I think the best thing about Age of Conan is the IP itself. Playing in the Conan universe is just friggen' awesome!

And there is no lack of content. These days, for someone just signing on, they would find the amount of content almost overwhelming. I don't think you could see it all in one play through on the road to 80. With the instances and expansion and everything, it's a lot of content. And if you are a fan of Conan it is very enjoyable because the transistion from pulp fiction to MMO is so well done.

I have a 51 Conqueror and some other characters.  Since I played before and, due to whatever else I unlocked, I have 3 character slots available, a few vet reward tokens, and my old gear.

After server merges I found my characters ended up on Set.  Global was a quick refresher lesson to why I keep the chat window small.  Some few vets were making sure everyone knew they were jerks.  There were some small set of helpful vets answering noob questions about changes and such.

It still plays about the same.  I had forgotten how clunky the interface and controls could be if you weren't familiar with them.  I spent most of my time after the download getting reaquainted with combos, controls, and trying to remember where in the hell the mailbox was.  I searched far and wide for the mailbox, eventually to find it as a tab at the auction hall, then only to find it was full of RMT/gold spam.

Some things were improved, while some other aspects I thought would have seen polish were still the same.  The game client crashed to desktop once, which it had never done when I played it before, but it chugged along okay after that.

The store is fricken EXPENSIVE.  To try and frame a reference 600FC costs $5 and 6000FC costs $50.  Items seem to range from about 250 to 800FC.  Class unlocks are 750FC each with bundles of 4 classes costing 2100FC.  There are a couple expensive bundles that have items, mounts, and travel tokens in them for $60 - $70, but they do work account wide.  Character slot unlocks are around 650FC each.  You also have to unlock most instances and raids.

The only really negative experience was on their forums where some asshat was posting gay porn pics for a while which made waiting for the download to finish much less fun.

Overall - It's still much better to play subscribed than FreePlay.  I'll keep it on my hard drive for the occasion when I want to visit Hyboria, but I don't think I would play it even part time unless I felt like paying the subscription.

I played AoC for a little while. My problem was the Romanesque armor styles. REH is probably my all time favorite author, been reading his stuff since the 70's, and I know the game stayed true to his vision. The graphics were amazing but I'm a sucker for 9th to 16th century armour styles. This is probably why I haven't played Gods and Heroes and other games based upon that era. Although the image quality is poor, below is my ideal style (wish someone would adopt this type in an MMO).

Originally posted by tazarconan

When something is fun it succeds.So since aoc is fun why it failed and went F2P? Something about the fun part must be wrong right? otherwise its subs would raise to 3-4  milions instead going so low.

um "no".

Why is it that some people keep this idea that in order for a game to succeed the subs have to be in the millions? Especially because there really aren't many games (if any games) especially in the west, that break that 1 million mark with the exception of wow.

You can't say that a game is going to be successful if it's in the millions when only one game has subs in the millions.

Since the other games obviously still exist and have fans then it seems that assumption is off.

Now, having said that, I have played a bit of AoC and I didn't find it fun.

Shortly after AOC came out I started playing and was blown away, I absolutely loved the combat system especially if you were a mele character, the graphics were superb, the quest alot of fun and made sense, their was voce characterazation, how cool was that and then I hit level 20 and the problems started no more voice, where the hell is crafting, the quest were not as good, my mele character cant come close to beating a ranged character in PvP, only one starting area how boring.

    AOC did a great job with the starting area but then they gave up, crafting needs to be done right at the beginning, You have got to have more than one starting area this is what made WOW so much fun whenever you started an new character it was in a different area. I am sad to see not much has changed in the last couple of years so now it is on to free play, that is not going to help the problems

I can't stress enough how glad I am not to spend anything more than some bandwith on this.

Originally posted by Grym

I played AoC for a little while. My problem was the Romanesque armor styles. REH is probably my all time favorite author, been reading his stuff since the 70's, and I know the game stayed true to his vision. The graphics were amazing but I'm a sucker for 9th to 16th century armour styles. This is probably why I haven't played Gods and Heroes and other games based upon that era. Although the image quality is poor, below is my ideal style (wish someone would adopt this type in an MMO).

 Well we could always hope that maybe Taleworlds will make a mmo out of Mount & Blade ;)