All Posts by AranStormah

Well, yeah, but then again it's only natural to bring up someone that people have heard about for sake of comparison, and in that regard it's better to refer to  WoW than a random MMO (seeing as pretty much everyone between the ages 10 to 60 has at least heard of WoW once in their life).

Please pardon my bad grammar and spelling, but the article had a few comments that I've not seen in english interviews so I thought it'd be worth translating.
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Conan's director resigns.

(VG Nett) Gaute Godager resigns as producer and director of the game "Age of Conan".

As stated by Funcom in a recent press release. The company writes that he is quitting in favour of finding new options outside of the gaming industry.

Gaute Godager was one of the founders of Funcom, and has been with them for 16 years.

Godager will be replaced by Craig Morrison, who according Funcom has alot of experience as a producer and game director of the online game "Anarchy Online".

According to "Age of Conan" product manager Erling Ellingsen, neither Gaute Godager nor Craig Morrison wishes to adress the media today. But Ellingsen can still shed som light on this decision.

- Gaute is dissatisfied with certain elements in the game, and wishes to take the consequences of that. That's why he's leaving Funcom, says Ellingsen to VG Nett.

- He has also worked long in the gaming industry and wants new challenges. In addition he feels that "Age of Conan" needs new, fresh eyes to meet the challenges the game is facing, he adds.

- That he's leaving the wheel of "Age of Conan" to someone else is understandable, but it's dramatic that he's also leaving both Funcom and the gaming industry. Has the Funcom management tried persuading him to say with the company?

- I can't comment on that, says Ellingsen.

- Why is Morrison the right man for the job?

- We have great faith in Craig, he has a long experience as a director for "Anarchy Online", but he also has a long experience as a leader for online communities, and has in addition written for IGN, says Ellingsen, who adds:

- That experience comes in handy in a time like this, alot of the work now consist of listening to the players and acting on that, and we believe Craig is especially wellsuited for that.

- Alot of the criticism you get these days is that you're not listening to your players, does this mean that you're accepting some self-criticism at this area?

- We feel we're doing a good job of communicating with the players as well as we can, but there is definitly room for improvement and this is an area where we wish to become better. Communicating what we're working on and what we wish is a challenge, as we have to be careful not to be too detailed incase something has to be change before an update is done, says Ellingsen, who also feels the criticism against the game is not unexpected.

- There's alot of people who've looked forward to "Age of Conan" over several years. It goes without saying that there's many feelings and wishes going around, and if the players aren't satifsfied it's only natural that they react to it, says Ellingsen.

- This is pretty common when games of this magnitude are released, also to a degree with "World of Warcraft" before Blizzard did the many improvements they've done over the last years, he adds.

- There's no doubt that you have a job ahead of you to turn this negative trend. What are you doing about it, concretely?

- What we'll do is improve the game based on the feedback we recieve. We'll add new content. We'll fix the problems with the game, and a key focus in all this is our desire to communicate these changes with our players, promises Ellingsen, who adds:

- What's most vital to us is meeting the players demands whenever possible and to improve "Age of Conan" together with our players.

"Age of Conan" is Funcom's big gamble for online based gaming.

According to Dagens Næringsliv (economics/stocks-newspaper) the game looked like it was going strong when it was released this spring, but it's suffered a substantial loss of players. DN writes that the game is criticised for having a solid start, but not much content as you progress from there.

Online games gets the major part of their income from subscriptions, and not on the box sale of the game itself. So this development has lead to an immense fall for the Funcom shares, after the release-optimism.

Original article

Just ignore them if it happens, which it will (in any game).

If you're not female, I don't see why you'd be anything but rolling your eyes at how hopeless the online generation is.

WAAAGH!!

Warhammer is okay I guess, but Warhammer 40.000 is the best thing handed down to us by the glorious God-Emperor of Mankind since sliced bread.

If you've seriously never heard of the franchise, you've either lead an unsheltered life outside in the sun, or you're lieing :P It started out as a fantasy tabletop game borrowing lots from Tolkien and popular fantasy culture, and it's evolved into several other forms of entertainment and games. 40K, for example, being a science fiction merge of Tolkien, Aliens and World War 1 and 2 - and spawning alot of quite readable fluff like the Gaunt's Ghosts novels by Dan Abnett.

I don't care for analyzing the history of "troll", but the current expression "trolling" is remarkably close to the word "trolling", which is the fishing term for when you drag your bait and hook after your moving boat. Coincidence? I think not.

If he's being literal, it sounds like he's going down the Star Wars Galaxies lane of making gold sellers kill on sight. It doesn't make much sense to me as they would still be able to spam tells, and the spammers probably aren't the characters with the gold so there's no point being able to loot them.

...and in worst case scenario it could turn into "pay me 10 dolla and you can kill me untill you have lotso gold".

On the other hand he could be figurative, meaning they'll do what everyone else is doing, which is trying to stop RMT by banning accounts left and right. And which is pretty useless as these guys are making more than enough money both through RMT and through credit card scams to buy new accounts. New accounts, which bring profit to the MMO owner btw *tinfoil hat moment*

The only way to beat RMT is to have a free item system like PlanetSide, where there is no ingame credits and everything you need can be aquired, but that wouldn't fit into any MMORPG I can think of off the top of my head.

Overall I'm not a market-whore, achievement chaser or item hog so I could care less for inflaction and RMT, but his colourful reply sparked enough interest to comment here :P

Of course there could be FFA in the Warhammer universe. Orcs will fight anyone, including themselves just for the sake of the fight. Chaos is Chaos and wouldn't think twice about killing eachother. Man is paranoid and on the brink of destruction, bound to kill anyone not agreeing with himself. (Elves; I don't know and don't care). Dwarves get worked up about anything.

The only part where it would be silly is that 1vs1vs1vs1...vs1 wouldn't be true to the franchise. There'd have to be warbands and factions. This could be represented through Guilds - so in the current state of WAR, FFA could fit in.

Fail senses... tingling!

This bears an uncanny resemblance to the whole dx10 thing with Age of Conan. Lets hope we don't get a rerun, where maxed out graphics aren't properly tested clientside and turn out to be unable to deliver :(

This, coupled with the rumours that basic features like trophies not being in, kill quests not being retroactive and tier-based length on dwarven beards not having made it into the game worries me (I'd assume that goes for orc size too).

I got one too, way after my original unsub message and my account ended. I found it particularily amusing that their text strings returned ## shit because I had deleted my CC info.

Dear Anarchy Online customer,

Thank you for reactivating your Anarchy Online account.

Here is your purchase and account information as of August 23, 2008.

Please log in to your account at https://register.funcom.com to change
your settings and information, as well as to see the status of your account. 

Account name: *edited out*

Payment method: ##payment_storage_name##

Subscription start: ##nextcycle_date##
Subscription length: ##subscription_type##
Subscription type: ##subscription_recurring##

To avoid interruption of service all recurring subscriptions will
automatically be renewed at the end of the subscription period. 

Please ensure that you treat your account and payment information as
confidential as possible. Should you ever need to contact customer service
about account issues, please note that they will never ask for your
password. 

Sincerely
Funcom

 

Originally posted by Cursedsei

When I got my 360 from EB, they asked if this was my first next gen console, I told him no since I have a PS3-

Oh man, you missed a great opportunity to pull his leg. I'd have said "SNES was my first next gen console." Which would be true, because I started with the NES. Got to love relativity :P It'd be interesting to see his reaction.

Originally posted by Unfinished

Originally posted by CreepingDoom

Famine trolls the mmorpg.com forums?

If so, then they must be desperate, thats just plain rough.

 

Yup true story, he plays hookey here. He comes across as a Jehovah's Witness going door to door trying to get converts. Lotta doors slam in his face here.

My grandma is with the Jehovah's Witnesses (this part is true ;)), and she told me to say the Witnesses are insulted of being compared with Famine and in responce they're launching a wardrobe of 50 different clothing sets with their new Bible, which as it happens will be more different sets than AOC's 1500 sets, by a factor of 600.

Godly Maths: 50 White Tuxedos > 1500 Nutslingers

Originally posted by Auzy

I didnt even read most of the thread....but here is a video showing how fast combo is if you have some skill.  If you don't like the combat dont play the game....

Check it out...

Looks pretty quick to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-YUqNbmZ1c

Thanks for the link. That's the sort of fluent from move-to-move combat I was hoping for :)

And seeing as everyone seems to be using World of Warcraft as a comparison; Consider how their wood elves dance in combat. They're always moving, even if you restrict yourself to autoattacks they'll still be flowing through one animation to a next without stopping to stand completely still and stare. Yet the video also shows what had me concerned: At 0:24 to 0:28 the Chaos guy stands still staring at his target (it happens a few other times, but I'm guessing that's because he isn't facing the target). I assume that's the bug Leocifer is talking about.

Originally posted by Leocifer

I played a Disciple and I feel like the combat is fine. The only problem/bug that I see is sometimes my character does the skill animation, but the skill doesn't really go through. As a Disciple I did auto-attack in between my skills, but the animation doesn't show everytime, but I saw the damage scrolling up. If the combat can be on the same responsive level that WoW is and all the combat animations show and are fluent, then the combat will feel faster and a lot better.

And that's all I needed to hear really. If the auto-attack between specials occasionally is bugged and we're supposed to always be in motion then I'm happy because I'm sure they'll get the animation fixed eventually ^^

Isn't anyone else holding their breath when combat stops like that? I can't help it and it unsettles me. It's sort of the same odd feeling as from playing The Witcher, which is a great game but has awkward controls and collision detection.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Do fights have to go by *that* fast?

The fights could be as pro-longed as you'd like, but it's seems really odd that your char can't at least fit in a few autoattacks between special attacks so that he doesn't just stand around. The attacks could do 0.5 pts of damage for all the matters, as long as it kept him looking busy.

I'm trying to come up with a comparison, but I can only think about chess;  It's like a chess match where the game itself may be full of skill, but it's not exactly exciting to watch between moves. I think it's nice that you don't have that problem, but do you get where I'm coming from?

Originally posted by ghost047

Originally posted by TheSheikh

stuff

 

He is not refering to how many spell you have or will have, he is refering to the 2 sec cooldown after your spell. So YES it is still slow, when you cast an instant spell, your toon stays still for 2 sec before doing anything else.

Aaah.. I don't know why someone would make it work that way, but I now I at least understand what I'm seeing.

So everything stops for 2secs after any special skill, eh? That's sort of... unconventional. Have they explained why they've made it that way?

Interesting point of view, heheh. I think I'd prefer a singleplayer instead then though :P but that's not really what this was about.

I see. I'll assume the stale, old combat videos are still true for the current state then. Thanks :(

Is there any period at all during combat when my char will be standing still doing nothing, or does he progress into a new attack immideatly after finishing an old one?

Just say 'yes' or 'no'.

I don't care if you have to spam special abilities or if autoattack can do the job alone, I want to know if battle is seamless, because I've seen videos where people engaged in staring contests with the occasional slap and it looked awful - then someone said it was fixed and then someone said it's still there. Confirmation please. Don't want to get my hopes up for nothing.

Aren't they updating the graphic engine with the expansion?

The particle effects look nice, but the textures are completely flat, which in turn lends a bland look to what would otherwise be very interesting geometrical maps.

Do you get scabards and holsters or do they float magically at your hip, threatening to cut your manparts off?