Sorry, but this was really bad.

-nox

About a week ago, I finally got myself into the Age of Conan beta. With the embargo lifting today for us reporters, I thought I'd share my very early impressions of the game. There will be a full beta report coming in the next week or so, but even though I haven't had a chance to play a great deal, the game as (should be  has) already made some initial impressions on me that I can share.

As a result, this beta preview preview (double word) will talk about character creation and the newbie experience. A lot of the time we, as more hardcore players, underestimate the importance of those first few levels. In the rush that many peope (Spelling) have to reach endgame content, we forget that most people will live or die on their first few hours of gameplay, deciding whether their subscriptions will last more than a month or whether this game will be just another box lining their shelves.

Still, you don't want to listen to me waxing (tense) poetic about the importance of the early game experience. Chances are that if you clicked on this article, you want to hear a little bit of something about Age of Conan.

From the very first moment that you enter the game (after what I would consider to be a long progression of associated company screens - Funcom, Eidos, Nvidia, Games for Windows... all easily skipped with a click), you get a real feeling of what you're in for. Your first glimpse of the world of Age of Conan is, appropriately, aboard a slave ship and you're the cargo. Your view of the ship is a dimly lit hallway. The camera sits at one end. On each side of the hallways slave men sit on planks, rowing the ship, far down at the other end a slave girls stands for... I don't know... slave encouragement? The sounds of the boat are crisp and clear (I want to be hoenst (Spelling) and say that the sound team on Age of Conan has done a brilliant job in all aspects, I am a fan of the sound in AoC).

This, my friend, is character creation. Your first choice is gender. Do you want to play a male character or a female character? If you choose the female, the camera swoops down the hallway to stop in front of the slave girl. If you choose male, the camera comes to rest in front of one of the rowers who stands up and presents himself to (style) your alterations.

I don't know why this particular bit filled me with glee. I think that it's the interactivity of it all. Right from step one, I got a sense of how the story would be presented. For those of you who might not know, I am a story junkie. I can't get enough of it and I enjoy (style) when it is presented not as a side attraction to a game, but as an integral focus.  By using their opening in this way, from step one, you are enganged (Spelling) with and participating in the story, which starts with characters who were once slaves being washed ashore after the wreck of their boat ( run on sentence - also prefer that to which).

Beyond that, character creation is pretty much what you would expect from an MMO. There are basic options that will allow people who don't care terribly much about the specific details of their character's appearance to breeze through with basic customization, but you also have the advanced options that open up sliders. Personally, give me the deeper selection of the sliders, but I do know people who will be eternally grateful to Funcom for the option to avoid them.

I should also mention here for you sticklers out there that this is also where you choose your race, your class and all of those necessary character building elements. For those players who aren't familiar with the lore of Conan, (and make no mistake, there area (are a) lot of them out there who are still waiting for this game), handy little descriptions are given for the different races and classes that will make choosing just that much easier.

Your early game experience really helps you with the feeling that you're an escaped slave who has just washed up ashore outside of the city of Tortuga (which is held currently by some really bad dudes). Armed with only a broken oar, you set about moving toward the city. Right away, you are thrown into comabt (Spelling) and believe me when I say that oar (missing article a) can be a bit of a kick-ass weapon.

Long time MMO players are going to find something fishy the first time that they jump into combat, but it isn't something that's terribly difficult to overcome. The Age of Conan UI is, in some ways, fairly typical of MMO UIs. For now, let's just talk about the action bar at the bottom of the screen. Normally, first level characters have an empty action bar save for one or two first level powers that fit into the "1" and sometimes "2" boxes. In AoC, the first three boxes are filled with arrows. These arrows, rather than being your classic special attacks, are actually directional attack commands. When you press up (2), your character jabs forward, when you press left (1), he attacks the enemy's left side. This, to start with, I found just a notch or two cooler than the standard MMO fare. I felt like I had some real control over what my character was doing and his approach to doing it. Maybe it's just me, but I found something very satisfying about wanting to hit a guy on his left side and actually seeing my character do it.

As you advance in level (which at the beginning happens quite quickly), you gain access to combo attacks that are more like standard MMO attacks, but in order to use them, you must choose the ability and then use the appropriate swing (left, right or middle) to complete the attack.

While this might sound likea  (need a space) little thing to some, and it may sound like an annoying feature to some others, I personally found that it creates more engaging combat. Suddenly, I'm carefully choosing which attacks I want to use and I have to do a little bit of keyboard dancing to activate the combo and perform the appropriate swing. I find that I can't just mindlessly spam 1,2,3 - 1,2,3 like I usually do until the other guy falls down. I will be very interested to see how this plays out at higher levels.

Before I cut this beta preview... preview short, I wanted to talk about an element of Age of Conan that I have absolutely loved up until this point. Voice-overed dialogue (Sentence Fragment).

I know that there are going to be some folks out there who will think I'm crazy. I know it isn't something that everyone enjoys, but for my part, I think it's something we don't see often enough in MMOs. Then again, I'm a story fiend and voiceovers really do help with an engaging interactive story.

NPCs in AoC (at least those that I have come across up to this point) have fully developed voiceovers. It's not even just a small portion of the text. It's complete NPC dialogue. Now, while I do say that I like voiceovers, the thought of them often makes me cringe. It isn't enough, in my opinion, to just have voiceovers. I've heard too many really poorly acted voiceovers (the XBox 360 Conan game is a great example) to get too excited about them. Often, it's like the actors were just handed a script and told to read without knowing anything about the game, the characters or the situation. With Age of Conan, I felt like the actors and by extension whomever was directing the actors, took the time to know and understand the context of the dialogue that they were delivering.
 
That brings this beta preview to a close. As I continue to play, I will continue to post about it and give you my impressions.

I am wondering if this portends an increase in the level cap.  This seems to be the kind of thing you do just before inceasing  the max level.  On other hand, since they just introduced the purple (very rare) enhancements, I am probably just day-dreaming here.

Or maybe they are finally interested in doing an elder game that Statesman used to talk about.

Always fun to speculate.

~nox

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Originally posted by Anofalye
 
PD could work, but it has to be a different approach which has NOTHING to do with unlimited levels.  I don't want it anywhere where I play.
 

---

Actually, PD and a level cap are very much related. The point of a level cap is to put a limit the largest possible difference between the least powerful player and the most powerful player. PD does the same thing, only instead of being a hard limit, its a soft limit. That is the further a character progresses, the greater the chance of eventually dieing through random accident. At some level there will be no more characters, because all the characters will have died prior to reaching it.

One advantage PD would have is that it would cause god-like characters to, well, act like gods. That is, instead undertaking quests and adventures directly (which might lead to death, however minimal the chance) they would be encouraged to act through intermediaries and proxies -- supposing the game mechanics supported it.

Personally, I am not a big fan of perma-death, mostly because it rewards very conservative game play, which I find, well boring.

~nox

Sure, you can have a game without a level cap.  As long as you have perma-death  (perhaps perma-death after a certain level is reached).

~nox

This game looks interesting, I would like to play it.  I hope it doesn't fall into the 'just on the edge of beta' stasis field that Darkfall seems to have fallen into.

Is it just me, or does Skill Based = Vaporware?

~nox

Originally posted by Killershiver

lol darkfall dev is full time job for most of the employs working on it

 

it even says on hennings art site that he doesnt have time to update it because his full time job working on darkfall is taking away from it so >.>

The funny thing is the devs don't seem to have the time to update their own site.  The latest news entry is dated September of 2007!?! 

This game is certainly not going to release in Q2 of 2008.  I suspect the earliest possible release date is Q2 of 2009 and that is pushing it  a bit. 

I am assuming here that they are going to have a box which will be available in stores.  Which means having a publisher (still an open issue with this game).   Which, in turn, means the lead time for the publisher to do the QA on the game, get the product design done, arange for manufacturing, arange for shelf space in stores, contract out for the customer service staff, etc.  None of which happens overnight.

Of course, they could always go the download only route and release eariier, but  that would put a real crimp in the potential subscriber base.

-nox

Originally posted by Killershiver

tarem why is that because they decided to make the game better and stay in dev the people getting payed to make this game its there full time job unless there 40 plus people then plus payed testers being payed to lie to us

 

fine i understand they dont pr well but thinking there lieing at this point in time is just like wtf

but on the side note the quality of the game on how the game will turn out after release that is up in the air

until farther notice xD

Look, it is not the case that the longer a game is in development, the better that game will be.

Unfortunately, games (like all software) are not written in a vacuum, but to run on a specific piece of hardware.   As time passes, hardware improves, software improves, and what once was state of the art becomes commonplace.  Game developers then have a choice to make.  Either modify the game to take advantage of the new tools and resources, or stick with your old design.

Stick with the old design and you have game that will run on just about every machine out there, but which will look sub-par when compared with games developed for more advanced systems.

Modify the game to take advantage of the new hardware and you open up a giant can of worms.  This is because you are probably using a new (or at least a new version) of your graphics engine, which means you are redesigning your world, updating all your textures, redesigning your models, etc.  Lets not even talk about the physics ...

Keep your game in development for too long and you can quickly get to point where you are not making any significant improvements, just continually redoing your art to take advantage of the latest hardware.

-nox

Originally posted by Kamadrion
lol... boy, are you working hard to delusion everyone. I'm sure a developer himself said it won't be out till 2008....

yeah, right.

Gods, this all too rich...

-nox

Leaving the console/PC argument aside, my gut feeling is that if they do bring a KOTOR  MMO out for a console, it would not be the Xbox 360 but the Wii.

~nox

Because this is City of Heroes, not City of Hentai.  That's why.

~nox

Originally posted by Kyleran

 

Originally posted by Ramzeppelin

 

If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.

Star Trek is certainly a household name, but it popularity is waning.  I'd venture a guess and say that for most people under 25 there is very little fondness for the franchise.  I know none of my children (ages 14-23) care a whit about Star Trek, and think its the province of old geeks like their father.

 

 

Say what you will about younger players, they are part of the market too (a big part) and I don't see a Star Trek MMO ever being anything but a niche game for older players....

And if this game sees the light of day before Fall of 2010 I'll be really surprised.

 

 

Well, you never know.  If they pair it with a really good  movie or new series, it might take off.  If somebody asked me four years ago what were the chances of a Battlestar Galactica remake appealing to a mass audience, I would have laughed in their face.  Now there is some chatter about turning that IP into a MMORPG as well.

Personally, if I was a developer looking to make a quick buck from an IP, I would go for Heroes...

~nox

Originally posted by JYCowboy

Originally posted by Shoal

Star Trek Online will  NEVER see the light of day.  At least not from this company.  I am surprised they ever managed to get the IP to begin with.  I would have expected it to go to a company with a sucessful track record.

Just my opinion.

Its not hard to dazzle Paramount with a merchandising idea as long as they hear investment is low.  Win goes to the lowest bidder.  There are only a few instances where a top notch product came with a Star Trek tag.  For every one good item, there are 4-5 crap ones.

Well, on  paper at least, PE probably looked like a good choice to develop STO.  Both Chris McKibbin and Joe Keene were part of the management team from EA that oversaw the development of Earth & Beyond.  They probably showed CBS/Paramount E&B and then said, 'imagine this with the star-trek IP...'  It would not surprise me if, at the end of the day, STO is essentially E&B with better graphics.

Standard public relations is not let your customer base know about financial difficulties or management problems until absolutely necessary.  That way, if you manage to solve the problem quietly, no one need be the wiser (and no bad press!).  So it doesn't surprise me that they shut the whole thing down on what seems like a moments notice.  What I can not  figure out is why PE would cancel GnH outright rather then pushing it to market in whatever state they could manage and then trying to recoup some of their money. 

The way I see it, PE has managed to generate about 20 million in funding since its initial start up in 2002.  About 11 mil came from (mostly Asian) venture capitol firms (see here and here) and another 9 million came from the purchase by Korean game publisher Gravity Co Ltd of 16% of PE's stock. 

I am guessing that most of this money is now gone.  It is hard to tell how many employees PE has/had (it is not a publicly traded company) but from its layoff announcements, I suspect that at its peak it had maybe 120 people working on GnH alone.  Supposing an average of 75K per person, that would easily translate to 9 million a year in salaries alone.  This is sunk cost that they now have no hope of recovering.

The only thing that makes any sense to me is that CBS took a look Perpetual's balance sheet and demanded that they close down Gods and Heroes or else they would pull the IP.   I couldn't find any hard sales figures for GnH preorders, but any product that Amazon ranked as #9,624 in Software could not have been burning up the charts.  Given the choice between supporting a quickly sinking game or losing their one valuable asset (the Star Trek IP) they chose (or were forced to choose) the later.

~nox

I think it might be useful to do a slightly different thought experiment when thinking about the importance of customization. 

Suppose a game developer decided that players really didn't really care what their avatars looked like.  That the only part of the game worth spending any time developing was giving players the ability to improve skills, acquire weapons, and defeat monsters.  That is, this developer was going to concentrate on gameplay to the exclusion of all else.  What might such a game look like?

Your avatar is a simple cube (only one polygon!).  Perhaps you can change its color, perhaps not.  You float through a world of simple shapes -- spheres, cones, pyramids, etc. which might represent trees, mountains or buildings or nothing at all.  Your weapon is a thin cylinder about the same length as your avatar.  For every meelee attack -- and there are many different attacks -- it swings in an overhead arc to strike your opponent.  For each ranged attack, whether by magic or archery, it shoots from your center in a straight line to its target.  As for crafting, you can make anything you want, but its always a sphere.

How popular would this game be?  Not very, I think.  It would be nothing more then a three dimensional version of the old Dungeon Game.  For most players this would be way too abstract, despite having a great system of combat and terrific rewards. 

To me, the real question is not would a person choose a wooden stick with excellent stats over a fancy sword (simple economics dictates the stick), but would that reward be enough to make the player want to skip a meal in order to go through the next dungeon?

~nox

Originally posted by LuRavi

Another example of how out of touch with actual gamers that Stradden would post this. As actual news.

I don't think he posted this as news.  More like a memorial...

~nox

 Yep, any game that stays in development for too long risks dying for lack of money.

Exhibit A: Trials of Ascension

I really hope they manage to pull this one out though...