All Posts by burmese

You can safely assume the character models won't be changed.  That sort of graphical work is an order of magnitude more time and money and labor-intensive than doing the graphics engine update is.  Personally, I don't have any problems with the character models - they have a level of freedom, in terms of emotes, that virtually no other game has; and the graphics update should improve some aspects such as skin tone.

The new graphics engine is still being worked on (now for about 16 months with the Alpha code shown as a nice video back in January).  No date set other than they intend to get it out this year.

From Game Directory Silirrion back in June:

"Lastly, but by no means least, we are still working on the render engine upgrade. As I also mentioned in the previous letter we are currently in a lengthy part of the process where we are stripping out the old engine entirely and integrating a new one, and testing that all the game’s key features still work! The development continues to be good, though, and we will be sure to keep you all up to date as we progress. It’s quite a formidable task and we won’t rush it out."

The 'Free' game can be played forever (they will -never- rescind the F2P status, they just renew it each year).

The buddy keys are for the 'full' game with 30 days free play - at the end of 30 days, you either cancel or start paying monthly fees.

Free players can do duels(controlled 1-on-1 PvP where the loser doesn't die on the spot), flagged PvP, Tower PvP, Arena PvP.  People with the Lost Eden expansion can also participate in Battle Station 'capture the flag' style PvP (which earns 'Victory Points' to spend on uber armor and stuff).

Visible titles can be displayed from duel wins, team wins, solo wins (or 'classic' PvP titles)

Over on the testlive server people are starting to put the raid interface thru it's paces. Some bugs still but it looks very nice. One person can create a raid of up to 36 ppl., assigning them to individual teams and moving them around as needed. When loot is set to Leader the Raid leader is able to open loot and then right click on individual items and assign them to raid members(thru a nested menu). Cannot assign to raid members not in vicinity. No one else can pick up that loot and it appears the loot stays under the raid's control until it rots.

Healers can drag the hp/nano bars of individuals from the interface out into the open where they can monitor them (in addition to seeing their own team). If a team loses a doc or other key person, the RL can quickly drag a substitute from another team and put them in that team - no need for ppl to drop team, go lft, then get picked up by the needy team - and can be done while team is in a fight, too.

RL can turn control of the raid over to other individuals - still need to see what happens if the RL LD's but probably someone in their own team gets RL status automatically.

AO is running on a new server farm they put in place almost a year ago. Lag has little to do with the servers, it has a lot to do with how your hard drive spools graphical data to the video card and most modern video cards and drivers don't expect to handle the game the way AO code wants to run.  That's one of the major reasons for the upcoming graphics engine.

As for petitions, I put in one or two a day, mainly to get rid of RMT gold sellers spamming the channels; and get responses from ARK's normally within the hour.

It's clear up front this is a promotion for the full game with all expansions. If you thought you were going to get 30 free days then slide into $5/mo SL, sorry.  And the -full- game can be had for $0 up front using a buddy key on a new or free account, if you're smart.  No one running the already cheap SL package is going to get the full game w/o $$ up front (unless they do some other promotion).

BTW,  lot of old timers have come back in the past week with the new expansions.  A lot of them have lvl 200+ chars that didn't hit 220 and they quit some years ago due to disliking the grind needed back then to get all the way to 220.  Now, with the Inferno missions easing that grind a lot, they're jumping on this offer.

No idea what you were expecting, the promotion is clear and accurate.  A prior $5 Shadowlands subscription will, of course, be automatically superceded with this promotion.  You're certainly not going to get 30 free days, followed by $5/mo SL.  This promotion is -only- for all expansions and the full subscription fee starts after the trial period.

Note that people either starting an account or upgrading a free account can get 37 free days and pay nothing for all the expansions by using a buddy key(which all paying subscribers have 7 of atm).  Like the above promotion, if they don't cancel by the end of the free period, they start paying the full monthly subscription fees.

Yep, they keep tossing in new stuff faster that anyone who plays less than 60 hours a week can digest.

So if that is too much to pay, start a new account and use the $7 upgrade.

Keep in mind that a lot of the above commentary is flat incorrect.  For example, Bekir Osman Keskin started with Funcom working on the AoC engine, then got pulled over to work on the AO graphics engine coming out later this year.  And anyone who thinks Gaute is responsible for AO launch timing should check their records on who was the CEO at the time (hint: it wasn't Gaute).  If you're going to try to tack expansions onto a particular regime, at least post links specifying the dates that various Game Directors were in place (no one has yet listed them correctly here and Gaute was on for less time than some others).

The fr00b content only seems boring because you see some of what paying customers can do but the game was for some years just what fr00bs get now, and 10's of 1,000's played it then and payed to do missions and kill mobs in the wild.  Still more variety and complexity available for fr00bs than any other free MMO.

The two biggest hits to the population AO has taken have been from WoW and AoC.  WoW hit worse...I could spend hours in West Athens back then and not see a soul...two months after that, they started the Fr00b program and that has been the lifeblood of the game...steady stream of fr00bs turning into subscribers.  They anticipated the hit AoC would take and that is part of the reason why they started the program for a new graphics engine back around the start of 2007.  When they drop that in, it will have the 'eye-candy' to compete with newer MMO's.

Game is doing fine and is easily the best 'free' MMO around.  As for moving people around, they even moved the key graphics designer (Bekir Osman Keskin) from Age of Conan to AO last year to work on the new graphics engine. As Silirrion posted in a state of the game letter today (June 26th), they are continuing work on the graphics engine, ripping out the old engine and replacing it with the new on the Developers server, and testing it).

I play both AO and AoC and each is for different audiences.  AO is the complex, thinking game, though.

That won't happen.  Shadowlands is the core of the game from a story point now, clan/omni/human are just the babies/descendants to come along in the past few millenia and each update is integrating Shadowlands deeper and deeper into the game and Rubi-Ka.

Also, using becnhmarks like 3DMark 06 (or whatever year) aren't very reliable in predicting how AoC will run.  It's a very different animal and the -only- way to know how it runs on your system is to play it, collecting fps while experimenting with the various advanced gfx settings in the game control panel.

The engine is tentatively scheduled for patch 18.0  They have patch 17.9 on test atm.  Probably sometime in the next 4-5 months.

The engine will be for everyone.

Update:

Upgraded the nVidia 7300 GS/256 to an nVidia 8400 GS/512

went from 5-10 fps to 18-21 average, also now on medium settings

1024x768 @ medium settings, shader 2.0 18-21, drops to 10-12 rarely, up to 30fps in some empty areas

big note - shader 3.0 drives the fps back to below 10, shader 2.0 needs to be used on rigs like this.  Also, it has a bad habit of switching back to 3.0 after some zoning.  When I see my fps drop thru the floor, I go reset the shader to 2.0 and all is good again.

AO is already the best bang for the buck deal around.  Core game totally free, the huge Shadowlands expansion for $5/mo, and the full game for less than $10 a month (assuming you subscribe by the year, like I do)

AoC doing good will undoubtedly have benefits for AO down the line, from better exposure to possibly more $$ for updates (not that they don't already do constant content additions and updates).

The launch has been very smooth over all and 95% of the ppl who are actually in the game are delighted.  Expect the forum trolls here to continue to spawn posts and keep bumping them to the top of the list.  They have nothing else to do...

Right now the only MMO launch that was any smoother would be LoTRO, and that one not by much.

Most of the PvP, and a few of the PvE servers, are heavily loaded with queues. 

Right now AoC has 600k-700k players which is excellent as they are not trying to cater to the lowest common denominator, but are looking to carve out a large, distinct segment of their own. It will be 2-3 months before we begin to have an idea if the end-game content has the right hooks to retain players.  Anyone here can claim what they want but no one knows squat as to how things will be 3, or 6 months from now.

I predict WaR will be a bigger drain from WoW, overall, but AoC is clearly pulling all the hardcore PvPers from -all- other current MMO's right now. The combat mechanics are distinct, intelligent, and not comparable to anything else out there.  It's also getting a good dose of RPers who are into the Conan lore.  Not to mention all the PC hardware companies are wetting their pants seeing a popular game out that really takes advantage of top end equipment.