All Posts by AmazingAvery

When you buy the game online (normal price) and download it, do you still get buddy keys?

Anyone know?

I'm sure to be politically correct they will add an option to get a dark skin tone.

1...

Good job on leaving RS. Welcome to the real mmo world!

Personally,  go for Guild Wars, try and buy the original and "Factions" - Factions will add more PvP options for you.

A lot of people dont see GW as a real mmorpg. However, for just the box price like you said your after, it will give you some better eye candy than Runescape.

After your done with GW or for the Future you could be intrested in GW2 (no monthly fee too)

Archlord and Perfect World are other free to play mmo's that you might want to try out.

My choice would be with the ABIT AN9-32X. Its a 590 chipset. You can read all about it here, with nice installation pics too. http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/ABIT_AN9-32X/index.shtml

You see ASUS has alot of mobo's here.

My choices would be

ABIT AN9-32X

GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4

MSI K9N SLI Platinum

If only you went with and Intel CPU, yours will hold you back if you get a second GPU. :)

Hope helps.

Originally posted by solareus

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by Jackdog

The definition of PvP is player vs player last time I  looked it up. In other words one player playing his character against another player controlled character rather than a computer controlled NPC. It does not matter if the other player is playing his spider or warg or orc or minstrel or hunter the challenge of playing against a live person is still the same. Therefor the statement that LoTRO has no PvP is false.

You want ganking, unbalanced classes, exploits and constant nerfs feel free to go play AoC. It has plenty of those to go around.

 

Something about this post screams scared of PvP

The OP asked "Real" PvP, you know with consequences...

Lotro fails for me there. PvE can be fun at times but PvP as in Player Vs Player is a joke for me, its not even fun.

 

LOL so you play Shadowbane now ? I knew aoC was weak GvP (gank vs player) Hope you have a good time in Shadowbane Avery , it is a great PVP game.

I think LotRO Monster Play is a lot more dynamic then people think. You aren't just going into the moors as a freep to pvp , there is some serious loot to get from quests, and having human players inside the monsters really makes completing those quest a lot more difficult. No other game has this kind of dynamic interaction between  player vs player.  You either get it, or you don't . A lot, A lot of people get it and enjoy it, creating rivalries and just all around epic battles between good vs evil. This is just the beginning lol, I bet you that Mordor will be the biggest MPVP arena ever constructed by man lol ....

Actually I played Shadowbane for nearly a year and left about 11 months ago,have been subbed to Lotro since launch, VG too, As well as AoC of course more recently. I don't find AoC's GvG weak at all, I bet 97% of people that complain about AoC's pvp have not tried Sieges yet.

Regardless, Monster Play is a let down for me, yes loot can be good from quests, and the concept is alright, but it just doesnt pull it off for me. Thats all I am saying. Mordor could swing it back for me to give it a concerted effort again, but at this point in time only reason I am still subbed is because I havent done all PvE aspects yet.

Originally posted by Jackdog

The definition of PvP is player vs player last time I  looked it up. In other words one player playing his character against another player controlled character rather than a computer controlled NPC. It does not matter if the other player is playing his spider or warg or orc or minstrel or hunter the challenge of playing against a live person is still the same. Therefor the statement that LoTRO has no PvP is false.

You want ganking, unbalanced classes, exploits and constant nerfs feel free to go play AoC. It has plenty of those to go around.

Something about this post screams scared of PvP

The OP asked "Real" PvP, you know with consequences...

Lotro fails for me there. PvE can be fun at times but PvP as in Player Vs Player is a joke for me, its not even fun.

Originally posted by PROdotes

I'll risk sounding like a troll but... Did AoC win any awards? Just curious since i had a bad feeling about AoC from the first time i heard about it... and a good feeling about war from the first time i heard about it... and i was right about AoC and i would HATE to be wrong about war

AoC beat out warhammer at every E3 during development and several high profile conventions over the past 2 years too.

Awards aren't everything as you can tell...

Grats Mythic.

If you havent tried goto the game folder:

Pick Simple config:

Click verify / repair and then "ok"

Then goto the patcher again, you shouldn't do the constant download thing.

Hope it helps.

Originally posted by solareus

The Video has nothing to do with the performance, one minute a 8600GT can run at max  , the next it cant, the one minute a 8800GT can run at max , now it can't.. pattern is emerging , if you can't see that you are completely blinded by fanboinopis.

These is due to the shaders loading for each zone, or area as you move into it,  just like any other game including lotro...

take your hate blinders off.

Some people cant handle the fact most people have really great PC performance in AoC. Time and Time again it what was said at launch.

Some people cant handle ATI being better either.

Originally posted by solareus

What is ironic, no matter what card and how many cards you use .. those trees still are the worst looking vegetation in mmorpg history, Hello Kitty Online has better vegetation.  Good luck with this argument, bottom line is the cards have nothing to do with how the game is set up to use the Microsofts 360's 3 core cpu and architecture, which seems to not want to work with pc single , duel , or quad cpus.

This thread is about perfomance, not tree hugging:

who care about xbox architecture? it wont be out on 360 for a year. I play the game on PC just like everyone else here, it was coded for the PC, there is a different dev team for the 360. FYI mate, the 360 hasnt even been coded yet. You see they are after help on the game for the 360 because its different from the PC version.

Here are some real stats to chew on. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6192732/p-2.html

$6000 machine to play the game on ... yea right. All done on machines no where near that cost.

Their self proclaimed awesome machine can be brought for under $1000 or upgraded to easily without that quad and a cheaper one in place overclocked. Or Even their awesome system for 2k.

Jackdog I had a system just like yours and get 60 fps plus in AoC since day one. Would you care for my system specs and fraps as proof for average value?

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Funcom's new massively multiplayer online role-playing game, lets players develop their characters and explore the mythical world of Hyboria. The game offers excellent graphics but also comes with equally breathtaking PC system requirements. Much of the game runs without a hitch, but like many MMORPGs, the true test of the hardware is in the large cities. High population counts, towering spires, long view distances, and tremendous amounts of shadowing all combine to make game frame rates about as viscous as corn syrup. Weaker computers will grind to a stop, while more powerful machines will limp along at less than half or even a third of their usual performance when faced with these large city environments. There isn't much you can do to avoid the frame rate hit, but you can upgrade a few key components to make the game a bit more playable.

Server conditions, population activity, and numerous other conditions make testing MMORPGs difficult. We increased our usual test duration to three minutes and used FRAPs to measure frame rates to compensate for the variability of our test runs. Our test ran through the streets of Old Terantia where we wound our way from the East Gate to the docks and back. The path has a mix of long view distances, heavily trafficked areas, and graphically varied regions that make the test brutal on the system hardware, as well as representative of the different scenery that the game offers. We found that the city test represents the absolute worst case scenario. We easily saw our frame rates double as soon as we stepped outside of cities, and combat instances in enclosed areas proved much less taxing than the civil environments.

Game Settings
Age of Conan has lots of adjustable settings and sliders, but most of them don't affect performance. However, there are a few settings you can tweak to easily double performance.

Graphics
The game's minimum system requirements starts with a GeForce 6600 video card, but we'd be surprised if you could do any more than look at the title screen with such an old card. We went through almost 20 video cards to identify the video cards that give you the most bang for your buck.

CPU
We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Toss your single-core processor in the dust bin of obsolete technology. Age of Conan practically requires a dual-core processor to run at all. We tested various speed quad-core, dual-core, and single-core CPUs from both Intel and AMD to help you decide where to devote your CPU budget.

Memory
Age of Conan requires 1GB of RAM to run, but that's barely enough to get the computer to boot in Windows Vista. We went ahead and tested the game with 2GB and 3GB of RAM to see what more reasonable amounts of system memory can do for performance.

Systems

A machine that featured the minimum system requirements--3GHz Pentium 4 processor, GeForce 6600 128MB video card, and 1GB of system memory--seemed reasonable, but we decided to build a test machine to see how the game performed on a system with the minimum required specifications. We didn't have many of the older parts, but we got close. We had to bump up the processor to a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 and blew the dust off an old GeForce 6800. Even with slightly more powerful components, the game could barely run. We got the game to move at a semifluid pace in city environments with rock bottom settings, but playing on the min-spec system wasn't an enjoyable experience.

The game runs much better on a PC with the recommended 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB, and 2GB DDR2 memory system components. The recommended hardware let us crank the detail up to medium settings and even bump the resolution to 1600x1200 while maintaining very playable frame rates. The game played buttery smooth outside of the city areas.

Our self-proclaimed awesome system, a 3GHz Core 2 Quad with a GeForce 9800 GTX and 2GB of DDR2 RAM, ran the game without a hitch. We turned the settings up to high to experience Hyboria in all of its splendor.

 

System Setup:

Game Settings

Age of Conan has numerous settings, but most won't help you regain performance if you have a moderately powerful video card. As with most games, the one major performance guzzler has to be shadowing. If you disable shadows in all their forms, you can get immediate frame rate gains. We nearly doubled our performance simply by disabling shadows and leaving all the other settings at high quality. If disabling shadows isn't enough, we also recommend reducing the resolution and view distance to get the game to run smoother on less powerful video cards.

 

You might also want to look at the bloom setting. It saps performance, and its benefits are purely subjective. High quality settings with bloom-produced walls create an overly bright and unnatural appearance. However, bloom became a bit more enticing with shadows disabled because the added color and light helped to offset the lack of blacks that the shadows provided. Check out how it looks on the following page and decide if it's worth the performance hit.

Image Quality Comparison

Preset Quality Settings

High       Medium       Low      

 

Bloom

Enabled       Disabled      

 

Shadow Settings

Everything       People       Disabled      

 

 

Awesome System: Intel Core2 QX9650, eVGA 780i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 9800 GTX, beta Nvidia ForceWare 175.16.

Recommended System: Intel Core2 Duo E6600, eVGA 780i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 7900 GTX, beta Nvidia ForceWare 175.16.

Minimum System: Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz, Asus P4C800, 1GB Corsair XMS Memory (512MBx2), Seagate 160GB 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Card: GeForce 6800, beta Nvidia Forceware 175.16.

Originally posted by Arcken

What do these cards benchmark at during the 48vs48 sieges? Oh wait, they promised those at launch but didnt deliver did they....

urrm about 20 fps for me on average in the thick of it.  You?

Wait... had to build city up first!

Wait there was a bug that prevented some guilds getting there about 9 days before they could, big whoop!

here is some more relevant stats done:

what do you think in comparison? enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

(DirectX 9)

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a very new game. This MMORGP is very graphically advanced for this style of gameplay, and we’ve seen it bring current video cards to their knees when trying to maximize the in-game graphics options. This game is also rather popular with gamers, and this evaluation wouldn’t be complete without including this new game. Unfortunately it is so new, that we were unable to do our regular highest-playable run-throughs in Age of Conan in time for this launch.

Age of Conan can be a pain as far as testing goes, because the time of day changes in AoC in-game. The game will cycle from day to night, and the different lighting being used can affect performance differently. In order to find the highest playable settings we must test in the day time, the evening time, the night time, and at dawn. When we do a run-through we also must make sure it is done at the same time of day on all video cards being compared. This adds a time factor to testing with AoC, making evaluating with it take much longer. We’ve found out that in 1 hour of real-time 6 hours of game-time passes by. So in a 4 hour period the game will completely cycle a 24 hour day. Keep this in mind as you are playing, because performance will change between day and night, and our evaluation reflects a level of gameplay that works in all times of day in the game.

First we are going to show you a table outlining the highest playable settings we found. Then we will follow below with an apples-to-apples comparison at 2560x1600 with highest in-game settings.

Age of Conan contains many graphical options in-game. We are not going to explore them all in this evaluation. For a complete overview of what the settings are and what they do, and for more detailed AoC evaluation please check out our Age of Conan Gameplay Performance and IQ evaluation.

Highest Playable – 1920x1200

Here we go folks; this is what the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is capable of. Age of Conan is simply breathtaking on the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and 4870 X2 CrossFireX platforms. One of the features the new ATI Radeon HD 4800 series supports is called Custom Filtering AA, talked about on this page. Custom Filtering AA (CFAA) is a method employed by the Radeon HD 4800 series to improve antialiasing image quality by using an edge detect algorithm. The beauty of this technology is that uses the stream processors to perform this action and does not tax the framebuffer at all. That means you can get high quality AA (equivalent of 12X and 24X AA) without the cost of using up memory bandwidth and capacity, it uses the shaders. The downside of course is when you are in a shader intensive game you can’t exactly spare the shader horsepower. But, with a setup like Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 4-GPUs powering the game, it has a ton of shader horsepower, 3200 stream processors at your disposal! In that vein, we of course had to test it!

As you can see in Age of Conan at 1920x1200 we were able to run with the highest in-game settings enabled, this means highest shadows, highest view distances and bloom enabled. Not only that, but we were able to use the unique edge detect custom filtering AA option of 12X, and not just that folks, but also Adaptive AA! This means we are receiving the quality of 12X AA on all polygon edges, as well as using Adaptive AA to reduce aliasing on all alpha textures (foliage) in the game! This is just with the single Radeon HD 4870 X2 as well. In order to use CFAA one only needs to select “Edge Detect” in the control panel and then set the in-game AA option to 4X. At 4X MSAA you receive 12X CFAA. At 8X MSAA you receive 24X CFAA.

As you can see, moving up to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration we are now able to set the absolute highest AA setting possible here, 24X CFAA WITH Adaptive AA! Yes, 24X CFAA with Adaptive AA, and getting an average framerate of 51 FPS. Holy cow, what else is there to say really? It blows the doors off of the GTX 280.

The BFGTech GeForce GTX 280 OC was playable with 8xQ AA (true 8X MSAA), but was not playable with transparency antialiasing at this level. Therefore the Radeon HD 4870 X2 allows a higher gameplay experience by giving us 12X AA plus Adaptive AA to reduce aliasing on foliage.

The GeForce GTX 280 SLI platform allowed us to enable transparency supersampling, but at 4X. We could alternatively disable transparency supersampling and run at a higher AA level, but we like our foliage all antialiased in the game. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 however surpassed the GTX 280 SLI configuration by allowing a higher AA setting of 24X AA plus Adaptive AA enabled.

Highest Playable – 2560x1600

Things only get more exciting at 2560x1600 for these video cards. We are just flat out floored, with drool everywhere, at the level of immersion these platforms allow at 2560x1600 in Age of Conan. No joke, we found 8X AA playable on both, but the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX platform still comes out the winner here. With GeForce GTX 280 SLI we were able to play at true 8X MSAA at 2560x1600 with the highest in-game settings, very impressive indeed. However, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX platform surpassed that by allowing us to enable Adaptive AA plus 8X AA to reduce aliasing on all the foliage in the game as well! Not only that, but as you can see, the performance is still even higher than GTX 280 SLI at these higher settings. Just simply outstanding!

Due to this incredible level of AA performance out of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 we had to run some apples-to-apples tests to take a further look at it, including scaling. The next few pages go a little deeper into these fantastic performance experiences. (see link at top for more games and performance)

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The bit in green is what im getting at.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

You wont see any other mmorpg with a view distance of 2 miles where you can turn everything up at 30" res and see better frame rates. Thats right. Because no other mmorpg lets you have the options too.

Its a demanding game on hardware, no denying that, but its also in a graphical option area where other mmorpg aspire to have options like that.

Like I said and still waiting for any proof if there is any.  pIctures with nice view distances do not correlate performance and quality at 30" res.

At 30" res, there is no other mmorpg out there that has better frame rates with all the same options as AoC has turned on and can get the same FPS. Any other mmorpg lets you put an "in-game option for transparency AA" at the draw distances AoC offers?

You haters are a bit slow in getting my point, the performance here is with Everything turned on. Transparency options are not available in other mmorpg's at that distance giving a better performance at higher resolutions because they dont offer that feature. Thats why respectable sites like the one in the forst post use AoC as a Bench because it stress' hardware when used. That is an option to use those highest settings.

Remember before the game came out - they said it would push the newest machines but still could be toned down to be played on older machines -still true.

As for the mis-informed guy about SLI - I have one machine with 8800GT in I added another and my FPS increased by about 70%. I have another with a 9800Gx2 which gets just below that at 19x12.

Guess what I can see people 2 miles away, rendered nicely too.

Its not about how far any game can let you view, its about how well it looks over that distance and performs.

Some of you are mis-understanding my point.

When you can scale the game with a 2 miles view distance and graphical settings not available in any other mmo, of course performance will dip when everything is turned on.

Scales well at the high end and the low end is a true statement from the development cycle.

Remember all those arguments that ATI cards were no good for AoC? well things look a little differently now.

I am sure most mmorpg players play on 22" monitors or less (with more playing on less in size) therefore performance will be far superior to the 20 " stats displayed here.

You wont see any other mmorpg with a view distance of 2 miles where you can turn everything up at 30" res and see better frame rates. Thats right. Because no other mmorpg lets you have the options too.

Its a demanding game on hardware, no denying that, but its also in a graphical option area where other mmorpg aspire to have options like that.

Including an engineering sample of ATI 4870X2 - soon to be released: