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Age of Conan - Hands-On Report
Recently, News Manager Keith Cross had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco for a hands-on demonstration of Funcom's upcoming MMORPG, Age of Conan. The experience was under embargo until today, so today he files his report.
If this isn’t the first article you’ve read about Funcom’s upcoming game, then you probably already know that between the years when Atlantis went tits up and before the sons of Aryas started doing their thing, there was an age undreamed of, where many shining kingdoms were spread across Hyborea. There was the dark and mysterious Stygia, Aquilonia the proud, and Cimmeria where the Atlanteans fled. And during this age there came a man of great mirth and melancholies for whom this age is named, the Age of Conan.
Speaking of the Age of Conan, I recently had the opportunity to attend a press event and get a hands-on look at one of 2008’s most anticipated games. Several people from Funcom, including Product Director Jorgen Tharaldson were on hand to answer questions and get killed by the press in a few PvP matches.
My experiences in-game began with character creation which was fairly comprehensive, considering that not every character customization feature had been added for this demonstration. Most notably absent was the ability to play female characters, as that option just wasn’t ready at the time. So I set to work making my dark haired Aquilonian with an Amish style beard. Some of the hair and beard styles weren’t quite ready, and didn’t fit on the face properly, leaving a noticeable gap between the cheeks and the beard, but that’s to be expected at this stage, as the game is still in beta with a currently scheduled March 25th 2008 launch. These little problems were made up for by an abundance of sliders for the body and face. A particular favorite among the standard face lengtheners and eye shrinkers, was the broken nose slider, which allows a player to adjust the direction and severity of their avatar’s broken nose. The triangular slider used to choose body type was also a nice change from the usual two dimensional left-right sliders, and gives the feeling of having more freedom when choosing how big, thin and/or, muscular you want your character to be. Aside from the bad hair dos and no girls (which kind of reminds me a little bit of high school) the only other thing I would have liked to have seen would be an age slider, but that’s more of a personal preference than something the game was lacking.
;)
Character creation took place on the deck of a galley in rough seas, where the player plays the part of a slave, forced to spend his days toiling away on the oars. But this existence is over as soon as you’ve finished with character creation, so with my nose sufficiently broken, my loincloth on tight, and my beard at the ready, I was good to go. The adventure begins with your character being washed ashore on a tropical beach with no memories. The beach is on an island called Tortage and the stage of the game is the tutorial. You spend your first 5 or so levels in a solo tutorial instance, where the first person you meet upon heading inland is a scantily clad vixen chained up in the jungle. She sends you to slay her captors where you learn the basics of combat with a wooden club.
I must say I enjoyed the combat system of Conan more than any other MMO I’ve played this year. The Age of Conan combat system has changed a few times since it was first shown to the public. In its current incarnation, it has the right mixture of game design, animations, and art direction to make combat a satisfying experience. At low level, when you don’t have access to much in the way of special abilities, you have your three basic attacks: from the left, the right, or an overhead attack that aims down your opponents center. When in combat, the enemy you have selected displays symbols in each of these left-right-overhead areas indicating their current defensive status from each of those directions. The idea here being that you have to choose to attack the least protected area if you want to do the most damage. The enemies in the tutorial area were fairly easy to defeat, but they were tough enough to show that you couldn’t defeat your enemies by just wading in to combat and attacking without strategy, like you can get away with in many other MMOs, but if you paid attention to their defenses you could truly mow down your foes with efficiency. I have no hard numbers on this but it seemed like a ratio of 3 hits to down an opponent with button mashing, to 1 to 2 hits with strategy.
;)
That’s the simple design that makes combat in Conan more active than in many other MMOs, but it’s not the only thing that makes combat fun. At higher levels this system becomes more in-depth when you gain access to special moves and combos. A special move is handled in the same way as in other MMOs, maybe a hit does more damage, maybe you can knock a foe back… the list goes on. But what makes them fun is that if you follow up a special move with specific directional attacks, you do a combo and do mare damage. If you finish an adversary with a combo you have a chance to perform one of the finishing moves that Age of Conan is becoming famous for, like a good old-fashioned decapitation.
We had a chance to try out our prowess with combos later on when we left Tortage for a higher level raid area. I explored two such areas with my colleagues in the gaming media, Connal’s Valley, and a place called The Maze. Of course combos weren’t the only thing that I learned here. This is where I learned about the death penalty in Conan; good news, the penalties only stacks three times. The other thing that I learned is that if you go back to where you died and retrieve your tombstone, the penalties are lifted. So death isn’t that bad if you die somewhere that you can get back to easily, which I learned the hard way.
When playing MMOs, I have a tendency to get too wrapped up in combat, and push too far ahead, where I subsequently get overwhelmed and die. Age of Conan encourages this kind of play (at least from me) with combat momentum, where you swing your sword to the right, and your whole body follows through to the right. The motion captures for this were well done and it adds to the feeling of immersion, and helped make the combat more intuitive by appearing more natural. It also encourages you to pay more attention along with the directional attacks and combos. One problem I often have with MMOs, especially at lower levels, is the lack of a “coolness factor” for my character. But with the style of Age of Conan, and the satisfying combat, you feel cool right from the start, swinging a crude wooden club and dodging rivals in a loincloth.
;)
I won’t say much here about Conan’s graphical qualities, because we’ve also got a number of screenshots coming out today as well. But what I will say is that the game looked pretty much the way it does in the screenshots. The graphics looked great of course because we were running the game on high end machines, but they had a laptop set up with Age of Conan running and graphics and game-play didn’t suffer too much. I honestly don’t care too much about flashy graphics as long as the game runs clean and I know what I’m looking at. I also think it’s important that the characters, NPCs, creatures, towns, and terrains all fit together in a cohesive artistic style. Funcom has done a good job on this front, finding a nice mix between a stylized look and photorealism, and the characters look like they belong in the world.
We finished off the demo portion of the day with a few PvP matches in a capture the flag scenario. The was a bit frantic at first, but once everyone got comfortable, and figured out how to work as a team the fun factor increased. I’m was told that a characters PvP level is separate from their actual level, a mechanic intended to help balance PvP and make it more accessible. The rest of the game is divided up into the first five levels of the tutorial instance, up to level 20 as a solo RPG, and then beyond that the world opens up to being a full MMO. So there’s a little something for every player.
After playtime ended I had the chance to talk to Funcom’s Product Director, Jorgen Tharaldson. Because of the current stage that Age of Conan is currently in, he couldn’t really answer many of my questions but we did have an interesting talk about the current feud between members of the Age of Conan and Warhammer Online fan bases. When asked about the debate Jorgen said, “I think our game will be awesome.” But then he added, “I think Warhammer will be awesome too. We’ve taken different design philosophies. They are taking a more traditional approach to MMOs, and we are trying something a little different.”
Thanks stradden but I guess the fact the guy can have a broken nose wont do much for my fears about this games release or indeed if it will be released on time,But again thanks for the post.
Fun read! I can't wait to play.
I just hope AoC dosen't put all of it's eggs in the PvP basket.....I enjoy PvP as muchas teh next guy, but if the quest system sucks , and there is little or no reason to craft, the game will go the way of Fury.
it doesn't. the pvp sounds way better than it actually . the pve aspect is where the game really shines.
Thanks, Keith!
That was the best written description I've yet read of AoC's combat system and it explains a lot! Now the videos and less-elucidating comments make sense--sounds great!
Short but sweet--this one is number one on my all-too-short list.
I'm just not so sure about the "first 20 levels are a single player RPG" thing.
How many levels are there? 50? 60?
So you have a good 33% ish of the game is single player?
The first 5 levels tutorial being instanced single player? Cool. Good idea. Let players get comfortable in the game before throwing them to the wolves.
But 20 levels?
Seems a bit much.
Still, all in all, very intrigued by this title and wil continue to keep my eye on it.
They are referring to the PVE levels in the game. There are 80 PVE levels and 20 PvP levels. So after the single player part you have 60 pve levels to gain and 20 pvp.
Atleast give negatives for the game. It sounds like Funcom bought you a new computer as thanks for playing thier demo.
While good overall i'm still getting a nagging feeling about the combat system with that decription: it's kinda a double egded sword there, where it's good being a simple system, it seems more like the 'winner' of combat will be determended by out 'button bashing' the other player when it comes down to pvp as very little was desclosed it actal combat, where does the class skills come in, does this add more to the system or simply just change the 'type' of attack? How does range combat work into this? These things could alter what the system is like..
Given the current details from this report I see no differences in combat then playing God of War or even the latest Conan single player game, meaning PVP wont be down to as much 'skill' as it'll be down to gear, meaning it's like PVP ala WoW again where the 'raid elite' with top end gear can easly outmatch a lower gear person even if that player with the lower gear is better pulling the 'combos', hopfully it'll be counter balenced by interupts in combat more then crowdcontrollike AOE lock downs and fears tho.. We can't really tell until we know more and experience the system for ourselfs.
As someone said unless things like crafting and other parts of the game are just as meaningful as the combat is to the game, AoC seems to cater for the console gamer market then the market as a whole, which like they meantioned more 'traditional' MMOers may look towards WAR or another MMO, which I'm not saying is bad but I'm just hoping theres somthing for them in AoC as well.
Perhaps this will put a benchmark up console style MMOs so we don't get just tacked on ideas for online like Phantasy Star or Hellgate, we don't know until it's out, but it looks like this may do the trick.
Edit: Highlighted bits to make it clear that my comments are based off the current decription only and to point out I hope theres more to it (which there is a high chance there is given thats only basic combat)
Sounds fun, BUT . . .
What was described here represents a very, very small part of a complete MMORPG game, or experience.
The fact that the basic Graphic elements for characters are not yet debugged should indicate that this game is NOT going to be ready to go Gold in 2 to 2 1/2 months time.
If I were advising the investors and developers on this one, I would recommend another 6 months to 1 year of development. Let WaR have its day, and WoTLK have its. Then, AoC can come out for Christmas 2008 and have a reasonable chance for a major success with a solid product.
Rushed out in an unfinished, and under-content state, and it will fail.
Because, you know that Mythic is not going to drop the ball on WaR.
Just my 2c on this one.
Ah, that clears things up thanks!
I just hope that first 20 levels of single player go really quickly. It's a MMO! Nothing massive, multiplayer, or online about 1/4 of the PVE levels being single player.... Ah well, we shall wait and see.
I keep getting more and more excited about AoC cant wait to see how spell casting really works. Hopefully they can hammer out those small graphical issues and as long as the rest of the game is complete maybe no more delayes. /pray
Tortage is hardly 20% of the gameplay either, to get an even beter insight you can browse or even read the beta diary reports on the main site.
Did you read the article?
Sarcasm at its best!
When you take into consideration that Electronic Arts controls Mythic, dissapointment becomes a synonymous statement.
Only reason I have no intent to bother with War Hammer is specifically due to the extreme amount of craptastic games EA has rushed out inorder to exploit the consumer video game market. And their sequals are the best!
EA/Mythic might have something with the new mmo although the track record is enough cause to lend caution.
Of course, we could also over analyze Funcom's initial release sucess with Anarcy Online. ;)
I think Age of Conan could be great and I'm glad theve pushed the release date back to march of 2008. As with someone else who said it, pushing it back a little further to ensure an open environment of availble content would be better, unless it already has the content.
Ahh, the uninformed! EA is helping fund the game but they aren't actually touching the project at all, as has been stated over and over by the developers.
I suggest you read the article again. He did not say the combat was button mashing. He said the combat rewarded strategy over button mashing.
He said with strategy you could take a mob out in 1-2 attacks while if you went in without strategy and just swung it was 3-4, or something close to that. Not a big gap of difference.
Was not being sarcastic about Mythic doing well with WAR.
Mythic has a great track record with DAoC. I played it for a couple of years from launch on. Their in-game support is top-notch, the quality of the game was top-notch, and their customer interface via CamelotHerald is still one of the best out there. Gameplay was fun in both PvE and PvP. Crafting worked as well. Large world with lots to explore and find.
They really only fell down when they put ToA into place (massive Grindfest) and modified the graphics so that they were 1st person hostile (Enchanter's Staff stuck up in front of face 100% of the time).
So, I do expect Mythic to release a AAA, top quality product in WAR. I expect it to run well, play well, and have a very good population.
What does that mean for AoC? Well if AoC releases in any state close to what AO released at, then its 'Game Over, Man!" AoC needs as good a release as WAR will likely have. And I do not think Funcom can pull that off if AoC is pushed out the door in 2 to 3 months from now.
At the first levels you're correct in saying that.
Shoal may i point out to you that AnarchyOnline had indeed a bad release but you cannot deny how well and fast the game was 'corrected' both companies are capable of delivering a good quality game if you cannot admit to that i must say you're a bit to biased.
That may not sound like much of a difference, but to me, that's a big deal. It rewards skill over button mashing. When you can kill a mob twice as fast from a hitpoint / health perspective, it makes a lot of difference in actual gameplay.
CONTEXT.
That is what he said, not me. I doubt you are going to see many regular mobs that require 8-12 attacks to kill. This example, despite the new combat system is basically what your typical mmorpg uses.
When WoW first started, you could kill a mob with 1-2 abilities, or 3-4 auto attacks, same thing for FFXI, same thing for Vanguard.
EDIT: Obviously it is going to scale, but it seems they all start out this way.
Yes, but that gap probably gets quite a bit larger the further you progress in the game. I mean, he's talking about beginning level mobs here. Of course you're not going to see much difference in how long it takes you to off them.
You're trying to find things to complain about.
Not just scale my friend,
You're ignoring a few minor things such as combos witch aren't just 'hotkey abilities', directional attacks can cause damage to multiple targets aswell.
But in theory and from the core up, yes auto attack is replaced with directional melee attacks and the defense shield system requiring you not to just button smash as the mobs adapt so it requires you to not just randomly hit buttons as you think and adapt constantly aswell, removing the much dreaded "q 123 /afk 123 /afk" from the MMO scene.
You used to be well informed ;)
To be honest, hitting random buttons would make it so that you do not leave a pattern which would make the mob not be able to predict where to place his shield.
Like I said from the description of what he said combat does seem 'button bashy to win' however I did metion we don't have all the imformation yet with abilities, ranged stuff, etc, etc, so from the base level combat decription we have I stated I hope theres more to it, A LOT more ,otherwise it's just as bad as what I said, however like I beleave I said at least twice, we don't know if it's entiely true until we all get to see a working product.
That's a possibility or maybe it just adapts where you do/did the most damage.
It's not really a 'shield' either more where the target focus most of their defence, you're also again ingnoring that the majority of the damage does not come from normal attacking but from combos what also are supposed to check versus the defence shield system.
I think the entire report was faked. I insist on a beta test invite to make sure this report in on the up and up.
(checks incomming email for invite.....and finds none)
And what about the spellcasters who can lock on target mobs from a distance? I am pretty sure they can button mash to burn mobs down. Going back to melee though, we can only speculate on what information has been released, in which we only know of the low level stuff. And according to all the low level stuff, it takes 1-4 attacks to kill things your level and combos are not hard to learn. You think I am ignoring things but you are ignoring the fact that players will not button mash their way to the top, but they will be able to button mash to a fairly decent pve level. BASED OFF OF WHAT WE KNOW AND HAVE SEEN, not guessing about higher level content.
They are all button mashers to some degree. AOC and WAR will both be fantastic games.
I would love to know more about spell-caster and ranged class mechanics in AOC though.
Melee combat
In melee combat you have six different angles of attack; down against the head, diagonally down from the right, diagonally down from the left, thrust against the torso, diagonally up from the right and diagonally up from the left. Combining these angles you'll be able to create combos that can give additional damage and faster combat.
You don't choose a single target in melee combat, but instead you turn your player to the direction you wish to hit, and you attack from one of the six angles. Attacking from some of these angles allows you to hit more than one enemy at a time; dealing damage to all of them. The damage of the attack will then be spread out on all the enemies that you hit.
You can get a soft lock on a target, but this doesn't mean that you're within range of the target. You can attack from where you stand, but that doesn't mean that you will hit anything. When you strike, the underlying engine will decide whether you hit a target, several targets, or none at all.
[edit]Ranged combat
In ranged combat you have two different ways of aiming at your enemy. You have the snipe attack where you see from a first-person perspective and you have to aim at your enemy as in FPS games. You also have the cone attack, where you see from a third-person perspective and you have a small cone in front of your player where your attacks will be aimed. The engine decides which enemy within the cone you will be firing at, depending on how straight in front of you and how close the enemy is. You also have different angles of attack in ranged combat similar to melee combat.
Its amazing what a little research can do for you :). http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, Is a great site if you want to know more information on AoC than this brief article gives.
On the topic of ranged combat, just because you read it does not mean it is in :-D . At gencon and dragoncon the way to target people with spells was to just click them and then you would be logged on, and if you have seen the new video thread, that seems to be the way it is in those videos as well ^_^.
Good to see Funcom finally allowing reports about AoC gameplay by fansites. Hopefully soon we'll be allowed to see some of the PvP battles described in the article. It's good to hear that they're revamping of the combat system seems to have helped. That's one of the big question marks about the game, the system is different enough that it will need to be extremely solid when it's released. Players hate innovation that is still in the experimental stage if they're paying for it.
Any game that makes Blizzard worry about their subscriptions will be a good thing for the MMORPG genre.
Sounds cool, I'm looking forward to more info.
Thank you for the article. I can't wait for this one.
Ooh.. ooh... let me know if this approach works. I'm anxious to try this game too.
Thank you for a very nice write-up, Keith.
Well, the comment of the author, that he didnt care for flashy graphics anyway sounded like he actually found them awful but didnt mind. Now I DO mind flashy graphics, and so far ALL male characters I have seen look BUTT UGLY, as if they fell head-on into a lawnmower. I mean, I dont see diversity in them, only a endless series of gorilla faces. *shudders*
The report was kinda thin, no real news and details.
Wish granted!
First link shows 'em all, but I tried to pick the high resolution ones for the links.
Linkage
Spellcasting
Swords & Sorcery
Cliffside Battle
Awesome how we transpose our own wants, perceptions and desires on what we read. Shame that sometimes our own perceptions dont always match up to what is being said.
After reading that article it solidifies my ideolgy of the MMORPG market. The media blowout today is also making Warhammer quiver in there boots. You want to know what it really is doing? Staring the gurillia World of Warcraft right in the face.
This guys words really describes the game well. This is the game I have been waiting for. Cant wait to play this game!!!!
*Shrug* I didnt find these words very revealing.
Somebody's playing Da Nile Online: It Ain't a River in Egypt
I'd like to point out that...
thats an old version of the game. they made that version for demos ages ago. been doing alot of demos with that whilst updating the actual game.
they completed women characters ages ago. And i'm willing to bet that 99% of the bugs in the demo where fixed on the actual game when the guy was trying it out.
thats why it seems 5 months behind schedule becuase that build of the game IS 5 months old.
gaunte is too modest. WAR is going to get owned in terms of gameplay.
I just hope this game comes out at the end of March as planned. They already delayed it two times. I don't mind a game being delayed, but have the courtesy not to do a press release stating a release date. That is foolishness and angers the very people you are trying to attract to the game. If it is delayed again that will be a deal breaker for me as I planned to pre order to show support for this first mature rated AAA MMO.
There was a nice description of the defensive system and bonuses to using the correct directional attacks. I think some people have not read the same article as others when they claim button mashing will produce the same results as strategy. 1-2 attacks is twice the damage of 3-4 attacks, what MMO have you played that you would forsake a 100% damage increase for the sake of boring yourself to death by just mashing any button you felt like?
Also as has been already stated the build that is used for demos is an old one so it won't be as polished as their current stage of development. Everything I have read about AoC says that it will be on track for March 08, they have said they are not adding any more features and that they have enough content in the game for release. They are currently working on polishing the game for release and fixing bugs. I have every faith they will release a good product in March.
Then my apologies, your presumptions tell far more about you than anything else.
Actually, women avatars were not ready to go back the last time they did a press event at Eidos, I cant remember when that was, I thought it was August, but it was right before the announcement of the delay.
I'm also not sure that this is the demo version from ages ago, because this version has the updated combat system. I'd guess that it's a stable version that is probably a generation earlier than what is currently in beta right now.
Personally, I think that Mythic is a great team to be making WAR, and that they'll turn out an excellent product, and I think the folks at Funcom will do the same with AoC. MMORPG fans really need both of 'em to be successful, especially after the weak '07 slate of releases.
Elikal,
The level of customization will surpass even Oblivions character customization, everyone who had a chance to toy around with the character creation screen will agree on that.
The people look more realistic and people will finally be able to make their own special appearence without having to wear something unique and thinking there goes another guy/gal with my face.
How pretty you'll look depends soley on yourself how long you want to toy around with the options and if you actully got the skills for it.
so yes you can make a 'pretty boy'.
Nice article! Thanks. And yeah the Age slider would be really awesome :P
I agree with your feelings on PVP but hopefully PVP will not be centered to much on what gear you have. Not saying I should own another lvl 80 that has Funcom raid instance gear while im wearing lvl 10 gear, but skill should play the major factor and hopefully it does.
I will say as far as the PVE front and content in general you people have nothing to worry about with Funcom behind the design.. If there is one thing that l know Funcom does well it is content. Its the other choices we have to worry about with this development team IE expansions and patch's (cough Shadowlands). Im mean to be perfectly honest I would not put it past them if they launched a Moderen day expansion complete with cars, plane's, and Teh BUSH) a year from now for AOC...They are known to go out in left field and add completly alien expansions to their games which cause's everyone to scratch their shoulders in desbelief...
Yep big red letters really do get your point across. Next time post some reasons to make it a bit less like a fanbois gushing over FUNCOM execs.
Anyway in the real world..... It all is sounding pretty good and i wouldnt worry that some of the beards and stuff are not done yet as thats a small thing really. It will be interesting to hear more about this game in the comming months i wish Funcom luck.
Thanks for the links! Looking forward to see even more videos in the future.
It's always so much fun to see people playing a totally new game, the players fighting in those video were obviously so clueless and utterly pathetic! Heehee
But that's to be completely expected, it's an entirely new game and they don't know what they're doing
They're noobs in the fullest sense of the word. Once more people have played the game and people get used to abilities, classes and controls we should see videos where people are actually using strategy rather than all that silly running around like headless chickens you always see in these early vids
But these early PvP vids are entertaining for that apart from shoing the early stages of the game. I really like the Sword and Sorcery one with the guy who kept on dying over and over. You'd think he'd figure out NOT to charge the group of casters LOL
Interesting collection of reports posted on this and other sites detailing this press close up with AoC. That Funcom is now actively hiring translators for AoC dialog and documentation indicates to me that they intend to put it out on time in March. I do wish they would let some reporters spend a month in the beta and then put out a report. Doing a condensed event like this is just way too short for anyone to make a really good report.
Good job with the hands on Preview mmorpg.com.
looking forward to a follow up in January ;)
Tortage is a beautifull place.
hence the "in terms of gameplay". I don't doubt mythics wow 2 will be successful than aoc. if you look at the game market, most succesfull games are unorginal. success has little to do with how good the game will be.
I come here to read about AOC and as usual, it's just a bunch of WAR flames, and even WoW in a few places. They should just change the name of AoC forums to Anti-WAR forums and vice versa. I'm looking forward to BOTH games and hope like hell they both succeed and kick much ass. I'd rather have a variety of successful worthwhile games to choose from than root for one to annihilate the other.
I'm not interested in how much you hate WAR or think it's WoW2 or DAoC2. That says absolutely NOTHING about AoC. Sick of seeing anti-AoC crap all over the WAR forums too.
I have friends waiting for AoC to come out and would really like to know how it's progressing, and check out the community. So far the game looks good, but I'm kind of worried if these forums are any indication of the community for AoC and WAR. Damn hatemongers.
Well I am looking forward to this game. I think Funcom will produce a winner, but let's not get too ga ga eyed at this one yet, remember most games are initially lacking a lot of content and I am sure this one will be too. If you want to rush through to top level you will be whining on this board soon after it is out.
As to Warhammer, all you have to do is look at Mythic, they basically destroyed a half decent game in DAoC, what makes any of you think that won't happen to Warhammer? Remember that same braindead lawyer is still in charge at Mythic and from what I have seen he has never learned a thing about the industry and what it takes to make a good game. I am looking forward to all the Warhammer whiners which will soon grace this board, it is only a matter of time considering who is in charge.
Just can't do it can you?
I'll Agree with this as that's something alot of people will do regardless of which MMO they finally will end up being it from Mythic, Funcom or SOE...etc with and somewhere it is quiet normal cause if you come from an excisting MMO you'll notice they all are 'big' they went thru tons of content upgrades, so we're all flat out spoiled.
But i must say previous bad game experiences or changes shouldn't really keep you from trying out future products most of the time the companies are pretty big and went thru several changes in content designers, managers etc and there's only one kind of person that doesn't make mistake, a person that does nothing.
My choice between WAR or AoC was an easy one, like the uncensored approach in howards book more then the dark humor and AoC being somewhat different it pulled me over, if it was 40K then the choice would be harder as i'm still wondering why oh why is there such a big lack of sci-fi mmo's (not space ship or strategy ones)
I really don't get the theory that WAR is less "original" than AoC.... If you look past the DX10 and yer basic combat system philosophy AoC follows WoW gameplay almost to the point while WAR divulges quite a bit.
AoC - Large difference in char power dependant on levels, PvE game with some meaningful endgame PvP... up to that it's meaningless stabbings in the wilderness, PvE raids, guild centered game (wow factions are a joke)
WAR - "3 lvl 10 can take 1 lvl 40 (max) if they know what they're doing", part of global PvP from level 1, realm oriented.
Imho, and I've been studying those 2 games a lot, the main reason I prefer WAR atm is that AoC is too similar to WoW. I don't want to spend another few years of my life grinding PvE dungeons to get uber gear, getting ganked by some dude just because he enjoys spoiling other peoples' game, leveling my another char to 50 just so I can PvP and chasing around my friends across levels.... and decapitations be damned!
(sorry for borderline trolling, but I'm referring to that last sentence in the review which is simply not true)
/edit
I'm a big fan of Conan lore (the books and old-school comics) as well as Cthulhu mythos which is slowly creeping into the game (Ia, ia) but I think I'll still wait some time after release before I decide whether to purchase. There is nothing like forced linearity (level bracketing especially) to kill a persistent world and so far I haven't seen anything on the relative power of characters on different levels. Large differences in player power are not that disastrous for a PvE game but it's a sure-fire PvP killer. I'll wait and see.
Nice preview Keith. Thanks.
It seems that the gameplay is finally getting there. Can't wait for beta and launch.
Yep Keith reported his own opinions from playing a small portion of the game, its unfortunate that the feedback he gives isn't good enough for some people...
In my opinion his previews are better than Carolyn's.
I have a feeling the combat will be clunky and probably suck, not suck as bad as wars auto attack combat but still pretty bad.
bwahahaha the above is a re-creation of our first attempt to take a Keep in DAoC rofl good times
ahh the age of Conan, it brings me back to the old days at the Arcade
Why worry about women avatars when the majority of women players will be giving this game a kick in the crotch and bypassing it for a friendlier community?
Aww, come on. Isn't it the dream of every woman to bare their breasts in an online game and be sexually harrassed by every guy they come across? Don't deny your desires!
EDIT: spelin is difikult...
yep kinda obvious this game isnt for the Paris Hiltons of this world.
Omg i broke a nail!
OK, mine was obviously sarcasm. It doesn't really sound like your post is in the same spirit...
Its about 50/50 for me. Considering the history made by the poster in another topic, some time ago, she kinda alienated herself already, and now seems kinda bitter about it.
Plus the unfounded Dig at the community and a prior admission of not liking AO or FC.
Oh and the name calling / insults.
Hot Air...
As far as I know the crafting system is quite well thought out, and crafting is useful in end game, just like daoc. As far as release dates are concerned "on time" is whenever the game is ready to go live. I'd rather not pay to beta test another mmo personally.
That's an amusing statement as you're implying that everywhere else there will be a great platform for female community.
Either you lack experience or you're naive and are just expressing your dislike for this game wrapped up in a false statement.
And so far Funcom ingame customer service has been able to handle harrasment calls much faster and beter compared to others.
Ooh, I like those sliders. I hope you will be able to create really "ugly" characters, not just "perfect" ones like in most MMOs.
Yea , that's a big hype bonus to AoC.. at least for me. Being awesomely handsome in real life I have no compulsion whatsoever to have my toon look like a fashion model.
My G*d in heaven.....does that say 137 hours played this week???!!!
You've played the WAR beta 91 hours already this week? I guess you like it.
Wow, after reading this report it seems they've really cut back on their original design. I mean they went from only directional attacks and combos, to having abilities, and now they have three directions you can attack, and the way to do combos is to use an ability and then press the appropriate direction.
I guess the feedback from the beta testers indicated that the combat system really needed to change. I didn't think they would change it this much after they said "minor tweaks were needed only." These seem far from minor, and completely change the game's combat.
I think they're making steps in the right direction. It sounds much more evolutionary than revolutionary now which is a good thing.
Also I noticed that you now select your enemy instead of just hitting whoever is in your path. I'm sure that was something that also turned out to be great on paper but bad in action.
The defense indicators on the enemy is a really cool thing, but how is this going to translate to PvP? Seems like only a PvE thing.
Also, after reading this it seems that the game is very much a PvE game, with the guild keeps and CTF style PvP as an extra. At least that's how it comes across to me.
Which isn't a bad thing, it's just tons different than what they were originally saying. It looks like the game is evolving nicely into something that a lot of people will love to play. Though I'm sure that the hardcore PvPers that were in love with the hack and slash style are going to cry rivers about the new style of combat.
They have changed their design from what was originally envisioned a little but that's due to listening to beta testers and implementing changes to make the learning curve a little less steep. The still have 5 directional attacks in the game but you start out at the early levels with only 3. The combos early on are a case of clicking the combo you want to activate first and then a highlighted direction but this will increase to a maximum combination of 5(iirc) directions later on in levels. They have also said that they intend to implement the defensive system for PvP also but at the moment it has only been implemented for PvE.
I definately havent read anything that would indicate that the game will be more PvE orientated than PvP. From what I have seen and read it seems that there will be plenty on offer in both respects and the guild wars in the border kingdoms and pvp in general will be a core part of the game and not a tacked on extra..
lol they were asked about the feud? thats the funniest thing i have read all day
The 'feud' is kind of pathetic, to me. It is like watching sports fans spewing venom about rival teams. Chill out, folks.
An interesting read. While the combat is not quite as in depth as it seemed it would be when AoC first surfaced, it seems like a nice change from your standard MMO combat.