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Age of Conan - Press Event Report Part One
Last week, Managing Editor Jon Wood traveled to Norway to visit the studios of Funcom's Age of Conan. Today, he shares the experience and information on the ESRB Rating, Crafting, Sound and more.
This past weekend, I spent about 35 hours in transit across the Atlantic Ocean and back. Not for a holiday, but instead to visit Oslo and the rather impressively sized offices of Funcom. The company itself takes up five floors out of the six in the unassuming Norwegian building and houses their roughly 300 employees.
When you walk through the offices, you’re likely to hear any number of languages being spoken: Norwegian, German and French, just to name a few. We were told during our visit that Funcom has employees from a wide variety of countries with nearly as diverse an array of languages, and as a result many of the meetings and inter-office emails that take place about the game take place in English.
The diversity of the Funcom staff was mirrored in the wide range of countries represented by my colleagues in the media, with reporters from countries like: France, Belgium, Australia, Russia, Germany, Canada and the US. It just goes to prove once again that Age of Conan (and MMOs in general) have a wide following worldwide that stretches well beyond the North American market.
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Before we reached the office doors, we were greeted by an armored and armed man on horseback who vowed to protect us from the dangers ahead. Now, I've seen a lot of sights, but the looks on the faces of casual passers-by was amusing. The show didn't stop there though, as we were then promptly attacked by another man on horseback and an infantryman who were summarily driven off by our mounted friend and a bow-woman who bore a striking resemblance to a certain blue-painted archer.
;)
;)
Free of the attacking hordes, we arrived at the offices as the developers were involved in morning team meetings that help them to see where they are going and how best to proceed with the day`s work and activities. The Age of Conan team as a whole is divided into what the developers call "Strike Teams", groups that work together on some part of the game. By way of example, there is a team specifically dedicated to the 1-40 aspect of the game.
We were shortly joined in the conference room by the Age of Conan Director, Gaute Godager and Jørgen Tharaldsen, the game`s Project Manager who introduced us to the game`s new official website. The new site, which you can see for yourself at www.ageofconan.com , we were told, "embodies what we try to do in how we present the game" and is built around three words that capture the tone for AoC: Live, Fight and Explore.
After checking out the new website and their most recently released video, Godager gave us a little bit of history on the game`s development:
Four and a half years ago, we were told, there was a discussion about what project should be tackled next. There were a number of candidates, but that Conan turned out to be the IP of choice. The Conan comic book series has always been popular in Norway, and the lore has a strong following. Combine that with the Norway`s viking history, and the dark and bloody world created by Robert E. Howard seems like a logical choice.
Speaking of dark and bloody, we were also informed that AoC had officially been given an `M`rating by the ESRB and an 18+ rating from PEGI (the European equivalent). Not that the announcement comes as any great surprise to the game`s fans, who have been told since day one that these were Funcom`s objectives, but the rating is always one of those things that its nice to have official word on, especially with the game now only a little more than two months from launch.
Godager went on to tell us that the Conan license was previously owned by a Sweedish company and that their current license has allowed them a great deal of creative freedom in the way that they have developed the world and adapted the lore to an MMORPG setting. It`s hard to remember sometimes that AoC was originally conceived and in pre-production in a pre-World of Warcraft world. "We tried," said Gadager, "in a pre-WoW world, to plan a game that would grab MMO players` interest". While I can’t speak for others, during my stay in Norway, I saw and learned a number of things that grabbed my interest. Over the next couple of days, as I recover from Jet Lag, I will be putting all of this new and interesting information to paper:
Crafting
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Crafting in Age of Conan is an innovative take on the classic MMORPG model for the creation of goods. The system, as is the case in many MMORPGs, is based on collection and creation by recipe. The biggest difference, we were told by Funcom staff, is that crafting (called Tradeskills in Conan) advancement is story and quest-driven. That being said, there are still a number of interesting aspects of the Conan Tradeskill system that deserve some attention:
- Resource Gathering: Each country in the game will have an area where resources are rich and can be collected. While resources will be available in other areas, these areas will be most plentiful.
- Inventory: Crafting-related materials will have their own separate inventories. These inventories will have 100 slots each.
- Crafting Stations: There is no need to travel to a crafting station in order to make an item once you have the recipe and have gathered the resources.
- Gem Slots: When you craft an item, let’s use the classic sword as an example, the item is crafted with a certain number of gem slots (based on the quality of the crafted item). These gem slots can be fitted with gems that give various bonuses. These gem slots, which are only available on crafted items, make crafting more important and useful in the long run. Once a gem has been placed, it is bound to the crafted item.
- Levels: Currently, crafting begins at level 40, however the team is hoping to reduce it to 20.
Other Fun Facts
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Tomorrow, we will go into aspects of the game like City Building, Mounted Combat and the like, but today, I thought I’d share some of the random facts that came out during the trip:
- All sound in the game is recorded in 5.1, including the music, which is usually done in Stereo.
- Age of Conan makes use of over 20,000 sound effects
- When all is said and done, Age of Conan will have between 2-3 hours of original music.
- One of the Cimmerian music tracks that we heard makes use of an actual Northern language.
- Age of Conan makes use of between 300 and 400 different combat moves.
- Age of Conan makes heavy use of motion capture, from sword thrusts to fatality moves, right down to the horse movements.
- For those of you in Beta, some aspects of the current beta are 2-3 months out of date and will be replaced shortly.
Good to see they are giving out more information. Its just too bad about the delay though but understandable. Looking forward to the next installment.
I'm all for a reasonable delay for a better experience. Nice bit of information. Keep 'em coming.
"For those of you in Beta, some aspects of the current beta are 2-3 months out of date and will be replaced shortly."
im just realy glad that they decided to whet our appetite with all of the fantastic press from this weekend and then stab us in the eyes with a delay (ok ok its probably needed).
Wouldnt it have made more sense to announce the delay last week and then all the good press comes along and helps us forget about the pushed date.
That crafting system brings exactly zero things new to the genre. I'm really disappointed that they didn't even try to change it a little bit. The gem sockets has been done to death as well as the harvesting/creation from recipe scheme.
I hope they haven't stripped the combat system down too much, otherwise this game is going to be as cookie-cutter as they claimed it wouldn't be.
True.. me too... i dont want to spend all my time on crafting.. I'm working from 2 to 10 PM.. I will have only few hours after Work and only more time on weekends for game,.. So!... I want to spend my time for every thing in the game.. and not to craft 1 sword for 8 hours.
I love what they doing with crafting system.. This game will be more interesting if it will have everything in the same portions... And it will be like this.. I'm sure..
Peace!..
It is not about being cookie cutter. Funcom has stated from the very start that they are aiming for the casual player.
Can't wait for Part two!
The combat system was scaled back because you literally had to memorize several dozen combinations of keys to pull off a combat fatality. For example, in the old combat system, to do an overhead killing blow, you might have to hit 'W A 1 W A 2' (I am making this up based on the explanation as I understood it in a recent interview discussing the old vs. new system). So imagine having to memorize multiple keys strokes to pull off one combat move. In the end I guess it just was not fun and too complex. The new combat system sounds more akin to EQ2s Heroic Opportunity system, but I may be wrong. I think it is still more complex than any other MMORPG combat system on the market today.
Delay or not, AoC is my most anticipated MMORPG. I love the craft while on the road addition. May can't get here soon enough.
Yes, you are in fact, totally wrong.
But you are right about the fact that it is the best feature of the game. :D
Hey Jon, how you feeling?? Im shattered, just woke up from getting back at 3 am myself.
Was an awesome experience :)
Strange how "Cimmeria" is considered more of a Nordic type of country, when most Conan's adventures are oriented towards east and Asia (middle east) specifically. The ancient country of "Kimmeria", which had Slav ancestry, was located in modern Ukraine and Western Russia, fits much more into the original concept.
To me, it is much more believable Conan was of ancient Slav descent then Nord. Ancient Kimmeria was heavily influenced by the Greek and Middle Eastern cultures, and it feels that way in the books.
Some aspects of Conan are Irish/celtic/Gaellic (his name, the name of the Gods, etc etc), but in no way Nordic. In fact, I dont really recall anything Nordic, other then god called Odin.
So, why Nordic?
Both theories arent too good because first one means Conan may become just another generic MMO with DX10, and the other one means they are running out of time to design and develop something good.
I hope Im wrong and this is simply a teaser with little info to tease our hype and imagination. I really like Conan IP (love the books!) and I hope funcom nails this one just the right way.
yeah It was tacky not to mention the delay, almost as tacky as selling a bunch of preorders then turning around and saying "OOPS! ANOTHER DELAY!"
now Jon don't forget to mention the pub ;)
@jimmyman
Interesting point you brought up there, and I won't argue with your perception of the lore (everyone's entitled to their own views). But I actually think that what they refer to that is northern here is the whole vanir / ymir vs. cimmerians conflict, whereas the vanir are the representatives for northern cultures. I'm not sure, but I haven't seen anywhere that they've implied northern ancestry for Conan =) And Howard had a lot of northern culture in mind when "designing" the vanirs (at least the way I saw it when I read the books =))
On topic. Nice report there, looking forward to the next part.
Hmm... Kinda makes me wonder if some people might be complaining about what they are dealing with in Beta.
Also um you would think during BETA Funcom would be updating their beta clients alittle more frequently.... 2-3 months? WOW...
There are so many things I find appealing about this game From the Graphics to the PVP system, but one look at the Immature (really these guys makes the WoW forums look like an episode of Masterpiece theater.) banal jerks that cruise the official forums, and I can pretty much tell this is going to be a collection of Blackrock servers only with lower IQ's. LOTRO is frankly getting a bit stale, but it has one of the most awesome mature communities out there. I'm not holding out a lot of hope that what I'm seeing on the forums now will change at retail...and in these type of games a Jerk community does make a difference.
Could any1 confirm/deny how is Conan's world being affected by this? Is it a nordic/gaul/celtic/other type of world? Generally speaking of course.
And who said live roleplay was full of grim lookinh geeks!... hubba hubba
The Hyborian world of Conan is containing ancestors to most of the people/ethnic groups present today.
The Cimmerians however are descendants from the people of Atlantis, and as far as i know Robert E Howard did not intend Conan to "belong" to any people living today, northern or otherwise.
Graphically however, Cimmeria is located in the north, and its culture is more resemblant to ancient nordic then the more civilised asian countries. The heritage from Atlantis give the Cimmerians their black hair and bronze skin, in contrast to the neighbouring Aesir and Vanir (pale and red/blond) who represents scandinavians and pherhaps celts.
That many of Conans adventures take place in a more asia-like environment has naught to do with his heritage.