Profile: gervaise1
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• • Instances, Instances and even more Instances!

  • The game has only just been opened up. Prior to that everyone has been limited to the same area across 4 servers - hence lots of instances aka CoX.

    Outside - were people are just starting to go - I am not even sure there are instances everywhere - it is supposed to be an open world with open world PvP etc.

    And originally / nominally the level 1-20 experience inside Tortage was going to be a solo experience. 

  • Posted: 5/10/08 7:19 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Pre-ordering Age of Conan

  • Pre-order was limited to 60,000 keys randomly given out in waves. Who got them was a lottery. So you cannot get into open beta; closed is by invitation of FUNCOM - I cannot imagine them wanting anybody new in the closed beta. The folks who are testing will be providing feedback on the various driver issues that the code had a few days ago; most are fixed but there are still some and I am sure they want them swatted.

  • Posted: 5/10/08 7:09 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Soo Funcom told the truth

  • Didn't they remove the Low option from the water quality? You can only select medium or high now. Will have to read all the patch notes.

    As far as miracle patches go - they don't exist imo. What is happening here is encouraging. The beta highlighted a host of (mostly) technical issues to do with drivers, core processors and so forth that internal testing had not found. These are BAD for those plagued by them but relatively easy to fix - and that is what is happenin; and it is happening fast. That is why it was encouraging that when beta started a lot of folks could play the game some with systems below the minimum spec.

    It says that when FUNCOM took a decision to launch they believed that they had a finished product; probably still had some bugs but they thought they would have time to fix those (they won't have had of course!) The technical patches now coming on line are making the game more and more playable for more and more people - there are a number of foums out there. Is it fixed for everyone - not yet but as the number of issues goes down there should be more people to fix these. Then of course they need to fix the bugs they knew they still had to do.

    So no miracle patch but fundamentally the game is solid underneath and plays on a wide range of systems. This is, imo, a far better state of affairs than FUNCOM deciding to launch a ropey product. Quality should be a paramount driver not an add on; it would have been better if there had been no gameplay bugs (rather than technical) bugs - maybe they will get round to fixing those as well, some are. Still - no excuse though.

    Is it a good game - that is a different issue and something on which people can disagree widely. That is the second hurdle it has to jump. First it has to jump the playability quality hurdle - for most it seems to be doing that now, hopefully it will do so for the rest but in the absence of a crystal ball only the next 10 days will tell.

     

  • Posted: 5/10/08 9:40 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Age of Conan...This is one BADASS game!

  • If people read the forums they will find that:

    1. There are a large number of people who are playing a problem free game. Some of those even have systems which are below the minimum spec - a saw a couple with Pentium3 systems and Radeon9800.

    2. There are a large number of people who have issues. And there are people using graphic drivers on one system who cannot run things well whilst someone else using those drivers is OK. Different OSs, CPUs etc.

    3. The 5 rules of how to be a fanbois apply just as equally detractors. I cannot run it therefore everyone who says they can must be on something.

    Now what does a large number of people mean. I don't know - all the beta keys went out. There are a lot of posters in both camps however unlike Vanguard, say, when the 'it's OK for me' posts were very few.

    What this reminds me of is why Microsoft became so big. Once upon a time every game had to have its own sound driver and pretty much its own video driver and even if you had both then you sometimes found your printer driver stopped your game running. That is the type of chaos I pick up: 32 bit system vs. 64 bit; XP vs. Vista, if Vista which version of Vista and so on.

    Let me say that games which retain their NDAclose to launch worry me, it suggests that there may be some 'issues' maybe high end content not finished and so forth. Nor do I believe FUNCOM wanted - or expected - things to be quite this bad. This was supposed to be a stress test not a system compatability test.

    The pearl however that lies within is that people on a wide range of systems are playing the game.

  • Posted: 5/03/08 10:24 AM
    Age of Conan