First Age of Conan Expansion On the Way 47
Funcom announced today that they are working on the first expansion to Age of Conan, titled Rise of the Godslayer. In addition to high-level content, it contains new objectives for lower levels as well, in an effort to fill out the leveling process. It also introduces new factions that are at war with each other: "Faction gameplay plays a large role in Rise of the Godslayer, presenting the player with choices that earn them both allies and enemies in Khitai. Through questing and adventure players can advance through faction ranks, rewarding them with treasures such as epic new armor and weapons. Players can choose to continue their adventures with existing characters, acquiring new combat abilities and spells through a robust alternate advancement system, or start over again as a Khitan — an all-new culture." A brief trailer has been posted, and Eurogamer has a more detailed preview of the new content.
This just in! (Score:5, Funny)
Well guess what! I crapped a little extra and put that ON TOP of the old pile of crap! Why don't you come take another look? It's way more awesome, I promise!
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hell hath no fury like a nerd scorned
Ah, yes... (Score:5, Funny)
Age of Conan... fond memories, those!
I remember how much I was looking forward to test it at a friend's. He had ordered the special edition with the artbook. That one half nude chick in there had me believe that there just might be a god who made it so that the creators of the game actually did have the guts to produce an adult game and who actually had taste when it comes to women... as opposed to stick figures.
Then we installed the game and... yeah, well, that's it, basically.
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Hey, have you tried EVONY? Your queen awaits!
Re:Ah, yes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the worst flaw that I heard of was them tying the combat system directly in with the animation system, so that (for instance) female players did lower DPS because their swing speed was slower, and combat mechanics changed whenever the art team adjusted a model. The lead designer at Interzone quit for that reason, I remember him complaining about it.
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That was a bug, but yeah, pretty fucked up.
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Severely off topic, but if they bounce on a real woman, she's wearing the fucking wrong bra or none at all and will carry her bits around her knees very shortly. Personally, for this reason, I prefer them not to bounce all that much ;).
Re:Ah, yes... (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory (Score:2)
http://bash.org/?146497 [bash.org]
great news (Score:5, Funny)
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One. Don't you know that Bob quitted last week?
So what's the game like now? (Score:2)
I'm one of the people that was conned into buying the game waaay back when it had problems. Does it still have problems? What's the game like now?
Re:So what's the game like now? (Score:5, Informative)
From a technical point of view (i.e. client and game stability), the game has vastly improved since last year's summer. For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking. But subsequent patches and updates made matters much worse, to the point that the client would almost invariably crash after a hour of playing or sooner, with frequent disconnects and clients freezing when loading a new zone. People left the game in droves, not because AoC was a bad or boring game but because it was rather unplayable at the time.
Those problems are mostly gone. There are some very minor issues and the occasional crash, but I'd say the game's stability is more than sufficient, if not quite on par with the industry standard. They've also added some content in free updates since then... If you liked the game itself back then, it's well worth taking another look (though I think you've just missed the recent 2 week free trial offer)
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For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking.
Bull. For starters, the game's base stats didn't do anything. Str, dex, etc--they were just numbers and affected nothing. Now I'm no game programmer, but shouldn't the most fundamental stats be the first thing nailed down?
There were also MANY feats that were either broken or just not implemented, though the game would happily let you spend your feat points on them. I did 3 respecs with my ranger before giving up on it, because every time I found that I'd wasted 5-15 points on broken feats. That's pretty dam
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There were also MANY feats that were either broken or just not implemented, though the game would happily let you spend your feat points on them. I did 3 respecs with my ranger before giving up on it, because every time I found that I'd wasted 5-15 points on broken feats. That's pretty damn gamebreaking to me.
I suppose it depends on what you are looking for from the game. I for one enjoyed exploring the game and levelling my ranger and tempest of Set immensely.
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Expecting stats to function correctly isn't asking very much of a game. Any game that can't do that is not ready to ship.
This was one of the most botched launches in the history of MMOs, and it came in an era when majorly botched launches aren't tolerated anymore. To say that the game is "vastily improved" is also like saying "the game actually works most of the time now."
Sorry, tried the two weeks and the game is still (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it is crap. What I think was most shocking about the game is that in the end, it simply ain't fun.
Or at least it ain't to people brought up on UO, EQ, SWG, LOTRO, WOW etc.
There is no tactics, no roles. Everyone does DPS, just a bit differently, but there is no saving the day with using the right skill at the right time.
It is one giant hack&slash. It appeals to people who like the korean MMO's. The most basic error introduced were the super-elites. Enemies that took ages to get down, even in a grou
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Any reason they don't have a permanent free trial like World of Warcraft?
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They're talking about an expansion with no new classes (probably because they still haven't balanced the existing one) in a continent with content that'll let you level separately from Tortage to 80 (if I understood the article correctly - I was skimming) but that's solo-friendly. The MM bit of AOC was a joke at the start with each "level" feeling really sparse, as you struggled over hill and dale for miles, trying to get to a
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I was there at release and played for a few months. When I realised that it was the most expensive MMO available I decided to give it up until it had a chance to improve.
They recently sent me an email offering a free retry period.
After a few days, I deleted all my characters, old and new, uninstalled the game and emailed them to ask that they delete my account completely.
You feel like you got conned into buying it?
I feel conned that they got me to reinstall the game and download a couple gigs worth of patch
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Not terribly helpful since you don't illustrate WHY you left.
For one thing, I would imagine that anyone who has played this game would understand that.
For another, the reasons are far too many to list here. If I gave one or two of my reasons, by themselves they may seem insignificant and people would wonder what the fuss is about.
Let me put it this way;
If MMOs were a drug, World of Warcraft would be the heroin of MMOs.
Age of Conan would be the methadone.
Its list of adverse effects on the user is far longer than that of heroin. Its very unpleasent to use but still add
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I just installed it last week and have put in a few hours. So far I'm not seeing all these bugs. I did have a glitch on one quest but it cleared itself up after a few minutes. I didnt like that mandatory non-grouping intro quest, as I prefer grouping, but it wasnt too bad. The game looks like its built for solo players, at least in the beginning.
Unfortunately, a lot of slashdotters are pretty bombastic and unforgiving people. Ignoring some of the more hysterical posters, you'll find the game to be a decent
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Tell you what, why don't I come round and kick you in the balls, then lecture you on why you should forgive me? Look, other people who I haven't kicked in the balls forgive me: why are you being so bombastic?
While I'm punting your nads up into your intestines, I'll be asking you what part of your post explains why anyone would want to pay to play AoC over WoW. Have notes handy.
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Well yeah, it's more then a year old now. I'd hope some of the massive crippling bugs would be fixed.
I mean this is the game that advertised DX10 on the box, and 9 months later still didn't have it. It's pretty understandable for people who were ripped off on the broken mess at release to carry a grudge when they see "Funcom" mentioned anywhere.
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I've played a lot of video games, and I can't recall another title that did as effective a bait-and-switch as AoC.
New Expansion, many players excited! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:New Expansion, many players excited! (Score:4, Funny)
aw man, still? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been looking forward to an expansion for a while. AoC is a great game that has completely shed the shackles of its lousy launch, but could certainly benefit from an injection of new content. However, I was very disappointed to read this in the press release:
Aw man.. we still have to endure 8 hours of Tortage every time we create a new character? It's a beautiful area with great quests, but every AoC player has played through that entire area about 12 times. It's time to introduce a new starting area. I don't care how they rationalize it in the story but it must be done.
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You can skip Totrage, you know.
There's a piece of paper hidden on the back of one of the buildings which will let you skip the area when you click on it.
The next Age of Conan expansion... (Score:2)
expansion? fix what's there (Score:1, Informative)
An expansion? With so many things still broken they should fix the pvp murder system, fix the rez pad choice after getting almost constantly ganked by 3+ vs. 1 and enforce some policies regarding RP. Leveling after 67 is a tremendous grind and you mostly become prey for higher level players hunting you for your tasty pvp xp. Pvp is a fun part of most games but with the pvp leveling and the murder system there are many exploits and it pretty much ruined the fun. However, it seems that a lot of people lik
Why, exactly...? (Score:1, Insightful)
Funcom shouldn't be announcing an expansion: they should be announcing that they're shutting down the game. Who on earth would buy this? If I was a Funcom shareholder, I'd be talking to my lawyer right now.
Why buy a new Conan expansion when WoW has:
1) Better quests
2) Better and more classes
3) More races
4) Better graphics
5) Better music
6) Better zones
7) Better dungeons
8) Better PvP
9) About 1000x the population
10) Developers who can continuously fund the game and improve it. 11.5 million players at $15/mo
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So I'm getting the distinct impression you really like WoW. Maybe I'm wrong.
I personally think Aion is going to give WoW a run for its money. The quests and grinding manage to be pretty fun and the PvP is exciting and unique, and it's already stable unlike AoC.
A basic review to warn you (Score:4, Insightful)
Age of Conan is a comedy of errors. There are so many mistakes made that you have to wonder just what the hell they were thinking.
Lets start with the start. There are four main classes, the heavy fighter, the damage dealing mages, the health restorers and the light fighters. You may notice that I do NOT mention the usual tank, healer, dps. That is because these roles really just don't exist in the game, but more on that later.
You choose your race and that determines the classes you can choose. You then crash on an island, every race does it, every class does it. EXACTLY the same island.
For the next 20 levels you will do the EXACT same quest except for some minor variations in the main story line quest that are different for every main class.
Does this sound odd? That's right, almost all western MMO's give you different starting points, so that if you create an alt, you spend at least the first few hours in a new area with new quests. Not AoC. As nice as Tortage seems the first time, many a player has commented just how much they hated doing it again and again. In fact, if you want to start in the new area that comes with expansion, you have to go through Tortage ALL OVER AGAIN!
Another huge mistake is the new combat system. In most MMO's you have a thing called auto-attack. This is evil. Nobody actually uses auto-attack (you attack an enemy and you keep hitting with a basic attack until you or the enemy are death, almost certainly you) outside korean MMO's because you get a rich set of special skills that you use to make the fight go in your favor. What these skills are depend highly on your class and a skilled player will learn what skills to use when for maximum effect.
But it can be said that pressing the buttons for these attacks can be become rather routine.
So AoC in a brilliant move did NOT make enemies more intelligent or force more tactical/strategic thinking on how to survive. Rather they introduced a system where you press a button for a skill, then have to press 1-4 more arrow buttons (ALWAYS THE SAME ONE FOR EACH MOVE), for the move to fire. The "trick" is that enemies can have their defences up randomly in each direction and you get best result of your attack has the direction where the enemy is defending least.
It sounds intresting, on paper. But since defence is random it is mostly based on luck and the skills themselves are all pretty much the same "do some damage". There is precious little beyond the direction to choose between the moves.
The effect is that in PvE you could just was well macro the "combo's" and be done with it, you are then left with the simplest of korean MMO's. Those games attract HUGE audiences and are a valid genre in their own right, but AoC made the mistake of marketing itself to a WESTERN audience, the kind of people who cut their teeth on EQ, WOW and LOTRO. They expect roles, tactics even a bit of strategy. Not, go into a dungeon, find enemies randomly standining around in a very wide series of hallways, each of which requires no more then to attack them for a minute or so in an endless slapdown. There really is nothing to it. No thinking, just endlessly pushing the same buttons over and over again. I played it one time with a looping macro and did perfectly. There is not even the satisfaction of finding a masterly put together macro. Just take three skills that hit different directions and you got it.
People put up with SWG and remember it fondly because beyond the bugs was a marvelous deep game. Age of Conan is bugs on top of an extremely shallow hack&slash.
If you are tired of WoW or EQ, then this is not the game for you. If you loved Lineage, then you might like this.
AoC is the example of the game that tried to be different for the sake of being different. They seemed to have thought, "maybe there is reason everyone else do it that way".
The MMO market certainly can do with some new ideas, but square wheels on a car would be new.
It will be intresting to see what The
Seems a bit premature (Score:1)