Age of Conan’s Developments on the Horizon
August 3, 2009
A new “Message from the King” was put out recently by Funcom’s Glen “Famine” Swan, discussing Age of Conan‘s upcoming guild features (which Craig Morrison elaborated on in his recent game director letter) as well as some class tweaks that the developers have been working on. Right now the dev team is looking at the Bear Shaman and Barbarian classes, with the Conqueror and Dark Templar up for possible changes after they’re done with the first two. He doesn’t spill the beans on exactly what might be happening with these classes but we’re told to stay tuned for more information soon.
The rest of Famine’s blog post relates to things outside of the game. It sounds like the Advocate Program has been going well, but Funcom would like to bring a few more advocates on board. Along with the existing class advocates, they might be recruiting advocates specifically for areas like roleplaying and player-versus-player, as was planned some time ago. Famine also gave a quick update on Funcom’s plans for Dragon*Con in Atlanta this September. Among the activities will be a developer panel featuring Age of Conan‘s lead designer Joel Bylos.
The Adventure Begins
July 30, 2009
So I’ve gotten off my too sat upon ass to brave the elements, mostly the sun, and drove to the nearest game store to buy another MMORPG. It doesn’t matter which one I choose because they will all start of the same. Upon getting back home I can open the shiny box with its grand promises of PvP and raids and a vast fantasy world to find a sad lonely DvD case and a small fat book. Upon inserting the CD into my computer it will ask me multiple times if I wish to install the game, eventually it will giving in to me clicking Yes multiple times in a row and finally start an installer window with a progress bar. While installing it will flash me screenshot of epic fights and faraway lands and a whole load of other bullshit that no player will ever seen done so artistically. At first one might think that installing the game is enough, but HA they fooled you didn’t they because you gotta patch that sucker up before they let you play. At this point its best to hope they made their patcher window pretty because its all you’ll see of the game for several days, and just like a strip teaser it lets you think its ready to finally pull off the patcher and show you the game, but that never happens because it downloads each update as a separate file rather than in one big chunk.
Now when the patcher has finished doing its job tormenting your mind and making you want to strangle the life out of it, the game can be launched. Whenever I launch an MMO for the first time I prepare to see the logos of everyone who ever so much as sneexed in the direction of the game during developement, each logo has to be animated and shiny too just like a 60s diner. After the logos comes a prerendered cutscene that has two jobs: first it must show the game’s graphics to be amazing, second it must show the game’s combat to be viserval and awesome. And while this cutscene is busy humping my head and ejaculating into my eyesockets I can only sit there on the verge of tears knowing that this is the most story I’ll ever get out of the game. After the cutscene is over the gerbil powering the story wheel dies off and starts to spin the wheel on inertia alone until its fury little body becomes too light and it just flops down and stops moving.
As July is coming to a close, Age of Conan‘s game director Craig Morrison has weighed in with his letter to the community for the month. The biggest discussion point this time around is a new ‘Guild Renown’ system that will be introduced with the next major content patch, Update 6. This system will allow members of a guild to contribute to its reputation on two separate scales. A guild’s Renown Level will be increased by members earning Valor points (from PvE activities like questing and killing NPCs), Glory points (PvP) and Artisan points (crafting). Higher Renown Levels will mean access to better guild city vendors and other bonuses — even a brand new building type that Morrison does not elaborate on in this letter.
Age of Conan’s Craig Morrison Goes Q&A Twitter Style
July 17, 2009
If you haven’t followed the Age of Conan Game Director, Craig Morrison, on Twitter…then it’s about time. I like most people love to have great connection with MMO staff and Craig Morrison steps it up another level to bring everybody on Twitter up to date news on Age of Conan and even answer questions personally.
Today he held a Q&A session on twitter with a random tweet “Since it’s a quiet Friday, if you have one question I can answer in under 140 characters – what is it? Will try and answer as many as I can”. This brought up great stir and today we are here to bring you all the tweets that were sent to him, and the answers.
Age of Conan Free-to-Play?
July 15, 2009
Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen states the free-to-play option wasn’t off the table for Age of Conan in this latest interview over at IncGamers:
“We’re certainly not ruling anything out, but we don’t have any current plans for that. However, we’ve had huge success going free-to-play with our other MMO Anarchy Online, and we strongly believe its a viable business strategy for these kinds of games.”
The full interview is available here.
Finally, Age of Conan their first Return To Hyboria for Age of Conan. Anyone who possesses a previously active account can — as of today, July 8th — reactivate and play for two full weeks entirely for free. If you decide to re-activate your account while getting the two free weeks, you receive: 20% off the first recurring period, mighty Snow Mammoth mount, and one of the three virtual items. So for all those players hearing that Age of Conan has been getting major updates, which it happily has, then this is your time to try it out and come back!
This all ties in with the announcement of the expansion details and update 1.05, making Age of Conan have a very strong comeback. Of course we still have to wait to hear what great new features are coming to the expansion. So see you all in Hybroria and let the battles begin!
