Tip For Australian Age of Conan Players

If you are an Oceanic Age of Conan player and haven’t bought or registered your copy of Age of Conan yet, I’d advise you to hold off registering it for a while.

The release of any MMORPG is fraught with problems. Server issues, bugs with the client, problems with class balance, and even exploits cause problems for players and developers. While Age of Conan has had a reasonable uneventful release, there have been a number of things that have needed fixing.

And that means the servers come down.

This hasn’t really affected the US playerbase very much yet. They have only had a couple of primetime server downtimes over the last two weeks. (Yes. It’s been two weeks already!) However, for the Oceanic players who play on the same servers that are located in the US, that hasn’t been the case.

Funcom have been bringing down the servers for four hours at a time at around 10am GMT. This translates into 8pm Australian Eastern Time, smack dab during prime playing time. This has occurred four of the last six nights, with another scheduled to start in a couple of hours.

The good thing about this is that it shows that Funcom is committed to fixing the issues with Age of Conan and making the game the best that it can be. And as I said, unexpected downtimes to apply patches are pretty much par for the course with a new MMORPG.

So unless you’re taking some holidays in the next month and can play during the day, I’d advise you to hold off installing the game until things settle down a bit, and server downtimes are once a week rather than three or four times a week.

Otherwise you are squandering that free month that comes with the game.

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Scheduled Downtime

I’ve had some scheduled downtime for personal maintenance over the last few days.

As I mentioned last week, I had an appointment this week to undergo some Lasik eye surgery. That happened late on Monday afternoon. (BTW, I managed to get to level 18 in Age of Conan before I had to head off to the appointment!) The last few days have been a mixture of resting my eyes, and playing a little bit of AoC.

I’ve worn glasses since I’ve been four years old, and pretty much hated it for most of the time, with the last ten years or so been somewhat ambivalent about it. I’ve either never had the spare cash, or the courage at the same time. This time both coincided so I booked the appointment and here I am… spectacle free.

I’m still a little blurry, and my eyes get a bit more tired if I spend too long at the computer screen. But… the procedure was a success. I’m reading things at a distance unaided… and loving it.

The procedure itself is pretty simple. The doctor dilated and anesthetized my eyes with eye drops, and gave me a preop valium. I laid on a table with the laser gizmo, and the surgeon cut a flap of the surface of my eye. The laser then did its thing, the flap was replaced, and my eye covered with a clear shield. Rinse and repeat for the other eye.

The worst thing was staring into a bank of very bright lights for the procedure. There was a red light I had to stare at, that was surrounded by a number of very bright white lights. With my eyelids held open and eyes dilated, that was very uncomfortable especially since I’m sensitive to glare anyway. But is doesn’t last all that long. And the results are worth it.

In the meantime, as I mentioned I’ve been playing Age of Conan.

I’ve got my main character, a Dark Templar named Stropp (what else) up to level 21, and am doing quests in the main starter area for my race (Aquilonian.)

I want to get a bit further before I report on the game, but I’ll let you know now that it’s a good game. Like everything, there are good and bad things in the game. I’ll tell you about those later. However, at this stage I’m not sure if I’ll continue past the first month. I reckon I could go either way on that issue at the moment.

More later.

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Funcoms Funbags

I sit here underwhelmed.

I’ve spent my first complete day playing Age of Conan, and I love it. My first character, a Dark Templar named Stropp (what else would I name him?) has reached level 11 after about 7 hours of play time.

I’m going to post more on my first day in AoC tomorrow, I’m getting ready to head out to have dinner and see the new Indiana Jones with friends, but I’d like to post one of my observations about the game now.

All the hype about sex, nudity, and extreme violence — which admittedly I have contributed to — doesn’t appear to be based in reality. At least not up to the level I have reached. That may change later when I get out of Tortage.

Or maybe there is a setting I haven’t found yet. We’ll have to wait and see.

But so far I haven’t seen any nudity, and the violence is no worse than you’d find in any one of Id Softwares First Person Shooters.

Sure, there’s blood, and blood spatter on the screen. And I’ve decapitated someone at least once. But I’ve got to say, if that’s it… well, it’s not much more than you get on TV… minus the gibs perhaps.

Apparently the nudity, or toplessness, only really exists when a player creates a female avatar and takes her shirt off. Tobold posted about this the other day, he did the work so I don’t have too. If you’d like to find out more about that, check out Tobold’s post. I haven’t even see any players pole-dancing near the mailbox — in fact I don’t know where the mailbox is!

Age of Conan is still mature content, and not really family friendly. While there are no naughty bits flaunting themselves around every corner, some of the conversation with quest givers and NPCs gets a bit risque. But again, it’s nothing you don’t already see or hear late in the evening on TV.

One of my concerns before getting this game was that it might be a little too over the top violence-wise for me. Some of the things I read about sounded like they might be over the line for my comfort level. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Age of Conan is shaping up to be a fine game experience.

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First Minutes in Age of Conan

Just a very quick update.

The servers came up around the time they were meant to, so I started the patching. That didn’t take too long, only around an hour, and I started playing around 12:30am. It’s now 2am (so I’ll make this quick.)

There were a couple of initial teething problems. I initially had no textures. I fixed it by making sure the texture cache was bigger than zero. I set it to max since I have 4GB system memory. I’ve also set the graphics quality to medium. I just wanted to play tonight, I’ll try better settings later.

I played through from the beach until I entered the city of Tortage. So far, so good. No problems, though I admit to button mashing my combat. That works, but isn’t very efficient. Much to learn methinks.

The client also crashed on exit. I sent the report to Funcom.

I need some sleep now. I’ll get more info for you tomorrow after I’ve been playing longer.

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Curses!

Yay! Age of Conan has been installed. The installer has that little checkbox checked — Launch game now.

Yeah Baby! Let’s do it.

Wait. What’s this? Fatal Error: Failed to download patch information file.

US Servers Update (May 23rd, 10am GMT)

The US Servers will come down today at 10am GMT for an update which will fix several issues. The downtime is scheduled to last about 4 hours.

(to see what time the downtime starts in your timezone please refer to this website ).

Thank you for your patience.

Nervously I check the website. 10am GMT is Friday 7:30pm local. Noooooooo!

Looks like I won’t be playing tonight.

Great start.

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This Might Take a Long Time

That’s what the Age of Conan installer is telling me about the installation of resources.

Yep. The disks did come in today. The store did not call me, even though a claim was made, I called them around 5pm and picked up the pack on the way to my Mums birthday dinner. I’m home now, installing from the first of two disks — it might take a long time.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this previously, but I preordered the collectors edition.

I’ve never really been one for collectors editions. They used to be just tins and a cloth map, but lately the MMORPG CEs have been more substantial. The Age of Conan Collectors Edition comes in a box designed as an ancient tome. It has a leather map — nice and smelly… mmmm — a bonus disk, a soundtrack disk, and an art book. The manual left a bit to be desired. You’d think the CE would have a colour manual, but since the manuals in a continually updated online game aren’t all that useful it’s not much of an issue.

The art book is what I like in the CEs. I’ve always been an art admirer, I love art galleries even if I don’t get to go as often as I’d like, so the books appeal to me. That’s one of the main reasons I bought The Burning Crusade Collectors Edition. I’m hoping for the same in the WotLK CE and Warhammer Online CE.

There are a couple of game items too. The mount, a mammoth for me — though I’d have preferred the rhino — a drinking cape, and a ring.

So. It is taking a long time. With a second disk and a patch to download once the game is installed I think I might go and put on some coffee.

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Being a Bum

It’s a pity that my favorite games don’t have a Lazy Bum class. Or maybe that’s a good thing or I might have spent the whole week playing it.

I’ve spent a goodly part of the week recovering from my recent trip sitting in front of the television, doing a bit of reading, and of course, playing games. It’s a good thing I’ve got this time off. I usually finish my vacation holidays moments before I go back to work and spent the next two weeks at work recovering.

The big thing about this week is that it’s been the calm before the storm.

Age of Conan has been released in the US. (I know. You’re sick of hearing about AoC.) And it appears that Funcom has not vanguarded the game. There have been a few teething problems, especially with the early access program, and there have been a few oddly timed server downtimes, but all up it appears the release has gone well.

I mentioned that I was called when I was on holiday by the game store with the news that my preorder card has come in. I picked that up a couple of days ago.

At the time I was given an update on the date the box would be arriving in the store. Apparently it was supposed to come in today (Thursday 22nd) for sale tomorrow. The shop was going to phone me when it came in.

Well, it hasn’t arrived. Apparently the local EB Games were inundated with calls asking when it was coming in, so they preempted my call and phoned me telling me the game wasn’t in.

I feel strangely calm.

I’m not worried.

I have an interview for a new contract tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, and it’s my Mums birthday tomorrow too, so there’s a birthday dinner planned for tomorrow night. And there are plans afoot to see the new Indiana Jones on Saturday evening with a visit to the obligatory Indian restaurant before hand. Oh, and I’m scheduled for Lasik surgery on Monday so my eyes will be out of action for a couple of days after that.

As you can see, there’s a lot happening. And I feel strangely calm about Age of Conan. I’ll get to it when I get to it.

Don’t get me wrong I want to play it. I’m excited about playing it, especially with all the positive news. I’m also a bit nervous. I really want it to live up to all the hype and expectations of the last year. I don’t want to get a month into it and get bored.

In the meantime, I spent much of this weeks gaming back in LotRO. One of my real life friends told me a few weeks ago that he subscribed to Lord of the Rings Online. It’s his first MMORPG so I created a Hobbit Hunter called Stroppo Swiftfoot on his server this week and started the leveling.

I reached 16 this afternoon and joined up with my friend when he logged in this evening. He has a 18 Guardian and handles it very well. We ended up running through the Strider quests together and, just the two of us, entered the Great Barrow. Needless to say, two isn’t enough for the end of the instance. We managed to get most of the way through, but the multiple elites got us. This instance really needs a Minstrel. Never mind. Next time.

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Is Diablo 3 Blizzards New MMORPG?

Over at MMOCrunch, Geoff is asking if Diablo 3 will be announced soon.

It’s a fair question given that Blizzard recently purchased the Diablo 3 domain name from the fan group was using it as a fan site pushing for Diablo 3. The purchase as I understand it was amicable, no lawyers involved, though I’m not sure what Blizzard paid for the domain. (BTW, even though I’ve linked to the domain, it’s currently not working for me; again my understanding is that there is a site there.)

I think an even better question is: will Diablo 3 be Blizzards new MMORPG?

Considering that:

• Blizzard is working on a new MMORPG. This was announced a few months ago, and a look at their job postings shows a number of Top Secret Next-Gen MMO opportunities.
• Starcraft 2 is close(?) to release. Close with Blizzard is a relative term, but I expect they’ll want to hit the Christmas season with Starcraft 2.
• Blizzard really only have three intellectual properties; Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.
• We haven’t heard a peep about Diablo 3 before now;

I believe that D3 is the likely candidate here.

With Starcraft 2 still being in development, it’s unlikely they’ll want to dilute sales with a MMO. Don’t forget that the original Starcraft is still a hot property in Korea some ten years after the game was released. A MMORPG released even a year or two after SC2 may hurt that game.

Diablo 2s online component was getting close to a MMORPG, perhaps without as much of the Massive that a real MMO has. It makes a lot of sense that the game mechanics of Diablo 2 could be extended into a full MMORPG without too much hassle. Of course, modern MMO mechanics would have to be added to make the game acceptable to modern MMOers.

Of course I could be wrong. Blizzard could be developing a completely new IP for their new MMORPG. Or, they could be working on World of Warcraft 2, but I really doubt that.

I think Diablo 3 Online is the likely scenario.

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AoC Servers and Preorder Madness

A couple of days ago, Funcom released the server names for the Age of Conan US servers.

The PvE servers are called:

• Set
• Dagoth
• Zug
• Omm
• Derketo
• Thog
• Wiccana
• Gwahlur (recommended for Oceanic players)
• Anu

The PvP Servers are:

• Tyranny
• Bane
• Deathwisper
• Bloodspire (recommended for Oceanic players)
• Doomsayer
• Cimmeria (RP-PvP Server)

Bildo has a more complete list including the Age of Conan European servers. You might like to check it out.

The news has also broken, much to the extreme annoyance of many Age of Conan Preorder customers, that the early access program has closed. So if you’ve preordered AoC and haven’t got early access, you are so out of luck.

Apparently the reason is that Funcom have had so many preorders and early access requests they have run of out of server space. Funcom is busy converting beta servers into release servers, but they can’t keep up with demand. Hopefully this demand won’t translate into meltdown of release day.

While I was holidaying in Coffs Harbour I received a call from EB Games that my preorder card had arrived. Since I had dinner plans it was a little difficult to duck home and pick it up, so it looks like I’ve missed out on the early access. The other bad news was that, for some reason, the game box has been delayed to the 27th of May. So if I want to play on opening day, I’ll have to download the game (and pay the File Planet fees I suppose.)

With the size of the download being in the vicinity of 12 GB, and some large patches, I’ve decided to wait until the box arrives. At least I’ll miss any opening day blues, or server meltdowns.

When it does, I’ve decided to do what it seems every other blogger is doing and create my character on the Wiccana server. Keen and Graev, Bildo (and the Ten Ton Hammer team), and Michael (MMOG Nation) have all announced that they are rolling on Wiccana. Hmmm. I guess it’s the unofficial blogger server.

What server are you going to roll on?

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There and Back Again

Okay. So it wasn’t as epic as the journey undertaken by Frodo and Sam, but it was over 4000 kilometers of driving. And fortunately it wasn’t as eventful. No armies of evil besieging the land, and no problems with the car either, it ran perfectly pretty much all the way, even the last two 11 hour days home.

I didn’t end up catching up with my friend in Sydney as much as I’d have liked. He had unexpected last minute work commitments which saw him overseas for my first two days in Sydney. Considering we had planned this for some months, and this was usually a quiet time for him at work, it’s a bummer. The best laid plans of mice I suppose.

Weather wise, it was pretty much perfect. Sunny days for most of the time, with only two evenings of rain, and my triumphant return home heralded with storms and a lot of rain. Otherwise the days only ever got slightly overcast which made for easy driving and good sightseeing.

The tourist groups say it a lot, but it’s true, Australia is a land of contrasts. While the cities are great, Sydney is a blast, the countryside is especially captivating. The mountains, grasslands, bush, snow (not that I saw any, it was too early) and coastal regions are all spectacular. Wildlife too, is everywhere. On the way back between Cobar and Broken Hill I was stopped a number of times by animals crossing the road, such a flock of emus (including one old boy who didn’t want to budge) and a number of wild goat herds. Didn’t see any kangaroos though, apart from the ones run afoul of the trucks.

I didn’t take as many photos as I was planning. They’re all still in the camera. I’ll get to it in the next few days, and then I’ll post a few of them up here.

It’s pretty good to be home though. Staying in motels, while convenient is rarely comfortable with solid mattresses and rock hard pillows. My own bed is looking pretty good.

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