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.

Popularity: 18%

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.

Popularity: 16%

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.

Popularity: 15%

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.

Popularity: 13%

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?

Popularity: 22%

AoC Schizophrenia

It’s a little worrying.

I’ve been reading some of the first impressions and reviews of the Age of Conan beta. Tobold has posted his, and Keen has added some more to his impressive repertoire of AoC articles.

AoC is shaping up to be a find game. That much is clear. By all reports the PvE is excellent while the PvP could use some polishing up, but is promising.

The problem is, it appears, that Funcom didn’t really learn anything from the Anarchy Online release debacle years ago. According to Keen, it appears that Funcom is using an old buggy version of the client, even older than the PvP open weekend, as the client for the open beta.

Now if that isn’t a mistake, I don’t know what is.

While it’s true that beta testers should be playing the game in order to test it, after all that’s why they signed up, the reality is a lot of beta testers just want to get in early and play an upcoming game for free. This is even more the case during the open beta when anyone can get in, not just those selected by the developers.

This makes it really important for the developers to put their best foot forward and provide the best experience for the beta testers. First impressions count, and this includes the beta.

There are still people who consider Tabula Rasa a bad game because of their experience early in the beta, even though the game improved immensely towards the end.

Funcom knows what it’s like to lose out to bad first impressions. Anarchy Online had a dismal launch, and this put a lot of people off the game, even after the problems were ironed out. AO has gone on to a long and successful career since then, but who knows how much better it would have done had the launch been smooth.

A game only gets one shot at a good first impression.

Popularity: 14%

By Crom, The Age of Conan Preorder

I have decided not to download the Age of Conan beta.

For one thing the public beta starts next Thursday the 1st of May and closes on the 17th of May, prior to the full release on the 20th in the US. Since I’ll be away from the 4th to the 18th, I’ll only have three days to play (and a big part of those three days will be spent preparing for the trip.)

The download is also big — the installed files are 9GB — and my account has a bandwidth cap of 25GB. Granted, that’s a lot, and I’m unlikely to go over the limit, but it will be a long download in any case. The other thing is that I’ll have to buy a sub to File Planet to access the download. For three days… nah.

If I wasn’t going away. I’d pony up the cash and grit my teeth for the big download.

So I did the next best thing. I ducked into the local EB Games store on the way home from work last night and placed my preorder for the collectors edition of Age of Conan. All up the CE AoC preorder is going to cost A$109 — highway robbery when you consider the current price of the Australian Dollar — comparable to the price I paid for The Burning Crusade collectors edition.

It also looks like the War Mammoth is the bonus that is provided to Aussie EB Games preorder customers. The sales clerk didn’t really know much about it, but he had a printout showing the War Mammoth. I know that the Mammoth was the mount most people were after, but I was secretly hanging out for the Killer Rhino. A much more dangerous looking mount in my opinion.

Age of Conan will be available for sale in Australia on Thursday the 22nd of May. In talking with the sales guy at EB Games, most games are released on Thursdays in Oz — just like movies — though this isn’t a hard and fast rule. GTA IV will be released on a Tuesday. When you take into account the timezone differences though, I’ll be playing AoC only a day after the US release.

So the release schedule for Age of Conan as I understand it is:

• 20th of May in the US.
• 22nd of May in Australia.
• 23rd of May in Europe.

Popularity: 23%

Age of Conan PvP Weekend

Funcom opened up their NDA and offered a lucky 15,000 players the chance to participate in a weekend of PvP gaming goodness.

I wasn’t one of the lucky 15,000, but Keen of Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog was one of the chosen. Over the last few days, Keen has posted a few times about his experiences, and has recorded a few movies too. Here are the links to Keen’s AoC PvP Weekend Impressions Part One and Part Two, as well as his Final Thoughts.

As with all these things, there’s good news and there’s bad news.

The good news is that the PvE game is, in Keens words, magnificent. I’m pretty happy to hear this. As you’ve probably worked out by now, I’m more of a PvE’r that a PvP’r. While I do enjoy PvP, a good PvE game is essential for me. Good story and lore help a lot too.

The bad news is that the game is very resource intensive. I think we all expected that, but it looks like it will take a pretty substantial rig to play this game at the setting required to get the beauty that we’ve seen in the videos and screenshots that have been released.

Hopefully Funcom are not going to run into the problem that SOE did when EQ2 was released. Some zones were almost unplayable due to lag caused by the heavy graphics requirements. I dreaded going into North Qeynos or Qeynos Harbor — it could sometimes take a minute to turn 90 degrees. That alone drove a lot of players away, right into the waiting arms of World of Warcraft with its much more modest system requirements.

The other bad news, especially at this late stage of development, is that the PvP game is seriously unbalanced. Some classes were extremely overpowered and could nuke an opponent in one or two shots, while other classes could barely manage a scratch.

While this is a bit of a worry, I expect that this is precisely the reason that Funcom held this weekend PvP event. They would have been watching very closely, and would have gathered some valuable info. That data would be put to use in balancing things out.

Don’t forget that two weeks before the Tabula Rasa beta ended, a game that was barely ready for release was patched and put into a releasable state. It may have needed more content, but the bugs and many shortcomings were fixed.

I’d wager that is likely to be the case here. I suspect that AoC will go into open beta with a bunch of balancing done that will fix PvP, or at least go a long way in doing so.

And since the NDA has been lifted (for the PvP weekend only) if you were one of the lucky players who partook this weekend, let us know what you thought in the comments below.

Popularity: 18%

Rotten Timing

I guessed this might happen.

The news is out that Funcom has announced that the Age of Conan open beta will commence on the 1st of May. Good news for all of us who have been waiting with bated breath to finally have a look inside this new MMORPG.

My timing sucks though.

I’m traveling, starting on the morning of the 4th of May. Given the timezone differences, the beta will be available for us Australians on the 2nd.

Hmmm. I wonder if I’ll have the time to download, install, have a bash, and write a quick update here?

Popularity: 15%

New Age of Conan Trailer

Funcom have posted up a new retail trailer for Age of Conan on their website. It’s quite large at 114MB and is took a while to download, around an hour. Longer than normal. I expect there are a few folks downloading. I also selected the 720p option which was a larger file, and I was only getting around 20 KBps.

There is also the option to view the Age of Conan Retail Trailer using YouTube. It will give you a much faster experience, but I have to say, the 720p trailer is a sight to behold, and worth the extra time to download.

I reckon Age of Conan may be one of the best looking games that I’ve seen. The graphics look gorgeous. Funcom have done a masterful job with the graphics and animation.

It’s one of the reasons that I am looking forward to the launch of AoC in just over a month.

There are some concerns though. Game developers have been known to develop beautiful looking games that have fallen short in the gameplay department. I’m not expecting this to be the case here though.

No. The bigger concern is what I’ve read around the traps. Keen is concerned about the type of players that Age of Conan will attract. To be honest I haven’t really given that aspect much consideration, but thinking about it now, Keen may have a good point.

Age of Conan is touting itself as a hardcore, action based, primarily PvP game. That does tend to attract a certain type of gamer, the highly competitive gamer. It also tends to attract the griefer types. Will this mean that AoC will be filled with trash-talking, fun-stealing gamers?

I hope not, and in any case, that’s just something to keep an eye out for. It’s not something to stop me from getting the game.

And one thing that will minimize the impact of this is being in a good guild. That should make a lot of difference in enjoying the game.

Popularity: 14%