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Plans for Massive Age of Conan Evolution Revealed

David Osbon — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:20:03 +0000

June will see the beginning of some new improvements to the fast-selling Age of Conan. Further additions to Funcom’s game will come later in the year to coincide with EA Mythic’s Warhammer Online full release and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. We have been looking over the details of what Age of Conan players can expect and here are our thoughts.

To The death

To begin with, a PvP content update is on its way, aptly named To The Death. With it comes more consequences and also rewards for the players who take part in the PvP element of the game.

Ten PvP levels (plus additional ranks) will also be introduced, along with weapons and gear specific to PvP.

What might excite Age of Conan players the most is a new part of the whole PvP experience, namely the Fugitive system. This system will aid against those players who gank lower level players continuously and think they can remain anonymous. Making it easier for players to hunt down this type of PKer could be a welcome tool for all involved in PvP within Hyboria.

Hopefully Funcom have done their homework here and made sure there’s no exploits to the Fugitive system.

“Kinship!” and Powerpoints

Later this year, a Powerpoint system will be rolled out that could look to emulate a similar character evolution and reward system contained within the forthcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (see Tome of Knowledge unlockables).

Rewarding active in-game behaviour, “power” points are gathered by the player through numerous methods including winning PvP matches, being active in a guild, and owning a Battlekeep.

How this will be presented to the player in Age of Conan has yet to be highlighted but as current MMOs go, a tabulated book interface could be in with a strong chance.

“Kinship!” is currently in preproduction and will be a free update concerning guild matters. Allowing the formation of alliances between guilds, it will allow alliances to battle each other to rule and conquer on a massive scale. Battlekeeps and “wonders of the world” can be constructed within allied guilds, allowing huge scope for battle between opposing alliances.

So it seems that Funcom are addressing areas of game mechanic that could keep players active in Age of Conan for a long time to come. It could also mean that the predicted two horse race between World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online has just become a more likely three horse marathon.

Is it a good time to get into playing an MMO? Well, the choices and battle lines are being drawn. Remember, there’s nothing better for the customer than game publishers in healthy competition!

Source: Funcom

Age of Conan Growing Rapidly – PC Gaming Not Dead?

Toni Dimayuga — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:35:35 +0000

Funcom recently announced that Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is one of the fastest-selling PC titles of all time. Launched on May 17th, more than 400,000 gamers (almost half hailing from North America) have entered the bloody, violent, and very adult world of Hyboria. After all, who doesn’t like scantily clad women and dismembering enemies?

On May 23rd Age of Conan launched an extra nine servers: 5 PvE, 1 RP-PvP, and 3 PvP. In addition to those playing the game, the Age of Conan websites have been experiencing a mass of traffic, with more than 2.2 million unique visitors in the last ten days.

“This is just the beginning, and we already look forward to massive updates and cool new features,” said Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. “We believe our focus on making Conan unique and groundbreaking is a key reason for the initial success. This is a focus we will keep and reinforce, and players can expect continued quality and innovation as we enter a new era for the game.”

Granted, these are very early numbers and we don’t know what things will look like further down the line. However, I think it’s safe to say that so far, Age of Conan is a success and PC gaming may not be dead just yet.

Follow this link to read an interview with Age of Conan’s creator, Jorgen Tharaldsen.

Registration for Age of Conan Pre-Orders Open

Toni Dimayuga — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:18:37 +0000

Early bird warriors who wanted to be first to hack and slash through Hyboria get another perk. Registration is open for those who have pre-ordered Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, which is due out May 20th.

Head over to AgeofConan.com and use your pre-order key to qualify for Early Access costing only 5$/5€. In addition to being able to play the game a few days early, this fee also includes 10 days of game-time, and the digital download of the client.

However, keep in mind that signing up for Early Access doesn’t unlock the special items (such as the War Mammoth and Killer Rhino mounts) that come with your pre-order. You’ll have to provide the retail key first before obtaining your freebies.

Source: Age of Conan Forums

Age of Conan Pricing Plans Announced

Tom Hillman — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:05:15 +0000

“You expect me to pay HOW much?”

Eidos have released their pricing plans for the upcoming Age of Conan. By the looks of it, it’s pretty standard MMO fare.

As per usual, the more game time you buy, the cheaper it becomes. Currently the pricing stands as follows:

Monthly £10.34/$14.99

Three months £28.95/$41.97 (£9.65 p/m)

Six months £53.06/$77.94 (£8.84 p/m)

60 day time cards £15/$29.99.

The pricing model is more expensive than WoW, which works out at £8.99/$14.99 a month, £8.39/$13.99 for three months, and six months at £7.69/$12.99.

Obviously aside from both being MMOs, they have very different styles. It will be interesting to see if people have to make a choice between the two when pricing becomes a factor. However, as Age of Conan matures, the subscription costs may be marked down.

Source: AgeofConan.com

Age of Conan Interview: Nipples, Religion, and Fanboy Arguments

Jonathan Zungre — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:17:15 +0000

When I got the chance to ask Jorgen Tharaldsen, the man in charge of the massive Age of Conan MMO (massively massive), I went straight to the heart of importance: sex, God, and why it was developed for the Xbox 360 and not the PS3. Check it out!

Zungre: I’ve seen a lot of the violence in the game, but what are the sexual aspects of Age of Conan? Can you get married or do you just go around getting freaky…

Tharaldsen: Yeah you can, of course you can get married. We haven’t put a system to it, but there is no sexual aspect to the game.

Zungre: There is none?

Tharaldsen: No, there is no sexual aspect to the game. And that’s the thing. And a lot of people will say “Conan, it’s a mature game.” You can get undressed, you know, you can see your nipples. You can be completely naked. And there are certain quests, like you speak to a brothel mama, you rescue a prostitute, stuff like that, but you can’t actually have sex in the game, and we’ve been very careful in avoiding any of that.

When we [originally] said there would be no nipples in the US, there was, like, an uproar. “What?! No nipples in the US! It’s a major crisis!” We had, like, comics being made about it and thousands of forum posts.

Nipples are in… and by that I mean they are out.

And there was a leak that we were reportedly having mini sex games like in God of War in the game and the Internet went crazy. “Whoa, will this mean rape?” and will this mean this and that. People just went off and we’ve never had it.

Zungre: Are there any type of religious aspects to the game? Can you worship Crom?

Tharaldsen: Definitely, all of that. All the different cultures have their own gods, and you’ll see all the cities and all the cultures being made with that in mind. You can see how [our created character] is a Stygian guy. You know that Stygians worship Set, the snake god. And you can see [how he has Set and pictures of snakes in his clothing].

The red lights in the hotel room make Jorgen look like he was born of fire and brimstone.

And you can get the avatars of the gods. There’s some demi-gods you can interact with. And, of course, there’s demons. Like [our created character] could shape into his demon form.

[The gods] aren’t coming down, with the finger from the sky, kind of Monte Pythonist approach, but they’re really there. Close. And people worship them.

Zungre: Did you learn anything from the release of the Conan game that came out last October? It was kind of greeted very luke-warmly. Did you learn anything from that?

Tharaldsen: No, not really. (Zungre laugh!) No, we didn’t learn anything valuable. I think we have chosen a very different focus for our game. And we spent a great many years on building an MMO world, where they built a single player world. So we have gone for a very different approach.

There you could play Conan, where in our game Conan is a more distant character as a king. So, we have had a very different focus for our game.

Don’t worry — Age of Conan’s “different focus” still involves lots of violence.

Zungre: What about the interaction with the people on Xbox Live? Do you have any hopes for that?

Tharaldsen: Yes, but first we’re coming with a complete community focus. And we’re going to reveal that once we’re done with the PC version, simply because we are faced with a large set of challenges which single player games simply aren’t met with in the same way. What about Achievement Points for a game that never ends? That kind of stuff, you know. How do people chat, how do they interact outside the game? Can PC gamers and Xbox gamers play together? Yes, we would like them to. We’ll see how it eventually winds up and what Microsoft wants as well. So we’re guinea pigging our way into this. It’s an interesting challenge.

Zungre: Why did you make the decision to go Microsoft (Windows and Xbox) instead of Sony?

Tharaldsen: Because it’s a very similar code. Xbox and PC are very similar in terms of the code base. And at the time when we started the development of Conan there was only one company with an online strategy, and that was Microsoft.

Zungre: Because this was five years ago.

Tharaldsen: Yes, exactly. They’ve done a fantastic job at bringing online to the consoles, and it was simply easier for us. A Wii version would have been impossible. Playstation 3 would mean putting it up as a completely different game with its own code base. There’s quite a lot of code run in this game. It’s a lot larger than any of the normal single player games.

Video and Pics from the event soon! I held the Conan Sword!