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Rip my laptop.
freekstyle
Member Posts: 49
So I tried to play Age of Conan, a game I've been waiting for forever! As soon as I started the game, the update launcher loaded flawlessly, compared to my friend's system which was a little higher up and didn't load as quickly. But, when I started the game the first time, it began flashing like it wanted to give me a seizure. Thankfully it didn't, but I tried to push through anyway because I didn't want to give up. I updated my driver and restarted the game. This time there was no stuttering and I began to hear sound! I grew excited. But I slowly realized that there was no video showing up. Through the entire game intro I couldn't see anything but a blue graphic stretched across the top of the screen, but nothing else. I figured I could get through the intro by just pressing enter, and finally reached a standstill. It loads a screen with a arrow-covered rock, a sun, and some mountains, but that's as far as it goes. I don't know if a menu is supposed to be there or what, but with the cursor, I am allowed to move some invisible "menu", I suppose. Does anyone else have this problem? I figure it's probably because my laptop is a little outdated, more specifically the graphics card.
Three to four years ago I invested in a gaming laptop which was actually decent for it's time, but slowly slid down the "technology treadmill". well now, I think it's officially fallen off. The only weird problem is that although Age of Conan has the same minimum video card requirement as Call of Duty 4 (which I can run, at the lowest settings, but can still run), it will not run AoC.
My sys. specs are:
OS- Windows XP Home
Processor- AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Memory- 1gig
Video card- ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 w/ Omega Drivers
Everything meets the minimum requirements except for the card, but if it runs CoD4 on the lowest settings, I'm confused as to why it wouldn't run AoC. Hopefully someone can help me out! Thanks. 
Comments
No help at all?
1. update your video card
2. buy a new computer (best performance)
3. give up and be a cheap ass (fir the budget gamer)
i suggest option 2 but for all the trolls and the 10 year olds with a 7 year old e-machine who secretly uses their parents creditcard option 3 would probably fit you better.
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest
1 G RAM.... tsk tsk
The only problem about updating the graphics card for a laptop is that you rarely ever get a laptop with a video card you can change.
Also, I read somewhere that if you can play Oblivion you should be able to run this game. This is killing me!
That's why when I bought mine, I made sure it could be changed. I can fit a different M video card into my laptop, or just another 8800M GTX.. which is probably what I'll do next..
.. But in a good way.
Yeah, I wish I would have known more when I bought this laptop. It'll last forever but unfortunately not for gaming!
Does anyone know if there's a place where you can butcher the graphics without actually loading the game? I totally forgot to look and deleted the entire game. Like, somewhere in the game's folder maybe?
My understanding is that the game client is optimized to push the load on the GPU and not the CPU?
the OP's onboard graphic card has this: GPU 450mhz and RAM 275mhz. It's similar to an ati x600?
Let us know what you end up getting to play AoC on. Too bad your laptop can't handle it though...
I've heard of some people having some video trouble, especially with older cards. At the log in, I think (I'm not at my gaming rig at th emoment) there is a button called settings, you should be able to go into there and make sure you are set to shader 2.0, but I think that is probalby the most you could do (and trust me, I'm not that far off on the sitaution) to get it playable...
I think that video card is below min specs (think the gf6600 and the ATI 9800 were the lowest possible cards) however, so that might be part of the problem.
Sorry I wasn't much help
The problem is that I can't get to the settings menu from in-game. The only settings I can get to is the Settings in the game launcher, and it only lets me adjust the screen resolution. I would accept my graphics card being below the minimum but the fact that the minimum for Call of Duty 4 is also 9800+ and I can run it fine, I just can't accept the fact that this game won't run. I'm hoping there's a second place where I can adjust settings and crank them looooow.