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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: Update 5 Post-Mortem Interview
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
The folks at Onlinewelten had a chance to sit down with Age of Conan Game Director, Craig Morrison, to talk about the recently launched Update 5, what lies ahead for the future of Age of Conan, and more in this latest interview.
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On what former players can expect to find in Age of Conan should they return, or even for new players who have yet to take the plunge:
Onlinewelten: Many former players are still unaware of the huge improvements Age of Conan has gone though since its release. Would you like to use the opportunity now summarize of all the new content and changes in Hyboria?
Craig Morrison, Funcom: That’s not a question to answer easily in a short space, so it’s a little long! Earlier in the year we summarized the changes for the interviews I did at GDC in San Francisco and I think that list is relevant here. I actually found it quite hard to distill it down to a single page, so the short answer is that a lot has been done, the longer answer breaks down into quite a few areas!
- New Content: We have added countless hours of more content through updates such as Ymir’s Pass – the largest playfield yet that comes with an entirely new storyline inspired by the classic Howard tale ‘The Frost Giant’s Daughter’. Then you have Xibaluku, a new end game dungeon packed with dynamic and engaging boss encounters for maximum level players. In addition we have added countless more quests and rewards to the game for players of all level ranges. The launch dungeons have also been revisited, revamped and generally improved to provide new and more interesting game-play and rewards.
- Enhancing PVP: The world of King Conan is a brutal one and we have made sure to focus on building on the games PVP offerings. One of the key elements that players reported enjoying in the game was the ability to be part of a bloody and exciting game-world and we wanted to build on that. Not only have we added a full PVP leveling system, with a host of rewards we build upon this with a full PVP consequence system that adds a true meaning to PVP combat and allows those that would tread a darker path to actually become criminals based on their actions, opening up a whole new game-play experience.
- Improved Sieges: Building on the desire to have truly meaningful and engaging PVP in every update we are continuing to refine, add to and improve the Siege warfare PVP elements. We are striving to keep adding new features to make guild vs. guild game-play matter more. In the most recent updates new PVP specific resources required to build and repair battle-keeps have been added. These resources must be fought over between players, and can be looted from vanquished foes corpses, adding more intensity and drama to the siege experience.
- Stability and Performance: Our technical team has been hard at work ensuring that there are constant improvements being made to performance and stability. Framerate has been increased on a wider range of computers, memory leaks have been corrected and bugs have been ironed out making the game-play experience a lot smoother and stable for the user.
- General Improvements: The big main features always get the headlines and previews, but we have also gone to great lengths to ensure that the smaller points and general polish also get some care and attention. A huge amount of general improvements and enhancements have been made, some small, some larger, but all combining to provide a better Age of Conan experience. More travel options have been added, more voice-overs, a new friend interface, the raid interface has been improved, a new GUI options mean it’s now easier to locate and get into PvP mini-games, tradeskills have been improved, loot rewards have been re-distributed, vanity pets are available as a special reward for those who adventure through the new Xibaluku dungeon… and the list goes on! These changes may never be in the spotlight but they all contribute to improving the experience for players each and every time they log in.
Read the full interview at Onlinewelten.
Comments
WTF? I'm sorry but is this a commerical? I tought i was coming here to read something important and not an advertisement. I wonder how much Funcom had to pay for this space.
Anyway, 1.5 killed the game for me with slow and boring pvp. Never going back there.
Cool cat
WTF? I followed the link to read the actual content of the interview, cause there was just this advertisement here. What i found out its in fking german, how am i supposed to understand that?
This was fail, pure fail.
Cool cat
Yeh don't just translate the start and then let us defend for ourselves.
Pages 1-3 are in German
Pages 4-6 in English
The link links to page 3 thats all.
I guess the posters above already posted what I was thinking.
Also, why couldn't Funcom have offered the vets the "re-discovery" trial, that they handed out last month, after the 1.5 patch... not before. No way I'm going back to that steaming pile of......
I bought the game when it came out. umm... there were a grand total of like 300 people playing the game. I was like wtf????
Hated it........................
Sorry about that guys, I've fixed the link. Pages 4-6 are in English.
It seemed Age of Conan was finally going in the right direction.... until they decided to slow down the game and make it overly item based with the latest patch. Such a shame, I honestly doubt that Age of Conan will get any players back now.
Tried: WoW
Played: EQ, EQII, AO, SWG, NGE-SWG, LoTRO, WAR, Vanguard, Eve, WWIIOL, Guild Wars, Darkfall, AoC.
Playing: DAoC.
Waiting For: SW:TOR.
Actually there are players returning and enjoying the game. I started playing again a few weeks ago and it's awesome. The server I'm playing on seems to be very well populated. Conan seems to have made a pretty good comeback.
LOL, don't think so but its your opion.
MAGA
Despite I do not like everything they add .... AoC is better and better with every single patch (included the last one) ... and it is worth every single € for subscription.
Especially I'm happy now that equipment matter more. Does not make any sense kitchen knife to be as efficient as brand new Excalibur, does it? So, very welcome improvement.
But is true, when there are such profound change (and change to talent trees) one must re-learn its class and respec few times instead of complaining on everything. To be honest ... I have also found after patch playing is more "difficult". But after studying changes after that had no problems at all.
But true also ... I do not PvP ... and do not RAID .... so can't tell for this areas ... but I can guess logic is the same.
meh I like the game better now than before, I never played it for the pvp I got tired of that at launch playing on cimeria.
AoC could have been a real good game, but at one point in development Funcom became obsessed with the idea to make it rather work on the XBox360 (hence small zone design and constant reloading) and appeal to the console kids ( hence a combo system which is working way better with a gamepad than a keyboard) at one point.
Ironically I highly doubt it will ever reach the 360 these days. Kind of a shame in my opinion, Hyboria is the best fantasy universe out of them all and yet all the Conan games (not just AoC) have fallen sub par.
Tried: WoW
Played: EQ, EQII, AO, SWG, NGE-SWG, LoTRO, WAR, Vanguard, Eve, WWIIOL, Guild Wars, Darkfall, AoC.
Playing: DAoC.
Waiting For: SW:TOR.
The old combo system would have worked really well on console, but they changed that in november or december '07. I really liked the old one. The old one was different from the current one in that you didn't need to push specific combos from your action bars to start them, you simply put up to 10 combos on your combo bar, and then started swinging. So when you pushed lets say 1, you had to work your way to the combo you wanted, you used the "combo rose" instead of the keys that are there by default now, and if you had 3 combos that started on 1 the next sequence of all possible combos would light up, and you had to chose what next attack to use. Once you hit the last attack of any specific combo you executed it. Instant skills/buffs and stuff like that you put on your regular action bar. Not really good at explaining but i hope you understand.
What i mean is that they had a system that would have worked perfect on consoles, and they changed it, with the current combo system they will have a really hard time to get alot of people to play it on a console.
If you read the threads about the alternate combo system thats similar to how it was back in '07.