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New Game Director Q&A
AmazingAvery
Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
mmorpgitalia spoke with Craig recent in a Q&A some nice stuff about the expansion contained in there too.
Read it all here (below is a small copy n paste) www.mmorpgitalia.it/forum/showpost.php
MMORPGITALIA: What can you tell us about the new alternate advancement system for the characters? Will this let us see new motion capture fatalities? You know, we love them!
Craig Morrison: The alternative advancement system will allow players options for specializing their class, of course the system is also being designed so that over time, the players can earn virtually all the available abilities if they keep working through it, meaning that they will end up with a great many options for the character and are not restricted to one single role.
We will have a set of brand new weapon combos and animations in the expansion. The look and feel of the combat animations has always been an integral part of our combat system and that will be continued with the new animations that the expansion brings.
MMORPGITALIA: Can you tell us how many main playfields will be present in the expansion and which are their names?
Craig Morrison: The expansion will feature a whole new land for players to explore, the Empire of Khitai. Khitai is split into five large gameplay regions and players will be able to travel there from one or more of the major hubs in the game:
Gateway to Khitai - The first glimpse that players will get of Khitai is actually from the western side of the Great Wall. The aptly named Gateway to Khitai contains rolling steppes that climb up to the foothills of the Mountains of Night.
The Northern Grasslands - On the eastern side of the Great Wall, the Northern Grasslands stretch as far as the eye can see. Beneath the shadow of the Kang Pagoda lies the village of Chow and further east, the frontier city of Pin Pin awaits. South of Pin Pin, the grasslands are swallowed by impenetrable jungle, while to the north the road winds across the River of Yellow Curses and into the desert of Kara Korum. East the grassland stops abruptly at the Khitan Escarpment. From the edge of the escarpment, you can see clear across the beautiful lands of Chosain Province.
Chosain Province - Once a stretch of idyllic countryside, Chosain Province is now torn by battle. The northern city of Gun Hai and the southern city of Gun Xui are at war, and the once peaceful city of Shaulun has become a staging ground for mercenaries from across the world. The northern marshes, which bound the southern side of the River of Yellow Curses, are populated by monstrous creatures, no doubt crawling across the river from Kara Korum.
Kara Korum - The desert of black sand, Kara Korum, is eerily silent in comparison with the southern countryside. Nothing moves in the streets of the village known as Ghost Hill and a gentle breeze carries forth the stench of decay from the forest to the south. Northwards, in the center of Kara Korum, the high walls of The Crater dominate the landscape and the sense of the alien that pervades the landscape seems to stem from that place.
Paikang - South again, and on the eastern side of Chosain Province gives way to vine-choked jungles of Paikang. To the north, through Souleater Pass lies Heavens Lake and to the east is Shatterspar Coastline, dotted with the wreckage of a hundred ships. But south is the imperial city itself, Paikang, its purple towered minarets gleaming in the sunlight.
Each playfield region comes with it own set of dungeons and instances leading up to the final raid dungeons that will be found in Paikang.
MMORPGITALIA: How many raid istances will we see in the expansion? Which tier are they?
Craig Morrison: The expansion will introduce tier four raiding in Pai Kang, the capital of Khitai. As with our other raid content each raid instance contains half a dozen or more unique raid bosses.
MMORPGITALIA: Do you also have any plan to expand the crafting aspect of the game in Rise of the Godslayer? Or this will be only tied to the main game?
Craig Morrison: There will be new recipes and tradeskill items in Khitai, so there will be new things for tradeskill fans to discover, but any major additions to the systems themselves will come as part of live game updates
MMORPGITALIA: In order to play the new expansion, considering the implementation of the Enlighten engine do you think will be necessary to raise the minimun hardware requirements needed?
Craig Morrison: It is unlikely we will have to raise the minimum requirements for the game for any of the expansion content. We aren’t planning on having to do so at the moment. Age of Conan is already a top end game in terms of graphics so we have been able to great visuals within our existing requirements.
5 new large playfields and several dungeons in each. Nice!
Comments
Awesome, it looks like it's coming together really well.
Quick question though, can anyone confirm a new starting zone for the race they are adding? I would love to come back and make a new character.
There won't be a new starting area with the Xpansion, all character that are newly made would have to do Tortage and then hop over to Khitai and then can level up there too. There will be updates to the quest line for this but there will be no new quests in Tortage I think it was said somewhere before.
You can however, create a brand new Character from the Khitai Race, although which classes are available to the Race have to be detirmined yet. You will have choices of now Four Races over 12 classes.
Content in Khitai will be from level 20. But most of the content is aimed for higher level players.
This all sounds awesome. Im really looking forward to this.
What happened to Craig Morrison? Or whatever their latest game director's name was.
Didn't you read it? The interview was with Craig Morrison.
Morrison is still in charge, and is doing a great job (too bad he aint in charge of AO anymore, but Means, AO's current director, aint bad). Gaute Godager was the previous AoC director, he left (though im pretty sure he got fired) the company
Morrison is still in charge, and is doing a great job (too bad he aint in charge of AO anymore, but Means, AO's current director, aint bad). Gaute Godager was the previous AoC director, he left (though im pretty sure he got fired) the company
Credit where it is due, Joel Bylos is a dev who has shaped the Expansion in a number of ways and can't wait to see his influence on the design too. V funny guy.
Morrison is still in charge, and is doing a great job (too bad he aint in charge of AO anymore, but Means, AO's current director, aint bad). Gaute Godager was the previous AoC director, he left (though im pretty sure he got fired) the company
Age of Conan players should be happy, Gaute leaving means only good things for Funcom, he was one of the major reasons for their downfall. After two years Age of Conan is almost passable as a playable game.