Anyone tracking Age of Conan?

[Slamz]

AOC is apparently due out in about a month, according to pre-order release dates.

I've only poked around a little bit, but it sounds to me like it's going EQ meets Shadowbane: player-owned cities, lots of PvE grinding and the best loot comes from 24-man raids fighting large PvE bosses. I'm not sure if it's instanced, but I'd bet it is. (They did mention that resource collection areas are instanced, which I assume means no PvP in there.)

Max level is 80. Although that doesn't tell me much without knowing how long it takes to get a level. I also hear about "PvP level" which sounds seperate from PvE level and only comes from killing other players? You lose "PvP XP" when you die in PvP, and it sounds like you'll need to maintain at least a 3:1 positive kill ratio to advance in PvP level.


Not sure what all that really means. It sounds suspiciously like WOW's system. You can either go to max level in PvE and raid for gear, or you can become the High Warlord or whatever for PvP gear, but most people simply will never achieve the latter goal, by design -- anyone can reach max PvE level but only the elite will reach max PvP level. (Although at least it sounds like PvP level is based more on kill ratio whereas in WOW it was based almost entirely on time-spent-online.)


Here's one player post I found on the forums, in amongst the usual arguments of "carebear" vs "ganker" threads. Not sure how accurate it is:

IGN posted up an exclusive look at AoC’s PvP and Raiding yesterday. In the article they talk about Raiding and PvP in the “end-game” or rather max level. The first waves of disappointment came when I read this:

“If you want to get the best armor and weapons in Age of Conan, you’re going to have to raid, something you can’t actually engage in until you hit level 80. There’ll still be dungeons that players can band together and delve into before the cap, but for large-scale, 24-player encounters against enormous bosses that require highly coordinated attack patterns to defeat, you’ll have to wait until the end game.”

*sigh* So basically it’s another treadmill of raid to get gear to raid to get better gear to raid to get gear. I thought we left that crap behind in World of Warcraft? I’m tired of having to spend hours every night raiding dungeons for a chance at loot. I’m tired of being forced to find 23 other players to even have a chance at getting good items or seeing epic encounters. It gets worse. You would think that perhaps maybe PvPing would be an alternative. Well it is, but not only does it sound incredibly difficult but the gear that you can get from PvP isn’t even better than the PvE gear and only the best PvPers are every going to see it. Here is how hardcore their system sounds:

“It’s also possible to lose experience when killed. According to game director Gaute Godager, this won’t drop you from one level to another, but it is possible for your progress to be brought all the way down to zero for your level if you’re constantly getting killed. To further add to this mechanic’s hardcore nature, you only gain a fraction (somewhere between one half and one third) of the experience for a kill compared to the amount lost for a death. Yikes.

The whole point of the system is for only the most skilled players to rise to the top, instead of having everyone who put in enough time eventually get to the highest PvP level. Once you do get high enough, special equipment unlocks and becomes available for purchase, and the gear is supposed to be extremely powerful. It’ll be comparable to raid gear, though its statistical bonuses will benefit PvP play more than PvE. According to Gaute, raid gear will be more accessible than the high-level PvP gear.”

So finding 23 other people to successfully raid is going to be easier than obtaining the PvP gear? I don’t need a full time job here. I need a fun game. I’m getting very discouraged already that Age of Conan is taking 10 steps back after they took 1 step forward with their interesting combat mechanics. I can’t sacrifice what little life I have to this game in order to have comparable loot. So much emphasis is being placed on gear in Age of Conan that the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that gear will dictate strength. If I can’t put in the time it takes to raid or PvP hardcore 24/7 then I will not stand a chance against someone who does. No thanks.

I have been there and done that too many times. I’ll be completely honest here and tell you guys that the thought of having to live through this horrible game design one more time makes me want to skip the game altogether. Does this form of play interest ANYONE out there (aside from you millions still running on WoW’s treadmill)? It doesn’t interest me at all. I really had no idea that AoC was going to mimic WoW’s shoddy design.

Graev is sitting across the room shaking his head right now saying: “The thought of having to raid and accrue DKP or participate in raids over and over isn’t appealing. I don’t want to feel like I’m forced to attend every raid just so that I can finally have the DKP or points to cash in down the road. I wouldn’t mind going on a raid every now and then but I don’t want to be forced into attending every single raid to compete. I will once again have to wait until every other person gets their item or whatever until I can finally get something. That just sucks. I don’t want to have to modify my play style to be a hardcore raider. I didn’t think this game was about raiding. That’s not fun to me.”

Raiding Treadmills and Hardcore PvP grinds = Kiss of death

(I walked away from the comp and left this post sitting here unpublished to think things over and talk more with Graev…)

We have decided to still get the game. -BUT- we will not be participating as “hardcore raiders”. We’re going to go as long as we can without buying into that horrible excuse for gameplay. If we can raid a couple nights a week in short raids and get some gear great. But once we have to modify our playstyle we’re going to quit.

I understand "public beta" begins soon, which presumably means no more NDA. I'd be curious to hear from anyone that's been playing beta, or starts playing beta when it becomes public.

From everything I've seen about the game, I don't plan to try it unless someone else tries it and says it's awesome. Sounds to me like we'd still be grinding levels in Age of Conan by the time Warhammer comes out in the fall.

(I also get the impression that The Purge will not have enough players to do our own city. I didn't see any numbers, but other posts said you need a "very large" guild, which to me means like 40+ people online at once and a triple-digit roster. The Purge actually was that big at one point in WOW, but the pressure generated by having to recruit that many people just to fill a roster is not something I'd particularly care to repeat.)

[Moristans]

I have a friend at work who really wants to try it out. He's never played an MMORPG before but he's a big Conan fan. I'll probably try it out just to play along and keep him company. My buddy is a big Xbox guy and loves getting achievements in FPS type games but I'm not sure how that will translate into xp grinding and l3wtz. Since this will be his first MMORPG experience, he'll either be hooked or get bored in a hurry.

I'll be glad to let you know what I think for as long as we are playing.

[Diggles]

I honestly dont get why a pvp fantasy mmo cant have fighting over resources similar to PotBS.

If your realm/guild controlled the iron mines, you could bleed an enemy dry of iron/steel weapons and they would have to use other weapons such as bronze, bone, wood, obsidian etc.

[Hoofhurr]

I haven't followed it at all but potbs isn't exactly compelling me to log in everyday either. I think I'm back in my single player, good storyline vein of interest again. Haven't heard of any MMOs in development or otherwise that have grabbed me by the balls recently.

[Slamz]

POTBS lacks a sense of investment. They have grand plans along those lines but it's obvious that they released well before those elements were complete. Can't say I blame em; they wanted to get their foot in the door before Conan and Warhammer released, but it's definitely hurting them.

Reminds me a lot of World War 2 Online, actually -- another good, in depth wargame that's easy to quit and rejoin because while it's fun, there's no sense of personal investment.

I'm planning to stick with POTBS, but it's actually duels that will probably save it for me. I need something interesting to do while waiting for 6 people to log in so we can do a group and get in some open sea combat. After Tuesday, I can see myself spending a lot of time in duels just for fun while waiting for people to log in.



My worry for Conan is that it's a game that requires a huge ramp-up. While I want a sense of investment, I don't mean that I want to grind NPCs for 6 months...

I really wish more games supported "medium to small guild investment". If we had a way to acquire something in the name of The Purge and build it up and fight over it, it would probably be a much bigger lure. I know they have plans for exactly that, but it sounds like it's a long way off.

[Hoofhurr]

The pvp in POTBS just seems really inaccessible to me. If you are geared out for group pvp you are really locked into that playstyle which is fine, but if you only have a little time to play or if you can't find a group in short order you're stuck building shit in the economy or waving at the blockaders in hermes and cutters. Not only that but it seems like you get one or two good 6v6 fights per evening of gameplay. I guess after the pacing of WoW I've lost my patience for the posturing and pacing of the OpenSea style of pvp gameplay. In EQ, you could spend the better part of the day running around looking for fun pvp and that seemed normal and perfectly acceptable. I may not have the patience for that anymore. I also thought I could handle a war of attrition where even when you lose you are still kind of winning but it turns out I really do hate losing, even if it's still kind of winning. heh.

[Desroe]

Heya guys : ) It's been a long time. My dad (Maxxis) and I have already preordered the game, along with purchased the Prerelease - so that's where we will be : ) Maybe see a few of you in game?!