Funcom: Heads will roll as Age of Conan moves into Open Beta

[Ithnag]

First part of the "review"

After receiving the mail from Gamespot and going back home after work i proceeded to start dloading from a 1 meg/sec connection, Gamespot downloader wasn't ready for what was to come, and gave very limited dload speed (at least to not paying subscribers), the torrent was unseeded, but eventually there appeared a free downloader and links to other sites that started hosting the files, i'm sure that if not for this a huge amount of people wouldn't have ben able to participate at all.

Gamespot wasn't ready for this, some people used the FC updater but it wasn't intended to be like that, as it was only supposed to be used to general and tech beta users, i could say that it is clear for me now why would i want to do 50k downloads for the "open" beta via IGN/fileplanet, even if i don't really like them, downloading from gamespot was hideous.

After the mass download of almost 7 gigs i had no problem installing, then proceeded to download a 250 mb patch from the ingame patcher, this ran well, no bottlenecking felt at the 1gb connection, so i put all the issues for the Dload of the main files on the Gamespot side, and not necessarily as a gamespot bad per se, only that they weren't ready for 20k people dloading 7 gigs form them, or something.

This was the problem for me, downloading was troublesome, but that was the low point of the weekend.

More impressions to come.

[Ithnag]

Installing and starting the game:

Once installed the game (i'll go to tech specifics based on the builds i tested later) i had no problem with the following: account creation, loading the game, loading the textures, generating content.

Lots of people seem to have been having this problem, but for what i sw a lot fo those problems were on their end, people used the key on pre existing beta accounts 8had to be new account), tried to use other beta builds (the PvP GS weekend had a special build, not the newest one, and limited to leveling up to 5, the outskirts of Tortage prior to entering the city, a Lobby and PvP mini game maps.), Single core Athlon (athlon xp) weren't supported for the PvP weekend, but are supposed to be supported on the final build, people didn't read this or the word of the beta build being special, so they dloaded the wrong one (leaked beta version) or used the one they already had (regular testers).

There were however real issues on the build, i was lucky and got none of those, but after a while there was a new patch after a 2 hour server downtime.

[Ithnag]

Char creation and PvE part.

The character creation was quite fun, i noticed that not all the hair styles iv'e seen prior on images and videos were available, i also think that not all the body and facial markings were available in this build, but were enough to spend a good time testing those.

The customization capabilities are great, you can end up with a real ugly char or the exact opposite, it's the most options i've seen for an MMO out there (or to come) to this point.

The three races have some differences, not statwise at all, but more subtle.

First and more notorious is the class options, each class have access to a number of class options, but not all. Stygians have no soldiers, but are the only ons that have mages, each class have one type of priest, things like that. A full list of options can be seen here: http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/...&selected=1083

More subtler differences include: skin tone, Cimerians are kind of Celts, and their available skins and hair reflect that, Aquilonians would be Roman/Greeks, and Stygians would be like Egiptians, they are the only ones that can be trully black (Stygian women also are the ones with the best looking base faces, in my opinion too); Body builds appeared to be sligthly different too, perhaps reflecting the natural differences that the environmental conditions cause on each area.

there are general hairstyles shared by 2 or the 3 races, but there are also styles available only to each race, one of our Cimerians looked lik the epitome of the Gaul warrior. Skars and "moles" are mostly available to all, but the rest of the body markings (tatoos and bodypaint) are culture based. http://youtube.com/watch?v=h1_zCFyuQj8 not my video, but it gives a good idea of it all, there are many others out there.

PvE.

Originally they weren't gonna include any PvE on the test, as it is Bata test of the PvP minigames and the interfase to access them, how the system worked and whatnot, and a stress test of it, the addition of some PvE content was nice, and in my opinion needed to give people a chance to get used to the gamplay a bit before being thrown into the butchery.

Only the 5 first levels were available, starting right after the char creation on the galley (slave galley) having the shipwreck/loadscreen and the first cutscene, talking with Khalantes.

The world looks great to me, even on the lowest possible settings look good, but if you can play it high, you wouldn't want to play it lower at all.

After Khalantes introduces you to the harsh reality (you have no idea of anything at all) and gives you a quest: get to the Slave master and kill you, to gain your freedom and prevent him from getting word to Tortage, then you find A chained girl in need of help, -> quest: get the key to free her. You find the guy that she says that has the key and blam, he has the key to loot., then you free her and escort her to Tortage.

Mobs here are extremely easy, i managed to die 2 times with 2 different classes, but was able to take down 4 of them at once on several occassions, it felt as if this was a toturial of basics, a practice room with a story background instead of being an actual practice room, the importance here wasn't the fights themselves but getting used to the gameplay, you can die, but it is not easy.

In 8 characters i found different kind of loot, generic gold teeth and croc fangs, bananas from the gorillas, and some special weapons to upgrade from the oar ( 2 handed mace, 1 handed mace, and dagger to upgrade from broken bottle for dagger users), but then the human mobs had several pieces of armor, basically witht he same (minimal) stats and different design.

6 head gear things (bandanas, caps, some sort of helmet like thing, a "cobra commander hood"), and variations of some of those, 5 types of footwear (2 boots, 2 sandals and shoes), several pants/skirts (2 loincloths, 1 short pants, 3 types of skirts) 4 "shirts" and 3 belts, the loot was very different from one try to another, being some variations of the shirts and skirts the ones that dropped more regularily.

At first the mechanics were a tad hard to grasp, but it can become quite natural, i found the "active combat" fun, it's gonna be hard to "master" but is easy to learn. A pal with only WoW as MMO experience was having problems with the combo/attack system, but he managed to get going after a while.

The walk from Tortage beach to the city is very linear, and safe, again i would like it to be harder, but it is a basic tutorial on how to do, it was more fun than the lower level of noob island in AO by far, the quests didn't feel like a dumb bring me x of this or kill x of those, the khalantes quest is key for your story, you need to ensure your life and freedom, and Casilda's one is you voluntarily helping a woman in need, you can just pass by and ignore her as far as i can tell, all the times the key to her chains dropped from the guy, 100%.

Problems: some animations are not quite right on some parts, the slave girl for instance not always acknowledged being freed from the chains and moves around in the chained position for a while, the gorillas had a problem on the animation after being knocked back, and in one occasion when knocking back one against a corner he ended up underground, able to attack me.

Fatalities performed:club the guy in the head, he falls on the floor and then you drive the pointy end (broken oar) into his guts, club the guy (1h blunt) leg braking his knee, he kneels and then you hammer his skull several times tin his skull cracks; Smash the guy's head rather hard and he goes down rather heavily, after a spell (necro) the enemy falls on his knees waiving his arms and shaking as if his sould was being sucked out form him, and you end up having a temporary pet out of it (frozen hatred), slith throat with dagger/broken bottle, i thought i would hate the blood splatter on the screen but actually i didn't mind it at all, it felt in the mood of the kill, i got to admit the first fatality got my arms up in the air in victory and my pals rearing while watching (Sunday, so no NDA breaking here )

The PvE for me felt nice, the ambient is very beautiful, some systems had low performance for what i've read, but my machine ran it well (perhaps patches before i started playing helped, can't comment) and it all let me wanting to see more, 5 levels on a tutorial region are short a "demo" but it was not really a demo, but a beta test, and i liked what i saw, i would have wanted to see more PvE once you get your char actually going, but, well, PvP weekend doesn't sound like PvE demo to start with.

[Kayl Maelstrom]

Thanks for this, Ithnag. Though I guess you've had to fill quite a few bug reports up first.

[Amaran]

Very nice and detailed ty

[Ithnag]

Only bugs that i really found personally (and reported) was the aforementioned animations, some textures that didn't initially load (but was a know issue) a crash on log out, models not always loading on the character selection menu (i had to go to another and return to the one not being shown when that happened) and a problem i saw but didn't replicate when people could go thru wall corners into the "other side of the map" in the PvP "lobby" and PvP maps, guess that was in need of being tested and found. Edit: i guess the gorilla i clubbed into the underground could be tied to this, i forgot that one, tho i tried to get where it ended up and i couldn't do it.

[Calelena]

Thanks a lot Ith! You put some work into those posts! A very nice read.

[Ithnag]

Thanks!

I have to say, i had very good luck, i skipped the early mass logiin hammering the servers and when i actually could play there were already some 350-400 mb worth of patches (or at least that's what i had to patch), initially rangers were dealing too much damage and that was addressed as i could read, for instance.

I read about another bug which along with the forced way into the "other side" strike me as the only real ingame bugs that are somewhat serious, apparently assassins could stack one "stance" that add damage up to the point that they could almost one shot people, i played one, but i seem to suck at exploiting, as all other stances or similar "buffs" in the classes don't stack, i didn't spam that button and didn't have any of that. The wall bug was found and exploited late in the pvp weekend, i don't think FC could fix it in time for the rest of the Event, the stacking of buffs is a rather simple code so while a powerful exploit it would be one that should be easily fixable.

Edit: PvE was very limited, just a glimpse (but was more than originally intended, that was no PvE at all) but if you have any questions i can try to address them. I'll give my opinions on PvP later as my time is limited today (frantic work day, more than the normal "it's crazy here" we have)

[Nyte]

I started the download on Friday and didn't finish until Sunday. I had very limited time and could only test the Demonologist.

In PvE, the deomonologist was silly OP... until lvl 5. I was one-shotting everything... until lvl 5.

Lol, then it was like it became severely underpowered. It was taking 4-5 shots... sometimes more, to drop something.

In lvl 20 PvP, I only got to play 2 rounds.

First round I had my ass handed to me swiftly.

Second round I figured out the skills and swiftly handed asses to two people before getting owned by some melee... probably a DT... wouldn't surprise me.

So overall... Download speeds from Gamespot were really disappointing. I wish I would have started the download on Wednesday when I got the email.

But I think Funcom handled this PvP weekend quite well... only allowing a very small taste of the game.

[Calelena]

So it wasn't possible to download this pre to the test weekend? When the friday came they could have just given you a key in your mail to activate the download.. or I understood it wrong.

Balancing seems to always be among the key issues, at least initially with these types of games, and probably AoC will be no different in that regard.

[Ithnag]

On PvE pet user/casters start up overpowered (tho the mobs are incredibly easy at start, so you can learn safely how to play, without feeling in a full silly tutorial, but actually a part of the world) my necro was killing them 1 at a time so fast i could stack 3 frozen hatred pets (temporary pets that are product of fatalities) twice (they don't take actual summoning "slots") but once i reached the level 5 boss/mobs area i had to be much more careful than melee, who were able to dispatch those guys fast, if not as fast as the ones before, neither as slow (proportionally) as the necromancer.

Demonologists got a club of fans/haters on PvP as they seem to be very capable of eliminating others, but also needed to do so swiftly or die, they are powerfull, but not to the point i felt it unfair.

Necros could screw your movement/fighting due to their number of pets being able to hinder your movement chances, was nice, you can't just run past them and gank the player, pets can play a strategic role other than being things that hit your opponent.

[Ithnag]

Originally Posted by Calelena

So it wasn't possible to download this pre to the test weekend? When the friday came they could have just given you a key in your mail to activate the download.. or I understood it wrong.

Balancing seems to always be among the key issues, at least initially with these types of games, and probably AoC will be no different in that regard.

You could download 2 days before the event start, but again, gamespot wasn't able to handle the dloading fast enough.

However, to prevent dload problems Gamespot layered the invites sending,once you received the mail you could start dloading, but the final 5k (extra invites) were sent early Friday, if i'm not mistaken.

[Ithnag]

Amaran, this is a nice DT video with description by the guy playing it, he explains a lot of stuff on how things worked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3r84vKr33Q

He has other videos there, quite informative.

In combat as melee you have: directional attacks, adjustable defense (the 3 markers that determine the areas you are trying to protect the best) combos (use stamina), double tap back (2 sec evade/dodge buff), double tap forward (momentum gives you 4 sec high chance of your next attack to stun your opponent) and 1 key that puts you in a pure defensive position, actively blocking attacks and consuming stamina. You have plenty of skills that can be used, and combat stances, and at level 20 there were a lot of combos too.

You can sprint (takes stamina) jump and move, you have to bee still when the last hit of your combo fires off or you cancel it.

As caster take out the double tap forward stun but add casting, and hopefully speallweaving by launch (that is said to work as combos). Rangers have combos for both range and melee attacks, and hybrid classes (more the norm than the odd case) have both spells and combos, but not planned to have spellweaving.

Melee have 3 directional attacks at start then get 2 more (not available in the PvP weekend), casters have 3.

All classes can stealth with varied success depending on the conditions and type of armor, as well as the amount of stealth skill the have put points into, same for perception (ant-stealth), everyone runs at the same speed, no stamina cost, sprint takes stamina, some buffs/debuffs modify speed, but mainly out of combat.

All can access at least one type ranged weapon, the last ones on getting them are soldiers, at level 50, rangers are the ones that excell at them.

All can use at least one type of melee weapon, from the start.

[Calelena]

Would you say AoC is focused on PvE or PvP?

[Ithnag]

it's for me hard to say, theres a LOT of PvP features and there has been a lot of work on that: Mini Games (instanced team battlegrounds), massive PvP (sieges), open PvP areas, bar brawling, charts and statistics, and a lot of promotion for guild warfare, also PvP experience and levels (that are not crucial, but still give added incentive and tools for pvp, but that don't really are supposed to impact PvE)

on the other hand you have personal and team quests all the way to final levels (with plans to expand them after the destiny quest), a lot of raid content for a game launch, personal and team instances for different level ranges (and also scalable ones) quest based crafting progression, PvE cities for guilds...

I think they are having both elements in high priority on the game, i couln't tell if one has a higher standing than the other, of course on the pvp weekend the main focus was PvP, and minigame-battle ground PvP at that.

Probably they aimed at giving you what they considered the best palette of pvp and pvE content they could give, so you could chose how you want to spend your time in game and have fun at that, but having much more options if you chose to do both (PvP and PvE)

[Calelena]

so we can gain xp and level up during pvp as well?

[Ithnag]

Originally Posted by Calelena

so we can gain xp and level up during pvp as well?

Nope, they have 80 PvE levels and 20 pvp levels, kills in pvP give you pvP experience.

However the pvP levels are told not to be of great impact, more like a status element (think pvP titles in AO) with PvP perks associated, some aditional PvP combos or whatnot, with the actual difference between level 1 and level 20 pvP being possible to overcome via skill alone (and with differences being smaller than those of 20 regular levels)

PvP levels gained advantages or whatever they are are not to be usable or of any advantage in PvE

[Ithnag]

Word of advice, don't get AoC running on vista with less than 3 Gb of RAM, vista users with 2Gig are the brunt of the people reporting lots of crashes and locks in the PvP weekend, and the reason is simple, vista eats up 1 to 1.5 Gb of your ram constantly (way to go microsoft!) then when AoC demands ram (say another 1.5 Gb) and it is not there, it can crash, as does my Rendering system when the ram is fragmented or hung.

i had 1 crash on the entire weekend, and 3 episodes when after log out the process would still run in the background preventing me from loging into the game without killing the process manually or giving time for it to finally unload, that was it, i run 2 Gb on XP, had basically zero problems other than those 3 and a couple of 1 sec graphic freezes, but ran pretty smooth on my system (core 2 duo 2.6, 2 gig ram, 8600gts 256mb, xp)

We managed to make it run on an AMD 4200 1gig ram system with a 6200 card, but it was bad, PvE could be played, but was ugly, considering the card was below the min reqs and that it was 1 gb ram on a xp system it surprised me greatly that it actually ran and was "playable" albeit poorly on min settings. A better video card changed it all.

[Kayl Maelstrom]

And if you intend to upgrade your RAM do not forget that Vista 32bits only recognize up to ~3.5Gb of RAM; a limit Vista 64bits doesn't have. So, if you install 4Gb, the rest can only be used to supplement your graphic card.

[Ithnag]

Originally Posted by Calelena

so we can gain xp and level up during pvp as well?

Well, according to the uberguild's radio interview with Athlean, say that you actually now gain some PvE xp from kills in PvP. Edit:aside from gaining and losing PvPxp, that is.