Age of Conan

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Aetherfukz
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Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

So... Early Access starts in about an hour. The patch servers are online again but the realms are offline (half an hour ago the patch server was down but realms online). Anyway, anyone here on the forums gonna play the game? I'm really psyched to finally get to kick ass and take names with my Conquerer.

He's gonna have a big twohander, heavy armor and will tank for my group of friends, and of course (hopefully) bash heads in pvp too. And if the name isn't already taken I'm gonna call him Guts or Gattsu :D
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The Prince
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by The Prince »

Now for the million dollar question, how does this game differentiate itself from WOW?
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by DrPepperPro »

will there be a free trial.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Starnum »

DrPepperPro wrote:will there be a free trial.
excellent question.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

About the free trial, I dunno. Maybe after the official release on the 23rd?

And although I loathe the fact that every MMO today has to compare to WoW (what did it really do besides cater to a casual crowd, and making MMOs mainstream? It's not that good of a game after you've played it for a long while), here's what differentiates AoC from WoW:

The visuals, both the graphic level, and the design of everything, is absolutely stunning and breathtaking:
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Then, the atmosphere: All the quests are fully dubbed with really fine voices, and there's little cutscenes for each quest, and even full cutscenes exposing the story for main quests. Oh and instead of just reading the quest text, you can interact with the quest giver, talk to them in multiple choice dialogs:
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I don't know if all the multiple choice choices (there are 2-3 for each and every NPC you can talk to) really change anything about the quests (never tried a quest twice :D) but damn, it really really adds to the atmosphere of the world. Feels much more like a single player RPG in that regard, which is a good thing.

You not only have a talent tree to put points upon levelups into, but you also get around 20 stat points per level which you can put into things like faster OOC regeneration, faster running, hiding (every class can try to stealth), perception, more or less aggro generation, etc. Feels much more like your own character, than just slapping on a predefined talent template. Oh and you can put points into climbing too!
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Then of course there's the whole combat system. No autoattack. Every stroke of the sword you want to make, you'll have to hit a button for. There's 3 (5 at a higher level) different sides which you can hit from, and enemies have "shields" on the corresponding sides (which the player does too, and both players and NPCs can and will change the facings of their shields in combat) which soak up damage, so the combat is very dynamic. The special abilities are all combos. To cast them you have to first hit the combo button and then do the corresponding moves, like one swing to the left, one to the right, then one to the middle, to
perform the special move. Spellcasters get spcial Spellweaving: They can enter spellweaving state (cannot move, slowly drains stamina) and then "spellweave" 2 or more spells together to create a new devestating spell with all the combinded effects and some bonus to unleash.
There's collision detection also which is great. You can't just run through players, and neither can mobs and vice versa. Which is really great especially for me as a tank: When I stand in a narrow hallway no mobs can come through to hit on the healers for as long a I live.
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Oh and of course, EVERY attack is area of effect. Swinging your sword from left to right? You're gonna hit everything that stands in front of you. Spells too, they either hit everything around the caster or everything aroud the target. The same goes for healing spells and crowd control.

Oh and lets not forget about the maturity of the game. Women are plentyful, prostitution is a running business (although there are NPC women in the military also of course), and every hit you make makes blood splatter. Then there's the whole fatality system. When you kill someone with a combo or a spell there's a chance of proccing a gruesome fatality (slicing of heads, arms, etc. in my case, electrocuting or burning someone alive for some spellcasters, drawing the soul from the body for the priest, etc. pp) which not only looks rad but also give you a buff so you'll hit harder and regenerate health, stamina and mana faster.
The game isn't 18+ for nothing.

Last but not least, no character looks exactly like another like they do in WoW. There's like a gazillion options upon character creation, with sliders for everything: Cheek height, cheek length, chin length, chin width, boob size, butt size, thigh size, feet size, nose size, eyebrows height, color of eyes, tattoos, etc., the list is almost endless. On top of that comes the realistic look of the game. Armors look like something a person might have worn some thousand years ago our time to battle.
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Well those are just my impressions from playing the game for the weekend + monday and leveling to 27 :D but the more I play the game the more I love it.

P.S.: Oh and the PVP. At my level there's only world PVP and minigames like the WoW Battlegrounds, but after level 40 you can build guild cities which you thenafter have to defend from other guilds in epic battles. I'm really psyched for that. I dunno at the moment if I and my reallife friends who play will join a big guild, or go with the implemented mercenary system: You can put yourself up to a mercenary list, and guilds can then recruit you for gold and for their inter guild battles. Sounds awesome if you can make yourself really known as a funky mercenary on your server :D

P.P.S. Oh and what I almost forgot, one of the coolest things. There are no cookie clutter classes. None of this Deftank who can tank raidbosses but can't do shit in pvp and needs 1-2 minutes to get a normal mob down alone shit. Every class does damage here. Like my 2hander talent tree for the conqueror. There's lots of talents which let my skills generate more aggro BUT ALSO do more damage. Or knock back enemies which is good in pve and pvp. Stuff like that. The healers also aren't supposed to spam the same heal on the tank the whole time. Most heals are group HOTs and while each healer has a single target heal that heals "normal", you get a debuff after that so you cannot be healed by the same spell for 1 minute. This all binds to the dynamic gameplay.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by DrPepperPro »

ahh damn it seems awesome. hey all us evil-genius people should try to play on the same server. I'll probably only play after experiencing it for myself with a free trial.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

DrPepperPro wrote:ahh damn it seems awesome. hey all us evil-genius people should try to play on the same server. I'll probably only play after experiencing it for myself with a free trial.
If you want to start talking german, sure :D I'm on the german RP-PVP Server Asgard :o
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by dialdfordesi »

Sounds interesting. Are you leveling fairly fast? How's the grind so far?
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

Yep. I hit level 30 yesterday. Grind is nonexistant because there are so much quests available everywhere and quest xp is really high. I needed like 40k xp from level 29 to 30, and there was a quest (which there are lots of) where I just had to deliver some wine to a guy 2 or 3 zones away - that quest got me 10k xp alone.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Starnum »

Holy shit balls, that looks and sounds pretty interesting. I'll have to keep my eye on this one.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by fujinsan »

I'm amazed, I wasn't interested until I read Aetherfukz post, very informative btw. So is this strictly for computer or what?
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

Yeah it's just for PCs now. Although there is a plan to convert it for the XBox 360, those plans have, AFAIK, been pushed sometime into the future now. I think they planned that Xbox and PC Users can play on the same servers than but that surely need a huge development time

Anyway, still nothing about a free trial but there will be a buddy program where users with a full version can give one buddy a key to get to try out the game for 10 days.

Dinged Level 37 yesterday and got invited into a huge guild with more than 50 members, which already claimed a spot for their guild city. Heard the details about it afterwards in the TS. Damn is that cool. You can build a tavern, an auction house, houses for all the different professions and classes, and much more. With the auction house you can let solo players put up auctions there (it's one auction house per server still, but the guild one might be closer located to quest areas or such) and then the guild gets the auction fee. Same when you let players use your forge and stuff where only the best equipment can be built, you get a small fee from it. Class houses have special abilities for all the classes you normally cannot get, and you can also get big buffs from one building, so other players can travel to your city to get the buff before raiding. How awesome is that?

Oh yeah yesterday I saw some guys who already got their mounts. And man they are HUGE! And there's actually an animation when the rider climbs up or down their mount. And different mounts give differnt stuff. Like the mammoth gives you big health, but is slow and you can only shoot bows from it, and the rhino is not the fastest too but gives you health and armor, and it allows you to charge and plow through enemies or even walls when attacking a city. Normal horses are the fastest and you can swing your normal weapon from it, but they don't give huge boni.
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Was in my first real instance yesterday, tanking fine. Damn that room surprised us. Huge statues with blood flowing from them filling up a see of blood below where a disgusting boss awaits. Reminded me somehow of the movie Hostel :D
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Well gotta get back to playing :D
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by fujinsan »

Yeah I really want to play this game now but I'm going to have to get a new graphix card and a whole bunch of new stuff. I will play this game though can't wait to get my hands on it.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by dialdfordesi »

Hey Aether, could you ask any of your guildies about the endgame if they are at that area yet? I really hope it isn't some worthless raidfest, because if it is, I wouldn't buy Conan even with all of the appealing things you've mentioned.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

Concerning the endgame, I dunno, probably noone does really. There are 80 levels, and the highest char in our guild is 52 or something like that. In the US there was a level 80 char a few days ago and on our server there is a 72 demonologist running around. But I don't suppose ~5 or 10 characters at level 80 worldwide can really try out the endgame :D

There is the option for raids that is for sure but I don't think that is the only endgame option. Guild cities and battlekeeps for guild wars alone are a viable endgame option, plus the whole "standard" pvp stuff, where you can gain 20 pvp levels and get eglible for pvp items with it.

Concerning the guild city, man it's huge. Our keep alone can be seen from half the map away, and the borders of our city span about a quarter of the map. We got a trade center, a library and a temple already and are just in the process of building a wall with towers and gates around the whole thing, should some jealous players come around.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Loeviz »

Ive had my eyes on this game since day one.
The big differential from wow is that this game aims towards a little older crowd (Just like their previous game Anarchy Online that was way better than wow ever will be), they have a little steeper learning curve. There werent many young kids that I stumbled upon when I played AO because they simply didnt give the game a second glance when it just wasnt just about grinding for xp at once.
However Im not going to start to play this until it gets out on the Xbox.
Dont play games on the PC anymore :P
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Starnum »

I'd like to check this game out, but I don't know if my computer can run it... I checked out the system reqs and I have a P4, but it's a 2.6 I believe. Also not sure about my vidcard, not sure if it can handle it. Let me know if a free trial comes out though, I'll be on the lookout for it.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

Starnum wrote:I'd like to check this game out, but I don't know if my computer can run it... I checked out the system reqs and I have a P4, but it's a 2.6 I believe. Also not sure about my vidcard, not sure if it can handle it. Let me know if a free trial comes out though, I'll be on the lookout for it.
I think I will get 3 or 5 buddy keys which enable one to play for 10 days, once the program starts. Till now the site reads "The buddy key program will open as soon as server capacity allows. Please check back later."

If you want you can have a key then, but you'd have to download the EU client and try the game on EU servers because US and EU keys and clients are different.
But as a trial, I'd say that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Starnum »

Cool dude, just let me know when. :)
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Aetherfukz »

Some updates and nice screenshots for you to awe at :D

Mounts are awesome. They move very natural, and you can at least do normal attacks with melee and ranged weapons from it (no combos though :() and use buffs and healing spells when mounted I think. The horse also has skills like kicking to the front and back, and a charge. The rhino has a sweep and a charge, and the mammoth has something like that to (dunno, I have the rhino from preorder).

(Using freeimagehosting.net now, imageshack.us seems to get slower and slower by the day. Anyway, still click the pictures for nice 1920x1200 quality shots :D)

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"Yo Conan, old buddy, wanna shake my hand?"

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Animations are still awesome. Really shows that they motion captured them. Also I love the fact that when I walk slowly with my twohander, I am holding the sword just as our all favorite hero before charging into a herd of demons:

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The game also gets more brutal the more you see of it. You get new fatalities every 10 or so levels. Two of my favorites: Knock them to the ground, stick the big sword right into their face, twist it and let it rest in their face, then cheer a little and finally pull the sword out. Or slice of their arms and head in one swift motion, go up to the dismembered body and smash them aside while you walk past them. And of course there's a youtube video of a twohanded blunt fatality which is beyond awesome.
On a sidenote - that guy definately got hurt:

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Random insert - Level 40 instance entrance, awesome lightning and atmosphere:

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So anyway, our guild got us a battlekeep (which basically is a guild village which can be attacked and burned down, but there are only 12 battlekeeps per server so all the guilds will have to battle for them). Gotta stand guard while the last piece of the wall is built:

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Huh - some random dude checking out the main gate to our battlekeep? That's gotta be a spy. Gonna put a crossbow bolt between his shoulders when he turns around, aimed in third- or first person view:

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Incoming!!!

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Oh noes! Mammoth' are breaking through the front gates, gotta bring them down!

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And they also got catapults? Not good, gonna need a strike team outside the keep to take that down:

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Last week - ding - Level 80!

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We did an attack at the battlekeep of a friendly guild of ours, to test out the whole mechanics and siege warfare:

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I have no clue what the ballista was for (we build it after our catapult got destroyed) but I recon it puts hurt onto people :D

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Storm their towers! Kill them on their own walls!

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My resumee after 1 month of gaming and hitting the level cap: The game is still awesome. Instances are fun. PVP is fun. There are still a lot of (more or less annoying) bugs, but that was to be expected. There aren't any rewards yet for PVPing but that will come with the big PVP patch at the end of this month. All in all AoC launch was 10x smoother than WoW launch. In the first 2 weeks of Early Access (before the official release) the servers were up for arou 90-95% of the gametime, no login queues too. Class balance as of now is a little shaky, but they are constantly patching bugs and classes (once a week). I can be a good tank and be able to PVP with the same talent specs, as can healers, which is a big plus.

But the best part, and the only thing that matters is: The game is freaking good time fun. ^_^

Alas, the buddy key/trial program still is s'posed to be "coming soon"...

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Special Bonus: Me cosplaying you-know-who.

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I think the armor (although the screens were made at night so you can't really see the armor details) looks close enough already, I just need a real dragonslayer instead of that a-little-bit-demonic-looking-runesword. I have already seen a model of a sword that looks exactly like the dragonslayer, only being slightly more golden than silver, but it's an epic drop from one of the first raidbosses :( But one day it will be mine *evil laughter* :D

P.S. I'd so kill for a cloak that (for the lack of a better description) "goes around the front", not just the back. But I've never seen such cloaks in ANY roleplaying game, be it single or multiplayer. Those cool cloaks only seem to be a mainstay in anime.
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Re: Age of Conan

Post by Tempest »

I will admit that any mount system that allows you to do this is awesome:

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