The Gamer's Quarter

sediment · Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 5:45 pm Post subject: Age of Ho-man

Anyone currently betaing Age of Conan?

I've a particular, personal interest in the game - Funcom is one of my favourite developers currently, and with their past performance with Anarchy Online I'm hoping Age of Conan launches both well and maintains play excellence.

The model seems kind of interesting - levels 1-20 are solo, and you acquire your primary class at 5, then your advanced class at 20 - like FFXI, except - probably - without all the chocobo pass earning bullshit and five years per level. You also have a "guild class" apparently, which determines the tradeskills and role within a guild your character performs. Add that guilds can build their own cities (provided they have the resources) and you have some interesting concepts, that perhaps have been done before in Horizons but here's hoping FC does it better.

PS only Stygians can be mages and all magic is evil. <3 Mages apparently grow more and more sinister in appearance as they level, with demonologists sprouting giant flaming wings and scorching the earth they walk upon.

I'm really wanting to play a necromancer, partially since they have a cooperative magic system they've been touting where spellcasters can combine their efforts to make some sort of uber metaspell, meaning a party composed entirely of mages or priests could theoretically be super-badass. Picture if you will a skeletal behemoth composed of the bones of like eight yaks.

Also, their melee and ranged physical combat systems seem pretty interesting - melee attacks have six directional components (probably even for special maneuvers) and defense has to be applied versus the angle of attack when parrying or shield-blocking, and ranged combat involves a sort of FPS element that I've seen a couple videos of.

This is, of course, only what I've heard- from the mouths of devs and all that, but some people I know who are in the beta have offered some backing to that which they're familiar with. All the same though, I've seen a couple videos and, on the whole, I think Preperation Conan feels good.
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jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

I'm not in the beta but I have preordered the game. I don't generally play MMOs, but as a big Robert E. Howard fan, for me this one is definitely worth a try. The screenshots I've seen are really evocative of Howard's Hyborea. I also like how you can play the first 20 levels as a single player game. I believe they did change the original single player design by allowing you to move between single and multi during the first 20 levels though. Multiplayer concessions aside, I'm just happy they kept the original single player vision somewhat intact(although it sucks that you'll have to pay a monthly fee to play the single player game, but maybe that was the plan all along).

However, I am a bit worried about what the MMO game will actually be like. The PvP beta weekend appeared to consist of capture the flag style mini games. It looked somewhat fun but I'm not sure I want that in my Conan MMO. At least that stuff can be ignored easily enough. I'm slightly more concerned about what the inclusion of such MMO banalities portends for the rest of the game.

sediment · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 3:58 pm Post subject:

Was that the one they had at Dragon*Con?

I didn't get to interact with that much, since... the day I was able to amble to the Funcom booth there were a couple sweaty guys hogging the terminals. I did get to squeeze in and check out the directional combat, which was pretty interesting... of course, the other guy was some sort of demon summoner so he wasn't much on defense. It seemed like more of an arena affair than a CTF battle.

This being Funcom they might put a more Howardesque spin on things, maybe turning CTF into "capture the wenches" or something.
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Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject:

jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

sediment · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 10:52 am Post subject:

Apparently they're taking the open beta into sort of a mayhem PvP last hurrah, where all beta servers become open pvp affairs and everyone who was at least level 13 gets bumped to 20 with faboo gear and warped out of tortage into their racial capital.
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The Great Unwashed · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 7:43 pm Post subject:

A friend of mine is in the beta, and related to me an anecdote of how he once saw, late at night, two developers slagging off the lead designer across the global public chat as "a talentless idiot".

It looks sorta fun though!
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sediment · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 9:36 pm Post subject:

Oh, Gaute Godager!

Yeah, he's the former lead for Anarchy Online, specifically during the Shadowlands expansion.
Mind, Shadowlands is beautiful scenery and some sweet-looking gear, but it thrusts a deep and complex metaphysical realm into what was fairly dark and gritty sci-fi. A lot of people claimed it ruined the game.

Hyboria seems more his speed, though who knows, he might design an expansion that completely turns the game on its head.
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sediment · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:27 am Post subject:

Early access apparently sold out? And info I've been able to dig up has been a little bit misleading.

Kind of a knife in the ear of preorder customers who weren't paranoid enough to validate and start downloading two days ago. Especially since, in my Funcom account control, I'm getting a message when endeavouring to purchase early access that my account's already been upgraded to the max.

eh, I can wait four days.
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jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

I picked up my preorder from Gamespot today, but I won't be able to play until Thursday or Friday next week since I missed the early access signup. I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into this.

sediment · Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 2:36 pm Post subject:

Have you installed it yet?

I just sacrificed 30 gigs of hard drive space on a bloody altar.
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jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

I know, it is a beast. And on top of that, the first time you launch it there's like 600+ MB of patches.

Sounds like the early access players are experiencing the usual growing pains, with the servers being down, etc. Hopefully that will all be straightened out by the time I can log in on Thursday/Friday.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

What the hell really uses up 30gb worth of storage? That's ridiculously honestly.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I'm trying to talk myself out of buying this. I never really play MMOs beyond the first few months, but the way it's structured - single player then multi - is how I've played every MMO, throughout. The combat sounds good and settings look great as well. Summer semester starts June 2nd though, which will kick my ass, but I want to cut heeaddsss ooffffffff.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

sediment · Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 5:24 pm Post subject:

Well, in two days I dearly hope I'll be here gabbing about how awesome it is being a necromancer or herald of xotli, myself.
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

If I hear anything close to that, then I don't think my will can hold out. Wii Fit for my girlfriend and Conan for me. Jazzercising and dismembering: Summer Fun Time.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I'm kind of interested in this myself and almost picked it up because it was on sale at Circuit City... next week Sad

Anyways, yeah, I'm kind of tempted, but also interested in Warhammer, and I don't know which I'd rather be involved with. . .
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I'm reading that the opening portion is largely poor, and that the equipment sucks - everyone gets the same thing until level 40, and then it doesn't change all that much. Boooo! I'm still picking up wii fit tomorrow and it would be pretty handy to grab both at once ... still tempted.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

The Great Unwashed · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:49 am Post subject:

I saw this on an article on Kotaku today.

I'm not sure to be pleased that they're taking the Boris-Vallejo-esque 80's glamfantasy aesthetic to its proper extremes, or amused at how well such an approach will probably sell.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Just pre-ordered.
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The Great Unwashed · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:24 am Post subject:

Into your pants?

*bu-zing*
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

It's never happened to me before, I swear!
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dhex · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:15 am Post subject:

so what makes this different than warcraft etc?
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

The combat is the main draw. I haven't been drowned in its previews, but from the bit I've read and the videos I've check out, the game has a combo system with directional and timed attacks - rather than queuing up moves, you have to watch your opponent's reaction and respond accordingly, like a fighter. The game is also heavy player versus player, with sieges, like but superior to Sovereign, coming in later as people level up.

I'm not so much worried about the delayed launch - they keep pushing it back a few hours each time - or people mysteriously being banned from their forums for trying to log in with copies they've bought, but the fact that there is apparently so little variety is what I find troubling.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

ApM · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 9:48 am Post subject:

sediment · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:26 am Post subject:

So far it's pretty fabulous. I can't make a flat-chested woman, but that's about my biggest gripe.

Combat is:
1) fast-paced. I'm constantly queueing up different directional maneuvers depending on the defenses my opponents are mounting, and my various specials have proven really handy, too.
2) bloody! I'm not a gore-fiend, but it's nice to see blood spraying everywhere in a fight, as opposed to some goofy bloodsplat decal being applied generally as a particle.

Magic is:
1) Fucking awesome.

There's some weirdness going on with my necromancer's pet summons, which I haven't quite ironed out yet. However, the game looks amazing on my really low-end PC and runs very smoothly, and it looks gorgeous on my fiancee's moderately less low-end PC.

I would like to point out that the warrior-women I've been able to create are pretty fierce-looking, though simultaneously it's super-easy to make a total bimbo hobag. Some of the male appearances are incredibly sultry, too... though, men are tending toward burlyness.

Now, take what I'm saying here with a grain of salt as you choose - I've not made it out of Tortage yet, but there are a lot of really nice environmental elements here, too.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

sediment · Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:44 pm Post subject:

Weapon availability isn't exactly universal, and most classes start differentiating heavily around level 5, with mages doing so far earlier.

It seems like you pick up new abilities every odd-numbered level, but levelling has proven pretty quick so far.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I just read on Qt3: "So to answer my own question retail copies each have one buddy key and collectors editions include 5. However they are pending release 'till retail customers have all settled in' whatever that means. I just went out and picked up a copy." Beh! Bastards are going to make me buy a copy.

I've heard 1-20 will average about 6 hours. This is the single-player portion is mainly there to become accustomed to everything. Once you past it, you then get to go to your home city; so I'm assuming it's quick in the event that someone is ready to tear shit up. You can also wander around a bit as well, but I think most would burn through it to start really setting themselves up and apart.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

I finally had a chance to play this and it is pretty great! First off, it is beautiful and the music is very fitting. I'm playing with medium visual settings(tweaked to include high res textures) at 1360x768. My monitor is actually 1680x1050, but the frame rate suffered too much and I'd rather have the visual fidelity than the extra pixels.

Some screens of the early parts:

I expect that levels 1-20 will take a bit longer than 6 hours the first time through. I've played about 4 hours so far and am only level 9. Even though I usually play casters in MMOs, my first character is a Cimmerian barbarian on the Hyperborea server, which is a PvP Roleplaying server. I choose a barbarian because I wanted to try out the combat, which I'm happy to report is definitely much more visceral and demanding of your attention than the typical MMO. Also, the barbarian has a number of skills to develop, such as climing, hiding, endurance, etc. Since there aren't enough points to go around, it seems like a nice way besides skill trees and trade skills to differentiate your character.

So far I am enjoying it quite a bit. The single player portion alone is a nice little game, if a bit linear.

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

This is me after some young buck (level 6) started swinging on me (level 15) and my irritation led me to beating the crap out of this person, who gave me the stink eye (re: was just standing there). It was also a fatality kill, which is very satisfying.

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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

SuperWes · Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

Ryan: thumbs up on this game or thumbs down?
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Up, so far. I'm really enjoying the combat and combo system. You can hammer away with basic combos at first - just like spells in Warcraft - but later you have to follow them up with directional attacks, and you can also use your basic attacks to hit an opponent in their weakest point, which is either left, right, or a high attack, depending on how they are shielding. The missions have finally become monotonous, but I'm about 30 minutes from leaving the starting area to go to my home city. I found that I need 80 in climbing to finish the last mission but only had 62, so I've been doing small missions to get enough skill points to pump it up.

It's when you leave that you get better equipment and assignments. The earlier missions are surprisingly good, feeling like a more involved Guild Wars or single-player action RPG.

The player-versus-player portions are pretty wild, with guilds already setting up outposts to torment people, but a jail system is supposed to be implemented soon to punish the spawn campers.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

I give it a thumbs up so far as well. ryan mentioned Guild Wars, which brings up a number of interesting points. I really wanted to like Guild Wars but hated how it forced you to use horrible AI companions if you wanted to solo. The first 20 levels of AoC is a little like Guild Wars designed for solo play and with a better combat system. Also, the multiplayer zones are instanced kind of like the cities in Guild Wars. This is really nice in PvP because not only does it keep the number of gankers in your instance down, it also allows you to switch to a different instance if someone is becoming annoying. Judging by the number of PvP servers, they seem to have designed the game around PvP.

And the Howardesque feel is excellent in some of the early missions!

Also, I hear you can respec your skills by ALT-clicking. The dialog box that appears when you do says it costs money but doesn't say how much, so I didn't try it though. Not sure if this feature is working or not.

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

It would be nice to spend my money on something. I think I've purchased a pair of boots and some milk so far. Not that I have too much stored up, what with Tin not being what it once was these days.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

sediment · Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 6:40 pm Post subject:

So far, way up.

My highest is only 24 though.
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Has it ever had error shutting down for anyone else? I have yet to shut it down without it crashing right at the end. Every time I boot the game up I have to either skip or sit through this scanning process that never turns up any actual errors.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

sediment · Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject:

Every time.
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jjsimpso · . Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 94 Location: USA

Every time for me as well.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Ok, picked it up. I was hearing a lot of interesting emergent situation stories and ... well, that shit got me. Anyways, I'm going to look around in the posts for servers.

What's everyone's server and character name?

EDIT: So far I've only found jjsimpso as saying he's on: Hyperborea
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

sediment · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 4:51 pm Post subject:

Wiccana, as well as ... six or seven friends of mine. I play a few characters, but mostly Danach and Apothka.

I need a non-Stygian character but I'm addicted to magic. Actually speaking of, I find it maybe a little surprising Stygians can't be dark templars.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I plan on making an assassin. I have a PLAN this time.

Still only half through my install. This is huge. I ran out of room for it on my XP partition so I started updating my Vista partition in anticipation for the game four hours ago. I started installing it about thirty minutes ago. I'm going to also need to download that first patch which will take probably another hour.

Overall it's going to take 6 hours to get this puppy running so I can then start tweaking other things.... This is one of those reasons that I give up on PC gaming when my system specs get too outdated. Currently my shit is really up to date being a new build, I'd hate to be even further behind the tech curve here.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

sediment · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject:

On assassins:
Very high damage, but until your feats broaden and grant you resistances you're stuck in cloth armor with no defensive maneuvers, making you the fragilest of the fragile, barring maybe Heralds, who do more damage anyway. My highest is my assassin, and I duo with my fiancee, who also has an assassin for this pair. We do crazy damage and stuff dies fast, but so do we. Without a real strategy assassins have really no staying power in a fight, so the key is to kill and kill fast.

A lot of people have been saying if you want to stealth kill and generally assassinate, play a barbarian or a ranger, since both hide equally proficiently as assassins. Barbs get light armor and more power in a straight-up melee, rangers get medium armor and numerous ranged combos.

I'm sticking it out with assassin for dogged stubbornness but I do honestly have fun winning fights by a razor's edge. Mine is corruption so far, and my fiancee is going lotus.
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ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I'm a barbarian and was pretty surprised to see them classified as rogues. I selected what I thought was a Conan version of a paladin, but instead I'm a beefed up assassin. The dual wielding feats are a huge plus, and if I time everything right I can take down people up to 4-5 classes higher. Hide finally became useful last night as I snuck through about 85% of one particular mission.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Huh... Barbarian actually sounds kinda awesome!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

sediment · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 5:49 pm Post subject:

Another perk in barbs' favor: Any melee attack delivered from stealth is automatically considered a sneak attack and does critical damage.

Barb feat trees specialise in either two-handed weapons or dual-wielding.

Two-handed weapons deal massive damage. Massive, critical, stealth damage = crazy high and probably instantly kills anything you get the drop on.

So yeah, barbs are way awesome! Sadly rangers kind of lose out for their range specialty since there's no way to get a ranged sneak attack. But hey, they can pretty much one-two drop anything shy of a boss before it reaches them.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

But... but... I want to backstab with poisioned tipped daggers then run while they die if the initial strike didn't kill'em.

Anyways, turns out I didn't install SP1 for vista when I updated my PC... so now I'm doing that. Then I'm also going to end up installing wow on this partition too...

I should take a shower to scrub all the evil out of my soul for doing this too.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

sediment · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 6:05 pm Post subject:

Oh, then play an assassin. We're the only ones who get poison combos.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I'll probably make a couple characters that I end up just dropping after a while.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"