Forever Conan

A teaser about the 1.05 update

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:12:32 +0000

There’s an interview with Glen Swan over at massively about the new 1.05 patch expected later. It’s not a lot of information, but it’s interesting to see that this will probably be the biggest overhaul of the statistics-system in the game so far.

He is excited to tell us about how tanks finally can work more on getting tank-specific items and dps can get dps-items etc. You can read the full interview over there.

Age of Conan One Year Later

admin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:50:35 +0000

Check out this great move about Age of Conan One Year Later!

Age of Conan 1 year old

Age of Conan 1 year old

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:46:10 +0000

It’s now been a full year (and even some more) since Age of Conan was released. Funcom has definitely not had the success they had been hoping for, but they are steadily improving the game. I have to say that the game is a lot more stable, entertaining and friendly now than what was the case a year ago. Maybe they released the game a bit too early, and that hit them harder than they thought, but nonetheless, Age of Conan is now one year old, and we congratulate them for still being in business. Many other big MMORPGs died within their first year.

Patch 1.05 News
We can be expecting the stacking of food and potions will be increased. Definitely something to look forward to for all those who have problems having enough bag space. We will also see new vendors where you can buy food and potions. For all guild cities out there what look a little abandoned, you will be able to include more NPC characters like visitors, residents and guests. A new recall option called Path of Comrades will be added, which will allow you to return back to your guild city. This will share cooldown with Path of Asura.

Extra Character Slot
Everyone who have had at least six months of active subscription will also receive an extra character slot. If you have not had those six months, you will still be able to buy the extra slot for about 15 dollar (unconfirmed). Totally you can get two more character slots.

About the PvP Patch

admin — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:07:24 +0000

Last week the PvP patch for Age of Conan was finally released, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been waiting for this a long time. We have looked at what you can expect from this patch, and will describe the new features you should be aware of.

PVP Levels and stats
The first and probably most important feature is that we finally get the PvP Levels and Statistics that so far has been shown, but not updated in the game. There are in total ten PvP levels in Age of Conan, and you gain PvP Experience Points by engaging in all aspects of Age of Conan PvP, like world PvP, Siege combat and PvP in mini-games. You can watch your PvP statistics in the character tab.

What is diminishing returns?
Diminishing returns is a way to prevent griefing and misuse of the PvP System in Age of Conan. It means that you will get less and less experience from killing the same player, meaning you and your friends can’t keep killing each other and expect to rule the PvP statistics. It prevents people attacing the same persons over and over. Funcom has announced that the exact values might change in the future, after they have seen how the people use the system.

PvP Armor and Items
You will now find armories in all the major racial hubs in Hyboria. They will offer you PvP rewards from level 20 (normal level, not pvp level) and up. At level 80 there will be a full set of blue armor for all classes, but also lower levels will be able to get interesting PvP Gear. So far there are armor for PvP level one up to level five, but better gear for level 6-10 will be added in a future patch.

Now, get out there, kill some players and see how you like the new PvP system!

Age of Conan wants to learn from WoW bosses

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:16:50 +0000

Leipzig GC is over, and it’s time to look back at some of the information we got from Funcom about the development of Age of Conan.

More interesting bosses
One of the things Erling Ellingson said, was that Age of Conan will be borrowing and learning from World of Warcraft boss encounters. So far bosses have been quite static, and the differences between the bosses had been animations, looks and hitpoints. Bosses in World of Warcraft have always been challenging for a different reason, they require tactics. Hopefully AoC will incorporate more challenging bosses, allowing us a more interesting end-game.

DirectX 10 Screenshots
Over at TenTonHammer you can see screenshots from the new DirectX 10 build for Age of Conan. I have to agree with one of the commenters that better graphics should not be the primary focus of Funcom, but I guess this has been in the work chain for a long time. You see the screenshots here.

Age of Conan PvP Patch
The PvP patch for Age of Conan is one again delayed, and is now planned for release on September 10. You can however check it out on the testlive server. From what we have found, there will only be one tier of PvP equipment at the launch, available from PvP level 2.

More high-level zones expected soon

admin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:54:10 +0000

Eurogamer got an article up on the new content that is soon expected in Age of Conan – well, “relatively soon”, as Erling Ellingsen said. What soon is, we just have to wait and see. It seems like the new content will be added first, before we see the PvP improvements and DirectX 10 support.

Funcom acknowledges that the content for level 50 plus is currently too sparse, and will mainly focus on this. The commons district of Tarantia will be opened, where you will be able to choose a side in the conflict between the street bandits and rules of the rooftops. Apparently there will be quite complex moral choices and quests for this area. The Black Castle dungeon will be expanded a lot from the current “singleplayer dungeon” to a full group dungeon.

One of the new areas will be the cimmerian area Ymir’s Pass, suited for level 55 and above. It is promised to be filled with dozens of yours of questing and other elements, including the dungeon Thunder River.

You can read the full article here.

Leipzig GC will give us answers

admin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:52:33 +0000

Many fans of Age of Conan is very excited about the new content and expecially the DirectX 10 features of Age of Conan that has been promised. The upcoming Leipzig Games Convention will be the place where Funcom starts to show us what they have been up to since the launch, except of course the continuous patches we have seen.

Finally we will be up to date on what the new content, areas and PVP system will bring the game, and it is about time. Even though Funcom has assured the fans that there will be major upgrades to the game, many gamers have put Age of Conan on hold, and gone back to other games while the new content is being developed. The other big thing we have been waiting for is the DX10 upgrade for AoC, which should have been finished for launch, but so far haven’t been available.

The Leipzig GC will start on August 20. and last for five days, and we will bring you up to speed if you aren’t able to visit.

Age of Conan has now gone Gold!

Aoc Patch Notes August 6

admin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:53:01 +0000

A smaller patch today, as illustrated by the short update notes from Funcom shown below.

The update today includes the following:

Resolved several issues with the Arena access quest, hopefully it should work correctly this time, and this time we really mean it! (or poor Aquilus might meet with a very unfortunate end if he insists on being so troublesome in the future!)
Travel NPCs will no longer erroneously show the same destination multiple times
Altered the loot table of the Beguiler Demons in Potain so they are now dropping more appropriate loot.

AoC Patch Notes July 31

admin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:48:11 +0000

A new patch today, and some of the highlights are damage-balancing between male and female avatars and making a lot more equipment bind on equip, or bind on pickup. Actually all green and better equipment is now either BoE og BoP, which means armor-makers and weapon-makers have an easier job with selling the items. Not possible to dump old equipment on the trade center.

For tradeskills, cloth-ingredients will drop more often. We guess this is mainly affecting Silk, that has been hard to get so far. Also alchemy-ingredients that previously only was available in Alchemist’s Cache has been added to the loottable of NPCs in the harvesting-areas. Maybe I now will be able to get Hyena Meat without paying tons of gold in the Trade Center.

As you see, no PvP-patch here, but we hope Funcom is finished testing the new changes soon and will add it.

COMBAT

We’re now done with the majority of the process to completely equalize Male and Female damage. We’ve balanced the animation-lengths for all “white damage” attacks as well as all “combo finishers”, and furthermore we’ve matched the animation length of “moving attacks” to the lengths of “stationary attacks”. As a result players should now experience no difference in damage dealt or time needed to execute an attack based on what gender their character is.
Aborting multihit combos before they’re finished won’t activate their full effects anymore.
Pet commands should now be more responsive.
When aborting a multihit combo finisher, you now get a percentage of the full cooldown depending on how many hits you got in before the abort happened. (It’s really in this time!)

CLASSES

All Assassin, Barbarian, Bear Shaman, Conqueror, Dark Templar, Guardian, Herald of Xotli, and Ranger combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced to match the newly adjusted animations.

Priest Archetype

Spirit Aegis will now give 0.5% invulnerability to Holy and Fire instead of 1% Fire with the first rank trained.

Assassin

Combos granted by feats should now deal significantly more damage than before.

Dark Templar

The Talisman Mastery buff will no longer be removed upon death if the proper feat is trained.

Guardian

Shield Sweep combo will now scale more consistently across the first three ranks.

Herald of Xotli

Pillar of Internal Flame Rank II is now a three-step combo (including combo starter) instead of an instant cast.

Necromancer

Bone Horde debuff now uses the proper icon in the debuff GUI.

ITEMS

Resolved an issue that caused item bonuses to not scale correctly.
Many items are now ‘bind on equip’ meaning that once equipped the item can no longer be traded.
Resolved the issue with raid gear that had lost it’s bonuses in a previous update.
The bonuses awarded by gems have been rebalanced. Unfortunately some of the gem bonuses were originally applied incorrectly leading to situations where too much bonus was given, mainly for invulnerability rating. These gems have now been modified. The benefit of the different level gems has been also been amended though, meaning that higher level gems should now be better than the lower level versions.
All items Green+ are now Bind on Equip (BoE) or Bind on Pickup (BoP).
Items which are BoE/BoP should now state this fact below their item name in the mouseover tooltip. When these items are equipped and bound to the character, the text below the item name will change to reflect this. A message will now ask if you are sure when attempting to roll “need” on a Bind on Pickup item.

PVP

Players will now always see Massive PvP results, and the time left in a battle during battles. This information is displayed in the right top corner, below the minimap.

QUESTS

Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Entourage from 52 to 47.
Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Cleansing the Tomb from 53 to 48.
Khopshef Province: Forbidden Knowledge – The Crumbling Codex will now despawn after it is picked up.
Khopshef Province: Slave Cages will now show a visual effect when player is on the correct quest to interact with them.
Pyramid of the Ancients: New Quests have been added to enhance your questing experience. Bosses have been upgraded to present a challenge to solo (or small groups) of players. Pay careful attention to the items they drop – they could be the key to defeating more challenging enemies.
Pyramid of the Ancients: All quests should now be working.
Tarantia Sewers: Orphans in the Hovel – Galeria should now talk to you after you kill her captor.
Defeating Lord Atum-Keket in the Pyramid of the Ancients will now reopen the door to the Lord chamber.
The teleport altar behind Lord Atum-Keket will now be visible at all times.
The Master Torturer in Pyramid of the Ancients will no longer spawn multiple times in a row.

NPC / MOBS

Toirdealbach’s Tomb has had its level range adjusted from 50-53 to 46-48. Loot in Toirdealbach’s Tomb has been adjusted to fit the new level range of mobs.
Pyramid of the Ancients: The Harem Girls have been dressed up properly, and sexily!
Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now ignore line of sight-checks, thus making it impossible to avoid them by hiding behind pillars and such.
Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now be impossible to fully resist.
The Dark Flames breath attack used by Vistrix will now use normal line of sight checks.
The knockback strength on Kyllikki’s Blizzard has been reduced.
Yakhmars adds have been modified, they will no longer stun players as they did.

TRADESKILLLS

Cloth Resource droprate in the world has increased somewhat.
The Resource and Building playfields (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp, Poitain) have new NPC camps that will drop tradeskill items previously only available through the Alchemist’s Cache. Some of these encampments will aggro, some will not. This makes these zones more dangerous, but allows lower level players a chance to get the tier 1-3 resources they need.

WORLD DESIGN

Checkerboard textures should no longer appear on the ground throughout the world.

MOUNTS

The horse ability Hind Leg Kick will now have a 12 second reuse timer, like the other horse abilities.
The Skewbald Pinto Horse has had its stats adjusted to horses of the same tier and price.

GUI

The “Quests” tab in the quest journal should now indicate the current number of accepted quests and the total number of allowed quests.
An option to add a player to your ignore list was added to the “Add by name” dialog.
If your trade is rejected, you will receive an onscreen message.
Tooltips for NPCs on the map should now show up in the localized version of their names, instead of their default English names.
You can no longer trade while in combat mode.
You will see an onscreen message stating that a team member has joined your team.
Onscreen feedback for a failed attempt at a trade due to a full inventory has been tweaked.
Added a new option that allows the player to make his cloak invisible.
Strange or seemingly out of place text in the UI should be removed

GENERAL

Several causes of crashes and assert failures have been addressed and fixed.
Important notification sounds now won’t be interrupted by other sounds.
A fix was implemented for item descriptions when switching between languages on the client.
Fixed an issue that would cause some playfields to be empty after logging out for some time, and then back in.
You can no longer send unlimited mail through the tradepost. If you send several mails and are informed via system message you cannot send any more, you will need for in-game time to pass before being able to send more mail.
Ignored users will no longer be able to send you mail.
Raid playfields will now kick players who are not in the raid.
Fixed some animations that weren’t blending properly
The number of needed ‘Fresh Kills’ has been increased to 20.

Closer look on the new PvP System

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:34:25 +0000

The new PvP system is currently being tested on the Testlive server, which you can find more information about on our site. You have probably seen that your PvP Experience haven’t changed ever, and PvP doesn’t feel very rewarding right now if you don’t count the actuall fun of just killing stuff.

We have looked around for more information about what to expect when the PvP patch goes live on all servers, and found a few interesting things. First, you kill other players from two levels below your own and up, you are marked as an Criminal. This will give you two swords above your head, showing that you have recently been fighting other players.

For players outside this range from two levels below your own, you accumulate Murder Points. When you get 100 points you are a Murderer, and instead of the Criminal-icon you now get a Murderer-icon, which is a skull. To achieve this Murderer-status, you only have to kill less than ten “innocent” players, so watch out.

The last new thing we will look at is PvP Experience points, of PvP XP. From level 1 to 5 you never lose rank (level) or experience points when you loose at PvP. From 5 to 9 you never lose rank, but can lose experience points. What this means is that if you reach rank 8, you will not fall back to rank 7 even if you are killed a thousand times. From rank 11 and up you can loose both rank and experience points, so this is where it becomes “hardcore”.

These changes are not yet live, and they might change after getting feedback from the testers, so not all this information is guarateed correct at launch of the patch.