Age of Conan articles

[Morreion]

MMORPG.com: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Re-Review

In a clever bid to lure players back to AoC, for a limited time, the folks over at Funcom are offering two free weeks of game play for Age of Conan. This offer to revisit the game on Funcom's dime was the perfect opportunity to hop back into Hyboria and see how the game holds up at present. AoC has undergone a series of massive changes in the year since its launch.

[Morreion]

Play Age of Conan For FREE – Forever!

Unlimited Free Trial of the first 20 levels in Age of Conan now available.

[Regolyth]

I've kind of wanted to go back to play AoC. The first time around, my computer was really bad, so the game was a slide-show to me. I enjoyed it for the most part, but there were glaring issues (which apparently they've fixed now).

[Morreion]

I keep hearing that the game is better now, I've thought about re-visiting- but the free offer just covers the first 20 levels, I did that part of the game half a dozen times and burned out on it So I'd have to re-sub to check out the rest of the game. My Shaman is 30-something and I have a PvP-team-server Ranger at 28 if I remember correctly.

[Regolyth]

Funcom sent me an email giving me two free weeks to activate my account. You should have gotten one too, I'd assume.

[Rakul]

I did too!

[Morreion]

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: The Road to Most Improved - Background (MMORPG.com)

MMORPG.com Age of Conan Reporter John Humphrey writes this multi-part article detailing Age of Conan's 2009 progress toward being named MMORPG.com's Most Improved MMO. In today's opening, Humphrey provides the background for the changes to come in the year.

...Players are not, by far, the only ones that have to fight their demons. Funcom has been plagued with the demons of an early release, incomplete content, uncooperative technology, and the angry backlash of players who don't look past the affront of undelivered promises and a perceived lack of communication. The managers and developers of Age of Conan recognize this. The guard was quickly changed in 2008, and the focus was shifted to delivering what the players wanted if at all possible. Some items have been clearly stated as to not being deliverable despite the good intentions of developers. Though, the XBOX 360 version still has a small dedicated team, and it is still being developed though likely for a NextGen system; we learned this year that Age of Conan is, simply put, a beast that will not fit on an Xbox360 platform. The graphics demands are much too high to run on existing console systems. Despite successes over the last year in eliminating memory leak issues in the game client, eliminating graphical slowdowns, resolving difficulty getting endgame Battle Keep Sieges not to crash, and honing the engine to run on somewhat less technologically enhanced PC Platforms, it still requires quite a deal of meat in the hardware category to pull off a smooth experience.

The developers of Age of Conan have met their demons head-first with sword, axe, and hammer in hand. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger..." In my opinion, I feel this game was released before its time for good and ill; the advanced technical requirements should give it staying power as newer systems will be better able to meet the demands of the game, and other games will eventually show their age requiring substantial engine overhauls to be competitive.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: The Road to Most Improved: Jan - Mar (MMORPG.com)

Part of Age of Conan’s recovery involved server merges, and there was much controversy as a result of it. On January 9, 2009, FunCom merged their host down to eight North American Servers and twelve European servers of various languages from the 49 originally populated servers. In truth, this event was inevitable. FunCom had set up a substantial number of servers believing that their game would rival WoW. When the dust settled in 2008 and 1.2 million boxes sold turned into 400,000 (or less) subscriptions, it turned out to be a business decision to maintain the game by reducing the maintenance on servers and the number of support personnel needed for technology and customer service, not to mention having players on the same servers.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: The Road to Most Improved: April - August (MMORPG.com)

In early April, Age of Conan released the first of its many Free Trials in 2009. This was repeated again in July and November. Throughout the year, each seemed to get more generous. Some former players suggested this may be desperation; I feel this made good business sense. With the rise in popularity of free-to-play games, players from all backgrounds expressed that they prefer to try something out before they turn over a significant sum of money. Existing players can also send seven-day free trials to their friends' e-mail addresses from the account pages.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: The Road to Most Improved: August - December (MMORPG.com)

In August 2009, the veil was finally removed from the Expansion mystery. "Rise of the Godslayer" will be released by the end of the first half of 2010. In December 2009, I released a two-part article on the expansion, so I shall not repeat all that material here. This news seemed to capture all of the attention surrounding Age of Conan, and we, as a whole, seemed to miss what was being said about the Updates and other patches to the current system that were being released throughout the year. It seemed like the majority of the questions introduced by interviews and articles throughout the second half of the year seemed to be trying to uncover more information about the next year's content.

[Regolyth]

I, too, think the game was released too early. It had such great potential, most of which was wasted on its hastened release. I think Funcom realized that, obviously too late, and made a great effort to turn the game around.

One thing I find funny is the number of servers they had upon release. 49? WTF were they thinking? They really thought that having a number of servers comparable to WoW would make the game as successful? Laughable.

[Morreion]

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: Alternate Advancement System Explained (MMORPG.com)

Funcom introduces a brand new alternate advancement system in the upcoming expansion to Age of Conan, Rise of the Godslayer. With the upcoming expansion we wanted to try and create a system that provided players with some in-depth and customizable progression without just simply raising the level cap. With this in mind we have created a complete new system that will allow players to push their characters in new directions and be able to grow and develop their characters even further.

The alternate advancement system gives anyone from level 20 to 80 new ways of progressing or earning new combos, powers and abilities.