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Age of Conan: GDC Preview
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Garrett Fuller had the chance to check out Funcom's Age of Conan at the recent Game Developers Conference.
At GDC this week, we were lucky enough to get a chance to look at the new demo for Age of Conan. Funcom is certainly putting the polish on this title and continues to work to make the game look and feel like the barbaric Hyborian world that Robert E. Howard had created. Last time we saw the game was at E3 back in May. The look of the game has been upgraded considerably in the graphics department with a very crisp texture and great artwork in the world. Despite having the launch delayed, it seems like the team are in the polishing phases before they plan for Beta in the coming months. Some of these features you may have heard of before, but several new elements were also shown at GDC.
In regards to character creation, players can start out as a Cimmerian, Aquilonian, or Stygian. Funcom describes each with the Cimmerians as the barbaric viking type race, Aquilonia as ancient Rome around the time of its fall, and Stygia as having an Egyptian influence. The customization in the character creation is very in depth. Players can spend a long time creating the look of their characters or allow for the game to randomly give you a certain look.
;)
Read the whole article here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
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-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
Why all the console hating? If you don't like it, then don't play the damn game. Simple enough. Consoles are in a new age and bringing MMo's to the consoles is just opening up the genre more than WoW did. My Xbox 360 supports my keyboard, I use it alot for typing and so on. I'm sure that in the future it will also bring support to possibly the mouse? Time will only tell...and AoC will rock.
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
The first undeniably 3rd generation MMO in existance
oh man this keeps sounding better and better
Amen
Agreed!!!!!!!!!!!!
October sounds so far away
Yeah consoles are what the devs of MMOs yearn for. They know that the number of console outnumber PCs. Now that it seems the technology is allowing the MMO industry to cross platforms that will be the standard
Hi all, long time lurker, Game on listener
great article; lots of new info. Would like to see you guys do an interview with Funcom for game on. Hopefully you're one step ahead of me and recorded something during gdc (hint hint)
would love to know more about the dark and light paths mentioned
I'm not camping stuff about AoC like some people are doing so this was very informative to me, GJ.
It's looking sooooo promissing, please dont flop !=P
Awesome! Some semi new info for us here.
For those who found this article informative, read the article over at Warcry. It has some new info and is an interesting read.
http://www.warcry.com/news/view/69503-GDC-2007-Age-of-Conan-Preview
ET
i'm also really interested in the social aspect...to me and lots of people that is one of the most important things, i can fight instances anywhere :P
could you, at some point, further explain how pvp is 'guild only' ? off the bat that doesn't sound good, but if the guild creation is more easy and more a part of the game as this article lets on, then it could work fine. does this mean there is always open worldwide pvp? is there pvp in only non-npc areas? are there pvp 'games' like capture the flag, etc.? is pvp kept only to one guild attacking another guild's instanced town? not sure how to interpret this, anything more would be great!
thanks for the article!
Every time I think "This could flop if they don't do X correctly." more information is released. Not only does this reassure me but now I want to play it even more. I didn't think that was possible.
My theme song.
Good news, they definitely stir up my interest.
Because games developed with consoles in mind have terrible controls, that's why. Just think of Oblivion, whose interface is plain bad and has to be modded at least with BTMod to be playable.Controllable territory, combat that requires some player skill (not just repetitive 1-2-3 button pressing ad nauseum), interesting character customization for all the RPers out there, varied quests that reflect the truly brutal world, all wrapped up in a shiny polished box...
My boner for this game gets bigger every day.
As for the cross-console thing, to be honest I don't care who I'm carvin' steaks out of. Bring 'em on.
O'rly.
One man's meat is another mans poison.
I am a long time console enthusiast, heck the only one I didn't ever have was the Neo Geo. AoC is looking freaking scintillating and if it's on the Xbox 360 even better. The 360 kicks my PC's ass.
Anyway I dont mind if we can play on both platforms as long as it is done right.
Hmmm a console that have mouse,keyboard integrated graphic card and sound card with hard disc... hmmm its sound like PC to me
Take the Hecatomb TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
I think its a little knaive to think that game developers wouldn't want to increase their player numbers by including consoles to their game's platform. Many devs admit that the reason they don't use consoles as a platform is because of the time it takes to learn the architecture of a console. Yes, their are some devs that say that their games interface wouldn't be transferrable to a console, but more and more are looking to multiplatform their games. Then their are some people who want to see PC-Exclusive games because they want more justification of why their PC costs 5 times the amount of a 360.
Oh, and Yes, The number of consoles greatly outnumbers the number of PCs in the world.
No they don't. Consoles for a long time have been gaming machines only and only recently Sony and now MS is trying to turn it into a media center. By their very nature consoles were more a luxery item than pcs so pcs became more prolific.
Get your facts straight.
waiting for aoc
I think what fansede meant was that console games sales blow away PC game sales as a whole.
Clearly there aren't more gaming consoles in the world than PCs. Not every home has a console, but almost every one has a computer. Also every office building in the world is brimming with PCs, but these don't play games (at least not in companies where the bosses pay attention
)
But console games as a market have been much bigger than PC games. It's much rarer for a PC game to get sales figures in the same league as console game monsters like Sonic and Mario and such.