Age of Conan: AGC Game Preview

Dana

Jorgen Tharaldsen, the Product Manager for Age of Conan, made the long trek from Norway to attend the Austin Game Conference. There, we met him bright and early for breakfast where we discussed the progress of Age of Conan.

Funcom’s sophomore title Age of Conan is currently in Alpha testing. At the Austin Game Conference we met with Jorgen Tharaldsen for breakfast to discuss the upcoming MMORPG. “We can play the game now,” said Tharaldsen of Conan. “It makes you want to play more.” A staff of almost 70 people is hard at work in Norway on the product, compared to 17 full-time on Anarchy Online, which was first conceived in January of 2003 and officially entered production in September of that year. “It is getting a lot more expensive to make these games if you want to compete,” observed Funcom’s Product Manager.

You may read the entire article here.

Torvac

Ao was production in sep 2001

Dana

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Originally posted by Torvac
Ao was production in sep 2001

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I double checked my notes. Jorgen said September 2003, after the launch of Shadowlands.

Dana

Also - for those who read the article before 10:30 am EST, I have modified paragraph nine. Funcom emailed me this morning to tell me that collision detection is a large part of the game, which nullifies my previous assertions about their formation system, drawn from a miscommunication in the interview.

CmdrRicK

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Originally posted by Lepidus
...collision detection is a large part of the game...

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its a tricky feature since it also offers many options for jerks to annoy other player by blocking door or other passages... but it is a great idea to put it into formation combat

Vampir

if they have collision detection with their combat system a large large roman sized square shield will be great..... for defense at least.

trike

I have to say, the screenshots on the Age of Conan homepage look amazing. I'm interested in seeing how it plays out without targeting, but one thing that concerns me is the use of the numberpad to focus attacks. I play on a laptop, which will make that set-up a tad difficult.

The idea that you play for 20 levels as a single-player game followed by 60 levels of an MMO is fascinating. I can't decide if it's essentially an extended tutorial or the next generation of single-player games with multiplayer content. It's a very cool hybrid idea. I hope the game plays as well as it looks.

Laserwolf

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Originally posted by CmdrRicK

its a tricky feature since it also offers many options for jerks to annoy other player by blocking door or other passages... but it is a great idea to put it into formation combat

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Yeah, but if done right you could also push the guy blocking the door out of the way. Or maybe off a cliff if he is afk and there is one nearby.

HeWhoWalks

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Originally posted by trike
The idea that you play for 20 levels as a single-player game followed by 60 levels of an MMO is fascinating. I can't decide if it's essentially an extended tutorial or the next generation of single-player games with multiplayer content. It's a very cool hybrid idea. I hope the game plays as well as it looks.

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I have serious concerns with this. Allowing offline play for something like an mmorpg introduces a whole host of problems regarding cheating and whatnot. What's to stop someone from hacking into the code for the offline game, for example, and making all encounters drop uber loot and give insane xp?

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying it's impossible to pull off, or that it's a bad idea. I'm just curious about what countermeasures they are planning to deal with this issue? In the event of further interviews regarding this product, I'd love to see this covered.

I agree though, it looks great.

Pasho

Dana, did you get any information on when they expect to start Beta or when the game is expected for release? Thanks.

Foxly

Both my husband and I loved the original Conan stories and the films. Neither of us has much respect for Robert Jordan after The Wheel of Time was so crappy (that is, to us) so we haven't read his renditions yet. I actually met a teenage Australian on Star Wars Galaxies who thought Robert Jordan was the conceiving author and refused to believe us when we told her he didn't come up with Conan, that the stories were very, very much older than that.

As Conan fans, we're looking forward to playing. The classes seem true to the stories.

Besides Warhammer Online (too bad about that), this is the most I've anticipated an online game before. I've tried Anarchy Online, which is great because you can kill 1337z0rz aka "Leets"/Elites for the uninitiated, but I wanted fantasy after a long disappointing bout of SWG. I ended up with Everquest II, which is a time waster but otherwise excellent. Then I went to Guild Wars, which is great if you don't mind people running off in the middle of your missions or your group being too impatient to let you look around new areas you haven't been to before when you're on a mission. I've also tried KAL Online, RYL beta, Legend of MIR 3, and I dumped Face of Mankind's beta on its head for indoctrination against America (as if it needed the help anyway), because games aren't the right platform for political indoctrination -that's what the Trots are for.

It all gets fairly repetitive and boring to me very quickly. I like that this game is devoted to people with less than 10 hours a week to dedicate to it. Good deal! It'll be more interesting that way.

Currently playing with Flyff, but it's juvenile and nothing is spelled right. Kinda unfun.

I hope Conan comes out quickly, because I'm pretty jaded with video/pc games these days. It seemed far more entertaining in the early 16-bit and 8-bit days. But I'm the first Nintendo generation, what do you expect?

It will be nice to visit the Hyborian Saga.