Age of Conan at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Thomas: We are using graphical assets to reflect that this is equipment intended to be used. We don’t have huge flaring shoulder pads, we don’t have pants that are burning in six places. We have equipment that serves a purpose, and it looks the part.

That said, the amount of detail that is in our equipment is astounding. If you equip a full set of chainmail, for instance, you’ll be able to see every link in the armor. It has specular as well, so it reflects light, casts shadow, and so on.

And that’s just how it looks.

In some games, we’ve seen a tendency to just toss items at the player without giving it any thought. We will not be dropping loot, equipment, or items that aren’t suitable for the monster you’re fighting. Chickens will not drop full plate armor.

Thorbjørn: Wolves won’t have two bags worth of gold in their bellies either.

Joel: The visual looks of the armor and stuff are also culture based. It ranges in power as well, depending on the strengths and the weaknesses of the culture. Also, if you go further back in time, you might begin to notice that some of the items that are based on the ancient civilizations are much more powerful than anything you could find from the cultures of the current time period.

Thomas: We have such a complex world when it comes to how many cultures you could encounter.

Also, we have introduced a concept called “community loot” where you kill a monster – a Vanir invader for instance – you have a chance of actually finding something that he’s actually using. It obviously has the appropriate bonuses and is available to the appropriate classes, but what you see is what you get, basically.

Thomas: I can only tell you that we have a few.

Thorbjørn: We have one quest in Cimmeria that’s actually a little tribute to Anarchy Online. It’s a quest where you have to go out and kill a monster and bring back a “monster part.” And it actually looks like a monster part from Anarchy Online.

Thorbjørn: There are not many items that you can actually pick up off the ground. We will have the standard treasure chest, and we’re trying to put some destructibles into the game as well, so you can wack away happily on a barrel or a crate.

Joel: Obviously in quests you’ll be able to interact with certain items.

Thomas: However, we know that in the game world, wherever you go, you are probably going to face some sort of conflict. Although you could find swords and armor strewn across the battlefield in days of old, they wouldn’t be there for long. People would come along and pick them up, but you don’t necessarily get that in an MMOG.

Thorbjørn: Having that many active items scattered throughout the world would certainly slow things down.

Thomas: It’s a combination. We want to reward the exploring players, so if you come across a boss mob that isn’t connected to any quest, he will have something interesting for the player. Something specific in some cases or random in others.  It just depends.

Thomas: Yes. Some bosses, especially group bosses, will have quite specific loot. They will have items and equipment that are connected to their own archetype.

Joel: If they should drop, they will drop. If you need to kill a Vanir to get a Vanir head, it’ll drop a head.

Joel: No. That’s gotta be the most frustrating thing in games sometimes. If you have a quest to get the claws of a monster, you can often look at the monster and see that the claws are right there! I was really careful! Gimme the damn claws!

Thorbjørn: However, there are some quests where you get a variable number of items that drop with each creature.

Thomas: Let’s say, for example, you have a quest and some sick-twisted wanderer wants you to kill Vanir because he wants their teeth to create a necklace.

Joel: He’s going to make you a necklace too!

Thomas: *laughs* So you get the quest, and it’s really daunting because you see that you have to get 150 teeth or something like that. But, as you know, the human mouth has a good number of teeth. So you go out and kill them and get a bundle of these teeth.

Joel: They’re actually molars in this particular quest and the minimum drop rate is around three or six. But you do get them fairly quickly.

There’s nothing more frustrating than that, as a player, because you felt like you just killed twelve bloody zebras to get their skins and you didn’t get any!

Thomas: Players will be able to get comparative equipment from different sources. Raiders, crafters, and casual players should all be able to get decent items for their level. The raid instances will be, more or less, the type of loot you’d see from other games.

Crafting will allow you to make decent weapons, but the gem slots are really what separates crafting from everything else. We try to blend the gem-finding in with everything else in the game. For instance, you can find gems in a raid encounter that goes into a crafted item. So you can actually – through raiding – improve on crafted items.

Thomas: The crafted weapons are more customizable then the raid loot, because you actually get to choose what’s going into a particular weapon because of the gem slots that are available to you. With raiding you get a pre-made weapon instead.

Thorbjørn: In Age of Conan, being a top level crafter is actually going to mean something.

Thomas: If you go into raiding, you will get equipment that is good for your class for raiding. If you go into PvP, you will get loot that is good for you in PvP. Each piece obviously carries bonuses with it into each field, but these pieces are specifically made for either PvP or raids.

The crafter is the wild card. The crafter makes a template item, and then he can insert the gems that he wants to have in the item, thus giving the item the desired bonus. So, the crafter can make items that are good for PvP and make items that are good for PvE. A crafter can also make a specific weapon that is really, really good against this one boss in raids.

Generic raid items that you’ll find will cater to every raid boss that you will face.

In short, the raid item may be a better weapon for the overall raid encounter, but the crafted item will be a better item for one particular encounter in that instance.

Thomas: We won’t have this for launch, but I have talked with the “Horse Master” and we’ve bounced this idea around a bit. We really want to give the player base a means of customizing their mounts. Players are going to be riding into mounted combat and having some barding or armor on the horse that we can replace is something we really want to do.

We are looking at getting this in the game, and we’re going to allow the players to really manipulate what their horse looks like. Different sets of armor, different pieces and locations on your horse, and things like that.

Mats: We’ve looked at it several times, and we have the tech for it. I don’t think it will make launch, but it’s certainly something we’re looking at.

Thomas: The only problem is – do we really want pink and neon green armors in Age of Conan? Because even if we try to avoid it, there will be people who figure out how to make the neon green armors. Some people just want it.

What do you think about the items and the crafting system in Age of Conan? Do you think crafters will finally find their day in the sun? Let us know on the forums!