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

Funcom’s Age of Conan saw a pretty rocky start; there’s no denying it. Shortly after launch, the forums were ablaze with angry players feeling let down and disappointed. Reasons varied, but ultimately players felt the game was incomplete and should have been more polished at launch. Even so, at the core, Age of Conan was a game that offered a lot. The graphics were unprecedented in a MMOG, and several game mechanics were new and exciting. The environments and AI were richly detailed and immersive, and it offered an experience unlike gamers would experience anywhere else. But was it enough?

Initial box sales records were shattered by the game, but shortly thereafter, the subscription numbers dropped rapidly. But many players held on, either loving the game, forgiving its shortcomings, or just out of a desire to see where it would go.

The devs weren’t ignorant. They knew there were issues, and they knew they had to do something about them. And that’s exactly what they’ve done over the past year or so. The game has seen 5 major updates, and hundreds of patches and hotfixes. In fact, over 1000 changes have been done since launch. But has it paid off? Many new players are still making their way into the game, and AoC forums everywhere have changed from the bitter and angry to a more pleasant, upbeat, and satisfied crowd.

Funcom announced this week that they are offering returning players a two-week free trial to check out the new changes. As free is a great price, now is the perfect opportunity for players who have been curious about the game’s development to see for themselves what exactly has been brought to the table.

Anxious to see the new developments ourselves, Ten Ton Hammer contacted the studio. We were graciously met by an offer of a tour of the new content that has been added and updated since launch. This article is the first of a three part series highlighting the updates we saw on the three hour tour. We’ve included some video as well so you can see some of the changes yourself.

We were met by Senior Community Manager, Oliver “Tarib” Kunz, and US Community Manager, Glen “Famine” Swan. The lads pumped our naked character up to level 80 and started off the tour in the new level 80 dungeon from Update 1.04, Xibaluku. After seeing some of the dungeon, we were whisked away to a live player city to see some of the things that have changed there. Below you’ll find a video of the Xibaluku and the guild city.

Xibaluku

• This is a new level 80, single group dungeon providing players with a large amount of new content and new loot.
• The Slaughterhouse is the introductory questline to Xibaluku. It is a solo dungeon which will allow players access to Xibaluku.
• There are 11 separate boss encounters in Xibaluku. But depending on how well your group progresses through it, you may only see nine or ten.
• Small attention to detail makes the dungeon immersive. The entrance is met with a vine you must climb down, which piques the sense of adventure. When you reach the ground of this ancient tomb themed room, you’ll see the floor has caved in over the years.
• The first puzzle of the dungeon is to figure out how to descend through the caved in floor without falling to your death. You’ll also note that it’s one way. So once you go down, you’re committed, and will have to work your way through the dungeon to find your way back out. If you do take damage on the way down, out of combat regeneration has been improved in update 4 to minimize downtime between fights.
• Player feedback suggested that boss and dungeon encounters weren’t dynamic enough. So Xibaluku is Funcom’s first instance to address these issues. The bosses are both dynamic and challenging.
• Traps have been introduced to the game throughout the dungeon. Players will need to stay alert. Some examples include a golem that has an AE snare that you’ll need to outrun as the golem is unkillable, and spiked traps on the floor and on the walls. Some of these traps’ effects will vary based on the size of the group going through the dungeon.
• The same kind of dungeon concept is planned for future playfields, where players will need to progress through a healthy mix of mini and main bosses scattered throughout a trap-infested dungeon.
• Of course, with the dungeon, comes a new series of quests and storyline.
• Dungeons can also vary which encounters players may face depending on the day. This also offers diversity and adds replay value to the areas.

• The first encounter, the Warlord, serves to pave the way to let players know what to expect with future encounters.
• Players will have to coordinate their efforts to survive this encounter.
• Above the warlord is a ledge with bones. When combat is engaged, the bones will spawn skeletal archers, which will continue to add in numbers unless players can find a way to keep them under control.

• The second encounter we saw was two bosses - the master and his dog.
• There are jail cells around the room, where players will be transported to during the fight. If they or their group can’t find a way to get them out quickly, they will die.
• The master or his dog will also become enraged should you kill one too soon before killing the other, making them a lot more powerful.
• This is another example of how groups will need to be coordinated in order to succeed.

• The affect of attributes on a character has been increased.
• All items have been upgraded to the new system which gets rid of the old decimal points in favor of full numbers.
• Items have also been added a rating system, such as Critical Hit rating, which increases a player’s chance to perform a critical hit while equipping the item.
• Also a new armor and protection system has been added. Armor is for physical damage and protection is for magical damage. These new systems are more intuitive for players to know directly which stats are affecting what on their characters.
• Players will be able to identify with a lot of the terms and names from use in other games.
• Before launch, the decision was to not have an item centric game, but as players love loot and how it affects their characters, the direct effect of items has been increased.
• Funcom has put effort into having the game still reward skill over equipment, but now the balance is closer to 50 or 60% in terms of how much equipment will improve a character, as opposed to the initial 20 or 30%. The idea was to have items be of more value to the player, without removing the need for old fashioned player skill.

Player Cities

• New social life in player cities was introduced in update 1.05. New life including new animals and NPCs spawn with the different buildings.
• More guards, more merchants, more commoners, and more whores.
• There are new social pet merchants to buy a pet snake, or hog or other pets to follow you around. Each continent gets different types of pets. For example, Stygians will have snakes.
• The Path of Comrades spell is now available which will allow you to teleport back to your guild city from anywhere in the world.
• Whore quests allow you to converse with the whores. Pending on your responses, you’ll receive different outcomes, including buffs.
• More city life will be added with future content.
• More interaction with the environment is also planned. In the future, Funcom hopes to add the ability to interact with objects in a tavern for instance. So grab a beer and a seat.
• The gem system has been overhauled. A new designer has taken on the task, and the results are new PvE gems, and new PvP gems that follow a socket and color system. This new system also offers rare gems which can be retrieved from boss encounters. Sockets can be reslotted, so if you want to replace a gem with a better one, you can. The old gem is lost in the process, but it offers a way to upgrade your equipment.
• The PvP battlekeeps are built from resources that can only be retrieved from the PvP battle grounds. This makes it so you have to be able to defeat other players to get the resources needed. It also allows you to try to prevent other guilds from building their own battlekeeps.    
  

General

• Among the revamps have been seven or eight dungeon revamps from the lower end dungeons to the higher end. These revamps have included quests, items, NPC placements, and bug fixes. This is advantageous to the players as it has addressed the problems experienced near launch with broken quests and encounters.
• Four new dungeons have been introduced since launch.
• There are now PvP levels.
• A murder system marks you as a criminal or murderer if you kill players far lower level than you. This can lead to being hunted down by other players, and if you’re killed by another player in front of a guard, the guard will not react. This is tied into a consequences system which is still being improved.
• The criminal system means players that have become criminals can only visit criminal camps, and have to stay away from the cities. If you become a criminal, you can redeem yourself through a redemption quest.

Our Take

Overall, after the first hour of the tour, it was hard not to be impressed. Xibaluku, particularly, was a real joy to see. The dungeon felt like a dungeon, and not some quick and dirty instance that was haphazardly thrown together from bits and pieces of the rest of the game world like we see in several other games. The advanced scripting of the encounters are really something players will want to experience firsthand. The downside? You’ll have to get to level 80 before you can see it. However, I am told that the other dungeons have been revamped as well, so they may be worth checking out if you don’t have a level 80 readily available, or are not on the test server where you can make one yourself.

The performance was good, but the test machine that was used is also quite good, so it’s impossible for this writer to say whether or not you’ll experience the same kind of performance I witnessed. What can be said though, is that if you have a rig that can run the game on full settings with the DX10 support, you’re in for a real treat. Quite simply, the game and environments are just stunning. They were good at launch, but they are even better now with the new DX10 effects.

Bringing some meaning to PvP and adding PvP goals is something the game needed. Long after many of the PvE servers were merged with other more active servers, the PvP servers continued to thrive, which points to the already-known fact that there is a large PvP crowd. It’s good to see they’re getting some attention.

If you’d like to check these changes out for yourself, but are hesitant to resubscribe, be sure to check out Funcom’s re-evaluation offer.