Barbarians at the Gate

Welcome to the 750th Edition of Loading... we're 3/4 of the way to the millenia mark and it's a special Saturday edition to celebrate the occasion!If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up.

Daily Column [Graciously sponsored this week by Shay's Treehouse.]

Welcome to a special Saturday edition of Loading... live from the Funcom Age of Conan community gathering in Oslo, Norway. Five days couldn't contain all the Age of Conan announcements we had for you, and to make you wait until Monday would be cruel.

Our time with Funcom kicked off in grand fashion. Upon leaving our taxi in downtown Oslo, a horseman (real horse, real man) came riding up, warning us of impending attack. He implored us to hurry to the studio's front door as he rode escort, drawing a groan from the multiple equipment case-schlepping Gamespot A/V guy. A dark horsemen and a haggard-looking infantryman attacked, fended off by our brave protector, and his beautiful female archer companion. The mounted combat got a little intense, as one horseman swung almost withing trampling distance of the frazzled Gamespot guy. But the day was won, and we were led into Funcom's towering offices in a boxy Scandanavian building that screamed Ikea.

Gaute Godager, Game Director, welcomed us and, in time, revealed what was sure to become the breaking news of the gathering. First, as was expected, two of Age of Conan's classes are going to be merged into existing classes. The Scion of Set will be merged with the Stormcaller to become the Tempest of Set, and the Lich will be fused with the Necromancer. Class guru Evan Michaels explained the moves by saying that the coolest parts of each class will be preserved in a way that compliments the newly formed classes, sating both gameplay grognards and lore fanatics, but read more in Cody's writeup of the 14 to 12 class merge.

The second announcement was more of a bombshell, and I should note that Cody is back at the Funcom Studios finding out more even as I write this.

The prestige classes, both adventuring and crafting, are apparently going away, and the abilities granted by these classes will be spread out over the existing class feat trees and abilities lists. The prestige classes were described by Gaute as cool in theory but overly limiting in practice, especially in the endgame, and I got the feeling (as a Conan outsider) that most of what a prestige class could offer will be available, with greater versatility and variety, through the feat trees anyway. The discussion had the flavor of the WoW hero class debate, which is only now starting to be resolved with that game's second expansion, coming 3+ years after that particular game's launch. It's just my take, but I think we ought to have some patience with AoC and see how the actual classes shake out, before we start crowing for prestige classes.

On a more positive front, Product Director JÃ¸rgen Tharaldsen revealed that Age of Conan got exactly the ESRB and PEGI ratings Funcom was hoping for (Mature and 18+, respectively) enabling the game to appear as-is on North American and UK retailers shelves. As announced a few weeks ago, however, the German version will be somewhat toned down. During the site tour, the ever sharply dressed Product Manager Erling Ellingsen bandied the topic of brutality vs. sadism with the folks in Funcom's motion capture studio, noting that some animations had been cut from the game because they flirted a little too much with that thin red line between dispatching your opponent and causing them an overabundance of suffering in the process. It seems probable that in toning down the German version, that line is moved a little more towards a quick and relatively painless kill, sans many of Age of Conan's trademark fatality moves. Also, Erling announced that the newly retooled Age of Conan website is now live.

After a play test of the 6-man level 40 dungeon instance "Sanctum of the Burning Souls," a plenary lunch, and the aforementioned site tour (which was less a site tour than a chance to get a close-up look at the nuts and bolts of topics like mounted combat, endgame development, zone design, and sound / music - we'll be bringing you a ton of video over the next week or so!), Funcom treated us to a dev panel / Q&A session late in the day. Many questions were answered, and although we weren't given a concrete answer about another hot topic - the timeline for the Xbox 360 release of the game - Gaute ideated that the game's first PC expansion might mark an excellent time to release the X360 version of the game. It's a statement pregnant with speculation, so please note that Funcom is treating both versions of the game as entirely separate releases - their stated aim is to make the best PC version of the game that they can first, and then the best Xbox 360 version of the game after that.

Much more was discussed, and in terms of video, it's an embarrassment of riches. We've got about 4 hours of video to go through in order to show you all the good stuff we saw without the boring parts, like watching our American selves go up and down 5 flights of Norwegian stairs time after time. To those of you physically handicapped in the lower extremities: beware Norway! In addition to video, expect articles clarifying the prestige class issue and much more after we cross the Atlantic once more and return home tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with us through our journey to the northernmost reaches of Cimmeria... er, Norway!

5 new and original MMOG articles today! 161 so far in January! 161 so far this year!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

WoW Priest Guide Update - How to Play a Shadow Priest

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to

Real World News

NASA Attempting to Create MMORPG
Chinese websites offer to fully fund exploration of Mars, all major credit cards accepted.
Boomerang Comes Back After 25 Years
Thief returns artifact, Austrailian authorities issue statement: "Crikey!"
Canada's Official Spy Shop is Off Limits to Canadian Citizens
In other news, Canadian government's plan for catching actual spies revealed.

Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com

- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer Team

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

Featured

About The Author

Comments

Related Content