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The whole staff of JeuxOnline/Age of Conan is proud and happy to bring you some fresh news ! Indeed, Crippius kindly get responses from J. Stone et E. Ellingsen to our questions.

Just note that these questions don't really concern PvP or Battlekeep attack because we plan to ask these questions at the Game Convention of Leipzig.

So, let's show the stuff =)

Game localization and server’s liveliness[]

1. Will the release date of localized versions be differed from the US one (30/10/07)?

We aim to release the game at the same time, but due to logistics and so one it may differ a few days. Expect to see the game around the 30th of October all over the world.

2. Regarding the localized versions, and more specially the French one, do you plan to use the three types of servers (PvP, classic, Rp-PvP)?

It really depends on the French players themselves. If there are enough French players to support it, we might as well add those types of servers. We’ll have to wait and see about this.

3. Will GMs be able to take part in the control of certain PNJ and boss (Conan, Valeria.) and to set up events in a regular way?

We are not planning any regular events driven by Funcom personnel. These types of events are extremely resource heavy and when you have a huge number of servers and an even bigger number of players spread all over those servers, making an impact with such events becomes very difficult. You might see special events, though, but I can’t promise anything.

4. How does Funcom plan to ensure a RP atmosphere on Role-play servers?

To a certain degree, that’s up to the players themselves. They are the ones who create a community on a server. We’ll provide the guidelines, but we can’t make sure that everyone stays in character at all times. You’ll most likely find the role-playing servers in Age of Conan quite similar to those used for other massively multiplayer online games.

Design, graphics and Computer configuration[]

1. In some videos, we have seen that the mobs were'nt really facing the character, worse, they sometimes had their back turned on him and it took them a few seconds to turn around. Has this problem been regulated?

Online games are constantly in development, and as things are added others may break and the programmers need to go back and fix those things. What you saw was a bug that was present in that version of the game used at that point. It has been fixed.

2. Animation of running is critized by a part of the community. What are you planing to do on this subject?

We have changed the non combat run animation many times, usually what has been commented on are very specific run animations while wielding specific weapons. With over 2200 animations on the male character alone these get hard to track down. It’s also a matter of people sprinting with weapons when we were not supposed to have sprint while in combat (you were supposed to put your weapon away when you did it) so there was no correct animation. Things are being worked on all the time, and many things will look different when the game releases.

3. We could read that a computer which can run Oblivion would be enough to run AoC, but up to what point? Will a computer runing Oblivion in "max" details be able to run AoC with the same level of details? Can we have more details on this information?

This is constantly changing as we continue to add to the game and optimize the client. Age of Conan is quite beautiful even not on max settings and a PC running Oblivion at “max” should have a great game experience with Conan.


Gameplay[]

1. Regarding resource gathering (like wood, gold, stone, iron), will these items directly go into the player’s inventory? Will they be stocked on site or in a bank or even in a guild bank account? Is there any limit to the amount of resources you can gather and stock this way?

There is a separate resource inventory on your character sheet. And guilds will be able to store resources in their player villages.

2. We know in detail the combo system, but do you plan to communicate about spellweaving any soon?

Yes, we are. There is a lot of stuff we haven’t gotten into the meaty details on yet!

3. Does dodging while double-clicking on a directional key consume endurance?

It does cost some endurance; it also provides an additional evasion buff to help you avoid blows.

4. Do the blocking and the parade of a blow cancel or reduces damages which should have been taken.

If you block or evade a blow it you take no damage.

5. Which will be the tools available in game in order to know the status of the Border Kingdoms in real time (conquest and loss of resources centers, battlekeeps, towers etc.) and to locate itself in each area (map and mini-map)?

We are aiming towards having a world map and region map information available for the Border Kingdoms to see what is happening.

6. If the size is adjustable during the creation of the character, will it take part into the aiming system ?

No, your character size does not matter.

7. In a PvP zone, how do we differentiate the allies from the enemies?

Allies can have optional green nametags over their heads while enemies would have no nametags unless targeted. We’re working on different solutions for this and will appreciate all feedback we get from players in beta. This is typically a thing being worked on until the very last minute.

8. Can you please explain why you chose to allow one battlekeep only per guild ? To be honest, the difficulty for a guild to maintain and guard more than one of these at a time rather sounds like a politically correct answer (intended to put the casual gamers at ease) to the ears of the hardcore gamers already enrolled in very large guilds (gathering hundreds of well organized players). As a consequence, some of them already seem to be tempted to split their guild up into several allied guilds, thus becoming able to control several fortresses at the same time

This is because battlekeeps need to be limited in number or else their value is decreased, and if we were to allow the holding of multiple Battlekeeps you would then encourage people to join the guild with the most battlekeeps – creating a vicious circle. Even if guilds split to take multiple keeps it still leaves them as separate entities and with bonuses for destroying other keeps even when you hold one yourself there will still be a reason to fight.

Account management and modes of payment[]

1. Did Funcom think about the problems of security, like account stealing, various swindles or cheatmod, as we can often see on World of Warcraft ? Which solutions are considered?

Funcom has a long standing history of being able to handle these types of issues since we have been running Anarchy Online for six years now. We definitively have the systems in place for Age of Conan as well, and we feel quite confident about preventing these issues from happening.

2. Which will be the modes of payment available in addition to credit cards?

I can’t comment on this yet, unfortunately. We are looking into different solutions.

Beta-Test[]

1. How many subscriptions to the beta-test does it have at present?

We have a huge amount of potential players in our database. When we first started the sign up process, we reached 50,000 testers in just 24 hours!

2. How many players do you have for the beta-test at present? Which are their nationalities?

I can’t give you an exact number, but we are putting more and more people into Hyboria constantly. We’re getting players from all over the world as we want as much diversity as possible.

3. How will be held the phases of beta until the release in October? Do you plan an open beta for this summer? Or rather this autumn?

I can’t shed too much light on this right now, but generally I can say that we have a technical and general beta. We’re adding more and more people into each constantly.


Source and comments (in French)


Other answers to questions on our boards[]

Will Age of Conan be optimized for 32 or 64 bits ? DDRI or DDR2 ?

We will have native 64 bits version of the game which should run faster than the 32 bit one. It is difficult to say exactly how much faster it will be right now as we are in a constant process of optimizing the game.
Regarding DDR memory it may show up that with DDR2 it will be faster. Again, as we are now in full optimization mode, we don’t want to give you the exact readings we currently have as these may change.
It will however, as it stands right now, be memory bound, and in this case DDR2 might help. (from Sergey, Game engine developer)

About dual/quad-core optimization[]

The game will take advantage of dual core cpus, and you should expect it run smoother on such hardware. (from Sergey, game engine developer)
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