Age of Conan: The siege warfare is a buggy lagfest

By Matt Warner
Age of Conan players should think twice about partaking in the lag-ridden siege action this weekend; they're better off waiting until this coming Monday's patch. The naysayers concerns from beta were certified two days ago, when Sinister took part in Age of Conan's first full on siege since the game went live. If you want the quick recap it was buggy and the performance was terrible; however, Funcom deserves kudos for responding as quickly as they did. Unfortunately, the only viable solution at this time is for players to crank down the graphics and wait it out.

It's hard to tell from the picture but it shows 0.3 fps and a 3389 ping, with many players reporting similar results on their superior gaming machines. Since Funcom's response a player reported better performance on the second siege averaging about 15 fps on dual 8800 GTs.We'll see if Monday's patch improves the performance or not for all players involved. If you'd like to see some rough footage from the second siege battle Sinister has posted it on their website. (NSFW)


This also brings up an interesting question regarding graphics versus gameplay, and if current technology can handle a true dynamic PvP mmog. Age of Conan certainly isn't the first game to have these problems with wide scale player versus player events. Technical limitations and optimization issues have hindered PvP on this scale before in other MMOs like Shadowbane. Is the technology just not there? Can an intuitive and ongoing dynamic mass scale PvP MMOG with amazing graphical content exist on today's technology or is it simply not feasible?

Recommended