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Postcards from the Age of Conan beta
One of the things we really love about the way Funcom is handling the development of Age of Conan is how they just keep us craving more by letting out little tidbits. When we were lucky enough to catch the demo of AoC at Dragon*Con 2007, we were thrilled to see how it was progressing. The Postcard series on the official AoC site is building further on those little tastes. Their intrepid beta adventurer, now in his second week of "postcards" gives us some glimpses into how life is progressing in-game after the new player areas. This time around, we get to follow him across the landscape, through ruins and into angry mobs of Picts, and into even more intriguing territory. We won't spoil the surprise for you, though. If you want to know, you'll just have to pop over to the AoC site and check out the screens and story for yourself.
Age of Conan product director, Jorgen Tharaldsen: "You'll see titties"
Gamesblog.it managed to score a video interview with Jorgen Tharaldsen, product director for Funcom and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures , and just in case you weren't sure yet, he makes it clear -- this game is not for kids. The interviewer poses a few questions relating to how AoC will be different from other MMO's out there, in particular its more mature and violent approach.The passionate Tharaldsen does not hold back -- much like the game itself -- with his responses. He places a lot of emphasis on Funcom wanting to be faithful to the Conan story and license, and not having to "dumb it down" or remove elements for a younger audience. Decapitations, prostitutes, and copious amounts of blood are some of the things mentioned that you may not find in your average MMO. Tharaldsen said that it was liberating to not have to worry about including aspects like this -- anything that they wanted to add, they did.It remains to be seen how the proposed server-side ratings system will pan out, and whether there will be an uncut edition of the game available in every region, but it's nice to know that at least somewhere, the game will exist in a form that is exactly how the developers envisioned.
Age of Conan's Guardian put under the microscope
Following on the heels of their report on the Dark Templar, TTH has another interview with Funcom product director Jørgen Tharaldsen, this time focusing on Age of Conan's Guardian class. The Guardians are part of the soldier archetype, their most prominent characteristic being the full plate armor that they bring with them to battle. To quote Tharaldsen, "Guardians are the unassailable rock upon which the waves of battle break." They go on to discuss how Guardians are more than just the AoC equivalent of WoW's prot-specced Warrior; they can switch up their maneuvers on the fly, exploiting enemy weaknesses by taking higher DPS approaches as the situation calls for.We had hoped that they would choose to mix up the class list a bit more for this running feature. It feels a little redundant for them to be talking about two of the primary tanking classes so close together, when there are other interesting classes like the Bear Shaman or Ranger that they could throw in to add some variety to the gameplay mechanics they discuss. Oh well.
The making of an AoC pinup
Any gamer of discerning tastes will know that the December 2007 issue of Playboy magazine will feature video game heroines shucking their skivvies, and that includes the deadly Keaira, close ally to King Conan. This week's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Friday update talks all about creating a compelling character. Finally I get to learn why there's a girl on the cover of a game about Conan. First and foremost, Keaira is beautiful, and so the initial concepts of the character design are built on that premise. She went through many iterations until she finally became the lady you see before you. Click on through and read about all the work that went into the character that has become the face of AoC.
Age of Conan director sits down for two-part interview
Gaute Godager, the man behind the Age of Conan's loin-cloth, if you will, recently sat down for the second round of a massive two-part interview with RPGVault, to discuss some of the finer points of the game's development. This round of the interview focused on some more extraneous elements of the game's development, including their approach to marketing the game in the Asia and their justification for bumping the game's launch back into 2008. This comes on the heels of the first interview piece they published, which was focused on slightly more interesting elements like the combat and the siege system.More than any other developer in recent memory, it seems like Funcom has been willing to talk to people, usually at extremely great length, about what makes their game stand out from the pack. Whether they're just providing a fan-service or trying to hedge doubts in the gaming community about their game remains to be seen. Personally, I'd rather see them talk about the game less and work on opening up the beta so more of us can decide for ourselves. Talk is cheap, as they say.
Age of Conan's Dark Templar in-depth
Most classes of characters in MMOs are generally morally ambiguous, blank slates for characters to impose their own personalities. At the very worst they're chaotic neutral, vaguely menacing looking but still ambiguous. In an interview with TTH, Age of Conan product director Jørgen Tharaldsen describes how the Dark Templar is noticeably, convincingly evil, evidenced by his very visible use of the powers given him in his pact with dark gods.From the sound of the interview, the Dark Templar will be a unique sort of tanking hybrid, pairing the use of single-edged weapons with auras and enemy draining abilities that rob enemies of health to sustain himself and his teammates. The interview itself has something of a worshipful character to it, but we're willing to look past that because of the depth of information there. As time goes, we're starting to hear more and more about the game's combat system and the kinds of characters we'll see in it, and what we've heard sounds pretty exciting.
Age of Conan interview on Uberguild podcast
In the latest episode of Uberguild's "Grenade" podcast, the boys sit down for a chat with Age of Conan designer Jason Stone. While we were prepared for a bit of a puff piece, you'll be happy to know that they actually take Mr. Stone to task, taking listener questions and generally raking Stone over the coals for specifics about the hotly-anticipated title. Of particular interest was Stone's discussion about Funcom's choice to de-emphasize the role of healing classes in the traditional sense, moving away from the chain-healing prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Their plan to achieve this involves proliferating cheap, readily-available healing potions, and giving the game's hybrid healing classes more heal over time abilities instead of spam heals. They also go into depth about the guilds, large-scale PvP, the siege system, and more. If you're anticipating AoC as much as we are, it's probably worth throwing on the iPod.
Dragon*Con impressions: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Funcom was at this year's Dragon*Con in force with demos of their upcoming MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. While the game isn't slated for release until March 2008 (we hope), the game Funcom showed us looked pretty slick -- though they're still tight-lipped on the feat system (that would be "talent trees" for you World of Warcraft-ers) and the "spell weaving" system the magic users will have access to. We did, however, get a good look at the gameplay as well as a look at the game's female models. For those of you who have to see these things for yourself, Funcom is accepting applications for beta-testers, but for full details on what we saw at Funcom's demo, keep reading! %Gallery-6912%
Age of Conan could mix PC and 360 players
In an interview with CVG, Funcom's Erling Ellingsen revealed plans to make Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures cross-platform compatible. In other words, Funcom plans to allow PC players to play with Xbox 360 players of AOC. The developer admits that there will be issues that must be ironed out before this can be accomplished, but they do intend to include cross-platform functionality in the game. One considered method for cross-platform play is to have both shared servers and servers that are exclusive either to 360 players or PC players. This way, players could decide whether or not they'd care to play with other platform users or keep it restricted to one.The PC version of Age of Conan is expected in October, with the 360 version following afterwards.
AOC launches ultrathin V500 portable media player
Christmas Eve just wouldn't be complete without yet another Chinese PMP surfacing, and this time we're looking at AOC's uber-sleek, ultrathin V500. Just marginally thicker than Apple's latest nano, this unit features a 2.4-inch QVGA LCD, an oh-so-shiny silver enclosure, USB 2.0 connectivity, and handles its fair share of media playing duties. On the audio side, it plays nice with MP3, WMA, and WAV, while you can enjoy those resized versions of Jack Frost and Yule Log (or any Keira Knightley film, obviously) in MPEG4 or AVI formats on the video front. Additionally, it doubles as a JPEG viewer, but doesn't rock any fancy gaming options like many of its competitors. Nevertheless, the V500 should be hitting the Chinese streets soon for an undisclosed price, with versions ranging from 128MB to 2GB in capacity.[Via Engadget Chinese]
