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Age of Conan reveals first PvP gear, stats and all
The bad news for Age of Conan PvP enthusiasts is that the patch has been put back yet again, and is now due to come out on September 10th. However, if you head over to the Testlive Server - and owing to a new feature, you can now copy over your regular characters instead of starting new ones - you can visit the ad-hoc PvP vendors in Tortage, and see how you like the long-awaited AoC PvP gear. (No, it's not live yet. This is Testlive.)It's not all in yet, with PvP level 5 the highest for which gear's currently available on Testlive, but there's enough to get an idea of where Funcom are heading with this. The bonuses seem to be emphasising damage resistance over damage dealing, which would logically lead to longer PvP fights where one-shotting and large amounts of burst damage were less likely. There's also a lot of health boosting, again pointing towards longer fights and heightened survivability. Tester Stounedi has compiled screenshots of all the Tier 1 gear (available at PvP level 2). On the downside, there only seems to be one set per tier per class, meaning that each PvPer of a given PvP level and class will probably end up looking identical. Though they are more than healthy in size, the benefits so far are all run-of-the-mill percentile boosts, with no procs, interesting bonus feats or such like. But the gear is, from what we can see so far, very nice looking indeed. Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!
More adjustments to Age of Conan's new PvP system
Last night a new patch went to Age of Conan's Testlive server. As well as making the usual slew of fixes and changes, including addressing memory leak and crash problems, and introducing a revamped version of the Catacombs in Old Tarantia, there were some tweaks to the PvP consequence system.We're glad to see the following among the patch notes: 'Trading with a criminal will inform you of the consequences and prompt you to confirm to continue.' The consequences of trading with a criminal are being flagged as a criminal yourself, so before this minor but crucial adjustment, it would have been rather easy to end up an open PvP target just by accepting a trade invite. Other adjustments include: no PvP XP earned for snuffing targets below level 10; no progression beyond PvP level 5 until you're level 40; no earning PvP XP at all if you are under level 10; and no trading with NPCs at all if you are a criminal. Many of the players are, quite understandably, very eager to see the new PvP system go live. Changes like the above make it clear that Funcom want it thoroughly tested before that happens. Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!
AoC Testlive forums now active
As part of the process of testing its new patches, Age of Conan recently unveiled its new Testlive Server, where players can try out the weekly patches in advance and provide feedback, thus helping find and crush bugs. As of last night, the Testlive Forums are now open. Although anything that happened in Beta is still under NDA (amazingly enough, given how often people talk about it!) the Testlive Forums are open to all active players, and thus are under no NDA.Players who want to try out various classes at higher levels will also be able to do this on Testlive, as there will be facilities for rapid leveling and automatic gear aquisition. QA manager Nophex explains: 'In order to streamline the testing process we will be placing out special Testlive vendors that will allow you to level up your characters to various levels. This leveling process will also give you appropriate equipment for your level. These vendors will appear on Testlive in the next few weeks.' The forums are open to both US and EU players, meaning the communities will be sharing a forum for the first time. Age of Conan players can log in to the Testlive Forums with their usual forum name and password.
Age of Conan test server now open to public
To our ever-lasting surprise and confusion, there always seems to be a significant number of players in any given game who are so eager to try out the latest patch that they're willing to spend their time on a test server testing content before it goes live. For a game like Tabula Rasa, with its monthly deployments, there's at least some logic in this. There's an advantage getting acquainted with tweaks before they go live. For a game like Age of Conan, with its current bi-weekly patch schedule, this isn't quite the case.Still, one thing that's become clear over the past couple weeks is that Funcom could really benefit from a more rigorous testing process for their patches. As we discussed on Saturday, the old beta test servers are coming down in favor of a new public test server, or Testlive, as they're calling it. If you want to participate, simply follow this link to download the executable, point it to the directory where you have the game installed, select a destination directory, and let it do its thing. Once its installed, go into your destination folder, run ConanPatcher.exe and you've got it. They'll have vendors up in the coming days to allow you to buff up your characters to specific levels, which should speed up the testing process as well.
