This is almost ridiculous. The official site is giving IGN’s Age of Conan Vault quite a push in its latest news update. It almost sounds like a promotion, doesn’t it? Read more
Category News
Guild Leveling is the New Black
Or at least that is what Craig Morrison and fellow Funcom peeps are hoping, because that is the next main feature being rolled out in Age of Conan. Basically, the idea is that everything you do as a player will be counted against your guild, hence you’re leveling the guild when playing the game. The system is called Guild Renown and it focuses on getting Renown points in three different areas:
- Valor, which is PvE stuff.
- Glory, which is PvP mini-games and similar.
- Artisan, which is garnered from crafting.
I wonder if this means we’ll have artisan focused guilds? That would be cool, make armor not war… Read more
Veterans Reward Program Coming to Age of Conan
When Age of Conan launched there was talk about the PowerPoints program, which would reward veteran (ie long term) players of the game. This has not been rolled out yet, but it seems as if it is still on the table. Game director Craig Morrison commented on the matter in the official forums, telling us that there will be a “veterans reward system” in the near future. Now, that could mean anything of course, but it is promising.
Morrison also said:
The veterans rewards when they arrive will be based on the number of months you have subscribed for in total. It will be retroactive as well so it will already know about those months you have already earned.
It is very much going to be about rewarding those who have been loyal to the game.
Play Age of Conan for Free? Nothing is Ruled Out, says Funcom
The IncGamers interview with Erling Ellingsen is an interesting read, but this question in particular sparked my interest:
There are many other MMOs of the same genre, and players can only afford so many subscriptions. Blizzard said earlier this week that it’s possible WoW will be free to play with microtransactions one day, would you ever consider changing AoC to a free to play model?
We’re certainly not ruling anything out, but we don’t have any current plans for that. However, we’ve had huge success going free-to-play with our other MMO Anarchy Online, and we strongly believe its a viable business strategy for these kinds of games.
Anarchy Online is still alive and kicking. It recently celebrated its eight year anniversary, so Funcom certainly knows a thing or two about free to play games.
GameSpot Revisits Age of Conan
GameSpot’s Online Games Blog regularly revisits online games, especially MMOs, since they are prone to change all the time. The latest post is all about Age of Conan and the changes since launch. It is a pretty good walkthrough on the various major updates that have been addressing the issues.
We ran through the early game experience again on a midrange PC and noticed considerably fewer performance problems than at launch–aside from a few bouts of network lag, the game seemed to run quite smoothly with few to no hitches beyond some extremely minor clipping issues with characters that have long, flowing hair that clips through their clothes.
The wrapup is a bit dull, but overall I’d say that the blog thinks you should revisit Age of Conan, especially since you can do it for two weeks for free.
While Age of Conan had a rocky start, it seems like the game has made several turns for the better and continues to have a devoted team of about 100 people hammering away at both improving and expanding the game. This new team really seems to have tried to address the major concerns of its fans, as well as the concerns of the people who tried the game at launch, and left.
