Age of Conan – The XII

Stumbled upon this fan-made trailer for Age of Conan, showcasing the 12 classes in the game, by Henryx. 

The Conan letter of July

Funcom has posted the Game Director’s letter for July for Age of Conan now (July 31st). The TL;DR version is “work is on-going, more to come later”.

There will likely be server merges for the single server tech in August. Some Unchained version of old dungeons will be released soon and the rest in the pipeline is ongoing. The general reaction in the forums are disappointment. Joel & his crew has not broken any promises or missed any deadlines – for the most part no actual time frames has been given.

But the game has pretty much only received the anniversary update and 1-2 more patch updates this year pretty much, so it is understandable that people are disappointed. The amount of updates for The Secret World seems to be higher, in comparison.

It is not surprising really – the buy-to-play model for TSW means that they have to produce new stuff and content to get any money. For Age of Conan they can rely on that enough people will have their subscriptions running to get some money anyway. From a business perspective there is less incentive to put much effort here.

If I had to make a business decision here, I would probably make a similar one, even though I do not like it as a player.

The third Khitan and AA points

Tomorrow on July 19th Funcom is going to give an additional 40 AA (alternate advancement) points to all level 80 characters which belong to active subscribers. They did this also on May 30th, but instead of only level 80 characters receiving it all characters belonging to active subscribers received.

That was a nice bonus, but may have been a mistake from Funcom’s side. The message this time is pretty clear I think, so I do not expect charatcers below level 80 to get this.

Of my characters below level 80 I had one character, my Khitan necromancer Yasha, who was somewhat close to level 80. She was in the 60s. Since I had a pool of offline levels I did level her up in the past few days a bit, with regular play time as well as offline leveling. So she has now dinged level 80 as well, now my fourth character to reach max level in Age of  Conan – and my third Khitan character.

Necromancer has been pretty fun, but not a class that I find exceptional. So for level 80 game play shge will likely take back seat for a while. Still, it is nice to have reached level 80 to start time based AA training for a later time when I might progress through Khitai with her. The extra AA points tomorrow will be nice to have as well.

The bear from Khitai and Black Ring Citadel

My Khitan bear shaman, Senken, has now returned to Khitai. I.e. he has now reached level 80 and the draw of the home land has brought him back to the Northern Grasslands.

Leveling up a bear shaman was quite fun – same as Herald of Xotli the bear shaman does not fit unto the usual stereotype for his archetype. Bear Shamans are priests – which in most other games are considered healers. In Age of Conan, all classes are DPS classes in a way – some just have the ability to do other things as well.

Bear shamans are melee fighters that hit stuff with big blunt weapons and they can heal as well – in fact one of the heals requires the shaman to strike with his weapon to work. He is slower (lower DPS) than the Herald of Xotli, but on the other hand he can survive some fights better and longer than the “glass cannon” herald.

This was my third character to max level. Most of the leveling has been normal leveling, with an odd offline level inserted here and there. I did add a couple of offline levels towards the end in the mid-70s though. It is a good thing this system I think; one can take away some rough spots and thus can prolong the fun with playing.

Raid in Black Ring Citadel

Recently I was also in my first raid in the game – Wing 1 of the Black Ring Citadel. Some fellow guild members were in a raid when I logged on and asked if I wanted to join, since they were a bit short on people. SO I jumped in with my Herald of Xotli. It was a fun experience, the people in the raid were a nice and friendly group and it worked out rather well. I guess it is one of the easy raids and thus suited nicely as an introduction.

A nice bit of fun and certainly something I can consider to do a bit more of.

The voice of Joel – Age of Conan

In May, Funcom started a new community<->developer exchange int he forums called Your Voice. In a forum thread players post questions they would like answered, a new thread for each month. Funcom would then answer 5 of these questions each month.

The answers for May were a bit delayed; most likely because Joel Bylos became a father and he had his attention elsewhere for a few weeks. But the answers are available now, answered by Joel Bylos. And a lot more questions got answers than the stipulated 5 as well.

Some of the answers had some good and interesting information and some were just enjoyable to read – Joel B has a nice style in hos posts and that shows here as well.

All the answers from May and June can be found at Your Voice – Answered Questions in the forums.

Some answers are funny to read, for example:

9. You gonna implement GLOBAL CHAT from TSW ?

TSW has no global chat. Intentionally. Because of AoC global chat 

It seems to be a nice complement to the information provided in Game Director’s monthly letter.

Adventures in Khitai

In the past few weeks my Herald of Xotli, Zelmira, have been adventuring a bit in Khitai. Around the time of the 5th year anniversary she reached level 80. Shortly after that she started to travel a bit in Khitai.

Entering Khitai

Khitai is part of the Rise of the Godslayer expansion for Age of Conan. With the exception of the Gateway to Khitai zone it is completely focused on gameplay at max level 80. Thus a large portion of the content in the game at level 80 is in these areas. In order to access it the expansion must be bought, plus a subscription is needed as well.

There are four zones available when entering Khitai through the Great Wall, in Gateway To Khitai:

• Northern Grasslands
• Chosain Province
• Kara Korum
• Paikang

As one quickly notices, these have a distinctly far east flavour. The scenery is beautiful and also fits with the setting. There is a main story arc that takes you into Khitai, which starts with King Conan. A number of assassination attempts have been made against Conan, with assassins from Khitai. Conan wants you to go undercover and find out the reason behind all this. As part of this mission one will meet with other agents and also a need to befriend some of the locals in Khitai. This leads into the Khitai factions gameplay.

A Khitan final ding

Today Senmei, my demonologist, reached max level 80 in Age of Conan. As a Khitan, she has now headed off to see her old home country again, after traveling around in Hyboria for around 40 levels.

From my experience with my first level 80, Zelmira, I nudged Senmei a bit at various stages a bit with the offline leveling system – maybe about 10 levels in total, during various times. This was to skip some content – some which were less fun, but also some content which I do not want to repeat with every character.

There was also some content which I had not done before, for example the Coast of Ardashir zone (low 50s zone mainly when it comes to questing). The demonologist is a bit more traditional mage character when compared to other MMOs and thus quite unlike the Herald of Xotli. Quite enjoyable though I think, even though I like Herald of Xotli better.

Next of the agenda though is to get back to Kheshatta and do the level 80 Destiny quest and defeat The Grim Grey God

The lovely city of Kheshatta..

This final ding is kind of a special occasion, because it is the second fantasy MMO that I reached max level with more than one character. The first one was Guild Wars – although in Guild Wars one reaches max level by the time one takes off the training wheels for the character. One has barely started playing when reaching level 20 there.

In Age of Conan’s case I still enjoy playing it, both with alts and also with the level 80 characters. Even though there is certainly a raiding end game in Age of Conan, that is not the only thing to do at level 80. But more on that later. For now, it is nice to have reached this milestone also.

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The Grim Grey God

About 10 days ago I reached level 80 wuth my Herald of Xotli, but it was not until today I decided to complete my level 80 Destiny question mission. This started off with chatting with Kalanthes in Kheshatta, doing some errands. After that it was time for the real mission, to defeat the Grim Grey God (GGG).

Defeating gods are not the usual task on the menu, even for MMO heroes, so how to deal with it? It turns out there are a set of tablets located in a couple of sarcophagi that will help weaken and destroy GGG – so that is what we need to pick up. A god is not much without any worshippers though, so there are are some local cultists to defeat.

It starts pretty easy with a few regular mobs. After defeating the initial set of mobs one of the sarcophagus can be opened to get the tablet and that can then be placed at a certain location to weaken GGG. After placing the tablets there are reinforcements arriving, which becomes a bit tougher. However, each sarcophagus also gives a boost to the character, which helps with the enemies.

After some rounds of picking up tablets, Toth-Amon pops in and he is a bit annoyed with the whole situation. He summons a magic wave/field that pulsates though the area at regular intervals. If one is hit by this wave, on of the buffs receive from the sarcophagi is removed.

The summoned enemies keeps getting tougher and Toth-Amon’s heralds appear. These are group enemies and a bunch of them, which means one needs the different sarcophagi buffs in order to beat them up.  This part ended up a bit tricky for me, since I had managed to get debuffed by the magic wave – I had a bit of trouble picking up the buffs again before being jumped at by multiple heralds.

Eventually that worked out though and the heralds were pulled and beaten one by one, away from the magic wave, afer running around to get the buffs in place again.

Then it is time for an incarnation of GGG to appear, also he a group mob. That fight took a bit of time, but eventually it succeeded and GGG was no more.

Similar to the other destiny missions bthere were some specific mechanics in place, with both the buffs and the magic wave in this case.  I liked it, as I have liked the other Destiny quests. This one was bit longer than the other s. It did a pretty good job I think in projecting a sense of growing power and some challenges.

It was a nice mission. Now I am left with a mixed feeling of completion, as well as time for new exploration.  One does not defeat gods everyday, last time I did that was with a character in Guild Wars Nightfall.

I would have loved it if the Destiny quests had been a bit more extensive than just a couple of quest at min levels every now and then and a bit more like the Guild Wars campaign in terms of scope.  But the few missions that were part of it were reasonably good.

Next stop, Khitai.

A generous surprise

In a previous post I wrote about that Funcom decided to give all players with level 80 characters an additional 40 AA points (expertise points) this week and another 40 AA points 50 days later.

What I and I think many with me assumed, was that every level 80 character would get 40 AA points if they were on an active premium/member account. It turns out that this was not quite correct. Instead every character, regardless of level, were given 40 AA points, as long as there were at least one level 80 character on the account.

That was more generous than expected and a nice surprise!

I am glad also because there were some concerns with the other interpretation that Funcom was encouraging rushing through the content with this move. However, with the requirement being just a single kevek 80 character to get the points it becomes much more sane.

It is a bit limited what one can use the points on before level 80, so some people may want to save some of them until they reach level 80.

Good work, Funcom!

Anniversary AA bonus

When the 5th anniversary of Age of Conan started Funcom announced that they made some improvements to the premium membership program – members will get AA points (alternate advancement) everytime a character levels.

Compared to what was before, where characters would get maybe a couple of points at most before reaching level 80, if they were members during that time. Now they will have received 80+ points at max level.

A lot of people thought this was a great move and certainly an added incentive to go premium.

But – there always is a but – a number of people were also annoyed because they would not get these extra AA points, because they had leveled their character to max level already, in recent months.

So in response to this, Funcom decided to add a special additional reward. On May 29th, premium members with level 80 characters will receive an additional 40 AA points. Then 50 days later, every active member will receive 40 AA points extra for characters at level 80.

I do not think Funcom needed to do this; it was a nice improvement and certainly a good step towards bringing in more paying players. It is however a nice change – it gives current players some extra points for max level characters and also a chance for people to level their characters to max and get something extra for that as well.

Well done, Funcom!