Day 3 of the Age of Conan early access was largely spent down. It began with a 5 hour maintenance period at 2pm PST. That was extended by 2 additional hours... then another additional hour... well, it was about 10:39pm PST before I was actually able to play the game again. Eight and a half hours locked out of the game in preparation for its release tomorrow.
By the end of the day, I'd have learned that Age of Conan was possibly irreversibly sabotaged from within.
When I did get into the game again, I found four other guildmates were online and ready to settle their Age of Conan withdrawals. On our mind was quick leveling prior to the release-day floodgates opening tomorrow.
Video Caption: Between ineffective walls or simple memory hacks, Age of Conan has found itself weakly enforced against exploits. Could this be the critical flaw that prevents it from reaching World of Warcraft fame?
To these ends, we formed a group and hit some dungeons. We were about level 23-27, we hit dungeons that were level 33ish (Black Castle) and 37ish (Great Pyramid). We only had about 2 hours to play because the servers went down again at 12:40pm. However, I think we learned something important in those two hours.
The Great Hyborian Glass Ceiling: Legend or Liability?
The first thing we engaged were tough dungeons about 4-8 levels above us. Progress was decent, but not great. I noticed I was only making 300 xp per kill on the highest level stuff we engaged in the dungeons. These were a tough fights, the enemies were difficult to kill, and we wiped out a couple times. Then we tried the "epic" level content of Khemi and discovered that this, too, seemed to give about 300 xp.
Avoiding either "epic" content or high level content was much easier. Quickly dispatching several small foes yielded about 178 xp each and they died ten times faster. There simply was no point to really doing high level or epic content in a group. I only made about one level in the 2 hours we were plugging away at the game.
Putting two and two together, there seems to be some kind of experience cap in place! However, the real significance is in what this cap means.
Sabotaged from within
If I had to guess why this crudely-balanced experience cap was in place, it's probably because of something a friend of mine told me over ICQ today. Apparently, some guild on the Tyranny server is already level 80 in 2 days of release. That's right, folks: exploits. Some would say it was from a repeatable sign quest, but I think the experience limitation was a stopgap measure to try to prevent things from getting further out of hand. It's even possible that the servers coming down two hours later were because they realized they capped the wrong thing.
Age of Conan is a pretty outstanding game, but it seems that the game balance has taken a major dive for the crapper before it has even really left the starting gate. What they need to do now are two things: Rollbacks and exploit caps. However, chances are that can't be done in a glamorous way, so they may choose to ignore it. It's a different kind of catastrophe than the one Funcom faced with Anarchy Online's near unplayable state at release, but in a way, it's just as devastating.
If I were to take away anything from this on a developer standpoint, it is that there's a phase of beta after the technical problems are ironed out that simply can't be skipped. Blizzard took World of Warcraft back to closed beta for an extended 6-month period of time specifically to find problems like this. However, an open beta that genuinely allowed players to access the entire game would likely have exposed these kinds of issues too. Skipping that phase of beta has not been without consequence for Age of Conan, and I only hope it can recover.
My progress in the Age of Conan Pre-Release has gone well. It's only due to the servers going down on Day 3 for yet another several-hours-long maintenance previod that I've the time to Blog about it. Apparently, not only did Funcom not make room for all pre-order customers to play the pre-release, they also decided that those who were in the pre-release would be shorted at least 10 hours for maintenance time.
Despite the "traders" (NPCs that perform a combination of mail, auction, and bank services) going offline, day 2 went well. I started at about level 16 with only the last battle left in my single player "Tortage Night" content. I needed level 19, so I turned to the "Tortage Day" multiplayer content, performing quests and avoiding the PvP zones. By evening, my Herald of Xolti was ready to finish Tortage, wrapping it up somewhat anticlimatically by killing poor Strom (the supposed main boss of Tortage) with a 950 damage fatality that wiped out more than half his health bar. Picture Caption: An early picture of my Herald of Xolti, Rathisky. Level 22, in unusually barren landscape, and at low detail settings on account of how my PC kinda sucks.
PvP
Though I had managed to avoid PvP in Tortage, now I was in the game proper on a PvP server. From here on out, all the hunting grounds were PvP grounds. I witnessed this in my first steps in the new territory, receiving ample interference from silly players who assumed that just because you can attack everybody you should. I didn't mind too much, the PvP penalties are pretty close to nonexistent: one player even asked I kill them (so they could respawn quickly elsewhere).
Actually, I think I enjoy the PvP in this game, which is unusual for me. Along with a guildmate, we managed to get into a nice blood vendetta with a Ranger 3 or 4 levels higher, who continued to hunt us down with his tracking and stealth. (He was bitter about being spawn camped, quickly forgetting that he was the first to do that.) The cat and mouse was challenging, and gave me a chance to refine my skills using the Herald of Xolti.
Herald of Xolti
The Herald of Xolti is a very dangerous combatant. Just when you think you can move in for the kill, I throw out a nasty damage over time attack and follow it with a hefty attack that removes over half your health bar. Those that stand and fight usually die. Even heavily armored fighters can't stand up to magical fire damage all that well.
Though I wouldn't recommend a Herald of Xolti to a newbie player, it's definitely a fun class to play if you can play with a bit of finesse. I'm essentially a cloth mage -- the weakly armored, high damage "nukers" who are intended to be protected by others -- but I do my business up close and personal.
Perhaps all the classes in Age of Conan are fully enabled in this way. It seems everybody has some modicum of durability and damage output, the differences being mostly a matter of what type of damage (slashing/blunt/fire/unholy/ect) and what aces (combos and spells) they have up their sleeves. That's not a bad balance in a mostly PvP game (there's more PvP servers than PvE servers). Under a balance where weaknesses and strengths are diminished, the best player really is the winner.
After a four hour delay, Age of Conan finally opened to the early access players.
Therein, I rapidly discovered that there was actually a reasonably improved client awaiting. It was mostly the content aspects - the many game-stopping bugs that had manifested during beta in Tortage were solved. They did manage to solve the issues with stuttering and long loading times in the client, it still suffers from a minor leak that degrades performance over the period of an hour or two. (Though, I'm using ancient hardware that has about a fourth of the framerate the average system should be getting these days, so the leak bothers me more than most.)
Nonetheless, even short on sleep as I was due to anticipation of the game, I had fun. At the urging the guild, I stated with a Demonologist. However, by about 3 hours and level 10, I was not very satisfied. I really missed the up close and personal hack and slash from the Herald of Xotli I favored back in beta. So it is that I played one up to 17. This being on a pvP server, I'll probably be defeated on a regular basis, but it'll be fun regardless.
Now, a day later, it seems the servers are down again for maintenance. Here's hoping they'll be up again at the planned 1pm PST time.
"Originally there was enough early access for everybody. Then came Conan, foreign king of the Aquilonians. With his great muscles and legendary swordsmanship, he cleaved the early access in twain, bellowing, 'Hyboria's Full! Go away!' Of the tiny sliver that remained, Funcom gave it to Germany and France, as only quality beer, wine, bratwurst, and cheese could soothe the rage within the savage barbarian."
The Conan the Adventurer cartoon series was relatively good at maintaining the spirit of the books, except for the lack of gore and sex, and Needle who is essentially the phoenix equivalent of Jar Jar Binks.
It seems Age of Conan is off to a popular start, but to bring some perspective to this is a little disheartening. The Early Access was closed to because the servers are full, by their calculations. It's entirely possible that the game will be close to unplayable this weekend. Come the 20th, they'll either have more servers up or the game's taking a nosedive for however long it takes them to catch up to their unexpected demand.
This demand will snap back shortly because no MMORPG really keeps the subscribers it has on the opening week. A great deal of players will treat MMORPGs like they would any other game, get shortly bored of it and quit. It's the remaining players, the "core subscribers," that are the actual players. Although I've gotten in trouble for my future casting before, I'd put that number at about 60% of the original subscribers on account of how Age of Conan is a pretty decent game. A second major infusion of subscribers should hit when Age of Conan is released for XBox360, currently slated for quarter 3 of this year.
Well, I've got another 21 1/2 hours to burn until early access starts. Saturday at 10am PST, I cease to function as a human being and begin anew as a citizen of Hyboria... at least until I'm thoroughly bored of it or the servers refuse to function (whichever comes first). To burn the time until then, I've been spending time browsing the forums, reading up on Robert E. Howard's work on Project Gutenberg, playing a bit of Sonic Rush Adventure, and finishing those eternal chores that really can't wait.
City of Heroes, despite having the comfort of a familiar haunt, is something I'm extremely burnt out from. The archetype system was flexible enough to hold me for perhaps 2000 hours -- a truly astounding feat for any game -- but that flexibility has come to an end. Even the addition of issue 12, which I briefly played with on the test server, could not restore my zeal for the game.
I need a new MMORPG to play, and Champions Online is still quite awhile away. So it is that I've decided to take Age of Conan seriously as my new MMORPG for awhile. Sure, I said I was broke and couldn't afford it, but I think I can borrow the neccessary money to make the preorder head start deadline.
Besides, there's a certain nostalgic pleasure to be had in elbowing your fellow players over the limited spawns as they set about colonizing a fresh, new virtual world. Months from now, when the game is finally where it should be, I can enjoy spinning tales to the newbies of the horrible game-stopping bugs that the early pioneers overcame.
As I mentioned a few times before, today (May 10th) the characters were were bumped from level 13 to 20, the level cap was removed, and the world was open for exploration. Also, the servers were all set to be PvP servers.
I spent a few hours of playing with my Herald of Xolti today, Though (deliberately or not) the ganking players were a kind of obstacle to prevent the open beta players from really getting a good look at the game, I think I managed to good feel for the post-Tortage (lvl 20) game.
Tortage: Where Age of Conan begins. Though there's a lot to like about Tortage, I'm most reminded of the front gate, which you will pass dozens of times before you're finished here. (Source)
Before moving on to the post-20 experience, I think it's neccessary to first describe the city of Tortage. Soon after your hero washes up on the nearby shores from a shipwreck, you spend the next 20 levels becoming entangled in an epic quest to escape from there, recovering your lost memories along the way. Facilitating this, each NPC has spoken dialogue, and even emotes into relatively convincing poses as they speak. (Not a "cutting edge" feature, but nonetheless an unusual level of detail to find in MMORPGs.)
By as early as level 5, the Tortage experience is split into single player (night) or multi-player (day) facets. The single player experience is a largely linear narrative that featured a changing world (NPC placement, mostly) and a number of pre-scripted cut scenes that (when they work) are excellent: I'll never forget when that one guy had his throat slit. The multi-player experience is more of a standard MMORPG experience: grind for experience and loot while optionally performing simple quests.
Tortage is intended to last until level 20, though we were capped at level 13 in the open beta. Supposedly this was "to preserve the epic storyline," but personally I think it's because Tortage is still pretty buggy in places. Even in the limited content I could access in open beta, there were broken main quest lines and cut scenes that would cause the game to hang. Regardless of how unforgivably buggy Tortage was, it was also brilliantly ambitious, and promised Age of Conan would be something more yet another MMORPG.
After Tortage: Where other MMORPGs have already been.
Today, we were released into the post-20 content that occurs after our characters leave Tortage behind to forge their destiny. Upon my character's arrival in the post-20 content for Stygians, I soon discovered that many of the things I loved about Tortage were gone: Picture caption: This is the Stygian city my Herald of Xolti was deposited at. (Source)
Instead of rich, pre-scripted (if linear) content, I found a standard open-ended MMORPG setup: scattered cities, foes whose lone purpose is to wait for a player to kill them, and a plethora of the typical kinds of quests.
Not a single NPC in this Sytgian city seemed to have audio dialogue. Nor did they emote - they all stood there like statues, lips unmoving, as the silent dialogue was delivered.
The personalized storyline I enjoyed so much in Tortage was gone. Instead, I was pretty much given free reign to run around haphazardly, earning loot and xp however I could. Open-ended Nirvana? Hardly, it was just like any other MMORPG.
To say one positive thing about my experiences in the post-20 game, it was less buggy than I worried it would be. Perhaps, in the general tried-and-true model that the game adapted, there was a lot less room for error. Though I did encounter one quest that involved escorting a kid from lions that didn't seem to work at all, for the most part the whole thing played stably and well.
My personal experiences of post-20 Age of Conan showed nothing nearly as innovative after Tortage, but what about beyond my personal experiences? Age of Conan is advertised as having a few promising sounding features such as fighting from horseback, building cities, and defending your city against invading hordes of NPCs. Those could be very cool features... however, without seeing it for myself, I cannot confirm that these features are anything more than unrefined prototypes at this point. (That would certainly reflect my experiences with the game I did get to see.) Picture caption: This is most likely the Aquilonian city. I wonder if the NPCs have a voice there? (Source)
Age of Conan does have at least two saving graces that may enable it to survive the generally humdrum MMORPG format they have adapted for the post-Tortage game:
The actual gameplay is fairly good and involving.
Once you get the feel for the combo mechanism and swinging at exposed sides of your enemy, there's an excellent feel of medieval combat. Sure, it's not the deepest or best balanced system out there. However, Age of Conan is perhaps the most tactile-feeling fantasy hack and slash MMORPG in existence. This will undoubtedly prove a competitive edge against the current western fantasy MMORPG heavyweights, such as EverQuest 2 and World of Warcraft, which have the insulating barrier of a autoattack and hotkey system.
Excellent social mechanisms.
As I learned firsthand from Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach, allowing a player to set a "looking for group" flag on themselves is no match for allowing players to find preexisting groups and contact the leaders. Age of Conan does both: everyone's looking-for-group flag on by default and there's an interface to find pre-existing groups. This should make it very easy for players to get into a team. (Unlike, say, Tabula Rasa.)
PvP players are not left without a means to find a fight, either. You can apply to participate in a Guild Wars-like PvP match from just about anywhere in the game. There's a whole PvP experience system built into this kind of PvP matchup that should sufficiently provide incentives for players to participate. (Unlike, say, City of Heroes.) Picture caption: This picture is likely one of the Cimmerian city (which is, predictably, country). It's probably so overcrowded because Conan was Cimmerian and your average MMORPG player can't be bothered to show much creativity. (Source)
So it is that, despite being rough around the edges and not feeling particularly innovative after Tortage, Age of Conan has a very good chance to retain its players and perhaps even gain the kind of inertia amongst new players to become a top MMORPG. With any luck, Funcom's developers will invest themselves in making the rest of the game as cutting edge as the single player Tortage experience (as well as fixing all the bugs).
So, will I buy it?
If I were anything less than a game addict, I'd be putting off purchasing Age of Conan because I know I'd enjoy it a lot more after it has a few months more refinement in it. However, because I am game addict, the sad truth is that the only reason I'm not buying the game now is because I can't afford it. Not the $50 game, nor the hardware upgrade that might help with those lengthy loading times. Difficult compromises like this are all the more reason to get off my fat gamer arse and find some employment!
Oh well, in the meanwhile, there's some exciting things happening in City of Heroes. I brought my Mastermind from 40 to 42 over the past few days, and hopefully he'll be 50 before Issue 12 and the Epic Villain Archetypes roll.
I was browsing the creative content tag here today, and I realized that the things I was production weren't as bad as I thought. Perhaps when I was planning on turning this Blog into a repository of self-created game fiction, I was on to something after all? As totally lame it sounds, at least those stories were entertaining. I'm just not up for doing them every day.
Thus, I've decided to start a new feature on this Blog, which I call Creative Content Fridays.
In commemoration of this grand event, the first Creative Content Friday occurs today, with this release of a Ableton Live produced song I like to call, "Cosmiquik." It's not your typical beatbox rhythm (though it's largely hacked together out of included sample loops).
The goal of this feature is to provide a good story or music or some other kind of creative content that I have created each week. It should good practice and, in the long run, probably more productive than dumping that time into some MMORPG somewhere.
Mmm... speaking of which, I think I'm going to resubscribe to City of Heroes. Age of Conan, as I was hinting at earlier, really doesn't have much in the way of "meaningful choices." Besides, there's no way I can afford the $50 box price by May 20th - even if I were hired today, I doubt they're going to give me a paycheck that early.
When I did get into the game again, I found four other guildmates were online and ready to settle their Age of Conan withdrawals. On our mind was quick leveling prior to the release-day floodgates opening tomorrow.
Video Caption: Between ineffective walls or simple memory hacks, Age of Conan has found itself weakly enforced against exploits. Could this be the critical flaw that prevents it from reaching World of Warcraft fame?
To these ends, we formed a group and hit some dungeons. We were about level 23-27, we hit dungeons that were level 33ish (Black Castle) and 37ish (Great Pyramid). We only had about 2 hours to play because the servers went down again at 12:40pm. However, I think we learned something important in those two hours.
The Great Hyborian Glass Ceiling: Legend or Liability?
The first thing we engaged were tough dungeons about 4-8 levels above us. Progress was decent, but not great. I noticed I was only making 300 xp per kill on the highest level stuff we engaged in the dungeons. These were a tough fights, the enemies were difficult to kill, and we wiped out a couple times. Then we tried the "epic" level content of Khemi and discovered that this, too, seemed to give about 300 xp.
Avoiding either "epic" content or high level content was much easier. Quickly dispatching several small foes yielded about 178 xp each and they died ten times faster. There simply was no point to really doing high level or epic content in a group. I only made about one level in the 2 hours we were plugging away at the game.
Putting two and two together, there seems to be some kind of experience cap in place! However, the real significance is in what this cap means.
Sabotaged from within
If I had to guess why this crudely-balanced experience cap was in place, it's probably because of something a friend of mine told me over ICQ today. Apparently, some guild on the Tyranny server is already level 80 in 2 days of release. That's right, folks: exploits. Some would say it was from a repeatable sign quest, but I think the experience limitation was a stopgap measure to try to prevent things from getting further out of hand. It's even possible that the servers coming down two hours later were because they realized they capped the wrong thing.
Age of Conan is a pretty outstanding game, but it seems that the game balance has taken a major dive for the crapper before it has even really left the starting gate. What they need to do now are two things: Rollbacks and exploit caps. However, chances are that can't be done in a glamorous way, so they may choose to ignore it. It's a different kind of catastrophe than the one Funcom faced with Anarchy Online's near unplayable state at release, but in a way, it's just as devastating.
If I were to take away anything from this on a developer standpoint, it is that there's a phase of beta after the technical problems are ironed out that simply can't be skipped. Blizzard took World of Warcraft back to closed beta for an extended 6-month period of time specifically to find problems like this. However, an open beta that genuinely allowed players to access the entire game would likely have exposed these kinds of issues too. Skipping that phase of beta has not been without consequence for Age of Conan, and I only hope it can recover.