Age of Conan - Browbeating...does it work?

We have heard this term before. Why use it here?

Right now Age of Conan is dealing with an image issue. Players who try the game or are interested in the game are met with the group I will call the "Brow Beaters".

Thanks to Funcoms terrible launch and of course having experienced a bad launch before with Anarchy Online, there is this contingent, if you will, who make it their plan to make sure others know about Funcom. By attacking Age of Conan in many different venues, they honestly believe they are doing a duty to future prospective players.

I want to share some of the tripe that is spewed by these types of people to give you an idea of how this looks.

"With the vast amount of problems in this game you may want to ask why a handful of people advocate this game if it's so bad."

This person goes on to state that anyone that says the game is any good at all, is on Funcoms payroll. The reason? Because Funcom advocates "viral marketing".

What I don't understand about this is...why does this person believe that Funcom is alone in wanting to market virally. Viral marketing is a huge gimmick that many companies want to do...but, why is it that if someone enjoys the game, they are part of this "viral" push?

Another item they note is if you are from Norway, you are on a marketing push for Age of Conan as well.

Silliness.

"Everyone knows AoC has about 50k-100k subscriptions."

Another attack ploy has been to quote low subscriber numbers to make it look bad for Age of Conan. Whether these are true or not...no one knows, as subscriber rates have not been posted.

We DO know a large population of the game left, where a server merge had to take place...yet, no further merges have been done (to see how this works, look at WAR, who has already merged servers two or three times. Never a good sign. Or look at LOTRO, which has sat stagnant...no growth of servers or loss of servers. The game is doing fine...btw.).

So, maybe GROWTH is not enough for AoC, but also, quoting numbers out of the magical lala land you live in does not equal facts either.

We just do not know how many players there are, and Funcom is not sharing, and really does not have to.

Other issues exist. For example, there are players who come into the game, and just go on and on in global chat about how they hate the game. If you hate it so much, why login?

The Age of Conan forums are full of people complaining. Fair enough...complaints are good...but these are usually rants and attacks moreso than bullet point type arguments for the issues at hand.

If your message includes the words "Failcom", then it is a rant, and needs to be deleted.

I could go on, but really, we get the gist.

There was a time when we could make decisions about the MMO's we play, but now we all have grown so opinionated (myself included) that we let it obstruct the game progressing in it's success or failure.

If the game will survive will not depend on the Brow Beater or the "Fanboy" anymore. With the MMO genre being such a deluge of half baked products now, no one game will be a right fit. They either are broken or are old or are not any fun.

What we must do is find the one game we DO enjoy, and hope it brings us pleasure. For now, Age of Conan does this for me, no matter the little glitches or bugs.

These Brow Beaters? They need to go back to whatever game they enjoy, and leave the gaming to those who are having fun (fanboy or not)

Cheers

Another Angry Rant

My post on crafting and how I feel about it.

The Art of Crafting

What is funny is this is the first time I have tried the crafting in depth in Age of Conan this past weekend. I like it for one reason...it is NOT so in depth that it takes away from my actual adventuring.

I am sure there will be many who will not like that (as I have heard there are many who already don't)...but, for someone like me? It works.

I guess I am not an artist.

Age of Conan - Level 40 brings some privileges

Hey all,

Sorry for being late with a post, but I seemed to have a small bout of stomach flu or something...not even well today. But, I just had to write a bit about the gaming fun going on in the trio.

This past weekend we hit level 40. With that came the fact...first of all, that we could ride horses. The next change was that we were able to start crafting.

Something I need to point out is that since I started playing Age of Conan, I never pursued crafting.

I wanted a game I did not think about crafting for one simple reason.

I always end up hating crafting in these games.

The only game that even came close to me to be a fun crafting game was The Witcher. This just consisted of basic combining of ingredients to create potions and was fun.

Games like Lord of the Rings Online (horrible, slow, tedious, press a button and go have coffee kind of crafting) or Everquest 2 (the mini game which proved to be fun at first, ended up becoming a reason to not adventure and ruined the overall feel of the game) just made me hate crafting overall.

Age of Conan has finally changed this in me (and is just another reason AoC continues to make other MMO's flounder in my eyes).

One good reason the crafting works is thanks to patch 1.05, gear is viable when crafted (at lower levels). The gear that you can craft that is part of your standard recipes are actually pretty decent greens.

Alchemy potions and food are VERY viable (including the 4 hour foods, which when used do not disappear when you die and persist for the full 4 hours...eat and forget).

Finally, you are only required to craft a few recipes to complete jobs for the crafting supervisors (the people responsible for the various duties of crafting like Alchemy, Armorsmith, etc), then thats it.

Craft a few pieces of armor, weapons, food...and I really do not need to keep doing it so that I keep my level matching the level of crafting.

In so many words, I do not need to gather say 100 jobs, then start crafting so that my crafting skill keeps up with my level.

This tedious type of crafting is what killed it for me in previous MMO's. If I am taken away from my main game to craft all the time to make sure I keep up with the joneses, then I usually give up.

Here, I craft if I need something, then I can forget about it (at least until level 50 now..). Hooray.

As an added bonus, for gear (armor and weapons) the gem cutting is a unique aspect to add the attributes you wish.

This is proving to be a pain in my rear when we find gear, and how unviable this gear is from just trash found on mobs.

Look at this nice comparison to see. (click on image then use the image magnifier on the page that follows)

This is a green chest piece drop. Look at the stats very carefully. Now look at the types of armor. A priest for example wears light armor, and requires either Constitution or Wisdom as attributes (for health and damage of spells as well as effective healing)...yet, these junk drops persist.

Why would a Heavy Armor piece have Wisdom? Not a single class that uses heavy would "require" Wisdom (some say the Dark Templar at times acts as a healer and this will affect it...but really, the DT is proving to be a better off tank, and this drop would be thrown away eventually).

Thus, thanks to the "gem" crafting, you can pick and choose the attributes to an extent to place in the correct armor piece or weapon as you so desire.

All pieces crafted have gem slots, so this is pretty cool!

The biggest part of this that amazes me the most? How my son loves it. He is actually quite pleased with crafting and said to me "This is so fun. I feel like I can actually do something that actually helps you guys by making these things."

WoW. He is awesome I tell ya.

He is also interested in finding the "rare" recipes now to try and make some cooler stuff also.

Oh yea...there are some great rare items that rock..look at this piece for example that I never knew existed until I looked at rare recipes..

Blacksilver Tasset

Another rare armor piece that looks more unique than most.

Anyways, my son has gotten really good with using the Trader to sell his junk and is using it to search out new gear and supplies he needs to craft.

He has also gotten persistent in going out and gathering the resources to make crafted goods.

The adventuring (and resource gathering) has taken a new turn with the intro of our horses, which allows us to get to places much quicker.

We really blasted away this weekend to get to 40, and we are so excited about heading to our new zones (Field of the Dead and Noble District), and experimenting..

One experiment consisted of bringing my 80 in and taking the group through an epic field to hit up bosses for blue gear drops.

When you do a field on Epic, the bosses 100% drop more unique rares, and can usually lead to either a good piece to wear or a selling piece on the Trader, which has built up the funds for the guild we created.

I think having this "set" group to adventure with creates a more pleasant atmosphere to game in and it is showing in how fast we hit level 40...and everyone is ready to go on.

Well, thats it for now...hopefully will post some more later this week.

Cheers

Age of Conan - Fashion Show

The one complaint that has been pretty persistent in Age of Conan is "I always look the same". I often wondered about this as it does seem that people do look a lot alike. So, I did some research, took some screenies...borrowed screenies...etc.

This basically gave me an outlook on the variety of armor available. It is more than most people think. The issue is that most of it is not a standard drop. People have to work for it, buy it, etc.

A lot is bind on pickup, thus you are forced to go get it or lose out on that visual variety most crave. Other MMO's have really made players lazy and make them believe they can just get what they want when they want it.

Well, to get these styles I suggest: Get a group, do a dungeon, craft it yourself...oh, and stop looking at the stats. The gear was not to be the end all of the game, so if you wish to look unique, you may have to wear something that is not quite up to what you need class wise.

But, thanks to the game having more skill than the need for gear, maybe you should just pay attention to how you look and less about how it works.

This is only a part of what is available. I have more screens coming soon of even more variety. So watch out for those.

Enjoy.

Age of Conan - Calm before the storm - Redux

Ok, just an update on this issue.

As I discussed yesterday, a ban was done on a member of a very large guild on the Set server by the name of Thotholyte.

He has been a subsciber since launch, and stuck it out through all the issues of the game.

It seems he tried to set up an event with Funcom, following the path of using the /petition system built into the game. He had approval, according to Thoth, by a GM to show up at a christening of the first Tier III city on the server. He would just be there for screenshots, not much else.

It did not go as planned, and this upset Thoth enough that he took his campaign to the forums.

He noted he was consequently banned from both the forums AND the game.

I have some confirmation on Craig Morrisons side of differences to the story as originally told. I want to share this with you so we have both sides.

"..this is simply a case of upholding the forum rules as we have to when anyone seriously misbehaves as he did, regardless of whether they are a nice guy.

..He spammed dozens of threads in a very short period, he questioned both moderation and customer service..

Secondly he has not been banned, he has been suspended"

Of note here is the fact it was a suspension. I pressed the matter further as information has been posted that he was also banned from the game.

This is not as clear as the above when the answer came to me..

"A suspension on the forums would only ever become an issue for someones game account if they harassed or were abusive to the customer service staff dealing with the suspension..

I am not aware of any in-game ban associated with a forum suspension"

This as we can see is very...informal, and not stating specifics "I am not aware of Thoth being suspended...etc."

But, as a Game Director I can understand his need to be a little cloudy. A previous example was when Craig was asked about a feature in game, and his answer was

"We will defintely look into adding that probably..."

We can see the double twist of words here, of a definite and probable...which are two totally different things.

This of course can be language barriers, and that would make perfect sense. But, the above answer on the game ban is definitely "political" in the answers nature.

He does go on to state...

"That though isn't something I personally deal with, and is between him and the community manager so can't say what happened after his suspension in that regard"

So, there is no definite. We also do not know the full story on Thoth's side.
I have been in contact with Thoth who is not following up with me, which starts to make me suspicious of his actions now.
I have been in contact with Thoth for the time I have been in the game since I came back. I have been in the guild for quite a while, and have blogged about the guild, had discussions with Thoth about his events, etc.
I never gleaned an "attitude" that would cause such a "ruckus" as this. But, of course, the text on the screen is just that.

We never know full intent.

Anyways, I wanted to make sure that we have this presented from both sides, and as much as I could I have been open and will continue to be unbiased in this particular situation.
I am hoping you are reading this Thoth and can clear up more for me...if not, then I guess we will be truly clear on who may have been at fault here.

Thanks Craig for the followup and now, back to the game (I may not like all your choices Funcom, but you have a good game here...you need to just step up the fixes and getting things just right. I sure do wish those forums could be shut down.)

Cheers

Age of Conan - This is how I play it

In case some of my new readers do not know this, I play Age of Conan in an odd sort of way.

I play using an Xbox 360 controller and mapping software for my controls.

I have put up a post on how I play along with a video on Angry Rant News. Why not go check it out...

Cheers

Age of Conan - Calm before the storm

Taking a detour from my run of posts about variety of gear to discuss a serious issue.

It all has to do with my motto for this page "Age of Conan Gamer, Funcom Hater".

I was saddened to learn that a long time player (has been on the Set server since launch, and helped lead the largest guild on Set, Fellowship of Souls) was banned from the forums, and subsequently took it upon himself to unsubscribe from the game.

His name was Thotholyte!

You can read his VERY amicable post about his leave here. THOTH SETS OUT

I had seen how this took place though, and wish to share the issue. As there is no history on this, thanks to the fact that most posts by this person have been deleted back to a certain date, it is hard to follow what may have been said. Based on what I read, I will share the story.

It started with Thoth offering his services to the company to help drive events. As most who play Age of Conan may know, the way the game works is most offerings are sandbox like, unless you follow the direct path to level.

You can craft, you can level, you can adventure, do dungeons...but, most "downtime" style events were just not present.

Especially after the one year anniversary that Funcom blew off all long time players with their "non-event" (the story went that Conan was to make an appearance, etc...so much hoo haw was made about the event by Funcom...yet nothing happened, and Funcom blamed the players for misunderstanding what the event was supposed to be...a player driven event...whatever).

Thoth offered his services to help work on events, as he had created so many for the guild, Fellowship of Souls (Amatheon was with the guild until level 80, and then Tabari, my HoX belongs to them now)...from horse races, to scavenger hunts, contests for resources...it was incredible all this guy did.

Well, to continue...this was never followed up on, as is normal for Funcom.

But, as this was happening, the guild was really starting to kick in...with over 1400 members, and Thoth started a final push to be the first guild with a Tier III city. No other guild had one yet on the Set server.

This was completed on June 21st.

Thoth wanted to make this a special event, so sent in a petition to see if a GM or Funcom employee could get involved. Be there when it is complete for screenshots, etc.

I know for a fact there are very few of these Tier II's on any server, and this would be the first on Set.

Well, it seems someone agreed, and Thoth followed up to make sure they would show, and had a name (escapes me at this time...and it was deleted, as GM names are not allowed on the forums I guess...need to go look at the Forum rules about that).

Guess what happened next. Yea...no show.

So, Thoth went to the forums, complained about the fact that Funcom blew off an opportunity to show they cared (his words)...Craig Morrison, Game Director came in and closed the post.

Now, who is to say who was right and who was wrong. We cannot know for sure.

But, when a player has been supportive of the game though as he puts it..."did not like the game THAT much"...but liked the guild and the concepts of the game, has been here since launch, and suffered through all the issues and concerns...I find it difficult to believe what Funcom did was right when that player finally says "I'm done".

We may never know what truthfully happened, and I hope I can garner more information from Thotholyte.

Until that time, I will mourn the loss of someone who stayed dedicated to a game no matter how awful the company treated him (or any of their customers for that matter).

Makes me wonder how the guild will do now.

So, I stand firm with my belief. It becomes quite difficult to play a game that I love so much, yet watch it be ruined and destroyed by a company just trying to make a buck.