AOC - General Information

[krinkled]

The game is still slightly buggy. I crashed twice just going from level 1-10, but all the quests, items, spells, UI etc. work great.

The graphics are the best I have ever seen in an MMO, hands down. Its like playing the Oblivion MMO.

In DX10 at very high settings @ 1920x1200 there are moments that are breathtakingly beautiful.

A problem for this game though is probably going to be that the audience will be limited by the very steep hardware requirements.

At those high settings I am only getting 30-40fps on: QX6850, 8800ULTRA etc.

[Hatorade]

DX10 doesn't work, sure you can turn it on ingame but takes a restart to take effect if you start it with DX10 it reverts to DX9. Still looks great though.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

The graphics are great and the game is fun. I like the innovative combat and classes. It does have performance problems that will limit it's appeal. Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, and LOTRO were better optimized at this stage in beta. The game is much further along than Vanguard was and is probably where EQ2 was in it's initial beta. May aspects of the combat remind me of Fury but set in a MMO world. I am a big Fury fan so I like that.

I think the game will be in the EQ2 level of popularity.

[DeBo]

Yeah, only bug I've run into is the occasional crash. Everything else was performance related which isn't game breaking at all. Now, when my inv starts disappearing and mobs start hitting me under the fucking floor is when shit hits the fan.... but that hasn't happened.

Overall, I'm surprised it's as finished as it is. People trying to compare it to the trainwreck that was Vanguard aren't even close.

[Lost Ranger]

I didn't bother buying Vanguard when it released. It only took 1 day of beta testing that piece of shit to save me some money. I will be buying AoC when it releases though. The only real issues I have had are some crashes and the black screen issue that happens when making a new character sometimes.

I have really enjoyed the hours I have put into it so far and think it deserves its chance post release to see where it can go. It isn't perfect and needs plenty of work but they did not completely forget the "fun factor" like Sigil did. What this tells me is that at release the game will still need polish but instead of releasing total shit they will release a decent game and can make it a great game later.

Ok, so now onto a more important question. How many dudes have you seen running around as female with their cloths off? If you thought manginas run wild in WoW just wait til they find out you get full on boobage in AoC heh.

[Lost Ranger]

Originally Posted by DeBo

Overall, I'm surprised it's as finished as it is. People trying to compare it to the trainwreck that was Vanguard aren't even close.

It is basicly the same thing as the people who call anyone who gives game info a "shill". The word got tossed around alot for awhile and I guess it became bandwagon worthy so even saying "this game is neat" makes you shill now. Just look at the guy who made that really good diablo mod thread and AO thread. Really solid posts with great info which is something the majority of posts around here lack and he got called a shill heh.

Anyway, it has become the cool thing I guess to compare any game with a problem to Vanguard. Which really makes me start to question just how many of these idiots even played Vanguard. I don't see how you could of played both and put them both in the same boat. What sigil tried to sell us was barely even a game at release. AoC is hardly perfect and needs tons of work still but it IS fun and it WILL be worth playing. Even if its not truely ready for release it is 100x more ready for it then Vanguard ever was.

[Madrugan]

Also anecdotal, but I haven't had much issues at all, excepting one issue when I fell through the world upon activating the destiny quest and crashed.

[spronk]

I kinda look at AoC like GTA4. Me and a buddy picked up GTA4 this week, hes never played one before and I've played all of them. I get bored after an hour or two session, the game is awesome but really not that much new (I do love cab rides!). He has gone on 6+ hour bender sessions and is almost 3x farther than me.

Similarly, if you have multiple 70s in WoW (and have done every instance), or the equivalent in LOTRo/EQ2, and are still playing these MMOs AoC is going to be fun for 10-20 hours and then more of the same ol' shit. Somewhat nicer graphics (altho imo the artists at Blizzard have a better "touch"/"feel" or "sensibility"), combos, gores, and titties are awesome, but really there isn't anything groundbreaking in the MMO world here. You get bored after a while doing more or less the same type of quests and killing the same kinda monsters you have for years.

If on the other hand you haven't played an MMO in 1-2 years AoC is gonna blow your socks off.

[Lost Ranger]

Keep in mind there are plenty of people looking to jump the WoW/EQ2/Lotr ship for a change. The game doesnt have to be groundbreaking and amazing it just has to not be complete shit.

I have a ton of friends who are hoping AoC and/or WAR deliver just because they are tired of doing the same shit in other MMOs. Its not tired of raiding, it is tired of raiding Illidan and Veeshan's Peak for a solid 6+ months. I am kinda in the same boat I think. I am really enjoying the PVP side of WoW atm but I would really love to get back into raiding... I just refuse to raid in WoW anymore. So I am hoping AoC/WAR end game is pretty solid.

[Lambourne]

Fix for the lagging in the works it seems... nice to see them admit there's a problem and actually address stuff like this rather than telling people to "re-install game/drivers/windows" like in some other betas...

From Open Beta - Update from Game Director on Known Issues - Age of Conan Forums

First off! Thank you very much for your great input and terrific feedback so far, it really helps us to identify issues and make the game much better for launch. Due to the incredible push we have seen the last hours I wanted to inform you about the biggest annoyances some of you have experienced so far – and what we are doing about them.

I want to say that it seems to me that most people are really enjoying the gameplay despite some technical issues. This is great news to me, but this is not the focus for this update, rather I just want to say “We see, we learn, we hear and we are fixing issues!”


Stalling

Some people call it “lagging”. Some people call it “hanging”. We have named it “stalling” internally, so that is what I am going to call it. This is the experience where the client hangs for some fraction of a second up to some seconds. This is, almost without exception, run-time compilation of shaders (a shader is “slang” for code running on the graphics card). This is a known issue, we have identified where we need to fix things, and we are working on a solution.

The best way to minimize these stalls is to set the rendering options to one of the “presets” (low, medium or high). Tweaking the rendering settings manually, increase the chance of stalls. Our recommended low, medium and high have some more previously compiled shaders, so it should be better. It won’t be stall-free though, not until the final version is out! If you have a worse experience in Tortage Day, than Tortage Night – this is most likely the case.

If you struggle with performance generally, turn on LOW settings. This includes Shader model 2 shaders, disabling “bloom” and has a short viewdistance. This helps a lot. Turn the viewdistance up again in the settings if you want to see more of the world after you do this…

If you experience stalls remember that you are testing beta-code. Getting data from you is our way to make the launch experience so much better for everyone.


Zoning or loading times

Differently from the stalls, this issue does not happening to everyone. This issue is actually new to Open beta. It does not happen on the closed beta. We are patching closed beta with the exact same code / data as we speak, so we can try to find the reason. Be patient and we shall prevail here too


Memory leaks

Your client running out of memory happens gradually, especially from zoning. By restarting the client, you should be fine for some time depending on your system. We have a host of fixes for this on its way to you, and we aim to update this in a day or two. Every time the client crashes, we get a message that helps us better understand the issue. What you are doing is terrific work that will enable us to fix this!

And then again, some are not experiencing any of this at all.

On behalf of the whole Funcom Conan Development team working around the clock,

Gaute Godager

[Jabberwhacky]

Ya, I agree with spronk. Not nearly enough new stuff to revitalize the MMO genre if you've already spent gazillions of hours in previous games.

Although I am surprised at how many of you are talking about "unique" classes. My newbie experience has been that they are all generic and dull. You know what game really fleshes out characters while you're still in your newbie levels? Vanguard. Even by level 10, DK's have shadowstep, bards can make a handful of songs, healers have MULTIPLE heals and attacks, etc etc. I didn't get any of this in AoC. The casters have a teeny bit of leeway, but the melees all seem to get the same base combos, and that makes for a really, really dull experience. We all know MMO's are repetitious as shit, but a good game keeps that hidden for as long as possible, it doesn't present it to you at level 4.

[gnomad]

If you experience stalls remember that you are testing beta-code

That actually made me laugh out loud. They have to have gone gold by now with the code (gotta burn those 600K copies they are ready to support on opening day ) since they are only 3 weeks out from launch.

Can't wait to hear the bitching when people that buy the 2 DVD's still have to patch gigs of code to go from the beta that they obviously burned to the release masters to the final game that they are still developing while we are all testing it for the next several weeks.

So typical......He is still using the beta code excuse

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by gnomad

That actually made me laugh out loud. They have to have gone gold by now with the code (gotta burn those 600K copies they are ready to support on opening day ) since they are only 3 weeks out from launch.

2 weeks - 17. May

[Kodylan]

I would hope client code changes don't cause there to be a multi-gig patch. Most of the install size is assets, not client code base.

[gnomad]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

2 weeks - 17. May

oops my bad...

BTW they brought back an old lame EQ item ....drum roll.... spell fizzles for my necro!!!

I thought that old tired game mechanic died with EQ. Guess not