Firstly I should say that I am still enjoying AoC, and I belive my guildmates are also. As I get further into the game though, I am coming across more and more cases of things being done half-arsed. Funcom has time to fix these, and there is a patch taking place right now which may help (No patch notes released yet). Here’s a few of my major quibbles.
The Trader made it in finally, but unfortunately the Auction House does not show stack numbers, so you do not know whether the leather that is for sale at 5 silver is a single unit, or a stack of 20. You have to buy the whole lot, either way, and the price is for the whole stack, regardless of size. Needless to say, no-one feels much like buying crafting resources under these circumstances, and I am confused as to how anyone never noticed this. Also, the mail system has been routinely swallowing any mail, items, or cash that anyone tries to send via it, so I would suggest not using it right now!
Crafters are also hurting from a bug that was introduced last week. Cotton and leather from before that patch no longer work in any of your recipes. Leather found now does work, but cotton harvesting is completely broken. There are also issues with some sorts of resource nodes not refillling. Gem cutters cannot advance their crafting quests, though it is just as well, as if you mouse-over an item that has a gem installed it in, you will immediately crash to desktop.
The bug which caused structure building to fail, costing you your exceptionally pricey ingredients, has been squashed, but at this time no city building gives any benefit, so there is little point in making them other than for bragging rights. Fortunately bragging rights appears to be enough for many guilds, but my own is going to wait until they are working correctly. There are still reports coming in from the PvP servers of folks managing to use exploits to destroy eachother’s PvE guild cities.
Speaking of exploits, with great fanfare there was a mass suspension of many accounts earlier this week. Mostly Guildmasters and Architects who, as mentioned, have to deal with vast amounts of money in order to build their towns. Since then, most seem to have had their accounts reinstated with rather less fanfare, so I’m a little unclear as to how many people caught up in this dragnet actually turned out to be exploiters, rather than just having been flagged for having a bunch of cash donations from their hundred guildmates.
I have been finding more and more unfinished areas. Take the Treasury of the Ancients. Nothing in this small dungeon drops anything at all, even money, and the two ladders at the end of the corridor, should you climb them, drop you outside of the world geometry on a long fall to your death. The nearby Pyramid of the Ancients, while at least dropping some basic loot, is also completely bugged, with the main quest uncompletable, and the whole area giving a feeling of menace, not because of the enemies, but because you never know if what you’re doing is going to break something. Now, as you know I level slowly, so the usual argument that the high end content doesn’t have to be in at launch does not stand. I am talking about level 30-40 content, which is reachable even by the most casual players by this point. Even in the Outflow Tunnels underneath Old Tarantia, the numerous human opponents down there once again drop nothing, ever (With the exception of one Boss).
There’s also some profound game engine issues, but I’ll go into them in depth in another post.
Basically, polish is rather hit and miss once you leave Tortage, and I would strongly recommend that new players be in no rush to leave that island, to give Funcom some time to sort out the problems with the mainland.
In short, those who claim this is the best launch ever are wrong. It is a pretty much average MMO launch with the sort of bugs that make anyone who has ever been involved in software production, such as myself, boggle with disbelief. Seriously, MMO companies, hire some real quality control people, and stop taking advantage of our patience. We older MMO players are starting to get grumpy about it.
An update on my guild’s progress. We have booked our City Spot in instance 7 of the Lacheish Plains, but we’re still a little way away from being able to afford to build our first building, the Keep. Architect is a fiendishly expensive profession, and it is going to be difficult for small guilds to build very often. Difficult, but not impossible! In any case, for now we’re just going to build the keep until the other buildings start giving the bonuses they’re supposed to.
Yesterday I hit level 40, and so it is time for me to start looking around for where I want to build our town. The majority of guild towns on Ymir seem to be at Poitain, with only a very few in the Purple Lotus Swamp and the Lacheish Plains. If you have any insight as to which one is best, please drop me a comment below! One thought I have is that there are only 2 town spots in a Swamp instance, as opposed to 3 in the others, so there might be less competition for resources there, but I do find the swamp a bit laggy and claustrophobic.
Today’s patch has gotten around to fixing one serious condition that had been worrying me. Some people were trying to build town structures, but finding that the action failed, while still removing the high resource cost from their inventory. Kind of terrifying, but it should no longer happen.
The extreme lag in the Fields of the Dead may also have been fixed. I’m still a little nervous about going in, as I have a number of friends trapped there in the old Lacheish Plains Style.
Patch Notes continue below.
Continue reading Age of Conan Patch Notes 26th and 27th of May.
The arrival of 1.1.2.4 saw me freed from my imprisonment in the Lacheish Plains, and once more did I begin my criss-crossing of Hyboria in the name of Mitra. My meteoric levelling has not abated, and I am now level 37!
While the Lacheish Plains may have ceased entrapping unwitting victims, there is a similar issue with the Fields of the Dead. Luckily, I don’t have much of a need to travel there yet, and I trust that it will be fixed by the time I need to spend any serious time there. The trader is STILL disabled, and I hear that player cities are not providing their intended bonuses to their guilds, so my haste to start building has been replaced with a patient calm. There is another update due tonight, so I’m looking forward to seeing the patch notes for it. Hopefully it also fixes the exploit that allowed one guild on a PvP server to destroy another guild’s entire town!
I am no longer alone in the Green Lodge! Two old friends from previous games have traversed time and space to join me, and there are more on the way. It’s nice to not be a guildmaster of a guild of one any more.
Below (belatedly, as I was trying to find out the version number.) are the Age of Conan patch notes for the update of the 23rd of May.
Continue reading Age of Conan Day 7 and 1.1.2.4 Patch Notes
Since last I spoke to you, I finished up all outstanding business in Tortage and headed out for the mainland. The first thing you notice is that the quests no longer have voice-overs, but they are still abundant and interesting.
Level 20 meant I could start resource gathering (although you cannot begin to learn crafting until level 40!). It is a fairly standard resource node system, though the nodes are static, and slowly refill. To liven things up a bit, while harvesting you often spawn enemies of an appropriate level who hanker after your goods. The only problem with this is that I found myself levelling quite fast during my harvesting periods, when I would have preferred to not have outlevelled any quests.
Levelling is fast. Quests give abundant xp, often astonishingly so. Those of you who have adventured with me in the past know I level just about as slowly as it’s possible for a fellow to do, and yet I’m already level 30. If these pesky NPCs would stop jumping me when I’m trying to mine sandstone I’d probably be more like level 25. I hope, for the games sake, that levelling above 30 takes significantly longer, though I have seen level 60’s running about already, which suggests to me it’s not going to get that much tougher. I would not mind levelling so much if it wasn’t for the feature that quests you have outlevelled no longer appear on your map, so they’re a bit of a pain to find.
The Trader is still disabled, blocking access to bank, auction and mail services. This has been revealed (Only in an interview in Norwegian, annoyingly) as being due to the discovery of a moneymaking exploit, but I really hope they get it fixed in tonight’s pre-launch downtime.
My character is currently trapped in Limbo. Limbo, in Hyboria, appears to equate to the Lacheish Plains. Once entered, most people have great difficulty leaving again, as they crash almost immediately upon logging in there. I don’t begin to know what’s causing it, but I do know that having a zone, that several mainland newbie quests send you to, devour it’s visitors is not terribly helpful. Hopefully tonight’s 5 hour downtime will release me from my unjust imprisonment, so I can continue my most enjoyable adventures!
For completion’s sake, below are last night’s update notes. They are not particularly interesting, and in the case of the Lacheish Plains, quite untrue.
Continue reading Age of Conan Day 5, and 1.1.2.3 Patch Notes
OK, this is really day 3, but I’m trying to look like I didn’t leave you all alone for two days.
I have just hit level 20 with my Priest of Mitra, Alfric, and it has so far been a great deal of fun. The quests have been well written, and enjoyable to pursue, with the exception of a couple of “kill 40 crocodile” type ones, which seemed to want an altogether unreasonable number of kills. That is only two out of about 50.
AoC eases you into the game quite gently. My pal Tina here can transport you between two versions of Tortage, a daytime one which you share with all the other players, and a night-time one that you have to yourself for following an archetype dependant series of “destiny quests”. She’s quite lovely, but unfortunately spoken for by the town’s gate guard. The destiny quests help to teach you the skills which your archetype will need in order to flourish in Hyboria.
Since my last post, my concerns about things being too easy have been ruthlessly dispelled by a variety of unpleasant deaths at the hands of evil-doers. Still, providing I don’t do anything silly I can usually survive most of what this newbie isle has to throw at me.
There’s been a fair bit of downtime since early access opened, but this is to be expected. I am a little irritated that the Trader, who functions as bank, auctioneer, and mailman, is currently nonfunctional. Your inventory is rather small, and I’m finding myself having to sell things I would have liked to have saved or sold. Other than that, I have found AoC to be surprisingly bug free, with very little of the weirdness that usually accompanies an MMO launch. Still, it is early days. In online gaming we’re never more than one mispatch away from invisible heads and vanishing inventories!
Anyways, I’d better get some sleep! Tomorrow, I do believe I shall be leaving Tortage, and heading into the wider world of Hyboria!
So, like I suspect quite a lot of MMO players, I’m sitting here waiting for the Age of Conan servers to come up for the Early Access period.
I shall be attempting to record my first experiences for posterity, that folks not in early access may live vicariously through my adventures!
5:55 BST I’m all patched up and ready to go. The servers are due to open at 5 GMT, which will be 6 BST. I notice that the official forums are down right now, presumably to get rid of the pre-release forum, and replace it with an equally annoying hive of scum and villainy.
6:01 BST They’re late! Consider my account cancelled, Funcom!!!!
6:07 BST Turns out early release has been delayed to 8 pm GMT. Let’s meet back here in 2 hours and fifty.
6:36 BST Rain stopped play for most of today’s England vs New Zealand Test Match. This has been quite a day of waiting for things to happen! Still, let us remain calm. I wasn’t in AoC’s beta, or I’d have an awful lot more worth saying at this point. My primary goal is to set up a happy little crafting guild, and if possible, build our town next-door to that of the Scions of Nordheim. Knowing precious little about costs, I don’t know yet if that is a realistic ambition.
7:29 BST Halfway there! What are you doing to pass the time, apart from randomly checking blogs for information? Drop me a note using my handy comment thingy down below! Me, I’m eating cherry cake.
8:49 BST OK, let’s try this again! Ten minute warning for the arrival of King Conan!
9:01 BST Oh Funcom, must you toy with us?
9:09 BST Oh dear. Well, see you in 50 minutes then!
9:23 BST I have some patching action going on. It’s a bit slow though, what with everyone else also patching.
9:24 BST And then the patch server went down again :(
9:27 BST I’m all patched! However, the login server seems unwilling to make my acquaintance.
9:54 BST Well, I’m in! I was a little dismayed by the lack of decent hair options, but Alfric is born!
11:26 BST OK, I’ve played through with a character up until opening the Acheronian gate now, and am now the proud owner of a level 5 Necromancer. I had been, right up until the end, a little concerned that combat was too easy, but it does seem to be getting a little more dangerous so I guess those crocodiles were just going easy on me!
Things began with my slave ship exploding, for reasons I have yet to discover. I washed up on a sandy beach, and was instantly approached by this gentleman.
A strange old man who apparently feels comfortable inciting complete strangers to commit murder. I am sorry, Sir, but I really don’t know you well enough yet.
But it didn’t seem like I had a lot of choice but to follow through with the bloodthirsty fellow’s plan, and so I set forth through a jungle wherein most everybody seemed to want to kill me, to their own regret.
The much vaunted combat system, thus far, seems to me a lot like hitting the 1, 2, and 3 keys at random until things fall over. I didn’t really need my spells up until the final bit. I do suspect that once I face some beefier opponents, taking a little more thought about what the heck I’m doing is going to wise.
Graphically, everything seems decent enough, especially given my meagre specs. A healthy enough framerate to play with, though I have yet to step into a city with other players, which is where framerates tend to suffer the worst.
Just a small tweak so not too much to talk about in this one, although I weep quietly for my expert carpenter. If the ad hoc spawning is finally truly fixed, then that will be a very good thing.
In other news, several major RvRing guilds on Roberts are going to be heading to Age of Conan, some merging to form the Scions of Nordheim. I’m going to be heading along to the same server, Ymir, to see what AoC is like. I’ll be trying to keep up with my responsibilities in PotBS, though I shall be cutting down the amount of time I spend there for now, at least until there is more to do for someone like me. I’ll try to liveblog my first impressions of AoC when I start the early access period this Saturday. I’m hoping that this time I eventually get the chance to build a city that I was denied in Vanguard and PotBS, who both decided it was an unnecessary feature to launch with.
I feel slightly guilty, as this is not going to help the dwindling population on Roberts at all, but at the end of the day I can’t let myself be bound to a game I’m not enjoying simply out of a sense of duty. I shall continue to try to help to make PotBS a better place to be.
PotBS patch notes continue below:
Continue reading PotBS Test Server Patch Notes 1.4.29, and a move to Age of Conan
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