Age of Conan

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A couple of weeks ago, one of Massively's more eloquent commenters referred to yours truly as "Funcom's biznitch." Well, OK, biznitch wasn't the exact word, but you get the idea. This bit of nerdrage was amusing for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that I hadn't covered (or played) Age of Conan for nearly five months at the time.

You know what, though? I do like Age of Conan, and I did miss Hyboria.

Sure it's got its issues, omissions, frustrations, and WTF-were-they-thinking design decisions, but it's also got a game world unlike any other in the MMO space. Join me after the cut for a few reasons I came back (as well as a preview of what the future holds for The Anvil of Crom).

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Age of Conan game director Craig Morrison recently tweeted a frank reply to one of his followers. The reader asked why Funcom doesn't revamp PvP items to make everyone's minigame stats equal, thereby relegating grindtastic PvP gear to the game's vanity armor slots and providing theoretical balance.

Morrison's response: "Not everyone wants a new player and a two-year veteran to be on equal footing. Many want that to count, aside from knowledge."

By "that," Morrison meant time spent playing the game and paying your character dues, as it were. This brings up an interesting debate, since MMOs have a reputation for rewarding geared players over skilled players in both PvP and PvE. What say you, Massively readers? Should veterans and newbs be on equal footing?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Funcom may be gearing up for The Secret World's imminent launch, but the company hasn't abandoned its other Dreamworld-powered MMO. Yes, Age of Conan is still going strong, as it's closing in on its fourth anniversary and pumping out updates on a semi-regular basis.

Today's traditional end-of-the-month development letter focuses on said updates, in particular a few systems changes slated for the near future. Funcom's Craig Morrison gives us an update on extensive changes to AoC's stamina mechanics, which have long been a thorn in the side of PvPers and PvEers engaged in lengthy battles. The new system boasts "a new personal resource that will be used just for sprinting. It is also not observable by other players," the dev blog states. Stamina will now be used exclusively for combos, and caster classes no longer have stamina at all.

Age of Conan is also getting multi-spec functionality with respect to the game's feat system. Switching between specs can be done almost anywhere in the game world (aside from raids and group instances). Look for these changes on the live servers "later in the summer," Funcom says.

Finally, class updates are in the works, beginning with the Tempest of Set and continuing on to the Bear Shaman, the Herald of Xotli, and the Necromancer. There's more too, so head to the official AoC site to read it all.

Believe it or not, there are actually loads of incredible MMO soundtracks. Oh, I know we all bellyache about the repetitive music and how we turn it off and just listen to speed metal or Justin Bieber while we grind boars, but the scores are often wonderful when removed from infinite looping.

Today we're going to pit two of the greatest MMO soundtracks against each other as they vie for your approval. In the first corner is Age of Conan's score, which was composed by Knut Avenstroup Haugen. It's not only award-winning and famous outside of MMO circles but hauntingly beautiful to listen to as well. In the other corner is Mr. Jeremy Soule's epic Guild Wars soundtrack (we'll lump all four of them together for this poll), which many claim to be just as memorable as the game's visuals.

It's the cream of the audio crop presented for your judgment: Age of Conan's score vs. Guild Wars' score. Give each one a listen and then let us know which you'll vote for after the jump!

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It's been a little while since we've interviewed Age of Conan executive producer Craig Morrison. In the intervening months, Funcom's bloody fantasy MMO has added developers, new content, and fresh ideas at a fairly steady pace.

This week sees the introduction of tier four raiding content in Khitai as well as a lengthy Morrison-authored update letter that provides a roadmap for the rest of 2012. Follow along after the break as we talk raiding, the upcoming crafting revamp, and the community potential (and perils) of Funcom's spiffy new single-server technology.

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Hullo Hyboria fans, and welcome to the traditional end-of-the-month update letter recap. What's the update letter, you ask? It's Funcom executive producer Craig Morrison's way of keeping players abreast of development happenings on Age of Conan.

This month there are quite a few interesting tidbits, including a mention of the game's next adventure pack, the crafting update, and of course, the new tier four Khitai raids in and around the Jade Citadel. Also noteworthy is the latest mention of Funcom's single-server tech. You may recall that Morrison mentioned this in 2011 as a way for players to form their own niche communities within the larger server community. Not much has been said about it since, but Funcom's Dreamworld engineers have been working on it behind the scenes to get it ready for its debut in The Secret World.

After that, Morrison says, the tech will make its way into AoC, and chances are you'll have a chance to vote on the implementation. "This will most likely be the main subject of our summer surveys this year given how radically we could change the experience with this technology," Morrison explains. "It is one of those things that could be implemented in a way that you don't even notice, or it could be deployed to make things work in ways that are not typical for MMO games (like potentially allowing players to define their own communities, or even, at the furthest fringes of what's possible, defining their own rulesets!)."

Look for our exclusive interview with Morrison later this afternoon.

Earlier this week we asked if there was a game you'd like to play but for its awful community. The topic got a lot of replies, and the usual MMO suspects turned up in many of the comments. The thread got us to thinking about customizable communities, server rulesets, and creative uses for instancing technology, and though no MMO firm has offered players control over their community experience as of yet, it's certainly doable.

Funcom executive producer Craig Morrison mentioned the possibility in 2011, and for today's Daily Grind, we'd like to know how you'd feel about being able to carve off pieces of a game world specifically for your friends, your guild, or your niche community (roleplayers-only, PvPers-only, etc.). Would you pay extra for dedicated communities or filtering technology?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Age of Conan's latest development update is here, and producer Craig "Silirrion" Morrison has quite a lot to say about the game's forthcoming crafting revamp. And when we say revamp, we mean revamp. "When we sat down and looked at the system and how we could add depth and improve engagement, it became clear that it was better to start over," Morrison says.

He isn't kidding either, as the new system does away with awkward quest blocks to progression and instead ties your advancement directly to making items and using the relevant skills.

Harvesting nodes will also spawn with more variety (and at more locations), and the much-reviled random NPC attacks that used to happen while harvesting are finally being dropped. Still want more details? Well, material quality will matter, there will be some sort of refining process, and there's an entirely new system for the actual production of an item. There's a lot more to Age of Conan's new crafting system, of course, but we're out of space, so you'll need to head to the official site to check it out.

Chillin' in the clink. Spending time in stoney lonesome. Thrown into the slammer. Checking in to the big house. Doing (perfect) 10 to life in the hole. Learning the ropes in juvie.

Prison: The only fun thing about it is the slang that people have come up to describe it. And while you may never actually want to spend any time in the crowbar hotel in real life, chances are you've already done so in MMOs. Jails are an ever-popular locale in online gaming, and they almost always deal with an epidemic of escaped -- yet still milling around casually -- prisoners.

So in today's Perfect Ten, we talked to the warden and got you a special glimpse into pixelated pokeys, if only to scare you straight. No more exploits and bots for you, young man or woman!

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The Funcom team is happy with its bone-crunching achievements in Age of Conan last year, but it has moved on to bigger and better conquests. In a new development update, the devs outline their roadmap for 2012 -- and it might not be what you'd expect.

According to the update, the team felt torn between adding more content to the game and going back to rework and tweak systems that needed it: "Our problem there in 2011 was that with so much content to support, the majority of the systems time was consumed by the creation of everything that is needed for the content itself." As a result, the first half of 2012 looks to be light on the content side of things -- although with new tier-four raids, it won't be non-existent.

Instead, the team will be reworking the tradeskill system this summer to make it more involving and complex than the modern "point and click" setup. Other improvements on the way include enlarging bank space, a dual-specification system, class balancing, and single-server development.

Following these projects, the team will shift back into content-creation mode, starting with a new adventure pack for later this year.

PvP is a naturally contentious subject, particularly when focused on its various flavors in the MMO space. Everyone thinks they know best, and whether they're arguing for a three-faction system, full loot, or open-world objectives, the discussion often devolves into verbal throw-downs every bit as violent as their in-game counterparts.

Age of Conan game director Craig Morrison recently waded into the fray via his personal blog, and he says that defining PvP in an MMO context involves separating the wish for conquest from the wish for competition.

Morrison touches on several interesting aspects of MMO PvP, including a bit of history relating to the arenas and battlegrounds that are usually reviled by hardcore player types. "The needs of accessibility dictated that designers try and find a way to accommodate the appeal of the conquest style of play while also retaining the fairness of the competitive desires of the players," he explains.

Ultimately, Morrison offers a bit of hope for those who prefer open-world conflict. "It's great to finish a great story and storm the castle and beat the bad guy. It is something else altogether to get to keep his castle, and for you to become the bad guy for the next would-be hero to try and conquer," he says.

Whether you've been playing Age of Conan since launch or you just recently jumped on board with its transition to free-to-play, today will give you a reason to be excited. Today marks the launch of the House of Crom update, offering players a chance to explore the eponymous structure that sprawls through two enormous dungeons. But that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of lore, with the two dungeons giving players two different ways to explore the new content.

One of the two dungeons is an instanced dungeon, but the other one is a social dungeon, allowing multiple groups to explore it at the same time and reap the rewards for braving its perils. Players will be tasked with exploring the structure left by the ancient Atlanteans, hoping to discover the evil that befell this ancient race of people. You can check out the latest screenshots of the update in the gallery below, or you can log in and start exploring the dungeons now.

[Source: Funcom press release]

As I've well established both here on Massively and elsewhere, I'm somewhat of a nut for video game music. Whereas others might collect vintage hair metal tracks or the latest Justin Bieber opus, I'm always digging through obscure (and not-so-obscure) official soundtracks to games like Wipeout and Kirby. Video game scores can be right up there with the best that the film industry puts out, and the fact that they tie into personal experiences that we've played through can lend them sentimental weight.

So for the next two Perfect Tens, I scoured all the MMO theme songs that I could get ahold of in an attempt to formulate a list of the very best. It was originally slated to be just one list, but after an hour or so of listening to tracks and having friends and fellow staffers weigh in on the subject, I knew it was impossible to keep it there.

Two important things to note for this list. First, I wanted to keep to just the title/login screen tracks so that I wouldn't be working on this for the next 2.5 years. Second, unlike most past Perfect Tens where there's no significance to the order of the list, in this case we're going to have a genuine countdown to the best MMO theme song of all time. And I expect to take no flak about it, do you hear me? Good. Let's begin.

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The House of Crom is basically the Hyborian equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever. It was announced quite a while ago, it was expected long before its actual arrival date, and at long bloody last, it's finally on its way to an Age of Conan server near you.

Thankfully, that's where the similarities end, as the new dungeon is looking quite impressive -- if Funcom's marketing blurbs are anything to go on.

The latest such features a few paragraphs of textual description regarding the Threshold of Divinity and Vile Nativity dungeons (the House of Crom isn't just one dungeon, but rather a massive new area that supports multiple groups and amounts to the largest indoor dungeon that Funcom has created to date). Head to the official AoC website for more info, including screenshots of some of the new armor available throughout the instance.