On the Subject of Warhammer

Keeley Hazell

I wondered what the box was that was awaiting my return home from the front today. In fact it was only seconds before opening it that it suddenly dawned on me what it might be. Yes, it's the Warhammer: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition!

First things first, the most important question to answer is, "how does it measure up to Age of Conan?".


They're definitely in the same ballpark. Which is to say, they're both rather large.


The boxes are exactly the same thickness.


AoC is about 2/3 of an inch wider. It's going to be a photo-finish.



WAR manages to pull itself back from the brink of defeat by being about an inch taller than AoC. I don't have a tape measure to hand, but I suspect WAR just clinches victory by being a fraction more voluminous than AoC, although it's almost too close to call. What you can't see, however, is that WAR is much heavier than AoC, tipping the scales firmly in WAR's favour.

So that's the exterior. What about the contents? Well, to be honest I haven't decided whether to open WAR or keep it sealed. You know, for best. Not because I have any thoughts of ebay'ing it (unlike the twat who admitted to buying a load of AoC CEs because original WoW CEs sell for big money now. Little did he know no one would give a toss about AoC and so he reckons he lost around $2k. Oh, how I laughed). Rather the thought of not even opening it amuses me. Because in any case I won't be installing it.

So you'll have to make do with the descriptions on the back of the box. Apparently there's some miniature in there, which is nice. And a graphic novel and the obligatory art book, just like AoC. No mention of a soundtrack CD, although in this day and age I'd assume there's one in there.

Conan Watch #5

Nadine Velazquez

Still hanging in there, maintaining my traditionally slow and steady advance through the mid levels of the game. Pinged a whopping 56 today, but I'm starting to hit the content gaps that people have been whining about for months already.

Level 50 basically means advancing to the Eiglophian Mountains, but while arriving in previous hubs has meant a quest log chock-full of XP-tastic quests, they've turned out to be a bit thin on the ground here. In the lower valley you get the usual run-of-the-mill kill quests, fighting cannibals in the 51-52 range. So far so good. There are "Wanted Posters", essentially repeatable bounty hunts which are the same as Vanguard's "Missives", but which give a pitiful XP reward. It's not long until you run out of quests in the lower valley, and head up the hill. The odd thing is, the mobs suddenly jump to the 54-57 range, and then further up still they're 58-60+. It would be nice if there was more to do in the lower valley, to at least get you up to speed with the next section. Having to beat mobs and especially bosses with their associated adds 5+ levels above you gets old fast. And then when you're done with those mobs, you're still several levels short of the next destiny quest (60), and the subsequent hubs.

Adding new zones to provide extra content is, of course, a substantial undertaking. What's odd about the mountains is that while an alternative 50+ zone would be nice it wouldn't hurt to simply add a few more quest lines within the existing zone.

So now I'm at 56, the next quest in my log is to beat a 60 boss within a camp of level 60 Vanir, which is just slightly beyond what my poor Priestess is capable of. At least solo. But then if I coasted through it in a group, what next? I'd still be a few levels down on where I need to be to progress to the next zone.

Even before I hit the mountains, and after the relatively good Field of the Dead, I made a new Guardian to pass the time. She had a pretty fun time in Tortage, although it wasn't particularly exciting the second time round. I miss the multiple, varied starting zones Vanguard offers. Unfortunately I'm not that keen on the Guardian class itself, at least not so far. It seems strange that the primary tank class in the game has absolutely no self-heals or buffs so far. Naturally they can take a lot more punishment than a clothy healer, but it's all a bit one-way. No heals, not great DPS, it's all about getting and holding aggro which is fair enough, but in a game which is fairly solo-oriented before end-game it doesn't feel like a particularly rounded class. While I wish the Priest of Mitra was a better healer, the fact is it works pretty well as a solo class.

Anyway if I can't be bothered to push through the final stages of the mountains, I might head back to Conall's with the Guardian and see how it develops.

On the Subject of Age of Conan, and Vanguard

Lucy Pinder & Sophie Howard

So AoC is suffering at the moment from endless patches that break more things than they fix, as well as essentially being too quick to get to the level cap (a lot of people did it easily within the free month, which was a bit of a design flaw really), and the official forums are jammed-packed full of people whining and bitching and quitting very publicly just like they did with Vanguard.

What's funny is that some people are going from AoC to Vangaurd, and making like they've discovered some super-secret, amazing MMO that no one else knew about. I've already admitted to taking advantage of the current Vanguard free month for previous subscribers or whatever it is that's going on at the moment. I've also admitted to not being overwhelmed by the progress that hasn't really been made since I last played. Well, ok the frame rates are better but that seems to be because they've massively reduced the detail levels, especially of character models where there used to be about 10 pages of sliders to customise your look but now there are about 4, and each slider has less affect than before. And the game still hitches like hell as you run around and it tries to load assets. And the animations are still horrible.

It still has a curiously nice "feel" to the world that AoC is missing, like it's quite an immersive place to spend time, but the actual mechanics are still rubbish. I couldn't summon the motivation to play on my old characters so I made a new bloodmage, and it was going ok, nothing special, but then I reached an area where you start to find harvesting nodes, and I used to enjoy harvesting because of how you could just ignore all the quests and head off into the wilderness and discover "secret" harvesting areas. Except that's all been destroyed now by these ridiculously huge labels they've put over all the harvesting nodes which you can see from miles away.


It used to be quite tricky to spot harvestable trees especially, because they look very similar to all the others unless you hover the cursor over them at which point the cursor would become an axe. I think they used to have labels, but they were quite small and didn't appear until either you were quite close or had them selected, I can't remember which. Then you'd get more used to it and you've be able to spot them, and even which type or rarity they were just by looking.
I mean just look at that screen shot. Hmm, where can I find a weakened tangleleaf tree do you think? or some "metal", or "mineral"? It's such a simple thing but it just killed the whole game for me when I saw that. Strangely enough AoC also recently added harvest nodes to the mini-map, so of course you can never find any that aren't used up now.

Meanwhile Vanguard's in-game chat is full of "thanks AoC, without you I wouldn't be here" or "this is what EQ2 should have been" masterbatory bullshit from people who think they've got one up on the remaining AoC players, but who will soon discover that while yes, the first 20 or so levels are reasonably good fun, the game quickly descends into mindless, endless grind after that and still seems to have a lot of the bugs that it had a year and a half ago.

Of course Warhammer is the new AoC in terms of people claiming it's going to be amazing, except they've just announced they've had to cut 4 out of the 6 starting cities, and 4 classes (out of 24, across the 2 factions, I think) because they couldn't get them right or EA wouldn't give them any more time to finish it or whatever. So when that comes out the whole cycle will repeat.

Anyway up to level 42 in AoC and yes it's a bit dull, yes they keep breaking it, yes there are fewer people around every time I log in. The good thing about having low expectations for it in the first place is that I'm not disappointed.

On the Subject of Quitters

Gianne Albertoni

I've been too busy protecting the free world to spend much time in AoC recently, but I have had the opportunity to stay connected via the magic of internet forums.
The first thing that has to be said is that the official AoC forums are a complete and utter shit-fest. For a game that was supposed to be designed for, and only available to "mature" players, the number of whiny little retards running loose on those forums is quite incredible. I recall when SOE launched official Vanguard forums after their acquisition of Sigil, the general mood was fairly up-beat. While it did go through a fairly rapid decline into patronising name-calling and generally worthless bullshit, even at it's deepest depths it was never a patch on the current state of AoC's.

Now that AoC has passed the one month mark, there's a very familiar smell spreading across the forums. Namely, the ever-popular "leaving" posts. One month passed means the end of the free month for all the early-adopters, which means all the sad, poor little people with no jobs who can't afford a measly $15 a month quit after a month of freeloading.

That in itself is fair enough. If you're too lazy to get another paper-round or work some extra shifts at MacDonalds to cover what is in reality a minor expense, then good luck when you finally grow up.
Unfortunately these worthless fucks deem it necessary to pollute forums with tedious posts either a) providing long, smug, self-important explanations as to what is wrong with the game from their obviously ever-so experienced, professional MMO player point of view, or b) sneering at the remaining players and smugly bragging about how they are moving to some other, inevitably far superior game.
What they don't seem to understand is that no one gives a shit. It's a well-known fact that official games forums are largely populated with posts from disgruntled customers, and that while the overall tone is often largely negative that is often not representative of the population as a whole. People who are pissed off make the most noise, in other words, especially when anyone who dares to contradict their often wrong or illogical claims will inevitably be labeled a "fanboi".

What's particularly sad is how mind-numbingly predictable the whole cycle is. Some game gets hyped to the moon. People develop massively unrealistic expectations and begin claiming the game will be the saviour of modern MMOs, especially in "leaving" posts on the forums of some other game. Then, as the release date approaches, tales of the new game not achieving it's potential begin to emerge. By the time the game is released the "hardcore" are already over it, purely because it's no longer in beta and no longer their secret little club. It's not fashionable to like a game that the unwashed masses are able to play. Meanwhile the "sub-hardcore" play the game, realise their unrealistic expectations were, in fact, unrealistic and therefore claim the game sucks. They then post some tawdry leaving post in the official forums, name-checking whatever forthcoming game is now being hyped. And so the cycle continues.
This was especially evident with AoC. It has been name-checked by people leaving other games for years now. The new "next big thing" is WAR, but I can make two very obvious predictions regarding that particular game:

1. It will, at launch, suffer the exact same lack of content, especially at the high end, and very likely the same amount of bugs and lack-of-polish as every other MMO that has ever been released (with the possible exception of Vanguard, which had more than average).

2. It is very much a PvP game, and while that might disguise the lack of content (because in a sense the players are the content) it also means the game will be a shower of hacks, exploits and especially nerfs. If I haven't already delivered a sermon on how PvP and PvE are mutually exclusive, then I will. Expect epic forum threads from whiny little bitches crying that their class has been nerfed into oblivion, or how some other class should be nerfed because the author was soundly beaten by someone playing it. If you think the AoC forums are bad, wait until WAR is launched.

The fact is there's nothing else worth playing right now, which makes all the bitchy leaving posts sound quite hollow. There's even a new trend of people claiming they're going back to Vanguard, of all things. That's simply laughable. While the early levels in VG might provide some short-term entertainment and while I'm told there have been substantial performance and stability improvements, it's still the same pile of grind it always was, and still full of promises that have yet to be fulfilled.
So while the smug idiots proudly proclaim that VG is the next big thing, that just means they either never played it, or have forgotten how fucked-up it is, or are just lying to try to sound special.

But what is really astonishing is how people who have by their own admission quit the game continue to post on the forums bashing both the game and the people who continue to play it. What the fuck is that about? Move on, you sad, worthless little cunts. It's obvious you're just desperate to have your decision to quit validated by trying to get other people on the forum to agree with you. It's also obvious that there's nothing better out there worth playing, otherwise you'd be playing that and not spewing your shit onto the forums day after day. It's like it becomes their mission to try and convince other people to quit, so that they don't feel like the odd one out while everyone else is having fun. Ultimately it's just desperate and pathetic.

It's just a game. If you don't like it, don't play it. End of story. You're not important, your opinion is not important, and no one cares at all what you think of the game or whether or not you're even playing it. GTFO.

And you know what, I don't even want your stuff, moron.

Conan Watch #4

Pamela David

So a few more hours played, a few more random insights gained.
My "main" character is now level 35, and starting to hit group-oriented content. As usual I'm lagging behind the main wave of power-levelers, many of whom are already at the level 80 cap. The idiots. It sounds like there are some gaps in questing content at higher levels and that it requires a bit of grind to advance, but that's something the devs have already acknowledged, and I suspect some of those holes will have been plugged by the time I get there. Which is a big advantage of adopting a more leisurely pace. Let the hardcore be the testers. It's what they should have been doing during the actual beta tests rather than trying to get a head start on everyone else.

What's interesting is that the 80's haven't been spending their time complaining about the lack of high-end content so much because they've been busy power-farming lower-level areas for money and gear. So when the devs recently implemented what seems to be an anti-gold-farming measure where bosses that are too far below your level actually scale to your level and are no longer farmable, the roar of disapproval in the official forums was deafening.
I'm all for the nerf, of course. Stick to level-appropriate content and you'll be fine. It only hurts people who are exploiting areas or power-leveling their noob mates. Those sorts of people have been bleating about how it "reduces content", means you can't complete every single quest because you out-level them too quickly, or even more laughably, "it's up to me how I want to play the game".
It only reduces content that isn't appropriate for your level. Awww, so you can't farm it and make big money for zero effort? Good, because then neither can the gold farmers. Out-leveled the quests? That's a shame, but there's no rule that says you must be able to complete every quest in the game on a single character. Maybe you should have done that group quest in an appropriate-level group rather than assuming you could simply level past it then go back at your leisure and then sleepwalk it solo.
"It's up to me how I want to play the game". That sentiment, which I'm paraphrasing from actual, real posts on the official forums and not just making up, blows my mind. It's not up to you at all, it's up to the developers. They designed the game, they decide what is and isn't acceptable. It's not up to some jumped-up little fuckwit who has played a dozen MMOs and has come to think they're some sort of elite player who knows better than the developers. Threaten to quit the game in protest? Or, as one moron put it "move on". Yeah? Move on to what? In any case, fuck off, no one will miss you.

What's sadly amusing is how I've come to appreciate some of Vanguard's mechanics now that there's something shiny and new to compare them with. Firstly there was the realisation that in a highly-zoned world such as in AoC, sailing will never be a practical reality. That was one of several advantages to Vanguard's unified, open world design. And yes I know chunking was buggy as hell but that's what happens when a game is programmed by educationally-challenged monkeys. AoC has little in the way of coastlines, certainly not complete oceans surrounding continents, and while there are lots of rivers they're often interrupted by waterfalls or other features that would make sailing impractical. I think more involved sailing, including fishing and maybe some exploration could be something that would tempt me back to Vanguard.

More recently I've started "gathering", or "harvesting" as it was known in Vanguard. Harvesting was actually one of my favourite pass times in Vanguard, and was again enhanced by the large open world where there were any number of areas you might never visit in the course of questing. This meant you could often charge off into the wilds and discover your own little harvesting heaven off the beaten track. Exploration was an integral part of harvesting, assuming you didn't just use one of the map mods or some web guide to lead you to the prime spots.
AoC, in contrast, tends not to have any "dead space" on it's maps, because everything is much more compact and enclosed.
Critically, Vanguard's implementation of rare and ultra-rare harvesting nodes was like a devastatingly addictive drug. "I would quit, but maybe the next node will be a rare!". Maybe the next node... maybe the next node. I would harvest a circuit and wait until every node was a common before leaving, just to be on the safe side.
I've only just started gathering so I'm not sure how rarity will come into play, but there are certainly fewer nodes than in Vanguard and more often that not you'll find one that's virtually exhausted rather than primed and ready for action. In AoC they seem to have health bars that are depleted as you gather and then gradually recover over time. In Vanguard you find a node, harvest it and it vanishes, only reappearing at 100% capacity after some given respawn time.
In AoC you can gather every type of resource. In Vanguard you are limited to choosing 2 per character. I prefer Vanguard's method because it means you'll never be entirely self-sufficient on a single character. It seems to me that that's better for the economy although admittedly it's fairly painless to level up a character in a given discipline. I know I had everything max'ed out except skinning (because I never had a high enough level character to take down the high-tier skinnable creatures).
Yet another factor in Vanguard's favour was gear. There was (is, I suppose) a whole inventory page specifically dedicated to harvesting gear. Better gear, often obtained from player crafters, could be used to improve harvesting yields. This includes clothing, and the actual tools. And your tools had to be a sufficient level for the tier of resource you were harvesting. Improved yields might look slight, but at the high end where ultra-rare resources were extortionately expensive it could make a massive difference. In AoC, the gear is non-existent, or at least so it seems. "Use" a gathering node and your axe or whatever is just magic'd out of thin air on demand.
Finally, Vanguard had a system where you get higher yields if you harvest as a group. Not by a factor of the number of harvesters, but certainly you'd get more from a given node as a group than you would alone and again at the high end it could make a serious difference, even split two or three ways. It was quite common to find myself working a given circuit and see someone else doing the same, and we'd end up grouping and splitting the resources because that way you're both better off than if you work in competition. It was a subtle mechanic, but a social one too.
So it doesn't appear as if I will achieve the same satisfaction from gathering in AoC that I did from harvesting, which is a shame. And it sounds like crafting, which I never bothered with in Vanguard because it was even more grind-tastic than adventuring, is suffering some teething troubles. But you can't even start crafting until you hit level 40 I think, and at my casual rate of play that's still a week or two away.

Conan Watch #3

Jennifer Lamiraqui

So it's been a while, mostly because I've been preoccupied with my secret plans for the global eradication of organised religion, but I've managed to squeeze in a few hours of AoC here and there.
Getting straight to the point, overall I'm slightly disappointed to report that it's not the enormous abomination that I was expecting. In fact it has a certain fun factor, but at the same time it really doesn't bring anything new to the genre.
One of the most important aspects of any MMO is obviously character design options. AoC features a combination of Guild Wars-style preset face textures and hair colours with various pointless sliders to control facial distortions and body proportions. The strange thing is, it's very difficult to achieve any sort of distintive style, and all characters essentially end up looking the same within a given racial group. On the plus side, at least the characters you can create look quite nice. Naturally I'm referring to female characters with nice, big boobs.
Talking of boobs, so far the promise of "adult" content has failed to materialise. There are nipples, which are sure to shock and outrage all the idiots that will no doubt read about AoC and start calling for it to be banned. Unfortunately, the most I've seen of nipples so far is when the game engine fails to construct an NPC model quickly enough when it transitions to a cutscene, and the character model is topless for a fraction of a second. In terms of gratuitous violence, there really isn't anything outrageous or even new. It seems to rely on the simple fact that the character models are more naturalistic than cartoony alternatives like WoW or LotRO for any sense of maturity or grittiness. Dead bodies hanging from trees are all very well, but they get old quite quickly. The combat is no more bloody or gratuitous than any other RPG.
Of course combat features the infamous directional attacks and shields. Well, melee combat does, it makes no difference to casters which are exactly the same as in every other MMO ever made. It's a shame they couldn't come up with something analogous for the casting classes. Not that physical combat is exactly revolutionary itself, but it is admittedly slightly more involving than other games. It's a clever way around the problem of latency, which is pretty much the reason why all MMOs feature combat designed to not require extreme time-sensitivity like "twitch" shooters. When you've got hundreds, maybe thousands of simultaneous players and pings measured in tenths of seconds rather than milliseconds you can't have systems that require rapid reactions and inputs. Guild Wars gets around the problem and allows real-time interrupts because there are only a small number of players in any given instance. "Proper" MMOs have to make do with the likes of chains and combos, and AoC is no exception.
Speaking of instances, the AoC "world" is a bit odd. It's a combination of shared instances and player-specific instances, and shared world areas are split into on-demand instances to keep population levels manageable. A bit like the outposts in Guild Wars, but actual world zones rather than just hubs. What doesn't work for me is the design of the zones and how they relate to each other. Maybe I've been spoiled by Vanguard's genuinely open world but having to talk to NPCs to get transported to neighbouring zones is horrible and really breaks the continuity of the world. There are some traditional gates and cave entrances etc, but it doesn't feel at all coherent and just heightens the feeling of disconnected instances.
Being able to climb, in addition to walking, running and swimming, is a nice touch, although the implementation is a bit lame and the use of an attribute to determine your climbing skill, simply by giving ladders a specific level, is a bit poor. Also, the UI keeps telling you "you can climb here!" even when the ladder is too advanced for you which is irritating.
The UI is shit. It's as if you took Vanguard's shitty UI and then "optimised" it for consoles. So lots of big chunky icons that don't trigger if your mouse moves even a single pixel between button-down and button-up. Really amateurish.
So far leveling appears to be quite speedy. After 6 months of Vanguard I had two level 30 characters, and a few in the teens. After just three of four sessions of AoC my big-breasted "Priest of Mitra" is already 28 (and a half). Of course the level cap is higher in AoC (80, compared with Vanguard's 50) so it probably evens out later on, but it does feel like it's designed to offer an exaggerated sense of achievement. Even in the mid-twenties I was gaining whole levels just by turning in a handful of quests.
Unlike Vanguard, AoC offers an "alternate advancement" system where you can spend points on "feats", which are arranged into trees and offer extra attributes and abilities. Fair enough, I don't have a problem with that.
Overall the game is quite pretty, but not that pretty. It suffers from the same bowl-shaped zones as every other RPG except Vanguard, with mountains surrounding almost all zones (the exceptions being the ones with coastline). A lot of the finer character details are lost because you tend to spend most of the time zoomed out. Spell effects are nothing special.
The game eventually promises the likes of mounts and player cities, but I'm a long way from any of that so I can't comment on it either way. Even though harvesting is supposed to become available at level 20, I think you don't actually get access to training until much later. I have no idea how crafting works.
In conclusion, so far I'm not finding the game to be the pile of steaming shit that I was expecting. It feels almost like a "proper" MMO version of Guild Wars, which is both good and bad. It'll be interesting to see how GW2 compares when that finally appears.
The launch seemed to go quite smoothly. Already the lower-level areas seem to be thinning out while at the same time it's not rare to see some characters running around at level 40+. Obviously there's been a rush of power-players who are sprinting to the level cap, no doubt so they can start complaining about the lack of end-game content, just like in every other MMO. The idiots.

Conan Watch #2.1

I didn't even notice the numbered hologram on the spine of the box! I am the proud owner of the fifty six thousand, five hundred and thirty first out of ONLY eighty six thousand collector's editions! I feel special.

Conan Watch #2

Irina Sheik

It's the big day! No, not launch day. Well, technically it is launch day but that's irrelevent. Today is worthy of note because of the arrival of my Conan collector's edition. That's right, a shiny limited edition collector's edition!

Wooooo. It's refreshing to open the outer box and find it full of collector's edition rather than packing peanuts or air bags.


The little black book is some Gamestop bonus thing I think. In the order status it also mentions a "mini art", but lists it as "canceled" and I can't remember what that was supposed to be.


The actual box is a monster. The book effect is a nice touch.


Here's how the enormous Conan box stacks up against some other notable special editions. It is the biggest.


Inside, the box continues the book pretense, albeit briefly.


The money shot. To be honest, given the mammoth (haha) scale of the box itself, the contents are slightly underwhelming. A nice selection of discs, including the ever-popular soundtrack, a faux-leather map (which stinks of faux-leather), a nice, chunky art book, the manual and various ads, offers and guest passes. The box is largely comprised of a black spacer.


Some DVDs and a CD.


Tits! The art book isn't quite as classy as The Witcher's, but it's still nicely presented and voluminous.

In summary:

Presentation	9/10	A big box for a big game.
Contents	6/10	Not a patch on Tabula Rasa, but no obvious omissions and an art book with tits for extra bonus points. A miniature or other novelty would have been preferable to the smelly map.
Overall	7/10	Above average, with some impressive specs.

So, what's the game like to play? Fucked if I know, I haven't installed it yet.

Conan Watch #1

Minka Kelly

So the "Early Access" program has begun (I think). It's common, probably even usual for new MMOs to offer a short period of time where people who pre-ordered the game can start playing before the official release date. In this case it's the standard 3 days.
I preordered (the Collectors' Edition, naturally, which has been shipped and will be reviewed in a future Conan Watch) and as per SOP I received a preorder key by email which I was supposed to register to get access to the EA program and unlock any other preorder bonuses. "Unfortunately" when I first went to register, the AoC website wasn't yet accepting registration, and I subsequently forgot all about it.
Which brings us to what might be the first of many Conan farces. For some reason Funcom (or whoever decides these things) put a limit on the EA population. Why, I don't know. Why they should not have the same capacity for EA that they do for launch, a whole three days later, is a mystery. Why the "offer" shouldn't be open to all preorder customers is a mystery. In any case the EA is now listed as "sold out" when you attempt to register a pre-order key.
Of course the official spin is that they underestimated the enormous public interest in the game and weren't prepared for the huge number of people that signed up. As if that's a good thing, and not fucking stupid, given the game is supposed to be an MMO. If they can't handle the preorder population, it doesn't bode well for the full launch, but that remains to be seen.
I'm not obsessed with power-leveling and grinding harder than the next person so EA doesn't really interest me, other than the fact it's currently Sunday, which would be a more convenient day to play than Tuesday, for those of us with actual occupations. The way the population has already been tiered does leave a slightly nasty taste though, and I expect AoC forums will not only feature "I was in beta" but also "I was in EA" qualifications in every post.

On the Subject of Age of Conan

Kelly Brook

Naturally I have refrained from chasing "beta test" keys for AoC. I do still have it pre-ordered, and I will go in with an open mind and give it the same opportunity to disappoint me that I afforded both Vanguard and Tabula Rasa.
It is interesting, somewhat satisfying, but at the same time crushingly inevitable to see the Conan backlash already beginning to creep out into forums. Recall that this is the game that has been heralded as a new virtual-world order in MMOs, typically by people quitting some other MMO and trying to both encourage back-patting sympathy and "you losers can stay here, I'll be in AoC" one-upmanship.
Now that a much broader population has had the chance to get a limited taste of the game the one-upmanship angle becomes less effective, so of course those people move on to the "meh, been there done that" stage where it becomes fashionable to be "over" the game, even before it has been released.

Oddly enough a lot of the reports from beta players (it's hard to seriously refer to them as "testers", as I've suggested previously) have been fairly positive. Some refer to the "revolutionary" combat mechanics as gimmicky, some don't see any real difference compared with existing MMO mechanics, some find it awkward, some welcome the change. I've heard it described as being somewhat like The Witcher's combat system, in being very simple but at least different to 1-2-3, or in some cases 1-1-1 button-mashing.
The graphics have had similarly mixed reviews. The problem here is that we've been seeing screenshots for years now, and sadly the quality has declined steadily over the course of development. Probably because the early media was pie-in-the-sky McQuaid-style dreaming which had to be "refined" to cope with the harsh realities of out-of-date PCs. Not to mention squeezing it onto an already out-of-date console. Still, some people have remained positive, some less so. While it can look impressive, the down side seems to be relatively small explorable regions. It might be fun to bash Vanguard but if there's one thing it got right it was scale. Scale, and the ability to explore that large landscape with relative freedom. No invisible barriers (except the ocean), no impenetrable wall of mountains in every direction. In contrast Conan looks to be firmly in the GW/LotRO school of enclosed, claustrophobic environments which is a shame.

At this point we come to one report from beta that has me particularly distressed. Apparently the time of day can adjust dynamically to suit the quests you're currently pursuing. What. The. Fuck. Say goodbye to any sense of inhabiting a unified, coherent world. It's obviously a ploy to cater to the ever-popular "casual" demographic. "Waaah, I've logged in but this quest has to be done at night and it's currently morning". I'm no hardcore MMO player as I'm sure I've established, but butchering the game world in the name of accessibility is sad and misguided. I personally considered Vanguard's day/night cycle to be entirely too short (something like 45 minutes I seem to remember, I can't be bothered to look it up), and that game had plenty of quests that required you to kill creatures that only appeared in certain time windows. Oblivion's was similarly ridiculous, but at least you could get time mods so that you didn't miss whole days while you were simply talking to NPCs.
And yes, I know my beloved The Witcher cheated the issue by letting you meditate for up to 24 hours at a time, thereby advancing the clock to whatever time you needed, but I see a difference between single-player and MMO games in that respect. I think everyone who's playing within the same game world should at least see the same time of day.
Personally I think a day/night cycle should be substantial. I understand that people probably play games at a similar real-world time each session (after school/work or whatever) and that it would be undesirable to find yourself playing in-game in the middle of the night all the time. I would suggest that the solution is in two parts.
Firstly, have a day/night cycle that's designed so that your real-world play session will occur at a different in-game time each day. Prime numbers are good for this sort of thing. I suppose ideally the cycle shouldn't be so long that you don't see any real change in virtual time during the course of, say, a 2 hour play session though, so I'd be maybe thinking of a 7 hour cycle as a sensible minimum, although I'd be thinking more along the lines of 13, or possibly 17 (as 13 is too close to half a real day).
The second part of the solution is to do with content, and designing quests so that while they might require you to complete them during a given time window, the completion of that quest isn't going to hold up your progress in the bigger picture. On the other hand you shouldn't feel like you've "left the quest behind". Not that I know how exactly you'd achieve that, but then it's not my job.
The point is, letting the player time-travel for their own convenience compromises the game world as a whole, although I'll have to see it in action for myself before I can properly judge the impact it has on the game. I suspect it's going to introduce more of a Guild Wars dynamic, where it feels more like a bunch of single-player instances joined together by glorified chat hubs.

Ultimately I don't really know why I'm reporting these opinions, since none of them are mine and therefore none of them are correct. I will be sure to deliver my definitive verdict on the game in a couple of weeks when it's properly released, including the all-important review of the limited edition packaging. Will it be a triumph of Tabula Rasa Collector's Edition proportions, or a sad joke like the Crysis limited edition box? Only time will tell.

On the Subject of Age of Conan

Jane Seymour

Delayed yet again. Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahaha.

What's the matter, Funcom, is your game a piece of shit? Is it in such bad shape that you need yet another couple of months to polish that turd and vainly attempt to make it even slightly playable and fun? Do you really think a couple of months will be enough?

Don't know why I'm laughing, I've preordered it. In my defense it was the Limited Edition. And I still expect it will be shit.

On the Subject of 2008

Sophie Howard

I was reading an article on technology predictions for 2008 when coincidentally I had the completely original idea of writing some of my own predictions, mainly for games, for the coming year. When it turns out I'm right on all counts I will quote myself at great length. In the unlikely event that I turn out to be less than right I will edit this post 1984-style to make it look like I was correct all along.

MMOs

2008 is supposed to be the year when both Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Age of Conan are released. Of course so was 2007, but that didn't happen.
AoC, which looks like the slightly less PvP-orientated of the two, is currently name-checked by anyone and everyone who writes a tedious, self-important, wanky "leaving" post on the forums of current MMOs. "waaaah this game sucks, Age of Conan will be so much better". I confidently predict that it won't. In fact I confidently predict both games will be shit, and will see plenty of their own leaving posts shortly after release.
As a PvP game, WAR will undoubtedly see continuous class balancing/nerfing until there's nothing left to differentiate between classes and the players condemn it as bland. Of course if they don't balance it, the same players will condemn the game as unfair.
AoC, which will also be released on the 360 (a huge flashing red warning sign if ever there was one for MMOs) will be dumbed down to the point of idiocy, with nice big chunky menus and easy-peasy mechanics for the console kiddies. It's also worrying that the screen shots that are being released are getting gradually worse and worse, no doubt as they struggle to make the game remotely playable.
AoC has "disappointment" written all over it in permanent marker pen. I'm really looking forward to it because of the told-you-so satisfaction I'll get as the deluded fanboys discover it's not the beacon of MMO perfection they claimed. It'll be like watching a kid who has told all his mates that he's getting the best christmas present ever, only to discover on the day that it's a pair of shit-stained pants.
As for WAR, well I don't really give a toss about that anyway because it's just PvP which is of course worthless.

Far Cry 2
Following in the wake of Crysis' narrative mediocrity, Far Cry 2 could turn out to be the game Crysis ought to have been. It might not be as jaw-droppingly pretty, but it looks more open, with some interesting features like dynamic weather and NPC sidekicks and the ever-popular dynamic fire. As a PC-only title this already deserves the Field Marshal's seal of approval. It's hard to make a prediction about it because relatively little is known, but I suspect it will be good fun and will address some of Crysis' shortcomings, although I also suspect it will come bundled with a lot of bugs and other issues. Still, I'm quietly hopeful and it's probably the game I'm most looking forward to next year. And maybe there'll be a limited edition!

Alan Wake
This will undoubtedly be the Crysis of 2008 as far as hype is concerned omgwtf it looks teh amazing!!!!111 And then it hits the shelves and suddenly everyone will be distinctly underwhelmed by the gameplay, and probably by the poor performance and bugs and other contentious issues like the widescreen implementation etc etc. At least it will give me something to write about. Oh, how I look forward to legions of clueless mongs claiming it's badly coded just because their piece of shit PC can't handle it. Yeah? Have you seen the game code? Can you show me something that looks as good but runs faster? And no, CoD4 doesn't look as good you FUCKING MORON.
Another potential limited edition for my collection, though.

Spore
Back in the day I was sucked in by all the hype surrounding Black and White. Oooh, the graphics. Oooh, the funny animal avatars. Oooh, zooming in and out and using a godlike hand to drag yourself around the terrain. Unfortunately I found the game boring as hell and only ever played 2 or 3 battles or levels or whatever they were.
That's what I imagine happening when I think of Spore. Yes, it makes for very impressive tech demos. Oooh, you can design your own arrangement of legs. Oooh, it goes from single cells to space battles. Unfortunately I can only imagine it being incredibly dull to "play". Maybe if you're into all that Civilisation/Sim City sort of stuff it'll be ok. However, I predict that a lot of people who aren't will buy into the hype and then shelve the game soon after they've installed it. But the fact is they'll have bought it, so it'll be hailed as a massive success by the games industry and probably lead to a resurgence of god games.
I won't be buying it, limited edition or not.