Thought for the Day - Jelena Jensen

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 Audiophiles

Christa Campbell

You'll never, ever impress an audiophile. There will always be better speakers, better amps, better pre-amps (what do you mean you don't have a pre-amp??), better speaker cables, better speaker positions, better-designed listening rooms with better geometry, better wall-covering, better seating position, better everything than whatever it is you have. If you don't have exactly the same gear as them then you're some sort of amateur. If you do, well, then there's something better anyway. If you have the better thing then there's something else that's better still and so on.
I have rarely encountered more insufferable bores than self-proclaimed audiophiles. Hard-core, old-school MMO purists have nothing on them. Even the most well-meaning comments, especially positive ones, regarding the quality of some piece of even remotely audio-related technology will attract the attention of audiophiles with efficiency of chum in shark-infested water. Never mind what the original subject was, audiophiles will immediately start making inappropriate comparisons and suggestions in a effort to demean people who generally have no interest in over-thinking headphone or speaker choices.
The interesting thing about audio equipment is that newer is not automatically better. The subjectivity of "sound quality" combined with little change in the basic design of speakers (modern materials and software simulations aside) mean that decades-old gear can often be regarded as highly as something fresh off the shelf. This is great for the audiophile, who can smugly claim the superiority of equipment the average person has never even heard of, and has no chance of ever acquiring, thus satisfying the audiophile's obsession with knowing more about obscure speakers than you while at the same time making it effectively impossible for you to question or disprove their obscure claims.
The situation is worse when it comes to computer audio. By which I mean specifically hearing sounds produced by a computer in the course of playing games rather than using computers in music production or some other "serious" audio production. Games players have different requirements to audiophiles. Quite often directionality is the most important quality of gaming audio, especially in competitive gaming. The quality of reproduction of some frequency that humans can't even hear (no matter what audiophiles tell themselves) is irrelevant. Gamers want an entertaining, immersive experience rather than obsessing over every detail of the reproduction pipeline.
It can't be much fun being an audiophile. I know when I'm listening to music I'm interested in the composition, the style, the musicianship (where appropriate), the qualities that separate a good song from a poor song. A good song on some cheap portable radio with a single built-in speaker is still a good song. A shit song played on some immense audiophile rig where you can hear a couple a block away from the recording studio having sex is still a shit song. Not being able to enjoy music that's in mp3 format or being heard on low-cost earbud earphones is quite tragic.
Of course it's nice to have nice stuff. That should go without saying. It's nice to have speakers that produce a clean, controlled bass rather than some indistinct, muddy rumble. It's nice to have headphones that don't sound tinny and shit. But some people have realistic expectations, especially when it comes to price, and that's what audiophiles are incapable of appreciating.

Thought for the Day - Denise Milani

I don't need an excuse to do another of these, in fact I suspect it will become a regular feature, but in any case consider this a extra bonus after I made Kelly Brook a "Marshal Girl" for the third time in the last post. There are plenty of women who deserve that honour more than she does, but it just worked out that way.
Anyway, here is Denise Milani and her outrageously large norks. I'm not sure why she never looks straight at the camera, it's a bit weird.

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.