US Age of Conan servers down for the merger of Bloodspire and Hyperborea
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Server downtime
Server mergers have finally come to Age of Conan. Today the US servers will be down starting around 7:00 a.m. EST (or 12 p.m. GMT) for about six hours so that Bloodspire and Hyperborea can be merged. Originally planned for early December, the mergers had been postponed when a data problem was identified that might have caused certain items to disappear in the process.
Additional details around how the mergers will be done are available on the AoC FAQ forum threads. If you have characters on these servers (or really anyone playing), it’s definitely worth having a look to determine how you might be impacted. Information on further merges has not yet been released.
US Age of Conan servers down for the merger of Bloodspire and Hyperborea originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Item Farming, Why?
We’ve all done it, doing the same raid over and over again hoping to get that kick ass item everyone is desperately trying to get. My questions is not why we do it, that’s pretty simple, it’s because we want that damn item. The question is why are MMORPGs setup like this to begin with? The whole point of a quest, raid or big boss fight is the challenge of completing it. Finally completing a raid or killing a boss that’s challenging is a great feeling, but only seconds after victory you’re presented with a slap in the face as the item you were hoping to get wasn’t dropped or worse yet someone else got it. So what now? Well we all know what’s next, time to run it again and again and again until hopefully one day we’re lucky enough to finally get the item.
No matter what quest your doing, after running it a dozen or so times you can’t help but start hating it. And lets hope you’re not in a small guild and have to run it with a random group, cause you know there’s going to be one guy that f@cks it up wasting 2 hrs of your time.
What I’d like to see are raids that are meant to only be completed once. Once completed everyone in the group gets the item they wanted, preferably class specific. I think this would help put a stop to item farming, which you know you hate doing and puts more emphasis on the challenge of the game. I know when I complete a raid or big boss fight, even if I don’t get the item I was looking for, I don’t want to have to do it again. Why should I? I already beat it, there’s no replay value in fighting the same guy again. Sure if someone in my guild hasn’t completed it yet, I’ll help out, but aside from that I don’t want to have to do it again. I want to move on to the next challenge.
Consider a MMORPG where there are 12 (arbitrary number) raids. Each raid is extremely challenging and in order to get all your epic items you need to complete all 12 raids. Compare that to most MMORPGS today where you first find out which raids/areas drop the item you want, then run those 5-6 raids over and over again until you have all the items. I’d much rather have to do 12 where once I complete it I’m done and can move on, instead of doing the same 5-6, completing each one a dozen times hoping to get a favorable drop.
For me I’d like to see the repetative aspects of MMORPGs removed and concentrate more on the challenge of the game. The fact that item farming is such a big part of MMOs is one of the main reasons why I end up quiting a game once I reach the level cap. There’s only so much I can take and when that time comes I’d rather quit playing then have to do the same quest/raid again.
“Game Management Systems”
Hello, everyone, and happy holidays! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, and most of you are probably thinking “thank god I haven’t had to read any hateful posts from this asshole,” but who couldn’t do with a little holiday negativity? No, no, I’m not here to bash the countless holiday events that game companies host in their virtual worlds. I’m not even here to post a subjective evaluation of a game I’ve played for only 10 minutes a la my Atlantica Online review. Today we’re going to take a look at Game Management Systems, and a couple in specific: PlayOnline, and Steam. If you’ve never heard of PlayOnline, all you need to know is that it currently stands as the best example of how to not build a game management system.
What the hell is a “Game Management System”?
Truth be told, it’s just a term I use to describe applications that handle digital content to make it easier for the users to 
obtain, play, and keep their virtual assets up-to-date; it’s a way to juggle many games at once. The most prominent example of such an utility is Steam. Like in the days of old, not every person had imaginary encounters with minotaurs, dragons, or angels but most people knew what they were; much in the same way everyone knows what Steam is supposed to do, even if they’ve never used it. These utilities promise a reliable, and most importantly, safe way to acquire games for yourself or others. Not only that, they’ll keep your games organized, so that all you really have to do is run that application, then pick whatever game you feel like playing. Wait, it gets even better. This tool will even keep track of your friends, what games they’re playing, and even allow you to join your friend’s game through the utility’s friend interface. The application even provides you with an in-game overlay you can use to talk to your friends, change the application settings, etc. It promises the ability to use all your favorite applications while in-game. That is, unless PLAYXPERT beats them to it(hurry up with those 64-bit versions, slackers!). Sounds great so far, right?
Well, hold on, I’m not done yet.
Everyone benefits from the existence and support of these applications. Developers can make their games available to an international audience without having to ship boxes there, thanks to digital distribution. Additionally, it promises the potential to reduce the price of games. How can it do this? Think of Wal-mart. They can sell goods at a much cheaper price because they sell a broader array of goods. Wal-mart also keeps low prices on goods by reducing the cost to make them; irrelevant when it comes to what we’re talking about, though, as there is virtually no cost in digital distribution(no box, CD, etc). By having so many games under one roof, and completely eliminating cost of shipping, cardboard, plastic, and media, games can be made available to the public much more cheaply. These companies can even bundle a bunch of games together, and sell them at a very affordable price. Hey, who wouldn’t want to buy over a dozen games for only $75USD[1]?
There’s more. These management systems can prevent piracy. By making game activation possible only to those who have the application, and only allowing people who have legit serial keys to play on legit servers, you can successfully prevent piracy. Arguably, anyone determined enough to crack a game will eventually find a way to play it for free. If the effort and time comes out to be worth less than the 50 bucks , then great. You must be some sort of game-cracking prodigy. Unfortunately, you’ll still miss out on having the most up-to-date version of the game, and any mod developed by communities of people who paid for the game.
So that’s it. This form of content delivery:
- Is user-friendly.
- Saves a ton of time spent on organizing games with your friends, and gives you more time to actually play with them.
- Allows more people to purchase the games and encourages more companies to offer digital distribution to reach an international audience.
- Can ultimately make games cheaper, as the companies running these applications have more games to sell, and can often bundle them for an amazing price.
- Prevents piracy.
Good night, everyone!
Wait. There’s more in this article?! Damn it.
I’m sorry. I can’t go an article without some negativity. If I skipped this next part, I might lose some “street cred” and then no one would like me anymore. Corporate executives know that if you need to point out an employee’s shortcomings when speaking to them, you start with something good, then point out where that person can improve. I’m taking a similar approach. You’ve seen the benefits of such a system, now let’s take a look at a system that may not be as popular or well-known. For damn good reasons. Square-Enix manages and distributes some of their games digitally through a system called PlayOnline. The most popular game obtainable through the system is perhaps Final Fantasy XI. Some of the game’s expansions are even available for purchase through PlayOnline itself!
If PlayOnline had been the only system ever made to manage digital content, then it would have also been the last. It shits all over the idea of game evolution and progress. It makes it more difficult for players to get to the game they want to play, can cost you more money than buying the games at the store, and can drive you to set yourself on fire and jump off a bridge. The only thing it can do in comparison to the previously-mentioned system is prevent piracy. Seriously, though, who owns a cracked copy of Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, or Lord of the Rings: Online? I don’t know why I even mentioned this point.
PlayOnline will assume from the moment you start your registration that you’re an idiot. It may be right, but it’s no reason to punish the rest of us. PlayOnline will assign you a username, consisting of four letters and four numbers. I guess it prevents people from exploiting the fact that some morons make their account name the same as their character name in-game. Of course, this safety measure can often prevent the same morons from accessing their own account, if they forgot to write down the random gibberish that is their user ID. You also get registered for a sweet e-mail address that you should give to all of your friends. Mine is x261610402427@pol.com. I’m not fucking kidding. There’s user-friendliness for you.
Note: Only e-mail me if you’re the chick with three boobs from Total Recall.
If you’re not a moron, but you move a lot like I do, and you lost the booklet where you kept your user ID, then good luck to you. Square-Enix’s customer service is the worst when it comes to account recovery. Well, actually, their customer service can’t even usually solve a simple problem. We’ll save that for another post, though.
The client offered potential. Five years ago.
I’m going to be fair here. I liked PlayOnline when I first started playing Final Fantasy XI, back in 2003. It seemed like a pretty cool way to organize your games, and keep all the people you play with on a separate friend list than the people you talk to on AIM, for example. So you could organize everything you wanted to do in-game with your friends without having to talk to them on AIM/MSN/TeamSpeak.
Its one downfall, perhaps, is that it is now limited by outdated technology. Because this system is used across two other platforms: the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 2, it is limited by the technology of the latter. That means if they invented a PCI card to serve the purpose of telepathic communication online, then PlayOnline would never support it. Consoles like the PS2 are not updated. Ever. At least not anymore. So PlayOnline is stuck in the past. Maybe forever.
Let’s go back to hating it real quick.
We’ve talked about how these game management systems can help you keep your games up-to-date either through downloading patches or purchasing expansions. PlayOnline does that absolutely flawlessly. Wait, I think I used the wrong word. Yeah, I meant absolutely shittily. As far as keeping your game up-to-date through content patches, why even discuss that? Every MMO does it. It’s not complicated technology. Final Fantasy XI has four expansions, though. These are: Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, and Wings of the Goddess. Rise of the Zilart came bundled with FFXI as far as I can remember. I think the only place it wasn’t bundled with FFXI at release was probably in Japan. Still, they offer registration keys for Rise of the Zilart through PlayOnline for … $9.99? What the hell?! In fact, they offer every key except the one for their latest expansion[2].
Let’s pretend for a moment that some stores sell just Final Fantasy XI, no expansion. $9.99 would be a reasonable price, but let’s put it down to $4.99. You go home, install it, and you want to buy the expansions through PlayOnline since you weren’t even told at the store they existed. Possible scenario, happens with some games.
- Theoretical cost of Final Fantasy XI alone: $4.99
- Rise of the Zilart: $9.99
- Chains of Promathia: $9.99
- Treasures of Aht Urghan: $14.99
- Total: $39.96(no taxes)
So you get the game, and three expansions for about 40 bucks. You don’t get the last expansion, though. Sorry. Not available through PlayOnline. On the other hand, they offer the game with all expansions at every store and Direct2Drive for…20 bucks? Wait, so the company sells keys for expansions that no one will ever buy, because they come bundled with the original game for a lot less money. Isn’t the purpose of digital distribution to save the users valuable time and money? And let’s remember, it’s Square-Enix selling their own games, through their own system, for more money than retailers. What is going on here?!
You might be thinking “man, you’re a dick,” but you’re also wondering “Wouldn’t returning players who didn’t purchase the third expansion want to buy it through PlayOnline? They don’t need a whole new copy of the game.” Actually, they don’t benefit, either. The third expansion(Aht Urghan) is sold through PlayOnline for $14.99. If you spend just 5 bucks more, you get that expansion, and the latest one. As well as a few extra keys you can burn or keep for when you lose your user ID and have to make a new account.
So, if you’re keeping score:
- PlayOnline is not user-friendly. You’re forced to write down or remember gibberish user IDs. You don’t need to type it in every time you log in, of course, but if you need account support(god forbid) or anything else, you’ll be asked for this information. Oh, you’ll also be asked for your registration keys. I guess the fact that you need support for their game is not enough proof that you bought it…What?
- PlayOnline does not save the user money. Buying just two of their expansions through PlayOnline would turn out as expensive as buying the original game and all four expansions at the store.
- PlayOnline stops running when a game launches. So you don’t get a sweet overlay, or anything like that to help you mess with settings while in-game.
Oh, and:
- PlayOnline helps prevent piracy.
It’s okay. I’m full of shit, too.
Look, my arguments are not that great. It’s possible that Square-Enix had no intention of producing a system to manage their games effectively, like Valve did with Steam. Maybe Square-Enix just wanted to have a way to handle billing for Final Fantasy XI without having to do it via browser. Wait. Shit, it doesn’t even do that better than paying via browser. My street address has a “.” character. You know, like “Apt. 4.” Couple of weeks ago, I wanted to renew my subscription and so I hop on, and put in my credit card information. It gets declined about 3 times before I contact customer service. Since in PlayOnline you cannot type special characters, like “.” their brilliant staff suggested I call my bank to tell them to remove the damn period from my address so I could pay for the game. I digress. Like I said, let’s leave their customer service for another post. We’re going to have fun with that one, too. There’ll be public notaries and calls to the FDIC…I know, I know. I can’t wait, either.
Getting back on track.
I have high hopes for game management systems. Even PlayOnline. With a few updates it could become the bullet-train of digital content and distribution systems. I really think that in the right hands, utilities such as these can save users a ton of time and money. The video game industry rapidly advances. Some think it’s going down the wrong path, and that developers no longer care about gamers. According to these people, it’s all about the money. They may or may not be right, I mean, it is a business and they want to make money; game companies are not charities.
One thing I am sure of is that the future of video games, and MMOs lie within these systems. Much like retail has moved from tiny mom and pop stores to Wal-Mart, Target, and other big box retailers. Hell, no one can argue that you can’t find quality goods at any of those stores. I believe the same will happen with video games. How will it affect MMOs? Just look at the Station Pass SOE offers. You can play a ton of games for one monthly subscription fee. Sure, most of them suck, but you have to start somewhere. Eventually someone might bundle good games under one subscription fee. I don’t know why you’d want to, but maybe we’re not far off from paying one low monthly fee to play Lord of the Rings: Online, World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy XI all together.
Slay a festive goat to win game-time and prizes in AoC
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Contests, Events, in-game
In keeping with the macabre nature of the Conan world, you won’t be helping orphans for Age of Conan‘s seasonal event. Nope. No delivering festive cookies to elves or spreading holiday love. Just hunting down mountain goats. Nothing says Christmas in Hyboria like a freshly slain and skinned goat carcass for that special someone. The problem in this particular case is that these “holiday” goats are in short supply — extremely short supply in fact, as there will only be one special goat per server. All the bragging rights (and prizes) go to one lucky person per server who manages to track it down.
There will be a hefty portion of luck involved in winning your server’s event, but Funcom is also providing clues to the goat’s whereabouts in the form of riddles on the official site. The events will take place on different days across the servers, and the goats won’t be in the same place either. Now we’ve got to admit that we were a bit slow to catch this (we’ll blame the spirit of the holidays for making us lazy) and some servers have already had their riddles posted and goats killed. However, if your server hasn’t had the event yet, then it will be either be on later today, or the 29th, the 30th, or the 31st of December. Each server’s winner will receive a pack of prizes (the same as the Season give-away pack) and two months of free game-time. Happy hunting!
Slay a festive goat to win game-time and prizes in AoC originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Mount & Blade, my game of the year!
For the last couple of days i have been completely hooked to Mount & Blade.
I did start playing a bit of The Chronicles of Spellborn, but Mount & Blade quickly took my attention away and is right now all i play.
Admitted the title doesn’t sound great, the graphics and character models look like 10 years ago but the gameplay is awesome.
Some of the “big” game makers should really take a look at this game.
This game is kind of a mix with RPG, action and strategy, but the thing they did very well was the horse/mounted combat, this is just awesome to play and it feels close to perfect (admitted it might not work perfect in an PvP environment but it works for PvE).
And then to think this game is (from what i have read) mostly made by a husband and wife team!!
This is definatly one of the most fun games i have played this year and really makes me wonder why the “big” gamemakers can’t come up with great stuff like that.
For me a game usually stands or falls with the graphics/character models unless the gameplay makes up for all and with Mount & Blade it definatly does, looking at the hours i clocked so far on playing this game (68 hours and counting) it’s my number one game for this year, even beating Fallout 3 for me.
So if you haven’t, definatly check out this game, there’s a full functioning demo out there that let’s you play the (full) game up to level 7 without restrictions.
I have to admit when i first read about this game and saw the screenshots i was not really interrested but after seeing IGN give the game an 8 in a review i decided to check it out and am i glad i did 
So looking at the amount of hours i played this game and the fun i am having i would probably say this is my game of the year!
Hmm, wonder what this game would be like with an engine like unreal or Gamebryo and a few tweaks here and there…..
New Seasonal Event Competition - Ten Ton Hammer
Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures will be joining the ranks of many other games this holiday season as they hold an ingame seasonal event for players to take part in. If you can be the one to win this event you will win an assortment of ingame items and two free months of play time.
In celebration of the days getting longer now and the turning of the sun, we will hold an in-game competition on each Age of Conan server.
Players will have to hunt and kill a certain mountain goat we will have spawned. The exact location where this specific goat can be found will be told in form of riddles which we will post here on the community portals. The location of the mountain goat will be different on each server to make it a bit more challenging.
Keep an eye out on the Season Event entries on the portal at 23rd, 24th, 29th, 30th and 31st of December. These will be the dates the competition will be held.
The event will run exactly once on each of the servers during the whole period of the competition (one single time on only one of the the 5 days mentioned above) so make sure you don’t miss the one running on yours.
To give you an idea, here’s an example of a possible riddle:“Between the sunset and the dark night.
Where the clans trade
and the lion sells his goods.”
The first line reveals the servername
The second line tells you about the playfield
The third line describes the exact spotThe first player to solve the riddle, finding the spot and killing the Mountain Goat will be declared the winner of that server.
Each winner will get a whole set of in-game items for Age of Conan. Each set contains:
- The brand new Snow Mammoth
- The War Mammoth
- The Killer Rhino
- Ring of Acheron
- Drinking Cape
- Bag of Holding
- Amazon Bow
- Totem of Origins
In addition, the winners also get 2 months of free game time.
So, what do you have to do again to win this prize on your server?
1) Check the Season Event entries on the community portal to read the riddle which will reveal the server, the playfield and the exact spot the Mountain Goat can be found at.
2) Go to that spot and find the Mountain Goat spawned there.
3) Be the first to kill the goat to become the winner and get the prize.
That’s it.
The winners will receive the codekey by e-mail to activate all of the above mentioned in-game items for his/her Age of Conan gameaccount. The 2 months additional free game time will be activated by Funcom directly on the account.
Happy hunting and good luck!
Exclusive Conan Movie Interview with Fredrik Malmberg - Ten Ton Hammer
The hype for the release of Age
of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
was enormous, and at Ten Ton Hammer we saw a huge influx of new faces
as the game neared its scheduled publication date. Over the last few
years, the popularity of Conan has continued to rise as Dark Horse
released a new comic book series, a new set of novels based on the Age
of Conan
mythos was released, and a single player Conan game hit stores. But the
one thing that hasn’t occurred as of yet is the release of a brand new
Conan film. As enormous fans of the franchise, the Ten Ton Hammer staff
took some time to track down Fredrik Malmberg, the president and CEO of
Paradox Entertainment (the company that controls the rights to the
Conan Properties) and talked with Fredrik about the latest attempt at a
Conan movie and how it might be tied in with the Age of Conan
MMORPG.
Ten
Ton Hammer: In articles about the film, it has been stressed that
staying true to the Robert E. Howard material is critical, how do the
writers plan on adapting his work for both true fans and a larger
audience?Fredrik: Very good question. My team worked closely with the
writers throughout the process, which has been more than a year now. It
is critical that we reach a bigger audience than the existing fanbase
to justify the budget, and yet we are dealing with an R-rated badass
hero with not all politically correct values. New fans need to
understand what made Conan who he is, so we focused on the character
traits that Howard gave us and hope that this will shine through.
Cities XL: First Look
I was recently sent an email from Monte Cristo Games about their upcoming SimCity style game Cities XL. Being a big fan of SimCity, I decided to take a look and was suprised to see how awesome this game looks. So why am I writing about a sim game on a MMO blog? Because Cities XL will be playable online and have many MMO features.
Once of the coolest things is that social networking with other cities will become very important to the success of your own city. Unlike SimCity where you have to build everything you need in your city, CityXL will allow you to make deals with other players to provide things you need, such as a garbage dump or power to run your city. Want to create a express highway from a big city to your waterfront resort? Well you’ll need to strike a deal with that player to do so. Players will also be able to travel around the world and visit other players cities via an avatar. You’ll be able to walk around and do some site seeing or you can go to designated areas where players hangout to socialize.
Another cool feature is that there is a tycoon type of feature within the game. So lets say your run a ski resort or amusement park, you can actually go into it and make changes. Perhaps lower prices, higher more workers, etc. I’m not sure how many features the tycoon part of the game will offer, but it’s definitely cool to have something like that in the game to add another layer of depth.
Stats will be a big part of the game, not only will Cities XL show you your standing against other players, but it also gives you in-depth information about the people living in your city. Age, income, education level to name a few, plus all the other stats you would normally find in a sim type game.
The global economy will be player based, so if you have a big and successful enough city you might actually have some effect on the global economy.
I’m not sure if the game will have multiple planets or how many cities can be on one planet, but we’ll try to find out for you. Cities XL is slated to be released in the first half of 2009 and is definitely one of the games on our must have list. If you choose to play online, there will be a fee to play, however there will also be an option to play offline for free once you have purchased the game.
Clan of Conan previews Update 4 and Xibaluku
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Previews, PvP, Grouping, PvE
We’ve already had a look inside the latest Clan of Conan newsletter, finding that there were shiny Kosalan talismans for everyone these holidays. Free jewelery aside, the newsletter also contains a great deal of information about what’s coming in Age of Conan’s Update 4, and a video of the new dungeon Xibaluku to boot. Xibaluku is intended for a full group of max-level players, and will be situated in the Thunder River area. After reading about it in the newsletter, you can click the “read more” link for an in-depth writeup of the dungeon.
Players won’t just be free to walk into Xibaluku. They’ll first need to complete a new solo dungeon called The Slaughterhouse Cellar, also located in Thunder River and to be released in Update 4. Those that venture deep enough into Xibaluku might find one of two new Undead social pets that are being introduced to the game, which are good for “spreading gloom and dreadfulness”, and probably scaring newbies in town.
Expect the PvP system to receive some tweaking in Update 4 too, with the “PvP resources” system set to debut. If you’re holding PvP resources to bring to an architect and get player-killed, you have a chance of them being looted by your assassin. Architects will need the resources to build and repair battlekeeps, and the hope is that epic battles will take place over the humble gathering nodes.
Clan of Conan previews Update 4 and Xibaluku originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Behind the Curtain: Multiple MMOs
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Age of Conan, EVE Online, Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, Star Wars Galaxies, Behind the Curtain
Is one MMO ever enough?
Lots of people play more than one MMO. Among the staff here at Massively, you would be hard pressed to find a writer with only one active subscription. Ever the exception however, I am a one-game kind of guy.
“Is that through choice, or necessity though, Craig?” I hear you cry. The answer is that it’s a little of both. It’s easy to say that I don’t have enough time to play a couple of MMOs, but if I was really honest with myself, I’d admit to that being a lie. If I’m able to free up a couple of hours every couple of nights to play World of Warcraft, then why can’t I alternate those nights, for example, between WoW and another game?
Continue reading Behind the Curtain: Multiple MMOs
Behind the Curtain: Multiple MMOs originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
