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Tonight we downed Ahazu, AND Incubus/Succubus. I would like to thank everyone for sticking it out over the past month or two. It can be difficult learning a boss. The end result was worth it however.
Everyone did an awesome job, and we hope to be killing this boss more in the very near future!
As always, we had fun, and kicked ass. Thank you Ravens!
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| Thursday, March 04 @ 23:33:41 CST |
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| News: Community Update - December 18, 2009 |
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Community Update - 18th December
Friday again and it's time to reflect the past week:
Unique Holiday Offer: Unlimited Free Trial
Funcom announced a unique holiday offer for Age of Conan. Anyone who downloads, registers, and starts playing the trial before January 1st, 2010 will be able to enjoy all of levels one through twenty – the entire Island of Tortage experience – without ever having to upgrade to a full account or pay a subscription fee. This unique Unlimited Free Trial campaign is only available until January 1st as a special holiday offer to anyone who wishes to experience the savage world of Conan.
All the details about this offer can be found on the community portal right here.
Production Update
Update 1.06 is on our public testing servers and we encourage everyone to head on over to check it out. The Live Producer has informed us that the team has already received loads of feedback and encourages everyone to send more. So if you haven’t already, check out this thread to find out how you can get on the public test servers and get involved.
In addition, the Live Producer has conveyed that development has been going great with the polish for the update. They will continue to take in the feedback, continue to have the QA teams grind out the latest builds and continue to release new builds throughout the coming weeks. That way the team can get as much done with the 1.06 Update before the holidays officially kick in for the Conan team.
Facebook and Twitter Competition
The holiday season is upon us and Funcom is ready to give away some great prizes. All you have to do is join one or all our games on Facebook and Twitter (the more you join the higher your chance of winning) and get the chance to win prizes like free game time for all our games, Rise of the Godslayer beta access, a spot in the future The Secret World beta test, in-game items for Age of Conan and lots more.
Join before the end of 2009 to be eligible to win. Winners will be notified by Funcom through Twitter and Facebook.
Funcom on Facebook:
Funcom on Twitter:
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| Friday, December 18 @ 11:42:31 CST |
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| News: Community Update, December 11, 2009 |
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The first iteration of Update 1.06 has arrived on the Testlive servers yesterday for you to check out and test. The Guild Renown System, new Tier 3 Raid instance and a new Raid Loot Token System are the main additions but there are many other tweaks and improvements to check out too. You find an overview including links to more detailled articles about the main new features on the forums here.
Beginning of this week, we held an exclusive live presentation of the 'Rise of the Godslayer' expansion on XFire. If you missed it, you can check out the video of the complete demo which is available on XFire.
There were also numerous articles and interviews published on various websites this week covering both information about Update 1.06 as well as impressions of the Rise of the Godslayer presentation:
Update 1.05.7.4 which was deployed this week to the live servers fixed some of the latency issues many of you have been experiencing. We are however aware that some are still having these issues. Our technicians are hard at work to find a solution for this and we expect to have another maintenance downtime next week. As always, we will announce it as soon as we have all the details ready.
And 'fresh from the press' so to speak: there is an exclusive "Rise of the Godslayer" Developer Diary video available on Incgamer today. In this video Communications Director Erling Ellingsen, Game Director Craig Morrison and Lead Designer Joel Bylos talk about the "Rise of the Godslayer" expansion. You can find the video on Incgamers.com.
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| Friday, December 11 @ 10:28:23 CST |
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| News: Update 1.06 Overview ***ON TESTLIVE NOW*** |
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::: TWO ADDITIONAL ARTICLES ARE POSTED BELOW THIS - SEE THE AOC FORUMS FOR THE ORIGINAL THREADS :::
Update 1.06 Overview
The first iteration of Update 1.06 is now available on the Testlive servers for our players to check out and test. You will find instructions here on how to access the Testlive servers and the separate Testlive forums where you can discuss the update and give your input.
Together with various changes and improvements, Update 1.06 also introduces new features and content to Age of Conan. The following overview highlights the most important ones and also includes links to articles which describe them in a bit more detail:
Guild Renown
Guild Renown is a new leveling and reward system for guilds in Age of Conan. Members of guilds can experience their epic adventures as they normally do today while contributing to their guild’s Renown simply by playing the game. There are three types of Renown; Valor (PvE), Glory (PvP), and Artistry (Crafting), which broadly describe three different play styles. As players progress in game, they will be able to progress their Guild Renown for the entire guild and unlock awesome rewards to be shared with each member of their guild. Guild Renown has a maximum of 20 levels to be achieved by the entire guild.
Every week, Age of Conan will rank the top-earning guilds, not only in total points earned (of any kind), but also in the total Valor, Glory, and Artistry earned for that week.
This article here provides further details about the rankings and rewards for each of the 20 Guild Renown levels.
New Tier 3 Raid Instance: "Toth-Amon's Stronghold"
Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold is our new Tier 3 raid instance. It has seven boss encounters, including Thoth-Amon himself. In addition players will encounter some of Thoth-Amon’s most powerful allies, both new ones and some they might have met, or at least heard of, before - like Hathor-Ka.
Toth-Amon's Stronghold can be accessed by talking to the Raidmaster to get attuned for Tier 3 and afterwards entering Toth-Amon’s castle located in the city of Kheshatta.
Read this article to learn more about this new raid instance.
Raid Loot Token System
Update 1.06 also adds something the players have been requesting for a long time – a token system for raid loot. The token system is added to Tier 1 and Tier 2 as well as Tier 3 raids. Hopefully this will help alleviate some of the randomness (or perceived lack thereof) in the loot drops.
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| Thursday, December 10 @ 14:23:31 CST |
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| News: Update 1.06 - Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold ***ON TESTLIVE NOW*** |
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Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold is our new tier-3 raid instance. It has seven
boss encounters, including Thoth-Amon himself. In addition players will
encounter some of Thoth-Amon’s most powerful allies, both new ones and
some they might have met, or at least heard of, before - like Hathor-Ka.
There are also several new items and quests that will be introduced
with Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold. As in any raid instance the loot is very
important and there should be new interesting items available for
everybody to enjoy!
Story wise this will conclude not only the main raiding thread, there
are others who are interested in the dealings of one of the most
powerful men in the world and his allies. As Thoth-Amon has gathered
many of his most powerful allies in his stronghold the extent of his
power becomes quite apparent. Some are probably already aware that
Thoth-Amon is the force behind a lot of the problems in the world;
including your own misfortune at the start of the game but now it may
just be as apparent.
As far as the encounters go I don’t really want to give away too much.
But who knows: perhaps someone will have to pay the ultimate price,
like having the Mark of Acheron reapplied, and maybe washing up on a
beach near Tortage, again? Ok, so maybe we won’t do that. We do hope
the encounters will prove a fun and interesting challenge for
everybody. I’d dare say the foundation we’re building our raid
encounters on has improved radically since Wing 3 was released, and I
think that will be reflected in the encounters.
Finally, we’ll be adding something the players have been requesting for
a long time – a token system. The token system will be added to tier-1
and tier-2 as well as tier-3. Hopefully this will help alleviate some
of the randomness (or perceived lack thereof) in the loot drops.
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| Thursday, December 10 @ 14:20:28 CST |
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| News: Update 1.06 - Guild Renown ***ON TESTLIVE NOW*** |
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OVERVIEW
Guild Renown is a new leveling and reward system for guilds in Age of Conan. Members of guilds can experience their epic adventures as they normally do today while contributing to their guild’s Renown simply by playing the game. As players progress in game, they will be able to progress their Guild Renown for the entire guild and unlock awesome rewards to be shared with each member of their guild. Guild Renown will have a maximum of 20 levels to be achieved by the entire guild and the Renown or level does not go with the player when they decide to leave the guild.
TYPES AND RANKINGS
There are three types of Renown - Valor, Glory, and Artistry, which broadly describe three different play styles. Valor covers most “PvE” activities, including killing monsters and completing quests. Glory is in turn the “PvP” type of Renown, primarily gained through mini-games and sieges. Finally, Artistry is the Renown type gained through crafting. Your guild can choose to focus on whichever of the three you prefer – any combination contributes to your Renown points and levels. The types are primarily of interest to those who want to top the Rankings.
Every week, Age of Conan will rank the top-earning guilds, not only in total points earned (of any kind), but also in the total Valor, Glory, and Artistry earned for that week. Although each guild can only gain a certain amount each of Valor, Glory, and Artistry every week towards their Renown level, they can earn as much as they want towards Rankings. The only restriction is that for each guild, only its top fifty members are counted towards their Rankings. We anticipate that competitive guilds will each find different strategies for climbing the Rankings, depending on the play-styles of their most active members.
REWARDS
Renown has a variety of rewards, from stylish new horses to new city buildings to arenas and dueling grounds. Add to this over twenty new quests and twenty new companions and there’s plenty to look forward to. As your guild gains more Renown levels, keep an eye on your city, as vendors may update their wares or citizens and gain new quests.
This is an incomplete list, and subject to change! PvP-related rewards in particular are not yet listed, as well as several convenient adventuring rewards:
Level 1
- A Collector moves to your city, stocked with interesting valuables and amusements, including dice and coins for games of chance, ritual knives, and prayer books.
- A Court Manipulator moves to your city, selling King’s Pardon and Confession Letters, to allow the wealthy to adjust their outlaw status, or lack thereof.
- The Guard Captain at the Barracks in your city (if you have one) allows city-members to hire out bodyguards, which protect against wild creatures while you harvest.
Level 2
- The Collector upgrades his wares to include seasonal headwreaths.
- A Brewmistress moves to your city, selling longer-lasting, “Purified” versions of standard level 40, 50, and 60 mana, health, and stamina potions.
- Your city supports small decoration location objects – you can now build shrubs, banners, pillars, and sculptures on these location objects. Architect and Weaver recipes for these are sold by a Sculptor, City Gardener, and War Merchant.
Level 3
- A Seamstress, Brothel Madame, and Leatherworker move to your city, selling social, gender-specific clothes to men or women. Only men can buy from the Leatherworker, only women can buy from the Brothel Madame, and the Seamstress sells to both genders.
- The Brewmistress upgrades her wares to include convenient level 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 Restoratives, to give simultaneous potion-benefit to stamina, mana, and stealth. She sells them individually, or by the crate.
- The City Gardener gains a few more shrub decoration seeds for sale.
Level 4
- An Ex-Innkeeper moves to your city, selling improvised weapons for social “barehanded” combat.
- Two cloak vendors move to your city, each selling eleven colored varieties of cloak – one sells the Ragged style, the other sells Buttoned.
- The War Merchant gains more banner decoration recipes for sale, and a Stoneworker selling pillar decoration recipes moves to your city.
Level 5
- A Horse Armorsmith moves to your city, selling pale, dark, and umber varieties of horse armors.
- The Sculptor upgrades his wares to include more recipes for sculpture decorations.
Level 6
- A Farmer moves to your city, selling pet chickens, pigs, and sheep.
- The Brewmistress upgrades her wares to include Sneezing Powder, a consumable which prevents targets from stealthing.
- Your city supports centerpiece decoration location objects – you can now build centerpieces of type sculpture, wood, stone, or flesh. The Stoneworker in your city upgrades his wares to include centerpiece recipes, and a Woodcarver moves to your city to offer more decoration recipes.
Level 7
- The Ex-Innkeeper upgrades his wares to include a blueprint for a new Tavern city building.
- The Court Manipulator upgrades her wares to include a Traveling Merchant’s Contract, allowing you to summon a merchant to sell to, from anywhere.
- The War Merchant and Stoneworker upgrade their wares to include more decoration recipes. A Visionary bearing more decoration recipes moves to your city.
Level 8
- A Settled Nomad moves to your city and offers a quest to adopt a half-tamed animal from Stygia, such as a komodo or cheetah.
- A Reverent Settler moves to your city and offers quests to explore the world, in exchange for a pet crab and owl.
Level 9
- Two more cloak vendors move to your city, offering the same eleven color varieties in two new styles – Swept and Roped.
Level 10
- The Horse Armorsmith upgrades his wares to include a Swift Shemite horse, complete with colorful silks.
- Your city supports the building of a Megalith, somewhere in the wilderness of your city’s region. When built, tese Megaliths grant a celestial bonus to mana-tap, health-tap, or stamina-tap to any visitor, depending on what Astrolabe is used in its presence. The Visionary upgrades his wares to sell the recipes to megaliths and astrolabes.
- A Bearded Barbarian moves to your city, offering quests to earn four varieties of Cimmerian ward banner decorations. Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to sell Cimmerian-themed decorations.
Level 11
- The Ex-Innkeeper upgrades his wares to include a blueprint for a Tavern II city building.
Level 12
- Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to sell Stygian-themed city decorations.
Level 13
- A Scholar of Equestrian Arts moves to your city, selling manuals to teach your horse to dance or bow on command.
Level 14
- The Collector upgrades his wares to include thoroughly tamed, wearable critters – a rat, scorpion, spider, and snake, all trained to cling to your upper arm indefinitely.
- The Collector also upgrades his wares to include a recipe to weave the Bag of the Renown, offering more inventory slots.
- Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to include Aquilonian-themed city decorations.
Level 15
- A Local Warmonger moves to your city, offering a quest to earn the Stygian Halfbreed horse mount.
Level 16
- Your city Keep gains a trapdoor down to a cultural retreat, including the comforts customary to taverns (food, drink, chairs), and a dueling area in which guild members may fight each other at will. In Stygian cities this area takes the form of Ritual Chambers, in Aquilonian cities it is a Council Forum, and in Cimmerian cities it is a Feast Hall.
- The Visionary upgrades his wares to include improved, higher-tier Megalith recipes.
- Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to include Acheronian-themed city decorations.
Level 17
- A Retired Scout moves to your city. The Retired Scout, Settled Nomad and Bearded Barbarian each offer a new quest, only to Aquilonians, Stygians, and Cimmerians, respectively. Aquilonians are rewarded with a fox companion, Stygians with a sawtooth companion, and Cimmerians with a wolf pup companion.
- Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to include even more Stygian-themed city centerpiece decorations.
Level 18
- The Ex-Innkeeper upgrades his wares to include a blueprint for a Tavern III city building.
- A certain patron of the arts in Tarantia posts an advertisement in your guild city, for qualified architects to study under a master sculptor and learn four Aquilonian statue city decoration recipes.
Level 19
- Two mysterious women, the Unseen and a Silent Practitioner, move to your city. The Unseen, the Silent Practitioner, the Local Warmonger, and Reverent Settler each offer two new quests, only to rogues, mages, warriors, and priests, respectively. Each quest reward is a piece of unique social headwear, and a choice between three unique (and mutually exclusive) companions.
- Various decoration vendors upgrade their wares to include even more Acheronian-themed city centerpiece decorations.
Level 20
- The Unseen offers a new quest to all fellow predators, to hunt the rumors of a strange creature. All such hunters are eventually rewarded a surviving Tarpani Stallion.
- The Collector upgrades his wares to include a recipe to weave the Bag of Prominence, offering even more inventory slots.
- The Visionary offers more varied-looking Megalith recipe
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| Thursday, December 10 @ 14:18:04 CST |
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| News: Age of Conan Update 6 preview |
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Hey everyone check out IGN's preview of update 6! Read up on the all new Guild Renown and Tier 3 raids.
Age of Conan is about to experience one of its biggest updates ever and we've managed to get some of the early details directly from Funcom. In Update 6 players will experience a brand new Renown system for guilds, confront the evil Thoth-Amon in a new dungeon, and even fight alongside Conan himself.
Check out the full article here
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| Friday, December 04 @ 11:17:55 CST |
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| News: Community Update, December 04 2009 |
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Already Friday again so here's the short overview on the past week and also some information about what might be coming up next week.
On Monday the latest Letter from the Game Director was published, bringing interesting news about the show in Korea together with the latest status of the 1.06 update including information about some of the plans to further balance melee users and casters. If you haven't checked it out already, you can read the letter here.
A few weeks ago we mentioned that the community portal's layout and presentation had been slightly revamped. In the meantime we added a few more pictures and also updated some of the texts to reflect most of the changes done since launch. This is still an ongoing process so we will keep on adding a few things here and there. Please note that you now also can follow Age of Conan on Facebook as well as Twitter .
For those of you who haven't seen the announcement yet ... there is a 'Rise of the Godslayer' Live demonstration happening on XFire next week on Monday 7th December at 20:00 GMT (check this link) to find out what time this is in your timezone. The play session will be streamed on the XFire website and is accessible to everyone. Visit XFire for more information. The presentation will also be available afterwards on XFire for those who didn't get the chance to follow it live.
Now to the topic I bet everyone has been waiting for: Update 1.06. As much as we would have loved to put the update to the testlive servers this week, there are still a few things that need to be fixed first. As mentioned in the past few weeks, the update is coming along very good and we were able to get rid of quite a few issues that kept it from being testable by our players. There remain however a few minor issues that make it impossible to thoroughly test the new features such as guild renown as well as the Tier Three gameplay. It just wouldn't make any sense to put it on testlive when the new features would not be 100% available for testing.
We are very close to get these issues out of the way and are confident that Update 1.06 will be ready for testing very, very soon. We will keep you informed throughout the next week about the current status of Update 1.06 as soon as we have news on the subject.
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| Friday, December 04 @ 11:03:52 CST |
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| News: Letter from the director, November 2009 |
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This month has been a bit hectic with work on the next major update alongside the work on the expansion and managing to wedge in a trip to Korea for the GStar event in Busan. This has meant that it was a little bit of a rush for me between all the travelling to prepare this text. So I have to extend my apologies to the other language forums as there might be a little delay before this text is available in all the localized versions since I was late with the text! Trying to write a coherent text from airport lounges is always a little challenging! I didn’t want to miss the month though!
Postcards from Busan
The show in Busan went very well. Our partners at Neowiz did an amazing job of presenting the game. The show-floor booth was very well put together and they put on a wonderful show for the Korean players. It was great to see people enjoying the localized version and getting to grips with Age of Conan for themselves.
Online gaming is more established and the number of choices of available titles for the Korean gamers is wider. It is a very competitive market and it will be really interesting to see if we can make some inroads into that market with our own game. It's definitely a daunting challenge, but an enjoyable one all the same. We make games for the people that play them, and one thing that visits like the one this week confirms for me is that there is definitely the appetite for good online games there!
What’s coming up…
The team is busily preparing the 1.06 update for the test servers this week. Prepare to see a lot more information on the update as soon as the update is available for testing. We will have full preliminary release articles for the features for you all to digest.
We are really looking forward to getting the feedback on the Guild Renown and the tier three raiding. It has been a few weeks of hard work resolving the technical issues that popped up after 1.05.6 and we are looking forward to catching up with the 1.06 progress.
Looking at the balance.
The next major update to the character development system will be in the form of the Alternate Advancement system that comes with the expansion. That said, we are looking at a few areas where we can make some minor adjustments prior to the alternate advancement system. In the course of the 1.06 series we will be making a series of changes based on the balance concerns surrounding the balance between melee users and casters, in particular on two areas – crowd control and stamina usage.
In terms of the crowd control we are going to be making some significant changes to the crowd control abilities. Specifically we are looking at reducing the range on the majority of the casting class’s crowd control abilities. The intention is to not have those abilities be something that allows people to keep someone at range, rather they will become escape abilities more than ‘pinning’ abilities as they will require your target to already be inside melee range.
Combined with this we will be preventing the casting classes from utilizing stamina potions. This should significantly reduce the duration of the casters ability to ‘kite’ melee players, while still reserving it for escape situations or well timed usage.
Obviously we will be testing these changes during the course of the 1.06 cycle testing on the test servers.
The remainder of the feedback is being taken into consideration when the systems team is working through the new feat trees, combos, spells and abilities for the Alternate Advancement system.
See you in Hyboria!
As we head into December I am really looking forward to being able to get the 1.06 update really put through its paces. Keep your eyes out for the preliminary update articles very shortly and I hope you all enjoy the month in Hyboria!
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| Tuesday, December 01 @ 16:57:05 CST |
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There are currently, 9 guest(s) and 2 member(s) that are online.
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A Donation of $9 keeps the site up for a whole month!
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Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name. |
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