Tagged News: midway

The official site has been updated with an article dealing with the epic story line of Forochel and the challenges associated with writing it.

The Content team for The Lord of the Rings Online has been working day and night to bring you our latest free content update; Book 13: Doom of the Last-king! Due to the solo nature of the Bay of Forochel the majority of Book 13 will be soloable as well, but players should expect to have to team up for at least one chapter against the denizens of this icy region.

Check out the rest by clicking below.

The winners of the LotRO loading screen contest were announced on the official forums today. Two winners were selected that will become part of the in game artwork:

Congratulations can be offered in this forum thread.

Funcom's game designer Jason Stone chatted with AbleGamers.com about the upcoming release of Age of Conan. Here's an excerpt from what Jason had to say:

AG: So, lets jump right into this if you do not mind, I have read every inch of your website and there is nothing there that does not make me giddy, but for our readers that have not combed over your site like I have, what sets your game apart from the countless titles that are live, or in the pipeline?

JS: A lot of things set Age of Conan apart, but the two most key of those are definitely the fact that we are working with the Conan license and the writings of Robert E. Howard, and the emphasis on a deeper, more action-oriented experience.

AG: If you could just pick one thing, from an impressive list of features, about your game that is just revolutionary, what would you pick and why?

JS: I would have to go with the combat system. It just is so much fun to chop away at multiple mobs at a time performing combo's and maybe getting a fatality. Making the act of play as fun as the achievement and exploration elements.

Read the rest at AbleGamers.com

NextGen.biz is also featuring an interview today. This time, editors talk with the game's director, Gaute Godager.

This combat system is more action-oriented than many other MMOGs - do you think this reflects a change in RPGs in general?

It's an interesting question. Many people have likened MMOGs to an Excel sheet, particularly in terms of combat. I think that's all well and good - I made a game like that myself. But I think inspiration from other more action RPGs like Knights Of The Old Republic have made me think about what else we can do on the internet that really drives activity and gives a sense of being there. I don't know if that's a general move for RPGs but it's a change akin to moving from strategy games to realtime strategy games. It's a natural evolution of people's interests; they want to have a different type of experience whilst keeping the old experience at the same time.

Great article. Read it!

Eurogamer is featuring an interview with the developers of Age of Conan.

Eurogamer: When you look at games like WoW and their audience, there are a lot of children playing them. Have you got any way of preventing children from playing this game, which clearly isn't suited to them - or do you just leave it up to the parents, since it's really their job?

Ole Herbjornsen: We do have a German version, which is going to be scaled down compared to the US and UK versions. Other than that, of course you'll need to have a Visa card - well, if your 14 year old son manages to get hold of a Visa card and go online, there are far bigger problems you have to worry about. We don't have retina scanners or anything!

Erling Ellingsen: We do also have pre-paid game cards. We can't keep underage children from playing in the game - it's just impossible. We just have to trust in parents. It's their responsibility.

Ole Herbjornsen: We've definitely seen in our community feedback that the most interested group of people, in terms of age categories, is 18 plus. The highest levels of interest come from people even older than that.
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Erling Ellingsen: Besides, the average age of an MMO player is supposedly 27.

It's a pretty extensive interview and worth the time to read.

Allakhazam .com had a chance to sit down and talk with Funcom's Jørgen Tharaldsen, who was keen to answer many questions regarding Age of Conan's lore, combat and crafting:

Tomec: When developing the combat aspect of this title, was there a specific goal in mind that you wished to attain (other than providing the best possible experience, of course), and is there a specific point of influence that you can attribute any of it to?

Jørgen: I think the vision was to give you a more hands on experience, something more active. We started this in 2003. We all felt that the combat in MMO was kind of stale. They were all pretty similar. They were quite static. They were very strategic. There was a lot of involvement. They were quite static in the sense that you can issue a combat and push a few buttons and very often you can sit back and its like a whack and go game by pushing a few buttons. And that's cool and all but then all online games since 1997, since Ultima, but still now we have the Conan game which is all about being barbarians and being brutal and fighting and we need an innovation for this and this is what we are going to do, we're going to make it better and this is how we're going to do it. So the goal was not to just make something better, but also to see how we could evolve the genre. With Anarchy Online we came up with stuff like instancing and lots of innovations which are now standard in the genre and everyone uses them, and with Conan we singled out combat. That's the key element of it and giving that ability. It has been a long, long, long journey to get where we are today, but I think it has paid off. You see it in the PvP and so it has paid off. The vision stayed from 2003. There haven't been any changes in the vision. We haven't had to have a change in the vision. It's simply a matter of improving the experience and the innovations of it. So that's the story - it remains the same. Then you get to level 40 and you can start fighting from Horseback and from the Mammoths and the Rhinos. Then you get to level 60 and you get to the sieging and there is an escalation in the combat, because now there is 6 versus 6, but then you get to 60 vs. 60 and there are Horses and Rhinos and siege weapons. You can build your own Battlekeeps and they are huge and you can rent mercenaries and the system you use for PvP can also be used for signing up as a mercenary. So if you are part of a guild you can just jump into the guild warfare. So it's going to be a pretty escalation of it as well...

Read the rest at Allakhazam .com.

Massively previewed Age of Conan at the recent Eidos/Funcom press event and scored an interview with Funcom's Product Developer Jørgen Tharaldsen. Massively also took several gameplay videos of the game in action while Tharaldsen answered questions about mature content, classes, magic and more:

Massively: So first of all, one of the big questions is, we know that this is more adult-oriented, so I expect that you're probably going to get that AO rating?

Jørgen Tharaldsen: No. We're going for Mature rating because with the AO rating we're going to be locked out of retail chains pretty much all over the world. And Conan was never an AO universe per se; it's not that gross. We're not really speculating that kind of violence, it's more like an inherent nature of living that kind of life that Conan did. So we've done everything in our power to push the barriers in terms of how far we can stretch it for the ratings boards to be within what's reasonable. If anything, when you read the comics and novels, they're a lot more brutal than what we are doing. We're going to the ratings boards right now. So actually you have seven different ratings boards to go to in the Western World, and they allow us to place certain parameters of what we'd like the game to be, and then we can twist like the horror value, the fatality value ...

Massively: So then it'll be localized by region?

Jørgen Tharaldsen: It will be server-side. Through your IP we can control what kind of content you'll see, so let's say you come from Germany, you might not see all the fatality moves, but we hope you will see all of them, we'll know soon when we hear back from the ratings boards, whereas in the US you might not see nipples. But you probably will see nipples in Norway, for instance...

Read the rest at Massively.

Today we have the chance to learn a little more about another class that will be present within the online world of Age of Conan. This time around the class interview will be talking about the Assassin. The interview took place with the Ten Ton Hammer network

Ten Ton Hammer: Out of all the Rogue classes, the Assassin has really been the only class without a detailed preview. Why has it taken so long to get specific details about the Assassin class to the general public?

Evan Michaels: Assassins were one of the more major "theme mergers" - bringing together the Lotus Master and Defiler classes into one - and as such has required a bit more work to fit everything together compared to some of the other classes, like the Guardian or Priest of Mitra that have been around for quite some time.

Given that the Assassin class has undergone so many changes over the last year, naturally it has ended up further down the list in terms of the order we approach class previews. In the end, however, we've been very happy with how the Assassin turned out and feel that it will be a very enjoyable class to play.

You can read the full interview here and be sure to discuss it on our boards!

TenTonHammer continues its coverage of Age of Conan's Soldier archetypes with the Conqueror class. Funcom's Product Director, Jørgen Tharaldsen, was ready to pass on the relevant answers and more:

Ten Ton Hammer: When looking through the lore of Conan, he held many titles including being dubbed Conan the Conqueror. What sort of lore and story elements did you create to develop this class? How did you decide which skills they would use?

Jørgen Tharaldsen: Aye, I think that is one of the great things about King Conan, his diversity. He absolutely lived his life to the fullest and that diverse "bring it on" approach is definitively something we have tried to achieve with our classes too, including the Conqueror. I am not saying that you can become a conqueror, barbarian, thief, reaver, chieftain, corsair, mercenary, soldier and pirate through choosing just one class, though (unless you are a mighty fine roleplayer and pretending it up that is *winks*), but rather that the Conqueror class in our game is also about diversity and choice.

When it comes to the lore background of the Conqueror, there are many references to this class inside the Hyborian universe, both on Conan, and others. I found this quote from our lore master inside a document, which says a lot I think:

"Conquerors were born on the blood soaked battlefield of Venariun when the finest soldiers of Aquilonia clashed with the Cimmerian hordes and the conquest of nations was at stake."
- General Pallantides of Aquilonia

...When it comes to the concept behind the class I asked system designer Andrew Griffin on the reasoning he had when he first started to flesh out the class several years ago, and he said "The concept behind the Conqueror class was for a non-shield using offensive type tank. They were envisioned to be the warlord type of character, who led from the front by virtue of their martial might and inspiring leadership, a more rugged and raw fighter than the Guardian. Hence they focus on either dual-wielding or using two-handed weapons, forgoing the defense of a shield in favor of rending their opponents apart."

Read the full interview at TenTonHammer.

Funcom's outspoken Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen reconfirmed, in a Gamesblog interview, the mature content within Age of Conan, and pulled no punches on their targeted adult audience:

Tharaldsen: One of the first thing we actually set down when we started to discuss the game four and a half years ago, was are we being true to the Conan license, are we taking it as it is in the books, comics and movies... We were very clear from the first moment, most people who play online games are adults...we didn't wanna soft down what the license is about. This means that you can enter this world, you can cut off heads, you can chop around, you'll see titties, you'll see prostitutes. We'll just try to fill the role in the parameters of the license...

Watch the full interview on Gamesblog.