Age of Conan going free-to-play, 'Unrated'
The MMORPG will relaunch this summer as Age of Conan: Unrated, under a free-to-play model with an item shop and premium subscriptions.
Mere days after the third birthday of Age of Conan, developer Funcom has announced that the MMORPG based upon Robert E. Howard's fantasy stories will be relaunched under a free-to-play model this summer. On top of that, it's planning a burst of good, old-fashioned sex and violence for all to enjoy.
With the launch of Age of Conan: Unrated, as it'll be called, all and sundry will be able to download and play the MMO completely free. Age of Conan will become funded by an in-game item store, selling "exclusive content such as weaponry and mounts" for real money, and optional "premium" subscriptions. Funcom says these subscriptions are the same as the current regular subs, which cost--now, at least--$14.99 per month.
As is typical for free-to-play MMOs, non-premium members will face a number of restrictions. An FAQ explains that free players will have fewer character slots, be only to play certain classes, be blocked from Sieges and certain dungeons, be stuck riding slow mounts, and suffer various other annoyances that are generally tolerable when you haven't paid a single penny to play.
Going 'Unrated' will also let Age of Conan reaffirm "its position as the sexiest and most savage MMO in the world," Funcom says. The team plans to create new content that's "even more true" to Howard's original stories and their "barbaric, brutal and sexy setting."
A number of high-ish-profile MMOs have made the switch from regular subscriptions to a free-to-play model in recent years, including Dungeons & Dragons Online, Global Agenda, The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest II, Champions Online, and, soon, Hellgate: London.
Funcom separately announced yesterday that it's also working on new content based upon the upcoming movie Conan the Barbarian, set twenty years after the fantasy flick.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Age of Conan going free-to-play, 'Unrated'.
The MMORPG will relaunch this summer as Age of Conan: Unrated, under a free-to-play model with an item shop and premium subscriptions.-
Alice, why does it have to be this way?
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I meant her constant double posts, but please, continue
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wow, it's sad to see that happen, but GOOD!
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This game deserved more of a chance. The combat system was great.
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How so? It was just the same shit as other MMOs, except you had to hit a few buttons in a particular order rather than any order. And doing so made no real difference in how the game played...you still just stood in front of guys clicking icons on a bar.
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Unless I'm forgetting something, your basic attacks were still on an action bar like any other MMO. I tend to click rather than use keys.
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AoC featured a physics based combat engine. That is different from all other MMOs which use a static-model for combat.
What the fuck does that mean?
Age of Conan combat tracks the movement of your weapons. A sword hits only if it impacts the model. Damage scales are used to adjust for level differences, stats and deflect/block effects. Spells land only if the spell effect actually reaches the target. Most MMOs (WoW, DCUO, EQ2, etc), use a static model where the animation has no effect on if the hit lands or not. Instead, it calculated by a dice roll, then has damage applied on top of that.
This did cause some interesting bugs, like female animation for the assassin class being slower than the male animation, so female assassins did less damage. (This was eventually fixed by slowing the male animations down).
This physics-based combat is completely unique in the MMO genre. No other game does it because of its lag-tolerance and high client/server calculation requirements.-
Some people will be confused by the spell effects (since games like WoW and EQ2/DCUO, etc) feature 'spell effects' animations. In AoC, unlike those other games, the damage is directly tied to the effect. That is why it is a physics-based model.
For games like WoW, spell effects are pure graphic eye-candy and are not used for calculations. WoW cannot track when an animation/effect hits the player model. This is why certain boss fights are more difficult for lagged users, since the client-side effects will not play before the effect happens. WoW's combat engine has no way to know when an effect reaches a player model. It just does a ray-cast the moment the spell is fired (or lands), and the server assigns damage. This is why you'll see spells travel through other people, objects and terrain before 'impacting' on a player. WoW example: Druid Wrath spell.http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/68186.jpg WoW/EQ2 and DCUO try to get around this for certain spells by spawning them as a physical object in the world and having them track towards a target. If this spell-object can interact with other players (/objects) and the server calculates a collision, it will deal its impact damage or fizzle. WoW example: Ley-Guardian Eregos's Planar Anomaly sparks (these will track a player through other objects, dealing an AoE pulse [LoS calculation though objects] of damage).
In AoC this is not possible as the damage is -directly- tied to the spell effect. The effect has to hit the player model (from the server's perspective) to deal damage. If objects/players move into the spell effect as it animates, they will get damaged as if they were the target of the spell since AoC calculates the physical trajectory without needing to create a spell object. This lowers lag on the server and client and provides a more consistent experience for players, as spells that 'impact' will not track them through objects (like land or building).
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While I'm here, let me add that there is no game coming out that will match AoC's advances in this field.
GW2 uses a traditional static-combat engine (as far as I've seen), as does Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2. All those are RPGs.
So far, only ToR has a slight update to this model where it does 2-player animation tagging (you can see an example of this in AoC during fatalities. It is when 2 players will suddenly 'snap' into a position while some 2-character animation plays). ToR supports a dynamic version of animation tagging for melee fighters when using lightsabres. The attacks will be matched together between two combatants making it look like they're actually sword dueling. This is, of course, entirely inaccurate since the combat engine is static and impacts are calculated based on dice rolls (exactly like WoW), but it makes it look more dynamic.
It of course breaks down if you have more than 2 fighters. At that point it switches back to the traditional static animations where the characters just flail animations and damage is dealt based on orientation, distance and a dice roll.
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See my post above.
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It was an interesting alternative, but I hated the way they handled elites.
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first 20 levels rival anything I've ever played in a fantasy setting. It's really good.
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All my old characters are probly on that list of not allowables. Loved this game for a short time, it just never clicked with me for long term though. Between the gear and stat revisions, and the absurd amount of time clicking nodes to upgrade cities/get resources, it kinda drove me away.
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As someone who invested a lot of time officering for a release guild that went on to get T3 city + Battlekeep I have to say that my experience with the developers of that game was by far one of the worst in any MMORPG I've ever played. The complete lack of any kind of player-developer feedback during beta and in the shitstorm that ensued MONTHS after release was pretty appalling. Every patch, break 2 things fix 1 thing, ignore 2000 other basic problems with the game. For FIVE months their item system was completely unbalanced and they did absolutely nothing to make amends. You've probably heard horror stories of the game's PvP where Guardians (at first) were one shotting EVERYTHING regardless of hp/heals/buffs/armor and then soon enough EVERY class was one/two shotting everyone else because of plain stupid item design decisions. The designers/developers for that game are just plain dumb. If you're not going to listen to player feedback, fine. But then at least do the job correctly by yourself
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Yes, exactly. It's increasingly proving to be a viable model for online games. Halfassing it like this just creates more issues and imbalances.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/05/11/-
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post the article. I got this from Massively news announcement:
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=166952
so what part is "really really bad" in comparison to lotr-
It's incredibly restrictive and looks like nothing short of a free extend-trial. 2/3 of the classes are premium content leaving a pretty large pay-to-win incentive. You lose access to premium content as soon as you go back to being free. You lose access to characters who are premium classes after you revert to free. Sounds awesome.
What made LOTRO f2p model work was that you payed for the content you wanted as you progressed and the content was a la carte and once you owned it, you owned it. You could also earn achievements in-game that could be spent to unlock more content. It's very casual and not game-breaking.
It looks like a terrible model and a desperate cash grab. I loved AO and I liked the concept of AoC but it was a broken game. Maybe I'm just someone who got burned at launch and am just a bitter lad. Maybe it is better now. I'm not inclined to download the 28gig install to find out. Feel free to do so.
Please, explain why you think it looks good.-
"2/3 of the classes are premium content leaving a pretty large pay-to-win incentive."
how so? the classes that are free are just as capable of kicking ass as the premium ones; they're just specialisations of the core free classes anyways
"You lose access to premium content as soon as you go back to being free."
and? why is this odd? why pay if you have access to all content?
"You lose access to characters who are premium classes after you revert to free."
this is just silly. what did you expect to happen? you pay for a month, revert to free play yet retain everything that was a paid premium? why would anyone pay beyond the first month?
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You're right. You win. This will be a raging success with the content so good droves of people who are currently subscribing to will continue to do so forever and all the f2p will boost the game population even more. Look for dozens of new servers popping up everyday. Compelling endgame....
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Like I said, I would suggest they go full F2P with payment options that don't mess up the game. Not halfass F2P with only a small handful of classes and features being free, creating major class population imbalances and introducing a second class of players that can't do anything meaningful with their paying friends. A severely fractured playerbase is poison to an online game, it just pisses people off and sours them on the whole thing.
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I'm pretty sure Riot is doing pretty well with that game too
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NICE, I love the free to play model. I never feel obligated to play all the damn time like I did with WOW. If anyone hasn't tried lotro I suggest you give it a try. I've been playing it for about 7-8 months and I've spent only like 13 dollars for quests packs which you are not forced to buy anyways. I tried the AOC trial and that was a good game too.
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Fuck yes. More people is all it's missing at this point.
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I feel that way about Brink. I just had to throw that in there.
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Haha. I love the article for one really funny and sad reason - Pirates of the Burning Sea also went free to play.
But they didn't advertise it. So no one knows about it. -
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