Comments on: Conan FAQ and… Fallout Online?

By: Bildo

Bildo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:11:00 +0000

AoC’s certainly on my radar… can’t wait till others know more about it.

Check out some of the info out there on the siege system and city building… it’s going to be one hell of a game.

By: SmakenDahed

SmakenDahed — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:14:06 +0000

A couple of cool things about AoC (from videos I’ve seen) –
- the quest givers appear to be Oblivion-like where you drop into a cinematic view and seem to have a number of possible replies. It’s almost like they have implemented the conversation tree type system we saw in NWN. Apparently there won’t be any accept/decline or yes/no type quest interactions.
- it looks like the combat swing buttons are mapped to 1 (attack the left),2 (attack the middle), and 3 (attack the right) but looking at some of the recent UI shots, these appear to be on the hotkey bar in slots for 1, 2, and 3. I’m guessing this means if you’re uncomfortable trying to move with WASD (or ESDF) while pressing 1-3 to attack, you can always use your movement keys and mouse click the attacks on the hotkey bar. (Personally, I don’t like having all the attack and movement keys so cluttered together – it reminds me of Gothic 2 where you had to hold down control and that switched your move keys to attack direction keys and that meant you couldn’t really attack and move)
- the graphics seem pretty cool, as does the character customization. I’m not sure about settings and scalability, but I heard (or read in the FAQ/boards) they have support for DX10 and multiple processors (see their recommended system spec which backs this up to some degree)

Anyway, the FAQ is pretty good. They also have some decent class descriptions and links to TTH interviews about each class – which aren’t too bad.

This one was off my radar for awhile, but now it’s back on. >

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:14:21 +0000

Keep in mind that whenever you see “MMORPG experience” listed in a wanted ad, “MMO” is being used to describe an increasing variety of games. For all we know, whatever they’re working on could be less like WoW or Warhammer and more like Hellgate: London.

Like Exeter, I stopped paying attention to AoC when I realized they were going the EQ2/Vanguard route of kill-your-PC graphics. I’ll look at it whenever I buy my next PC, but I’d rather start with the optimal AoC experience than play the game early and hate it for taunting me like the peasant that I am.

By: Pixie Styx

Pixie Styx — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:23:27 +0000

I would expect the graphics to be very scaleable in Aoc, and i would guess if you can run eq 2 on relativly high level settings then you can run Aoc on similar levels. Also I remember correctly Brent or Darren said the demos they saw at GDC were in dx 9 and were gorgeous. So you are not going to loose to much ‘atmosphere’ by playing on windows x as opposed to vista.

By: Tipa

Tipa — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:03:48 +0000

I have no idea whatsoever how AoC will perform on a standard system. I play on a laptop so upgrade opportunities are slight; games either work or I can’t play them. EQ2 and Vanguard work, though.

Graphics are important to a point, but I think a problem with a lot of modern games is setting the bar so high. Everyone points to WoW, but really… they play on Windows (all versions), Mac, Linux, and it looks decent on all of them. Blizzard never said you should upgrade your computer to play, as Brad McQuaid so famously said about Vanguard. They set low specs and made the game work on them, even though Ironforge could get awfully laggy at times — you could still play on anything, anywhere.

When I look back at my favorite games — Adventure, Nethack, EverQuest, WoW — I can’t really think I would have had more fun if the graphics had been better (or if they had graphics at all — I tried to get into graphical versions of Adventure and Nethack but they just don’t do it for me). EQ2 and VG should have taught everyone that high-end graphics are not a path to success for your game; it’s more important that ALL your players have a great viewing experience in your game rather than the select few with great hardware. If that means less realism, then that’s what that means.

My enjoyment of the original EQ was not diminished at all just because trees and campfires were two dimensional cut-outs, nor would I have enjoyed it more if they had launched with proceduraly-generated 3D trees — ESPECIALLY if it killed performance even one little bit.

By: Pixie Styx

Pixie Styx — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:07:20 +0000

I wouldnt say that there system specs are set that high … as to being upfront with the specs … maybe they are and until you play it remains a mute point

By: Exeter

Exeter — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:04:06 +0000

Well, I guess I’m not going to bother with AoC anymore since I barely meet the “required” system specs and I’m way too skeptical in the future of any MMOs now to invest in an upgrade in order to meet the specs for a ‘recommended’ sytem. I doubt that I’ll be able to enjoy a lot of the stunning visuals I’ve been reading about on my system and, in the end, that’s a killing blow. After all, in my opinon, the whole point of an MMO is to immerse myself in an environment and really oogle at the stuff flashing across the screen. Somehow I’m just not able to ‘get into it’ if I have ground looking like a poorly groomed putting green and water that looks like a wobbly blue mystery jelly.

It’s a shame since I was really looking forward to trying out their new combat system, brawling in a tavern, stomping on people in PvP and romping around in a world that seems to have a real edge to it rather than the shiny fantasy of most MMOs I’ve played.