AOC - Kingship revealed - Huge upgrade planned!

[Bubba Grizz]

Kingship revealed - Huge upgrade planned!
Posted: - 13.06.2008

We will be doing a lot of improvements and additions to Age of Conan in the weeks to come, and we will be sure to tell you about it. But let’s also take this opportunity to gaze deeper into the glass ball, to see what awaits us in the future – later this year!

Okay, so we’re not ready to give you all the juice on it just yet – this is, after all, some months away from going in the game. But we want to lift the veil a little bit, as we feel that this is such a powerful community builder that it deservers some anticipation!

The tentative name for this update is Kingship, but that might change as we move close to patching it onto the servers. This is basically an update that will introduce some very groundbreaking new features into Age of Conan, such as guild alliances, legendary battlekeeps, and so-called Wonders of the World. And some other, secret stuff!

The Kingship upgrade will also be rooted in the Powerpoints system, and we will be introducing several new features and content. Here is some of what you can expect!

Guild alliances

We want to allow guilds to get together and form alliances, creating strong accumulations of power that can take on some of the biggest challenges on the server, and we will be employing various tools for them to create a strong common identity for the alliance.

Here is a list of some of those tools:
Alliance flag – you will be able to acquire a flag that you can carry around on your back, and this flag can be customized for you alliance.
Alliance cloak – you will also be able to acquire a cloak that you can customize for your alliance, showing everyone what gathering you hail from.
Alliance chat – of course, just as with guilds you will be able to share a common chat channel with all members of all the guilds in the alliance.
Alliance name – you will be able to select a name for the alliance, and that name will be shown after your guild name and your character name.
A guild alliance will be quite a political entity, and this among other things involves holding elections to choose alliance leaders and such. Rest assured, guild alliances will have plenty of tools at their disposal when they set out to conquer the known world!

Legendary battlekeeps

Already in the game your guild have the opportunity to build player cities and eventually also conquer battlekeeps. We will, of course, be improving these functionalities as well as we move ahead in the coming months. Kingship will also expand on this feature.

Situated next to the three big cities – Conarch, Khemi and Tarantia – will be something called legendary battlekeeps. Massive constructions that can be seen from inside the major cities themselves, and there will only be three of these in total in the online world – one for each capitol city. Conquering these battlekeeps will be the ultimate challenge!

Guilds will effectively have to team up with each other and become alliances if they want to have any chance of conquering a legendary battlekeep. These will be gigantic battles, and we are aiming for over 300 players to be involved in the battle simultaneously!

That also means we will be doing some technical improvements to the massive battle system to allow for this great number of players in one battle at the same time.

Wonders of the World

These battlekeeps will all have different benefits to provide the alliance that owns it, and they will all be visually very different from each other. You can customize and build upon your legendary battlekeep, just as you would with the “ordinary” battlekeeps.

Another feature we will be introducing with this upgrade is Wonders of the World. These are powerful constructions rooted deep in the identity of that nation (e.g. the “Golden Lion of Tarantia” for Aquilonia) and they look epic and magnificent. Each nation has two of these wonders, and they can be built in the legendary battlekeep for that nation.

Building these wonders is a huge effort for anyone in the alliance, and will involve a lot of team work. Once you have built the shell of the wonder in your legendary battlekeep, other guild alliances can steal it and bring it to their city – so you need to protect it!

The benefits of owning one, two or more of these wonders (can you steal all of them?) is beyond anything you can imagine, but those details are to be revealed at another time!

[Kaldaur]

This just taken from the main website today. An interesting idea for dealing with griefers. What do you guys think?

PVP Evolved - Drastic Enhancements Coming!
Posted: - 13.06.2008

Did you know that the majority of Age of Conan players is playing on servers flagged for player vs. player activities? We do, and this month we are about to introduce a slew of drastic improvements that will breathe new life into this important gameplay feature!

Following the launch of Age of Conan we sat down immediately and started fleshing out some ideas for what we wanted to do with the PvP (player vs. player) features in the game, and now we are ready to reveal it to you. All of these changes, additions and improvements are expected to hit within the end of June or very early July.

Here are some of the exciting things you will see pop into the game any day now.

PvP consequences – the fugitive system

No longer will evil misdeeds go unpunished. Of course, Hyboria is ruthless and barbaric so don’t expect anyone to deal out justice just because someone smacks you about with a very heavy axe, but some justice is actually now being introduced to the world.

This is where the fugitive system comes in, presented in a set of colors defining your fugitive status – from blue to orange and eventually the deadly red.

Everyone is by default classified as “blue”, but your actions as a player killer will affect your fugitive rating. If you kill someone way under your level, you will notice that you will very quickly move to red. So will actions such as killing someone repeatedly, or other general unfairness. The more serious the crime, the quicker you rise in fugitive.

Obtaining red status will be quite painful to you. This means that other players can kill you without rising in fugitive level, and if they manage to kill you while you have red fugitive you will actually drop one of your better items and gold that they can loot!

Of course, turning red will be a double-edged sword. Sure, it will get you a lot of attention and many will probably see you as a danger to be avoided. But at the same time, people will hunt you down for your items and your gold so be very, very careful!

PvP levels, ranks and PvP gear enabled



Now it is very important that we underline the fact that the fugitive system is not meant to punish player killing. It is only meant to punish unfair player-killing. Player killing in general is a central part of Age of Conan, so we also want to reward you for it!

That’s why we are now activating PvP levels. Soon you will be able to gain PvP levels by simply engaging in such activities, and there will be 10 such PvP levels in total.

However, that’s not all. Once you have reached the 10th PvP level you will be able to earn special PvP ranks beyond that. These are very hard to acquire, and you will lose ranks if you get defeated so it’s a constant battle to keep you rank up. And you will want to both gain PvP levels and keep your PvP rank up, as this will give you very exclusive benefits.

That’s because we will be introducing PvP specific gear in this update. You will be able to seek out a special vendor that sells this gear, and if you can afford it and you have the required PvP level (or PvP rank for some higher level items), then you can buy it!

PvP gear will come in all shapes and sizes. Some will be class and race specific, while some will be usable by everyone. Below you can take a look at some of the gear that we have available in our internal builds right now. Of course, a lot more will be available!

General fixes and improvements to PvP



Of course, improving PvP in Age of Conan is not only about introducing such high-profile features and content. It’s also about making various small changes, fixes, improvements and additions needed to make it a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

We will be doing various fine-tuning, and the patch notes for this update will of course contain the specifics. But let’s take a look at some of the changes that we are making.

First off, we are introducing a dueling functionality. This allows players to duel each other, both on PvP and PvE servers, without any serious repercussions. It also allows players on PvE servers to engage in PvP without having to go into the PvP mini-games, allowing them to test their grit (or solve an argument) against each other directly!

We are also doing major changes to the way damage is handled in PvP (without going into any more specific details right now), and we are also making it so that you can not attack members of your own guild (now you can duel instead, of course).

Other changes you will observe are for instance improvements to the “charge” ability that all soldier classes have. If you charge someone you will stun them, making it much more useful. Casters will also see major improvements, so keep your eyes out for more news!

[Winnow]

AoC developers continue to impress with their high activity in squashing bugs, tweaking classes and development of new content and game mechanics. I need to find some time to play!

[Bubba Grizz]

Did you create another character Winnow? It shows that you haven't been on in like 10 days or so.

[Winnow]

Did you create another character Winnow? It shows that you haven't been on in like 10 days or so.

No that's accurate. I hit a wall at level 42!

Have you caught up to my level Bubba?

[Kaldaur]

You guys are playing on a PvE server right? My game and new computer will be here in a couple of days, and I've been trying to decide what server type I want to play on. The player built cities will be in PvP-enabled zones, correct? I want to PvP, but I don't want it to disrupt my leveling and grinding sessions.

[Winnow]

You guys are playing on a PvE server right? My game and new computer will be here in a couple of days, and I've been trying to decide what server type I want to play on. The player built cities will be in PvP-enabled zones, correct? I want to PvP, but I don't want it to disrupt my leveling and grinding sessions.

Yeah, there's PvP zones on PvE servers. I recommend going that route. Some of us are on the Thog PvE Server.

[miir]

Without PvP, AoC is a mediocre game at best.

[Spang]

Without AoC, Miir is mediocre at best.

[Bubba Grizz]

I'm close. I hit 36 the other night but my play time has been limited as of late. I am only now hitting the fields of the dead. Which should level me up pretty quick. I'd like to do some dungeons but I have yet to group with anyone since level 14. The guild I am in has a bunch of people but no one talks.