Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“More than 700.000 gamers have registered an Age of Conan account so far,” say the boys at Funcom. That means that it’s in second place behind World Of Warcraft’s twenty-nine-gajiloplex players. I have to admit that I’ve now lapsed and haven’t touched Conan’s glistening textures for over a week. I’ve no intention of going back any time soon. I do want to get to that whole fortress-building stage, but there’s just too much else distracting me. There’s so much good material in Conan, but I lack the time and the in-game chums to want to bother. Eve, TF2 and a host of other toys will keep me entertained.

What about you, denizens of RPS? Are you still beating down the barbarians?

As well as announcing that Turbonegro (above) will be contributing exciting punk rock music to their MMO, Funcom have released some details about what to expect from the next few updates to Age Of Conan. Top of the list is changes to PvP to deal with the ganking of lower level players, as well as some specific PvP gear, in a patch which should appear towards the end of the month.

Rather more excitingly Funcom are now talking about a free update appear later in the year which features guild alliance warfare. This will allow the guilds to be able to team up and “erect unique-looking alliance battekeeps”. This does sound intriguing, I just hope it doesn’t lead to the over-the-top super alliance situation now faced by Eve Online. Needless to say, all this alliance stuff is just a part of attempts to improve and expand on AoC’s endgame, the player-built villages and Battlekeeps. I’ll try and pen something about that in a few weeks, once I’ve pushed my warrior woman up a few more levels.

After the jump: the excerpted relevant bits of the latest Age Of Conan press release, and why I’m not actually sexually excited by Conan updates.

Read the rest of this entry »

For people keeping score. Griefing: very funny. Benny Hill theme: makes me want to die.

After Kotaku’s highlighting of Age of Conan’s Best NPC Of All Time (above) I was reminded to ask Tom Francis at PC Gamer UK to post his account of what is probably the Second Best NPC Of All Time, Thedret The Exaggerator. Possibly my favourite story of an in-game bug, ever.

I love my Thedret because no-one else has one. It took Valve six years to make Alyx a likeable aide, but this piece of sloppy code has made Oblivion’s Thedret far more important to me.

If I could have anything, I would have a Thedret like Tom. Anyone have any other nominations for what I will now call “The RPS Inadvertant Best NPC Awards 2008″?

Age of Conan, with modest to decent coverage in the earliest days, continues to proclaim impressive numbers.

Not only did Funcom declare that a million signed up for the open beta, and indeed boast that the Collector’s Edition sold out pre-launch, but now it appears to be one of the fastest selling PC games of all time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blizzard appear to take a very approachable attitude toward rival MMOs. But then, I suppose if I were a 5000 foot mountain, I’d probably not make too big of a fuss about the surrounding hillocks spoiling my view. However, it’s nice that they don’t take the attitude of “DESTROY THEM! DESTROY THEM ALL!” In fact, they’re humble enough to concede that their reign will one day come to an end. Speaking to Eurogamer, producer J. Allen Brack explained that he doesn’t see Age of Conan or Warhammer Online as enemies.

“We don’t make games in a vacuum, we don’t just play World of Warcraft, I love online games, I play a lot of online games, and I’m really excited about those games coming out because I want to play them… I think there’s room for all three of those games to be successful.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Age of Conan’s open beta should certainly provide a decent stress test of the servers. Eidos announced this morning that the game’s had one million people sign up so far. Biggest ever? Funcom and Eidos (cautiously) think so. Funcom’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Morten Larssen, says,

“Funcom has not been able to find any higher beta numbers for MMOs in the western world. We believe it represents the largest ever beta sign-up figure in the history of the genre.”

While throwing figures around they report 800,000 people signed up to their newsletter, and 115,000 posts on their forums. We’ll have more about Conan soon, when we report our findings in the beta. Meanwhile, Rock, Paper, Shotun is proud to announce over 8 million typos have now appeared, and the posting of the 400 billionth comment about piracy. Handshakes for everyone.

Dear me, a few days ago the fine-feathered folks at PC Gamer put my preview of Age Of Conan on their website and I didn’t notice. That’s being remedied RIGHT NOW.

Be tantalised by this excerpt, and read the rest here:

Six months ago, Conan looked to be in a spot of bother. The beta began, and the players let out a unified “Erk”. The problem? The combat. In trying to move away from the standard MMO fare, Conan’s esoteric approach to online fighting left many players bemused. Now, only about four months from the delayed release date, it’s that element of the game that’s seen the most work.

The good news is that it’s still different enough from every other MMO to be interesting. The better news is that it’s very easy to play. Perhaps even too easy. Every enemy in the Robert E Howard-inspired game has three points where they can be attacked: left, right and above.

At last we have some evidence of the mounts in Age of Conan, and they look pretty good. Using eyes, watch:

Parts 2 and 3 below.

Read the rest of this entry »

See, using the word “bonanza” implies something exciting, doesn’t it? But does it ever amount to more than there being more than one of something? No. No it doesn’t. Here’s more than one video preview of forthcoming PC games! Below are clips of Age Of Conan, Conflict: Denied Ops, Faith And A .45, MTB Target and Marble Blast Online.

Read the rest of this entry »

Something I meant to write at the bottom of the Age Of Conan preview was that I fully expect the game to slip to the summer. Somehow I forgot to write it, and today it was announced that there’d be no sign of it until May. I’d have looked so knowledgable and astute. Pretend like I wrote it, eh? I’ll extend that prediction and say we’ll not be in Hyboria until July.

Anyhow, to keep us interested with the longer gap, a tech demo has been released by Funcom. No, there’s no need to go looking for it – it’s right here!

Thanks, Gametrailers. You can ride on the back of our rhino any time.

Read the rest of this entry »