Future AoC plans from Funcom

Taken From: http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1303&table=CONTENT&item=1004

Guild alliances and "wonder of the world" building intrigues me as well as these "powerpoints" seems like some kind of Alternative advancement to me.

"Funcom and Eidos announce massive evolution plans for Age of Conan
Massive PvP update in June – New areas and dungeons – Powerpoints and Guild Alliance warfare to come

Durham, USA – June 13, 2008 – After the incredible initial success for Age of Conan, a whole world of MMO players are eagerly anticipating the future plans for one of the most popular online games ever released. While Age of Conan has already evolved massively since launch, numerous expansive additions are yet to come. Funcom and Eidos are therefore proud to lift the veil on Age of Conan’s promising future, and today the two companies reveal selected features which are now in production.

"While we have enjoyed the initial success for Age of Conan, we know that a solid launch is but the start when it comes to the MMO genre,” said Gaute Godager, Game Director on Age of Conan. ”As we look ahead we are preparing a huge amount of new content, and what we are presenting today will evolve Age of Conan even further. It’s naturally an incredibly ambitious update plan for a live MMO game, but we are certain our players would want nothing less.”

Without further ado, here are some of the cool things to expect in the months to come:

PvP evolved – To the Death

The great combat system in Age of Conan has taken MMO fighting to a new level of fun, and Player versus Player combat plays a major part in this. As a result, a massive new PvP update is planned for late June. Aptly called To the death, this update brings more consequence and rewards to PvP, and an important part of it is the Fugitive system. The more lower level players you kill, the easier it is for others to hunt you down. In addition, ten PvP levels with additional ranks will be introduced, as well as specific gear and weapons for PvP.

Guild Alliance Warfare

Preproduction has started on a MASSIVE free update which will come later this year. Currently titled "Kingship!”, large clusters of guilds will be able to form alliances, and rule and conquer on a massive scale. Everyone in a guild alliance will play a part in this system, and together they can even erect unique looking alliance Battlekeeps. The alliances can also fight over, and build, culture-specific "wonders of the world”, with a direct link to higher powers! As part of the system Funcom will also facilitate larger amounts of players in massive battles.

Powerpoints

This fall, a unique reward and character evolution system called Powerpoints will be introduced. This rewards active in-game behavior, and allows for gathering points through numerous methods, including owning a Battlekeep, playing the end-game at level 80, winning PvP matches, or simply being an active guild member or subscribing to the game. There will be many ways to obtain Powerpoints, and numerous rewards, ranging from exclusive Powerfeats to weapons, armor and potions. Powerpoints may even allow you to level faster!

New areas and dungeons

You won’t need to wait for an expansion pack to explore exciting new areas. In the next period, Funcom will include several new areas, as well as evolving already existing areas. This includes a brand new dungeon in Aquilonia, reshaping three dungeons in Stygia, and an entire mountain range in Cimmeria!

Improved player-made villages and Battlekeep systems

While the guild alliance system brings a whole new level to the game, Funcom will continue to expand the existing player-made areas and the systems running them. A focus on evolving the massive elements of the game even further continues, ranging from placing NPC’s in the cities to more choices and benefits.

Social updates

An MMO is nothing without a good social scene. While Conan is all about crushing your enemies, social enhancements are also getting some love. A fun example is the combo-based dancing system which is now coming to the game, and it’s entirely motion captured by professional dance artists.

More adventures

Age of Conan has received tremendous praise for immersion and the great voice-over quests. This is but the start of the adventure, and numerous new quests are coming into the game, spread across the entire world and across the level ranges. Soon 60 additional quests will also get full voice acting, further improving immersion.

Embracing community feedback Since launch several enhancements and fixes have been implemented to Age of Conan, and Funcom has continuously staffed up the service departments to improve customer satisfaction. This has already resulted in a better game experience, but the work will continue. At the heart of all of this stands the Age of Conan community. A lot of the upcoming improvements to the game will be based directly on community feedback, and the wishes and concerns players have when it comes to the future of the game will always be taken into account.

By reading the community websites, official forums and the monthly Clan of Conan newsletter you can expect additional information about upcoming features and released updates, as well as an arena to give your feedback. A new Clan of Conan newsletter is also going live today, with more detail on the upcoming features. http://funcom.cachefly.net/WebFiles/Newsletter/Issue17/

---

About Funcom - Funcom is an independent developer and publisher of online games for PC, consoles and mobile platforms. Funcom has provided outstanding entertainment since 1993 and continues to expand its track-record of more than twenty released games. Recent titles include 'The Longest Journey', 'Anarchy Online' and 'Dreamfall: The Longest Journey'. For corporate information please visit www.funcom.com. For information about Funcom games visit www.anarchy-online.com, www.dreamfall.com, www.darkdaysarecoming.com or www.ageofconan.com. Funcom is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker FUNCOM.

About Conan Properties International LLC - Conan Properties International LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Paradox Entertainment Inc., controls rights to Conan, many associated characters and the Hyborian world, as created by Robert E. Howard and various rights expanded upon by many acclaimed authors and artists. Many consider Conan the world's best-known fantasy character. For more information about Conan Properties International LLC, visit www.conan.com. For information about Paradox Entertainment Inc., visit www.paradox-entertainment.com.

About Eidos Interactive Ltd - Eidos Interactive Ltd is part of SCi Entertainment Group Plc (SEG) creators of some of the world's leading videogame properties. Eidos consists of offices across Europe and the US and several development studios including Crystal Dynamics, IO Interactive, Beautiful Game Studios and Eidos Montreal. The Group has a valuable combined portfolio of intellectual property including: Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex, Championship Manager and Just Cause.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners."

you and imoquala are teh forum ninjas, good find

now the sour puss:

allainces this early may spell disaster for illprepared guilds.

in guildwars we got allainces about a year in and it led to nothing but trouble for about a year for most guilds. (allainces were neccessary in guild wars for the reason that we had a lot of guilds who maxed out - 100- their membership limits)

here are problems with allainces we had
guild leaders not seeing eye to eye
allaince hopping
guild hopping between allaince guilds (members flopping back and forth)
arguments/bad discussions in alliance chat
guilds splitting to form more guilds to join the allaince.

if the only reason to be in an allaince for us is so we can build epic buildings then i say bollox to them we are large enough to build our own epics

here is also a problem with aoc and allainces, there are 8 battlekeep spots i beleive

so what happens when the battlekeep owners all ally together so they can lock out any other guild from having one

I read it as the Alliance Battlekeeps were different than the ones currently in game. I could be wrong though. I was thinking it would be along the lines of Alliance Vs. Alliance battles, and then there would still be the normal guild battles.

Here is something else to ponder on over the weekend too.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=82843

evilash wrote:you and imoquala are teh forum ninjas, good find

Who is this?

i am so sorry, was in a hurry


also even if there are sepearate keeps (which again is cool and excites me)

there is still the initial problem unless the new keep negates the old one and holding them is pointless.. hmmmm back to go post in aoc official

Alliances are for the lose. Unless of course you are the suck guild and wish to ride the coat tails of a much larger more uber, respected guild like ourselves.

Guild Alliance Warfare

Preproduction has started on a MASSIVE free update which will come later this year. Currently titled "Kingship!”, large clusters of guilds will be able to form alliances, and rule and conquer on a massive scale. Everyone in a guild alliance will play a part in this system, and together they can even erect unique looking alliance Battlekeeps. The alliances can also fight over, and build, culture-specific "wonders of the world”, with a direct link to higher powers! As part of the system Funcom will also facilitate larger amounts of players in massive battles.

This is no more than a "fix" for the screw up they placed from the start. (mostly effecting FFA PVP servers) It was my prediction smaller guilds would continually get stomped by larger guilds,(imagine having your entire city smashed overnight after all the $$ and resources put into it)... why? Because there are asshats by nature and because they can. All the slaughtered lambs cried out and Funcom heard them. Now they call it a feature, it's really a fix.

And by "fix" I mean adding another problem to cover up the old one. Who the hell needs alliances when you're a fine guild to begin with.

Guild alliances can be either good or bad. In shadowbane guilds could sign up as subguilds. This had many advantages. 1 small guilds could have a city to call their own, even if it was the larger guild's they could still live in/use it. Smaller guilds got to participate in the massive sieges in that game. Also many small guilds could come together to take on a single massive guild.

Unfortunately this was abused to the nth degree. I played on dread server and i was part of a guild alliance, Leigon 7 felix, we controled most of the ice continent. The main guild on the server was The Black Watch. They had most of the guilds on the server sworn under them, and had most of the territory controled with their cities and subguild cities. So they basically had near unlimited resources and personel to wage war with. leading eventually to my guild and several others just leaving the server and the server had to be eventually shut down. I also heard of other massive guild alliances being forcably disbanded and then the members banned when they tried to reform it. so its a double edged sword.

Sorry to any former TWB members, its been a long time and some of my facts may be wrong.

there is really no bedrock for aoc to do this but one thing that helped guildwars balance alainces was the power resources (towns) that were meant for allainces to control also weakend them by about 10 percent every day(or week i cant remember)

my numbers may be off and they may have adjusted it but let me give an example (well thought out by guildwars people too in my opinion)

THE place to own for one faction was a town called Cavalon(there are other towns but this was the top), so lets say it costs a million "faction" to own it (bear in mind it was owned by the top slot so whichever guild had the most "faction" at any given time owned that town)

Faction also went down like 10 % a day(or week) so if you had a million faction then your guild had to grind out 100,000 faction a day (maby it was a week) just to not have a negative affect. This was true all the way down the line, if you had 10 faction you would loose 1 faction a day/week.

by doing that it created a "the bigger they are the harder they fall" and to this day still allows good competition among allainces.



so, one way this could be avoided is some degrading debuff on the allaince that grows with their number or acomplishments, aka give allaince keeps a degradation or erosion process so that the more stuff they have the more they have to maintain and upkeep.

idk no one will ever read this thats important so i'm just spouting

I am too important! Like the concept.

evilash wrote:there is really no bedrock for aoc to do this but one thing that helped guildwars balance alainces was the power resources (towns) that were meant for allainces to control also weakend them by about 10 percent every day(or week i cant remember)

my numbers may be off and they may have adjusted it but let me give an example (well thought out by guildwars people too in my opinion)

THE place to own for one faction was a town called Cavalon(there are other towns but this was the top), so lets say it costs a million "faction" to own it (bear in mind it was owned by the top slot so whichever guild had the most "faction" at any given time owned that town)

Faction also went down like 10 % a day(or week) so if you had a million faction then your guild had to grind out 100,000 faction a day (maby it was a week) just to not have a negative affect. This was true all the way down the line, if you had 10 faction you would loose 1 faction a day/week.

by doing that it created a "the bigger they are the harder they fall" and to this day still allows good competition among allainces.



so, one way this could be avoided is some degrading debuff on the allaince that grows with their number or acomplishments, aka give allaince keeps a degradation or erosion process so that the more stuff they have the more they have to maintain and upkeep.

idk no one will ever read this thats important so i'm just spouting

Too late I read it. I like the concept of that, though. What was the turnover rate with that system?

fairly good all they way up to the top but the top one might not have switched more than once every few weeks or so

also realize first the only benefit was entrance to an elite area (with a workaround) and cheeper nominal goods (keys and such)

the elite area entrance was taken away and given to all

so with the idea in mind that there really wasnt much of a benefit more than bragging rights i would say the turnover was pretty good.

granted i havent checked in months

Kingship
http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2533&table=CONTENT

Powerpoints
http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2534&table=CONTENT

PVP
http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2535&table=CONTENT

This sounds interesting.

*editted* for stupidy

I feel like we could always ally with the smaller guilds. One, we help out the underdogs which can help keep ballance. Second, if we ally with a few small guilds, there is strength in numbers! There is plenty of time to think, debate, and poll on this.

Different personalities, different ideas, different directions. This holds true with guilds, no differently than people.

Rhuu wrote:I feel like we could always ally with the smaller guilds. One, we help out the underdogs which can help keep ballance. Second, if we ally with a few small guilds, there is strength in numbers! There is plenty of time to think, debate, and poll on this.

I too like the idea of allying with smaller guilds for various reasons.

1: If we help them get on their feet they feel indebted to us and are less likely to mutiny when the going gets tough.

2: A small guild usually consists of a tight knit group of players who can function together well and in PvP will likely act like a well trained merc team.

3: Big guilds tend to have more of a sense of "sovereignty" and dont like to have demands made of them and will tend to place their own interests before their allies. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, unless you're the ally that needs their help. Allying with multiple smaller guilds means that just because one of them cant assist, doesnt mean none of them can assist. With a big guild it's usually all or nothing.

Edit: I'd also like to mention that I totally understand if we're not in favor of jumping aboard the alliance ship just yet. Too early for alliances and all that jazz. However, I feel that in the long run they will be inevitable if we're to retain our guild integrity in the PvP world. Sure, we can always add more members but that in and of itself holds dangers of it's own.

I suppose this is one of those cross that bridge when we come to it scenarios, so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Brakkish wrote:Different personalities, different ideas, different directions. This holds true with guilds, no differently than people.

/Agree

I read powerpoints and immediately thought of slideshows. I guess they could be giving "Death by Powerpoint" a completely new application!

Good ole Air Force, we can't get enough of those presentations.

I'm really psyched about all of this. The powerpoints thing especially. It sounds like you'll be able to make your character grow by just playing the game and not by monotonous grinding...

PVP gear makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

In regards to Alliances, it seems more or less all you would use that Alliance for is to have ownership of an Alliance keep. It would be pretty simple for each guild of the Alliance to take turns defending, or use a certain amount of defenders. All the Alliance members would in theory receive the benefit of such a place. Everyone benefits. Much in the same way we have members who are going to raid with other guilds to learn the lay of the land, a similar premise could be entertained in this instance. Problems usually occur when one group reaps all the benefits while another one feels like used tp.

As for different guilds having differences, that's true; however, just like the interview process and making sure a new member fits our play type, guilds can be talked to similarly. I would wager that there are a fair amount of guilds on the server that aren't hardcore and share at least some of the attitudes of this guild.

well after reading everything, you guys seem to be making great points... of course i havent left torage yet so i dont even know how the real game is yet lol....

i just like that funcom is doing things and planning things that are big a great.

After the incredible initial success for Age of Conan, a whole world of MMO players are eagerly anticipating the future plans for one of the most popular online games ever released. While Age of Conan has already evolved massively since launch, numerous expansive additions are yet to come. Funcom and Eidos are therefore proud to lift the veil on Age of Conan’s promising future, and today the two companies reveal selected features which are now in production.

"While we have enjoyed the initial success for Age of Conan, we know that a solid launch is but the start when it comes to the MMO genre,” said Gaute Godager, Game Director on Age of Conan. ”As we look ahead we are preparing a huge amount of new content, and what we are presenting today will evolve Age of Conan even further. It’s naturally an incredibly ambitious update plan for a live MMO game, but we are certain our players would want nothing less.”
That makes me lol a little =)