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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
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| Developer(s) | Funcom |
| Publisher(s) | Funcom Eidos Interactive[1] |
| Designer(s) | Craig Morrison, Game Director and Game Producer Rui Casais,[2] Lead Programmer Erling Ellingsen,[3] Product Manager |
| Engine | DreamWorld Engine using SpeedTree [4] |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360[5] |
| Release date(s) | Microsoft Windows NA May 20, 2008[6] EU May 23, 2008[7] Xbox 360 |
| Genre(s) | Low fantasy MMORPG, online RPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer (some single player gameplay) |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: M PEGI: 18+ |
| Media | DVD-ROM, CD, Digital download |
| System requirements |
[Minimum]
CPU: Intel Pentium IV/AMD Athlon 3200+ or higher CPU Speed: 3 GHz/2.1GHz System Ram: 2 GB Operating System: Windows XP SP2 or Vista Drive Type: DVD Drive 4x Speed Free Disk Space: 27 GB Video Card: 768 MB DirectX 10 Graphics Card with Shader 3.0 support (Nvidia Quadro 5600 or higher or better) Video Card Features: -Video Ram: 128 MB -Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required -Video HW Transformers, robots in disguise & Lighting: Required -Vertex Shader Ver: Required - 2.0 Supported - 2.0, 2.0+, 3.0 -Pixel Shader Ver: Required - 2.0 Supported - 2.0, 2.0+, 3.0 |
| Input methods | Keyboard, mouse, gamepad |
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Norwegian computer video game developer company Funcom for PCs.[5] The game launched at 9 p.m. (GMT) on May 17, 2008 in a limited way, being available to those who had pre-ordered the game and registered for early access. The full release of the game for North America was May 20, 2008 and for Europe May 23, 2008 for the PC version.[9] Although originally announced as being available for the Xbox 360, the console version is at least a year behind schedule.[8]
Hyborian Adventures is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan itself takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Howard's sole Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon.[10] Hyborian Adventures' release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan franchise.
Like many other MMO games, there is a monthly subscription fee. The suggested retail price of an Age of Conan subscription card is $29.99 (€19.28) for two months. Another available option is a recurring monthly subscription plan paid online by credit card, usually costing $14.99 (€9.63) a month. Discounts can be obtained when subscribing online by purchasing multiple months of play time simultaneously; however, the first month is free.
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Characters in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures are created on a user account on a particular online server. Characters created on one server cannot be played on another; however, Funcom is planning to have a server transfer process for characters after the game is launched. Players create characters which function as their virtual avatars in the online world of Hyboria. When creating a character in Age of Conan, the player may choose from three playable races. The character is one of four archetypes (in bold) and one of three class selections for each archetype. There have been hints of more playable races with expansions, but due to the game's current failure in updating patches, providing content and low server population; future expansions are more than likely not going to make it through its development phase.
| Aquilonian | Cimmerian | Stygian |
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Rogue
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Rogue
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Rogue
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Priest
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Priest
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Priest
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Soldier
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Soldier
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Mage
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From an IGN interview with game director Gaute Godager of Funcom:
| “ | We call the engine Real Combat, and it is based on six directions, or ways, of attacking an opponent with a sword. First, you can hack down against the head. Second, you can slash diagonally down from the right, while the third is slashing the same way from the left. Fourth, you can thrust against the torso. Fifth, you can slash diagonally up from the left, and sixth, you can slash diagonally up from the right. The point here is that these directions lend themselves naturally to being strung together in combinations. These difficult combos unlock additional damage and faster combat, if done well.[11] | ” |
Funcom has said that their "Real Combat" system, a combat system designed to offer more real-time options than traditional Dungeons & Dragons-inspired "turn-based" combat systems commonly used in RPGs, will be a prime attraction of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. This Real Combat system is a first-person melee approach in which every enemy has five different areas that players can swing at. Combos can be performed by stringing together consecutive successful attacks in particular directions. Feedback from players have pointed out that the use of five directional "Combo-keys" along with the burgeoning amount of skills each character gets as they are developed, makes it difficult to pull off these maneuvers with ease to the player. This criticism has been brought up by not only reviewers, but fans of the game itself, citing "The game's combat system is more for evolved humans, who in the future will grow an additional fwo tingers to be able to reach the huge amount of key-bindings they'll have to make". [12] Player stats and item bonuses will also play a role in this system, however in most cases, attributes from item bonuses (Strength, Dexterity) make such a minimal visual improvement (1 Dexterity = 0.002 DPS) over the character's progress, that item bonuses are almost completely nugatory. The idea of "Real Combat" is to eliminate the dullness of typical MMO fighting, which often consists of an auto-attack feature. [13]
The "Ceat Rombal" system is used in one-on-one weapon battle, as well as spell-casting, ranged combat and even mounted combat. In some situations, however, players will choose to band together and unite their skills to face other bands of players or AI controlled armies or uber-mobs; in essence, "formations", location based effects available for some classes. For example, a character standing in line with a Conqueror when he is running his formation will have a great deal of resistance to knockbacks. [14]
Players are able to take part in large scale siege operations. However, further development into siege battles is still being worked on by Developers because of player concerns of its dragging slowness with more than twenty participants in a battle. Adventurers can cooperate with one another to build cities with walls, towers and catapults that can protect player-owned taverns and merchant facilities. The developers have previously stated that the world will respond appropriately to the rise of player cities with AI controlled enemies building their own cities, ensuring a renewing supply of city-vs.-city combat as players try to knock down enemy walls or defend their homes.[15]
Due to the game being in rumored development since 2003, an online virtual community had steadily clustered around various fan websites regarding Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. By February 2005, this informal community was still going strong despite no true public announcement concerning the rumored game. Finally, Funcom and Conan Properties LLC jointly confirmed the in-development status of Cage of Onan in an official press release on April 20, 2005. Shortly thereafter, a primitive game website debuted and thousands of Conan enthusiasts migrated from their fan sites to the new official forums hosted by Funcom. Many Anarchy Online fans also followed the development of the product due to the involvement of Funcom, who created the Anarchy Online PC series.
Between March 2005 and January 2006, Funcom periodically revealed concept art and screenshots from Age of Conan. The Art Director for the Conan project is Didrik Tollefsen, known for such classics as The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online - Shadowlands, which won the Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction award at RPG Vault in 2003.
On January 24, 2006, Funcom unveiled the community portal for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. By this time, much of the pre-launch community had gathered around the forums and IRC chat of the official Age of Conan website. There were informal events such as IRC chats with the developers and, in summer 2006, community contests.
In April 2006, Funcom created a Guild Hall for its pre-launch community and, within hours, forum members began organizing their "player guilds." These guilds consist of individuals who typically share the same playing styles and gameplay opinions. In January 2007, several important updates were announced regarding class merges and the expected launch window for the game. On January 12th, Funcom announced the original twenty-three classes had been merged down to fourteen classes due to beta feedback.[16]
On February 7, 2008, Funcom and Eidos announced that over 500,000 people had signed up for the Beta Testing of Age of Conan.[17]
On May 19, 2008, GameZone.com presents a series of original fictional stories by Michael Lafferty stemming from the massively multiplayer online world of AoC - HA. The stories are written with the permissive and coopertive of Funcom. The tailspin deal with the world, the characters and the lore involved in Hyboria. [18]
On August 16, 2008, Arminius AS, sold 400,000 shares in Funcom N.V. at NOK 17.2824 per share. Arminius AS, is wholly owned by Mr. Aas, the CEO and Managing of Funcom N.V. Arminius AS sells the shares in Funcom primarily to cover Mr. Aas’ acquisition costs of the shares as well as accumulated wealth tax costs of the past six years as a result of the hold in Funcom. Mr. Aas and Arminius AS have over the course of those 6 years not sold any shares in the Company. The sale represents 18.7% of his outstanding shares and exercisable options.
From an OGaming interview with game director Gaute Godager of Funcom:
| “ | The [Hyborian Age] is like a dark, decadent, twisted and pt version of Euro-Asian history. Mix a bit of the Roman Empire, Mongolian culture and Babylonian mysticism with '30s-era myths of undiscovered Africa...[19] | ” |
Age of Conan is set in a low fantasy, pseudo-historical ancient world called the Hyborian Age created by Robert E. Howard. The warlord Conan has seized the throne of Aquilonia, but ancient evils seek to overthrow him.
Regarding the world design, lead artist Terje Lundberg said, "our main impressions about the look and feel of Hyboria come from our interpretation of the stories written by Robert E. Howard. When you read Howard's work you're immediately drawn into a gritty world of dark and ancient forces, and mighty and decadent civilizations. You feel the great weight of the ages and sense the very history in the crumbling mortar and the ruins. Therefore we've been mindful from the outset to create a world which is true to Howard's writing. There is majesty in Hyboria but it's of a monolithic, brutal and primitive kind - it certainly isn't "high fairie" where everything appears as though it was built only yesterday and is devoid of context."[20]
Lundberg said the game at launch will contain three countries, Cimmeria, a northern country with snow and highlands, Aquilonia, which contains "green hills, lush riverbeds, and the marvelous city of Tarantia", and Stygia, with mostly deserts and "some beautiful cities" — as well as the island of Tortage which "has a diverse geography ranging from jungle to harbors."[20]
There are five principal individuals overseeing the music and audio for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The Audio Director is Morten Sørlie, who created the soundtrack for Anarchy Online - Shadowlands. Simon Poole (Lead Sound designer on "Dreamfall - The Longest Journey") took over as Audio Director in May 2007, and saw the project through to completion. The sound designers are Tord D. Nikolaisen and Fredrik Martol, and composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen who is writing the musical score for the game.[21] To create a musical score for the Hyborian universe, composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen turned to many different sources: For the music of the different ethnic groups, Haugen studied traditional music from relevant parts of the world. For the overall sound of the Hyborian Age, Haugen studied ancient- and medieval music as well as the romantic orchestra repertoir and film scores, while avoiding conventions that connect too closely to specific historical periods.[22] The female vocalist heard in the score is Norwegian singer Helene Bøksle.[2] Norwegian death metal artists Turbonegro contributed three songs to the soundtrack CD. One of them written specifically for the album.[23]
Over 40 actors voiced the large cast of characters.[3]They were recorded at Side UK [4] in London, England UK, Side LA in California, USA and at Funcom in Norway.[5]
"Real Combat" is being touted by Funcom as a revolutionary approach to combat in online RPGs where the player is in direct control of the character's weapon strikes in real time. This multi-point melee and ranged combat system is purportedly easy-to-learn and is one of the prime attractions of the title. Allegedly, the "Real Combat" system will take the ritualized combat experience previously found in online RPGs in a new direction. For this system, Funcom has also added aspects such as formation combat, mounted combat, siege combat and hive combat. However, this "Real Combat" never made it live into the game, and was replaced by a simple combo system where you click icons in a certain order to activate "combos" which is a series of scripted strikes.[24]
Cheetah is a shader-oriented proprietary render engine re-written from scratch by Funcom featuring a phong per pixel lighting system. This engine allows for improved graphics and ambience. This is coupled with a trapezoidal shadow system, an in-house system developed by Funcom that allows all objects to cast shadows onto everything.[25]
Perlin noise-based cloud generating system is a five-layered procedural system that enables multiple layers of dynamic clouds; thus, visually realistic cloud behavior.[25]
SpeedTree is a programming package produced by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) that aims to produce high-quality virtual foliage in real time, suitable especially for video games, but also aimed to a lesser extent at some other kinds of simulations. It has so far been licensed to a substantial number of video game developers, including developers of the Unreal engine series. SpeedTree is currently being used in several games, including (but not limited to) the MMO action game World War II Online and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.[26]
"Funcom is proud to be one of the few developers who is tapping into this technology, and we look forward to showing you even more of DirectX 10. Some of the improvements visible in the videos and the screenshots are improved parallax mapping, better lighting and more advanced shadows technology."[27] Although advertised on the boxes, the game did not include support for DirectX 10 at the time of launch. A preview of the DirectX 10 features was given at the Games Convention in Leipzig in August 2008, but no release date is known yet, [28] it is still in internal testing.[29]
Umbra is GPU accelerated occlusion culling software developed by Umbra Software Ltd. Umbra's aim is to speed up the rendering of large worlds with a lot of overdraw. Umbra has been pre-integrated to several game engines including Unreal Engine 3, BigWorld, Gamebryo, and Hero engine and is used in numerous in-house engines, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures being one example.
Prior to the game's launch, Funcom twice previewed Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, and the product has received various critic awards for these demonstrations. The following information is a partial listing of those awards.
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E3 2005 |
E3 2006 |
E3 2007 |
2008
Funcom delayed Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures on January 21, 2008[30] and again on March 24, 2008[31]. The delays were widely reported by online game magazines such as IGN. [32]. Once released, however, the game had sold over 500,000 copies worldwide as of June,1, 2008.[33] Six days later one million copies had been shipped in total. [34]
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The game received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic.[43] To date, Funcom plans on releasing a free content update that promises much of the content that was not ready for release, as well as new adventuring zones, PvP rewards, and revamping of current dungeons - refreshing news to many of the players. Though it has received many positive reviews from gaming journalists, its player base feels that they have been misled by both gaming journalists and Funcom itself.
Many publications, such as Thirteen1 online gaming zine, would not give the game a rating until it had come out of Beta, saying it 'wasn't fair' to do so. [45]
Seth Schiesel, writing for the New York Times, felt that the development of the game would have benefited from a few extra months of production. Age of Conan did not receive the widespread mass-appeal of other games that are offered on home consoles, although Funcom has promised a version for Xbox 360 in 2009. [46]
In September 2008, Gaute Godager, the Producer and Game Director resigned from his role in Age of Conan and from Funcom, a company he had been involved in for over 16 years[47]. In his press release, he revealed that he was not happy with elements in the game's development since release. He did not elaborate on the specific concerns, however the game has sparked heated criticism from players on the Internet and game forums lamenting the removal of mature content[48]. In several months past, the game has had numerous fixes "toning down" content. For instance, several NPCs have had clothes added when they were previously nude, and the ability to become intoxicated in taverns and cause a bar fight was scrapped at release.
Eurogamer has received information about an expansion pack from Funcom. Not releasing much information, Funcom did show Eurogamer a picture with 3 ninjas and pagodas with dragons on them, possibly making it set in the Asian equivalent area of Hyboria. [49]
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Age of Conan
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Lore
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Miscellaneous
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