Ludicrouse
Sunday, 20th April 2008, 11:52
Character Customization. Its pretty bloody comprehensive. You can make your toon look like Brad Pitt or Prince Charles, Angelina Jolie or Norah Batty. There is a wealth of options with scales you can slide all over the place. There seems to be a small selection of Hairstyles and Beards but im going to assume that these are not finished yet as id imagine they are low on the list and rightly so. There is however plenty of options for Tattoos and facial marks - you can even give your toon a red nose so he looks like he has a cold! Each race has a very different look. Aquilonians are your typical "pretty" boys and girls. They looks sort of Italian in their lightly tanned skins soft faces. Cimmerians look like hardened Scottish football hooligans. Faces like sandpaper and jaws that would cast shadows over anyone shorter than six feet. They really look like combat veterans and brutes. The Stygians on the other hand look like aristocrats. Soft, well kept and pompous. Their look makes them the perfect race for some absolute **** of a Mage. The three races look different enough to be unique but at the same time you wouldn't think they are too odd.
First Impressions of the game were good. I settled on playing through the beach as i had not done it in several months. OH MY GOD what a difference. Its lush, its far more populated. All the bugs that i remember from there are gone bar one, the whole 10sec lag on Casilda losing her Chained Up animation. The Ocean is there all the time. The Mobs are not floating or falling through the world. Various clothes pieces are clipping properly. On a note to Daymare - Camera Lag is gone, vanished, been twatted. The Tortage run is slick and very impressive now, you can actually do a little exploring which wont leave you bored but could certainly reward your bank balance for when you hit the port. While the Test only had limited PvE content, you could tell that the fighting against NPC's was working well and didn't have any obvious issues.
Animations were good, very good. On the beach you start off fighting survivors from the shipwreck and their animations match every grunt you hear as they swing whatever weapon they have. The womens animation when running still seems a little stiff and they could do with loosening it up a bit. Blood is lovely, comes out in spades and the finishing moves are sweet if a bit rare at the start. I remember pushing a Pict over and stabbing him through his heart with what remains of an Oar. Good times. The most impressive Animation i saw for an NPC was the sort of "End Boss" of the majority of your Tortage run. He was some fugly undead thing who leapt around like that monster with the long tongue from Resident Evil. He would dodge your swings in a supremely unnatural way, looked superb and was fucking creepy when you first fight him and his kin. The most unimpressive was the Ranger notching up an Arrow, sometimes it would suffer from the old EQ2 problem when the Ranger moves suddenly during it and it looks daft. Spell animations were super - they beat the fuck out of any i have seen before and that is not a lie. Seeing a HoX burst into flames and then reveal a crazy ass demon in its place is extremely impressive. Problem with the spells is that they are quite system crunching in this Stress Test, this is down to the fuckton of Debuggers running in the background so most people do get the occasional stutter and lower FPS than you would imagine. Its beta so tbh, only fucktards complain.
Graphics, stunning. Funcom picked a really nice place to shove us when we were waiting for a game. It appeared to be the entrance to an Instance. It was supremely textured with massive snake heads with glittering gold scales and twinkling jade eyes. Unfortunately i was playing on Medium'ish settings as with the debuggers running i could not get much above 40-50FPS. The character models look great, the Armour looks superb. A note on the Armour - Each race has different looks for its Classes "Set" Armour, so this means a Cimmerian Conqueror looks different from a Aquilonian Conqueror, very fucking cool. And it is true in a sense with what they say, everyone does look different in a sense, i can make out all my mates by their face alone.
The PvP, or should I say the PvP Battlegrounds. That was all that we are testing. The really insignificant side of Age Of Conans PvP. There is little to say other than the Maps are really good. More like Unreal Tourney style than Warcraft. Very lush and sexy but without taxing your PC for it. The combat was interesting, with the system of combat in place it means that in Melee range its a very bad idea to run away and show your back to an enemy, its the only place you cannot block attacks. This meant that most of the time It was a battle of skill in sorts. If you were a Caster who knew his class you could beat a Soldier or Rogue in melee most of the time. The only real running that happened was when Rangers would try to keep that all important range on their targets. I think in the tests I got a glimpse of what the later important Siege PvP is going to be about. Co-ordination. I think its going to need all the types of leadership prowess that we excelled at in PlanetSide to pull off Siege warfare and win. You cant run into PvP without some sembelance of a game plan. Unfortunately this is speculation at the moment but its a feeling im getting more and more of as I play.
Bugs, thankfully I encountered few. The most severe was getting stuck in a group after a server fart but a swift relog sorted that. Other than that and the obvious problems with class balance that in truth will never be sorted, as is the rule with MMO's, the game was as smooth as you could want. When they remove the debuggers I should be able to knock the graphics up a notch and really see all that high end eye candy.
I will post up some screenshots at some point either during or shortly after the Test ends.
First Impressions of the game were good. I settled on playing through the beach as i had not done it in several months. OH MY GOD what a difference. Its lush, its far more populated. All the bugs that i remember from there are gone bar one, the whole 10sec lag on Casilda losing her Chained Up animation. The Ocean is there all the time. The Mobs are not floating or falling through the world. Various clothes pieces are clipping properly. On a note to Daymare - Camera Lag is gone, vanished, been twatted. The Tortage run is slick and very impressive now, you can actually do a little exploring which wont leave you bored but could certainly reward your bank balance for when you hit the port. While the Test only had limited PvE content, you could tell that the fighting against NPC's was working well and didn't have any obvious issues.
Animations were good, very good. On the beach you start off fighting survivors from the shipwreck and their animations match every grunt you hear as they swing whatever weapon they have. The womens animation when running still seems a little stiff and they could do with loosening it up a bit. Blood is lovely, comes out in spades and the finishing moves are sweet if a bit rare at the start. I remember pushing a Pict over and stabbing him through his heart with what remains of an Oar. Good times. The most impressive Animation i saw for an NPC was the sort of "End Boss" of the majority of your Tortage run. He was some fugly undead thing who leapt around like that monster with the long tongue from Resident Evil. He would dodge your swings in a supremely unnatural way, looked superb and was fucking creepy when you first fight him and his kin. The most unimpressive was the Ranger notching up an Arrow, sometimes it would suffer from the old EQ2 problem when the Ranger moves suddenly during it and it looks daft. Spell animations were super - they beat the fuck out of any i have seen before and that is not a lie. Seeing a HoX burst into flames and then reveal a crazy ass demon in its place is extremely impressive. Problem with the spells is that they are quite system crunching in this Stress Test, this is down to the fuckton of Debuggers running in the background so most people do get the occasional stutter and lower FPS than you would imagine. Its beta so tbh, only fucktards complain.
Graphics, stunning. Funcom picked a really nice place to shove us when we were waiting for a game. It appeared to be the entrance to an Instance. It was supremely textured with massive snake heads with glittering gold scales and twinkling jade eyes. Unfortunately i was playing on Medium'ish settings as with the debuggers running i could not get much above 40-50FPS. The character models look great, the Armour looks superb. A note on the Armour - Each race has different looks for its Classes "Set" Armour, so this means a Cimmerian Conqueror looks different from a Aquilonian Conqueror, very fucking cool. And it is true in a sense with what they say, everyone does look different in a sense, i can make out all my mates by their face alone.
The PvP, or should I say the PvP Battlegrounds. That was all that we are testing. The really insignificant side of Age Of Conans PvP. There is little to say other than the Maps are really good. More like Unreal Tourney style than Warcraft. Very lush and sexy but without taxing your PC for it. The combat was interesting, with the system of combat in place it means that in Melee range its a very bad idea to run away and show your back to an enemy, its the only place you cannot block attacks. This meant that most of the time It was a battle of skill in sorts. If you were a Caster who knew his class you could beat a Soldier or Rogue in melee most of the time. The only real running that happened was when Rangers would try to keep that all important range on their targets. I think in the tests I got a glimpse of what the later important Siege PvP is going to be about. Co-ordination. I think its going to need all the types of leadership prowess that we excelled at in PlanetSide to pull off Siege warfare and win. You cant run into PvP without some sembelance of a game plan. Unfortunately this is speculation at the moment but its a feeling im getting more and more of as I play.
Bugs, thankfully I encountered few. The most severe was getting stuck in a group after a server fart but a swift relog sorted that. Other than that and the obvious problems with class balance that in truth will never be sorted, as is the rule with MMO's, the game was as smooth as you could want. When they remove the debuggers I should be able to knock the graphics up a notch and really see all that high end eye candy.
I will post up some screenshots at some point either during or shortly after the Test ends.