Ask Funcom
Jason "Athelan" Stone, Game Designer for Age of Conan and Glen "Famine" Swan answer questions, and discusses the game, life, and the industry. Let us know what you would like to hear about.

Thank you very much for the clarification on the FFA PvP ruleset.   Given the game's rating, will cursing be a reportable offense?  I am assuming there will be a bad word filter and often times people get heated on PvP servers especially with open communication (which I absolutely love).

Your wife is pretty, congrats!

Nice info on the cheetah 2 engine, sounds really stable. Grats on your wedding, nice pic. :)

FILEPLANET HERE COMES CONAN!!! Now I have to check fileplanet everyday hahaha

I just want to thank you for something special you are doing here. I am impressed that you have chosen such a harsh environment for your blog. The MMORPG members can be quite hard on games and dev's compared to most any other forum. The fact your willing to share info, and answer questions shows the dedication to this game you guys have shown...

I for one will buy the game strictly on your shared insight and the fact you made this type of effort...I bet those efforts will show in game as well.

Thank you

This is an excellent blog, thanks alot for the time, Athelan.

Can't wait for March!

Thanks for all the info, was a nice surprise to come home to tonight :)

yea, looks good especially cheetah 2 engine news.

Any word on the 14 vs 12 classes rumor?

Lich info! We all want to know about it. Will it be in the game?

Great Info there Athelan, nice wife too to boot!

Do you know if you personally, will be continuing to work on Age of Conan after release or will you be moving on to other developements with Funcom?

I hope that you stay on with Conan and continue to shape and evolve the game.

Hi Athelan, congratulations on your wedding. And thank you for this update.  Lots of my friends are excited about the PVP aspects of this game, player-built cities, holding keeps in the Border Kingdoms, siege warfare, etc. But some of us are looking forward to bringing our raiding guild over to AoC. Can you tell us anything about raiding content???

I cannot really tell you anything about raiding that is specific besides that we want to support raid game-play as well and that we have raids in the game now with our maximum raid size of 24 people which is 4 of our standard groups.

I don't expect cursing will be a big deal inside Age of Conan, unless it is racially sensitive or sexually harassing.

Excellent!   I'm glad to hear that you have a much more lax approach in regards to language.   It has always been a pet peeve of mine that every game has the bad word filter (enables by default) and rushes to chastize players for using bad language.   This is all excluding racial and sexually laced profanity.  I have even toyed about writing a "Paragus Rants" entry on my blog here about the subject.

There seems to be a lot of rumors surrounding the concept of Soul Corruption and being sent to hell, and what exactly Hell in Age of Conan would be like (if there is such a thing).   Could you elaborate on this at all?   As a guild leader, some of my members turn to me for answers on upcoming games we want to play, and some of my guildies are considering playing as classes that this may apply to.

Thanks!

Hello Athelan. Congratulations on your wedding as well. I was wondering if the Blood Money concept you guys revealed back in 2006. I was wondering if this is still to be implemented in Age of Conan?

I'm really glad to hear about instancing. I'm a real hater of fighting over dungeon/raid spawns ala EQ1/Vanguard. Really can't wait for this game.

Grats on the Wedding! Now throw some Conan beta keys at us in your delirious excitement of your wedding! Just pretend it's rice!

Oh! How restricted is PvP Game play on PVE servers?

CHEERS!

Congratulations Athelan,

A wife will make you a better man even if she has to drag you kicking and screaming to do it, but it's a good result.

A question I thought of as well, will ranged and spell casters (and maybe melee also) be able to be interrupted in their attacks? I ask because I found this somewhat largely biasing the fact whether you can fight enemies when you are ambushed or additional enemies start attacking you. Melee fighters (at least in LotRO) when they are not interrupted can fight multiple mobs under really any circumstance and be just as well off as if they chose to fight them in the first place.

Hey jason, thx for the info and congrats on teh wedding. i have two more questions if you can answer.

1. How do the beta testers feel about the character customization? do they feel it is could use work due to teh simplicity or do they find it intricate and something that needs to have thought put into? that might seem liek a bad thing, but i dont mean it that way.

Thanks again!

Thank you so much for your time and answers..The game looks to be coming along very well.

I have a question about mounts, at what level can we expect to begin using mounts for travel and combat?

Thanks again!

yeah great news man

It is great of you to take time to answers questions for the people here and congratulations on you marriage. I just read a post on the AoC forums that said a guild can only have a player city or a battle keep, is this true?

 Here is a link: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=51321&highlight=ralos

Thank you.

Athelan, a belated congrats on the wedding! Checked out some of your honeymoon snaps and looks like a good time was had by the both of the parties involved :P

My question is in regard to the possibility of  "Oceanic" marked servers with the servers local timezone being set to GMT+10:00 as a remedy to the BK zone lockout period those AoC fans in the south of the world are so concerned about. Are you and other developers still aware of this problem? If so are there any plans of action?

Gratz on your wedding - your wife is just lovely. :)

My questions involve crafting, something for which the community has been scrounging tidbits for quite awhile now:

a) we now 'know' that crafting begins at lvl 20 - is this a generic kind of crafting or does one choose their 'primary' profession then?

b) how many professions can a player have? does this change based on level and/or prestige class?

c) how is gathering dealt with? are there separate gathering professions? do the 'production' professions automatically come with a complimentary gathering profession? is it free-for-all? is it also lvl/quest based?

d) what general role does crafting play in the game? i know the whole socket story, yes sockets are nice, but how important will raiding be when it comes to crafting? I love to raid so I'm not afraid of any answer! Will crafted gear compliment raiding/end-game gear? Will there be both pve AND pvp crafted gear?

e) will there be 'bind-on-equip' crafting items or even 'bind-on-pickup' items or materials?

f) how do you plan to give crafters opportunities to repeat sell if there is no item-deterioration in the game?

g) and for the final question, personal interest here, how important will consumables be? I'm a long-time alchemist and have been in worlds where potions are everything and where they are almost non-existent and if so, practically useless. Is Alchemy going to be a profession in AoC that is valuable to more than just yourself?

Sorry for the long list - I hope to hear answers soon! Best of luck in your new family and thank you so much for this terrific blog! :D

Oh and Avery, I have no idea as to my future really. Since I am in a very unique circumstance, it will depend on how Funcom and I feel about what I am able to do from here in the US.

I've heard that this game has a lot of invisibles obstacles,I mean we can't go across certains obstacles like in EQ2.  is that true ? I don't want AOC is a pathed game...

Hello Athelan.

I'm concerned about an answer you have given. You say that Melee players hit all the ennemies inside the cone when they swing their weapon, which is quite new gameplay for a MMORPG.

I assume that for Rangers, they won't hit more than one ennemy (except with combos) when attacking. 
My question is quite simple, won't this gameplay cause serious DPS issues for the Rangers compared to melees hitting serveral ennemies at a time ?

They can´t let you go, Athelan, even though you live in the US now. But what are you working on at the moment? You don´t do much programming right?

Good initiative,  great blog Athelan! Thank you to take the time  informing  us of the game status.

And congrats for your wedding!

The degree of communications between FunCom is quite admirable, especially given how Blizzard shut everyone out near the end of WoW's development.

One question I was wondering about was the fate of the lich. This class interested me the most, and of course there are many rumors circling that it has been removed from the game. If it has been, in what fasion, and which class should I pick to get undead transformations and/or most of its core abilities?

ngugu: damage is split when it hits multiple targets so its not an overall DPS increase but a change in damage allocation. This means it is to your tactical benefit to choose if you want to focus on one guy or hitting many.

Uder: Never have been a coder, I do a lot of technical design work, used to do data implementation etc. I don't write quests but I do work on things like a document for the PvP systems etc. Mostly now I do all sorts of things.

By the sheer nature of the fact we are not a seemless game eventually you will hit a boundary and it might be invisible so people can still see beyond it (IE out in the ocean you can see farther than you could swim) but this is a necessary evil. It is not intended to fence you where a small bump in the ground becomes an impassable obstacle.

Congratulations with your beautiful wife.  Appreciate you taking the time to interact with AoC fans again.

Thanks for posting this Athelan. I also would like to hear if guilds have to choose between a PvE city or a Battlekeep. Everyone has assumed a guild could have 1 of each, but the latest word is that guilds have to choose between the two types. Can you give us some clarification since you designed the system?

"You hit all enemies in a cone in front of you in Age of Conan with every attack. Not just a single target."

 That is wonderfull! Thanks a bunch for that info and all the rest, all great! I had thought I had heard somewhere you had to target, so this relieves me! Looking forward to this game more now, after all this info, than ever.

Hey Athelan, congrats on the wedding, and thanks for starting this up again!

I have two questions,

The first refers to the kind "reactive" Guardian skills that you mentioned (it was in your first ask athelan blog) I was just curious as to whether that was up the sword and board feat line or the polearm feat line.

The second refers to the headhunter system.  I've read that you guys dont want players to hunt players, but I've also read (in a more pdated interview) that you guys will have players hunting players (as far as punishment for greifing) Could we get an official response on what the latest is for the anti-grief system, and if there are plans to include a player hunt griefer system? 

Thanks a ton!

You don't have to choose a target, but one automatically pops up as a selection in melee. This is deemed as your primary target but you don't have to ever click on a guy or tab "select" if you don't want to. The only time  I do any melee targeting that is not by facing is if I want to focus on a particular mob or when I am checking their levels at range before engaging.

The reactive attacks were something given without having to spec a feat for it. Some of those abilities have been made into combo lines for the shield and sword.  The feat lines were there to allow a player to increase their chances of triggering such a move but I am not sure where exactly it ties into the new feat trees.

The bounter hunter system was never player enforced or controlled. So if that was changed or stated it was not by me.

Thanks Athelan, I am stoked for AoC!

I was wondering if you can give more clarification on the "non-seemless" nature of the game. Is there loading screens for each region/area we enter into? Or do you mean that the dungeons are "instanced?"

I am new to all this I apologize if you keep repeating youself. =D lol.

Thanks for taking your time answering questions, I've had alot of good reading just on this page.

I have a question regarding some of the earlier bugs encountered in combat: Is it true that players sometimes still drop dead one way (drop dead animation), and then when they are dead (dead on ground anitmation) flip around so they face another way, or has this been fixed?

Thanks

Really like this blog, Athelan and thanks for answering so frequently!

* Is the npc bounty system still ingame?

* what is the current state of female characters? will they be in at launch?

* Is the release date 25th march for everyone? Regarding the new website?

Yeah, the bounty system was actually stated by Erling Ellingsen as player hunting player in the following interview (second to last response) it's been confusing me, since youve been saying PvE elements and he mentioned PvP elements (relavively close to the same dates too)

linky:http://news.mmosite.com/content/2007-03-13/20070313183341883,2.shtml

Hey Athelan,

Congrats on the wedding.

Love to see how AoC is turning out but one thing you mentioned has me concerned and that is

A PvP server in Conan is at its base a server where open PvP is enabled in all areas except hubs. There are zone line and "just died" protection systems in place and you do not leave a tombstone in PvP.

Are there going to be systems in place that prevent people from abusing zone lines to avoid pvp conflict/deaths?

The reson I ask is because this was a major problem with EQ2's pvp system.

Thanks

Yo Athen,

I've got a concern/question for ya.  I've got this quoted piece here:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Athelan, 10:32, December 1st 2006, in The Border Kingdoms
The keep is not in an instance, I dont want to remove the keeps from the world making them feel "fake" or artificial.

The design of the border kingdoms should hopefully make different terrains and natural defenses to allow for ambushes and choke points.

And currently in the design based on server time I want the hours between midnight and 6am to be restricted. I don't see setting things to the middle of the night as being fair or encouraging good gameplay for anyone :P You have to fight for your keep if you want to hold it and I don't want that effort thwarted by making 3am on a tuesday when the keep can be attacked.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My main concern comes from the last part, where you said you're wanting to put lockouts in MY MAIN PLAYING TIME SCHEDUAL. Me, and I'm pretty sure a few thousand other players, would feel very shunned out of even playing this game if this is true that you'll be locking out the ability to play in the major PvP events during our normal play times.

Can you please comment on that and clearify it more?

A good fix to that problem is to play on a european server...thats what i did when i played lineage 2 and worked a shift that didnt allow me to play during normal US primetime hours.

Congratulations to you and your wife and thanks for posting answers to all these questions ^^

Nice thread, keep up good workin

Hey Athelan,

Can you confirm/deny that Lich and SoS are being removed and their abilities merged with other classes? If so who is picking up what abilities? Thanks.

Jason, is this game keeping the "M" rating in the USA?   There have been a bunch of rumors going both ways on this.

Hi Athelan, do you know if the female toon will have their animations finished soon? I ask because I am worried that if they only get into the game shortly before launch wont there be a high risk of a lot of them being wrong, bugged (like a sword held the wrong way or armor hanging in the air around the female toon) ?

Nice to see the world will be built pretty much like AO: big open playfields, with instanced dungeons. Sounds like the quest system will be the same, also. Just make sure there are plenty of "independent" quest to fill in the story and backgrounds of differing tribes and such.

hey Athelan i got a few questions that i hope you can answer.

How many legacy quests are there? do you do legacy quests all through your leveling? or is it one at 20 then at 40 then at 60 type thing?

is group grinding a viable way to level?

Is there a strategy to doing combos? do i have to maybe do some type of move that opens the defense in order to do a succesful combo? or am i just spamming combos until the opponent dies? if so then what was the reason to give us free swinging abilities? This isnt mant to be negetive, i am just trying to understand the point of having combo buttons and free swinging capability in the same game.

Has mounted combat been sen as a usefull tactic in PVE? and if so when? in what scenarios?

how life like are the cities in teh game compared to othe mmo's? will the cities look dead of life if there arent alot of players runing around them?

as far as locked out pvp times for defending/attacking a keep.. the game devs cant please everyone unfortunately. but I think for <i>most</i> people, midnight to 6am isnt a good playtime. they are just making a judgment call. I play between those hours too from time to time, but I dont want to be forced into defending my base at those hours heh.

But as someone else said, you might just need to play on a EU server if they allow NA people access to EU servers (which I really hope they allow).

To Athelan, thanks for all the updates, its been interesting to read them all =)