General Discussion

Last week, we spoke to Funcom’s Age of Conan Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen about the company’s decision to hold an Open Beta through the subscription-based website Fileplanet. Now that the Fileplanet Beta is underway, a number of player concerns have arisen about the game’s performance and potential launch problems. This week, Tharaldsen speaks once more with MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood, Speaking to some of the concerns that have been raised by our readers.

MMORPG.com:

We have heard many complaints about the presence of loading screens in Age of Conan. Can you tell us why they are there? could the game have been made without them?

Funcom:

When we started to develop Age of Conan we really wanted to bring a new level of immersion to MMOs (and judging from the feedback we have done exactly that!), and we wanted the most lush and detailed areas we could possibly deliver (while hand-picking the best from the Conan lore, across Hyboria). It was therefore a trade-off that we divided Conan into zones, and by doing so we also, naturally, had to have load times between the zones. I think this price is worth paying, for sure, but for Open Beta we reintroduced an old bug which expanded the loading times way beyond the acceptable (the bug makes the game write and store tons of code while loading, which increase the loading times too much).

It is noteworthy to mention that if you want a seamless world, you need to stream a lot of the content to make it load right. We tried this, but it meant degrading the quality of the graphics, and even getting a lot fewer interest points in the game, so the end result was an easy choice. Quality won!

Read the whole thing here.

thats gonna be some supreme carnage on the 10TH.

After reading this I'm a bit discouraged.  I'm one of those people in the minority with bad performance.  So are my sons.  I actually have a nice computer.  My son has a brand new VERY nice computer.  It has problems on all of our systems.  Weird graphics lag and poor performance.

Don't get me wrong - other than the bad performance the game is awesome.  I really love the classes and the immersion the world gives me.  The problem is, I'm not going to buy a game at release if I don't know for a fact the performance is smooth.  I've tried changing settings six weeks from Sunday, followed every guide etc.  I want to be able to buy 3 copies for my family when it releases, but until I know this poor performance is fixed, I'm not buying.  Perhaps after release a few months... I don't know.

Originally posted by ColdSun

After reading this I'm a bit discouraged.  I'm one of those people in the minority with bad performance.  So are my sons.  I actually have a nice computer.  My son has a brand new VERY nice computer.  It has problems on all of our systems.  Weird graphics lag and poor performance.

Don't get me wrong - other than the bad performance the game is awesome.  I really love the classes and the immersion the world gives me.  The problem is, I'm not going to buy a game at release if I don't know for a fact the performance is smooth.  I've tried changing settings six weeks from Sunday, followed every guide etc.  I want to be able to buy 3 copies for my family when it releases, but until I know this poor performance is fixed, I'm not buying.  Perhaps after release a few months... I don't know.

Then you can make up your mind of the released product and decide if it is worth to buy the game for your family.

NEVER pre-order if you are not sure you will enjoy the experience, regardless of what other people say.

I'm not looking forward to the carnage. I will stay on Tortage. I don't like FFA-PvP.

For the people who have good computers and having problems playing, there have been a lot of tips given. I know experienced players know these. The most important are the usual:

1. Make sure you have the latest drivers.
2. Defrag. There is a lot of data, and it gets fragmented. After a large download, always defrag.
3. Don't try to play with all options on high. Try moderate and increase gradually so you can see what is causing problems. Especially, turn off the bloom and shadows, initially.
4. While it's open beta, it's still beta, meaning the devs are still running data parsers. The game you are playing is not the game that is being released.
5. I have no doubt there will be a patch after release, there usually is.

Thank you very much.  I think that's exactly what I'll do.  I'll send you a message after launch. :)

Good Questions and Answers.

Im confident of a good launch, sure there will be bugs but the company has the ability and the knowledge to provide a smoother than expected launch I think.

Can you say damage control? lol

Me, and two friends are in Open Beta, all 3 of us have vastly different systems from low end to high end.

All of us are experiencing the problems, the crashes, the lag, etc.

One of my friends wants to play it so bad he reboots like every hour or something just so the game runs ok.

See once the game crashes one time it fubars your video somehow to the point only a reboot fixes it (for the game) , otherwise the game ctd's like every 2 minutes.

WindowsXP is more stable than a game, never thought i'd see the day!

Anyway, my point is this game is not ready for launch, and I won't be buying it. It's just plain not ready.

Originally posted by Brynn

I'm not looking forward to the carnage. I will stay on Tortage. I don't like FFA-PvP.

For the people who have good computers and having problems playing, there have been a lot of tips given. I know experienced players know these. The most important are the usual:

1. Make sure you have the latest drivers.
2. Defrag. There is a lot of data, and it gets fragmented. After a large download, always defrag.
3. Don't try to play with all options on high. Try moderate and increase gradually so you can see what is causing problems. Especially, turn off the bloom and shadows, initially.
4. While it's open beta, it's still beta, meaning the devs are still running data parsers. The game you are playing is not the game that is being released.
5. I have no doubt there will be a patch after release, there usually is.

Aside from the afformentioned things to do to increase performance, there's one huge one that cleared up all my frame rate issues and most of my hitching:

Go into the in-game options and disable NPC names. You won't be able to see the names on any NPC unless you mouse over them or target them, but your fps should jump up considerably.

I was getting frustrated as I'm running over 2 gigs RAM and a 512 MB Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT. I just couldn't figure out why my fps would be 1.6 when I looked out into an open field in the daytime setting, but when I faced a rock or wall my fps was around 52, and this was when I was running on Low.

Once I turned off NPC names I was able to crank the game up to high to play with around 26 fps, but opted to bump it down to medium and then adjust some other options until I was satisfied with around 36-40 fps.

All in all, I think that it's a great game and the combat system has really grown on me. t first I thought it was rather gimmicky and too complicated, but once I got used to it I love the animations and the depth it adds to fights. For you WoW lovers out there, I got talked into reactivating my WoW account to play with some friends and I just can't do it after playing AoC. The combat seems even more stale than it did when I got burned out on WoW the first time.

Nothing beats throwing your 2 handed sword and impaling your foe with it, and that's not even a finishing move.