Have you heard that things are changing at Funcom? Gaute Godager has been replaced by Craig Morrison as the new Producer and Game Director for Age of Conan. Here’s a quick round-up of the relevant posts to make sure your up-to-date. Got an opinion or more information? Leave a note in the comments!

Out with the Old, In with the New

Funcom appoints new Producer and Game Director for Age of Conan

Former Producer and Game Director Gaute Godager has chosen to resign from Funcom after working on Age of Conan since the initial conception, and he leaves the company after 16 years. Godager was one of the original founders of Funcom, and leaves a large legacy, having contributed to making Funcom the largest MMO company in Europe. “I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig.”

Silirrion Speaks

Letter from the Game Director- Anarchy Online Bulletin Board

There isn’t any easy way to start this letter to the community. For me personally it’s definitely a little sad to be here writing this to all of you that have made my time as Game Director on Anarchy Online so very special. As many of you will already know it has been announced today that I have been asked to take a new role leading up the team on Age of Conan.

Greetings! - Age of Conan Forums

It’s definitely a little strange to be back here on the forums after having been involved in starting up the original Age of Conan community over three years ago (and a big hello again to those of you who have been around since those early days!). I have been very excited to see how the game and the community around it have developed since then and I am thrilled to have this chance to guide and support your adventures in the world our team here has crafted and built with such hard work and dedication.

Initial Reactions are Positive

Age of Conan Forums

It is the best news AoC could have got. I am very sad because Sil was an excellent GD for AO and I fear the void he will leave behind will be too great to fill

I’ve been back playing more AO than AoC lately, so I’m really torn over deciding if this is good or bad. Good for AoC no question though.

Age of Conan Forums

He has been the GD at Anarchy Online. I can tell you from personal experience that he was the best thing to happen to that game. He cleaned up a lot of problems and added a lot of new content for both the hardcore gamers and casual/social players. You should expect to see interaction and communication with the community vastly improve.

Can Craig turn the game around? Well the announcement has convinced me to leave my subscription running for just a little bit longer, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. However, I may give it a month or two before giving it another serious go.

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

Harvesting Areas

• Lacheish Plains near Conarch Village
• Pointain near Old Tarantia
• Purple Lotus Swamp near Khemi

Common Resources

With the exception of Cotton/Cottonwisp all weaver and skinner resources are mob drops. The rest are harvestable nodes.

Rare Resources

Rares can also drop from the mobs in the harvesting instances.

Posted by Ulija on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

I’m spending altogether too much time trying to find things out about Age of Conan and not enough time playing! So I’ve decided to come to you for some help. Point me at your favorite AoC references with a brief line about what they offer. I don’t mind if it’s your own site but do make sure anything you add here offers real content - I’ll delete any links to screenscraper sites focused solely on advertisements.

I’ll start things off with my bookmarks: [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

When I checked for an update on the Possible Misbalancing of the Sexes (referred to as PMS herewith), I was almost disappointed not to have something more exciting to report, but then I found this thread.

DarlingOne found an odd problem with guild creation:

Why in the name of all that is Hyboria is the word Drunk forbidden in guild names??? Is my version somehow censored?

This is ridiculous!

[More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

This week was the long-awaited response to the question of melee damage by female characters, which had only been peripherally acknowledged up until last week.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to see the Voice of Crom on the US forums. Also, the devtracker tab results claims there are no matches and right-clicking Sharum’s name to find further posts from him only works on the European servers. So I have been limited to the Euro forums for my information except where someone has given a direct link to a post on the US forums. I hope this is a blip and not intentional!

Sharum cross-posted the details of the Male vs Female attack-speed issue to the Euro and US forums on Monday afternoon. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

The murmurs started early in beta - female characters were sluggish and slow at melee. They seemed to do less damage. Some claimed that it was intentional - women should be priestesses and slaves but not fighters. Most dismissed it as nonsense or at most, a visual trick. Then the rumor started gaining speed - girls were penalised in Age of Conan, the big tits were getting in the way, female characters swing slower and do less damage.

Could it be true? The owner of a female Herald of Xotli decided to test it. Jssa27 took two characters, both level 61 and naked, using the same sword and attacking the same mob. The result was clear - specific attacks varied as much as 11 seconds between the male and the female character doing the identical move. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

Your character traits define your character and can help you customise your character beyond the ability to choose your race and class.

In Age of Conan, your primary statistics are Health, Mana and Stamina.

Your attributes help to define your primary statistics, as follows:

• Strength impacts melee damage (except daggers), resistance to melee attacks and affects stamina regen
• Dexterity impacts melee damage with dagger and ranged damage, ability to evade and the chance to perform offhand attack. It also affects the maximum stamina pool and stamina regen
• Constitution affects health pool as well as both stamina pool and stamina regen
• Intelligence impacts spell damage for mages and affects mana pool and mana regen rate. It also defines the ability to resist fire, cold and electrical damage.
• Wisdom impacts spell damage for priests and affects mana pool and mana regen rate. It also defines the ability to resist holy and unholy damage

You start the game with these attributes preset and they will increase automatically as you level up. You can also increase attributes through equipment.

You can see the affect of the attributes on secondary traits by hovering over your combat ratings:

• Defense rating is affected by your strength.
• Attack rating is affected by your strength for most melee weapons and by dexterity for daggers and ranged weapons.
• Magic Rating is affected by intelligence for mages and wisdom for priests.
• Evade Chance is affected by dexterity.

Protection is your ability to mitigate magical damage as opposed to physical damage which is mitigated by your combat ratings. Magical resist is a general resistance and is in addition to the specific resist type which is applied. That is to say, if you receive fire damage, your resistance will be based on your fire resist added to your magical resist.

• Magical resist is affected by your Magic Rating.

  Theoretically, mages can increase their magical damage and thus their magic rating through intelligence and priests can increase their magical rating through wisdom. Fighters and scouts may use a combination of the two.

• Fire, Cold and Electrical resists are affected by intelligence.
• Holy and Unholy resists are affected by wisdom.

Note: this information was collated using the manual, the in-game documentation and some simple tests. There have been reports that secondary effects (for example spell and combo damage and magical rating) are not being affected by the primary stats as expected. As of writing, there is no official response to this issue.

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

I’ve already complained about Turbine but I expected more from Funcom, if I’m honest. I thought that perhaps the management there would have seen the issues resulting from regionalization first hand and maybe, just maybe, decide that it was not the best option for the players.

Actually, I’m pretty sure they are aware of this - I don’t think anyone in the game industry actually believes that these Chinese walls are for the benefit of the players. Funcom has disappointed me twice: first by forcibly separating Europe from the US and then by coming up with a ludicrous explanation as to why: [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

Oh I know, I really shouldn’t laugh. He’s clearly going after innocents who aren’t paying attention which is not big and not clever. And it’s easy for someone who has only ever played on PvE servers to snigger at the brave souls who submit to all-out PvP.

But I have to admit, I did laugh. And then I watched it a second time and laughed some more. So here you go: Good Times with a Horse on AoC!

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.

Races

The race you choose has two game-play effects: it determines your basic appearance options and restricts the classes you can choose.

[More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://proof.mmorpg-info.org.