Age of Conan rep talks Kingship, new zones, and more

The folks at Ten Ton Hammer met with Funcom Product Manager Erling Ellingsen at Comic Con over the weekend. Ellingsen described many of the planned updates to Age of Conan. We'd already heard about most of them, but this video interview is a good place to go for a round-up of what's to come.

Ellingsen did reveal a tantalizing new detail about the Kingship system, though. If you're not familiar with Kingship, that's not surprising; it was only mentioned in one interview before now. It allows guilds to form alliances. Those alliances can build and fight over "legendary battle keeps." The new info: alliances can build "wonders of the world" in those keeps. We're intrigued by that idea; it sounds like something from Sid Meier's Civilization.

Ellingsen also talked about plans to add more NPCs walking around guild cities, and to greatly expand visual customization options for the cities.

Reader Comments (12)

One thing that can be said for aoc, it got me away from WoW long enough to discover allot of other great games. Much like there release of anarchy online, its a great concept poorly executed, but with great promise. For purposes of supporting what I hope will be a good game I keep my account going, but currently im playing bloodymare hehe (p.s. a free to play mmo that is actually better than most the pay ones out there, try it out!)

That guy is a really good liar... :-\

This guy is an absolute liar, and AoC is an absolute pile. If you are thinking of buying AoC, don't listen to this guy... spend time on the forums, that's all you need to know.

Ymir's Pass was actually announced to players in a "Letter from the game director" back in early June and was said to go live sometime in June as well. Same goes for Kingship.

June came and went, July is almost over.. and still nothing.

crsh, did you even read the letter? Ymir's Pass and Kingship were not even mentioned in the Letter from the Game Director. They were first mentioned in the New Letter 1 week later.

Letter from the Game Director: http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&table=CONTENT&func_id=2510

Clan of Conan Issue #13 News Letter: http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&table=CONTENT&func_id=2539

Above the powerpoints, Ymir's Pass, Kingship, and guild alliances section of that letter, it clearly says:
"Here are some things you can expect later this year."
It never gives a definitive timeframe or specifics, just being later on this year.

As for the planned fixes at the end of June/Early July, sure they're a couple of weeks late, but they're still getting them out before the end of July and they're doing a great job as fixing the things.

@Lethality, the forums don't represent the game's population. Only a small percentage. If you actually have played the game (doubtful), you'll find that most people in-game are enjoying the game and having fun. The community is very helpful and mature, even on the PvP servers. So what if immature people troll the forums, they're just pissy because school hasn't started yet and they've got nothing better to do, apparently. Just take a look at the WoW forums, or any other MMO forums, they're all filled with people bitching about their game. Are you to expect that WoW is failing because it's forum trolls say so? Sure.......

@Pickles

Oh, I've played the game... it's a steaming pile, but that's not what this is about - I am trying to prevent other players from getting taken in by the doughboy Ellingson's interview. It's blatant lies.

And spending time on the forums is INDEED an accurate way to get a feel for the state of the game. No, not everyone that plays goes to, much less posts on, the forums. BUt the ones that do are SPOT ON with their criticism, and will save alot of players alot of money and time if people go there and read and understand what they're saying and DO NOT believe what Funcom says.

That guy has LIE written all over his face!

I got this game just the other month and I'm already sick of it. I played it for 9 days out of the 30 and it has me running already.

Also I'd just like to note that once you get out of the first 20 levels of the game its quality greatly diminishes, no voice acting on NPC quests. It's like a former shadow of the earlier starting zone.

I won't say which game I'm going back to cause thats not what this is about, Funcom just have a really poorly executed MMO with lots of potential but overall it feels like a big beta that shouldn't be paid for. I'll re-sub in a year as-long as my character hasn't been deleted, If you read the manual it says they cannot guarantee that non-subscribers characters won't be deleted, but they do guarantee that people who do have subscriptions won't have there characters deleted. Sounds like a sort of threat to me, Keep your sub going or we might lose your characters!.

Can't believe I wasted £30 on it. What a joke.

Um, every MMO in history has said such things about your characters for cancelled accounts.

He is the token marketing guy, he gets paid to lie his ass off.. Yes if you want the truth go to the main forums and read, but read fast before the Funcom censor train cleans up the post.

I wish Massively was filtering this Marketing crap out and report on this when the changes are in testing or live..... AoC can not be trusted....

Legendary battle keeps? Man they can't even get the normal battle keep system working. My server, Deathwhisper, was THE PVP server to go to and its a ghost town now with the game not even being in retail 90 days.

Funcom has failed, most servers are dying, and people should just move on to another game.

Age of Conan rep talks Kingship, new zones, and more

Reader Comments (12)

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 7:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 8:19AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 9:00PM Lethality said

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 10:31PM Crsh said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 5:32AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 7:55AM Lethality said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 2:56AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 5:15AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 7:30AM TwistedBishop said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 6:02AM MrGutts said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 11:58AM TheJackman said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 1:12PM HadesLotD said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

The Secret World launch delayed to July 3

Featured Stories

Editorial: Learning from the 38 Studios disaster

Storyboard: Why I rejected your guild application

Everything you need to know about The Secret World

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW