Age of Conan's hardcore PvP ruleset releasing tomorrow

What's a good encore for the week following a huge, game-altering freemium revamp? How about a new and much-anticipated server ruleset. Yep, Funcom is gearing up to release Age of Conan's hardcore Blood and Glory PvP shards tomorrow according to an update on the official boards.

The American and European servers are scheduled to receive four hours of maintenance, after which time two new shards, Deathwish (US) and Rage (EU), will be brought online. These aren't just any servers, either. The Blood and Glory ruleset features free-for-all PvP throughout the game world, corpse-looting, and one character per account.

Age of Conan's PvP community has been very vocal in its disdain for the game's turn towards the PvE side of the MMO street in recent years, and the new ruleset will finally give the die-hards an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is. For more on the ruleset, check out our exclusive interview with Funcom's Craig Morrison as well as our Blood & Glory opinion piece.

[Thanks to Blasius for the tip!]

Reader Comments (20)

I can't wait for the whining to begin...

Their idea of hardcore pvp is just a gankfest..

@(Unverified)

To each their own; you couldn't pay me enough to try it because I'm very much a PvP wuss, but those who enjoy that sort of free-for-all mayhem will at least have the option to play that way.

@Crsh

Problem is there are so few people that actually want to play a PvP game like this, there is a huge difference between hardcore and jujmp dumb pvp.. this pvp server has no real goal and in the end players of all levels will just get bored and hang out in the newbie areas, slaughtering new players and giving them one less reason to play on that server.

The first few days will be fun, but once players start getting to higher levels the only players that will enjoy it are the high level players, it's severely horrible implementation and in the end it will be no more then a FFA gankfest.

This is just a hoax to grab more subs, class vs class balance is still complete garbage, and that should have been their first priority.. Unfortunately this will be seen as some sort of success because all these new players are going to take a few weeks to realize how unbalanced this game is. The balance is bad, REALLY bad.

@(Unverified) I'm still trying to figure out what makes it hardcore, it sounds like a normal PvP experience for those of us that play/ed MMOs like Lineage, Shadowbane, EVE, etc etc. Now if they added perma-death I would say it's hardcore. Of course I'm being rather tongue and cheek ;-p

It's good though to see those interested in PvP will finally get a proper PvP server in AoC.

@Unshra Aside from the corpse looting aspect, the rules don't sound much different from what many of us experienced on the FFA PVP servers at launch. After the rule changes restricting PVP, many people, including myself, left AoC. I don't see it as hardcore either.

I am looking forward to the new PVP rules (or lack of). This experiment could fail, but it is worth a shot. Yes, ganking was a problem ... sometimes. There were ways to avoid being ganked repeatedly and it added a little bit of strategy to the game. 'Who' is in the zone you are going to? What interesting tidbits can you get from your combat log? I miss the cat and mouse in the Underhalls. I could also find fun with my lowbie Ranger playing stun-and-run with the high level gankers. I knew I couldn't win the fight, but I could make it painful for them to mess with me. The rage tells I used to get made it priceless.

Yarb!

This sounds absolutely amazing.

@CaptainZoidberg

Wait, is this a f2p option or purely for those with premium?

@CaptainZoidberg does it matter?

If you don't pay you will be extremely handicapped PvP wise.

@(Unverified)

Will Funcom have superior gear for sale in the store? Pay to win will be an option?

@CaptainZoidberg

It's for everyone

I think this is amazing news. This is what this stale genre needs. Old-school PVP where the players band together to kill people or protect people. Nothing like old-school PVP emotions and adrenaline.

This announcement has piqued my interest in Age of Conan. I've been eying it for a while now. With this change to freemium and the addition of hardcore pvp servers, I will be giving this game a play. Congrats funcom, on interesting someone in a two year old game.

I might try this out. The last time I played competitive PvP was way back when the original Unreal Tournament was hot stuff. These servers are going to be famous ( or infamous ) in the MMO circuit! Gotta be able to say to my grandkids, I played on the AoC Blood and Glory rule set server :)

Interesting names for the hardcore PvP servers:

Deathwish (for US) and Rage (for EU) :D

Mayhem! Woooooot!

In my opinion, what they could have done to make this less of a grind, is to allow everyone to start at lvl 80 on their single character. I don't doubt this might have some flaws, but I am sure people would appreciate skipping the whole 1-80 aspect. Of course some might not, and maybe they enjoy lving up 1-80 in a FFA PvP environment.

Maybe the intstant lvl 80 idea could be restriction to special arenas (where others could spectate too), turn them into ampitheatres, and throw in some clickable ingame leaderboards, etc.

@Scrobes

I agree, what's the point of an entire MMO with quest lines, level advancement, a huge world, a story along with the rest of the boring gameplay for a PVP server? All that is really needed is a patch of grass large enough for a place or two to hide, and a res pad. Just get down to the business of beating each other over the head, forget the rest of it!

I'm not really sure what the genius is behind splitting the already sparse pvp community between two servers.

I also don't get people who want instant 80s with preset gear. What's the point of pvping in an MMO then? Just play an FPS. They do it much, much better.

PvP in an MMO SHOULD be about battling each other over finite resources in the open world. An open world where all the raid bosses are. No instances at all.

That's obviously not going to happen since the harsh truth is that the majority of any modern MMO's playerbase are the ultra casual, and the ultra casual wouldn't play an old school open world MMO where you could do nothing solo and sometimes waited an hour or two to get a group together to do anything if you were unlucky. Yet, those games had the best pvp.

So, in summary, this server is going to be an utter failure, because the game itself is an utter failure. Every single current gen MMO is an utter failure when it comes to pvp because of instances.

Age of Conan's hardcore PvP ruleset releasing tomorrow

Reader Comments (20)

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 6:09PM Seffrid said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 6:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 8:27PM Crsh said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 10:44PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 11:23PM Unshra said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 1:24AM mechanicalturk said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 6:40PM Graill440 said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 7:04PM CaptainZoidberg said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 7:09PM CaptainZoidberg said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 10:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 2:05AM Poordevil said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 6:22AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 7:04PM Vumbra said

Posted: Jul 6th 2011 8:44PM claytondora said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 1:57AM Poordevil said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 6:24AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 7:18AM Mukit said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 9:26AM Scrobes said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 10:51AM Poordevil said

Posted: Jul 7th 2011 7:57PM (Unverified) said

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