Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Interview

GameSpot talked with director Craig Morrison during the GDC to get a feel of Age of Conan’s state and future.

However, the game still seemed to lack one crucial piece of the puzzle–powerful, desirable, and sexy loot items (known colloquially by massively multiplayer veterans as “phat loot”). This will also change. The Age of Conan team’s next big project will be a gigantic overhaul of the way items work in the game, as well as the power and bonuses they provide. In most massively multiplayer games, you expect to keep fighting, keep questing, and keep looting more and more-powerful items that grant your characters huge bonuses that strengthen them considerably. Previously, Age of Conan’s somewhat conservative loot system did just the opposite. Even powerful magical swords and armor would provide measly-sounding +0.02% bonuses to damage or protections against damage. With the next update of the game, items will instead carry “ranking” labels that provide easier-to-understand bonuses like “+10 to strength.”

In addition, the game’s basic item bonus system is also being overhauled. Previously, you could receive bonuses to certain attributes (strength, endurance, and so on) only from specific armor pieces; for instance, you could only get strength bonuses from gloves or helmets, which limited your choices considerably. Now, you’ll be able to find armor in any slot that increases any character statistic, and really focusing on raising the power of a single statistic will have a noticeable, but not overwhelming, effect on your character’s power level. Morrison was quick to point out that even a fully kitted adventurere with meticulously gathered enhancing armor will increase in power by about 50% (as opposed to the 200%-300% power increases you might see in other online games), so this advantage won’t always guarantee you a victory, and isnt’ intended to be something that players should obsess themselves with, unless they’re looking to get into high-end raids, which, as Age ofConan players already understand,requires every advantage players can get their hands on. Hopefully, thisradical changewill help players get more enjoyment out of their game by pursuing powerful loot, but won’t make players feel obligated to complete specific armor sets or end up limiting variety as all players of a certain class end up all wearing the same type of kitted armor.