Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Q&As

TenTonHammer has two back-to-back Q&As discussing FunCom’s upcoming MMO, Age of Conan. The first interviews 5 different designers about items in the game.

How would you describe the armor and weapons in Age of Conan? Are the items going to be as (fancy) looking as what we see in other games?

Thomas: We are using graphical assets to reflect that this is equipment intended to be used. We don’t have huge flaring shoulder pads, we don’t have pants that are burning in six places. We have equipment that serves a purpose, and it looks the part.

That said, the amount of detail that is in our equipment is astounding. If you equip a full set of chainmail, for instance, you’ll be able to see every link in the armor. It has specular as well, so it reflects light, casts shadow, and so on.

And that’s just how it looks.

In some games, we’ve seen a tendency to just toss items at the player without giving it any thought. We will not be dropping loot, equipment, or items that aren’t suitable for the monster you’re fighting. Chickens will not drop full plate armor.

Thorbjørn: Wolves won’t have two bags worth of gold in their bellies either.

Joel: The visual looks of the armor and stuff are also culture based. It ranges in power as well, depending on the strengths and the weaknesses of the culture. Also, if you go further back in time, you might begin to notice that some of the items that are based on the ancient civilizations are much more powerful than anything you could find from the cultures of the current time period.

Thomas: We have such a complex world when it comes to how many cultures you could encounter.

Also, we have introduced a concept called (community loot) where you kill a monster a Vanir invader for instance you have a chance of actually finding something that he’s actually using. It obviously has the appropriate bonuses and is available to the appropriate classes, but what you see is what you get, basically.

The second interviews designers Evan Michaels about class & raid in the game.

Have you ever worried about having an overwhelming number of melee characters compared to your magic classes? It seems like the type of person that is attracted to the Conan lore is more (melee) oriented rather than a magic user, and thus more players may be melee classes.

Evan Michaels: We’ve discussed it a bit, especially since magic was relatively uncommon in the Conan stories. In the past, we talked about artificially controlling the number of mages on a particular server, but we didn’t really want to go there.

However, I think you’ll find that things will balance out on their own, regarding the melee/magic users. The mage classes are really quite good. The Demonologist and the Necromancer are some of the best soloists in the game. Two guys on the combat team pretty much play one of those two classes; they are mage type characters in almost every single game that they play. With those two representing the Mage archetype, I think that mages will be fine.

Given the IP, people like the up-front, hands-on action that can be gleaned from whacking people with your mace, sword, or large object. And I have to admit that it’s fun. When I play the Barbarian or Guardian, for instance, I love getting up in people’s faces and doing a knock back sort of maneuver then killing them with my blade.

Spotted on Blue’s News.