Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures State of the Game

The Age of Conan State of the Game (belatedly) gives us an update on how the MMO, actively in beta, is doing.

Most of the content and most of the features have been deployed to the beta, or are waiting for deployment in QA. Let me give you an example on some things we have a special focus on right now. Things like core hands-on combat (iteration nine now), items and quest rewards (iteration 3), feat system (was redesigned after last delay. It is now in a new iteration and feels truly awesome), PvP mini-games (iteration three, soon going live on Beta, with more areas on the way) and GUI (iteration 5, 3, 2 or one depending on the area) are all things we have a special eye on.

Some places in our development things are coming slowly to the beta version, in other places it is blindingly fast. As an example; when the new rendering engine was patched to beta recently, the engine we had on the beta was almost three months old. On other stuff we patch it out almost instantly, and what it all boils down to is quality and iteration. Is it good enough to test yet, are we happy about it? That is why we have features in the beta which can only be triggered by GM commands (like building a battle keep). The entire foundation and code is there though it just needs cleanup before it is enabled. Through the rest of February and March (and beyond) we will implement what we have, make it available to test, and then polish, and polish. Once we move towards our initial March deadline we will then focus harder on shifting to a launch mind-set, but still continue the polish as we move towards May 20th. Seeing from my side of things, and seeing that I can play or peek at ALL parts of the game, I therefore actually feel very good these days. It’s busy, for sure, but what we have coming for you is something special.