AoC will become much different in the near future?

Craig Morrison, Game Director for Age of Conan, talked about where his game is currently and where it is headed down the line. Except with some bugs and lack of content at launch, Conan is in a much stronger place. As of the next patch being released next week to the test servers, Craig feels that they’ve addressed all the issues identified by players last summer after the game’s launch. DX10 even went live this week, so anyone with the capabilities can now use DX10 in the game.
This next update is a complete revamp of the RPG system. All the items in the game were altered to make them more valuable. Funcom developers realized that while they didn’t want any players to feel that someone with better gear could not be defeated, making items have no value wasn’t what players wanted either. So while items will have more value now, they shouldn’t give players an edge that can’t be overcome, but there will be an edge. However, Funcom hopes that most players won’t even notice a difference, as they are rebalancing other systems in the game, so that the baseline of an average player with average equipment will feel exactly the same power out of items. Where it will be felt is with higher AoC power leveling players who possess top notch equipment.
As for the near future, Funcom plans to continue adding new content and focusing on providing more interesting and dynamic gameplay. In the last update, a new encounter called Xibaluku was added. Some of the boss encounters in this new area have platform elements. A Jailor will randomly mind control someone throughout the fight in the group and send them to a jail, where they will be taken out of the action for a short time while they kill a skeleton and obtain a key. Players never know who might get hit with this confinement, so it’s a new experience every time.
Also, later in the encounter, a boss monster has a buff that makes it very difficult for players to damage it. There’s a button that can be pressed on the other side of the room which will deactivate the buff. To get to the button, 5 platforms have to be crossed that are controlled by orbs. There is a platform element here as jumps have to be timed as one platform is going up and the other is going down. The platforms are controlled by orbs that another play has to touch in order to raise or lower them. The order of which orbs control which platforms is random, so it will be a new experience every time. And while one player is jumping and the other is controlling orbs, other players have to distract the boss mob, which isn’t taking any real damage in the meantime.
Coming up is a new outdoor playfield called Tarantia Commons. It is an urban environment and will be a story driven experience for the players. There is civil unrest in the commons as two rival factions are fighting for control of the streets, and the players will have the ability influence how the rioting and unrest happens. There’s one area where players will get to fight on the rooftops. Tarantia Commons will be for players with age of conan power leveling 73+ and will be on public test in the next few months.
Funcom also didn’t talk about expansion news, instead focusing all their attentions on communicating to the players how they are trying to make the game work the way it should. However, there is an expansion team working on something, but no information is forthcoming on that. For anyone who hasn’t gotten a chance to try out Age of Conan, a free trial is headed our way soon, so be sure to check back with Fileplanet for those details.