Unchained! As most of you may know Age of Conan has finally accepted the Free to play model of game development(f2P). This was a benchmark MMO and still has amazing features that make it one of the best now F2P MMO games out there. With its amazing graphics, intense combat system, and uncensored blood and gore violence this game will satiate anyone’s blood lust for PvP in the MMO market.
Unchained and Hardcore! When Funcom announced that the game was going free to play they also announced that they will be releasing a hardcore server for Age of Conan. This server will contain No guards anywhere in the game. No Bori (which for people who do not know what bori is. It is a system in place to grant PvP levels without having to do much killing of actual players.) This server will also include loot dropped off of players, either generated at random or a piece of loot off of their character plus a percentage of the money that they are carrying with them. Increased PvP experience from sieges and open world PvP killings and many more features to be added into the game at a later time. These features will be sure to entice players from all over to come an join the fight on the Deathwish server! F2P Zerg! As a lot of the veterans in the MMO community know, when a game falls on hard times or sees that their subscription base is starting to dwindle. It is possible to the save the ship by going with the hybrid free to play model. Games like DDO and LOTRO adopted this style and noticed that the player base almost tripled from previous numbers. Depending on how well the F2P system is implemented for AoC we could see the complete resurrection of this game with thousands of players on at any given time. Funcom will also be rolling out a lot more content for the game in the coming months along with the new Conan movie that is releasing this summer. Item Mall: As you all know with the inclusion of any free to play system its safe to assume that there will be an item or cash shop with it. Well Funcom does not dissapoint with its iteration of a F2P favorite. I like the AoC cash shop because it has a lot of useful and fun items (yay!) but the window itself doesn’t leave much to the imagination. The cash shop window does not show up well on very high resolution displays and appears fuzzy. Its also cluttered to all hell and will take some time to get used to it. In the long term though the cash shop will improve over time. For now its a bit meh but it serves its purpose just fine to the player base. Vanity Slot, finally! One of the other major things to come with the F2P switch over for AoC is the inclusion of the vanity tab. Finally you to will be able to run naked through the streets killing and chopping off heads while having all of the benefits or your gear at the same time. This will obviously lead to a lot of people going naked all the time which is fine, as it adds a certain amount of customization to the game and your own personal character that was not there before. It is also refreshing to not have to have your character like he stole his starter armor from some poor beggar in the streets. All in all I like the vanity tab and I hope they keep releasing vanity armor to keep it interesting. The only thing you cant re skin is weapons, this could be partly because weapon range in AoC is a big deal for PvP and it could come to mess up range detectors on that side of the game. In conclusion: With the free to play system being adopted by Funcom hopefully the numbers for this game continue to rise and the new hardcore PvP server is a complete success. They have also announced a slew of new content that will be released with the new Conan the Barbarian movie, you can watch the trailer below to see for yourself how epic it is. Also If you have any questions regarding the game or want to venture into the untamed lands of Hyboria with a couple of us, feel free to drop down to the Eve channel any time. |
