Age of Conan Open Beta Writeup

dude why do you think theyre making an open beta, its not to test the game features but to test the stability and easy bugs

post ur sys spec btw

They have a strong history of cutting it close. I was in the Anarchy Online beta. That game actually got WORSE closer to release, and (as most people knows) had one of the worst launches in MMORPG history. AoC is not as unplayable as Anarchy Online was before release, but Anarchy Online’s problems were all lag/latency related and at least the game actually looked good for its time.

I’m not too concerned since I didn’t really intend to pick up AoC, I was just hoping it might win me over. It does sound like even people with good processors are having trouble, so I’ll chalk it up to un-optimized beta code for now. I think they’ve implied that open/closed beta testers are using different versions of the game, so for Funcom’s sake I hope the closed version is optimized. The ‘fileplanet open beta’ is really just a stress test after all.

This review is spot on. Not only is this just like Vanguard, it’s actually a bit closer to what happened with Hellgate: London. There’s no way there is some more updated build that Funcom will surprise us with at retail: that’s why they’re still debugging. I’ll pay my $5 to get 10 days of retail, but if there’s no miracle patch, then I’m out.

Oo, I forgot; I disagree about the quests. Yeah, they’re standard, but I really, really appreciate the conversation style of acquiring them rather than the wall-of-text style. And I loved the nighttime story sequence. I’m only sad that it only goes until level 20. 🙁

There should be a huge difference from what you are playing and the launch version if they get that done in time. For once the beta has basically a recorder that logs everything you do and any errors and just from one session it can create 8-20Mb of info (that will ofc be turned off on release). One reason why your harddrive goes bananas as you play sometimes. Also in beta there is only the dx9 version 1.5 of the graphics engine cheetah and not dx10 v2.0. So it will look better and run faster on launch. And sometimes when you turn around quickly it slows down to a crawl and that is and old error they had with the shader effect.

Now you are curious why use an old client. Well it is the same in the closed beta and it is because what they want to know is stuff like server load optimizing (same as tech. beta) and any quest bugs etc. Still with the problems it run ok on my semi-old amd x2 2.6GHz, 2Mb ram and geforce 8600.

But come on even with the slowdowns it is nowehere near the unfinished feeling Vanguard had the first year 😉

And finally the game play in AoC is tons better than that of wow imho.

I would also like to say that yes the 1-20 area is closed in as it is an intro but after that the 20-35 areas are insane crazy size some of them and NOT instanced as much as 1-20 is.

You all should remember a few things..

This Open BETA is hosted and held by IGN, not Funcom themselves. The client that’s being used is a older one, than the current one in closed beta etc..

The amount of players in the starting zones are like 4x more than the server is supposed to handle at once, so you can’t really expect anything else than a laggy experience.

The whole Open BETA is a gimmick when it comes to “beta testing”. First of all, the Open BETA isn’t held by Funcom at all, so I would be surprised if they are watching the Open BETA much at all. I think IGN have paid for this whole Open BETA thing, and that’s why you had to be an subscriber to get invited. I think the whole point wit the Open BETA is just for people to test the first few levels of the game, to get more people buying the game. Why would they want people to beta test an old client? And why would they have a level 13 cap in a BETA?

Just face it, the Open BETA isn’t really a BETA.
It’s a chance for those who want, to pay for being able to try out the game until level 13 on a old client.

I don’t really understand why Funcom gave IGN such a old client, as it gives players a poorer impression than if they gave them the latest client which runs quite a lot better, and got all the latest stability and class balancing fixes.

And as Horpse mentioned, the client is indeed in a debug mode, and as well all know, that always cause some failure and memory leaks.

There is a reason why closed BETA and Open BETA testers aren’t able to play on the same servers, that’s because there are two different clients. And the Open BETA isn’t even hosted by Funcom.

So with an older client, not hosted by Funcom, debug mode, 3-5x times the amount of players the server is supposed to handle at once, don’t expect a flawless experience.

To be honest, I haven’t had a single client crash with the closed beta since January (then I used Vista 64bit and got bluescreens)
So it quite clear to me that this Open BETA client is quite sucky compared with the current closed beta client.

Seems you atleast didn’t experience my favorite issue, the game more or less pausing for anywhere between 10 seconds to three minutes. I say pausing because everything freezes and CPU usage drops to zero. You’d think it had hanged or was crashing, but if I just waited it always came back, sooner or later.

@Thomas
A client in debug mode should never cause memory leaks, if anything it should prevent memory leaks and cause crashes instead.

Keen,

Although closed beta testers can play on the open beta servers, they could still be using a different version of the game engine, the server isn’t going to care how optimized your client is.

I’m not saying that IS the case, just pointing out that the fact closed beta testers can join the open beta essentially tells us nothing.

So the big question comes in…

*drums rolling*

Will the graphics make up for all the fail?

The first FUNCOM beta I played in was AO. Yes the beta crashed a ton, but I enjoyed the game style. So thinking FUNCOM would fix it, I pre-ordered and got the game. The first month was ten times worst then beta. Worst the last minute screwed over the skill system destroying what I thought would have been a great game. They also gimp all the pvp stuff. With the mess of the game, I left after three monthes of that BS feeling cheated. DOAC I move too.
A good beta and good launch, still Mythic had issues too.

I’m not planning for AoC game to be stable, or the launch going smoothly. What I see in the game now is the best I can hope for when the goes live. With that said. The game rocks! I’m hoping there will be REAL PVP servers, as they claim. The game looks great, when it doesn’t lag. Ok FUNCOM I’m giving one more shot. I’ll stick with it for 6 monthes. Hope my friends will too. This time they got a fun game, only if they can make it stable. The basic levels and feel of the game made me wishing for more. So I pre-ordered.

My system: XPC sn25p FX60(duo 2.6ghz), 2gig ddr 400, palit 9600gt 1gb sonic, 2 Raptor WD HDDs in Raid0, Sharp 1080p HDTV.

So no issue loading the client, or updating the game.
Started off with low settings 1024×768. Got 65-60 FPS during non city/combat. City would choke on loading things, 50-30fps to 5fps or having things “pop in”. The 1st level area combat would drop to 45-25 fps with some lag spikes in intense effect points droping to 5fps. As the night went on, I had 11 random game disconnects over 14 hours. No blue screens. No drop to desktops. Any only 2 game frooze the computer for a hard reset. Not too bad for beta in my head. Guessing launch won’t be better then that. Yet I still want to play the game. It’s that good. Plus hoorey for boobies!!!

Note anytime I switch characters, or logout I did a full reboot. So far the game is running better then last night. We’ll see how handles over the weekend.

Button mashing will not stop until virtual reality games and technology appear for computers on a regular basis. Wii is such a idea but really crude at this time. AOC is just button mashing as is WoW and probably WAR too. Watching the video’s posted, can you say that in a huge brawl or fight your doing to take the time to circle around your opponent’s ungarded side or back side to strike? Hell no. Your going to stand toe to toe and just whack at each other while franticly moving your sheilding around by mashing buttons. So be it.
I’m looking forward to the more realistic graphics and new adventures in this game and getting away from the cartoon of WoW tho I am appreciative of the game and still play.
Keen, I’m just glad that I found your blog and youtube videos and look forward to each day’s post.

What a joke, everyone at mmorpg.com is making fun of this “review”.

Dunno whats wrong with your system; but I have not crashed at all after playing 5 hours or so. The game ran smooth on high settings. The only bugs were falling through some bridges and through the world – once.

“What a joke, everyone at mmorpg.com is making fun of this “review”. ”
dunno.. i like his review its his opinion and he has a right to one so … yes it seems that only lvl 1- 20 will be instanced (thank god!) i like the combat system ,the q…cmon its a mmorpg the most epic q u’ll get in a mmorpg will be go there kill 5 rats 🙂 i’m interested in mass pvp and sieges (i come from playing l2 for about 4 years ..pvp is in my blood)
thank you for ur opinion …nice blog btw:P keep us posted

@Alex Taldren

“The auto-attack feature is probably one of the worst things ever conceived. MMO gamers need to realize that playing video games requires playing, which requires pushing… oh my God, dare I say it… buttons!”

In an MMO in which long-term grinding is common, having to press a button for each attack could get problematic. Another thing is that it helps even out latency issues because even if your client is behind a lag spike, your character is still considered to be attacking without your intervention.

I came across this site and after reading you’re description of the open beta of Age of Conan i was laughing. Why? because it is exactly in every way the way i see things right now.

I also played the pvp week-end and left with some uncertainty about the real state of the game at this point.

I feel that this game will be awesome for sure but it will take at least 6 months of polishing. No way Jose that this game will be in a playable state in fifteen day’s.

I have a quad core with the 4 gb ram and the 8800 gtx blah blah blah..it doesn’t matter ’cause you go from 64 fps to 8 and constant stuttering and everything else mentioned above.

I still pre-ordered and i cross my finger.

Keep up the good work with your comments. They are unbiased and very informative.

Why wouldn’t the game be in a “playable” state at release?

How can you even make a comment on that when you aren’t even running the latest BETA client?

The Open BETA client isn’t near as polished as the current closed beta client. And at the same time we in the closed beta aren’t using the same one as Funcom got internal..

And for me it’s by far playable, 40-60FPS and barley lagg whatsoever?

And then I’m not even running on the final client..

I do understand your scepticism, as I’m kinda sharing it too. But I can’t really understand how you can draw any conclusion basted on what you’ve seen in the PvP Weekend and the Open BETA as the client is old and the servers got 3-4x times the amount of players that their supposed to handle at ones..

“crashing, bugs, glitches, leaks” Guys in closed beta already said that most of these problems are fixed with the their client version

Just a tought: Could they be using an old client to lower expectations, seeing as the game is very very hyped? Kind of like when presidential candidates lowers expectation to “win” a debate.

And also Keen: You seem very convinced that WAR is gonna be the ultimate MMO (for you, at least). How can you be sure that WAR will not have similar issues? I have the impression that you are very pro WAR, am I wrong?

Off course this is your blog and I respect your right to post any and all opinions you might have. Btw, like your explanation off the experince, and the way you comment on what you like and dislike and why. Keep posting.

People commonly let their own experiences blind them to the greater truth of matters.

Keen is trying to focus on the larger population of open beta testers as a whole and the impact the game will have over a population base of millions. Saying “OMG my rig is running awesomeee!! 1900×1200 u noob!” is a worthless comment. Your experience is solely your own and has no meaning in the bigger scope of this games impending release.

The facts seem to be that people, by and large, are having problems and if Funcom wants to succeed in this MMO enviroment, it better damn well pay attention to that ‘by and large’ crowd.

Also, to the “Closed Beta is better” crowd. Stating that the closed beta is in a cleaner and polished state than the open beta, is difficult to believe at best. If its so polished, why not release it to the masses and make the publicity stunt that is open beta, sore to even greater heights?!?!? Why on earth would they keep it locked up if its so bug free and polished? I call Shennangins!

>:[

I liked your review of the classes during the PvP weekend – but since then, your site has become and more and more negative towards AoC. I am not seeing the non-biased remarks I was even a week ago. =/

“Why give open beta a botched client?”

For marketing, reviews, even building hype I’ll agree it was a big mistake.

For “testing” it makes complete sense to me. One must have understanding of how software is made and tested. It takes a team. Lots of different people. Things like MMORPGs don’t’ have just one programmer. You do have a handful of people working on every part. Software for the servers, which is more then one(game,database,account,logging,chatting), not just the game client, then there is the network hardware too.

They do have build version for a reason. They will work off it. Having QA and testing working with the same broken software. Just to test and stress test software to find as many bugs and error that they can. Takes tons of time making or trying to make the same error happen over and over. Logging it, and planning to fix it. QA keep using the old broken client. Meanwhile the Devs try to fix the errors, log what they did, test what they did, then at some point a Program Manager calls for a new build, which then handed to QA. Cycle goes on and on for MMORPGS. Sadly it is just way too big of a system and program. So the company uses test servers with us as part of the QA. Stress tests and Betas, help a lot for many reasons. Not for showing off an error free game.

Now I doubt FUNCOM is hosting all these servers at their company HQ in Switzerland, Norway, USA and China. They must partner with host to setup Internet Bandwidth, security, firewalls, load balancers, switches, servers, websites, databases, etc. It’s also on a incredible scale. How many companies have 1000 or 5000 employees in one spot. Think of the dozens of IT workers just to handle them. Now look at MMORPG with like 50k to 100k to Million users connecting to those servers. It’s a lot more complicated then just a web server. All of that takes time to setup, test, and get working. Stress test and open beta are key to prepping to the final launch.
How many QA people can you HIRE and Pay to figure out those glitches. Never enough compared to the scale of users that play a new MMORPG. Close betas good, but still not in the same scale. Hence the bad PVP stress test, or hyped Open beta.

Now if you use old client, to test you caught and understood all the game, server, network bugs or glitches. Then switch to a final build. Hopefully have fix most of the issues, then scramble to fix key problems that might have been missed. Make sense for the devs.

Doesn’t make sense to get all the fans happy with the game.

Most Companies can not afford a long open beta, paying for all those severs, bandwidth, and work without earning something back. Publisher will also be upset if the game doesn’t sell when they said it would. This will always plague MMORPGs.

We can only hope FUNCOM brings us a good stable game in reasonable time.

Thank you Keen and Graev’s for all the good reporting work. Your videos and blogs got me into pre-ordering and trying Age of Conan. The Open Beta made really want to play, even with all the glitches. 80 levels. There is a lot we haven’t see and isn’t finished. Let’s see how the class fair at 40, 60, 80. As long as the keep good FFA PVP or some type of good PVP I’m interested.

I Played My POM 1-13 and loved the game play i will admit i was a bit laggy at the beginning but i am most of the time with new games. Now playing the game im not realy experiencing much lag except for a few lag spikes in the CTF pvp.

Over all i think this game is awsome, yes theres a few bugs but people have to remember, 1. this is a beta 2. this is a stress test so every thing is going to lagg.

most of all…. 1st rule Of AOC… dont talk about Wow (lol… no realy..)

I also forgot to mention the load times which are usually 3-7 minutes….

While I’m in the camp of people that would call it a mistake for funcom to release open beta with an older buggier client, I’m also cautiously optimistic about how many well thought out (albeit fairly pissy) posts from experienced closed beta testers that claim these bugs are indeed fixed, and that different aspects of the game are being tested at different times. As a programmer myself I understand how lengthy the debugging process can be, and no you do not always build every fix and every component of a program into an “ultimate” build and then retest based on that build.

As I’m sure many people have been doing, I’ve been scrolling through many forums for possible explanations for a buggy open beta, and the best I found was this, that this being a stress test, funcom released a build that created the most server traffic whether by bugs or by inefficiency, with the idea being that if the servers could handle the stress of overpopulation by a terrible client, it would definitely be able to handle the final optimized client.

Now I’m not saying I believe in this magically polished client out there, but I think there are just enough people giving reasons for older client use and reporting days when closed beta runs magnificently, to believe that at least some of the bugs that Keen has been talking about in his blog have been dealt with. I’ve been following the posts of two alleged beta testers, both post with a reasonable and grounded attitudes, and both have reported that the closed beta client changes with patches, with functionality being added or even subtracted based on what needs to be tested. They both claim to have played a closed beta client in which these bugs are a nonissue, and I will hold out hope that they are telling the truth.

Obviously for every one of those posts, there are about 20 posts about how terrible everything has been, so it’s so difficult to get a good read on the situation unless you’re actually actively testing.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, in my opinion there is still reason to hope for at least a fairly stable release. Personally I’m holding onto my preorder because I believe even if it doesn’t happen right away, the game will prove itself somewhere down the road, hopefully in the near future, and these kinds of MMOs are always fun to look back on to see what they were, and what they become.

All this being said, kudos to Keen and Graev for an awesomely informative blog, and although it was your AoC coverage that drew me in, I’ll definitely be checking in in the future for all things gaming =)

I read your post Keen, and I must say, very informative and very helpful. I was interested in picking up AoC to play while waiting for warhammer but so far, what I’ve heard isn’t too encouraging. Graphics aren’t a bid deal to me, but gameplay and functionality are. I dislike multiple world instances, its very Tabula Rasa-esque and kills that real world feel for me. I’m suprised that a game like AoC which is going for a realistic feel, would use instancing like that. Anyways, great article as always! Keep up the good work!

Keen,
Thanks for all the good work reporting the beta. I must say I’m not having any of the issues you are reporting. I do get choppiness now and then, get a few DCs, but the crashes and other issues I just don’t have. I know you don’t think its PC related but I’m suspicious that it is. Assuming we are playing the same beta and you are having problems and I’m not then it would point (IMHO) to the PC.

My PC:
Windows XP
Nvidia 8800gt
2 gig ram
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 3 ghz

I have a feeling their minimum and suggested specs are alot less than what they should be.

Anyway, I’m having fun in the beta. The button smashing, IMHO is twitch type play. I’m not liking it very much. But I am enjoying the graphics and the classes. I’m also enjoying the fact that the pets aren’t bugged like they are in LotR.

So far, the beta hasn’t changed my mind to play the game when it first comes out. I still think, as a niche game, it wont have a huge player base but will have enough to pay the bills. I probably wont play it too long though.

“I’m going to be blunt. Funcom is lucky that WAR was delayed and Mythic should be kicking themselves that their game wasn’t ready in time to go against AoC. If these two games went head to head then AoC would have been obliterated and unless Funcom turns things around before Fall that’s precisely what will happen. Sorry if you disagree, but that is the truth of my opinion.”

Dude if you would have played war closed beta and aoc closed beta you would acutally know that RIGHT NOW aoc>war. Back your opionion up with some arguments or just dont post them at all;). Also keep in mind that maybe they are reasons why warhammer got pushed back? -.-. All i can say this that the closed beta client is far more advanced right now.

“BSOD – I had my first BSOD in 3 years lastnight. It happened while talking to a NPC. Suddenly my system locked up and a BSOD appeared. It mentioned something about my display driver which I assume means it crashed.”

Update your drivers. Most likely this is not a client problem.

hey been reading and reading, also i’m playing open beta, i crash bout every 2-5mins, but its usally cause im running around and trying to open my inventory. Also when ever i try to use the menu button, or f10 the game crashes, if i ever hit the settings button the game crashes, i have read that i needed to change a few files on my comp before playing and i’ll admit i havnt got to try this yet. Anyways just wanted to rant alittle and say what a very interesting read, i do hope to read more soon, also have you guys ran across any problems involving these?

@Viah: WAR will appeal to wider audience not only with their design but with their game’s system requirements. Funcom has a reputation for failure with AO. Mythic has a reputation for success with DAoC. That’s my argument to back my opinion that WAR would have obliterated AoC if they released at the same time. Now would you care to back your opinion of why AoC > War based on closed beta?

No surprise. War is nothing else than an inverted wow. And thats the problem, the gameplay is almost exactly the same, except its more choppy right now. Since war is still under NDA i can’t say much, except that you will get bored pretty fast. Atleast i got bored fast. War and wow are just to parallel and the features they implemented to further enchant their pvp system are not quite as good as they claim to be. Just take the wow battleground system add a few new global impact features on it and you acutally have war in the state it is RIGHT NOW. Atleast the pvp part of it.

Its also pretty hard to compare both games war and aoc. War is definitely more casual friendly. You will get almost everyhing shoved up your ass. You can join pvp battles easy, you fight for your faction, you don’t need a guild to succeed, every quest you complete does indeed help your faction to win the war. In wow however you normaly don’t give much about the rest of the server, since you have x realm battlegrounds and usually a guild which raids. You simply don’t need to know anyone else. In war its different. Thanks to the rvr.

However the RvR system doesnt play out to well right now, since the lack of players within each faction. But it already gives you a nice preview of what the endgame might look like. Every player relys on everyone else , if the majority of your faction sucks, there is nothing you can do about it. Several good guilds won’t do it alone. You depend too hard on everyone else. Which might be a good thing for casuals, but its no fun at all for more serious gamers. It is @Viah: WAR will appeal to wider audience not only with their design but with their game’s system requirements. Funcom has a reputation for failure with AO. Mythic has a reputation for success with DAoC. That’s my argument to back my opinion that WAR would have obliterated AoC if they released at the same time. Now would you care to back your opinion of why AoC > War based on closed beta?

No surprise. War is nothing else than an inverted wow. And thats the problem, the gameplay is almost exactly the same, except its more choppy right now. Since war is still under NDA i can’t say much, except that you will get bored pretty fast. Atleast i got bored fast. War and wow are just to parallel and the features they implemented to further enchant their pvp system are not quite as good as they claim to be. Just take the wow battleground system add a few new global impact features on it and you acutally have war in the state it is RIGHT NOW. Atleast the pvp part of it.

Its also pretty hard to compare both games war and aoc. War is definitely more casual friendly. You will get almost everyhing shoved up your ass. You can join pvp battles easy, you fight for your faction, you don’t need a guild to succeed, every quest you complete does indeed help your faction to win the war. In wow however you normaly don’t give much about the rest of the server, since you have x realm battlegrounds and usually a guild which raids. You simply don’t need to know anyone else. In war its different. Thanks to the rvr.

However the RvR system doesnt play out to well right now, since the lack of players within each faction. But it already gives you a nice preview of that the endgame might look like. Every player relys on everyone else , if the majority of your faction mates suck, there is nothing you can do about it. Several good guilds won’t do it alone. You depend too hard on everyone else. Which might be good for casuals, but its no fun at all for more serious gamers, its definitely not nice to lose on several lanes because the majority of players just can’t organize or just suck.

In aoc however you don’t fight for any faction, you only fight for your guild and this is much more appealing. Create a guild and see if you can make it to the top or fail. Create your battlekeep and try to keep it. Alliances, diplomancy both needs to be considered.

Its rvr against gvg. Casual versus more dedicated players. It really is. Most aoc players i have met are really motivated, they show ambitions, they want to prove themselves as a good guild or players. While in war i miss this feeling since its rvr, you have to think on a much larger scale. The personal impact on the outcome of the war is rather small, regardless if you play like a young god or not, it won’t matter. It reminds me kinda of the wow attitude if you join a regular game of av. Everyone WANTS to win but only a handful of players do acutally play the way that you might win the game. Which is a shame. Back to aoc.

My conclusion:

I haven’t played the open beta from aoc yet, since i have access to the closed client, i can’t compare both. All i can say is that i experienced few to no problems with the closed beta client. Of course there are bugs, its a beta overall, but at the current state of both games i judge the aoc beta to be more polished and fun. But i think war will be a large success since it aims for the casual players.

In the end only time will tell. Both games have great potential. AoC is not really a game for casuals, while war is. Its not easy to compare both.

I’m going to be blunt as well, I played the game up to level 53 I think, add to that my 3 other 25-30 chars.

This game blows, I stuck with it until lvl 53 cause I figured it’d get better, well it didn’t. The buttonmashing is boring, and the time it takes to excute an attack means that in any given fight you can make very few tactical chocies of what kind of skills you want to land on your opponent. Add to that that many of these skills are your normal “reduce opponents armor” crap. So what does this new “immersive combat system” really mean: less choices, more mindless buttonamshing and the most booooring combat system in any PtP mmo to date.

Complete lack of class balance.

NO polish at all and horrible stabillity issues, it lacks a proffesional feeling.

The graphics are pretty bland if you ask me, and graphics in an mmo are a secondary concern.

Linear world. The world doesn’t feel free at all. if you find a steep hill you can get up on you will often be blocked by an invisible wall. Sometimes even visiting all 3 races zones were not enough to get you leveled without doing lower lvl quests(problem in the mid lvls).