Age of Conan delayed until May

Several readers alerted me that this weekends news of Funcom confirming a March release date for Age of Conan was already outdated by Monday. Age of Conan has now been delayed again until May 20. As Funcom still holds the record for the "worst MMORPG release ever" with Anarchy Online, I can understand why they don't want to risk a repeat performance. Beta testers leaked that some of the main features of AoC aren't yet implemented in the beta, so two more months can do the game only good.

Karazhan chess

As part of Saturday's Karazhan raid I had the opportunity to participate for the first time in the chess event. That was a lot of fun, even if I just stuck to the pawns, me being a noob. In the chess event you control a piece on a big chess board, where 16 Horde pieces face 16 Alliance pieces. You can only move from square to square, but combat is done with the pieces hitting each other with attacks and spells, trying to bring down the other piece's health just like regular WoW combat. Every piece has different abilities, and you win by killing the enemy king piece.

The Karazhan chess event is very easy, our guild refers to it as "free epics". Blizzard had to hotfix Karazhan once, giving stealth detection to some trash mobs on the way, after videos appeared on how to solo the chess event in an uncleared Karazhan by sneaking there. Apart from a joke on how chess was too hard for Alliance and would be changed to checkers, most guilds consider the event as a light entertainment interlude between harder fights. The strategy required is very basic, just kill the healers first and then concentrate on the king. And the pieces always have the same stats, so the players' gear and buffs make no difference whatsoever.

What did strike me most about this event is that I can't see any reason why it should be reserved for raiders able to get past Curator and the trash mobs. The chess event is a complete game inside the game, which obviously took a lot of effort to program, even more than a regular raid boss. And the ability of a raid group to win the chess event is in no way related to their ability to beat other bosses or trash. If they could just get there, any group of players could beat the chess event and get the epics. It is welfare epics for raiders, plus a free fun game thrown in. And the reason why it is so easy is that the pieces are well-balanced, but one side is controlled by a relatively stupid AI, while the other side is controlled by the players.

The same chess event would be a lot better if it was a 16 vs. 16 PvP battleground. Instead of choosing their piece, players would be randomly assigned one piece to control. As both sides would be controlled by players, and the board is symmetrical, the outcome just depends on player skill and a bit of luck. This would be the one PvP encounter where playing an overpowered / underpowered class or wearing full epics / only greens wouldn't matter. It would be real Player vs. Player, not Avatar vs. Avatar. Of course there wouldn't be epics at the end, but some honor points for both sides depending on how well their side fared, plus the usual victory marks. As a "free epics for raiders" thing the chess event is wasted, as a PvP battleground it would be extremely popular.

Does sex sell MMORPGs?

Adolescent boys feel a great curiosity towards the naked female body and depictions of sex. That is totally normal, a primal urge that goes back to a time where humans procreated with 15 and died at 30. Although video games generally have very little to do with sex, they often target a young male audience, and sex is an sometimes used marketing ploy to attract them. Just take E3 booth babes as example, although that practice has stopped with the reorganization of that video game trade show. Up to now there hasn't been much sex in MMORPGs, at least not officially, just some people having cybersex which is mostly text-based, with a couple of emotes. You can't even strip totally naked in a typical MMORPG, and the anatomy of avatars is of the Ken and Barbie kind. This is going to change when end of March Age of Conan comes out, the first MMORPG with a mature rating and naked female avatars as a major feature in marketing. Is that going to sell?

First of all, besides the marketing, there are perfectly good artistic reasons to have this sort of mature content in the Age of Conan game. The Conan the Barbarian stories and books of Robert E. Howard date back to the 1920's and 30's, and are sexist by modern standards, although they contain also strong female characters. A politically correct Conan would jar, you can't be both a barbarian and politically correct. But one man's laudable sticking to the source is another man's cheesy marketing ploy. By stressing the "mature" rating of the game Funcom obviously hopes to attract some people that are only interested in the mature parts of sex and violence.

But I have my doubts whether being the "MMORPG with boobs" is going to be such a strong selling point. If somebody under 17 wants to play a mature ratings online game, he obviously needs unsupervised internet access. And if he has that, Age of Conan might not necessarily be the most titillating content available. Why look at pixelated boobs of female avatars in AoC if the internet is full of free porn pictures and videos? While some people claim that social networks are now more popular than porn, the actual "percentage" of porn on the internet is disputed, as it depends on whether you count sites, visitors, or amount of data transfered. For example one study found porn to be 13% of all Bittorrent traffic, while another government study found only 1% of sites indexed by Google being pornographic in content. But I think we can all agree that there is plenty of pornography on the internet, and that an average teenage boy would have no problem finding it, even if his parents wasted money on some filter software, which never works.

So funnily enough it might be more the violence and gore part of the mature rating that will actually sell Age of Conan. The sex part will result in a couple of headlines and protests from attention seeking politicians, but I don't think it will actually drive the sales of the game. In the end much will depend on whether Age of Conan is any good, and not on how many naked pixels it contains.

Second half Karazhan

I haven't exactly "finished" Karazhan yet, but now I visited the second half of it, and killed the end boss, the prince. Now that felt more like a real raid and not easy mode raiding, because it took us about 10 attempts before the prince died. In the end we managed it, by letting our druid tank instead of our paladin. I might be prejudiced, but I'd say that we were missing a warrior tank. Anyway, the whole raid from Nightbane to the prince took 7 hours, including having to clear respawned trash mobs again.

I picked up an off-hand healing item from Aran, and a necklace that was more a damage caster one from the prince. I would have loved the priest/warrior/druid helmet token the prince dropped, but our druid needed it too and well deserved it. I don't know what it is, but I found that strangely in this round of raiding I care a lot less about loot than back in the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. I'd rather not fight and see everybody get something and be happy.

Wiping didn't bother me. But I must admit that after 7 hours of straight raiding I was knackered, and my performance in the last fights was probably less than optimal, due to fatigue. And I had run out of potions, in spite of having brought 14 each of elixir of healing power, elixir of major mageblood, and 10 super mana potions. Are there any flasks that give healing bonus? For repeated wipes that might be better than elixirs.

I am going to spend this Sunday farming gold and herbs with my warrior, to finance the expensive raiding habit of my priest. You might have heard the news that some guy discovered the hard way that the maximum amount of gold you can have in WoW is 214,748 gold. But I can assure you that the guy was not a raider. Only casual players ever get rich in World of Warcraft.

Age of Conan release date

Nobody believes in the release dates that game shops list, those are often just rough estimates. But for once they got it right, Funcom confirmed the release date for Age of Conan to be March 25. The guys from Funcom obviously share everybody's belief that there will be a major clash of release dates between WotLK and WAR in the second half of this year, and are trying to get their game out well in advance of that. Which can work if, and only if, Age of Conan is polished enough and fun on release. Unfortunately there are rumors to the contrary. And being the "MMO with boobs" isn't going to save them if they release a game of Vanguardian state of readiness.

Spending Badges of Justice

There are so many things you can buy for badges of justice, you end up having difficulties to decide. But for once I indulged myself and instead of saving for some healing item, I took something that will help my priest a lot when soloing: the Carved Witch Doctor's Stick. The stats are okay-ish for a healer, but the important thing is the 175 damage per second. My previous wand only had 125 dps. As soloing with a holy priest consists of bubbling up and killing mobs with your wand, wand damage is extremely important. This wand is excellent for me. I'll buy some healing stuff with the next batch of badges. :)

Looking epic

Another Karazhan with my guild, who has done that far more often than me. Thus for me it is kind of an "easy mode" raid. Which doesn't mean I'm slacking, my healing and shackling went pretty well. We went until the Curator, and included the opera. Romeo and Juliet again, but apparently these two like me, because last time I got a healing trinket from Romulo, and this time I got the Masquerade Gown from Julianna. Good run for the guild insofar as nearly everyone got something, and we didn't need to disenchant or vendor anything.

For my priest the main effect of his new robe is that as epic robe the thing just looks better than non-epic stuff. Which made me think of this cartoon. How important is looking epic to you?