GameZig

DirectX10 features in Age of Conan exclusively revealed at Games Convention
 
- New locations, content and features to be revealed for both press and consumers at the show - - Thousands of exclusive give-aways, including free trial accounts and limited edition game DVDs -
 
Durham, USA - August 15th, 2008 - Conan is invading this year’s Games Convention in [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve been over to Mythic’s website but have noticed they have released their minimum system specs for Warhammer Online.  The specs are within reach of most gamers these days, but after the launch black screen disaster that was Age of Conan for many, it should be pointed out that still [...]

At least, why I’m not going to buy it right away.  Snafzg over at TheGreenSkin.com made a great point, in my opinion, when he posted that he thought the next beta phase for WAR could be the actual release.  We’ve seen it so many times before - they are called rocky releases.  The next big [...]

Jordan Weisman, the founder of FASA Corporation and creator of the MechWarrior franchise has reacquired the license for MechWarrior back from Microsoft along with a few other properties previously in the FASA catalog.  He has taken his newly reacquired franchises back and launched a new game company to boot, Smith and Tinker.  While he hasn’t made [...]

 
 Sony Online Entertainment and DC Comics announced today at E3 DC Universe Online.  There really isn’t much available yet as far as game play type information.  The only thing I was able to take away from this is that a) it’s going to be an MMO based on the DC Universe, duh.  b) It’s goine [...]

In a recent letter for the game director, Gaute Godager announces what Funcom has been up to behind the scenes working on Age of Conan.  It’s a rather lengthy letter but I’ll some up the key points and what I took out of it.  Before I begin, I should say that the biggest reason I [...]

Mark Jacobs announced some good news and some bad news for Mythic’s upcoming Warhammer Online.  Well, he announced some good news and alluded to other good news, heh.  First we’ll start with the good news, the bit he alluded to:  Warhammer Online won’t be delayed, probably.
 
The other good news, the part he actually did announce [...]

You see the ads for these two game economy wreckers all the time - power leveling and gold farming.  Hell you probably see one right now - wink wink.
 
World of Warcraft is a good example of how powerleveling and gold farming damage a games economy.  Now don’t get me wrong, farming in a game for [...]

GameSpot just did some research into what it takes to run Age of Conan and what it takes to run it well.  Unfortunately, the page with the full article appears to be down so I can’t get in and read what the post says - but I can read between the lines.  Having played AoC [...]

As the title of the post makes obvious, this was a very slow gaming weekend.  I messed around a bit in Call of Duty 4, working toward getting my gold AK-47 (I have no idea why I want one) and spent an hour or so in World of Warcraft leveling up my mage to level [...]

Oh the great debates we could have!  I hear people complaining in World of Warcraft battlegrounds all the time when a twink kills them.  They complain because he is uber powerful with all that extra gear!  Being that I’m usually playing a twink myself the complaints go in one ear and out the other without [...]

Warhammer Online is definitely garnering more and more of my attention lately with the let down of Age of Conan and the repetition of World of Warcraft making me look for new horizons.  Yesterday afternoon I was reading some Ten Ton Hammer interviews with WAR developer Mark Jacobs about the way crafting will work in [...]

I just finished reading a post from Syp over at Waaagh about his predictions on how Warhammer Online will fair in the MMO market and what he thinks are the keys to getting it there.  Syp lists 10 points that he believes will influence the outcome of WAR’s fate down the road, starting with number one, [...]

Well, that feels like a waste of $90.  I have this fancy box, this cool leather map and a game account I’m no longer going to play - at least not in the near future.  Age of Conan for me was a fun break away from the normal MMORPG in it’s unique style of combat [...]

Getting back to the MMORPG Cookie Cutter topic, to keep MMORPG’s from getting stale and give developers a fresh perspective on things gamers want, I started thinking about some interesting ways to bone up on features in new and even some current MMORPG titles.  Now, these aren’t necessarily a major overhaul on the whole MMORPG [...]

I’ve been receiving a lot of requests for help from people experiencing problems with the black screen issue in Age of Conan in response to my post on the issue.  But now I’ve also been getting a lot of complaints of people freezing or locking up sometime around the boat scene or character creation screen.  [...]

Gaute Godager over at Funcom wrote a letter to the community today discussing some of the upcoming changes to Age of Conan along with some additions and fixes.  The first bit of good news is that Funcom seems pretty dedicated to making this as smooth of a launch as possible.  There have already been some [...]

 
Cursed.com has launched a beta of the Age of Conan Armory.  The beta version of the Armory currently supports a functional feat calculator as well as community driven feat builds for players to show off their PVP feat setup.  The beta site also features a feat commenting and rating system for players to chime in [...]

A few patches ago I began getting consistant crashes when exiting AoC asking me to report the error to Funcom. It was annoying but I was pretty much just living with it until I found a fix posted online by Lefty1117 (gotta give props). Basically the problem seems to be caused by right permission on [...]

My heart just about stopped today when I read my email.  I got my first message from BestBuy stating that they are giving me a coupon for $10 off of my next purchase because my pre-order of Age of Conan Collector’s Edition was delayed leaving the warehouse.  Guess who my next email was from?  FunCom, [...]

One game I’ve been watching lately has been Stargate Worlds, an MMO based on the popular television series, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.  I’ll admit, I’m not to up-to-date on the story line in Atlantis, I’ve maybe seen 2 episodes but SG-1 was a real favorite of mine.  At least it was until Richard Dean [...]

 
Some cool new features coming along with the next expansion to World of Warcraft “Wrath of the Lich King”, no doubt aimed at fending off serious competition from Age of Conan.  For example, some of the new quest mechanices they are implementing in the new expansion offer mount based combat.  If you remember in the [...]

I’ve heard the cries of many gamers who are unable to login and play Age of Conan due to a authentication failure during login. According to FunCom, this is in large part due to not properly registering your key from the retail box to your account if you were an Early Access player, like me. [...]

AoC is a very polished and bright game. The launch was the best I’ve ever seen in an MMO with smooth gameplay and a fairly small number of major issues. No launch is ever likely to be perfect. That being said, the Early Access was disheartening to say the least. If you are in the [...]

I, like a fool, have been trying the ‘/claim’ command in game to try to get my pre-order items.  I ordered the Collector’s Edition from BestBuy and have yet to receive the actual box of the game.  I finally realized today that I won’t be able to use my in-game pre-order items with the claim [...]

Well, I spent most of Saturday trying to figure out my graphics problem just so I could get into the game.  After I finally got in late Saturday night, I was able to play a bit but even after the shader fix mention in my previous post, the graphics were still funky.  Shadows under objects [...]

Just in case some of you had the same issues as me, here’s the problem and what I did to fix it. Whenever I would click Play on the client menu, the screen would either stutter or just go black. Graphics in the game if I got past the black was just a mountain terrain [...]

Looks like server start time for Early Access has been bumped up to 8 PM GMT. Which is 3 PM Eastern Standard Time. That gives you a little more time to finish your download and patch your client. Get ready!

Based off of the premise that early access will start at 5pm GMT on 05/17, here’s the start time for some world cities (Saturday is 05/17, so adjust accordingly):
UPDATE: START TIME MOVED BACK 3 HOURS
Addis Ababa Sat 8:00 PM
Adelaide Sun 2:30 AM
Aden Sat 8:00 PM
Algiers Sat 6:00 PM
Almaty Sat 11:00 PM
Amman * Sat 8:00 [...]

Seeing as how so many people seem to be onboard with the Early Access in AoC, I thought it would be cool to get a group of people together for some mayhem early on.  The big debate for me was whether to go into a PVE or PVP server.  I read Tim’s post over at CtrlAltDel-Online.com that [...]

As predicted, when I woke up this morning the download client reported download complete and I began installation before heading into work.  Gotta love Funcom, the installation message “This will take a long time” haha.  Anyway, if you haven’t already tried the auto pause/resume method using the AI Robot or some other macro tool, I [...]

I understand that pausing and resuming the early access download is another solution to keep the download speed up at normal levels.  This works for me when I try it this way but slows back down to a snails pace after about 5 minutes or so.  You can just pause and resume again every five [...]

The download has been going painfully slow since it began, sometimes getting up around 40kpbs at it’s peek but hovering in the 30’s. I was wondering why it was so slow, and my internet connection was unbearable while it was running. I have more bandwidth than that!!
 
Today I started messing with the settings and it [...]

It’s been 24 hours since I began the Early Access Download for AoC.   This morning my download was at 17% completion, which if it keeps at this pace means it should be complete early Saturday morning my time.  I’m not planning on waiting up until midnight on the 17th to start anyway, I’m not that [...]

Well I finally got the email I’ve been waiting for. Sometime during the night I got the email from Age of Conan that my Early Access Download payment had been processed and I was cleared to begin the download of the AoC client. I started the download this morning, not feeling like I was in [...]

Last night when I checked my mail box I found a nice bubble wrapped box from BestBuy in there. The pre-order exclusive card with my registration number to get on the early access train had finally gotten here, and just in time too. Early access was supposed to start today. So I got on the [...]

In this newest edition of the Hyborian Insider, a developer discusses the core components of the game.  Crafting and building player cities.  Watch the video for more:
 

This is the official retail trailer video for Age of Conan released last month. This shows a lot of the features coming including the amazing world itself and a good look at mounts.
 
 

While waiting for Age of Conan to arrive, I thought I’d delve more into my thoughts about what I thought Star Wars Galaxies should have done.  At this point, I’d be happy if it were any space MMO that could pull off some of the stuff I’m mentioning, but Star Wars would of course take [...]

From everything I’ve been reading, the Early Access Download to play Age of Conan before the rest of the world starts on May 17th.  But, of course there are going to be plenty of people crowding Funcom’s download servers to get the program to play early, so they are allowing people to start downloading the [...]

I’ve been toying back and forth with the idea of buying the Collector’s Edition of Age of Conan for my pre-order.  I’ve been doing some research and found a great article over at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog that talks about the pro’s and con’s of buying the CE.  Keen talks in his article about what he [...]

If you pre-order Age of Conan you will get one of three bonus items depending on where you order from.  From what I’ve been able to tell so far, pre-ordering from Amazon.com awards the Amazon Curved Bow as your pre-order bonus item.  Gamestop awards the War Mammoth and I assume the War Rhino comes from [...]

With a little more digging, I found that there is a special offer you may be interested in if you are planning on buying Age of Conan anyway. If you pre-order the game you will get your choice of two mounts, a Killer Rhino or the War Mammoth which you’ll be able to mount after [...]

Age of Conan, the long anticipated MMO is finally set for release this month! I gave up on this game ever coming out a while back and stumbled across it in my musings. It looks better than ever and looks like all the major features promised will be included in initial release. [...]