Age of Conan Open BETA starts today

Started the game up at about 11:05 last night. Created a Character, launched intot the game, all going smooth. Decided to go have a quick shower, brush my teeth, go get a a glass of water etc etc etc. 11:30 and it was still on 50% the game hadnt crashed. Will give it another go tonight. If i have to wait longer than 10 minutes to get in, i think ill give the beta a miss.
 
Hope we start to get screen shots!

Your wish is my command.

Old Tarantia

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First Raid Instance (notice at the very bottom there is the raid boss)

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Thunder River (60-70 zone)

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My friends Tempst of Set (i think)

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Hope your aware that the NDA has only been lifted on the first 1-13 levels nothing more should be discussed. Might want to remove the pics ;)

Got a email last night. Tech beta -> Closed beta account.

I've now got a full beta account And open beta one. Full beta has a lot better client and a lot newer. The Open beta is using a old client 100% to check server stabilty. Nothing to do with gameplay atm. Open beta client is laggy. Doesn't use CPU power well, gives bad FPS. Closed ones a lot better - Release ones the same. Open beta still has the swiveling bushes as you turn and a lot of wierd model issues.
 
Just so everyone knows that long MSDOS window that opens up is the games debugger, which is still running whilst you play the game hence most of the performance issues people are having. Apparently it is using preset shaders etc and not optimized. My mate did give me a link last night but on TS so i've lost it now that shows Funcom stating the Beta really is that and the performance should in most cases be far worse than the real game because of the debugger running, checking everything that is going on.

I like it at the moment, performance isn't great and have had a few crashes but its a beta. Having a few problems trying to find a mate on the server as well but not sure if we are in an instanced zone or what as we can't see the same people but can see each others messages.

I do like the combat though and the ability to toggle between sets of weapons.
 
Hope your aware that the NDA has only been lifted on the first 1-13 levels nothing more should be discussed. Might want to remove the pics ;)

Of course im aware, so what? 21 days till release. Go tell Funcom about me breaking it, there is no need to throw your toys out the pram. Geez.

Jobsworth.

I'm assuming they're early screenshots (or low detail) as the open beta landscape looks a hell of a lot better than that.

They are old screenies

Games a lot better now.

DX10 content isn't massive. Its only HDR really.

Those screen shots taken are at max graphical detail, draw distance with some partial DX10 content enabled. Most of them where taken after the last 2gb graphical update. The only difference is there .jpg and not .png.

Waso, im afraid is full of it. These screen shots where taken around 22nd of April. The DX10 content is mroe then just "HDR".
 
I've heard that game debugger running in background giving low performance before, oh yes it was vanguard and on release it was even worse performance :D

still gonna buy it tho.
 
I've never understood people who bang on about graphics in an MMO not being "the next best thing".

They can't be cutting edge for the simple reason that it would be an exercise in frustration when trying to raid. Could you imagine what your PC would do if you raided with 25+ others in a game that looked and ran like Crysis does? ;)
 
SOrry but thats crap, what you have is, the ability to turn all your settings down if and when you want to raid. Not everyone bothers with raiding, or even likes it. A long time is spent often getting to top level when you are enjoying the world, not enjoying getting the best of the best kit with nothing to use it on at the end. There isn't any reason for a brand new game to look like crap, its pretty much as simple as that. THey don't have to look spectacular, nothing does, but remotely good would be nice. IT has that horrible, overly busy with nothing actually looking very good feel to it.
Really dislike it when games go for quantity of bushes, grass, tree's over quality as it just looks a mess. Most of said tree's, bushes and grass look very very dated, just multiplied. THe character models aren't bad, but aren't great. There really isn't much of a difference between character models despite the massive talking up of the versatility of character creation. The difference between fatest and thinest is very small, tall and short, not a huge difference. Different faces maybe, only a few different haircuts of which 3-4 of the 8 just won't be chosen by anyone.

Horrible level of instancing in at least the early area's(maybe not later content) coupled with insanely, ridiculously, worst I've ever seen loading issues was really not the way to go. The whole UI looks poor, the inventory, quest, skills stuff. I also can't tell but, afaik skills simply automatically come in as you level, I'm not sure if theres any real deviation in characters or if every hunter will be identical to others bar a few skill points added here or there.

Fighting is, as suspected, a good thought, but in reality, more of a pain than other MMO's. Yes they've gotten rid of the click a button see a skill thing , but now we have, hit 1, 2 or 3 thats almost it thing.

Why they supposedly used an old client if theres one with loading times and some graphical stuff fixed i don't know. Theres supposed to be a lot of single player content AFAIK< especially early on yet lots of people are finding their characters very hard to take on groups of guys. One of the night time quests a group of 4 guys I had to kill one and run into a Inn to get away from the rest to take them down one at a time. Sure, you can sneak past everything(just about) but thats just a tad pathetic. AS in, "sure, you can solo, you can just sneak past everything and not actually really do anything, woo" .

The other thing would be, as a hunter, a supposed range class, I have almost no range and have multiple melee attacks already and a single ranged attack, a trap that has so far not worked a single time. Very weak bow powers compared to melee attacks, just seems at least at low level to basically be a melee fighter, it just all seems wrong so far. Meh, we'll see. What was very much most certainly billed as an "open beta" was on the day of release suddenly changed to a "stress test" using an old client with no stability at all. Thats fine, if they said it was such. OPen beta's are often taken as a semi demo. For Lotro the open beta gave an absolutely fantastic indication of how the final game would be, it was in a fantastic, stable, great looking, working, bugless(mostly) state.

Oh well, maybe it will improve a lot, but somehow, I doubt it.
 
I expect the normal "full open beta" will be released in a couple of weeks time as usually happens with Fileplanet "betas". I haven't tried other classes yet, but with the necromancer I'm finding that I have enough spells and abilities to complete the given quests to make me want to get to the later levels.

For the solo-missions that I'm on just now I find that I'm dying a few times due to mob aggro but I think that's a good thing as it should encourage grouping more while giving us an option to solo it, even if it takes us a bit longer to complete.

At the moment I'm getting poor performance from the client so I really do hope that it improves a lot and I've not seen anything to do with crafting yet so I hope that will come to characters soon after 13th level.
 
I like it, it is buggy yes but I am able to accept it is a beta with the debugger running in the background. I honestly can't see how anyone could think this is not the best looking MMO to date...
 
Until I see a review of the game post 13, I'm not touching this with a barge pole.

You arent likely to see a post 13 review because the closed beta which allows you to go beyond 13 is under NDA, and they said they are keeping that NDA in place until launch.

Thats also why you wont be seeing a "full open beta".

Best chance for info on the post 13 content will be by NDA breakers, but of course you wont know for sure whether or not what the NDA breaker says is true or false.

Cant say I agree with keeping the NDA in til launch, I cant think of too many MMOs which have had the NDA stay through to launch day. But thats the choice they have made. Only way that the general populace will know for sure what its like after 13 is to buy it
 
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