Associate
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2006
- Posts
- 1,476
Age of Conan Open BETA starts today
- Thread starter lunarwolf
- Start date
It's because Funcom aren't confident with their game. I've seen other people state they're 'protecting the story' but that's nonsense. Funcom are using the NDA as a muzzle to stop negative reports, because the areas after lvl13 are nowhere near as polished as the newbie zones and whole systems haven't been tested, much less implemented yet.
They will finish the game on subscription money, just like Vanguard (though I'm sure AoC isn't in the state Vanguard was). I have to state, I haven't read any NDA breaks and I'm sure I could find them if I looked, but hey. If it walks like a duck, and looks like a duck... it's a duck.
I'm interested in playing, but I'm not buying this on launch day until I hear the truth about it. There /is/ something wrong here.
I advise no one to buy this on preorder just yet. The performance is absolutely atrocious. Not just the load times but also in the normal environment. Shame but they are releaseing far far too early. There is a good chance this will bomb, unless they produce a miracle client for release.
Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2007
- Posts
- 3,896
- Location
- Bristol
I don't know what game those screens are from because it looks a lot better than that to me.
I will say that performance does seem to vary widely without making too much sense. I can be in a wide open space with lots of trees, foliage and mobs and be getting 60FPS. I can then walk into a small empty tavern and only be getting 13FPS. Because of these dips, I can't really run it on the highest settings but these screens are taken with the 'high' preset.
I will say that performance does seem to vary widely without making too much sense. I can be in a wide open space with lots of trees, foliage and mobs and be getting 60FPS. I can then walk into a small empty tavern and only be getting 13FPS. Because of these dips, I can't really run it on the highest settings but these screens are taken with the 'high' preset.
Teki's screenshots are from some of the areas after the starting area, the post-level 13 areas
read http://betaleaks.com/forums/index.php if you want reviews of content from 1-80 and classes etc.
for graphics, yes there is quite a large difference in detail between the low level areas and the much larger high level areas but this doesn't matter to me. What i am mainly concerned about is the end game stuff, leveling in AoC doesn't take very long and the content at high level is very basic, the developers have said there will be content at release.
It's incredibly buggy
Although it is a beta, but still. I've just had to end task on it as it had basically frozen.
yeah, it will probably get 20% better for its actual release. Tabula Rasa was very simular, horrid beta and became relatively stable by release. Content wise it was lacking massively.
Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2007
- Posts
- 3,896
- Location
- Bristol
E6850 @3.8Ghz, 2GB PC6400, 8800GTX.
I think there are only a couple things I don't have turned to max such as draw distance. When I had everything to absolute max and the game would stutter (not too often but I found once or twice every 30 mins to be annoying), it would drop to 3fps and the game would hang for 20-30 seconds.
With it just slightly down from max, it still stutters once or twice every 30 minutes but it only drops to 10fps and hangs for 2-3 seconds.
I never udnerstand why these mmo companies concentrate solely on graphics it seems. The actual part that will determine whether it is a success seems to be neglected completly. Blizzard/CCP/TURBINE really set the standard and it is amazing that aside from EVE/LOTRO (palyed both on day of release) nothing else has come close to a fullly functional mmo at release that works sufficiently to allow you to play it without questioning whether you need to upgrade your 1yr old pc just to play the dam thing.
Im also willing to bet that WAR will have a much smoother release than AOC. You can spot the polish a mile off just from the ingame vids.
Im also willing to bet that WAR will have a much smoother release than AOC. You can spot the polish a mile off just from the ingame vids.
I suppose its easier to concentrate on the graphics engine before its out on an mmo, than rather have it in updates. Dont worry im sure the bugs will be fixed in good time its not out for another 20 days
I was getting a bit peed off with it today as it was taking 5 mins to load any level. Then I got dropped from the server, i restarted and and suddenly all the levels load in less than 30 seconds.
I do keep getting dropped though, and when i rejoin my xp is rolled back to where it was
so i have been level 6 for 2 hours now.
*edit* Seems to have stabilized a bit now though. Here goes level 7.
I do keep getting dropped though, and when i rejoin my xp is rolled back to where it was
so i have been level 6 for 2 hours now. *edit* Seems to have stabilized a bit now though. Here goes level 7.
I've been in the AOC general beta for a few months and I can only really say that screenshots cannot do the graphics quality any justice, it really needs to be played to truly guage it's visuals. However, to make it look nice you will need a meaty machine. I have an OcUK overclocked 8800gtx machine with a Q6600 at 3.3ghz, with 4gb RAM. Fortunately I had it come with 64bit Vista Ultimate as I knew that Funcom were building their game to enhance performace on this OS aswell as with full dx10 support.
So far the beta has had many ups and downs, and it's performance varies on different systems with each patch that comes. I have managed to get an average of 25fps on some of the older patches, up to an average of 50-55 fps on more recent patches (apr19th). The current patch which was released last night however seems to be a bad one for quite a number of people - including myself. One thing that the game does universally badly on, and has done for a while now is that it suffers greatly from huge memory leaks. Dependant on how your system is set up, how much RAM you have, and how you set up your virtual memory, page file, many players manage to get the game to run for a few minutes before suffering from freezes and crashes, others manage to run it for a few hours before suffering the same. I personally today seem to hover around the 45 minute mark before the game either sticks, freezes and then survives for another 45 minutes, or freezes and then requires a boot up of task manager to close it. Failing that, the dreaded manual shut down and reboot.
Funcom's developers are insistent that these issues are not going to be a problem when the game is released and that the beta clients are not representative of the finished product by a long way. They also claim that using 64bit windows with a multi core CPU will provide a 30% graphics performance boost when using DX10.
I would be very happy if the release client came without the awful memory leaks, the freezing spikes and stutters(which are caused by shader loading and uncompressed textures being constantly loading in to your machine), and a 30% increase in FPS on the medium/high settings I use on 1920x1200 with DX10 would mean I would manage to obtain around 45fps with lots of players and action going on-screen, and 55-65fps in small group action in most of the areas in the game.
For those not already hooked by the game, and are or aren't in the beta, don't expect to see a polished game on release, and many people are expecting troubles in it's early days, but if they do manage to pull it off at launch then this game has Winner written all over it.
So far the beta has had many ups and downs, and it's performance varies on different systems with each patch that comes. I have managed to get an average of 25fps on some of the older patches, up to an average of 50-55 fps on more recent patches (apr19th). The current patch which was released last night however seems to be a bad one for quite a number of people - including myself. One thing that the game does universally badly on, and has done for a while now is that it suffers greatly from huge memory leaks. Dependant on how your system is set up, how much RAM you have, and how you set up your virtual memory, page file, many players manage to get the game to run for a few minutes before suffering from freezes and crashes, others manage to run it for a few hours before suffering the same. I personally today seem to hover around the 45 minute mark before the game either sticks, freezes and then survives for another 45 minutes, or freezes and then requires a boot up of task manager to close it. Failing that, the dreaded manual shut down and reboot.
Funcom's developers are insistent that these issues are not going to be a problem when the game is released and that the beta clients are not representative of the finished product by a long way. They also claim that using 64bit windows with a multi core CPU will provide a 30% graphics performance boost when using DX10.
I would be very happy if the release client came without the awful memory leaks, the freezing spikes and stutters(which are caused by shader loading and uncompressed textures being constantly loading in to your machine), and a 30% increase in FPS on the medium/high settings I use on 1920x1200 with DX10 would mean I would manage to obtain around 45fps with lots of players and action going on-screen, and 55-65fps in small group action in most of the areas in the game.
For those not already hooked by the game, and are or aren't in the beta, don't expect to see a polished game on release, and many people are expecting troubles in it's early days, but if they do manage to pull it off at launch then this game has Winner written all over it.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Jan 2003
- Posts
- 7,116
- Location
- Northamptonshire
Game keeps crashing for me 
Kicking me back to desktop as well.
The graphics are pretty good, but even with 2 x 3870x2's i canna have the detail up too high but im running at 2560x1200
Kicking me back to desktop as well.
The graphics are pretty good, but even with 2 x 3870x2's i canna have the detail up too high but im running at 2560x1200