Age of Conan - Age of Renewal

Refuge of the Apostate hitted Live Servers!
This week we saw the flash release of the new content announced a couple of weeks ago, after a quite speedy testing phase the instance has been released, and despite some usual bugs it is the first step toward a defined direction that has been drawed by the Game Director.
The reduction of the farming aspect of Age of Conan is being shaped day by day, first came the introduction of the exchange with veteran tokens, now the new instance, after will follow a rework of the faction reward, so the path is quite defined even if I'm eager to know what will change, and how much these changes will affect our experience.
Beside this aspect, there's also much more on the go, and it's my opinion that FunCom is willing to make use of the new Movie incoming this summer to shake the game from it's actual status both to prepare the ground to face the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic (rumors says it will be out in September) and to keep AoC alive till the release of their main project (at the moment at least) The Secret World.
Of all the upcoming changes we don't have many information, there will be 2 districts in Paikang, 2 new ACG instances (Active Generating Content [I'll check the spelling later:P]), but what is interesting me the most are the upcoming changes to the Crowd Control skills, to the Animation lenght and the introduction of the new ruleset.



Crowd Control Changes:

This change will affect the PvP side of the game, and I feel it is really much needed, the weight of the CC in the game mechanics at least for PvP it's just to heavy, most of your time while PvPing will be spent under the effect of CC being it a major one or a minor one, despite the new AA Anti-CC it still makes the experience not enjoyable.
Accordingly with the few information provided the major pace of this change will regard the "melee cc" due to the possible introduction of an attack before the execution of the skill, this will somehow affect the gameplay of the melee fighters, especially for a class like the Barbarian which is relying on the CC.
It will be interesting to see:
1) How will they work on the resistances to the CC especially for the Silence, which will be reviewed again;
2) How much melee will be affected by the change;
3) How much casters will have benefits/penalties from this changes.



Animation Rework:

When FC speaks about "The exploit we are not supposed to talk about" they are clearly referring to the comboskipping.
This change will aim directly to delete or at least reduce the occurrence of this exploit, by fastening the animation speed and by removing the root effect at the end of the combo (HoXes rejoice you won't be stuck anymore while using PoIF) they'll make the PvP much more dynamic and frenzied, faster combos will be harder to skip (if it'll be possible at all) and again this will affect badly all the classes that are "abusing" or take insane advantages from this "exploit" (Barbarian, Conqueror and Bear Shaman are the first coming to my mind).
Let me be clear anyway, FunCom classified the "Comboskipping" as an exploit, it is of course a practice which is on the very edge of the "Legal play" it is unfair by definition because male can skip better than female, because class X can skip better than class Y, but actually not Comboskipping will make your effectiveness in PvP far below the average.
This will be a really interesting change, and i'm absolutely looking forward to see what they'll do.




Paikang Districts and the 2 new AGC instances:

More introduction on the PvE side, this is not a bad idea itself, and if it will help in lessening the farming factor of Age of Conan i'm all up for this change. There's a huge lack of information beside some new posted in the Monthly Development letter on official forums so I can't really formulate anything detailed on this, but I have just one question:
Wouldn't you appreciate more new bosses for the T4 instance and a related bug fixing for it?
As a PvPer I would do. T4 is actually what is frustrating the most the player base PvEside, from my point of view obviously.


Blood and Glory ruleset:

I've already spoke my mind about this, but the news about CC and Animation rework will change things a bit.
These changes WILL change the life of the PvPers, these changes WILL affect also the chances of either success or utter failure of this new server for Hardcore PvP.
I've heard whispers about a possible PoM revamp in the meanwhile, and yes I do believe that a fresh level 80 PoM is in need of some love, but so does ToS and HoX.
Will they revamp these 3 classes before the Blood and Glory will be released?
If I was a member of the Developing class, I would suggest them to focus on revamps and class balance before facing such a huge challenge like the B&G release.


Anyway only time will give us the answers we are seeking, I have to say that FunCom is working and apparently is working hard to shape a new form for this game, results are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but I see a positive will in all this.

Let's just wait and see what the future will bring.

Till the next blog entry and may the Wrath of Xotli be with you!

Arcalimon