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Yaaaaaaa!!!! The Biggest PvP Update in the history of AoC, finally here !!!!
DaSpack
Member UncommonPosts: 589
And it Starts NOW... Get in there, in The Best MMO ever created. PVP is finally here !!!!
http://www.ageofconan.com/news/celebrate_age_of_conans_sixth_anniversary
http://www.ageofconan.com/news/festival_of_bloodshed
Celebrate Age of Conan’s sixth Anniversary!
Age of Conan turns six years old today, and we wish to celebrate the occasion with a brand new event, free gifts and a massive PvP update! The Anniversary Celebrations will last for two weeks, from today and until the 3rd of June.
Shadows of the past
Play now to take part in a fresh event in Hyboria! Travel through the sewers of Tarantia and take on the Red Hand, as they are plotting against king Conan himself! Uncover more layers of deception and discover that the true plans of treachery go much deeper. Go back to Tortage and the Acheronian ruins to face off against the true malevolent power behind this new assault!
Free Treasure Chests
The Treasure Chest and the Grand Treasure Chest have just been added to the in-game Item Shop. These brand new chests grant powerful rewards and on Friday the 23rd of May all Members will get a Grand Treasure Chest and every non-Member will get a Treasure Chest as a free gift! (If you become a Member before Friday you will get your Grand Treasure Chest). To claim your free gift you must log in before the 31st of May.
Festival of Bloodshed
Age of Conan just got its biggest PvP update ever with the all new PvP Festival system! Every month there will be a festival week where everyone can take part in brand new PvP events, do fresh PvP Quests and get their hands on unique rewards. The first ever PvP Festival week starts tomorrow on the 21st of May! Learn more about this huge new PvP system from Lead Content Designer Matthew Bennett here.
The Ultimate Breakdown
Comments
Here is the stuff on how these PvP events work (4 new of themes).. They sound pretty AWESOME sauce all of them... And impressingly enough PvP gear and rank have just been adjusted up to snuff so this can really really get massivly interesting !!!
http://www.ageofconan.com/news/festival_of_bloodshed
Fields of Slaughter
Our first event is reminiscent of a King of the Hill game mode. Each of our possible festival zones has 6 carefully chosen locations which can become fields of slaughter.
Players will then fight for control of one of these points. Every 30 seconds the current owning team will have their score incremented and when the event ends, the team with the highest overall score will have their names broadcast to the zone and declared to be the winners.
However to ensure that no team should ever get an unassailable lead the team holding the point at the end of the timer will receive a large boost to their score and an additional reward.
This event is intended for teams of 6 (though nothing prevents smaller teams or solo players from participating and having a major impact on the outcome, one well placed combo or arrow can easily throw out one group's dominance).
Arenas of Death
The Arenas of Death are split into two events, a solo free-for-all deathmatch and a team based deathmatch. Each festival location has two very different arenas which will play host to these events. The open world structure of each of these arenas will lead to very different dynamics based on the location.
The rules for the arena are simple, the player/team scoring the most kills within the confines of the arena is declared the winner, and don't try to flee because your death will still be counted if you do.
Of course in war it is inevitable that not all classes are equal all of the time and therefore the winners are determined on an archetype basis. Players coming in second and third also have the honour of having their names broadcast and receive lesser rewards. In the team arena the winning archetypes on the highest scoring team receive the same honour, creating competition within the teams themselves.
Again these events are open to all comers.
The Chosen of Gullah
The fourth and final event (on release) is the Chosen of Gullah, it works similarly to Juggernaut or Predator modes in other games.
When this event starts a random active player in the zone will receive a buff effect greatly increasing their stats and essentially making them a player controlled open-world boss. This effect will last for a maximum of 3minutes or until the player is killed, however during that time the player will accumulate a score based on how many PvP kills they can rack up.
We resisted the temptation of having this buff transfer to any player able to kill 'the Chosen', instead when the effect expires a new random active player will receive the buff. This means the event will move around the zone naturally and every player has an equal chance of experiencing this enhanced game-play. Of course the feat of slaying 'the chosen' does not go unrewarded and any player able to do so gets a large boost to their own score.
When the event timer expires the player with the highest score has their name and victory broadcast.
Quests and Rewards
All the events are backed up by a large selection of quests which reward players for participating (whether they win or not). Rewards will come in the form of large PvP progression boosts both in terms of PvP rank and XP for our Alternate Advancement system, along with token drops for the purchasing of unique PvP armour sets, weapons, accessories and recently updated social items.
Additionally every player who has their name broadcast as a winner will accumulate victory tokens which will give access to unique vanity rewards. More rewards will be added over time from this new vendor. Such rewards will initially include a companion who will taunt other players based on their PvP deaths, an axe man who might throw his weapons at others, the ability to summon carrion to feast on your dead foes and a certain Cimmerian female assassin.
Daily Questing System
Along with the festival we are introducing a Daily PvP questing system. With this system we wish to reignite open-world confrontations across Hyboria. On release these new daily quests will be limited to the PvP servers but will be made available on our PvE server during the festival week.
The quests include a bounty quest to track and assassinate another random player within the zone, a quest to intercept packages carried by other players attempting to deliver them without the use of mounts or stealth across the zone and its counter to successfully deliver said packages without dying.
Optimal Gameplay
Our world boss system has proven that our tech is capable of handling a mass influx of players onto the same part of the map. However, I would still recommend that those wishing to participate in these events switch their settings to Raid and PvP, disabled particles and remove floating damage numbers in order to experience the most optimal gameplay.
PvP Gear
Really the PvP festival is just the pinnacle of improvements we have been making to PvP in Hyboria over recent months. Our entire PvP itemization has received a complete overhaul and the difference between the different tiers of PvP gear has been greatly reduced while the whole PvP gear system has been improved to stand parallel with the best gear from PvE.
What this means is with just the PvP starter set a character can be instantly be very competitive within all our existing and new PvP game features.
Player-Driven
We are really looking forward to seeing how these events will play out and all the unique stories the players will create with this open-world system. A great thing is that these events will take place in existing open-world zones and will offer total agency to players on how they use the surroundings to their advantage and make use of the event setup. We are also really excited by the prospect of the events acting as catalysts for spontaneous open-world PvP throughout the whole focused week and re-spark old guild and player rivalries.
The Ultimate Breakdown
The Ultimate Breakdown
come come come, Fury is flooding over with new people. Can't remember when I last time saw the first page in the official forums being filled with requests, praise and question about this and that from new people. Pay atention guys, AoC might get back up on the feet with this update..!!
As I always have said AoC DOMINATES all the other p*ssy vanilla MMOs out there. Noone over, noone beside..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&feature=youtu.be&hd=1
The Ultimate Breakdown
Whooaa... Is there blood in your body, or possibly a beating gameing hart inn there??
AoC have not had a real beefy update in quite a while and very little on PvP in years. A huge PvP update like this deserve every exclamation mark you can throw at it. Wake up, get in there with the rest of us ..!!
The Ultimate Breakdown
Iceman
great one.
DaSpack, it's ok to be thrilled by the game, I'm also a big AoC fan. There's a very good reason for that "very little on PvP in years" part, and to be honest, turning away from the pvp focus was the only reason the game lived on, meanwhile WAR for example went down. And if you check the forums, even the very first announcement on April 1st received a huge backlash from the players. The good thing is Funcom seems to have some survival instinct left, so they've decided not to force it onto everybody this time, like they did last time 5 years ago* (causing a hemorrhage of players). It's good to know they're still listening to the playerbase. You skipped this from your quoting post above:
"On our dedicated PvE server (Crom) this festival will take place in the Border Kingdoms, an area permanently flagged for PvP, so that PvP on this server remains completely consensual."
And that's fine.
I admit, I too would rather see they're investing these many development hours into finishing the crafting revamp like Yoda_Clone said, but if they think throwing a pvp bone is better for the game on the long run, I don't mind - until they keeping it out of Crom
For the other two parts of the event: Lockboxes, /boo. Joel, should we bombard you again with your own "no lockboxes" post?
The Shadow of the Past sounds cool. I used to hop back into Tortage often for the mood, it's good that now we have to investigate a plot and kicking some Red Hand butt in there yet again. That is a nice anniversary gift.
*edit: of course we can't be sure, back then it wasn't the "forced" pvp either what chased many folks away, but the constant revamps by following every pvp whining. If this event will be just that, an event popping on and off, then it's fine. If FC starts to messing up classes and mechanics again, then we'll have a problem...
And for a great example of what went on for months during the previous "pvp focus" era: the event is barely started, but there's already a pvp whine post in forums about class nerfs and crying for balance... /grabs popcorn
Well, PvP stuff is happening and population is deffinitely moving to the positive. I see nothing wrong in sharing that in an enthusiastic way... with feelings, as in happy.. Yaaaa!! But thanks for the moderation and advice.
The Ultimate Breakdown