Comments on: Age of Conan Beta Falls Flat on Its Face http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:01:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Ole http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2610 Ole Sun, 18 May 2008 14:41:10 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2610 Actually I'm having similar problems in the early access (which I payed for), in addition to the same problems in the open beta. I get a black screen, sound, and can see the mouse cursor. At the log in screen I get some messed up graphics; and that's it. Unplayable. I've tried to contact tech@ageofconan.com several times now (in the open beta as well as recently), with no response! What horrendous service eh. Think I might just try to contact them the 4th time (weeks since my first try).... I'm using an ATI X800 card, and otherwise meeting the minimum system reqs. Strangely enough though I was able to play the open beta for a while, it all changed after the latest open beta patch, and then clicking the predfined "low" grpahics settings in the client. After that I've been unable to play the game in two different windows installations; I even did a defrag and reinstalled XP, updated drivers; still can't play. Friggin' strange.... Actually I’m having similar problems in the early access (which I payed for), in addition to the same problems in the open beta. I get a black screen, sound, and can see the mouse cursor. At the log in screen I get some messed up graphics; and that’s it. Unplayable.

I’ve tried to contact tech@ageofconan.com several times now (in the open beta as well as recently), with no response! What horrendous service eh. Think I might just try to contact them the 4th time (weeks since my first try)…. I’m using an ATI X800 card, and otherwise meeting the minimum system reqs.

Strangely enough though I was able to play the open beta for a while, it all changed after the latest open beta patch, and then clicking the predfined “low” grpahics settings in the client. After that I’ve been unable to play the game in two different windows installations; I even did a defrag and reinstalled XP, updated drivers; still can’t play. Friggin’ strange….

]]> By: Fyrn http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2399 Fyrn Thu, 08 May 2008 17:09:38 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2399 You're not so far away from the real reason Belfagor. The last 10% of your loading bar are actually Shaders compiling on your GPU and being saved to the hard drive. Next time you enter that particular Area, it won't do that again unless your client crashed and couldn't save the cache file. In Retail the game will include an exhaustive pre-compiled cache for these shaders for all popular GPU. I've seen nothing unusual for a beta and compared to past MMOG "Open Betas" or even launches, this one is pretty smooth. You’re not so far away from the real reason Belfagor.

The last 10% of your loading bar are actually Shaders compiling on your GPU and being saved to the hard drive. Next time you enter that particular Area, it won’t do that again unless your client crashed and couldn’t save the cache file.

In Retail the game will include an exhaustive pre-compiled cache for these shaders for all popular GPU.

I’ve seen nothing unusual for a beta and compared to past MMOG “Open Betas” or even launches, this one is pretty smooth.

]]> By: Belfagor http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2394 Belfagor Thu, 08 May 2008 14:57:26 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2394 As someone as already pointed out, we are 12 days now from the game going live and yesterday I spent 1 hour out of the two I dedicated to AoC simply staring at an awfully slow filling loading screen... I thought that it was because of "first load texture decompression and optimization" (like the "shader optimization in the Battlefield franchise) but after a 15 minutes load for entering the third time in the noob city i simply gave up with the loading bar @ 75%... The game is already went gold so there are very few chances that this problem will be fixed in a short... As someone as already pointed out, we are 12 days now from the game going live and yesterday I spent 1 hour out of the two I dedicated to AoC simply staring at an awfully slow filling loading screen…
I thought that it was because of “first load texture decompression and optimization” (like the “shader optimization in the Battlefield franchise) but after a 15 minutes load for entering the third time in the noob city i simply gave up with the loading bar @ 75%…

The game is already went gold so there are very few chances that this problem will be fixed in a short…

]]> By: Brian http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2359 Brian Wed, 07 May 2008 02:07:16 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2359 My understanding of beta is that it is to test servers and work final kinks out of program. Why would you go into it expecting it to work for everyone? The whole point of beta was to help them test, they said that when you signed up for beta, in order to help them find bugs and such. Furthermore, it is clear from player reports that they have included additional components, such as a debugger that won't be there in the release to mess things up. And, if we are to believe it, they claim the open beta client is to some extent an older version than the closed beta. They had their reasons for including buggy code there. Besides official forum moderators confirming this, as well as many people who have access to both open and close beta versions confirming this, the creators have also stated this and more, explaining that this is beta, its point is to find bugs: Talk with developer: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1927 To me I just can't understand how all these beta players can go into the beta thinking it's going to be like the retail version. They signed up to help find bugs, and then guess what, when they actually do encounter bugs, they become upset and complain! "How could this happen! I can't believe I ran into bugs!" My understanding of beta is that it is to test servers and work final kinks out of program. Why would you go into it expecting it to work for everyone? The whole point of beta was to help them test, they said that when you signed up for beta, in order to help them find bugs and such.

Furthermore, it is clear from player reports that they have included additional components, such as a debugger that won’t be there in the release to mess things up. And, if we are to believe it, they claim the open beta client is to some extent an older version than the closed beta. They had their reasons for including buggy code there.

Besides official forum moderators confirming this, as well as many people who have access to both open and close beta versions confirming this, the creators have also stated this and more, explaining that this is beta, its point is to find bugs:

Talk with developer:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1927

To me I just can’t understand how all these beta players can go into the beta thinking it’s going to be like the retail version. They signed up to help find bugs, and then guess what, when they actually do encounter bugs, they become upset and complain! “How could this happen! I can’t believe I ran into bugs!”

]]> By: Openedge1 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2332 Openedge1 Mon, 05 May 2008 17:43:56 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2332 I also found the game erratic at times. I did a study with multiple systems... Here http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/2008/05/age-of-conan-sohow-did-it-run.html And posted on forums here http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/177470 What was of note is only one system had the horrible load issues, black screen, etc... It was an Intel e6850, 3 gigs of ram, ATI 3870 and onboard sound... One of the components is causing a problem, and I am out to figure out the problem.. But...2 other systems had better luck loading and playing...and they were Nvidia cards... Could you maybe share your specs? Thanks I also found the game erratic at times.
I did a study with multiple systems…

Here
http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/2008/05/age-of-conan-sohow-did-it-run.html
And posted on forums here
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/177470

What was of note is only one system had the horrible load issues, black screen, etc…
It was an Intel e6850, 3 gigs of ram, ATI 3870 and onboard sound…
One of the components is causing a problem, and I am out to figure out the problem..
But…2 other systems had better luck loading and playing…and they were Nvidia cards…

Could you maybe share your specs?
Thanks

]]> By: Aleustria http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2328 Aleustria Mon, 05 May 2008 15:33:13 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2328 Calous, you're a brave dude posting this with all the fanbois out there. I completely agree, the game is too buggy, too far from ready. I cancelled my pre-order and I'll check back in a year. It might be ready then. I'm not going to pay to beta it for them they next year. Long load screes, clunky and unintuitive UI. I'm sure it has it's niche audience and will keep it. But there's no way in hell it will steal many from WoW or keep many once Warhammer Online comes out. Personally I think they went so far out of their way to be different from the other MMO's that they'll alienate most people. Calous, you’re a brave dude posting this with all the fanbois out there.

I completely agree, the game is too buggy, too far from ready. I cancelled my pre-order and I’ll check back in a year. It might be ready then. I’m not going to pay to beta it for them they next year.

Long load screes, clunky and unintuitive UI. I’m sure it has it’s niche audience and will keep it. But there’s no way in hell it will steal many from WoW or keep many once Warhammer Online comes out. Personally I think they went so far out of their way to be different from the other MMO’s that they’ll alienate most people.

]]> By: Sethanon http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2296 Sethanon Fri, 02 May 2008 23:53:29 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2296 I had the (now) infamous account issue where I made the mistake of assuming that my existing Funcom account was useful. A friend of mine lucked into just creating a new Funcom account to register the day and I was off to the races. I don't know if I'd say that the beta is a failure, but Funcom really needs some work on their support skills. Users are using an existing forum from years ago to post issues because there isn't one exclusive to the beta. Some issues don't seem to get a response from a Funcom employee at all. Nor have I seen any Funcom GMs in the beta answering any questions. So, I'm sure that they're missing out on all of that fun, "how do I climb?" chat. That's an issue that could easily be fixed by editing the field manual, but I sort of wonder if it will. But I think what bugs me the most is that if the game does crash, you're presented with a bug submission form that you can't opt out of, and seems to hang on my system when I try to submit. A common problem, I'm reading. It's a beta build and there is apparently some debug layers running behind the client, so I'm giving them some leeway before I say the beta sucks. I'm actually having alot of fun playing the game. But I'm really hoping that the, "gold" version that I spent most of a hundred dollar bill on, gets some needed improvements. I had the (now) infamous account issue where I made the mistake of assuming that my existing Funcom account was useful. A friend of mine lucked into just creating a new Funcom account to register the day and I was off to the races.
I don’t know if I’d say that the beta is a failure, but Funcom really needs some work on their support skills. Users are using an existing forum from years ago to post issues because there isn’t one exclusive to the beta. Some issues don’t seem to get a response from a Funcom employee at all. Nor have I seen any Funcom GMs in the beta answering any questions. So, I’m sure that they’re missing out on all of that fun, “how do I climb?” chat. That’s an issue that could easily be fixed by editing the field manual, but I sort of wonder if it will.
But I think what bugs me the most is that if the game does crash, you’re presented with a bug submission form that you can’t opt out of, and seems to hang on my system when I try to submit. A common problem, I’m reading.
It’s a beta build and there is apparently some debug layers running behind the client, so I’m giving them some leeway before I say the beta sucks. I’m actually having alot of fun playing the game.
But I’m really hoping that the, “gold” version that I spent most of a hundred dollar bill on, gets some needed improvements.

]]> By: Geoff http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2295 Geoff Fri, 02 May 2008 21:34:06 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2295 @Droniac Defragging the hard drive eh? I'll give that a shot when I get home later today! :D @Droniac
Defragging the hard drive eh? I’ll give that a shot when I get home later today! :D

]]> By: Geoff http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2294 Geoff Fri, 02 May 2008 21:30:30 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2294 @Scott I see what you are getting at. I changed the title to better represent that this is for the beta... not the full retail version of the game. Other than that you are just going to have to deal with the post. I chose to write about this specific topic, not because it is affecting me, but because it is affecting a decent sized population of the game, amongst other bugs. @Scott
I see what you are getting at. I changed the title to better represent that this is for the beta… not the full retail version of the game. Other than that you are just going to have to deal with the post.
I chose to write about this specific topic, not because it is affecting me, but because it is affecting a decent sized population of the game, amongst other bugs.

]]> By: Droniac http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/comment-page-1/#comment-2293 Droniac Fri, 02 May 2008 21:21:03 +0000 http://www.mmocrunch.com/2008/05/02/age-of-conan-falls-flat-on-its-face/#comment-2293 I had the blackscreen issue as well, all I did was defrag my drive and tick off full-screen (so play in window mode) and it worked perfectly. Although right now full-screen is ticked on and it works just fine too, it was probably just the defragging that did the trick. I've run into zero problems since. Creating a character was a breeze (and originally done) and I got into the game world just fine. It does take a looong time to load up when you first enter the gameworld (particularly the final 10%), but after that loading times grow increasingly shorter. I'm sure they'll do something about that before the game goes live. So yeah, I've played for a couple of hours now and I have to say I'm impressed. Playing with all the settings at High you can't help but be impressed with the gorgeous landscapes, smooth animations and phenomenal sound. The gameplay does take some getting used to, but it's fun. I like the combo's, although it'd be nice to hit a few more fatalities in combat ;) Now if only I could find a shield for my Guardian... I had the blackscreen issue as well, all I did was defrag my drive and tick off full-screen (so play in window mode) and it worked perfectly. Although right now full-screen is ticked on and it works just fine too, it was probably just the defragging that did the trick.

I’ve run into zero problems since. Creating a character was a breeze (and originally done) and I got into the game world just fine. It does take a looong time to load up when you first enter the gameworld (particularly the final 10%), but after that loading times grow increasingly shorter. I’m sure they’ll do something about that before the game goes live.

So yeah, I’ve played for a couple of hours now and I have to say I’m impressed. Playing with all the settings at High you can’t help but be impressed with the gorgeous landscapes, smooth animations and phenomenal sound. The gameplay does take some getting used to, but it’s fun. I like the combo’s, although it’d be nice to hit a few more fatalities in combat ;)

Now if only I could find a shield for my Guardian…

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