Funcom sent us word of the latest Letter from the Game Director of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Craig Morrison. Morrison provides details on changes coming for the next major Age of Conan patch, including Veteran Rewards and Guild Renown!
This months letter reveals the incoming veteran reward system and
new guild changes coming into Age of Conan from the Game Director Craig
Morrison
As the summer months, here in Norway, bring with them a short period of
rest and recuperation for the development team, I wanted to take the
opportunity with this month’s letter to both thank people for all their
support this year, and to start to lift the veil on the changes for the
next update cycle that we have only teased about so far!
Coming Back to Hyboria
Firstly,
I want to say thank you to veteran players and returning players alike,
who have been playing during this re-evaluation period.
While
we, of course, still have work ahead of us and are doing our best to
continue to refine and improve the game even further and add even more
great new content, we are very pleased to see so many people enjoying
the game, and continuing their adventures in Hyboria. It has been the
culmination of lots of effort on behalf of the development team to get
to the point where we could give people a good impression of what the
game is and where we are taking it in the future.
Veteran Rewards Incoming
On
the subject of veteran players, I can also confirm that we will be
introducing new veteran rewards in the near future. As part of the next
major update cycle, a new veteran reward system will be introduced that
gives veteran players access to special vendors who will offer them a
host of veteran benefits ranging from social status items to special
items that will provide extra convenience items to veteran players. As
an example of the latter, exp potions and similar bonuses, while not
increasing the power of your characters, will provide veteran players
with great time-saving rewards and options not available to new
players. There should be something for everyone!
Guild Renown
Now we get to the good stuff!
We
have talked for a little while now about the fact that guild gameplay
would be a focus for the upcoming update cycle. Today, I wanted to give
you the first look at what shape those changes are going to take. The
main feature of this area in the update will be the addition of the new
Guild Renown system.
So what is Guild Renown?
Guild
Renown is a system whereby the actions of any individual player count
towards their guild’s reputation. Collectively, guild members can level
up their guild in three distinct categories to gain access to new guild
rewards and bonuses. The system has two primary components, the Renown
level, and also Renown rankings which place guilds against each other
and measure your successes against those of other guilds on your server.
Let’s
take a look at the Renown levels first, before moving on to the
rankings. Renown levels act much like the levels for your character,
i.e., as you accrue Renown points through your actions in game, you
will in effect ‘level up’ your guild.
Almost every action in the
game will earn some form of Renown points for your guild. There are
three categories of Renown points that contribute to your overall
Renown level:
- Valor points: Earned from PVE gameplay, killing mobs, doing quests, beating bosses and raids.
- Glory points: Earned from PVP activities like winning mini-games.
- Artisan points: Earned through crafting actions.
Your
Renown level is a combination of all three of these totals, which
allows you to level up your Renown level in any way you choose. You do
not have to do all of the categories if you do not want to. It will be
perfectly possible to try and level up your Renown level with any
combination of the above actions.
This will add another
dimension to your everyday gameplay, and even a short ten minute
session will be contributing towards your guild’s Renown pool and put
them closer to the next reward tier! For example, getting a team
together for a dungeon run, or doing a raid will both have the extra
benefit of contributing towards your Guild’s Renown level.
As
your Renown level grows, you will earn new rewards for you and your
guild and access new features for your guild cities, like new pet or
mount vendors, and even another new building type for your city, among
other amenities. Some of these new rewards will benefit every member
directly, and some will be for the guild as a whole. You will get more
details on the rewards themselves when the update goes to the test
servers.
So that is the Renown level. What about the Renown ranking system I mentioned earlier?
Renown
rankings are where the competitive element comes in. People like to
claim bragging rights, and the Renown ranking system will allow players
to see how their guild has compared to others both on the overall
Renown earned and also in each individual category. You will be able to
see which guild has accrued the most Valor, Glory, or Artisan points in
any given period.
The rankings will reset after each ranking
period (currently planned to be weekly, but that may be adjusted during
testing), and everyone starts on equal footing.
One area we have
considered here is that we don’t want to have players feel ‘forced’
into merging guilds to compete for ranking placement. Thus, we will be
making the ranking calculations only count the top X contributions from
members in the ranking period (the value of X to be determined during
testing). So let’s say we decide the contributing cap will be 50, then
the top 50 contributors within the guild will be the ones whose efforts
are counted for ranking purposes, even if you have 100 members. Please
note that we plan for all members to be able to contribute to the
Renown level, so larger guilds may level up quicker, but they won’t
necessarily do better in the rankings - they might - but it is
important that success in the rankings is down to effort, not just due
to overwhelming numbers. With this, we hope that even small and
medium-sized guilds will be able to make appearances in the rankings.
Likewise,
by having ranking for all three of the categories, we hope to able to
give those guilds that choose to focus their gameplay a chance to
shine. So, even if your guild focuses only on PVP, and might not gain
enough Renown in the overall rankings, you will be able to push up the
Glory leader-board, if you are truly successful at PVP.
With the
rankings being reset regularly, we hope to avoid guilds being able to
‘bank’ and constantly top the rankings. These rankings should reflect
your current status as a guild, and your current dedication to your
chosen causes!
The rankings will confer status bonuses to the
winning guild - mainly cosmetic items or bonuses for bragging rights.
Gold, Silver, and Bronze positions, for example, will be visible in
your character’s guild tag.
The rankings are not something we
intend to be about bestowing extra power on the winning guilds - they
are meant to be an additional part of the system that allows players to
prove that their guild is up there with the best on the server, either
in their chosen area of expertise, or in all areas!
In Closing
So
there you have it, a little bit of insight into what is coming up in
the near future for Age of Conan. Of course, there are also a couple of
other significant additions coming in the next update cycle, namely new
zones in the form of House of Crom and Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold, as well
as new Tower-based PVP objectives in the Border Kingdoms, but those
will be the subject for future letters!
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director Age of Conan
