Age of Conan will feature a limited single-player portion at the start of the game. Here you advance through a deep and involving story, where the focus is on you, your character and your place in the world. After a while you will start meeting other players, but you will be able to switch between single-player and multiplayer during the first twenty levels of your character's life. After that, its all massively multiplayer.
The level cap is 80. Forty normal skill levels (standard MMORPG XP) and forty different player-versus-player levels . You gain PvP levels by fighting battles with other players
Fighting between players is consensual because it is limited to certain areas of the game world. If you want to avoid player-versus-player combat, all you have to do is avoid these areas. There are other areas to engage in player-versus-player combat. You can, for instance, pick a fight at a tavern once you get drunk enough, or you can get involved in mini-games in the arenas.
One of the key features of Age of Conan is the unique combat system, which is a huge leap forward for the genre both from a technological and a gameplay standpoint. Whereas fighting in most MMOs involves targeting by clicking something, initiating attack and then clicking a combination of icons, fighting in Age of Conan centers around something we call the Real Combat System. In this innovative approach to MMO melee combat you don't target anything directly, you actually move up to your foe and start striking your weapon in different directions in real-time, using directional keys or even a gamepad.
In ranged combat you will actually have to string your bow and aim manually from a first-person or over-the-shoulder viewpoint to strike your enemies.
Players will be able to create formations that will increase the participants damage output and defense rating, as well as giving special types of attacks. A formation will have a leader who can designate spots in the formation for players, and the players have to stand at the specific spot for the formation to reach its maximum potential. Formation combat will naturally be very useful in PvP battles, but will also play a vital role in PvE.
Battlekeeps are structures that players can build and maintain in the Border Kingdom. Throughout the Border Kingdom there is a limited amount of areas where battlekeeps can be built. Because of the limited amount of space, other guilds will most surely come and try to take it away from you or even destroy it completely through the use of siege engines such as catapults. By using collected resources such as iron, stone and wood, players can build upon these battlekeeps, constructing walls and even stables to house the cavalry. It is also possible to add computer-controlled guards to these.
Server types:
(PVE, PVP, RPPVP).
There will be rules of etiquette and a restricted naming policy on RPPVP server
Groups:
* Small xp bonus for killing stuff
* 3 loot options: round robin, free for all,master looter.
* Quest items always drop for every groupmember with the quest
* Nearly all smaller caves or minidungeons (like the maze or acheronian ruins) have a hero mode (a challenging groupgame), because those dungeons are normally made for solo or minigroups.
Mounts:
There will be mounted combat in the game, where players can get hold of mounts such as horses and camels. You can fight from the backs of these great creatures – either with a sword or with a lance for maximum damage
* There will be a big choice of horses (5-10 in different colors)
* Differ in hitpoints, turn radius, stamina, speed
* All mounts can attack on their own and cause different damage
* Many spells can be fired from the back of a horse
* Its possible to get kicked of the horse during a fight
* The warmammoth and the rhino are nearly the same in stats, the rhino is more agile though and the warmammoth has more HP
* Mammoth and rhino are exclusiv preorder items atm
* Requirement for a mount is lvl40
* Mounts are inventory items, you can have many of them
* Currently mounts cannot be customized at release, but they will come up with something later. its unclear what a mount does, when you dismoount atm.
Stealth:
* Every class is able to stealth
* Different possibilites to detect a stealthed player:
- Stealth skill: raised with skillpoints
- Perception: if its higher then the stealth skill of a player, you detect him faster
- Noise: dependent of the gear you wear, the surface, the speed
- Viewcone: a stealthed player infront of you,will be detected easier
- Lighting level: easier to see a stealthed player at day
* There will be a interface which lets you see the lighting level
PVP
Anyone who is not in your group is attackable (they think about adding guildmembers to the non attack list no matter if they are in another group or solo)
There´s a pvp variation of all equipment stats
There will be a pvp ranking system which increases with pvp kills and decreases with pvp deaths
The highest ranked pvpers will be awarded with ingame items
different styles of CTF arenas, the ones we saw at CES etc were Stygian style maps, there will be more after launch
Besides CTF, there will be team annihilation
CTF battles involve battling it out with the other team in an 8 player, 4-vs.-4 format where you have 10 minutes to win the match completely, of which involves capturing the other team's flag three times before they capture yours the same number. (curse article)
There is also a Team Deathmatch type of instanced PvP, both with Ranked or Skirmish options. In Ranked matches, dying means you lose "PvP experience"
No death penalty besides loss of pvpranking and blood money. you don´t drop a tombstone when you die by another player.
See My AoC PvP Guide
Age of Conan PvP Guide: "Mama Said Knock You Out!"
Crafting
* Every character can learn one crafting profession
* You can only learn one crafting profession
* Current minimum level is 40, but they think about lowering it to 20
* Crafting profs are: weaponsmith, armorsmith, alchemist, gemcutter, architekt.
* Crafting experience will only be gained through crafting quests
* Recipes will be always usable (are non consumable)
* Leveling crafting will be fast (approx. some hours)
* Nearly all items have 2 variations, crafted with normal resources and with rare. only craftable items have sockets for gems
* Sockets come in different sizes, 4 per item are usable
* Gems cant be removed, once equipped
* Most of the crafted items or even all wont have stats like strength or inteligence. they´ll have ground values.
* Crafted items without gems are not comparable with very good looted items, however they are more flexiable then looted items. they are good against opponents with special resistances or weaknesses.
* Higher quality items can only be obtained from people who are in a guild and in a guildcity crafted in special crafting places.
* Crafting works everywhere
* The crafting process is automatic and you wont lose your crafting resources in the crafting process
Harvesting
* 6 harvesting profs (Mining, Prospecting, Skinning, Stonecutting, Weaving, Woodcutting)
* you can learn all harvesting profs at once
* every resource has 6-8 levels (i.e. for mining: bronze, iron,...)
* chance of getting a rare resource (within level) during harvesting
* resources are displayed on the minimap
* can be found in the city zones (crafting city and border kingdoms) and rarely in the world
* there is no plan to specialze in a specific resource
* there are additional resources, dropped by specific mobs
* Gemcutter and Alchemist harvest their resources through killed mobs
* harvesting nodes are specially designed with particle effects to make it easier to notice them
