Age of Conan - Coming this Fall... KINGSHIP

Words cannot describe how awesome this first MAJOR content update sounds. I know a few folks (KEEN) who might be interested in reading this. This is one of many new things planned for AoC this year, and I'll be damned... it all sounds fantastic. You can read about the new PvP System, the Fugitive part of that, new dungeons, new chat system, Powerpoints (odd sort of achievement system), new lore quests with voice overs, well... a whole lot of NEW at this LINK.

Am I still excited for WAR this fall? Yes. Will it be hard to pull away from Conan on a daily basis if all this makes it in by then? You bet your ass. The TTH Guild and its alliance will own Hyboria one day this fall, mark my words. Anyway, read about the Kinship content update below:

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Kingship revealed - Huge upgrade planned!

We will be doing a lot of improvements and additions to Age of Conan in the weeks to come, and we will be sure to tell you about it. But let’s also take this opportunity to gaze deeper into the glass ball, to see what awaits us in the future – later this year!

Okay, so we’re not ready to give you all the juice on it just yet – this is, after all, some months away from going in the game. But we want to lift the veil a little bit, as we feel that this is such a powerful community builder that it deservers some anticipation!

The tentative name for this update is Kingship, but that might change as we move close to patching it onto the servers. This is basically an update that will introduce some very groundbreaking new features into Age of Conan, such as guild alliances, legendary battlekeeps, and so-called Wonders of the World. And some other, secret stuff!

The Kingship upgrade will also be rooted in the Powerpoints system, and we will be introducing several new features and content. Here is some of what you can expect!

Guild alliances

We want to allow guilds to get together and form alliances, creating strong accumulations of power that can take on some of the biggest challenges on the server, and we will be employing various tools for them to create a strong common identity for the alliance.

Here is a list of some of those tools:

* Alliance flag – you will be able to acquire a flag that you can carry around on your back, and this flag can be customized for you alliance.
* Alliance cloak – you will also be able to acquire a cloak that you can customize for your alliance, showing everyone what gathering you hail from.
* Alliance chat – of course, just as with guilds you will be able to share a common chat channel with all members of all the guilds in the alliance.
* Alliance name – you will be able to select a name for the alliance, and that name will be shown after your guild name and your character name.

A guild alliance will be quite a political entity, and this among other things involves holding elections to choose alliance leaders and such. Rest assured, guild alliances will have plenty of tools at their disposal when they set out to conquer the known world!

Legendary battlekeeps

Already in the game your guild have the opportunity to build player cities and eventually also conquer battlekeeps. We will, of course, be improving these functionalities as well as we move ahead in the coming months. Kingship will also expand on this feature.

Situated next to the three big cities – Conarch, Khemi and Tarantia – will be something called legendary battlekeeps. Massive constructions that can be seen from inside the major cities themselves, and there will only be three of these in total in the online world – one for each capitol city. Conquering these battlekeeps will be the ultimate challenge!

Guilds will effectively have to team up with each other and become alliances if they want to have any chance of conquering a legendary battlekeep. These will be gigantic battles, and we are aiming for over 300 players to be involved in the battle simultaneously!

That also means we will be doing some technical improvements to the massive battle system to allow for this great number of players in one battle at the same time.

Wonders of the World

These battlekeeps will all have different benefits to provide the alliance that owns it, and they will all be visually very different from each other. You can customize and build upon your legendary battlekeep, just as you would with the “ordinary” battlekeeps.

Another feature we will be introducing with this upgrade is Wonders of the World. These are powerful constructions rooted deep in the identity of that nation (e.g. the “Golden Lion of Tarantia” for Aquilonia) and they look epic and magnificent. Each nation has two of these wonders, and they can be built in the legendary battlekeep for that nation.

Building these wonders is a huge effort for anyone in the alliance, and will involve a lot of team work. Once you have built the shell of the wonder in your legendary battlekeep, other guild alliances can steal it and bring it to their city – so you need to protect it!

The benefits of owning one, two or more of these wonders (can you steal all of them?) is beyond anything you can imagine, but those details are to be revealed at another time!