Salutations folks.

I was one of the early-ish players who embraced AoC (and AoC Nation) back when it first hit. After numerous frustrations with game performance issues (lag, FPS drops, video RAM leaks, etc.) I went back to World of Warcraft.

As of late, though, my interest in jumping into AoC again has surfaced. I was wondering if the technical issues that the game faced post-launch have been fixed for the most part? I'm speaking specifically of the memory leak issues and poor framerates that were driving players... such as myself... completely bonkers.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

The last patch specifically addressed the memory leak issues, or at least some of them.  Personally I saw a noticable decline in performance from patch to patch using Windows XP 32bit with 2gigs of RAM.  It got to the point where I had to keep the task manager open on my second monitor so that I could manually end the AOC process whenever the mini-map greyed out and my system started to chug.  This was a fairly regular occurance, resulting in restarting the game approximately every half an hour.

 

Prior to the last patch I had upgraded to 4gigs of RAM and Windows Vista 64bit and now the only issue I have with the game is the occasional server lag spikes.

 

Obviously this isn't the preferred fix to the memory leak issue, but if you have the disposable income to run out and upgrade your machine for no other reason than to play AOC, it seems to help.  Anyhow, I haven't had any problems with Vista and the game actually seems to run better with my 8800 GTX card, both in appearance and increased framerate.  (I also switched from shader 3.0 to 2.X permanently to rid the problems in some of the instances where my framerate would die due to some particle effects or textures, I haven't switched this back under Vista so I cannot comment on whether these changes have any effect on that particular problem).

 

Anyhow, to specifically answer your question.  No, I don't think they have fixed the memory leak issues but it appears it is towards the top of their priority list.

 

Hope this helps..

I recently came back after 2 weeks almost...  I was not satisfied with the performance still.

As above said..the grey map is a sign you better restart the game.  My friend and I just agreed yesterday.  We are finished with AOC.

Dev's have a lot of work to do and time is 'NOT' on there side im afraid.  I wish those who do stick it out fun times.

OP> if you have urges to come back.. Keep watching the patch posts.  Wait till you see more things done first.

I play on a Phenom chip I believe its the 9750 2.4ghz X 4 chip... i forget .. 3 gigs of ram on dual channel ..8800gt-OC

I still burn through memory with AOC... pre recent patch I zone more than 2 times..i have to reboot soon... Latest patch the only noticeable thing I saw was steady frame rates but they were in the  60s ..when before I would be in the 80s...but it fluctuated then... seemed to be a more steady 60. 

Ill end this... with.. play aoc at your own risk =p.. its better since the beginning...but not that much better. To me that is.

Since the last patch, I haven't had any memory leak issues. I upgraded my computer to play this game in the beginning and the biggest downfall was the memory leak issue after playing over 5 hours straight. Since the patch, not one memory leak issue.

I still love this game. I found that it's more enjoyable when you play a character that you "connect" with. For me it happens to be the Dark Templar.

For graphics, I have turned off Shading all together and run it at 3.0 My FPS as a result is a steady 40-60 FPS. Only in the villas I had to go to 2.0 but after leaving those quests, I put it back to 3.0 My graphics card is a 9600GT Nvidia and I have an AmD Athlon Dual Core 4600+ with 2 gigs of ram.

I'm actually having a worse time since the last patch. Before the patch it was simply the gray map warning, now I actually get CTD's without warning and the lag spikes are worse.

There are also more zone resets than before.

Well for me the performance went down comparing to what it was at start. I never lagged at villas but since some patch i get it everytime now. Also it was working very smooth at start but since the last or may be the patch before the last patch i started to get random freezes at any part of the world. The freeze may happen anytime/ anywhere and the only thing that can fix it is reboot. I never had any memory leaks so cant comment on that but one more thing that i noticed is it looks like i get more random disconnects from the server now. I had less of them before. It is not so rare now to see that everything else except you is freezed and screams like: "OMG what a lag" or just "lag" in general chat window. After a while you get a disconnection from server or it gets to normal and you keep playing. Well at least thats how it happens on EU Crom.

 

BTW guys how is the population on the US servers? I read on few forums that some US servers lost a lot of people and are deserted now. Is that true? 

Galad wrote: BTW guys how is the population on the US servers? I read on few forums that some US servers lost a lot of people and are deserted now. Is that true?

 

I've read this also, but I'm not sure how true it is.  One poster on the AOC forums concluded that there were less players because there were less instances running simultaneously.  This compounded with the fact that I see the same people every evening would lead me to believe that the population has dropped, but I wouldn't say the servers are deserted.

Jerival wrote: Galad wrote: BTW guys how is the population on the US servers? I read on few forums that some US servers lost a lot of people and are deserted now. Is that true?    I've read this also, but I'm not sure how true it is.  One poster on the AOC forums concluded that there were less players because there were less instances running simultaneously.  This compounded with the fact that I see the same people every evening would lead me to believe that the population has dropped, but I wouldn't say the servers are deserted.

 

On the Gwalhur PVE server, we've always been at "medium" load when logging in, and I see about the same number of folks running around the various zones. The chat windows still seem to be busy with folks looking for groups and our guild manages to have 10-15 active most of the time I'm logged in.  So I've not seen any big decline in the population base. Not saying it is or isn't happening, just that I'm not seeing any incontrovertible evidence one way or the other.

Thanks for the replies guys. Browsing the websites i followed the link and got there:

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Epidemic-Obesity/Funcom-Investors-Jump-Ship-as-Age-of-Conan-Found ers/.

 

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Epidemic-Obesity/Age-of-Conan-Desperate-for-Subscribers/

 After reading the whole article my good mood was gone. If some of the facts mentioned there are truth then the game in trouble.  That why i asked about population on US servers as im playing on EU Crom and can speak only for EU servers. What i can confirm is people cancelling accounts. I lost many friends who couldnt stand the current state of the game and stopped playing. Whole guilds falling apart because of lack of members. People going back to the games they played before AoC: WoW/LOTRO/EQ2 etc. There is still enough people playing the game in Europe but the overall number is decreased thats for sure.

 

Anyway i hope the situation is not that bad as i still like the game and would like it to get only better and better. But if the info about FC making new MMO already is truth then im not sure in AoC future.

Not to sound fanboyish but you're reading a World of Warcraft fansite blog in search of Age of Conan news.  You're going to get a lot more reliable information about how good Age of Conan is from an Age of Conan website like the one you are on. 

No Age of Conan will not kill WoW.  We all know this.  However, it doesn't have to have more subscribers to be an enjoyable game.  Funcom has kept supporting Anarchy Online for years as a free product.  To say that  AoC which has more paying subscribers than Anarchy Online ever did is going to die anytime soon is just insane. 

Edit:  Just actually read that second article.  I like how the guy doesn't have any source whatsoever for his statistics other than "an inside source".  Basically its an article by a random guy on a world of warcraft fansite that supposedly knows someone that knows funcom's sales statistics.  Right...

2nd Edit:  I would think that if Funcom were deep in development of another MMO they would be recruiting more than one C# programmer for it (www.funcom.com).   AoC took 5 years of development.  I would guess that they're looking ahead to the future.  If they're beginning production of an MMO of the proportions of AoC, then they could be planning on a 2013 or 2014 release date.  If you'll look, blizzard also is recruiting programmers for their "next gen mmo".  This doesn't mean they are abandoning WoW anytime soon. 

I haven't noticed much of a population drop. Yes there are fewer instances, but I have yet to go anywhere and NOT been ganked (or attempted) at least once. Every zone I go through has people in it. The world looks FAR from barren.