Game Director Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison updated the Age of Conan community today on the next game update, which is currently on the test server and will go live over the next couple weeks.

Perhaps the biggest change is a new consequence system for PvP. As we reported late last month, it will add moral consequences to your actions.

Players will be now run the risk of becoming a criminal or even a murderer depending on their actions in PVP. ... It will be possible for those evildoers to redeem themselves, however.

Morrison also gives an overview of the changes to trade skills, including new armor and weapons and an overhaul to the Alchemist profession. In addition to GUI adjusments, he also briefly mentions changes to massive PVP sieges, mounts, quests, raid encounters, items and tradeposts. His full post can be found here or below.

The next game update is now progressing very nicely on the test server and we hope to have it ready for the live servers over the next couple of weeks. As anyone who has read the test server update notes or visited the test server will be aware the amount of changes and new content coming with this update is substantial. The next update will introduce many new adjustments and additions so today we wanted to give you all an idea of what to expect from this update.


PVP Consequence System – The Notoriety System

The next game update brings with it a major new game-play feature – a new consequence system for PVP. Off the back of the PVP leveling system introduced in the last update, this new system aims to bring even deeper meaning to PVP and introduce real consequences for your actions. Players will be now run the risk of becoming a criminal or even a murderer depending on their actions in PVP.

If you take part in anti-social actions in PVP, picking on weaker foes and such you will find yourself accruing ‘murder points’ that will eventually mean the attitudes of NPCs in the world will change towards you! Murderers will be outcast from society and will have to depend on new outlaw camps which can be found at remote locations in various different playfields. You will still have access to vendors and travel through these camps, but that will now come at a cost! A consequence for being a dangerous individual!

It will be possible for those evil doers to redeem themselves however. Murderers can try to solve specific quests to lower their murder points to one day receive amnesty and loose the status of a murderer. Until that time other players can hunt down and kill murderers to punish them for their crimes. We think this system will introduce a great new dynamic to PVP game-play. Do you dare to try and live a life outside of the laws of the land? Do you have what it takes to be infamous, or indeed become famous for hunting down these most treacherous of player targets!


Changes to Trade-skills

Brand new types of armor and weapons will be introduced with the next update. There are so called ‘Base’, ‘Culture’ and ‘City’ armors and weapons recipes which give weapon-smiths and armor-smiths many new pieces to craft. The recipes for these new items also include new resources that Alchemists, Skinners, Weavers and Woodcutters will have to provide so working together with other player crafters and gatherers is encouraged and even necessary.

Listening to player feedback made it clear to us that especially the Alchemist profession had to get an overhaul in terms of the too high number of available alchemy recipes and needed resources to craft these sorts of items. With this update the number of alchemy resources has been reduced by about two thirds and existing recipes have been adjusted accordingly. This will make crafting for alchemists much more enjoyable and allows this profession to focus on crafting specific items and potions as an unnecessary high number of different recipes and resources made it hard to actually find what was needed.

In addition all other trade-skill resources have had their chance to drop increased which should result in players being able to gather the resources needed for recipes much easier.


GUI Adjustments and Additions

Additional possibilities for raid leaders to add and move members from different raid teams and also added more versions to display more detailed information about the team members to show different bars as well as debuffs will be coming with the next udpate. And this is not all! Many other changes and improvements to the GUI are added and we also will continue to bring such adjustments in future updates.


Wrapping up!

In addition to the content highlighted above this update brings also brings many more changes on various other topics like for example, massive PVP sieges, mounts, quests, raid encounters, items and tradeposts –to mention just some of them.