AoC Bug Penalizes Female Characters?

Massively is reporting that there may be an unintended (according to FunCom) bug in the new MMO Age of Conan that would cause female characters to do significantly less damage over time. It seems that as the initial "shiny factor" wears off for the new darling MMO, the bugs and complaints just continue to pile up resulting in a fair bit of buyer's remorse. "In the meantime, some ingenious players have provided fixes along the lines of the 'unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed' trick. Poster Dnotice even provides evidence that variation in listed attack speed may be down to the gender of the first character you log in when starting AoC, and not the gender of the character you may be playing at the time. Curiouser and curiouser: although the listed speed can be altered by changing the first character's gender, the actual animation speed apparently can't."

Re: Female attack speed and mount movement speed

[Eowaennor]

Those issues were already fixed on Monday...

Fixed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, fixed. I made a female character to test the bug, only to find out it was already fixed.

The Full Scoop

[Scorpinox]

I've been following this bug since it was first made apparent by some female assassins. At first we thought it was limited to the assassin class, but they were just the first to notice it, it turns out ALL classes who dual weild weapons are affected by the gender bug.

Here is a youtube video which clearly showcases the difference:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=k-C4z-pTrII&feature=related

Players who were in the beta of the game say (while breaking their NDA sadly) that this bug was in the beta for months, but was never addressed.

Funcom's response as of over a week ago was along the lines of "We'll look into it, they should be the same speed". There has been no communication on the bug since then.

I think it's great that this bug is getting mainstream attention now, it's a very serious imbalance that Funcom needs to take responsibility of.

Re:DPS (is not the issue)

[Scorpinox]

DPS is not the issue here. The game has many "procs" (each hit has a %chance of adding an effect like poison or extra damage), so after 30 seconds the genders may be doing the same "damage" but the males will have more procs than females.

Also, the game uses combos which require several regular attacks to initiate, a male will be able to fire off combos faster than females, many of which debuff or do additional damage that higher "damage per hit" will not make up for.

Re:topless bunny hoppers

[sesshomaru]

Yes, it goes all the way back to his Weird Tales debut in the 1930's with covers by Margaret Brundige:

Wikipedia: Margaret Brundage [wikipedia.org]

I mean, there's a reason why H. P. Lovecraft (notorious prude) would tear the covers off the magazine where many of his best stories appeared, to quote Wikipedia:

Brundage's art frequently featured damsels in distress in various states of full or partial nudity; her whipping scenes were especially noteworthy and controversial. Her sensual images usually illustrated scenes from the pieces chosen by editor Farnsworth Wright as cover stories; her work was so popular among readers that some WT writers, like Seabury Quinn, cannily included scenes in their stories that would make good Brundage covers.

So.. there you have it... you'd think people would've been able to tell this from the Conan movies, though. Or maybe... those are also too old fashioned now. I feel old.

Re:Subscription question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That, or a 2 month pre-paid game card (in which case you have to pay for extra 60 days before you start).