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Hi, I'm Daniel. You might remember me from such other MMO articles like "It was great except for the Elves with 5 o'clock shadows" and "Tits and Fatalities aside, Age of Conan sucks flaccid donkey genitals". I'm new here; and bringing you a highly opinionated, wordy rant on the latest of MMO trends: the term "WoW Killer".

The meme itself isn't new: the first earliest recorded instance of this meme was by the scribe Pontus Sextus Alphonsus in 300 A.D, writing about the threat of an invasion from far eastern Empires into the vulnerable Roman empire. He referred to these savages as possibly the first "Rome-killer" -  yeah, ok, I just made all of that up. The term "WoW Killer" has been kicking it around since WoW first became a success back in 2004. Any major MMO release since then has been plagued with this term: "Will this game be the WoW Killer? Will this game gain self-awareness, attack the Blizzard server farm with a targetted nuclear strike, then start searching for Sarah Connor? Does this game have the potential to learn kung-fu?"

No, it doesn't. The term itself implies that WoW in fact can be killed, which it can't. Sure, it can lose some subscribers: even for arguments purpose, it's possible (though not likely) that games like Warhammer Online have more total active subscribers than WoW. Does that mean WoW has, in fact, been killed? No. It would still be the 2nd largest MMO subscriber game, and it would still be the all time biggest MMO in terms of subscribers. Even in this best case scenario, WoW would still have a piss-ton of subscribers by industry standards.

Many people say that the only thing that can kill WoW is WoW itself. I liken this to people watching too many Terminator movies as kids or possible temporal lobe damage from hearing the pre-pubescent screams of Eddie Furlong too many times. WoW can't kill itself, but it's supporting staff of humans can perhaps muck things up a bit. A lot of WoW subscribers were alienated or quit after the Burning Crusade expansion: WoW subscriptions were down to around 2 or 3 million actual subscribers and about 17 million chinese gold-farmer accounts. Wrath of the Lich King might do the same thing; and it's good to theorize that if Warhammer Online provides as good of a PVP experience as everyone hopes it does, it will take a good deal of the "real PVPers" away from WoW (if any still play) - and WoW can be happy in deluding people that the little e-sport Arena games are "real PVP". At the end of the day, though, there is still a core group of people that love WoW for what it is: whether it's because it was their first MMO, the majority of their friends play, or even it's cozy familiarity: people will always stay and play World of Warcraft, and in great numbers.

TL;DR version: WoW has too many loyal fans and addicts to ever be "killed" as a MMO. End of story.

Now that we've determined that WoW can't be killed, it's time to move on. Even though it can't be terminated, it can still lose a lot of customers, or better yet, it *is* possible that another MMO has just as big of a following and playerbase as WoW does without stealing their customers. In fact, this latter scenario is the best scenario because it means that players have been gained from outside the genre and the industry has indeed grown. This can't really happen with titles like Warhammer Online or Age of Conan because it's still stuck in the same genre (Fantasy) and is really just a rehash of the same thing - and maybe niched to a certain demographic, like PVP/RVR with WAR or Nudity and ... well, whatever for AoC.

So what can rival WoW in fanbase and subscribers? A non-fantasy, perhaps "non RPG" based MMO that is rock solid, using a known IP. Whether this is a MMOFPS or MMORTS (or even both) - this is really the only chance that the MMO industry has at ever producing something that rivals the beast of WoW in revenue and following. Using this logic, companies like Mythic, Funcom and 38 Studios actually hurt the MMO industry because they won't be generating many new players (from outside the genre) and have instead been focusing on stealing other players away from other similar games. Meanwhile, hordes of fantatical FPS and RTS players are uncatered for in our over-saturated Fantasy MMORPG market.

I digress; in conclusion, let's stop using this tired term "WoW Killer". The term is just plain inaccurate; we need to be more creative and constructive in representing the MMO industry. So, let's focus on objective reviews and previews of upcoming releases and advancing and expanding the industry, rather than throwing this lame meme into the mix with every new title that's about to be released.

Original postage: r1ft

Featured at: MMOCrunch

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In the midst of all the existing and upcoming Fantasy based MMO's, it's easy to get lost in new features and cutting-edge expectations that might put game X over another title. For an avid PVPer like myself and many others, though, we tend to focus more on the actual game mechanics and PVP features of the upcoming titles. So, it's no surprise when we start to compare these games to other titles that we've enjoyed.

Ultima Online (pre Trammel) - the old school gamers holy grail, this was our first and perhaps only true love for MMO's. UO offered a PVP freedom that only Asian-grindfest games have reproduced since, with little success in the Western market. In UO it was possible to attack whoever you wanted (later with consequences) and even fully loot them if you had the time. This was wonderful for the community and you could easily be a "bad guy" or a "good guy". This sort of freedom came with a price, of course, as the danger was high and few (if any) places were really secure.

Dark Age of Camelot was the next major PVP release and introduced Realm versus Realm combat; this limited your freedom as you couldn't attack your brothers in arms, but you could attack the other factions, mostly in the Frontier or RvR zones. You couldn't really hunt your enemies down on their turf, so they had plenty of safe havens and could avoid PVP altogether if they wished. However, the dynamic and fun nature of RvR combat was still satisfying, at least on a different level. DAoC, to my knowledge, was the first major game to implement strictly PvP / RvR rewards as gear and items.

World of Warcraft was a step backward for PVP in many people's mind. Most people agree that WoW is a PVE game first with PVP slapped on secondary, something I fully agree with. WoW popularized instanced PVP, though most true PVPers perfer more random and dynamic encounters like world PVP - something that WoW has neglected, and something they are trying hard to implement in WotLK.

Age of Conan is almost not worth mentioning, as it was marketed as a PVP game but still has yet to provide any meaningful PVP system, nearly 4 months after release. After trying their proposed system out on the Test Server, I can safely say that AoC is actually a step backwards from WoW, which I didn't even think was possible. They've basically taken the instanced PVP of WoW and combined the lame penalty systems from UO and bundled it all up into an unbalanced piece of excrement. If only they could work on something to actually punch you in the face whilst you PVP'd, they'd be sitting pretty for the worst PVP system ever put into a MMO.

EVE Online snuck into the scene in the midst of all this and provided a true evolution to UO's dynamic PVP experience. It's been a bit of a niche game with a rocky start, but I can honestly say it's the closest thing to UO I've seen in the last 10 years. It's not quite as addicting as WoW / DAoC for me, which is sadly a problem as far as sticking with a game, but it's still worthy of a mention as a wonderful break from the cookie cutter fantasy PVP templates we get thrown into on a regular basis.

Enter Warhammer Online. The hype is there, and the game is going to deliver. For many people, it's kind of like a "Dark Age of Camelot 2" - with a different IP, of course. Mythic made the DAoC PVP experience fun and memorable, albeit with less freedom than UO or EVE - and from the beta, it looks like Warhammer will do well to evolve the PVP aspect of the MMO industry. Public Quests, meaningful RvR combat, and most importantly: a game focused on the PVP experience.

So, how is WAR holding up so far, to those that have played the beta? Do you find that they've help evolve the PVP aspect of MMO gaming - or have they taken a step backwards?

Original postage: http://www.r1ft.com/war/warhammer-progress-in-the-evolution-of-pvp/

It's summer here in the south of France, and everyone is busy trying to spend their 2 months of vacation, either trying to avoid the tourists or having fun being one themselves. Age of Conan did a wonderful job at getting a lot of people outdoors this summer, as the Funcom team works diligently to provide a PVP system: one that was promised in June but might be here by the end of the year. Anyway, that failure of a game is behind most of us PVP addicts, and we turn our autumn sights to none other than Warhammer Online.

I've been playing beta. For a very short time, I had thought to perhaps make some videos and some screenshots and write little witty guides and playing experiences for everyone. However, I quickly let that go because I knew other people would do it, and do it better. So, the least I can do is bring my faithful reader(s) a few links with some good stuff so they can read about Warhammer and all of it's glory. The questions most people are asking themselves now are: what faction should I play? What class should I play? What is my life becoming when I obsesse over games like this? Alas, these should help answer at least the first two:

Of course Keen of Keen and Graev's blog, being on the Mythic payroll, has done an excellent series of videos, screenshots, and coherent ramblings:

WAR Beta Movies and Screenshots

Keen's not-quite-sober Beta Impressions, Part 1 (of 78,000)

Good stuff, my boy! Keep 'em coming. Change your damn guild name though or at least go with something a bit more masculine like the "Blue Oyster Club". (name the movie!)

Not to be outdone by simple college students, Massively, in their attempt to have 2000 blog posts on the same topic, have done a series of quasi-article things on the Classes of WAR.

Destruction (I'm evvvill! *emo sob*)

Healing Classes for emo Destruction

Melee Classes for Destruction

Tank Classes for Destruction

And Order (Legolas to the rescue!)

Ranged DPS Classes for Order

The missing ... 4 guides will be coming soon I suppose. Check here if I haven't updated this post yet.

And of course no Warhammer news can be complete without The Greenskin!

Beta Thoughts Part 2

Greenskins in the Beta

Post NDA writeup

That's it! Will add some more if I find them worthy.

Original postage: http://www.r1ft.com/war/war-gathered-betapost-nda-infos/

It’s hard to try and delve into a subject as controversial as chauvinism or sexism without pissing a lot of people off almost immediately. I guess a good place to start is why I would pick a subject like this as a topic. Well, I suppose the idea came from an astounding and almost laughably unbelievable issue in Age of Conan that basically makes female characters roughly 25% more ineffective than their male counterparts. Woops! While I’ll side with the angry masses here and say that Funcom definitely dropped the ball on this one - though, since 95% of the female characters in MMO’s are dudes anyway, a tiny violin is playing somewhere because of the punishment you’ve received due to your fondness of staring at a virtual female ass whilst playing.

This leads me into my topic here, which is male vs. female equality in MMO’s. Time for a bold statement:

Males and Female characters should not be equal.

Ahh! you say. Die, heathen! Wait, wait! Let me at least defend my statement. By saying “not equal” - I mean that the physical and mental characteristics of a male or female character should differ as they do in the real world. Oh, the real world, you say? Please, do tell… how *are* guys and girls different?

Let’s start with this: Males are biologically predisposed to have a bigger body mass. In the homo-sapien species, it’s just a fact that males are bigger than females. Bigger body mass means more muscular development and general overall greater physical strength. This is a generalization, of course - you’ll find feeble weak men and horrifically strong women at both ends of their respective spectrum.

So, using that logic: Males in MMO’s should be better at physical tasks such as armed combat. Right? That doesn’t mean a female couldn’t excel at physical combat, they would just have to work a bit harder at it. Smaller stature just puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to clanging swords around and wearing stuff like platemail and other heavy armors.

Counterpoint: Many melee classes don’t rely on raw strength to excel, and females would perform just as well or better depending on the class mechanics. A good example would be a ninja. Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon. The three females in the movie (the main girl, Chow Yun Fat’s girl, and the bad woman - oh, I’m great with names) performed just as well in combat because it was more skill and dexterity rather than raw strength. Chow Yun Fat kicked all of their asses just because he was the most badass ninja in the world or whatever. Anyway, my point is that certain classes like a Barbarian or Warrior would be much more suited for a typical male whereas classes like Rogues and Ninjas would equal for females to perform in terms of physical combat.

What about the other side though? Males might be the bigger of the two in our species, but in what areas do females excel at that could be transferred to an MMO setting? And that leads me to yet another bold statement: A female’s smaller stature makes them better suited for sneaky or quiet-type characters. (and jello wrestling)

In a fantasy based MMO setting this could easily translate to female characters being superior at magic using and rogue-type classes. When using weapons such as crossbows and daggers, where raw strength is hardly a factor and dexterity is key, females would be able to perform just as well or better in this role. Their natural small stature would make them far superior at sneaking around. Being female could also give them more dialog choices or the option to use their physique or natural allure to persuade friends and foes alike.

Ok… so why has no MMO even thought about this?

I think the mere thought of anything like this has company PR and execs crapping their Depends. People seem to think that this treads into the realm of Sexism or Gender Equality in the real world, when in reality, it’s just reflecting the biological and perceived strengths and weaknesses of our species. It’s nothing to get all in a fuss about: if you can’t accept the fact that male homo sapiens are physically larger on average, there are probably some other issues that you need to look into along with some possible anger management. So why not use this bit of realism and make our MMO worlds better?

I suppose that begs the question that is most important: is complete gender equality (like found in current MMO’s) helping or hampering the gameplay experience?

I know it’s a bit of a silly question. Does it take a suspension of belief to see a petite slender elf girl with a humongous fiery battleaxe that probably weighs twice what she does? Is it ok that around every corner we find some sort of Xena: Warrior Princess that has some exceptional amount of natural strength? Or are these just the ramblings of a madman who needed a few more hugs from his mother and wouldn’t have turned into a sexist chauvinistic pig ranting about game mechanics on the blogoweb?

In my opinion - and this is only my opinion - a more realistic gender balance system would enhance gameplay. I think that female gamers are more disposed towards non-melee classes anyway (in my experience) and would actually benefit from being superior in these other roles more than males would being superior at plain old smashing weapons together.

I’m curious to what some of my readers think. Let’s hear it!

For those that don’t know, which is hopefully nearly everyone, I’m an ex-Air Force guy currently held prisoner in mainland Europe. I say this because it’s relevant to what I’m about to say. I met a lot of people in my 8 years of service, and left behind a lot of good friends in the states when I chose to live in the land of wine and baguettes. This includes a lot of “gaming friends” - you know, friends that you game a lot with but sometimes struggle to do normal social stuff with like going out or doing whatever the hell it is people do when not lodged in front of their virtual hamster feeder.

I got a letter from a friend I used to be stationed with in the states in my first “newbie” years in the military. I played Ultima Online and Counterstrike with this guy, along with various LANparties and other geektastic stuff that used to be going on in our free time. We didn’t keep in touch much through the years, but he somehow came across my humble blog here in his searchings on Age of Conan or midget porn or something. After exchanging pleasantries he wrote me a few things and asked if I could maybe write something about what he said. And here we are.

Basically, my friend is a MMO addict like a lot of people. He started with Ultima Online, moved on to Everquest, then to DAoC, then WoW, and now Age of Conan. Of course some other titles were mixed in there as well like Horizons, Shadowbane, Vanguard - he, like many of us, were not impressed with these games and went back to the safe bubble of his chosen game at the time and let it soak up his time.

While reading some of my earlier AoC stuff, he came across another blog site that I happened to mention in an article: Keen and Graev’s gaming blog. He read one article, in particular, called “Summer begins: will it be another slump?” — and because of this one article, he told me, he threw his computer out a window.

Yeah, he threw his computer out of his window. There was no broken glass because the window happened to be open. Only a bug screen lost its life as the shiny Thermaltake case smashed through it and then deposited it’s various components on his front lawn. (He’s ground floor, and has a house - no flying computers out of highrise apartments unfortunately.)

Most gamers know about “gaming rage” - that is, smashing stuff or being violent because of something that happens in whatever game we’re playing. Hey, it happens - I’ll admit I’ve lost more than a few keyboard keys and even dented up a monitor or two (was a lot better back in the CRT days) due to some stupid and rather trivial string of events that happened to take place while engaged in some virtual whatever.

However - this is the first time I’ve heard of someone being so moved by an article that it caused them to take immediate action. While there could have been other contributing factors (I do believe alcohol was involved), it’s still a bit remarkable for someone to react with such emotion to “words”. At first I almost laughed this off - and then I went and really read into this article on Keen’s blog. So, what’s it about, anyway?

I think the first line sums it up nicely:

Ok, that is a bit depressing. No, I don’t mean that fact that *gasp* “no good video games are coming out this summer…” — I mean it’s depressing that someone’s emotional state and relative happiness is based upon the release of virtual entertainment. To each their own, I suppose, though I do wonder how the poor people that happen to not be born in our rich, every opportunity given, catatonic westernized society (or more than 20 years ago anywhere for that matter) managed to survive without hanging themselves out of sheer boredom.

And then at the end we have:

In his defense, he did say he was going emo for a moment, right? So here we have - a couple of teenage kids (I think they’re still in high school?) whose lives seem to revolve around video games and MMO’s. Hell, that could be a false assumption - perhaps it’s Peter North and Ron Jeremy over there writing - we all know that any popular niche blogger gets more ass than a toliet seat, right? Anyway, it was my view that yes, the article is fucking depressing. It’s not worth throwing your damn computer out the window though. Come on now!

And then my friend told me this:

Here is the quip he’s referring to:

Well shit on me. I was just trying to be witty. I guess I need a warning label that says: “Do not mix this with depressing, melodramatic posts bitching about having no ‘puter games to play.”

All joking aside, it got me thinking. I think my friend really needs (or needed) some help dealing with what he considered an unhealthy addiction. He’s still in the military. He’s not married, probably no serious girlfriend. His average day Monday - Friday is probably something like this:

Monday - Wake up 6:30 AM. At work by 7:30. Home by 5PM. Game until midnight / 1AM.

Tuesday - Wake up 6:30 AM. At work by 7:30. Home by 5PM. Game until midnight / 1AM.

Wednesday - Wake up 6:30 AM. At work by 7:30. Home by 5PM. Game until midnight / 1AM.

Thursday - Wake up 6:30 AM. At work by 7:30. Home by 5PM. Game until midnight / 1AM.

Friday - Wake up 6:30 AM. At work by 7:30. Home by 5PM. Game until 3 / 4 AM.

And then it’s the weekends:

Saturday - Wake up at noon. Eat. Game until 3 / 4 AM.

Sunday - Wake up at noon. Eat. Game until 5PM. Do some social thing. Home at 10-11PM. Game until 1AM.

Rinse, repeat. Normal workouts are mandatory in the military so he doesn’t even have to worry about being overly obese. That’s a 50 hour work week and a 60 hour game week. Subtract gaming time if you want to play sports or try and have sex.

I think that is what he was pissed about. His life, when he wasn’t at work, revolved around gaming. He had to sacrifice gaming time to do any “normal stuff” when it should have been the other way around. He clearly had no moderation in his life in terms of gaming. As they say, that shit was out of control. Well, it only lasted… 10 years. Is it over? Not sure. Maybe it’s like smoking. You can never really quit.

Anyway, here’s what he said about the whole thing:

Just wanted to let you know… dont mix beer + depressing shit like that! Warning!

Behold, the power of the internets. We can rebuild you, we have the technology. Oh, and we can make you throw your computer out the damn window.

So, anyone else have some stories of article rage? MMO rage? Do tell….

Let's shed the formalities to get started here: Age of Conan, in all it's glory, is an unfinished and unpolished product. This doesn't mean it still can't be fun (and it can be quite fun) - and it also doesn't mean that we should, as consumers, silently ignore these blatant mistakes that Funcom has made by releasing their unfinished product in what could be considered a "pay to play" extended beta test.

It's not my goal to alienate people immediately to think I'm going to go on some tirade about how Conan a complete pile of dung and we should all curse Funcom for a thousand generations or anything. What I aim for is a constructive look on how the state of the game was at release and now, a couple weeks after "launch". I know there are a lot of people that are still on the fence whether to leave their current MMO for Age of Conan. Investment into a MMO can be a consuming thing, both financially and time-wise.

Edit: This has been a sort of "living" document as much has changed in the past week since I've started this. This should be noted that Funcom is actively working on things, which should be encouraging for any player that's a bit concerned on the long term status of the game.

Anyway, on to Daedren's look at "the state of Conan". No, it's not California.

Client Stability / Performance:

I'll start by saying that Funcom did a great job scaring the hell out of Open / Close Beta testers by releasing a client that was far more stable and playable than these beta clients. In retrospect, this was mainly due to the debugging feature and the game devs "playing around" with testing stuff toward the end of the beta. The release client, for a lot of people, has been pretty stable.

Now the bad stuff: the Technical Support forum (at least on the EU forums) has more topics and posts than any other forum. Even taking a sample from my guild (40 or so people) - there are still a lot of instability issues that people are having. There seems to be a lot of problems with the Conan engine and performance in certain zones. On average, in a typical evening of playing (4-6 hours) you can expect maybe 1-2 (at most) client crashes, depending on the zone and server load.

Client disconnects are far more frequent. There seems to be a current bug where if the instance you are in gets too low on players, it automatically "shuts down" and boots you from the server. When you log in, you're in another instance. Piss poor way to handle that, but this doesn't happen all that often. The good (or bad) thing about this is that your teammates / friends in the same instance get DC'd also, which makes for a nice social building experience as you feel you've coordinated something so great and unique that you cause the server to boot you all.

Performance is so-so. The biggest issue for most people has been the actual zones causing problems. For the first week, the 40+ zones Field of Dead and Tarantia Noble's District were causing serious performance issues. People that got 30-50fps everywhere else were getting 1-5 fps on average in these zones. This made leveling (and PVPing) absolute hell. Fortunately, they've fixed most of these issues in the first week. The biggest performance issue people seem to be having now is in large scale PVE / PVP battles where a lot of AOE is used. People with juggernaut gaming PC's even with everything on low settings (and they can normally run high) are reporting 1-5 fps for 10-15 seconds if certain classes / AOE spells are used by multiple people. Let's hope this gets worked out by the time sieging and border lands PVP is up and running.

A last note about the client: DirectX 10 - one of the main "selling points" of the game - is still not implemented. Oopsie.

Content

This is by far the hottest and most severe topic for most people. Age of Conan is a wonderful - almost completely polished game - up until about level 35. While this is arguable (as you're forced to hop around and do a lot of grey / green quests in the 20's/30's), for the most part the early game is quite complete and enjoyable. At level 35 you get to experience your first "instance" - I'll cover all of these below - and it starts to become obvious that the game is lacking a little polish.

At level 50-60, it becomes clear for most people that questing is no longer a viable option for advancement. While the subject is debatable, it's estimated that a player will need to grind (as in - kill stuff over and over again, ad nauseum) for about 5-10 levels between level 50 and 70. I can confirm this to a degree - I'm always duoing or trioing with my friends when I play, and we ran out of quests at about level 55/56 (and this is even with a lot of AOE grinding while doing quests) and had to bite the bullet and grind our way to 60. Things didn't get much better 60+, as we quickly ran out of quests in Thunder River and Aztel's approach. Kenshatta (the level 70+ zone) has about 3-4 levels of quests, so you can expect to grind about half of that, either by instancing or boring ol' mob grinding.

(note: a few more Main System / Catacombs runs would have helped a lot with experience. If you're able to do these, you might be able to do very little grinding on your way to 60+.)

So, high level leveling content is a bit sparse. The good thing is this is easily fixable with the addition of another content zone or two from level 50-80. The bad thing is that if you're currently at this level, you're stuck with either grinding or running instances (which may or may not work, depending on your server - see below instance "Cisterns and Main System"). In the end it really depends on the player. If you're mainly a solo player that doesn't want or have time to find groups for instances, you'll probably be grinding a few levels out in the 50's.

Travel System

Traveling in the lands of Hyborea quickly is done by suiciding across zones to appear at other resurrection points. Is this intended? Who knows. People accept it as a necessary evil to solve a logistical issue in it's current state. Actually running (or riding) from, say, Field of Dead to Old Tarantia would take about 15 minutes. It'll take less than 5 if you can kill yourself quickly. Realistic? No. Practical? Yep.

Edit: Mount speed has been changed recently. It's still faster to suicide across a zone - the only problem is finding a cliff to jump off of. It's sometimes faster to just ride now rather than search for your demise like some death loving maniac.

Instances

(This is not a complete review of all instances in the game - only the ones I've tried)

The Sanctum of Burning Souls

This is the first proper instance I got to try out, and I must say it's good fun. It's the first time you'll see bosses drop "blue loot". The bosses are fairly straightforward. The instance, overall, is not challenging, but it's an excellent way to advance from 35-42 if you can run it a few times.

This instance isn't without bugs, however. The boss loot tables are pitifully small - 2 bosses drop the same blue item every time, while the other 2 drop from a table of 2-3 items. Also, the second to last boss (Princess) is bugged. You attack her, she doesn't move, and drops nothing. Overall, probably the best and most complete instance in the game that I've done. Yikes!

Edit: Princess has been fixed in last patch and loot tables have been increased a bit.

Tordelbach's Tomb

This is a level 50+ instance in the Field of Dead. Instance is small, and has two bosses that drops loot.

The fights in this place scale ridiculously. The trash getting up to the boss is sleepingly easy - level 50ish elite mobs that hit like a noodle. Just as you're yawning, you get to a mini-boss, which turns out to be a somewhat challenging fight. Now that you're awake, on to the last boss, just a stone's throw away.

The last boss fight will last about 10 seconds. In these 10 seconds, you need to kill the boss or she'll start doing this insane AOE thing that kills everyone nearly instantly. So, hope you brought some level 60+ DPSers or an entirely ranged group. As she's doing this AOE attack, waves of elite minions start coming in and healing her.

The biggest problem with this encounter isn't the difficulty, it's the bugs associated with it. I ran Tombs 3/4 times - and every time we didn't kill her the first try, she bugged out. This meant anything from running to the instance start and killing everyone as they respawned or just turning yellow / unattackable and starting to dance as we flail away on her with no effect.

Edit: Last boss becoming unattackable has been fixed last patch.

Cisterns / Main System

The Cisterns and Main System are different instances as they are not "proper" instances - there are other groups and people with you, like in Dark Age of Camelot's "Darkness Falls". While on paper this seems like a good idea - and actually can make for some interesting PVP scenarios - in the end, it fails to be a rewarding experience if you're forced to sit and wait for boss spawns for hours on end. (I really feel for people on PVE servers - must be a nightmare!)

The Cistern is small and relatively easy to do because it's so short. Chances are you can get a crap PUG and do the 3 / 4 quests there in under an hour if everyone is at least mildly not horrible. Stuff here is level 50 elites and gives ok experience that might get you a level or two.

Main System is where the real fun happens. Boss spawns respawn anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half, meaning if you don't get killed by another group you'll probably end up just waiting around a lot. The experience is ok if you can kill things quickly with a good group. As the bosses are shared and often on long respawn times, the bottom line is that you'll probably get a lot of time to work on some dance combos or emotes or something. Groups don't usually want to go trash clearing as they're afraid to miss a boss respawn.

Bugs in the Main System aren't horribly bad. It can happen where bosses follow people back to the instance start, making for a royal bloodbath. Loot tables seem to be small but at least moderate, and the rewards are good.

Best case scenario: if you can get a good group on an empty server (or non peak playtime) you can make some serious experience and loot to offset the grind in the 50's.

The Pyramids of the Ancients

This is by far the buggiest zone / instance / thing in the game. It's meant to be a mid 30's instance. Instead, it's a virtual hole of bugtastic fun that can make for some interesting and disturbing game experiences. The zone has a lot of potential, as you get to do things like unchain a captive naked hotty and collect the dismembered body parts of someone for a purpose you probably don't want to know.

In this instance you'll find you can magically walk through locked doors. You'll also get a quest where you learn you've just killed the mobs that would have dropped the quest item. Redo the instance and you'll find the quest is broken anyway. The last boss goes into an infinite dying animation and drops no loot. The main quest for the instance "Enter the Pyramid" doesn't work. According to it, you've not yet entered the Pyramid, even being on the top floor of said location.

End Game Instancing

Disclaimer: As I'm just about to hit 80, I have to report on these all from second hand knowledge.

Basically, the general feeling is this: there are no properly working end game instances other than Frost Swamp, Ravine, and Oasis instances. These three zones are a bit special as they are actually level 40-80 and adjust accordingly to your level. The instances are extremely simple, loot is pretty good, and general difficulty is easy.

Other instances and end game raid dungeons, from what I've heard, are almost completely unplayable. Anything from bosses and mobs resetting mid fight for no reason or guys that teleport through walls, all the end game stuff seems to be at least mildly bugged. End game boss raids are either impossible to do or easily exploitable, with some not even dropping loot.

I won't expand on this too much as it's all second hand. End game Conan, as it stands right now, seems to be a work in progress.

Summary

All in all, instancing in Age of Conan - in my experience - is very buggy. I could understand having a few bugs (like Sanctum) in your instances - but to release the game with entire zones broken (like Pyramids) or putting bosses on long as hell respawn times (in Main System) is a bit on the shady side. This sort of stuff is why you beta test. Lock the zones out that are buggy as hell (Pyramid) and make these instances at least work on a functional level. Annoying bugs are one thing, but bosses that bug out requiring you to rerun an instance is just plain unacceptable. All in all, instancing for the most part has seemed a waste of time (with the exception of Sanctum) - making for an unsatisfying experience that leaves a lot to be desired.

Crafting

Crafting is one of the key aspects to an MMO for many players. If you're looking for a rewarding and engaging crafting system, look no further than... well, not Age of Conan. The current state of crafting can be summarized as "completely borked". Bugs abound in the crafting system: anything from quests you can't delete (filling your precious quest log) to materials that are impossible to obtain - oh, and great stuff like your crafting skills resetting when you respec - crafting, in it's current state, is an incredible timesink with little to no benefit other than constructing guild cities.

Sadly, crafting seems to be the only worthwhile thing to do at the moment at level 80 because it's needed to build your guild city / village. It's not so much resources that are needed rather than just straight cash. Upgrading to a Tier 2 city seems to cost upwards of 100g at the moment (with materials) which is obtainable by a small to medium sized guild after a few weeks usually. Unfortunately the buggy crafting system really roadblocks a lot of progress here, and rumor is you can't progress past a Tier 2 city at the moment. Tier 3 cities are supposed to be required for owning or building a Border Keep, so we can safely file this into the area of "not completed" yet.

When will it be fixed / completed? I'm not sure. Doesn't seem to be a priority on Funcom's list at the moment.

Class Balancing - PVE

Another smoking hot issue is class balancing for leveling. Sadly, many classes in their current state are very underpowered - almost to a point of unbelievability. At the end of this scale are the two proper "Mage" classes - the Necromancer and Demonologist (covered a bit here also). Their main problems right now include spells that don't scale properly (doing the same damage at level 50 and 80), completely broken feats and abilities, and the inability to maintain damage or level in an efficient matter. There are mixed reviews of both these classes, but the general consensus is: Demonologists are doing less damage in PVE than a Priest class (TOS) and Necro's only really "shine" after level 65 when they get some AOE pets. The Conan dev team has announced more changes will come "soon" - so let's hope soon is actually soon rather than later.

Scaling down, AOE and Healer classes (with Bear Shaman being the worst PVEer of the Priests) have a huge advantage progressing in the game. Classes like the Tempest of Set and Priest of Mitra can effectively AOE / Solo 5-6 higher level mobs with little downtime, while other classes like Assassins can barely take 2 even levels on - with moderate downtime. Soldier classes can also AOE kill very well, albeit slower than some of the AOE powerhouses like ToS and a high level Necro / POM. Most melee classes kill considerably slower than their spellcasting counterparts, though most is "manageable" with the exception of the Assassin class at the moment.

Why is this important? Well, because of lack of high level content to keep you busy and questing for exp, you're left with either grouping or trying to grind quite a few levels out. Some classes are just far better at it than others. Keep this in mind if you're like me and can't handle much repetitive grinding.

PVP Class Balance

As Age of Conan is (or was supposed to be) a PVP oriented game (make no mistake about that) - so PVP Class balancing is, of course, always an issue. Not many people are level 80 yet, so while it's true that high-end PVP is still a bit of a mystery (for reasons explained below), there are some concerns about PVP in the current state of the game.

One of the biggest concerns in the current state of the game is the ability for many classes to "one shot" kill people. For example: a Barbarian or Herald of Xolti utilizing all of his knockdown / cooldown abilities will kill a Necromancer, Demonologist, Assassin and probably a Bear Shaman / Tempest of Set / Priest of Mitra almost every single time. This varies with mileage, of course - the Healers have a much better chance of surviving because they might have heals ticking on them or some abilities to mitigate some of the incoming damage.

What's this mean? Well, if it's still there in the end game, that's piss poor game design. No one wants to run around in PVP and be victim to the "3 minute mage" every single time. As it is currently, 2-3 classes can effectively take out all the squishy classes with little or no effort. It's similar to being stunlocked from 100% - 0% in WoW - not much fun. People want to at least be able to fight back, do something - anything - in PVP. Playing target dummy to those that won the "instant kill" class lottery is just plain silly.

Another thing in PVP that seems a bit wonky is Healers. Healers, in their current state, do more damage than their mage counterparts. Tempest of Set's are especially dangerous as they've been reported to do more damage in battle than a Demonologist or Necromancer. Oh, and they can heal too. Any of the three Healers can, with one heal on themselves, completely negate any damage from many of the pure "DPS" classes which makes "1 Shot Killing" or zerging a target the only effective way to bring it down. I agree this is a bit hard to balance out - if a Healer can't even keep himself up, how can he keep his teamates up? However, I think that as of right now no healers have *any* mana issues whatsoever, it should probably be looked at.

Anyway, the game isn't about 1vs1 PVP. Or at least it's not supposed to be. Group PVP pretty much boils down to this: take out their healers or you're going to lose. So, as a Healer class, you'll find yourself constantly targeted by duel or trio stealth / HoX combos. As you'll be knocked down / out of the fight for a good 5-10 seconds, the only way to survive this is have someone with counter knock-downs watching your back. This brings a good tactical element to team PVP, though sometimes people just die too darn quick (a HoX + Barb combo on a healer can take them out in literally 2-3 seconds) for any strategy to be involved.

PVP System

For those that haven't heard, the PVP experience system did not make the release launch. What's that mean? It means that PVP battles in it's current state mean absolutely nothing. There is currently no PVP reward system in place. Death means nothing: it works like in an FPS - you respawn at a spawnpoint and go about your business as if nothing had happened. For many people this isn't very fun or interactive. The whole system just seems lazy.

End game PVP is supposed to be about border land wars, keep sieging and PVP minigames. Currently Border Land keeps are unobtainable due to Crafting limitations. My biggest concerns about massive PVP battles is client stability and performance. I've been in some 20 person (total) fights and it's been laggy as hell. 48vs48? Ouch. Let's hope they work everything out in the next few weeks.

Instancing - as in, same zone, multiple copies/instances of this zone, is one of the biggest obstacles in World PVP. Word isn't out if the Border Lands will be instanced - let's hope to Crom not - but as of now, this makes world PVP extremely hard and non-dynamic. People can swap instances and avoid people. Interaction becomes an option. All in all, while I understand the technical reasons for having this, it leaves for a less than satisfying world PVP experience in it's current state.

Continuing - the sad fact is that Age of Conan launched without a working PVP system. For a game that is a "PVP oriented game" -- this is just plain piss poor business. If the PVE content was finished it might sting a little less, but the evidence remains that the PVE game is just as (if not more) incomplete than the PVP system. All in all, we're left with a constant reminder that Age of Conan is just not quite finished.

So, we're left with no meaningful PVP system, end game PVP sieging and border lands not working, and questionable PVP class balance. The positives, at least, are that you have plenty of time to learn the combat system and your class in PVP before it really "counts". I can't think of any other positives (other than PVP being possibly fun) of the AoC PVP system as it's just not implemented yet.

Conclusion

Age of Conan has it's strengths: a new combat system, nice visuals and sound, and the promise of a dynamic PVP system that has attracted a lot of players to the game. Funcom has invested a lot of time and money into this game, so it's a very good bet to think that these problems will get sorted out - eventually.

Underneath this shiny little cover, though, Age of Conan is almost embarrassingly incomplete. It really needed another 2-3 months of good beta testing to work out. Of course this is an arguable topic, and people will say "it's complete enough!" or "it's fun" which I can give a half-hearted "meh" to in response. The game is not complete, even by MMO standards, and has most certainly lost a good deal of initial customers by releasing the game too early.

I want to bash this horse a little more - apologies in advance - but Funcom screwed the pooch on releasing this game too early. The company buckled to either PR or marketing idiots and didn't bite the bullet to finish their game. The weirdest thing of all to me is that new MMO's use World of Warcraft as their "model" or at least try to copy a lot of the working things from this game. Now - I'm a Blizzard hater as much as the next guy - and I wouldn't mind WoW losing lots of customers - but I have to give Blizzard a lot of credit for not releasing stuff that isn't finished. They aren't afraid to delay something to polish it. Of course, WoW wasn't perfect on release - and I know these arguments will come - but WoW was much, much more polished than Age of Conan at release. The WoW PVP system was broken / nearly non-existant, but WoW was never a PVP oriented game. It was a PVE game with PVP slapped on later as an added bonus as most will agree on.

Now, for the real conclusion!

Age of Conan is kind of fun. I like the new combat system. Never will I be able to auto attack again. Fatalities make it even more sweet.The graphics in the game are also wonderful. The voice over dialog and quest scripting is great, especially at lower levels.

The game has just been released, so it's not expected to be 100% complete and polished. However, main elements are just missing or broken. Yes, they'll be added sooner or later. Classes will be balanced better than they are now for both PVE and PVP. Instances will be fixed and both high end content and leveling content will be fixed / added.

Until then, though - make no mistake. You're playing and paying for Age of Conan: The Extended Beta. For those of you seeking a complete MMO with little to no hassle - I just can't recommend this game to you. If you're like some of us, though, and just need a new MMO to play and don't mind waiting a while for some of the promised features, jump right in with the rest of us.

Original article is located at: http://www.r1ft.com/age-of-conan/the-age-of-the-extended-beta/

While in the recent months I've expressed my dissatisfaction with the possibility of yet another Medieval/Fantasy sort of MMO, I'm also a believer if you do something, you should do it right.