Age of Conan

NDA is lifted according to Gamespot, so here are my thoughts...

From only playing the first 5 levels, and then pvp at 20, I found the game overall to be fun.  I like the combat mechanics.  I did notice though that if someone is not used to steering with the mouse, and more prone to use the A and D keys, they will have a bit of a time adjusting, as it is FAR MORE useful to steer with your mouse in this game.  For me, it was no problem at all as that is the way I have been playing MMO's for quite some time now.

Classes are fun.  I purposely avoided the Ranger, knowing it would be nerfed in a week or two.  I didnt want to get used to it now, just to feel gimped in the future.  Necro and Demonologist are good.  Only knock I have is that the spells don't look all that different from each other.  maybe a color change here and there, but nothing grand about their special effects.  This could be on purpose for this client, since they wanted to get us the basics.  It is also the case with other things that (supposedly) are in the General Beta, but were not in this client, so it wouldnt suprise me at all if the effects were toned down for a smaller client upload.

I liked that even at level 4, I was finding 3 or 4 different looking chest pieces.  They all had the same stats, but the variety is good to see.  You wont necessarily see all level 6 people wearing the exact same thing.  Good to see from the start.

The first five levels were very easy to kill through, but from what I have heard, this is intentional so that you get a feel for how to fight multiple enemies.  Also, the beginning area is VERY linear.  You'll hear people complain of this and make it sound like the whole game is like this.  Don't listen.  Yes, the first island is linear, but that is intentional, again for tutorial reasons. 

PvP maps are very standard fair.  They look real good, mind you, but they are typical one side vs the other.  Nothing wrong with it. 

Graphically, the client felt trimmed down vs what really exists.  Example of this is no DX 10.  Some options for quality level, but probably not all are in.  Overall though, it looks great.  I love the amount of foilage on the ground.  Really feels like a jungle.  Can hardly see the actual ground as you are running through shrubs and plants.  Water effects are great!  Underwater looks fantastic.  I hope there is a good amount of underwater content, as it would be a shame to not purposely put us there with it looking so good.

I have yet to determine a class to play upon release.  I enjoyed the Assassin, Demonologist, Necromancer, and Bear Shaman.   

Also, dont let people tell you how a specific class felt like there wasnt enough skills or spells.  Its only level 20, of 80. 

I think the game looks pretty awesome from that video, looks pretty fun to play. Spell effects and animations look fine to me.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Originally posted by skeptical

Well i got my beta key at the last min they sent out an extra 5k so it took me about 12 hrs to dl the files from gamestop.

The pvp beta is very very limited. Basically you can do a very small pve intro that gets you to about lvl 5. Once you complete that you get bumped to lvl 20 and you get sent to a pvp staging area. You can join the pvp mini games from there. There is basically a capture the flag game and a kill the other team game.

So far the ping has been good and my framerate is decent for running this on an upgraded 2 year old pc. I had to turn down the settings a bit but the difference is minimal anyway really. I get about 35 fps in crowded pvp and more in the pve intro thing. The combat isn't anything too revolutionary but its better than the typical button mashing MMO. There is some obvious class balance issues but that's nothing new. The combat seems to be a bit fast to really take advantage of the combonations but since we are all lvl 20 with probably very basic gear that will probably get better at higher lvl. The "feat" system (like talents in WoW) seems to have some nice depth to it.

The game does sort of have a more xbox kinda feel to it but that's because it's such a limited beta i think. The UI is sort of simplistic I'd like to see more slots for spells/abilities. Overall though compared to the total crap I've seen with other games this looks pretty good. My only concern is that they are only letting us see such a small part of the game. It's looks good enough to keep me interested though.

Thank you for your balanced thoughts.

 

Did you like the graphics?

What impressed you most about the weekend?

What didnt you like about the experience you had?

Is there anything that suprised you about the game?

I was pretty impressed at how well it ran and how good it looked even on lower settings. I had to turn Vanguard into donkey kong to run it smoothly.

Only thing i really didn't like is how limited the test was. It's a very very small part of the game they let us see.

I was pretty impressed that i never got major lag never got dcd never saw the server crash or any of the usual beta stuff so thats one good thing anyway. They really don't have enough to do to really make me want to play it a whole lot but it was nice to get a look at the game anyway.

So those of you that did try the ranger...how do you like the FPS style for the bow?  Pretty sweet huh. 

Okay it's 12pm PST here so I'm guessing the NDA is lifted (15:00 EST, 19:00 GMT) so here's my take on the PVP beta.

First off I'm running a Intel Duo Core 2.66ghz w/ 2 gigs Ram and Gforce 8500 GT 512megs. My video card isn't the greatest but I figure I could run maybe medium settings with a few things turned off or lowered. Not the case, I had to go further than Low settings by going into Advanced and reducing anything there even lower to get what I personally felt was a decent semi smooth FPS. This was really disappointing for me. Reading the global chat it seems that performance varied alot, so maybe it'll be different in retail.

My experience with the PVP games...

Team Annihilation: This is the team based death match, destroy ressurection stones game. Not too bad, was enjoyable and I played mostly these games.

Capture the Skull: Nice setting, but it never got very far because my game would end because of lack of people or sudden crashes.

My experience with the Classes...

Conquerer: Easy to figure out so I tried this first. Not much to say, you get what you expect. It's a warrior melee type and I didn't see anything fancy about it. I didn't do massively epic damage or anything.

Demonologist: Decided to try the mage type class. I like the pet that you can summon and having a ranged spells was a nice change after playing melee. Spells sound cool, but personally, I didn't feel they did much damage in PVP. I would nuke some people but they would just run up to me and hack me to death. I had a root spell but the cast time felt a bit longer that it should be.

(Whatever the class that turns into a monster): Can't remember the name but there's a class that can turn into a monster and is melee. This class was actually fun except that the spell to turn into a monster only lasts 25 seconds and I think 2min cooldown. That's totally lame seeing as how the description makes it sound like that's the trademark of the class. Other than that it had some nice melee attacks and also an area root and also a charge. I had the most fun with this class, I really wish the monster transform was longer and shorter cooldown.

Assasin: Pretty much a rogue class. Was fun to play too with all the sneaking around. EXCEPT for the fact that if you went off a ledge, no matter the height, it would break your stealth and then you'd have to wait for it to cooldown to activate it again. This was incredibly annoying. Jumping also breaks stealth. Makes its very frustrating to cross small platforms and such or to drop down from a small ledge.

Priest: At lvl 20 I felt the priest was completely useless in PVP. The healing spells where all Heal over time and pathetic numbers like 10 or 8 per second, when your teammates can take double digit damage in combat. The holy attacks constantly fizzled out on me as well. The only good spell is the short self invulnerbility. I don't know if I am missing something with this class? but without a targeted heal or a much stronger heal over time, Priest was just a useless body in PVP.

Ranger: This class totally dominates in the current PVP beta. Farther range than a mage which is sad! And can deal MORE damage than a mage as well just with regular attacks. Also has a snare trap, a snaring arrow shot. And even when they come close, you can switch weapons to a sword and shield and use a snaring attack to run away.

Other experiences about the PVP beta...

The introduction single player in the woods is nice but you can't tell how it'll be like when you start getting FedEx or Kill #X quests, so it'shard to see if PVE will be enjoyable (darn! ).

I found the inventory/character screens VERY UGLY. The icons for the items are flat and muddy. During single player quest, I got this club off a boss and I wanted to see how cool it was in my bags and it doesn't not look good at all. The whole inventory/character screens really reminded of the free to play MMO Cabal, ugly and flat. Why am I making a fuss about this? Well, later on when you get cooler items I want to admire them not only when I equip them but in my character sheet.

Combo system and attacking in different directions is interesting but I  couldn't figure out how to use it best.

I was also annoyed of the amount of loading screens. When you enter Annihilation your team is in a sealed off area, and then when the game starts, theres a short loading screen. Everytime  you die and ressurrect, there's another loading screen, ugh!

I still have not received my beta email, lol... there was a post with a link to the download page and if you where selected, there will be a beta code there. Which I used, so if anyone is still refreshing their email, maybe check the link instead.

Overall I'm a little dissapointed, however, I am still interested in the game's PVE aspect which I enjoy more in MMO's anyways.

I spent most of my time playing Tempest and the HoX.

The Tempest is pretty much what I thought it was. It's much like the Fury class in EQ2 if you have ever played it. It has a nice Area effect root on a 30 second cool down. You have to move a large targeting circle on the ground to cast it. They also have 1 quick cast short duration stun. You have 2 main attack spells at level 20, the main does does a fair amount of damage and also hits other enemies near the target.

The Herald of Xotli at level 20 is pretty much what i feared it would be. You look cool. Once you factor that out, your still a cloth wearing melee who gets messed up really bad when your going toe-to-toe with most of the other melee. When your in your demon form, you can hang a lot better, but it doesn't last long, and the casting of the demon form can be interrupted. The HoX does not have enough stamina to do its melee combos and has way too much Mana at this level.

The spells at your disposal include a damage absorbing shield which never seems to absorb enough and has to be recast every 5 mins. They also have a channeling fire breath spell that shoots out in a cone in front of you. It does OK damage, but nothing to write home about. Finally you have an insta cast point blank area root that only lasts for a few seconds at best. They also have a melee charge like the soldiers, but theirs uses up such an insane amount of stamina then when you reach the target your pretty much tapped out. I can only assume that this class gets more stronger and easier as it gets higher. I have heard they become more magic oriented at higher levels which might explain the disproportionate amount of mana they have.

Overall impressions of the game is that it plays very differently than any MMO I have played previously. This is not a cookie cutter game or WoW clone with the combat mechanics. The melee in this game is very involved. A serious Melee class should be expected to understand how to do combos while managing the shield position to minimize the incoming melee attacks. The games targeting system also shows what spell or ability your target is using. This means that a truly masterful person will see the incoming combo and know where to move the shield, and for mages it means timing your stuns and interrupts.

Healing is pretty much completely different as well. Most of the heals I have are areas effect or cone based. This means you don't need to have anyone targeted in order to heal. Just cast it and your allies in front of you get it.

This game does take some getting used to. If your going to play a melee you really are going to get to sink your teeth into the combo / shield system. It's probably the most interactive combat in an MMO so far. It also means that you need to click your mouse or press a button every time you swing, but your swings are capable of hitting multiple targets and collision detection adds an element of strategy that will be used a lot once some PvP situations.  I like it overall and after playing the outside tutorial, I am very excited to see overworld PvP on the FFA server.

I wont go into detail as a lot of people would take it as bias.

but I will say have a couple of PC's

PC 1: P4 3ghz / x1600 ATI GPU /4gb crap ram / Samsung 22" 226BW 1680x1050 ~ getting around 20 - 30 FPS on custom medium-ish setting. 32bit XP

PC 2: Q9450 @ 3.6ghz , Rampage Formula Mobo, Crucial BallistiX 4GB Ram PC2-8500, eVGA GeForce 9800 GX2, Samsung - SyncMaster 245T 24in monitor 1920x1200 ~ upwards of 60 FPS everything turned on. 64 bit vista home premium.

I had few lag spikes here and there. Necros can have a multitude of monsters, from 3 little demons, to 2 mummies, to 1 lich guy. Quite a few classes have the ability to stun resulting in fun times ;)

had points to spend in your skills, like bandaging (health regen) perception(stealth detection) hiding(stealth) concentration(casting interruption deduction) at lvl 20 you had like 700 some odd points to put in.

I loved the character creation, gets better everytime.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

I wont go into detail as a lot of people would take it as bias.

but I will say have a couple of PC's

PC 1: P4 3ghz / x1600 ATI GPU /4gb crap ram / Samsung 22" 226BW 1680x1050 ~ getting around 20 - 30 FPS on custom medium-ish setting. 32bit XP

PC 2: Q9450 @ 3.6ghz , Rampage Formula Mobo, Crucial BallistiX 4GB Ram PC2-8500, eVGA GeForce 9800 GX2, Samsung - SyncMaster 245T 24in monitor 1920x1200 ~ upwards of 60 FPS everything turned on. 64 bit vista home premium.

I had few lag spikes here and there. Necros can have a multitude of monsters, from 3 little demons, to 2 mummies, to 1 lich guy. Quite a few classes have the ability to stun resulting in fun times ;)

had points to spend in your skills, like bandaging (health regen) perception(stealth detection) hiding(stealth) concentration(casting interruption deduction) at lvl 20 you had like 700 some odd points to put in.

I loved the character creation, gets better everytime.

good to see you are finally liking the game. i was getting tired of all your negativity mister.