Age of Conan

So this weekend I got to play the retail version AoC. To give you a little background I played AoC in open beta once fileplanet made it free for all members and tested it on a couple systems. My mind set after the beta was wait it out 2-3months after launch and then check it out. Well my brother came to my place with his PC in which he bought AoC and after setting it up he said give it a whirl. So here I was with AoC and having 2 1/2 days to get into the dirt of it.

Let us get some assumptions out of the way. First off his PC is high-end with a Geforce 8800GTX 768MB, AMD64 FX 3.0GHz, 2gigs of RAM timings 5-5-5-15, running Vista 64bit. Secondly all the drivers and software is up to date.

When I got to the character select screen I quickly rolled a necro, all the options for character customization is great truly defines what you want. Loading into the game didn't take that long 5-6 seconds maybe. Getting dumped into the familiar world of Tortage got me running through it to the quests I knew already to the new quests I was picking up since in open beta I only made it to 10. The game looked and functioned beautifully without a hitch of lag.

The voice acting is very well done there was only a couple npcs that had high pitched squeals that seemed like they ran out of actors. Though the conversation didn't leave me as interesting I found myself frequently clicking options say come on come on just so I could grab the quest and go on. The conversations with the npcs are often lengthy dribble and uninteresting that is my only gripe with it.

The traders not working yet had me scratching my head, how can one of the biggest systems not be running on launch I was thinking. So I was stuck with the crap you got while questing.

As the class necro it seemed very very weak and I found myself dieing way too many times then any MMO before, good thing there is barely a death penalty else it would be hell and there would be no progress if xp was lost. My pets won't tank the mob would run after me and I would find myself tanking a mob as a caster which is clearly a flaw. The point of the caster is to stay back. In a single player zone from 1-20 where barely any grouping is done because you barely can find people who are willing to group in Tortage casters get the shaft. I remember going into the volcano and before getting to the boss dieing 12+ times and then another 4 on the boss it was ridiculous. Pets need to tank it's horrible without it sometimes would I cast frenzy on one of my pets to beef it up it would tank for a bit but it wasn't often.

While playing the servers reset (connection lost) 3-4 times and stuck on a loading screen once so all in all not bad for a launch not bad at all.

Now to point out some annoyances. When you run into an object say a rock for example you can not use your strife keys to move around it you are stuck and cant jump over it either it's like it locks all your keys up all you can do is either backup and go or turn your mouse around the other direction. Just something that pissed me off more times then not. Hitting an invisible wall or edge also wasn't helping and there is many of them in the world of AoC. I got stuck inside of a wall in the water when jumping off the bridge, it was strange how since I clearly jumped over the building and instead it like warped me inside it. There I was stuck trying to swim out. The /stuck command alerts an funcom GM to get you out but it is a long process one that the community frequently bitched about. So I sat there trying to swim out while waiting then after 5minutes it finally just released me. Not sure if it was a GM or not nothing was said to me either way I was unstuck and back into the world of AoC. Oh ya and the you can't climb here unless your climbing is 30 really had me scratching me head why?!?! I'd scream to my character, "I have arms and legs climb up that mother f--ker!" Killed some of the realism of the game I was feeling beforehand.

Though the world looked beautiful the quests were bland and waiting for what many thought would be next-gen in terms of gameplay is the same ol same ol. Not game breaking unless your sick of the kill x, get x type of rule set but it's in every other fantasy MMO so take it for what it is worth.

The directional combat seemed to me a useless system, frequently I would find myself just hitting 1-2-3 over and over again while blasting off my spells as well but hitting the mob's weak point is the purpose of the system so I understand why they made it but it's nothing truly innovative and nothing eye catching or awe-inspiring.

The game being cut up into zones and instances didn't help me get into the grasp of the game. It's not game breaking unless you absolutely hate instances. The rumor going around is AoC acts and works like Guild Wars with it's central hubs of meeting places and then single/groups zones. That isn't correct AoC works a lot like EQ2, nothing different it's been done before. I seen a lot of different players in the zones so you can still interact with people without grouping outside of the cities.

Though the world opens up a bit after Tortage it is still based off the same structure as Tortage just bigger land masses. Still have zones still have instances it's not one big seamless world but they are bigger zones then what you experience in Tortage.

There is broken quests and fatalities can easily be your last breath if you are positioned wrong. With AoC's annoyances it is still a very playable game and runs great on a high end PC I wouldn't recommend trying to play it on a decent PC it just isn't going to work for you performance wise.

All in all I'd say if you haven't bought AoC yet wait a couple months it's a good game but needs to iron out it's bugs and annoyances before you can really enjoy the experience.

Good review, thanks.

Ok, just because you have a good video card doesnt make your system high end. Actually everything else is junk besides the video card. Get 2 more meg of ram and a different processo

A few of the things you mentioned are what put me off in the closed beta.  I didn't play the open beta nor have I played the retail, but it appears it still has the same old problems :/

The thing that I really didn't like was the game world just feels to linear and small (not only because of the heavy instancing), I was expecting something like wow where it is totally open from the start and you are not stuck to set paths or areas.

From what I'm hearing they never sorted the class balance out either.  Half the classes are apparently STILL to weak in both PVE and PVP.  I think this takes a lot away from the game, I remember trying to level an assassin and it was almost impossible to kill anything my own level.

I agree with a lot of this review.  (nice review, by the way, HashBrick)  The one thing I'll mention is that I'm playing on a mediocre system which is just a tad above the required.  I'm getting very good FPS with very little lag, stuttering or stopping.  I tend to crash a lot but only ever on exit, which is annoying but certainly not game breaking.  The game still looks great even though I've tweaked the death out of it in addition to playing on low settings overall.  Pushing the slider for the texture system cache and turning off the grass made the most dramatic improvements for me. I also now have a decent video card, XFX GeForce 8800 GT, which vastly improved my performance from my older 7800 GT.  You might have some luck, like I did, but it seems to be a crap shoot.  Some people with better systems, more ram and better video cards are having problems running it.  If you CAN run it on a mediocre system, be prepared to sacrifice some of the eye candy for performance.

I enjoy the combat but I agree about most of the quests.  Their saving grace is reading the story.  When playing a character that uses combos, I tend to use the Combat Rose, which makes it a wee bit more interesting.  I agree that there is a lot of same button spamming which makes me wonder if it would actually be a better game on the 360.  I might give it a go if I'm still interested by then.  (I'm so fickle when it comes to games!)  I also find the game just a bit too linear, but it's still very good fun so far.

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Originally posted by bobothewizar
Ok, just because you have a good video card doesnt make your system high end. Actually everything else is junk besides the video card. Get 2 more meg of ram and a different processo

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I wouldn't say junk, it's not my PC it's my brothers and even with the stats I listed it played flawlessly on 30fps in town and out never dropped a frame. The AMD64 FX is a beefed up single core processor it is the king of single cores. I will agree with you on RAM specially with Vista but it had no problems what so ever running vista and AoC so why buy more RAM when it's all working out for ya already :).

Originally posted by HashBrick

 The /stuck command alerts an funcom GM to get you out but it is a long process one that the community frequently bitched about. So I sat there trying to swim out while waiting then after 5minutes it finally just released me.

/stuck is not done by GMs. I got stuck twice and /stuck worked within a second. It "jumps" you up to a solid spot around you.

Thanks for the praises.

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Originally posted by NasherUK
A few of the things you mentioned are what put me off in the closed beta. I didn't play the open beta nor have I played the retail, but it appears it still has the same old problems :/
The thing that I really didn't like was the game world just feels to linear and small (not only because of the heavy instancing), I was expecting something like wow where it is totally open from the start and you are not stuck to set paths or areas.
From what I'm hearing they never sorted the class balance out either. Half the classes are apparently STILL to weak in both PVE and PVP. I think this takes a lot away from the game, I remember trying to level an assassin and it was almost impossible to kill anything my own level.

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You are right there needs to be some balancing done and I think over the coarse of the next month you will be seeing these changes taking place. Right now they are still focusing on game breaking bugs and performance and will soon shift over to game bugs and unbalances themselves. If they can iron out that then AoC can be truly an enjoyable game with out the downfall of swearing up and down because two mobs the same level as you just gave you a new nose job.

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Originally posted by Signe

I enjoy the combat but I agree about most of the quests. Their saving grace is reading the story. When playing a character that uses combos, I tend to use the Combat Rose, which makes it a wee bit more interesting. I agree that there is a lot of same button spamming which makes me wonder if it would actually be a better game on the 360. I might give it a go if I'm still interested by then. (I'm so fickle when it comes to games!) I also find the game just a bit too linear, but it's still very good fun so far.

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It is a bit linear though they do bombard you with quests and you can choose to do them or not. More than enough quests to get you through Tortage at least. I also think the 360 version would be very fitting in fact even more so since the combat system is very console control like.