Age of Conan

Originally posted by SolarRain

I also agree with the OP, and I don't understand why his post, which praised the game quite highly, enticed all the fanbois out of their holes.

Also, I've got to say something here.

The most important aspect of MMO design is providing an illusion for players.

Even if your world is NOT seamless, it is critical that you give players the ILLUSION of a seamless world. As long as it feels seamless, it doesn't matter if it's not.

Same goes for just about everything. If you were to post in the patch notes that "Class X" now gains 2% more damage with melee attacks, but in reality you DO NOT change it, you will STILL get complaints from people claiming the difference is clear, and the class is too powerful now.

A lot of MMO design is in your mind. If everyone feels like they are the most powerful class, you have a winning balance.

The 'feel' is so important.

Originally posted by airstrike

Originally posted by chargerrich

Let me preface this review by stating the following:

1. I was really looking forward to Age of Conan
2. I am desperate to find a "WoW" killer
3. I have been to a certain degree a fanboi of this release
4. I was not in any BETA but did launch with EA
5. I have leveled two characters to level 44 and 35 so I have not maxed

That being said I am sad to say that the more I play this game, the more I am let down and disappointed by some of the core mechanics of this game and am not sure this is really even an MMO (at least not in the typical MMO vein).

The Review

First the good:

Environment - The games "setting" and "environment" is about spot on to what I would consider my "ideal" environment. The mature rating allows for a more adult oriented game, some violence and gore and some sick animations. 9/10

Combat - Probably the best aspect of the game, grinding is still grinding but the "no auto attack" combat certainly keeps you interested and the aforementioned animations are very well done. 9/10

Graphics - I guess this is a love it or hate it aspect of the game, some will say they are dull, but I believe that was a design decision to go with the realistic environment. I personally like the graphics and they are a 180 from the crayon colored cartoon grahics from World of Warcraft. 8/10

Character Creation - AoC comes in second (albeit a distant second) to the character creation system of City of Heroes/Villains. I like the options that are available and coming from AC/AC2 and Wow this is a nice feature. 7/10

Now the Bad:

Now with all the nice things said above, one might wonder how just one negative aspect of a game can take this game down so far in this reviewers opinion. But the one problem I have with this game is a big one and not one that can be fixed with a patch as it was a core design decision.

And that is...

AoC uses a "guild wars" type of instancing system... so much so that one can argue that this game is not in fact a true MMO. So you have picked a server that say supports 2-3000 players (estimated). Now unlike WoW or CoH/V or most MMOs if 1000 players go to any one city you are all not in fact in that city together, you are in one of upwards of 15-20 "instances" of that city or quest area even though you are all on the same server.

What this means is that you are really only playing with 5-10% of the actual server at any one time. This obviously completely ruins PvP. Want to get revenge for a gank? Too Bad! The ganker can switch instances and you are left with A) doing nothing or B) spending the next 30 minutes instance hopping just hoping to catch the offender.

This is completely unacceptable and it baffles me why this decision was made. Performance? Perhaps in 1998, but in 2008 this could not have been a performance issue when all other mainstream MMOs can and do handle > 2500 players per server without this type and level of server instancing.

This decision is very disappointing and really limits the appeal of the game to many who are used to playing with more than a handful of players.

There are other small quibbles (stats make no sense, armor does not seem varied enough, et al) but all of these are fixable. The instancing decisions are core to the game and for many will ruin the experience and any longevity.

If you like Guild Wars then I can completely recommend this game. It has a lot of nice features even some level of innovation, but if you are looking for or are used to a game where all players of a server are available to you, then this game falls woefully short.

 3 posts = your credibility is -1 ,now go reroll another account here and post the same whine again mr. no life kid.

Yes, just 3 posts.....it totally destroys all  their credibility:

In some elaborate rouse, he/she joined in 2004, just to come back in 2008 and post a review about how  he/she doesn't like age of conan

OR

Maybe, just maybe, her/his posts got wiped a few days ago like mine....crazy isn't it?

And I bet he/she is just boggled with a comback to "Mr. No LIfe Kid"....of course my instinctive comeback would be to call you a major douchebag.

I mostly agree with this OP except the instancing is NOT the same as guildwars, i do think its bad but its not the same as guildwars its the same as eq 2.

I think pherhaps you haven't played guildwars much.

I'm tired of quoting and correcting, so i'll just say this.

Sucks that you didnt like it. I'm 100% into it now that i found a community and the OOC channels are starting to pop off like WoW trade chat.

Game rocks.

To Sarcazmo:

LOTRO's graphics are nothing special in directX 9 mode. Most people compare AoC directX 9 with LOTRO directX 10. They see that AoC is a tad better than LOTRO and say "what's he point?"

Do you understand the point now? Doesn't it make you wonder how exactly AoC will look when the directX 10 actually arrives?

Originally posted by Raston

there is one thing that AoC is doing that no other game (save EVE) is going and without instancing it would not work and that is the collision detection it is using for Players.  This is a highly CPU intensive process to detect collision on constantly moving targets, it is bad enough to have to do this cull for NPCs, where you can determine the maximum number of moving targets in any one area (either through spawn control or leashing) but a different matter entirely when it comes to players.

Thus you use instancing to manage that number to ensure that the heavy collision detection code doesn't bog the game down too much.  With out this, they probably could of gone for the fake wow/vanguard seemeless world concept, but it would of also eliminated alot of the game play designed for the game.

It is a trade off.

Am I thrilled with the number of instances?  No, but that doesn't mean I don't think they made the right choice for the game and I full expect that once the average computer system increases, that we will see an increase in the number of people who can be in a particular instance, but they didn't want to cut out 90% (stat pulled out of ass) their potential subscribers because they would have to require a E8400+ with SLI'd PCIe2.0 video cards to play the game

Sorry CoX did it, yes they have instanced zones and missions but they do not have clones of zones.

kakarotrage , did you really have to quote his entire post? you come down on him for his opinion then turn around and waste resources and other people's time. Seriously man.

Originally posted by onlinenow225

Originally posted by Raston

there is one thing that AoC is doing that no other game (save EVE) is going and without instancing it would not work and that is the collision detection it is using for Players.  This is a highly CPU intensive process to detect collision on constantly moving targets, it is bad enough to have to do this cull for NPCs, where you can determine the maximum number of moving targets in any one area (either through spawn control or leashing) but a different matter entirely when it comes to players.

Thus you use instancing to manage that number to ensure that the heavy collision detection code doesn't bog the game down too much.  With out this, they probably could of gone for the fake wow/vanguard seemeless world concept, but it would of also eliminated alot of the game play designed for the game.

It is a trade off.

Am I thrilled with the number of instances?  No, but that doesn't mean I don't think they made the right choice for the game and I full expect that once the average computer system increases, that we will see an increase in the number of people who can be in a particular instance, but they didn't want to cut out 90% (stat pulled out of ass) their potential subscribers because they would have to require a E8400+ with SLI'd PCIe2.0 video cards to play the game

Sorry CoX did it, yes they have instanced zones and missions but they do not have clones of zones.

I can remember back to the early days where it wasn't uncommon to have 2 Atlas Parks, I also remember a PvP event where Sirens Call was up to instance 7.