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Since I've had several people asking me how Age of Conan was, and if it was worth buying at release, I thought I'd make a info thread about the game.
I loved the game when I started to play it at the beta at first, but after some more testing I thought that there was too many serious issues with the game for it to ever become good. I was pretty sure that Age of Conan would end up like another Hellgate: London. However, Funcom kicked it into a new gear after prior to the release, and did more to the game than I thought was possible. I decided to buy the game and try it, and so far I've played a necromancer up to level 30. My old WoW guild went into Age of Conan, so I've gotten to look at the resource gathering and guild town features as well.
The starting area of the game, Tortage, goes from level 1 to 20, and takes about 6-10 hours to complete. The story there is great, and every NPC has voice acting. You have tons of generic NPC quests in this area, and the quests are much better than any (MMO)RPG I've played so far. You get some good indicators on your map/minimap on where the quest objectives are, and NPCs related to quests shows up as well. You also get destiny quests to follow, which serves as the main storyline of the game. When you take the destiny quests you go into nightmode, which is a singleplayer mode, so you can follow the story without being bothered by other players. It's a very good setup, which allows you to mix your destiny quests and the normal quests as you wish. You can at any time switch between day and night. I enjoyed this so much that the game had already gotten its money worth when I completed it.
When you are done, you end up in the homeland of the race you picked, and from there you can travel freely around. They removed the voiceacting from the normal NPCs, as well as the night mode to follow your destiny quests after the starting area, but it doesn't really make an negative inpact on the game. Everything is done in the traditional multiplayer sense of a MMO from this point on. So far I've liked all the cities and all of the zones. They are large and beautiful, have good quests, and have interesting content.
The resource gathering is somewhat similar to WoW. There are resource nodes that you need to click to collect resources. The upside here is that the nodes are always visible, but they have a HP bar that gets drained when you collect from it. When it reaches around 10%, it is depleted, and you have to wait for it to recharge. You actually have gathering zones to go to as well, which has much more concentrated resources than you find in regular zones. This is a nice twist that takes some of the traditional resource farming snorefest much better. You can actually have all the professions in the game at once!
The social aspect of the game is unfortunately very flawed. The chat looks horrible, the chat commands is a pain in the ass to use, and the GUI for your friend/guild list is ugly and small at best. I can't really think of any positive to say about it at all. Players in your guild is even attackable at any time, which allows the standard annoying crowd in your guild to be even more annoying. This feels more like a bug than something that is intended though.
Yesterday, my guild expanded its city to add class buildings and tradeskill buildings. Overall it was a cool thing to be a part of, but it still needs major work before it becomes as awesome as the concept is. There is nothing in the game at all to coordinate guild resources, so everyone had to trade officers in turn to deliver the massive amounts of resources needed to construct our city. This is a messy and boring way of doing it, as it takes time for many players to find the officer and to give the resources needed. You can only trade with one player at the time, meaning that everyone has to hand it over to him in turns. After waiting about 30 minutes, our architect had finally gotten the materials he needed to start building!
Click here for a screenshot of us watching a building getting built! (Large image)
Note: The DirectX 10 in the game isn't working properly yet, so the viewing distance looks screwed. This is amplified with the visual bugs in this zone.
After 1 hour of waiting total, and spending everything everyone in the guild had on these buildings, we found out that they are bugged, and does NOTHING at all at this point. They are supposed to give everyone in the guild some permanent buffs, which are increased for each level we upgrade the buildings.
Overally, the classes, feats (character specialization), and spells/combos are very imbalanced. This needs some major overhaul, fast. Example: My nercomancer got a new rank of a spell at level 30, which increased the damage of the spell with less than 1%, and increased the casting cost by 120%. This hugely affects the PvP aspect of the game, and is the most serious issue this game has at the moment. The graphics looks very, very nice most of the time, except the one visually bugged gathering zone I went to.
Summary:
Pros:
Cons:
This game was worth its money by far, but it needs some very, very hard work from Funcom to reach its potential. This is a MMORPG I want to stick with if they manage to sort out the worst of the cons within a reasonable amount of time.
Edit: I have to add this. There are lots of nice tits in the game! Made my first female character now, and I can't bring myself to wear a chest item!
Click here to look at my character, Freeride!
The map on that picture also displays what I love about the questing. You always know where to go.
I loved the game when I started to play it at the beta at first, but after some more testing I thought that there was too many serious issues with the game for it to ever become good. I was pretty sure that Age of Conan would end up like another Hellgate: London. However, Funcom kicked it into a new gear after prior to the release, and did more to the game than I thought was possible. I decided to buy the game and try it, and so far I've played a necromancer up to level 30. My old WoW guild went into Age of Conan, so I've gotten to look at the resource gathering and guild town features as well.
The starting area of the game, Tortage, goes from level 1 to 20, and takes about 6-10 hours to complete. The story there is great, and every NPC has voice acting. You have tons of generic NPC quests in this area, and the quests are much better than any (MMO)RPG I've played so far. You get some good indicators on your map/minimap on where the quest objectives are, and NPCs related to quests shows up as well. You also get destiny quests to follow, which serves as the main storyline of the game. When you take the destiny quests you go into nightmode, which is a singleplayer mode, so you can follow the story without being bothered by other players. It's a very good setup, which allows you to mix your destiny quests and the normal quests as you wish. You can at any time switch between day and night. I enjoyed this so much that the game had already gotten its money worth when I completed it.
When you are done, you end up in the homeland of the race you picked, and from there you can travel freely around. They removed the voiceacting from the normal NPCs, as well as the night mode to follow your destiny quests after the starting area, but it doesn't really make an negative inpact on the game. Everything is done in the traditional multiplayer sense of a MMO from this point on. So far I've liked all the cities and all of the zones. They are large and beautiful, have good quests, and have interesting content.
The resource gathering is somewhat similar to WoW. There are resource nodes that you need to click to collect resources. The upside here is that the nodes are always visible, but they have a HP bar that gets drained when you collect from it. When it reaches around 10%, it is depleted, and you have to wait for it to recharge. You actually have gathering zones to go to as well, which has much more concentrated resources than you find in regular zones. This is a nice twist that takes some of the traditional resource farming snorefest much better. You can actually have all the professions in the game at once!
The social aspect of the game is unfortunately very flawed. The chat looks horrible, the chat commands is a pain in the ass to use, and the GUI for your friend/guild list is ugly and small at best. I can't really think of any positive to say about it at all. Players in your guild is even attackable at any time, which allows the standard annoying crowd in your guild to be even more annoying. This feels more like a bug than something that is intended though.
Yesterday, my guild expanded its city to add class buildings and tradeskill buildings. Overall it was a cool thing to be a part of, but it still needs major work before it becomes as awesome as the concept is. There is nothing in the game at all to coordinate guild resources, so everyone had to trade officers in turn to deliver the massive amounts of resources needed to construct our city. This is a messy and boring way of doing it, as it takes time for many players to find the officer and to give the resources needed. You can only trade with one player at the time, meaning that everyone has to hand it over to him in turns. After waiting about 30 minutes, our architect had finally gotten the materials he needed to start building!
Click here for a screenshot of us watching a building getting built! (Large image)
Note: The DirectX 10 in the game isn't working properly yet, so the viewing distance looks screwed. This is amplified with the visual bugs in this zone.
After 1 hour of waiting total, and spending everything everyone in the guild had on these buildings, we found out that they are bugged, and does NOTHING at all at this point. They are supposed to give everyone in the guild some permanent buffs, which are increased for each level we upgrade the buildings.
Overally, the classes, feats (character specialization), and spells/combos are very imbalanced. This needs some major overhaul, fast. Example: My nercomancer got a new rank of a spell at level 30, which increased the damage of the spell with less than 1%, and increased the casting cost by 120%. This hugely affects the PvP aspect of the game, and is the most serious issue this game has at the moment. The graphics looks very, very nice most of the time, except the one visually bugged gathering zone I went to.
Summary:
Pros:
- Good graphics.
- By far the best questing I've done in any game.
- Cool animations on spells/combos.
- Little bugs with the general questing and solo play.
- Profession system is very good.
- Virtually no issues with the servers at all.
Cons:
- Horrible game balance.
- Huge bugs in every major guild feature in the game.
- The UI isn't very good.
- Guild/chat/friend interface is awkward and ugly.
- Lacks dungeons and PvE content outside endgame.
- You run out of quests at level ~50!
- Everyone looks similar, very few skins ingame.
This game was worth its money by far, but it needs some very, very hard work from Funcom to reach its potential. This is a MMORPG I want to stick with if they manage to sort out the worst of the cons within a reasonable amount of time.
Edit: I have to add this. There are lots of nice tits in the game! Made my first female character now, and I can't bring myself to wear a chest item!
Click here to look at my character, Freeride!
The map on that picture also displays what I love about the questing. You always know where to go.
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