Age of Conan

No, I won't call this a review, simply because it isn't. Having played one day and having reached Level 18 hardly enables me to write a review, so I'll just mention a few things to all of you, now that I am in one of the brief "no-AoC" and "no University" phases.

First things first. I have played a female Aquilonian Dark Templar up to Level 18 now and I am playing on the Cimmeria Server. One of the things that FunCom DID fail to do, was actually -LABEL- the PvP RP server in the server select window. I'm certain they will change that eventually, but it was very confusing at first.

Anyway, on to the juicy bits.

1. Technical / Stability / Lag

One of the most talked about subjects of Age of Conan is it's (in)ability to run smoothly on Systems where it should. Well, I cannot speak much to that, since I myself have a System that -should- and -does- run Age of Conan beautifully. For reference, I've been using:

- C2D E6600, 2.4GHz

- Gainward Bliss GeForce 8800GTGS 1GB

- 4GB Kingston DDR2-800 Memory

- Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit

Anyway, my technical issues in the EA Client are close to Zero. The only bug I have come accross so far was at one point, when my Sound-System decided to just screech at me like crazy until I restarted the game. That happened once in overall 8 hours Playtime on the first day though, so I would not call that gamebreaking, even if it was highly annoying (for my ears!) at the time. Apart from that, the game ran smooth as butter for the entire time I played this first day. The Pings ranged from 100ms to 200ms, which is acceptable, considering I am playing on US Servers from Europe (the things you do for your GF ^^).

FPS ranged from 20 in Tortage when the flood of players was worst to 40 and higher in Instances and when I was working by myself or just with my GF's character. This was with 1600x1200, Everything on High, DX10 albeit SM 3.0, Bloom Enabled, 16xAA (1600x1200 because my 10 year old Monitor does not support more. XD). From what I gathered in the chat, there are still some problems (albeit less and less) with other systems, but since this is a First Impression from my side, I cannot say anything negative towards the game in that respect. Particularly knowing what huge leaps the game took in the last few weeks, days even before EA, I have to give FunCom props for this.

2. Gameplay

It seems to be a common belief that AoC promised to reinvent the wheel with their Combat- and Gameplay-Mechanics. I myself never saw it that way. But I did see -EVOlution- to the current things out in the market. The Directional Attack system forces you, for one, to stay with the fight and to make decisions based on the enemy, but it does not go into the full twitch-based combat such as Oblivion or such as DF promises. For me, that is a good thing and a step in the right direction. I enjoy the system. After a while, you get used to not just clicking buttons, but to actually follow-up with attacks and to choose your skills according to how your enemy is defending himself at the time.

PvP is another thing I have not been able to test extensively, for surprisingly, I was not ganked more than once the entire time I played. Well, twice, though the second was only a try and fell short when we decimated him for trying.

However the little I got to play it, it seems to be fun and more or less along the line and up to par with the rest of the combat, if a little more tricky since you can't see the shields of enemy players and thus have to be a bit more in the dark about where to hit them.

3. Quests/World

I put these two into one category because for me they are closely linked. The world itself and the Quests presented in it create an atmosphere for me (or fail to in some games). Anyway, the First part, Level 1-20 is, Quest-wise, brilliant. The Destiny-Quest gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling, but then again, I'm a sucker for such storylines. Otherwise, the Quests in Daytime Tortage are basically standrad, if fitted into the Conan-world nicely, but nothing you haven't seen before. The quests are well told, which makes this OK.

The world is, as many are never tiring of pointing out, Zoned, particularly in the first 20 levels. You get quite a few Loading-Screens when you're making your way through Tortage. This is...not a problem for me, but I can see how some people might be annoyed. In my case, the longest wait-time on a loading screen was 10 seconds and that was when loading into the game for the first time. Most of the zones inside Tortage load within a second or less, so it's basically more a click, wait briefly, and just continue on.

The negative thing was obviously that the starting area was totally overloaded. And even with Zoning, the Daytime-quests were sometimes hard to complete, simply because others were farming/killing the same mobs as you or waiting for the same boss to spawn. As time passes, I am guessing this will ease up a little, though I will be glad to be out of Tortage once full retail hits.

4. Community

Well, it is hard to tell about a community after only so much time, but what I've seen so far has given me reason to be overally positive. For one, I did not see one topless female running around or dancing in the streets (BLASPHEMY!), the chat was -NOT- spammed closed with Nipples and such things, but rather with questions about gameplay, the unavoidable E-Peen contest between Computer Systems/FPS, and, starting a bit later, with reports on Corpse-Campers or elimination thereof. Otherwise, it seemed like a pretty normal OOC Chat to me. As the hour grew later, I noticed a steady decline in the OOC Chat, not in quality but in quantity. I am guessing this was either because of the late hour, -OR- because many people had, by then, managed to find their guilds and have switched to Guild-Chat instead.

Names were varied and quite a few were not really good for immersion. It remains to be seen how FC will enforce their Server policies. I am sure there has been plenty of reporting going on already for naming violations, so we will have to see that in the coming days.

5. Summary

I would like to note again, that this is a personal report of my -own- first impressions. These are not supposed to give an accurate review on the game itself and on the possible and likely problems it still has, but simply to tell you how I experienced the world of Hyboria for the first 8 hours. That being said, I had a blast. It was fun to play, it was back to the time when I played and played and suddenly realized 5 hours had gone by.

I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of polish FC managed to get into the game within the past few weeks alone, and that in itself makes me look forward with optimism. Sure, there are still issues, when will there not be any? Smaller bugs I encountered include vanishing of hair for a brief moment when diving under the water, Occasional sliding with the loot-animation after picking something up (easily remedied), a few AI oddities, so far only one Quest-bug, which was instantly fixed by a GM after petitioning it with a wait time of maybe 2 minutes or so total.

While yes, these bugs are there, they are, at least to me, -NOT- gamebreaking and I was able to enjoy the night of AoC completely and fully.

I wish all of you, who join me in Hyboria at some point, or who already are fighting alongside, or against me, the best of fun, sharp blades and trusted allies for the days, weeks and months to come!

See ya there!

<Mod edit>

I got to level 13 and I'm having a blast with the game. That's what its all about...surprise that i could get consistent 30 with my rig.

Originally posted by Deadm0ney4u

BS Funcom has lied to half of its player base and not delievered what they promised Funcom=clowns

Thanks in advance.

Originally posted by Deadm0ney4u

BS Funcom has lied to half of its player base and not delievered what they promised Funcom=clowns

Will the person who registered on MMORPG yesterday and only made three posts so far please leave the room. Thank you.

I'm sad when I see so many people with high end rigs giving reviews. It was a solid 'review' in a sense, but I honestly want to hear a review from a low end system since that's what I'll be running on, if I'm running it at all.

Originally posted by Deadm0ney4u

BS Funcom has lied to half of its player base and not delievered what they promised Funcom=clowns

Go and play with your Dolly!!!.  Unless you have something constructive to say relevant to the thread.

Having a great time, myself. Its gone very smoothly

been playing alittel and i find this game very innovative

also the story questing was a blast!

The melee combat system seems impresive and im positive about this game, altrough its still prety buggy and has now maintenance at 8 pm here in europe so it can forget about the smoothes mmo lanch ever, but still if things work out well , i think funcom will roll high eyes, also becouse a lot of people have been waiting for a realy good pvp mmo, but only time will tell.