Age of Conan

I usually do not do this. But i know we all waited for new (decent) AAA MMO for year or more, and finally one is coming our way. And since i am sure most of you are very eager to play it , and think perhaps : What are all this fanboys and haters ranting about ? Or perhaps you are still unsure about buying the game , here is my oppinion - keep in mind ,  i am grumpy veteran gamer , and i do not spare even a smallest polygon speck from my sharp critic

So lets begin:

Note - I have tested AOC on most unlikely PC that is way under MINIMUM requirements. Soprisingly game works , and it is almost completely playable. In my review i will assume that the game performance problems come from my outdated hardware.

AOC = Great RPG

Makers of award winning Longest Journey , Funcom - bring you for the first time in MMO history , a game that can put to shame almost every single player rpg on PC. If AOC was single player RPG it could stand right there with KOTOR , Witcher , Oblivion , TES , Gothic , Baldurs Gate ... and not feel ashamed.

AOC is so rich with atmosphere , lore , story , npc-s , quests , awesome area design , awesome character design , stunning music , great weapon and armor design , great quests - and for first time in MMO history: DIALOGUE TREES (and yes , despite some wrong information - you need to chose carefully to get right quests)

So , if you love SP RPGs - there is no reason in world to skip AOC

-----

Lets continue ...

Graphic and animation:

There is no doubt AOC has great graphic. Animations are all motion captured , and way more advanced than anything present in MMO gaming so far.I find that sometimes graphic might be not that good , but wrong animation can truly ruin the game. Did you ever look in disgust at capes that sway like wood planks , or frozen long hair that does not move ? Not in AOC. Movement is fluid and natural , it is great fun even to look at it.

Although , there are bad mistakes like , missing animations ( jump in place or no resting animation) and some animations are weird , like female dagger fighting stance. And spell casting is rather unimpressive

Character creation is great - but not as detailed as we are led to believe. Females especially.

There was a game year ago that boasted vistas in which you can see so far in distance - a far away fortress on a far away mountain , and you can go and explore it. That game didnt deliver. But AOC does!

Level design is stunning. And instancing does help , so instead just saying you can theoretically see far in distance - in AOC you actually can - even on crap PC.

Zones are anything but badly designed. Actually who ever designed arhitecture and landscape should get special credit here !

And cities ? Amazing , huge , detailed ... especially Aquilonian capital.

----------------

Quests

As mentioned above , AOC features great singleplayer rpg resemblance - this continues even after lvl 20 (tested) how far ... i can not say. But every NPC has dialogue tree , and something smart to say.

Let just say that AOC features same quality of quests like LOTRO , and this is a compliment if i ever seen one

--------------

Gameplay PVE

Revolutionary combat system is everything but revolutionary. In fact it is cumbersome , and pretty much pointless. But it does brings a slight more involvment than your regular press icon combat (although it is basically the same thing)

Classes , play pretty much similar (for their type) and i kept feeling there is a missing Oomph! skill. A true recognisible skill for certain class. Like for example EQ2 coercer charming MOB , WOW druid shifting forms , AO fixer grid jumping , LOTRO burglar conjuction starting ...etc. AOC classes do damage or heal...thats about what they do.

MOB is among stupid AI i seen in MMOs. It is annoying to see a game that received such attention on graphic and quests , have sub par MOB - that gets stuck in foliage , sometimes walk instead running , and basically knows to do one trick only.

FUN FACTOR - sadly i must admit , i didnt feel very addicted ...why , i can not put my finger on it ...

-------------------

Instances , invisible walls , loading times

Well , we all know there are instances in AOC, and lots , lots of zoning. Is this bad ? Depends ...

If you (like me) have 10 minutes loading times average , every time you open a door. I would not blame you for burning the game dvd in your trash bin. Hopefully , good PC's and upcomming patches will fix this problem.

Invisible walls ?! What ?!?!

Some zones have many natural obstacles , but there are no walls. Actually you can climb steep surfaces by jumping , even more sucesfull than in any other MMO.

BUT , i have another fear....

Something that was not mentioned before (perhaps nobody thought about it)

Most zones are quite smallish. And i was looking at them map - there is really not that many areas in game!!!

In size AOC is even smaller than LOTRO at the day it was released....actually much smaller.

--------------------

PVP , servers , PVP gameplay , cities , borderland keeps

AOC is long boasted as ultimate PVP game. In my oppinion , this is nonsence.
This topic would be to long for me to write about it. And i do not want to get into discussion about this.

I can only state, my suspicion that AOC will not succed as PVP game , but suprisingly quite countrary as PVE game. But this can be changed , if Funcom - invests some thought and rebalance and redisign PVP.

------------------------------

So what is my verdict ?

As i suspected for looong time now. AOC is not perfect.
It does some things awesomly , some things bad - and some horribly wrong.

But on the end I was disarmed by its charms. It really made me feel like i am character in CONAN's world of Hyboria. Something no MMO had managed before.

If your PC can run it (get the trial)

This is must PLAY !

Great Post i could not agree more :)

  sounds 'bout right.

The only thing I disagree with when it comes to your review is with load times and overall performance... I can definitely tell that is your biggest issue with this game, almost every post by you includes something about them (even you have to admit that).

You said yourself in the very beginning of your review that your computer was well below the recommended... the fact that your computer can even run is astounding, supposedly, so why compare your comp's performance to others when most people who will be playing this are going to have well above your specs? And yes, I realize that people are having issues even with high-end machines when it comes to these things, but those numbers are dwindling quickly and are getting resolved.

The PvP servers are doomed to be deserted, that's just inherent to the FFA ruleset.

The misleadingly labeled PvE servers will likely end up like the DaoC servers, just with good PvE and a guild/guild alliance focus rather than the faction approach.

I didn't really bother with the size of the gameworld that much. From the little I saw, it seems to be comparable to the initial EQ2 in zone size as well as world size.

Excellent review that matches my feelings about the game very well.

Great job putting it into words.

I'd only add one nit, and thats the quests.  While the quests have the appearance of a game like an RPG I didn't really see any impact of the decision trees, basically hit 1 and bunch of times and get the quest.  I also didn't see a lot of creativity in the actual quests.  All the ones I did were pretty standard fare.  Go here talk to so in so.  Deliver this to so in so.  harvest X and bring them to me.  Kill n mobs, or kill mobs and get some X.

I didn't see quests that had the same level of creativity and diversity as in either wow or eq2.   For that matter no game to date comes close to eq2 for quests.

I was also disapointed that the lvl 20+ area's didn't have any voice overs.

Good review, it supports my verdict of still trying this AFTER release.

Heck, most of the fanboys had you down as a troll. Not anymore