Age of Conan

I started AoC tonight with mixed feelings.  Half of me wanted this game to be superb, polished and stable.  The other half had doubts with Funcom's track record, the OB fiasco and of course the late start of the EA.  Before going further this is my system:

Intel core 2 quad QX6700 Extreme

Asus Striker II Formula 780i Motherboard

4GB DDR2 800Mhz

2 x XFX GeForce 8800 GTX in SLi

Vista 64 Ultimate

As you can see it's a decently high-end system so all the graphics settings in the game were shoved up to maximum, and the graphics truly are superb.  Unfortunately they are also the games best feature.  I have had no slow-downs, stuttering or anything like that, in fact the game runs very smoothly but on this system I didn't expect anything less.  I would think that mid-range PC's will be able to run AoC on medium settings without too much drama which I will admit is plesently surprising and all credit to Funcom for achieving this.

Character creation is above par for MMO's and I can imagine some people spending quite awhile tweaking their toons look, although a zoom feature to gain a close-up of the character's face would have been helpful.  Even without this though the creation process is better than most MMO's on the market today.  I am not one for spending hours on this however so my character was ready to go in a couple of minutes.

A short cinematic later and I was lying on the beach and was approached by the 1st NPC and recieved the 1st quest.  Ok, I decided on a Stygian Demonologist and anyone that has read REH's Conan stories knows that this is one evil SoB and this is where the game hit's it's 1st small hitch, in that the storyline quests set you up as a good guy working for the good of the kingdom and against the ambitions of Thoth Amon and his thralls.  Being the class and race that I was it would have been a lot better to have had the opposite option and the ability to become Thoth's number one fan but no.  Instead I end up working missions for some drunkard mage in favour of the rebellion.  Part of this is to worm myself into the favour of a powefrul Stygian sorceress as a spy while gaining the added benefit of her knowledge.  Again, as a demonologist this should have been screw the goody goody rebels and teach me everything you know please mistress.  I have only taken the character to level 10 so far but the storyline really doesn't fit upto this point.  The quests do however appear to have been carefully designed to avoid level gaps ( not being able to continue the story due to being too low lvl ) with the only break so far being between lvl's 9 & 10 when I had to go out and kill a few things to level up before I could go on.  This only took about 20 minutes however so no hardship there.

This early part of the game is very linear and heavily instanced and I'm sorry to say that it felt like a chore being led by the hand from one quest to the next with no reason to ever deviate from the beaten path.  Even solo each step is easy to the point of being ridiculous and I got the impression of a tutorial that just didn't know when to end.  Inside the various instances there are fights that will find you outnumbered and you will die on occasion but there is no death penalty, so even for a squishy it's a matter of kill one, die, respawn at the start, run back, kill one, rinse and repeat.  All very tedious.

The much hyped combat system is, in my opinion, a joke.  There is nothing fast paced or revolutionary about it and I think that by level 80 even the most ardent fanboi will be bored to tears with it, although the animations are well done but again that just comes back down to graphics. 

Server stability:  We all remember the database lag that WoW suffered with during OB and on into release, well, AoC suffers from something similar.  All appears fine as you can run around and chat with fellow players but then when you talk to an NPC ( or try to ) or cast a spell etc. nothing happens, the server just doesn't respond to the request and this is one of the same problems that existed during the OB and although it doesn't happen as often now the latency is still there.  This of course will be fixed very quickly I would think but along with login problems etc. it all adds up to a less than perfect game experience.

Funcom reckon that they need to have retained 250k subscribers by the end of the games 1st three months of operation and I honestly don't see that happening, the game, at least in the early levels just isn't good enough.  I will continue to play though to get past lvl 20 and away from Tortage in the hope that the game beyond is a lot better, which of course is a double edged sword.  If the game is a lot better after lvl 20 then FC have seriously messed up the early experience and 1st impressions are vitally important.  If on the other hand the game is much the same after lvl 20 then I think only the most rabid of Conan fans will still be playing 6 months from now.  Level 1 -10 rating   4/10 and I added an extra point because the graphics are so good.  Sorry Funcom but in my opinion at least gameplay is way more important than graphics.

Originally posted by eric1000

I started AoC tonight with mixed feelings.  Half of me wanted this game to be superb, polished and stable.  The other half had doubts with Funcom's track record, the OB fiasco and of course the late start of the EA.  Before going further this is my system:

 

Intel core 2 quad QX6700 Extreme

Asus Striker II Formula 780i Motherboard

4GB DDR2 800Mhz

2 x XFX GeForce 8800 GTX in SLi

Vista 64 Ultimate

 

As you can see it's a decently high-end system so all the graphics settings in the game were shoved up to maximum, and the graphics truly are superb.  Unfortunately they are also the games best feature.  I have had no slow-downs, stuttering or anything like that, in fact the game runs very smoothly but on this system I didn't expect anything less.  I would think that mid-range PC's will be able to run AoC on medium settings without too much drama which I will admit is plesently surprising and all credit to Funcom for achieving this.

 

Character creation is above par for MMO's and I can imagine some people spending quite awhile tweaking their toons look, although a zoom feature to gain a close-up of the character's face would have been helpful.  Even without this though the creation process is better than most MMO's on the market today.  I am not one for spending hours on this however so my character was ready to go in a couple of minutes.

 

A short cinematic later and I was lying on the beach and was approached by the 1st NPC and recieved the 1st quest.  Ok, I decided on a Stygian Demonologist and anyone that has read REH's Conan stories knows that this is one evil SoB and this is where the game hit's it's 1st small hitch, in that the storyline quests set you up as a good guy working for the good of the kingdom and against the ambitions of Thoth Amon and his thralls.  Being the class and race that I was it would have been a lot better to have had the opposite option and the ability to become Thoth's number one fan but no.  Instead I end up working missions for some drunkard mage in favour of the rebellion.  Part of this is to worm myself into the favour of a powefrul Stygian sorceress as a spy while gaining the added benefit of her knowledge.  Again, as a demonologist this should have been screw the goody goody rebels and teach me everything you know please mistress.  I have only taken the character to level 10 so far but the storyline really doesn't fit upto this point.  The quests do however appear to have been carefully designed to avoid level gaps ( not being able to continue the story due to being too low lvl ) with the only break so far being between lvl's 9 & 10 when I had to go out and kill a few things to level up before I could go on.  This only took about 20 minutes however so no hardship there.

 

This early part of the game is very linear and heavily instanced and I'm sorry to say that it felt like a chore being led by the hand from one quest to the next with no reason to ever deviate from the beaten path.  Even solo each step is easy to the point of being ridiculous and I got the impression of a tutorial that just didn't know when to end.  Inside the various instances there are fights that will find you outnumbered and you will die on occasion but there is no death penalty, so even for a squishy it's a matter of kill one, die, respawn at the start, run back, kill one, rinse and repeat.  All very tedious.

 

The much hyped combat system is, in my opinion, a joke.  There is nothing fast paced or revolutionary about it and I think that by level 80 even the most ardent fanboi will be bored to tears with it, although the animations are well done but again that just comes back down to graphics. 

 

Server stability:  We all remember the database lag that WoW suffered with during OB and on into release, well, AoC suffers from something similar.  All appears fine as you can run around and chat with fellow players but then when you talk to an NPC ( or try to ) or cast a spell etc. nothing happens, the server just doesn't respond to the request and this is one of the same problems that existed during the OB and although it doesn't happen as often now the latency is still there.  This of course will be fixed very quickly I would think but along with login problems etc. it all adds up to a less than perfect game experience.

 

Funcom reckon that they need to have retained 250k subscribers by the end of the games 1st three months of operation and I honestly don't see that happening, the game, at least in the early levels just isn't good enough.  I will continue to play though to get past lvl 20 and away from Tortage in the hope that the game beyond is a lot better, which of course is a double edged sword.  If the game is a lot better after lvl 20 then FC have seriously messed up the early experience and 1st impressions are vitally important.  If on the other hand the game is much the same after lvl 20 then I think only the most rabid of Conan fans will still be playing 6 months from now.  Level 1 -10 rating   4/10 and I added an extra point because the graphics are so good.  Sorry Funcom but in my opinion at least gameplay is way more important than graphics.

 

 

Theres a game called WoW, has the best intuitive combat system ever from what Ive heard...

Very nice review...I am in the process of upgrading my PC since it is due for an upgrade now. I think I will still give AoC in a month or so!

Thanks for the great review!

So basically you reviewed the tutorial, not even that only HALF the tutorial. 1-20 takes no time at all and is used as a tutorial. Its the same as WoW's starting area's except you can clear it in under and hour if you wanted to.

And im pretty sure they will keep 250k Subs. Hell there are 100-200k people alone just playing early access, apprently 600k+ Pre-ordered, so a good guess for subs at the end of the month would be 500k-1m.

why would you write a review on the tutorial?

Zones are much more open and much much larger post 20... which has been discussed alot already on these boards. To each their own, but theres a reason the early levels are linear, i do wish the "actual" game started prior to lvl 20, but its so refreshing... hopefully they have some good end game content to keep us interested, leveling is quick.

Well if WoW can attract 10 million subs with an even less exciting first 20 levels.. then I'm sure AoC will be just fine.

Nice review, opinions are opinions.  I didn't experience the server lag you were talking about.  I did get disconnected one time during the last 8 or so hours though.  That's something you come to expect on occasion from all online games.  I think the combat system will grow on people,  Sure, I wish there were more starting areas, no instancing and alternate storylines.. but I certainly wouldn't give this game a 4 out of 10.

I've played 16 levels so far.. I'd give it an incomplete score.. but if I had to score it for the first 16, I'd give it a 8/10.  Extremely wel thought out quests, very little grinding, great graphics, server stability, no crashes and huge updates, no glaring glitches or bugs of any kind.  Pretty smooth pre-launch honestly.  A lot better than I expected.

Thanks, lots. Needed some more insight on the beginning levels.