Age of Conan

I'm going to attempt to give my own breakdown of this game, from the perspective of a level 73 player. The purpose of this is to explain my problems with this game, and what can be done to fix it.

I'm a level 73 Tempest of Set on the Deathwhisper server. I was greatly enjoying this game in the beginning stages. I found the quests to be interesting, and I liked the dialogue, the scenery, and the lore. My class wasn't unique from other MMO's, but it was interesting enough to satisfy me.

As I played this game, I hadn't ever come across any game-breaking bugs, just tons of little ones. Little things, like my weapon slowly floating away into outer space, or my characters legs disappearing, or being unable to apprentice a friend for no explainable reason.

Then came Field of the Dead (pre-patch), which legitimately made me ponder uninstalling the game. Still, I struggled through the multiple crashes before a player informed me to just turn off my audio, because that caused the game to crash. "Fine", I thought, "A petty inconvenience, but I'll manage". It was around this time I learned of the totem exploit, and how many guilds on my server were abusing the apprentice + mass totem spam technique to hit 80 very rapidly. I noticed a huge influx of 80's on the server, and while disheartened, I didn't mind. I figured Funcom would begin addressing the issue anyway.

From there, I went to Eigliophan. When I asked a good place to go, I was sent to the Cannibal Caves, where I grinded out several levels. Yes, running the same path for what was likely 12 hours was the only way to level, as many guilds on my server, notably Sadistic and the Hordes of Goonheim, had locked down the "good" leveling areas.

Onwards to Thunder river, where I noticed a significant decrease in the lack of available quests. After around my first 2 levels there, I was forced to begin the grind. Camps were extraordinarily limited, and as with Eigliophian, were highly over-camped and competitve, at all hours of the day.

So I solo'd. I solo'd several levels, and from there went to Aztel's approach. Within my first 20 minutes in Aztel, OOC was flooded with people spamming about the Gong quest, which I was estimate at last 200 people took advantage of on my server for a quick exploitable 5-8 levels. Meanwhile, I was forced to solo, as I'm in a smaller guild. You can't get certain areas, as patrols of level 80's guard the spawn points, raping anyone who dares enter their guild's grinding area. So again, I was forced to resort to soloing. It's much slower, but I needed to at least feel as though I was progressing.

But nay, it would not be the case. For guilds were even locking up the solo areas so that they could apprentice grind lower level members of their guild.

Due to a lack of options to level, I have been stuck at this level now or 2 full days, making minimal progress before getting discouraged. There aren't any quests available that I haven't done. The grind areas are so overly competitive that exp isn't gained, rather, you spend more time defending your camp than you do using it. Multiple instances don't help, as there are so few areas for groups to exp in, that they are always, always full.

And so I sit here today, and ponder why I'm playing this game.

At 73, you legitimately need to kill around 500-700 mobs to level. I don't know how many of you sympathize or care, but after killing my 500th mammoth, I just stopped caring about the game. There's no immersion there; rather a bland, repetitive, forced route that I have to endure because of areas being over-saturated by played.

But perhaps I just overdid it. So I'm going to take a week off. Maybe I burned out, maybe I over-grinded, maybe I didn't stop and sniff the roses. It could be my class, the effect of encountering the same, irritating little bugs over and over and over, or just me. Whatever the problem is, somewhere between 56-73, the game stopped being fun, and so much so that I can't even rightly feel like logging into the game.

What needs to change

- More leveling areas. Stop shuffling the player through content, give us options on where to level.

- Better quest rewards. 50k exp when you need almost 2 million is just not satisfactory.

- Better item drops. I don't mind grinding, when I'm getting something worthwhile. After my 4th Big Cudgel, I stop caring about checking chests

- Make PvP worthwhile. Give me some reason, ANY REASON, to PvP. At least then, competing for camps has a purpose, instead of just monotony.

- Fix the apprenticeship system to prevent abuse. Scale back exp appropriate for the level to PREVENT oversaturation of an area by a guild power-leveling level 20's in  level 60+ zone

- Test patches before they're run. The re-instancing bugs = infuriating.

- Leave up a set number of instances at all times of the day, not just when it's crowded.

- More group-friendly individual instances

- More content

Let me know if you agree or disagree with me here.

Play on a PvE server.

It has PvP too just not the stupid crap FFA is atm.

I have to say I agree with you. The game is shallow at all levels. When first reading about it I was so excited. I thought crafting would mean something and it doesnt. I thought the pve would be as engaging as the pvp and they do not. And I thought pvp would have a purpose and it doesnt. I am going back to EQ2 for now. Maybe War will offer more but hopefully I get into open beta for it. AoC is a pointless hack and slash with little to no purpose other than to just be there. No social aspects at all or point to interact really. The game is horrendous on almost every level other than tortage which was well done and graphics also well done.

Apprentice or mentoring type systems as they are called in other games, suck. They are always exploitable.

Clearly it is too easy to level in AoC considering how many high level characters there are reported to be, and the exploits don't help. The fact that multiple exploits exist is a sign of poor testing and QA on Funcom's part. The only way for Funcom to correct this issue is to close the exploit and delevel the characters that benefited from it. If they don't delevel these characters then the game is tainted and ruined on those servers.

While I can't relate to AoC, I know exactly how you feel. During my days of EQ I'd be sitting there lfg for literally hours. It doesn't take too many days like that to just quit in frustration, because you can't gain one ounce of progress.

Some people blame the players, but I think its rather the poor foresight of the devs to foresee these types of problems. People aren't going to pay if they can't play.

To the OP:

I applaud you for actually sticking with this game that long. 

I have had a long standing group of gaming friends that I play with, and I made it to level 50 trying to enjoy the game with them.  That is as far as I could make it.  With stats being meaningless, broken skills, the "content shock" of going from very well thought out progression with alot of great quests, dialogue and zones to explore, to almost nothing...I just knew it would get worse and I could not  put myself through it.  I might check back with this game in a 6months to a year, but by that time, I am sure another... better game will have grabbed my attention.

I think this game has really hurt this genre, as more and more companies will see that you can half ass the content after midlevel and still get awesome reviews and make huge money.

I really think you oversaturated yourself in the game.

It is a mistake powerlevel in a fresh released game, this may work in already expanded games as Everquest2 or Lineage2, but not in new ones.

Take a break and slowdown, you may enjoy it again.

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Originally posted by Umbral

 

 

I really think you oversaturated yourself in the game.

It is a mistake powerlevel in a fresh released game, this may work in already expanded games as Everquest2 or Lineage2, but not in new ones.

Take a break and slowdown, you may enjoy it again.

 

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What people might not understand about this game is how fast you level.  Especially with all the quests and content you have at the lower levels. 1-40 can be achieved in a few days.  Probably like 10x faster than WoW or EQ2, (just guesstimating)

Originally posted by ghettobooste

Originally posted by Umbral

 

 

I really think you oversaturated yourself in the game.

It is a mistake powerlevel in a fresh released game, this may work in already expanded games as Everquest2 or Lineage2, but not in new ones.

Take a break and slowdown, you may enjoy it again.

 

...

What people might not understand about this game is how fast you level.  Especially with all the quests and content you have at the lower levels. 1-40 can be achieved in a few days.  Probably like 10x faster than WoW or EQ2, (just guesstimating)

Well, I played EQ2 since the release and AoC for a while in closed beta/release, and the leveling time is very similar, you could go from the island to the end game in EQ2 before the expansions ( even after EoF ) pretty fast too, as you can in almost all western games.

But as I said , powerleveling may work in expanded MMOs but not in fresh releases.

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