Age of Conan

We all know that Funcom paid a lot money for a good review from various site, such as IGN, Gamespot etc. All cover up as advertising partners of cause. However here is a review from a site there don't was on Funcom payroll.

Verdict: Major Disappointment
In conclusion, Age of Conan has been the biggest disappointment of the year so far. Funcom knowingly hyped up the interest, tightly controlled any information from the closed beta and then went ahead and released a half-complete game, with many of the hyped features either missing or woefully incomplete. Poor customer support together with silly design and implementation errors make things only worse. Sure, they polished up the newbie zone pretty well, and many rookie reviewers happily took the bait and dished out big scores. Funcom must be commended for successful "bait and switch" as the early levels do not reflect what awaits in the later stages of the game.

Now if you fancy MMOs as playgrounds where half the fun is to freely gank people and find new ways to exploit the game, Age of Conan is perfect for that - in its short lifespan there has already been duping exploits, powerleveling loopholes and PvP exploits, and I'm sure there are plenty more for the evil gamers to find. For us less evil gamers, if you decided to jump in, you need inhuman amounts of patience and hope to go with the game box, as what you are getting is effectively a half-finished beta with a subscription fee. There is some potential for sure, but based on historical evidence with Anarchy Online, personally I'm not holding my breath. Simple bugs and missing things will most likely get fixed as the time goes by, but there are several flaws that run so deep that they are almost impossible to correct at this point.

The impressive sales figures of Age of Conan demonstrate the massive demand for a new top tier MMO. Current ones just can't push out new content rapidly enough to keep the players happy, so there is room for new contenders. It's a shame that those players who took the early positive comments based on early parts of the game will most likely end up disappointed - and Funcom will see the greatest monthly percentage drop in MMO subscriber numbers since… well, the launch of Anarchy Online, most likely.

Age of Conan isn't the worst attempt to compete with WoW in the recent years - that honor goes to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - but still it's a failed attempt in many ways. It's not different enough to avoid unflattering direct comparisons, and when you scrape off the pretty visuals and put the actual meat of the gameplay next to Blizzard's juggernaut, Age of Conan falls on its face. In fact, it doesn't compare very favorably even when you size it against the actual gameplay offered by old timers like Dark Age of Camelot or Everquest 2. Shiny visuals and boobies are not enough to cover up the unfinished and poorly designed gameplay. Next contender, please.

Read the full story here

Orignal Link:  http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/19142_age_of_conan_hyborian_adventures/

Originally posted by Battlekruse

 

We all know that Funcom paid a lot money for a good review from various site, such as IGN, Gamespot etc. All cover up as advertising partners of cause. However here is a review from a site there don't was on Funcom payroll.

Verdict: Major Disappointment
In conclusion, Age of Conan has been the biggest disappointment of the year so far. Funcom knowingly hyped up the interest, tightly controlled any information from the closed beta and then went ahead and released a half-complete game, with many of the hyped features either missing or woefully incomplete. Poor customer support together with silly design and implementation errors make things only worse. Sure, they polished up the newbie zone pretty well, and many rookie reviewers happily took the bait and dished out big scores. Funcom must be commended for successful "bait and switch" as the early levels do not reflect what awaits in the later stages of the game.

Now if you fancy MMOs as playgrounds where half the fun is to freely gank people and find new ways to exploit the game, Age of Conan is perfect for that - in its short lifespan there has already been duping exploits, powerleveling loopholes and PvP exploits, and I'm sure there are plenty more for the evil gamers to find. For us less evil gamers, if you decided to jump in, you need inhuman amounts of patience and hope to go with the game box, as what you are getting is effectively a half-finished beta with a subscription fee. There is some potential for sure, but based on historical evidence with Anarchy Online, personally I'm not holding my breath. Simple bugs and missing things will most likely get fixed as the time goes by, but there are several flaws that run so deep that they are almost impossible to correct at this point.

The impressive sales figures of Age of Conan demonstrate the massive demand for a new top tier MMO. Current ones just can't push out new content rapidly enough to keep the players happy, so there is room for new contenders. It's a shame that those players who took the early positive comments based on early parts of the game will most likely end up disappointed - and Funcom will see the greatest monthly percentage drop in MMO subscriber numbers since… well, the launch of Anarchy Online, most likely.

Age of Conan isn't the worst attempt to compete with WoW in the recent years - that honor goes to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - but still it's a failed attempt in many ways. It's not different enough to avoid unflattering direct comparisons, and when you scrape off the pretty visuals and put the actual meat of the gameplay next to Blizzard's juggernaut, Age of Conan falls on its face. In fact, it doesn't compare very favorably even when you size it against the actual gameplay offered by old timers like Dark Age of Camelot or Everquest 2. Shiny visuals and boobies are not enough to cover up the unfinished and poorly designed gameplay. Next contender, please.

Read the full story here

Orignal Link:  http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/19142_age_of_conan_hyborian_adventures/

I had that feeling, too, after I got off of Tortage.  I'm not done with the game just yet. I'll see where it leads me for a couple of months, but as soon as i got to my home city and talked to the first quest giver I though "well that must be bugged she didn't say anything!" But then next quest giver and the next one did the same and i began to feel a bit shafted.

What a bullshit review. But people can spew any crap they want on a web page.

I dont think all reviews from other sites is bad.  And to assume they are on Funcoms payroll is a gross thought unless you have some evidence to back that up imho.  Did FC screw up the launch? Sure there were alot of problems with it.  Getting passed the bugs, the game is alot of fun.  I think everyone agrees that the game couldve used alot more polish in it.  I personally like the game, it is playable the way it is now, some things need attention and FC seems to be patching things quickly (which is good considering).  But I have to respectfully disagree that because other sites praised it as a good game, that it means they are automatically on FC's payroll.  IGN gave it a 7.8 which I agree with.  The game is alot of fun, except for the bug side which will get fixed.  Considering these were all launch reviews the game actually did pretty well.  I'd say the best review was IGN's , alot of people had different experiances with FC, but from my experiance it wasn't bad at all.

that review sounds more like some of the statements made here... verbatum, probably a guy with an ATI vid card and is thinkin 'me first, me first' screw nvidia.

First 20 lvls is a blast, next 10 were fun as well.  Unfortunately about that point the game's flaws just started to show through for me.  I know its launch but its not just small things I began to notice, its the design of the title that's killing it for me.

Me?  I don't blame Funcom for putting its best foot forward as far as what they did show to us "open beta" testers, actually probably what any company would do in the same situation.  However the problem is the quality does drop off the higher you seem to go in the game.

For me I could have over-looked quite a bit but combine the various broken mechanics with limited paths through areas and a community of juvenile gankers and you have a recipe for me to hit the cancel button.

Originally posted by Battlekruse

 

We all know that Funcom paid a lot money for a good review from various site, such as IGN, Gamespot etc. All cover up as advertising partners of cause. However here is a review from a site there don't was on Funcom payroll.

Verdict: Major Disappointment
In conclusion, Age of Conan has been the biggest disappointment of the year so far. Funcom knowingly hyped up the interest, tightly controlled any information from the closed beta and then went ahead and released a half-complete game, with many of the hyped features either missing or woefully incomplete. Poor customer support together with silly design and implementation errors make things only worse. Sure, they polished up the newbie zone pretty well, and many rookie reviewers happily took the bait and dished out big scores. Funcom must be commended for successful "bait and switch" as the early levels do not reflect what awaits in the later stages of the game.

Now if you fancy MMOs as playgrounds where half the fun is to freely gank people and find new ways to exploit the game, Age of Conan is perfect for that - in its short lifespan there has already been duping exploits, powerleveling loopholes and PvP exploits, and I'm sure there are plenty more for the evil gamers to find. For us less evil gamers, if you decided to jump in, you need inhuman amounts of patience and hope to go with the game box, as what you are getting is effectively a half-finished beta with a subscription fee. There is some potential for sure, but based on historical evidence with Anarchy Online, personally I'm not holding my breath. Simple bugs and missing things will most likely get fixed as the time goes by, but there are several flaws that run so deep that they are almost impossible to correct at this point.

The impressive sales figures of Age of Conan demonstrate the massive demand for a new top tier MMO. Current ones just can't push out new content rapidly enough to keep the players happy, so there is room for new contenders. It's a shame that those players who took the early positive comments based on early parts of the game will most likely end up disappointed - and Funcom will see the greatest monthly percentage drop in MMO subscriber numbers since… well, the launch of Anarchy Online, most likely.

Age of Conan isn't the worst attempt to compete with WoW in the recent years - that honor goes to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - but still it's a failed attempt in many ways. It's not different enough to avoid unflattering direct comparisons, and when you scrape off the pretty visuals and put the actual meat of the gameplay next to Blizzard's juggernaut, Age of Conan falls on its face. In fact, it doesn't compare very favorably even when you size it against the actual gameplay offered by old timers like Dark Age of Camelot or Everquest 2. Shiny visuals and boobies are not enough to cover up the unfinished and poorly designed gameplay. Next contender, please.

Read the full story here

Orignal Link:  http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/19142_age_of_conan_hyborian_adventures/

This is such a bullshit review.  I could have at least took his point of view if not for the VG statement.  VG never tried to compete with wow, it was stated many times during development that it was going to cater to a crowd of 250k hardcore players.  VG fell on its face not because it tried to compete but because of piss poor management.  Today its a great game.

I understand AoC has its flaws but what game dosen't?  what I think most people are piss at is that during development everyone had these wet dreams of what is was "supposed" to be inside there heads.  This is why I don't ever follow development or hype myself up.  I play the game when it's released so I had to pre judgements.  I'm enjoying myself, and not on a 2k computer.

People just need to take a break with the friggin conspiracy theories.