This review is based on the gameplay from 1-80 in the first month. It is not endorsed by MMORPG.com or it's affiliates, rather, it's my personal critique of the game thus far. I'll be using the token MMORPG.com format for this, mirroring our official one's format. This is design to be a harsh review; no sugar-coating.

Technical Review

On a technical note, it seems that Age of Conan has a wide variety of significant problems, however, they never appear to collaborate/clash at one time.

From 1-20, the game is almost flawless. Mobs path correctly in all areas. Performance is not a problem on the video or audio department. Quests work swimmingly, and are blessed with speaking NPC quest-givers. You're given the opportunity to solo your entire way through Tortage, or to experiment with the group mechanics, and depending on your server, you'll get your first exposure to the PvP experience. I don't recall a single crash or issue in Tortage, honestly, and it may have been the smoothest opening to any game I have ever played.

The problems begin to arise once you leave the starter areas. For one, graphically, the game runs better on medium/high settings than it does on low, and I personally don't understand why that should ever happen. There are little random areas that seem to induce large lag spikes, sometimes as small as a 4 x 12 meter area. While I run the game very smooth in most areas at a 1280 x 1024 resolution on medium settings with my computer, which is around 2 years old (for the tech specs, a T7400 Dual Core Processor, 2 GB RAM PC-5700 DDR2 ram, Nvidia GeForce 7950 GTX) I have heard many people have issues with significantly more powerful builds, as well as issues with people who have similar builds.

From levels 20-40, the game continues at a relatively painless process. Aside from a few broken quests, there aren't really any issues. The Pyramids were rather FUBAR'd in terms of functionality in Stygia, but aside from that, I didn't encounter many problems.

At level 40, the technical woes began to increase substantially. The Nobles district in Tarantia, in my experience, had the most buggy and broken quests of any zone in the game to date. Thankfully, many of these have been fixed and patch. Fields of the Dead is still technically a nightmare, as playing with your sound on in that particular zone will cause your game to crash continuously. Before disabling the audio, I crashed around 44 times in this zone alone.

From 40-60, I had very limited technical issues, aside from crafting woes. There are known tradeskill issues in-game, and these can be corrected with a GM's assistance. However, good luck; the average response time for an in-game petition (in my experience) is over 8 hours, and that's on a good day. There were a few bugged quests in the game, but aside from that, still a relatively painless experience.

The supreme technical ineptitudes appear in the 60-80 time frame. Zones are extremely buggy, such as Kylikki's Krypt, or Yahkmar's cave, or the Oasis of Zhaara. Exploits are plentiful; don't be surprised if many top-end guilds are fully equipped in epic gear before the first month is over. Raid instances are wholly dysfunctional. Sieges are in the process of being fixed, as they are currently nearly entirely broken, and the battlekeep zones have significant performance issues.

Other random pieces of interest include the random-yet-semi-frequent zone crashes. These don't occur as often as they used to, but are still quite the nuisance. Performance is a serious issue for over half the player-base, in my opinion. The customer service in-game is downright appalling, possibly the worst of any MMORPG I've ever played to date.

Don't get it twisted though; for a new release, it's not awful. It just needs a significant amount of polish and clean-up post 60, improved customer service, and a performance patch. I would give the technical aspect a 6/10

Graphical Aspects

Graphically, if you can run it, AoC is one of the prettiest games I've ever set my eyes on. Beautiful world terrain, well-done environments, detailed characters. It's eye-candy all the way. There's the minor graphical glitch every now and again (such as falling through the floor), but for the most part, it's gorgeous.

The problem is, for those of you without top-end computers, performance is sacrificed for this eye-candy. As I stated earlier, for whatever reason, this game's low settings have not been optimized/tweaked. As such, it is easier to play on medium settings than it is to play on low. Also, graphical performance suffers greatly in raids, be it for PvE or PvP purposes, to the point where the game practically freezes. Most of this is due to latency issues though, and will hopefully be addressed soon.

Armor sets look great as the game progresses. While I'm not necessarily a fan of wearing a skirt for 90% of the game, I was satisfied with the differences in appearance throughout my playing of the game.

Spell effects are also well-done in my mind, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing a fatality in battle.

The only issue I've noticed with graphics is the occasional clipping, and the infamous "chopsticks" that follow you around. I've also had my character's limbs disappear before, or float off into the sky

Graphically, I'll give this game a 9/10, docking the 1 point for the minor issues.

Auditory Aspects

The music and sound effects in this game are satisfactory... when you can hear them. The problem is, the sound crashes this game a lot of the time, and therefore, you find yourself playing without any sound at all. Also, for whatever reason, disabling sound seems to improve your performance overall. For that reason, I consider the sound a detriment to this game, as opposed to a welcome addition.

Also, while the beginning of the game is blessed with voice-overs, they disappear once you leave the starter area. Given the amount of quests in this game, I can understand why this might be a problem, but I for one was sad to see that feature disappear as I progressed through the game.

Audio gets a 4/10 until it ceases to cause crashes, and stops hindering performance.

Questing

This is a sensitive subject to many of the AoC players. On the one hand, there is an abundance of quests at many levels, and a limited area of "dry spots" where there just aren't enough quests to go around. In my opinion, these dry spots took place from 47-50, 57-60, 65-69, and 78-80.

From 1-20, there are so many quests, that even if you do everyone of them in Tortage, you'll be well past level 20, and experience no bugs. From 20-40, there's a comfortable mix of questing-to-grinding ratio; you'll find yourself fighting more enemies, but it won't feel like a chore. From 40-60, you'll experience, in my opinion, the buggiest number of quests in the game, but there are plenty to go around to where you'll only be grinding a little bit. From 60-80, there's a significant decrease in the number of quests, and a huuuuge spike in the amount of experience needed to level. There are a few bugs, but for the most part, you'll be grinding away this part of the game.

In terms of functionality, I would say less than 2% of the quests are bugged/broken, In terms of originality... well, there really isn't much here. It's the same style of quest; fetch-and-kills, escorts, gather-and-deliver. For the most part, it's fetch-and-kills. I will say I was never bored at any part of the game doing quests, which is important in my mind.

My only real problem with quests are the rewards. While there are some quests here and there that give rewards that are amazing, for the most part, the itemization from questing is rather random, and semi-useless. You're MUCH better off going to an epic instance, and killing the bosses for blues to get phat lewt than you are from randomly questing. There are some exceptions obviously; the arena quests in the Noble's district tavern, for example, but for the most part quest rewards are semi-worthless.

Questing gets a 7/10 in my book.

Combat

Ahhh yes, the meat of the game.

I will say that I have not ever been bored of combat since I started Age of Conan, even after the massive grinding patches of the game. For the melee classes, combat is a step forward with the combo system and the built-in fatalities. It gives you some sense of importance, doing more than just pressing a macro every few seconds. With casters, it's generally more of the same though.

For PvE purposes, combat can get slightly stale depending on your class. For example, I played a Tempest of Set on my first character. For the majority of the game, I'll either be using Lighting Strike and Charged Bolt, or Storm Field. 3 skills for 80 levels can get repetitive. However, after rerolling a Barbarian and a Ranger, combat can get a bit more complex and interesting. Necro's are also particularly interesting. For the most part mobs are fairly simple to kill. As you level up, they don't really become harder as much as they become cheaper. For example, 2 mobs with a stun move can legitimately chain-stun you an entire fight. This can get rather tedious, as when you encounter these mobs, you legitimately become defenseless.

For PvP purposes, the game needs a lot of work. Certain classes, such as the Barbarian at higher levels, and the Ranger at mid-levels, are ridiculously broken and over-powered. There's no reason any class should be able to 1 shot another at full health. Other problems exist simply in the game mechanics themselves. For example, as with PvE, you can be chain-stunned/feared/rooted, to the point where fights aren't fight anymore; it's target practice.

There's also a few other problems, depending on your server. Ganking, while I personally don't consider a problem, is present, and many people disapprove of this. Spawn-camping is popular, which again I don't consider a problem since you can change instances at a rez pad, but many people would disagree with me here as well. Lastly, some skills simply don't work yet; which is a problem. For example, Rousing Shock is a Tempest of Set skill that would be invaluable in group PvP (it removes stuns), yet it doesn't work. This is frustrating, as you have to spend feat points for a combat ability that doesn't work. However, these are all being addressed in an upcoming patch; so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Community

I'd like to start off by saying that I'm on the FFA-PvP server; naturally, there's going to be a lot of people running around who you might not want to deal with.

For the most part, the Community certainly doesn't deserve the "Mature" rating it received. I find that general chat consists mostly of the following:

1) Complaints about a player/guild for being garbage, due to their ganking habits

2) Complaints about how this game isn't WoW

3) Barrens chat. I.E. Chuck norris jokes, general stupidity, trolling, flaming, etc

Now that I've pointed that out, I will say I enjoy the community in the game. While every game has it's token set of smacktards running rampant, it's easy to find a good group of people to play with. There are a plentiful amount of guilds who, from what I've seen and experienced, are very helpful. They help secure spawns, help you quest, answer your questions, etc. I also have many friends in numerous different guilds, and I love playing with them.

As such, the community is a very fragile thing to address. If you find a good group of people, you'll enjoy the game. But if you're unable to deal with a clunky chat interface system, unable/unwilling to deal with people who are somewhat emotionally guided in their conversations, or intolerant of people who aren't there to be serious, than this community might not be your cup of tea.

The community would get a 5 from me, because you'll either love it or hate it immediately.

Customer Service

First off, I'd like to start off by saying that this section is getting a 1 out of 10.

Now I'll explain why.

The petition system, for one, is a complete pain in the ass. It's slow, it's not helpful, it times out if you don't update it every 4 hours, and quite frankly, you've failed your customers here, and horribly.

On top of general GM incompetence (Note: Check the forums at the Hordes of Goonheim if you'd like a laugh), and the seemingly lackluster response times, I don't have anything positive at all to say about this area. Response times are generally over 8 hours, and sometimes days. Yesterday, I was in game, and I was number 4 in line to be served. 6 hours later, I was number 2 in line. That, to me, is unacceptable.

Complimenting the total lack of GM support is the complete lack of service done by their email team. My friends and I fraps'd a video of a guild exploiting an instant, infinite exp/gold hack. We got all the people's names, and sent the email in. We never heard back from Funcom. No bans were passed out, the guild wasn't penalized, no action was taken against the players in question. It's one thing to ignore your customers in-game for petty problems, it's another to turn a blind eye to game-breaking exploits.

Furthermore, I am not impressed with Funcom's lack of preparedness. 3 weeks ago, they knew this was a problem. I have not seen *ANY* improvement in CS in 3 weeks, which shows me that, not only did they not care about their customers then, but that they don't care now. Idle promises mean nothing to me as a consumer; I need to see results, and they're not being provided at an acceptable pace.

A final tangent goes in regards to the patching process. Every patch seems to fix one thing, and break another. Whether it's disappearing mounts, de-leveling, trade-skills bugging out; every Monday and Thursday I look forward to a new headache. It's very clear a lot of these fixes are NOT tested before going live, and it's painful.

Get on the ball, Funcom, because people are NOT going to tolerate this kind of treatment, and they sure as hell won't pay you for it.

Performance

This is, again, a mixed bag in my mind.

Some users will report a flawless game, with absolutely no performance issues. For the rest of us, there's quite a few.

To be honest, I have always been a person who believes that High-end PC users should be able to really utilize their hardware to it's maximum capacity, while low-end PC users should be able to run the game without any of the more glamorous perks. However, AoC is very... sporadic in it's performance.

Zone crashes are an issue that all players are forced to deal with on a semi-regular basis. While not game-breaking, it is rather irritating having to wait 45 seconds to be booted, and then reconnect to the world of Hyboria. However, there are far more serious issues at hand here.

Sieging, for example, is completely impossible at this time. If you were one of the guilds fortunate enough to get a Battle Keep up first, I commend you; you probably won't be losing it any time soon. Why? Because the latency in these zones is downright appalling. On the outskirts of the area, the MS will be between 300-1100, and if you're actually in a siege, enjoy your 2 to -3 framerate. While you can fight easily away from the keeps, I found that actually attacking the keep wasn't even possible. The game turns into a slideshow, and you end up hoping for the best. This is not siege exclusive; more often than not, when larger guilds battle in a zone (such as Kheshatta), 48 people are capable of crashing the zone. Not only that, but it's extremely difficult to even tell what's going on during the fight, as the game practically freezes up.

That aside, performance, when you're not in a crowded area, is pretty decent. I found myself lag-free in Khopshef, Connall's Valley, Tortage, Zelata, Thunder River, nearly all of the instances, and Eigliphian. However, Field of the Dead, the Noble's District, some of the end-game raiding content, Kheshatta, and Aztel's all can get rather laggy.

I give performance a 5/10, because it needs lots of work, but isn't terrible most of the time.

Fun Factor

This is arguably the most important aspect of a game in my mind.

Here's where I stand on Age of Conan. It's a good game with some bugs and kinks that need to be worked out, but at the end of the day, this is another rushed product.

Features that were promised aren't working, and if there's one thing I loathe as a gamer, it's half-assedness. Sieging is 90% broken. Almost all the end-game bosses are easily exploitable/buggy, and clearly have NOT been tweaked at all. The guild cities and battle keeps don't have a purpose yet, other than bragging rights. Spellweaving, while flashy, is wholly useless. There isn't any purpose for PvPing at all, yet Funcom is implementing a fugitive system to prevent ganking, rather than a PvP reward system for engaging in competitive PvP. The apprentice system is highly abused.

Now factor all that in, and think about it. I, for one, am able to look past all of it, because to me, the game is new, it's fresh, and I can still find ways to have fun. The thing is, a lot of people can't, or simply won't. I can respect that.

Age of Conan is one of those things that you can't judge until level 30. The problem with every review I've seen thus far is that it's only criticizing the part of the game that HAS been optimized and refined, and frankly, that's highly misleading to customers everywhere. You need to know that it's incomplete, and it has it's problems, and that it's definitely a work-in-progress, not a refined product. In my opinion, you'll love it or hate it by level 30.

So is it fun? Yes, I would say so. But does this fun come at a cost to the overall gameplay experience? Absolutely. The real question is whether or not you're willing to stick it out through the rough patches to get to the greener pastures that lie ahead.

Closing Thoughts

Age of Conan did not live up to the hype, not even a little bit. But at the end of the day, while it might not revolutionize the genre, it's taking small steps to trying to change it a little bit. New features, which need refinement and work, are something you don't see in MMO's nowadays; everyone want to stay with what works. I think that, if nothing else, Age of Conan is daring to step away from the conventional MMO build, even if only in small bits and pieces.

While I think it's safe to say this game could have used another month or two in beta, the end result is still a playable, entertaining game, which I think will only continue to grow and get better. The biggest problems right now are unquestionably the Customer Service woes, and the performance problems.

If you asked me right now "Should I buy this game?", I would honestly say no. Come and give it a shot in a month or two. I don't believe in charging people for unfinished products, and while those of us who already own and enjoy/hate the game have committed to it, I can't in good faith lie to people.

Also, having dealt with Funcom (Anarchy Online), I know that promises can be empty for long periods of time. Based solely on the company's track record, it is extremely difficult for me to stand up for them.

Wait on this one until Mid-July or August, and then come have a look around the vast world of Hyboria.

At the end of the day, I give this game a 67%; with it's budget and previous MMO experience, they knew what to expect, and at this time, they failed to meet the standard for a modern MMO. This will no doubt rise up in the next few months, but right now, there's a long road ahead of Funcom.

thanks for posting the review

Very good review..

Nice review, well done. :)

Did you cut and paste this from an old Vanguard post? 

I forsee the same fate for AoC for the same reasons, that's why after level 25 i saved myself some time and money and clicked "cancel."

Note to Devs:  If you want more than 30-50k subscribers, you need to make it playable on more than your in-house computers and comparable rigs.  Also, don't mistake customer service for a one night stand, we want to hear from you.  Thanks

Good review though, thanks for the detailed insight.  Just wish i could be as happy playing this crap as you are.

Truth be told, if I were not playing with good friends, I don't think I'd even enjoy this game at this time. But I lucked out there.

Sadly, it's similar to Vanguard in many ways in my eyes. I hope it doesn't go down that road though... I will be sad to see another MMO tank within 3 months

I think your review is pretty fair.

I really hope Funcom pulls it together with a much needed performance patch.  As it stands my subscription is cancelled.  If I see on the AOC forums their ATI issues are resolved I may resub.  Then again, I might not.

Good review OP. You summed it up well.

Just the rating AOC deservers. A 6+/7-

Awesome review.

Thanks for the review.

Just one remark: I find it strange you have to say explicitely that the article isn't  endorsed by mmorpg.com. Is it because it's an honest review? (Rhetorical question i know )

Great review! I like how you didn't entirely bash the game, just gave honest insight to what it's like. It's also rare getting detailed feedback from people that make it that far into a game.

It does remind of Vanguard and imo Vanguard had a lot more experience and money behind it. Seeing Funcom's past with AO and now this game, I'm surprised that anyone is sticking it out. I hope that those that do find enjoyment in it.

I personally will never pay to try another Funcom game for the first time. Maybe I'll try a beta or trial offer but I won't be listening to anymore of their hype ever.

Thank you for the review. It reads as well, better in some ways, as any professional review. Good and Bad, and let the customer make the decision. Like millions of others, I suppose, I'm just looking at other possibilities. Having reviews like this, and not like, "Dude, this game is so bitchin'", or "This game suxors", really helps to inform someone trying to make an honest decision.

Heh, I'm going to plead the 5th regarding the disclaimer.

It's simply professional courtesy. It would look pretty terrible if an official review came out, and I wrote one saying "THE OFFICIAL REVIEW 2, READ MINE!"

Plus, I always contribute my own personal review of the game, so long as I am playing it :)

This is probably the best review I've ever read for this game, very well done Cymdai. And I hope MMORPG.com keeps you around, it's good to have a completely unbiased review from someone who works for a major MMORPG website.

Tough but fair.  I was expecting you to give it a bit higher.  Like a 75% but I can see why you went lower.

Originally posted by pruttel

Thanks for the review.

Just one remark: I find it strange you have to say explicitely that the article isn't  endorsed by mmorpg.com. Is it because it's an honest review? (Rhetorical question i know )

He had to say that because his review was brutally honest.  When I did the review for Stars Wars NGE (you can still read it on the SWG game discussion review section) we had to always give a positive to a negative. We had to be very politically correct and as equal as possible.

That's why Cymdai wrote that

But, on topic...I agree with the OP. Great and honest review.

Excellent review which tells it like it is...

so bump.

I tip my hat to the OP for giving  a complete 1-80 review of the game. It was neither fanboish or hateful, it was simply just an honest review of the game.

terrific post..... you summed it up nicely

I'm waiting for a free trial before I hop into the game, but your review was really thorough and gives me a pretty good picture of what to expect.