My Review

21-50

There is still enough content and discovery to keep the player busy and questing. The occasional PVP can be either enjoyable if you play one of the easy-killing classes, or frustrating and depressing if you play one of the easily-killed classes. There are some holes in content, but this is a MMO, grinding should be expected. Overall at these levels you're enjoying the game and looking forward to the future.

50-70

Things start getting boring, quests dry up and start to repeat themselves, kill X of this mob, etc. Villas fill in the gaps but you start to wonder why you have to do the same villas 10 times and you start to realise how small and buggy the zones are. The mobs start getting repetitive and the lack of a carrot of any sort starts to get irritating. You're looking towards end-game at 80 and thinking: "all the gear is crap, there's no incentive to PVP and my guild of 100 people is now 3 guys who log in and log off after 10 minutes". You start losing the will to play.

70-80

Painful and boring. The mobs were buffed to the point where pulling 3 of them might kill you. You're still doing villas because of the lack of quests, and Keshatta is a gankfest because all the bored level 80s are there ganking everyone in sight out of frustration. The bugs become rampant, the flaws inherent in mob AI and the coding start to show and you start to lose any love for your character class and the gameplay that seemed so fresh and new 40 levels ago.

80:

You log in to check the trader to see who's found the latest exploit for epic drops, gems duping or whatever, and log off after 10 boring minutes. You might even have had a grey map or crashed in those 10 minutes. Your tier 2 city is barely progressing because everyone in your guild has basically given up.

You do one of the level 80 dungeons but it's a buggy, ugly mess and the loot is crap so there's no reason to go anyway. You try a PVP mini-game and either one-shot everyone (like I do on my guardian) or get one-shotted by asshats like me. That is, if a mini-game pops up at all in the hours of queueing you do, because no one is signing up for them.

You do a Kylikki raid or a Vistrix and notice how boring and badly designed the bosses are. This combined with the crap loot, buggy raid instances, laborious raid interface and unhelpful GMs makes you wonder why you ever even wanted to join this raid.

BK sieges are moot: no one bothers with them except maybe once a week if you get lucky and are in one of the last remaining zerg guilds. The siege itself is laggy and boring, and everything is bugged to hell; you start to think maybe this "feature" is something that shouldn't have been put in if it was going to be so crap. You start to notice less people around. Nothing fun's happening.

You go to forums and find censorship of negative posts while moderators disguised as fanboys spout drivel about how we should be patient. You make a negative post and get an infraction. You question one of the fanboys and get banned because it's actually a friend of Tahitoa and moderators ban people who disagree with their friends.

You cancel your account and hope Funcom don't bill your credit card for another month like the ripoff merchants they are. You come to mmorpg.com and find others who have gone through the same thing as you.

I give the game a 49% because there are some beautiful graphics and it's worth a few hours of decent gaming for the first timer. However, the lack of actual gameplay in the latter half of the game combined with the extremely poor standards of communication, service and patching by Funcom mean I can't put this game over the halfway mark when it comes to a percentage. It's a shame, this could have been a very good game, it just got destroyed by incompetence and cynical money-making marketeers.

How long are you going to keep doing this? Seriously.. it's time to move on.

I think the review is quite correct really, I can do one for COD4, EVE, or Bioshock as well (and even that one is going to have some gripes, despite the game being overall better)

Absolutely spot on, you've summed up my exact thoughts about the game!

About when you reach lvl 60 and finally get to meet Conan, there is nothing left of the game worth playing. (Also, some people complained that Ron Perlman - who did a good job btw - didn't sound "barbaric" enough as Conan in the 360/PS3 game. I hope they never get to hear this version, because it made me think "Patrick Stewart, all is forgiven. There are people doing more pompous VO's than you!") And what is this living legend's role in the game? "Well done, you've saved my kingdom yet again - here, have ANOTHER ring with big, non-working stat-boosts". OOC.

Originally posted by Arthousesig

I think the review is quite correct really, I can do one for COD4, EVE, or Bioshock as well (and even that one is going to have some gripes, despite the game being overall better)

lol of course it is quite correct cos you wrote it.

As Narshe said dude, get over it and move on!

Funcom have taken your money for free, and they still own you, break free and go and find your calling.

Agree with the OP completely.

I agree completely.

It's a poorly designed game.  It offers much less than just about every other fantasy MMO currently available in terms of gameplay.  The bugs just make it all worse.

Stop crying aboute the game being bad and just play something else, move on.

let's play a game called.. u had fun up to 70, be pleased and move back to wow like everyone else who strays for another game..

spot on the review it is.

and as far as all going back to wow I deleted my toons and am never going back.

LOTR and DX 10 rocks

Well, most of the high level contents sucks, yes. But if you feel this way, take a break 6 months untill everything is in place, try a month in december or so... Yeah, cost you fiten bucks but that ain't so much. No need to suffer and pay for something you currently not enjoying,

And get a bit older game, the endgame use to suck for the first 6 months. No, I'm not defending anything but I never played a new game with complete endgame, heck, look on LOTRO, ain't close of and endgame and it been out for over a year. Seems like MMO folks believe they can patch in most content later. Worst thing is that regular games seems to take after and force you to download massive patches too.

Originally posted by Loke666

Well, most of the high level contents sucks, yes. But if you feel this way, take a break 6 months untill everything is in place, try a month in december or so... Yeah, cost you fiten bucks but that ain't so much. No need to suffer and pay for something you currently not enjoying,

And get a bit older game, the endgame use to suck for the first 6 months. No, I'm not defending anything but I never played a new game with complete endgame, heck, look on LOTRO, ain't close of and endgame and it been out for over a year. Seems like MMO folks believe they can patch in most content later. Worst thing is that regular games seems to take after and force you to download massive patches too.

Well I am sorry to say it, but the reason MMO folks believe they can patch most content later is because of people like you. They say "Let's hype the game using Mr. EE and then cash in some easy money, then we will patch stuff in 8 months time, start a 10 days trial and people will just come back and pay us more cash."

Not saying its not a good tactic on the MMO folks side, but I find it funny you support it and then complain about it in the same post.

I for one hate Funcom for the entire experience that AoC was for me. From the paid FilePlanet beta, to the recent PR lies and spins. I am NEVER going back to AoC.

I fucked up, I should have waited for some reviews but the hype really got to me and I jumped on the wagon. Now I know better.

I really do stand by my extremely short and subjective review. I really tried to enjoy the game and played all areas of content, but really AOC is a total failure in every field.

The problems in the game stem from core failures in the balancing, content and game mechanics of AOC, and I just don't think they are solvable without a "restart" because it's just too far gone already.

There are too many useless items in the economy, too many exploits have come and gone without rollbacks, everything is just too screwed up now because Funcom didn't predict things or fix the issues when they cropped up.

A perfect example is the damage gems issue which people were talking about 3 weeks after launch, saying it would be a huge problem in PVP, and it's still as of today not fixed. And that's just one in over a dozen major game-breaking issues that are just left to fester.

We ALL know this could have been a good game. But Funcom just really ruined it by covering up issues on their forums and then not addressing things that mattered - and now it's just too late.

I have to figure people understand that the game is terrible by now and that funcom failed the MMo community. Seems obvious when they say they are releasing an expansion early next year without even being able to handle the release (They want money and that is it).

49% score for a half-finished product pleases my logic senses.

Originally posted by Arthousesig

My Review

21-50

There is still enough content and discovery to keep the player busy and questing. The occasional PVP can be either enjoyable if you play one of the easy-killing classes, or frustrating and depressing if you play one of the easily-killed classes. There are some holes in content, but this is a MMO, grinding should be expected. Overall at these levels you're enjoying the game and looking forward to the future.

50-70

Things start getting boring, quests dry up and start to repeat themselves, kill X of this mob, etc. Villas fill in the gaps but you start to wonder why you have to do the same villas 10 times and you start to realise how small and buggy the zones are. The mobs start getting repetitive and the lack of a carrot of any sort starts to get irritating. You're looking towards end-game at 80 and thinking: "all the gear is crap, there's no incentive to PVP and my guild of 100 people is now 3 guys who log in and log off after 10 minutes". You start losing the will to play.

70-80

Painful and boring. The mobs were buffed to the point where pulling 3 of them might kill you. You're still doing villas because of the lack of quests, and Keshatta is a gankfest because all the bored level 80s are there ganking everyone in sight out of frustration. The bugs become rampant, the flaws inherent in mob AI and the coding start to show and you start to lose any love for your character class and the gameplay that seemed so fresh and new 40 levels ago.

80:

You log in to check the trader to see who's found the latest exploit for epic drops, gems duping or whatever, and log off after 10 boring minutes. You might even have had a grey map or crashed in those 10 minutes. Your tier 2 city is barely progressing because everyone in your guild has basically given up.

You do one of the level 80 dungeons but it's a buggy, ugly mess and the loot is crap so there's no reason to go anyway. You try a PVP mini-game and either one-shot everyone (like I do on my guardian) or get one-shotted by asshats like me. That is, if a mini-game pops up at all in the hours of queueing you do, because no one is signing up for them.

You do a Kylikki raid or a Vistrix and notice how boring and badly designed the bosses are. This combined with the crap loot, buggy raid instances, laborious raid interface and unhelpful GMs makes you wonder why you ever even wanted to join this raid.

BK sieges are moot: no one bothers with them except maybe once a week if you get lucky and are in one of the last remaining zerg guilds. The siege itself is laggy and boring, and everything is bugged to hell; you start to think maybe this "feature" is something that shouldn't have been put in if it was going to be so crap. You start to notice less people around. Nothing fun's happening.

You go to forums and find censorship of negative posts while moderators disguised as fanboys spout drivel about how we should be patient. You make a negative post and get an infraction. You question one of the fanboys and get banned because it's actually a friend of Tahitoa and moderators ban people who disagree with their friends.

You cancel your account and hope Funcom don't bill your credit card for another month like the ripoff merchants they are. You come to mmorpg.com and find others who have gone through the same thing as you.

 

I give the game a 49% because there are some beautiful graphics and it's worth a few hours of decent gaming for the first timer. However, the lack of actual gameplay in the latter half of the game combined with the extremely poor standards of communication, service and patching by Funcom mean I can't put this game over the halfway mark when it comes to a percentage. It's a shame, this could have been a very good game, it just got destroyed by incompetence and cynical money-making marketeers.

Fu**ing A++ m8. I could not even make it better.

I would love to sue Funcom and get mine 50eu back. And spend it on something more FUN! Like beer? Give it homeless?

I think we should do the same thing, as once people did with SHAQ-Fu game.

Originally posted by Arthousesig

I think the review is quite correct really, I can do one for COD4, EVE, or Bioshock as well (and even that one is going to have some gripes, despite the game being overall better)

I usually ignore anyone with that avatar you use , but after reading a few of your posts in other threads I decided to read your review . I'd say you were really fair , Even forgiving toward some aspects like "grinding". it definitely wasn't what i would expect from a hater :P . I only got to 38 , So I have no clue how to judge the endgame stuff , However I would certainly recommend this review to anyone interested in AOC.

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by Arthousesig

I think the review is quite correct really, I can do one for COD4, EVE, or Bioshock as well (and even that one is going to have some gripes, despite the game being overall better)

I usually ignore anyone with that avatar you use , but after reading a few of your posts in other threads I decided to read your review . I'd say you were really fair , Even forgiving toward some aspects like "grinding". it definitely wasn't what i would expect from a hater :P . I only got to 38 , So I have no clue how to judge the endgame stuff , However I would certainly recommend this review to anyone interested in AOC.

Hey, I was the first to put on that avatar XD

Then everyone stole it!

hehe nah I think the avatar is sort of symbolic for an underlying truth - the disappointment and anger of all the people who really wanted to play this game and were so badly let down by a shoddy product pushed like bad crack on a MMO community that was just eager to greet a new game and see it flourish alongside a competent company.

It breaks my heart to see how badly all us eager MMOers were treated by Funcom - hence the avatar

I borrowed Art's avatar for the reasons he just explained.

Not all of us wearing it are rabid haters hell bent on destroying Funcom. We are angry about our voices not being heard by the developers, we are irritated at our constructive posts being locked by volunteer mods, we are sick of patches that break more than they fix, and we are disappointed by what we saw prerelease and the product they delivered.

My appologies if I offended you both , Didn't mean for it to sound that way . I'll have to remember to keep an open mind in the future , I usually know better than prejudging based on aesthetics , Sorry again.

OP nailed it.  This game is a high-school cheerleader: Great to look at, and interesting at first, but ultimately shallow and not for the intelligent and sophisticated.

While most of what you say is true I will say some of the recent improvements to lower level quests and dungeons have been amazingly great!  If you haven't tried some of the new dungeons give them a run through again.  As a solo player I was amazed at how fun and interesting they are.  They have improved some of the quest and game content at the lower level range primarily.

Now I know your thinking "so what!  End game is still crap!"  but if you look at it from the point of view of how improved it has become at the 1-50 range then the promise and hope of an awesome end game is not just a pipe dream.  It is possible.  The devs are moving way to slow for most of our likes and the super fast leveling experience has ended up shooting them in their own foot.  Not sure why the level was made to push advancement so fast.  The only theory I have is beta testing is often done with xp set on super high...  you can guess the rest and I am sure most of us feel like we are beta testing a live game. 

But I cannot deny the improvements to most of the lower level content.  Graphically the game is a dream, the combat system is innovative and fun, although somewhat repetitive after a while. (but what MMO system isn't) and with the recent improvements I now have hope they will fix the end game.  Just not as fast as we would like.  So I would say go play something else but keep checking back eventually our lvl 80's will have much more to do.

Originally posted by gom276

While most of what you say is true I will say some of the recent improvements to lower level quests and dungeons have been amazingly great!  If you haven't tried some of the new dungeons give them a run through again.  As a solo player I was amazed at how fun and interesting they are.  They have improved some of the quest and game content at the lower level range primarily.

Now I know your thinking "so what!  End game is still crap!"  but if you look at it from the point of view of how improved it has become at the 1-50 range then the promise and hope of an awesome end game is not just a pipe dream.  It is possible.  The devs are moving way to slow for most of our likes and the super fast leveling experience has ended up shooting them in their own foot.  Not sure why the level was made to push advancement so fast.  The only theory I have is beta testing is often done with xp set on super high...  you can guess the rest and I am sure most of us feel like we are beta testing a live game. 

But I cannot deny the improvements to most of the lower level content.  Graphically the game is a dream, the combat system is innovative and fun, although somewhat repetitive after a while. (but what MMO system isn't) and with the recent improvements I now have hope they will fix the end game.  Just not as fast as we would like.  So I would say go play something else but keep checking back eventually our lvl 80's will have much more to do.

 

Although the improvements to black castle and pyramid have made those instances actually good, rather than messy and laughably buggy as they were at release, it's actually WORSE that they would prioritise fixing content that you level past in 2 hours rather than fix the endgame that is the bread and butter of even most casual players who are at level cap now.

It was actually an extremely poor game development decision to revamp those instances instead of fixing the level cap content, and the results of that decision speak for themselves.