Originally posted by BarCrow

One of the NPC's in  tavern  has an option to skip THE REST of your destiny quest and leave Tortage to the mainland. However, I don't think it is option until around 15th level. I could be wrong. I know I did it once just to check it out and went to Khemet . I can't recall my level at the time but I do know I wasn't yet 20th level.. They do give an option to go right back to Tortage to finish up.

Not sure about the level (15 or 16), but skiping the destiny quest and leaving tortage are different things. The destiny quests you get at levels 5, 10, 15 and one at 19 to leave tortage. You can skip destiny quests, but if you skip the one at level 15 it'll just mean you'll stay in tortage until you're high level enough to pick up the 19 one, and at 19 you might as well just do the quest and leave than skip it.

To leave tortage earlier you must pick the smuggler's quest, which I'm not sure can be done starting at 15 or at 16, but starts on a note in the wall on the back of one of the last houses you see while going to the boat to white sands island. Your destiny quests aren't skipped this way but you leave the island, and if you want to start them again (next one at level 30 IIRC) you'd need to go back to tortage to do the destiny quests you left or tell your trainer there to skip them.

I mostly agreed with the OP. I have been playing on and off(mostly off) for 3 months or so. I have a demonologist to lvl 40 I think. I am in a guild that no one is ever on. I guess finding a better guild would be better. Graphics, music, gameplay is good. It's basically like LoTRO to me though. It's all questing. If I cba to make a new toon on the pvp server, I might feel different.

The gathering/crafting is a bit odd too. I can't harvest granite til i'm lvl 50? It's not a big deal, just odd. I don't know yet if I want to buy a sub or not. I enjoy logging in and playing some, but if I don't, I don't really care. Odd actually. I guess I will just continue my f2p, I mean free unlimited trial until I decide to stop playing it.

I think I will enjoy it more if I start a melee character as the demo is sorta boring...but I do like watching people burn alive. The HoX looks like fun, but I don't have access as a free 2 player.

Longevity 8 ? are you kidding ? if you play a couple of hours every day you will reach 80 within 4-6 weeks & then what ? even if you pay there is bugger all to do in AoC endgame other than grind for X,Y,Z.

I played from pre-launch & quit january this year. IMHO this game has never reached its potential and (free 2 play aside) in the current direction it is going it likely never will.

Originally posted by TheCrow2k

Longevity 8 ? are you kidding ? if you play a couple of hours every day you will reach 80 within 4-6 weeks & then what ? even if you pay there is bugger all to do in AoC endgame other than grind for X,Y,Z.

 

 

The end game is pretty much the same as almost every other mmo out there. So if you are complaining about that in this game, then surely you have the same opinion for just about every mmo no?

After reading the article there are two things that caught my attention.  Number one, to be picky, is that Funcom is a company, which is a single entity, so you would say Funcom is or Funcom has, not Funcom HAVE.  That was irritating, or should I say, I were irritated.

The second thing is (or were, lol), why didn't you give the graphics a 10 out of 10?  Seriously, what game out there right now has better graphics?  While many things are subjective, it seems like a game that still, arguably, has the best graphics of any MMO should get a 10 out of 10.

As for the game itself, I made several characters, but never got very far.  The graphics are amazing and the combat is unique, but knowing that the end game PVP was weak kind of took the wind out of my sails.

Also, I should mention that, for returning players it can be frustrating to try to play the unchained, free-to-play version.  I wanted to check out the new free for all PVP server, but I couldn't make a new character, nor delete an old character to allow me to do that.  I returned for that reason specifically, but ended up giving up after I realized that I couldn't even try the server without making a new account.  What a bummer.

Gotta say I've always loved AoC and I come back every now and then... The only reason I've not stayed is because simply... I couldn't get any of my friends to touch it with a ten foot pole with all the negativity about the game.(Which I've almost always disagreed with)  They won't even touch it now.  I'll probably rejoin after they put in the single server tech that they've been talking about.. or.. I get bored with SWTOR/GW2/Skyrim/ Alamar/Witcher 2/Diablo 3...  Good thing about this long queue.. MMOs get better with time..:P

Originally posted by Cacophanist

...

It is also just a mass of instances. It does not feel like a coherent world. Nothing open to it. Sure some of the instances look big and open but they are just levels in a level based game.

...

THIS is what I don't like about the game.

Actually, the only thing I don't like is the fact F2P accounts are stuck with a 2 gold cap with no cap increase available. Allow me to carry more than 2 gold on a character and I'd gladly come back and play.

People who pay real money for their gear in AoC when you already have a P2P subscription must be total idiots.

Tried this again recently, and I still cannot get past having to enter a password every time I want to execute a skill. It sounds really interesting on paper, but in execution it just does not work. Oh, and it only applies to melee skills. Stupid.

A re-review that skips the PvP portion of the game.  Terrific.  

Sorry but this re-review reeks of advertising.  Though it is preety normal for specialized websites / magazines :/

Some things that was not mentioned about AoC:

cons:

- awful p2w model + if you want to play end-game you have to subscribe anyway

- claustrophobic small zones

- instanced world + loading screens

- game looks nice but still is awfully optimized

Finaly. Here is the re-review after going freemium ;)

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

Actually, the only thing I don't like is the fact F2P accounts are stuck with a 2 gold cap with no cap increase available. Allow me to carry more than 2 gold on a character and I'd gladly come back and play.

 

"gold do a long way in AoC" Not like in WOW ehere you need 100Gold ore sow to get a mount. In AoC 2gold cap will hold until lvl 60-70. And guildbank can hold money for you.

And the conan world can feel smal in the start, but endgame playfields are 4-5times larger. 

Originally posted by randomt

I think, if you haven't played Mount and Blade, you might not understand why some might say the melee is still button-mashing in AoC.

Try it.. it has a free trial to level 7 or some such (warbands, not fire n blade, that one's game is nerfed to a crappy quest based system instead of a sandbox)

That's the sort of combat MO wanted to replicate (not very well at all). And no, DF isn't anything close either.

 

 

You hit the nail on the head here. Mount and Blade combat is something that everyone should try and then say that Conan combat is any good. Or oblivion.

Conan was half way there, it was close but no cigar. It was a button masher that simply was not the swing your sword and it might hit something, real physics. Not even close.

Darkfall and Mortal Online did actually get closer to proper combat.

Like nearly every MMO I've ever played, AoC slows down the leveling too much after the first few.  It's not as bad as LOTRO (that one slows down to an unbearable crawl by level 12).  It's not as bad as Rift (that got boring around level 15).  But it's bad.  I'm not new to the genre anymore, and I'm not entertained by killing countless things so repetitively that it puts me into a trance.  It's okay sometimes, especially if I don't have to interrupt said trance to trot back and forth to various quest givers, but it's not okay enough to spend weeks or months doing it and calling that entertainment.

I want one of two things.  I either want something substantially different and more entertaining than a quest grind to 'progress' in MMOs, or I want to level fast.  I especially hate leveling fast at the beginning, then getting bored as everything slows down.  At least one of the oft-quoted Skinner Box articles claims that fast early leveling, with lots of new skills as rewards, is just a way to condition the hamsters to their wheel and keep them grinding on long after everything slows down and gets boring. 

I guess I make a lousy hamster these days, because my reaction to getting bored around level 20 is to roll a dozen alts just to make sure every race, class, and skill combination is equally dull after the first few levels.  Then I quit the game in disgust.  Which is what I eventually did in AoC, after I realized that pvp really isn't that easy to find or fun for a solo player and doesn't sufficiently compensate for the level grind.  However, the unique combat system probably was responsible for keeping me playing long after I would have quit anything else.

Originally posted by Cacophanist

Originally posted by randomt

I think, if you haven't played Mount and Blade, you might not understand why some might say the melee is still button-mashing in AoC.

Try it.. it has a free trial to level 7 or some such (warbands, not fire n blade, that one's game is nerfed to a crappy quest based system instead of a sandbox)

That's the sort of combat MO wanted to replicate (not very well at all). And no, DF isn't anything close either.

 

 

You hit the nail on the head here. Mount and Blade combat is something that everyone should try and then say that Conan combat is any good. Or oblivion.

Conan was half way there, it was close but no cigar. It was a button masher that simply was not the swing your sword and it might hit something, real physics. Not even close.

Darkfall and Mortal Online did actually get closer to proper combat.

M&B combat is fun and takes some timing and skill.Unfortunately we're talking about MMO combat. If  M&B were made into an MMO   it would likely have hotbar combat like the majority.

Game is still the same ... loading time is gigantic , game lags like hell .... :/