Age of Conan

First off I will skip over the bugs and technical issues with the game.  It is beta, funcom says they fixed the bugs, and I think that horse has been beaten to death.

Brief history of my experience so I can hopefully avoid an army of people talking down to me like I am new to MMOs.  EQ, AC, AC2, DAOC, AO, E&B, SWG, COH, COV,  WOW, EVE, and LOTRO. Now on to the review.

Avatars: Customization is good.  Textures are a bit bland.  Combat Animations are pretty fluid.  Walking animations are off a bit on their timing and standing animations make characters look robotic.

Equipment:  Armor/Weapons are pretty bland visually. From low level items I have seen first hand in beta to items in higher levels I have seen from screenshots.  I have not seen any piece of equipment that is awe inspiring.  Everything is pretty generic and flavorless.  Lots of earth tones and dull metals.  Very little contrast between characters and envirements.  Everything kind of blends together.  It may fit the IP, but it still doesnt look exciting or stand out. 

Gear itemization is not very obvious for new players.  Tons of stats in game can leave many people overwhelmed and unsure what they need for their character.  Also huge gear quality gaps and very hard to determine quality.  Some level 1 items are better than level 12 items.

UI:  What you would expect. Could be a bit more intuitive.  Maps could use some work as they dont relay much information about what lies between your mark on the map and the mark for where you need to go.  The compass is pretty cluttered but useful once you get the hang of it.  Chat system is outdated and frustrating at times if you dont know the exact /[format] to use.  Pretty good LFG system, better than most.

Combat System:  It is pretty fun but it is no more complicated or inventive than any other MMO.  You have multiple directions of attack and combos to use against foes.  But these are no more than hitting 1,2, and/or 3 after you have clicked a combo attack icon.  Enemies shift there defenses but it is easy to trick the computer into opening its self up and it doesnt seem to respond and shift its defenses after the first 5 seconds of a fight.  Players for the most part just  keep all their defenses even as it takes too much time switching your shields and it is of little gain.

At the end of the day you are still mashing buttons, especially without an auto attack, because every .1 second counts.  But sadly there are few flashy looking attacks and by the 1000th overhead weapon swing its all the same.

Quests:  Pretty standard stuff, plenty to do, and decent rewards for your time.  Stories in the quests are pretty generic.  Get items for this guy, kill badies for that guy, go walk across town and talk to someone else.  There are one player quests that take you out of the multiplayer world to complete small story arcs.  I personally think that kills immersion and while the story for these quests is a bit more intriguing than the standard ones, the actual game mechanics involved remain the same.

MOBs: With all the same information as listed in my Avatar section but with a little extra.  Good variety of enemy designs.  For example the Pict (group of badguys) may all look similar but there are enough variations in their armor and equipment so that they dont look like they came off an assembly line.  Between various factions of humans and various types of wild life, you get enough variety.  More than some games but at about the level you would expect for this part MMO development history.

Envirenments:  Bright skies, a realistic looking sun, and nice surfaces on water areas.  The actually land is a bit cluttered.  I understand it is a primitive world and has lots of jungles and plants but there is too much undergrowth.  The ground is filled with grass, bushes, ferns, and flowers.  It leaves zones feeling over saturated and over done.  I wish they put more attention into the dirt, sand, and rock.  From what I saw there is only one color for each and blending the seems tends to involve stark terrain shifts or a trim of plants to hide the edges.  Ruins have the same type of rock used for all (a glossy grey) and buildings are very drab and repetative.  The layout for Tortage is pretty good, looks like something that real people might build, shops and such seem to be in the right place for the types of business they do.

PVP:  The one available pvp area is not very interactive.  2 starting bases, 2 side areas to capture.  You run around killing eachother with little purpose than to kill people before the timer runs out.  They put a small fort in each teams base but they have no use in game and are merely aesthetic, what a shame.  PvP tends to involve everyone runnning upto eachother and than standing still because you cant move and use combos.  Range classes hit you fast and then just run away.  Without any abilities to catch them it is pretty easy to win like that.  Hopefully that changes later on.  You can run around and just use default 1,2, and 3 to attack your enemies but the damage is very weak and combat becomes more dull.  I will assume they plan to have more types of pvp areas once you level through the game, but the area available in the BETA was boring.

Last words:  Overall the game is pretty standard.  Combat is not complex or exciting, but it does force people to play their character instead of letting the game do it for you.  Characters and envirenments are bland and not distinct,  but are high resolution so there is a bit of realism.  Chat system needs work.

This is a 3 out of 5 quality game.  You can easily get your money's worth out of it, just dont expect a blockbuster.  Within a year this game will hopefully clean itself up and finish out all the things they have started but half finished.  I will most likely purchase this product one month after launch and I confirm that the current lag/bugs are mostly fixed.

nice review

i was also nicely supprised by the

viarity of *humanoid* mobs. nice work.

But OMG! some of the animals look realy end up bad compared to other mmorpgs if you look close at em

(black panthers and scorpions for example)

Yes the jungle is cluttered with plants, but i like that..

..feels like jungle.

i just pray for the peeps who will play/buy this game that there will not be to many *forced* routes and invisible walls, so you can actualy hide IN the jungle ^^

thank you for sharing :)