This review is coming from a moderate to hardcore player on a PvE server with a fair amount of MMO gaming experience. I have played and/or tried World of Warcraft, Everquest, Lineage 2, FFXI, D&D Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars, RF Online, and Vanguard.

Items: You get all of your item upgrades from quests. I have only ever found one or two items dropped from mobs that are better than my currently equipped quest item. I am still wearing my level 20 mace at level 50 because most of the items I am given to choose from aren't too caster oriented.

Spells: This is a very nice aspect of the game. When you level you automatically get new spells in your book and upgraded on your bars. No having to go to a trainer and no having to buy or farm the recipe to memorize the scroll. If you have a lot of spells you want to use they give you two extra bars that you can drag up or down in order to give you more or less buttons.

Leveling: There is an abundance of soloable quests from 1-45 and it is extremely easily to level, even more so than WoW in my opinion. After level 45 quests become hard to find. I had to go between Tarantia Noble District, Field of the Dead, and Eglophian Mountains. FotD and EM are very very far from TND and it becomes irritating having to go back each time you level to check and see if you obtained any soloable quests. Once I got all the resurrection points on my map I started to jump off cliffs so I could die in order to cut travel time. Doing this was a MUCH better way to get around than to actually run. The Death Penalty isn't much of a penalty at all so killing myself often wasn't a hard decision. At level 48 finding new quests was nearly non-existent. Once you hit level 50 you have to grind the majority of your level in order to hopefully find more quests in those three places I mentioned. I say hopefully because I don't plan to play anymore past 50. In total for bugged quests I had around 7 or 8 that I was unable to complete.

Priest of Mitra: Yes, I was this class and compared to the majority of other MMO's out there they didn't have problems soloing several mobs 4 levels higher than them. Now with group content it was quite different. I did a dungeon with some guild mates when I was around level 45 and healing wasn't that easy. Fortunately PoM's get a knockback/stun spell that gives your healing spells 5-ish extra seconds to get your party members somewhat healed up. We also get a fear that last about 5 seconds as well. Even with all my talents into improving my heal spells group content wasn't that easy. If we got more than two mobs it was a wipe and yes we were within 2-3 levels of each other with the tank and myself being the highest level.

Tradeskills: I didn't try tradeskills since there were and are currently so many bugs regarding them. For example one of the bugs was if you reset your feats (feats = spec or alternate advancement points) you would also lose all of your tradeskill related stuff as well. Another bug was that you would stay gathering on a node and you couldn't get off. Currently people are having the problem of only being able to accept one tradeskill and then it says your quest log is full so you can't get your second. There's just so many bugs with tradeskills it's currently not worth it to take one up.

Earning Money: By the time I hit level 50 I only had 1 gold and 50 silver. To buy a horse mount it was said to cost around 3g. I had the pre-order rhino and mammoth so I didn't have to worry. It was faster to run anyways as the pre-order mounts were so very slow.

Grouping: It wasn't easy to find a group. The only way I'd imagine this would be possible is if you have a bunch of friends you play with that are around your same level.

Pvp: I don't enjoy pvp since I am honestly quite horrible at it... so I didn't try it.

To end this review I'd like to say they did quite well with all the solo quest content from 1-45, but after that the only other option is to constantly do dungeons or grind. I do not enjoy grinding so after the majority of my guild mates get to my current level I will try the dungeon option, but if that doesn't work out I plan to quit AoC. I enjoyed the game thus far and I will check back in a few months to see if they added more soloable quest content and how much was fixed.

Nice review. What's bothering is it seems people are already blasting through the content. My guild already has several people post 40.

Originally posted by spinach8puff

Spells: This is a very nice aspect of the game. When you level you automatically get new spells in your book and upgraded on your bars. No having to go to a trainer and no having to buy or farm the recipe to memorize the scroll. If you have a lot of spells you want to use they give you two extra bars that you can drag up or down in order to give you more or less buttons.

 

Seriously?  Thats not at all good...   No trainers at all, u just magically learn something and auto gain it just cause!? 

what difference does it make, you learn from a trainer instantly as well that doesnt make "realistic" sense either.

Originally posted by Khrymson

Originally posted by spinach8puff

Spells: This is a very nice aspect of the game. When you level you automatically get new spells in your book and upgraded on your bars. No having to go to a trainer and no having to buy or farm the recipe to memorize the scroll. If you have a lot of spells you want to use they give you two extra bars that you can drag up or down in order to give you more or less buttons.

 

Seriously?  Thats not at all good...   No trainers at all, u just magically learn something and auto gain it just cause!? 

Your item quality is poor because your not doing dungeons, and also you need to try doing more zones on epic difficulty for a increased drop rate of rares.

Also, making the "realistic" argument in any MMO is a bad idea. Mages magically cast fireballs, preists magically heal people. It's still a game.

As a PvE - Role player, I thank you for the heads up :)

Good review. I cant help to feel like the Wizard of Oz with this ... great show up front but nothing real and essentially its not a big magician but only a weird old man.

Originally posted by IcoGames

Nice review. What's bothering is it seems people are already blasting through the content. My guild already has several people post 40.

its very easy to lvl in this game; thats why

Originally posted by lysrgk1

Your item quality is poor because your not doing dungeons, and also you need to try doing more zones on epic difficulty for a increased drop rate of rares.

dungeons and epic groups doesnt increase the quality of the drops. Wished it were the case. But it isnt :(

Thanks for the review OP. Good info.

Originally posted by spinach8puff

Leveling: There is an abundance of soloable quests from 1-45 and it is extremely easily to level, even more so than WoW in my opinion. After level 45 quests become hard to find. I had to go between Tarantia Noble District, Field of the Dead, and Eglophian Mountains. FotD and EM are very very far from TND and it becomes irritating having to go back each time you level to check and see if you obtained any soloable quests. Once I got all the resurrection points on my map I started to jump off cliffs so I could die in order to cut travel time. Doing this was a MUCH better way to get around than to actually run. The Death Penalty isn't much of a penalty at all so killing myself often wasn't a hard decision. At level 48 finding new quests was nearly non-existent. Once you hit level 50 you have to grind the majority of your level in order to hopefully find more quests in those three places I mentioned. I say hopefully because I don't plan to play anymore past 50. In total for bugged quests I had around 7 or 8 that I was unable to complete.

I'm a bit worried about your questing experiences at level 45+

I hate to Grind -- its as boring as watching paint dry

a different player was level 58 and rated the quest system 8/10

but said nothing about running out of solo quests - maybe a glaring omission on his part?

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/181806

Originally posted by Nadia 

I'm a bit worried about your questing experiences at level 45+

 

I hate to Grind -- its as boring as watching paint dry

 

a different player was level 58 and rated the quest system 8/10

but said nothing about running out of solo quests - maybe a glaring omission on his part?

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/181806

I had talked to someone who was a higher level than me in my same questing area. He had told me that the best way to level is to clear everything out of the area where you have quests to do. I imagine this is how Devalon did it as well. If you play that way from level one I can understand how he is that high of a level. The way I level is to only clear the mobs you have to in order to get to the quest objective. I just didn't expect for quests to run out like that or else I'd have done what Devalon possibly did.

Originally posted by Enigma

Originally posted by IcoGames

Nice review. What's bothering is it seems people are already blasting through the content. My guild already has several people post 40.

its very easy to lvl in this game; thats why

That's the thing with these reviews a lot of people are posting. They talk about lack of good loot...well that usually is the case upon launch. Most of the games today didn't have the best drops when launched but they patched it and added better drops, drop rates and quest items. Probably why I don't bother letting that bother me right now. Basically folks need to remember this is a currently launched game. It won't compare to the game you have been playing for some years and has been polished over and over via patches and expansion packs. You have to look at it more for potential than anything else and look at it's foundation, it's base.

So for me the foundation looks rather good. They definitely have something that they could build from and grow behind. So at this point I can say I would give the game a pretty strong review but still put that asterik that all will depend on Funcom's next step in the first month. What patches will we see in regards to our questions and issues and what is the direction the game will begin to steer itself toward.

Originally posted by spinach8puff

 

Originally posted by Nadia 

I'm a bit worried about your questing experiences at level 45+

 

I hate to Grind -- its as boring as watching paint dry

 

a different player was level 58 and rated the quest system 8/10

but said nothing about running out of solo quests - maybe a glaring omission on his part?

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/181806

 

 

I had talked to someone who was a higher level than me in my same questing area. He had told me that the best way to level is to clear everything out of the area where you have quests to do. I imagine this is how Devalon did it as well. If you play that way from level one I can understand how he is that high of a level. The way I level is to only clear the mobs you have to in order to get to the quest objective. I just didn't expect for quests to run out like that or else I'd have done what Devalon possibly did.

Cheers!

This game is sadly even more dumbed down than world of warcraft. You instantly get spells, quests tell you exactly where to go, the death penalty is nothing, dungeons aren't even a challenge (no CC needed), crafting resource nodes do not despawn at all (just minimap dot them and run back in 2 minues), the entire game is instanced and lacks group quests. Where are MMORPG games going now days?

All this game has going for it now is the open world pvp, fatalities, boobs, and blood.

Yeah, I was right about Devalon. He had to grind mobs in order to reach the next level to get a few more quests. He agrees there's a lack of quests also. I'd just go play some F2P game if I had wanted to grind. I am pretty sure that is why WoW is so popular. It offers options to all types of players. WTB another game like WoW... just not WoW.