MMORPG.com Age of Conan Correspondent Jean-Francois Doyon writes this article giving his own opinion of the customiztion in Funcom's flagship title.

Back in the days of glory of single-player games, your introduction to a new game would usually be the tutorial, or the first mission in the game's campaign. In the world of MMORPGs, your introduction to the game usually has one more step before you can jump into the action (not counting installation issues, server crashes and unbelievably long patching times, which are in the best of cases an annoyance, and in the worst of cases an introduction of the game to the trash bin): the character generation system. This system fulfills a need that most players will have; the need to give their avatar in the world a look they like and to differentiate themselves from other players, much like the need to wear a dress or a suit that isn't worn by everyone else in a reception. As the technology available to game makers becomes more powerful, players are also asking for more freedom to make their characters look the way they like.

Read the whole article here.

Lots of cool PvP gear available now with the PvP upgrade patch that came out before this week.

I think for a modern next gen MMORPG Conan fails horribly in the customisation department.

I find I no longer want MMORPGs that force looks and styles on me because I must have a particular style of armor because of its statistics and ability bonuses.

I hate the fact that all the characters look alike at various levels of the game. Sure their faces may be different (may be), but this is irrelevant when the rest of them looks identical.

Take a game like City of Heroes/City of Villians or Spellborn. You are able to fully customise your character's look, beyond adjusting physical sliders which means nothing if you are forced to wear particular clothes and armor.The difference is amazing, and your immersion in the game world increases tremendously. You actually care about your character, and pay attention to this virtual representation a lot more than with a game focused on items for abilities and stats. Lord of the Rings has a good workaround as well, allowing you to wear items for Stats/abilities...but have a seperate set of items for Look. So you can define a look for your character, and keep on gathering armors bracers, boots etc. etc. but these don't affect or change that look.

I was hoping that AoC would allow better customisation.As it stands, the customisation options for practical purposes are just marginally better than World of Warcraft which was announced 7 years ago.

The Console MMORPGs that are planned for release next year all allow near infinite full character customisation as well. This will start to show up games like AOC and others which don't offer this to players.

Isn't Age of Conan still in Closed Beta?

A very bad game wrapped in pretty graphics.  It's like waking up for Christmas and unwrapping that really shiny gift only to find a rock.

Like others, I find it hard to say anything positive about AoC.

During early beta there was a lot more character customization you could do, but it caused a lot of clipping issues. Even though it was something the players wanted, it never played out when the game made it to "retail beta". You would think a game with graphics this stunning needs better customization, especially considering how piss-poor almost everything else about the game is.

OK, now for something positive about AoC:

The retail box does not contain the small pox virus.

Originally posted by Gel214th

I hate the fact that all the characters look alike at various levels of the game. Sure their faces may be different (may be), but this is irrelevant when the rest of them looks identical.

I often wonder what the roman legion or any of today's army, navy, air-force and marines would be like if they got to choose what they the wore on the battlefield. Of course this is just a game, and everyone wants to look good, but It's not about the way you look or dress in the game. It's whats inside that set us apart from one another. So we look alike. big deal... 

"Rock Hard, Metal Heavy and Bang till ya can't stand it." j.L.

Why are they still patching this horrible game.  They need to look at the real numbers of active subscriptions and decide whether to pull the plug on it.. Sounds to me like they need to resign the whole game.

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Originally posted by Gel214th
I think for a modern next gen MMORPG Conan fails horribly in the customisation department.
I find I no longer want MMORPGs that force looks and styles on me because I must have a particular style of armor because of its statistics and ability bonuses.

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QFT

Originally posted by Soupgoblin

Like others, I find it hard to say anything positive about AoC.

During early beta there was a lot more character customization you could do, but it caused a lot of clipping issues. Even though it was something the players wanted, it never played out when the game made it to "retail beta". You would think a game with graphics this stunning needs better customization, especially considering how piss-poor almost everything else about the game is.

OK, now for something positive about AoC:

The retail box does not contain the small pox virus.

Yes, while the character creation options are really still pretty good (compared to almost all other MMOs right now) wouldn't it be nice to get that extra character creation customization we had in alpha and early closed beta? 

One thing the AoC FunCom Team can do and really must do quickly is provide a *LOT* more EQUIPMENT DIVERSIFICATION -- all the damn PvE armor looks the same.  My currect avatar, a female ranger, has had her armor look exactly the same for nearly 50 levels.  This week's patch may have take care of providing some better & better looking PvP gear, but I don't see why  my girl's armor hasn't changed since when she left Tortage -- except for the tufts, stitching, length of her skirt and whether she has boots or shoes on  -- all of her armor looks the same. 

Worse yet, in game, I see myself coming and going - everyone else looks like me.

With Gaute gone from FunCom (quit or fired) and Chris as AoC's new game director, I've already seen even more emphasis on actually listening to the player community.  Now FunCom even has forum trolls on the MMO fansites like MMORPG.COM to read and make note of what the player community is saying. 

Hopefully one of FunCom's Forum Trolls will read this!

Yoo Hoo!  FunCom! That's pretty *LAME AND LAZY* having all the equipment drawn by the same sorry one trick pony artist with only one armor design -- get your artists to make a ton of new skins for armor (and for weapons, too, while you're at it)!

We wanna see some nice sexy stuff!

Oh and lets not forget, let us dye our equipment.  If LotRO can do it and Dark Age of Camelot offered the armor dye feature 4-5 years  ago, I'm sure Age of Conan allowing players to pick their gear's color isn't hard to do, nor is it rocket science.

This is one of the reasons I canceled.  When Guild Wars, a non-subscription game over 3 years old, can offer your character 3 armor choices as a newb character, and full color customization, there is no, NO excuse for a subscription game that sold "800,000 subscriptions" to offer such uninspired sets.  At the least, why do the merchants in Stygia sell the exact same armor sets as the ones in Tarantia?  Don't you think they would sell something styled in their region?  The same goes for Cimmeria.  You shouldn't have to rely on drops to have unique armor.

To the comment about "people in the military having the same uniform"...  you are a freelancer.  At no time are you a part of the Black Dragons or any other group in the game.  I know when I was in the Navy, I'd get irate if I saw someone walking around in a Navy uniform.  You could get arrested for that.  I think the Dragons or Stygian guard would get a burr up their bum if you wore their armor.  It distinguishes them, a professional fighting force, from you, a freebooter.

 "For example, Guardians, who are allowed to wear heavy armor, cannot wear cloth"

That pretty much summed up the ridiculous restrictions in AoC for me.  Of course most of these theme park MMO's have similar problems.  Any class should have the ability to wear cloth, how absurd.  Even in Wow a warrior can wear cloth or leather items.

I personally liked much better how UO handled it.  A mage could wear plate if they wanted but they were left with almost no mana regen in so doing.

Why are we still reviewing AoC, the game is pretty much history.  By the end of the year they will be lucky to have a 100k player base.  Another MMO that hit the genre with a huge thud.

If you think character customization sucks in AoC, you better stay away from Warhammer Online.  Plus, the graphics in general, especially the textures on the models look attrocious.  Low resolution and and kind of crappy looking overall.

Warhammer graphics are reflective of the lore.

And, really, if that is the only complaint about Warhammer...

Warhammer has content in all forms -- something AoC STILL lacks 4 months after release.

AoC lacks a soul. It is that simple.

Originally posted by Xez666

AoC lacks a soul. It is that simple.

I think this is 100% of the problem..

Originally posted by corpsman77

Warhammer graphics are reflective of the lore.

And, really, if that is the only complaint about Warhammer...

Warhammer has content in all forms -- something AoC STILL lacks 4 months after release.

 

 

This is absolute nonsense (pardon me). R E. Howard lore is way bigger in content, age/history and fanbase than WARHammer, and this is certainly reflected in AoC's game content... No need to say anything more about that. Besides, I doubt you have tested new content after Patch 2.0... Since you post on AoC threads and obviously is interested in AoC, I would read up or test the new content before making new worldchanging statements.

Since you say WARHammer got content in all forms I would like to correct that a bit. I claim WARHAmmer do not have that rich combat content actually, due to its very limited oldschool combat system. The attacks are very repetetive (you can see that on any movie) and the animations horrible... Just look on a guy running for example, it looks like his shoe is flaoting on the ground as the character move.. This gave a terrible arcade feel to me...  Well what about combat in AoC then... For starters there are Fatalities .

Originally posted by corpsman77

Warhammer graphics are reflective of the lore.

And, really, if that is the only complaint about Warhammer...

Warhammer has content in all forms -- something AoC STILL lacks 4 months after release.

 

 

Okay, I can understand our player character and the NPCs in Warhammer Online look cartoonish because of the Warhammer Lore since it's based on the Games Workshop IP.

However, take a close look at the game trailers and how the characters look in those trailers is 1,000 times better than their actual appearance in the game.  It's clear the design team took the lazy way out and/or they just didn't understand, care, or believe that being able to make one's player avatar more unique would positively affect player imersion and thus, player enjoyment.

WAR's character creation and character customization is pretty lame for a "leading edge" MMO.

I can understand there are a lot of people who could care less about character customization, however, there are also a lot of players who are turned off by a lack of being able to make their avatar their own.  I got tired real fast seeing my Witch Elf look like every other Witch Elf I saw, except for small variations in facial frown, eye color and a few choices on big hair, eye and skin color, scar/tattoo.  

I understand all that "true to lore" stuff, okay -- got it -- but it's really just an excuse for taking the easy route.   After playing the WAR beta for almost a year, I was hoping Mythic would apply some polish for graphics by the time the game went live, but nope.  I'm very disappointed with WAR's lack of character customization and the overall lack of depth in the graphics as a whole.

Armor in AoC is not just handed over to you, you have to go out there to get it. Yes, vendor armor all looks the same, and the simple quest armor is not better, but if you want to look different you can. The better armor is there, you just need to find it, and I think its fortunate they didn't make it too easily available to everyone. But I do however agree that some more diversification for the "simple" armor would be more than welcome.

Here is a small sampling, there is much more ingame:

img68.imageshack.us/img68/8597/99079116ft6.jpg

Originally posted by OrionMan

Originally posted by corpsman77

Warhammer graphics are reflective of the lore.

And, really, if that is the only complaint about Warhammer...

Warhammer has content in all forms -- something AoC STILL lacks 4 months after release.

 

 

 

This is absolute nonsense (pardon me). R E. Howard lore is way bigger in content, age/history and fanbase than WARHammer, and this is certainly reflected in AoC's game content... No need to say anything more about that. Besides, I doubt you have tested new content after Patch 2.0... Since you post on AoC threads and obviously is interested in AoC, I would read up or test the new content before making new worldchanging statements.

Since you say WARHammer got content in all forms I would like to correct that a bit. I claim WARHAmmer do not have that rich combat content actually, due to its very limited oldschool combat system. The attacks are very repetetive (you can see that on any movie) and the animations horrible... Just look on a guy running for example, it looks like his shoe is flaoting on the ground as the character move.. This gave a terrible arcade feel to me...  Well what about combat in AoC then... For starters there are Fatalities .

If you think the few "books" Howard wrote (in fact he mostly wrote sequential short stories for fantasy magazines and killed himself in the age of 30) can compare to the really vast amount of warhammer backround, you haven't even bothered trying to take a look at the IP. In quantity it's probably a hundred times more of backround story.