Deleted because later post shows point better.

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by Jackdog

I would not have thought 3 to 4 weeks would be enough time to get the logistics done for the N American distributrion. It should be a interesting event to observe. I am curious to see if Funcom can break their record of buggy releases.

 Well think about it.

They have at most 100K active subscribers. Quite a few of these have bought the game online.

Its an expansion pack. Eventhough you get the original game included, its still an expansion. The hype around it will not be nearly as big as with a new game.

So, a lot of the customers who bought AoC wont buy the expansion. The sales figures will be a lot lower, and it should be so hard to produce a suitable ammount of boxes. And if sales exceeds expectations they will sell more online copies and its easy enough to print new boxes.

Also, online distribution has become a lot more popular in the last two years.

 

Whats more interresting is to speculate on how many copies they will sell. We know that the game sold 1.2 million copes within the first couple of weeks of 2008 and became one of the largest selling titles of that year. We know that it has been selling new copies since then. A conservative guess is that they have sold 300k copies since Craig Morrison took over the complete mess that was AoC back in 2008. So in total 1.5 mill copies.

 

Lets say they sell to all existing customers and to 10% of all former customers. They will then sell 100k + 150k copies of RotGS, of these quite a few will be online copies and quite a few have been bought allready through 1 year subs. Lets say they will sell 50K online copies. Cant be to hard to distribute 200K boxes.

Just small fact check but http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ageofconanhyborianadventures/news.html?sid=6196037&mode=all 

states this: "the studio revealed today it has shipped more than 1.2 million units of the game, 800,000 of which have been sold. Of those 800,000, 415,000 have remained subscribers as of August 14."

I would be supprised if Age of Conan sold over 100K units after the first week as the backlash was so bad AND Funcom would have said something to investors if sales where over 100k.    300k box sales over 20 months as you claim would mean that every month 15,000 new people at least buy the game so there should be growth and spikes and I don't hear Funcom mentioning it.  However, yeah there do seem to be a lot of new people but I am failing to believe those testimonies after two years.  Everyone hates the game and then two years straight of people just out of Tortage saying this game is perfect when no other MMO gets that.

-----------------------

Anyway, I wonder if there will be reviews from anyone but die hard players as the content is level 80 and we all know reviewers 1) couldn't get past Tortage 2) probably are to involved in Warcraft to have level 80 AoC toons.  It is interesting they are keeping this on the down low but Catyclysm will get major hype by like 11 million players so not sure how that can back fire.  Plus by keeping AoC down low they will kill the hype as units sold will probably be published and if not many follow the game or whatever they may be turned off by low initial sales.

Deleted to add same point to another post.

Originally posted by DaSpack

Well, first of all it's now official,  AoC RotGS is going retail 11th of May.  CompuExpert is opening up PreOrders.

http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1395&table=CONTENT

I must say, I am so happy that FunCom junked Eidos as distribution partner. I have had little experience with CompuExpert though. Anyone have a thing or two to say about them?

I bet Edios junked AoC do to the horrible second week and onward sales.  But Edios is owned by Square Enix who has a competing MMO comming out that will probably be released on consoles so Funcom should take notes.  I'm not a fan of Edios after the Kane and Lynch controversy but Funcom's business ethics have prooven to set a bar much lower than Edios or any American or Japanese company.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by Vespers

Funcom isnt stupid. They have done this many times before and they now know the folly of rushing a release date without proper preparation.

 

I'm not sure, there should probably be a more open closed or open beta by now if it is to release in the next couple of months.

I do think AoC will be hard to find on shelves especialy with the digital version for year long subs or anyone else. SSf4 comes out next week, and it has been hyped up for the last 6 months and pretty much everything was leaked info wise about changes either officialy or unofficialy and everyone has been playing diffrent builds to test for the last 6 months and two months ago the final build was sent to the publishers to be boxed up and in vast contrast there is very little information about ROTGS aside from a couple generic news releases and that it had a friends and family type beta since late last year. There is almost no hype at all and it will take time to get the final build to publishers.  They can still patch the game but it seems like there is an issue delaying it.

AoC officialy came out may 20th which is a month away but there was a pre  orderish open beta and a head start.  So it won't make it out in May which is odd because AoC did well in May, but AO released on June 26 so that may be the release date.  And as I said before they would likely need to wait until early or late September if it doesn't release then but I doubt AoC would survive the summer if they delay it as there isn't anything comming out at all to keep people till the expansion.

 

Seems like they have proven you wrong with proper announcement tomorrow including all the pre-order and retail goodies. The hype is about to be outed. Following and learning from previous experiences, we have not had a barrage of a years worth of hype, as you say hardly anything at all. Which is a good thing. Now the PR can do their job with  19/20 days to go. It will go gold very soon.

Seems AoC's expansion is very bad if they are rushing it to shelves with little hype and not going to break NDA again before it sells. Looks like the fans are wrong when they said AoC learned their lesson as it seems the same thing is happening again.

Also yeah, AoC doesn't have the funds to advertise as big at release and I did say that probably in this thread but AoC needs a huge boosts in players and I'm sceptical that will happen now.  AoC is bringing in about twice what AO was bringing in 9 years latter so there needs to be a product life cycle boost.

Good news for me though, I wasn't expecting the expansion to be good at all.

Originally posted by VultureSkull

Originally posted by Besttheiswow

Tortage is really bad..but its the best thing the game has...if you dont like tortage then you gonna just hate the rest of the game.

 I simply cannot understand comments like this. Tortage is different yes, it plays like a solo game as the story is strong here. You can still group etc with other players if you want.

"the rest of the game" plays exactly like all other MMOs, WoW, LoTRo, Vanguard, EQ2 etc etc, which entails going to a quest hub getting a load of quest and going out to do them, mini game pvp and dungeon running.

So If you don't  like "the rest of the game" then you will not like any other mainstream fantasy based MMO either!!

Hold on one second, WoW, EQ2, EQ1, etc where pretty good, Vanguard had issues but is supposedly pretty good just not getting much development just like age of conan. Lotro is pretty popular so I'm sure a lot of people like Lotro and wouldn't like AoC. I liked pretty much every MMO I played so far aside from AoC so for me AoC is missing something.

Most those games have way more space to tool around in and more quest hubs more players and generally more this or that, better classes, better lore, better game engine, better PvP systems, etc. A lot of people like MMOs or other MMOs and don't like AoC at all.  Guess the only thing we can agree on here is Besttheiswow has one heck of a nice signature.

------------------------------

Also you get a free level 50 and pretty soon you get free levels just for paying to play this game so Tortage shouldn't be much of an issue. But Tortage is important most this game is awesome and improved hype come from Tortage level players and then I guess they unsubscribe and forget about AoC because I never hear from them again.

Originally posted by Vespers

Funcom isnt stupid. They have done this many times before and they now know the folly of rushing a release date without proper preparation.

 

I'm not sure, there should probably be a more open closed or open beta by now if it is to release in the next couple of months.

I do think AoC will be hard to find on shelves especialy with the digital version for year long subs or anyone else. SSf4 comes out next week, and it has been hyped up for the last 6 months and pretty much everything was leaked info wise about changes either officialy or unofficialy and everyone has been playing diffrent builds to test for the last 6 months and two months ago the final build was sent to the publishers to be boxed up and in vast contrast there is very little information about ROTGS aside from a couple generic news releases and that it had a friends and family type beta since late last year. There is almost no hype at all and it will take time to get the final build to publishers.  They can still patch the game but it seems like there is an issue delaying it.

AoC officialy came out may 20th which is a month away but there was a pre  orderish open beta and a head start.  So it won't make it out in May which is odd because AoC did well in May, but AO released on June 26 so that may be the release date.  And as I said before they would likely need to wait until early or late September if it doesn't release then but I doubt AoC would survive the summer if they delay it as there isn't anything comming out at all to keep people till the expansion.

Originally posted by VultureSkull

 

 Even a lvl80 assassin could not tank a lvl50 dungeon.

 

 

We agree on that http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=85317 as even a level 80 tank couldn't handle lower level instances.

But no the game has not changed as much as you wish, I played during win backs and the two patches since didn't touch any of it.  It isn't your fault so we probably both don't care so much but the lack of content needed to be addressed in the expansion.

IDK what to say about that group, but the high preformance players that could do that instance probably are not leveling up or playing AoC, usualy they grind out on their mains until they run out of stuff and then they stop playing so they may be back for expansion.  I know well that wipes just didn't happen with PuGs even.  Heck half the time I played I would get the level boost buff or whatever and be level 30 in a level 40 instance with no problems and that buff did very little aside from let me hit mobs.  It's cool you can just market it as a more casual game with more soloing and that is who is playing AoC anyway hence why so many have so many alts.

Maybe I confused the name of cradle of decay there are two instances about a minute away from each other in oasis, one of them is open and there wasn't anything there and I soloed that one but I ran the other and we blew through it with with a reck of a think a ToS was healing and tanking and we may have had a gladiator but a newbie PuG w/o wiping or anything the one with all the quests out front that looks like a temple on the outside then we went to the open one and set it to hard and both where meh.

There where a couple cool instances but isn't like the back bone of the game at all.  In some MMOs grouping is much easier and assisted with more places and reasons to. A better LFG system and more instances for loot would help AoC.

Originally posted by nihce

LOL you can't tank epic mobs so easily. Even lvl 80 bearsaman will have problems with for example lvl 60 epics

The top tank server wide in all of age of conan hypotheticaly wearing all T3 or full level 10 or whatever PvP gear would probably have trouble and get owned trying to tank level 60 epics because of the anti farming things where grey bosses go into rage mode. http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=85317 I didn't hear them change it back and I doubt they would with so many public instances. But yeah that is just another reason I would shy away from AoC...pawning bosses or solo clearing stuff has always been very fun and challenging in MMOs for me.

But if anything after the stat ulgrades with 1.05 pre 78 stuff got very very very easy.

Originally posted by VultureSkull

 

 

 

 

Solo Dungeons Not group dungeans and most of them are smaller than a World of Warcraft Yeti cave so there should be over 9,000 and half server almost no purpose that I could tell, I leveled up and found nothing aside from mobs in many. This is AoC all zones are instanced.
 

6-Player Dungeons

Name: Sanctum of the Burning Souls  - this is 1
Levels: 37-39
Zone: Wild Lands of Zelata

 

Name: Cradle  of Decay  This one is a bit bugged and not sure if it is done anymore but I did it and it is a regular world zone.

Levels: 39-48
Zone: Fields of the Dead

Note: This is a public instance and not spawned separately per individual party.


Name: The Cistern - This is an atunment quest for main system.
Levels: 50-53
Zone: Tarantia Noble District
Note: This is a public instance and not spawned separately per individual party.

 

Name: Main System This is a regular world zone.
Levels: 52-60
Zone: Tarantia Noble District
Note: This is a public instance and not spawned separately per individual party.

Name: Catacombs This is 2
Levels: 55-60
Zone: Tarantia Noble District

Name: Toirdealbach's Tomb This is a mini zone but has three bosses so 3
Levels: 58-60
Zone: Fields of the Dead

 

Name: AoK  4 This is new but it is a regular zone and not sure if it is done often, I know people stay out of the new zone at that range which I think is Yimir's pass.
Levels: 59-65
Zone: Yimir Pass

Note: This is a public instance and not spawned separately per individual party.


Name: Os Harku Regular zone.
Levels: 65-70
Zone: Thunder River
Note: This is a public instance and not spawned separately per individual party.

Name: Halls of Eternal Frost (Ice Ruins)  5 - small with 3 bosses
Levels: 70-73
Zone: Atzel's Approach

Name: Scorpion Cave  6
Levels: 75-76
Zone: Kheshatta
  

 

24-Player Raids - I was talking about leveling but all I cut can be cleared in a few hours once a week.


Name: Thoth-Amon's Stronghold  - This is pretty buggy
Levels: 80
Zone: Kheshatta

Special 6-Player Dungeons - These group dungeans have no rewards or any loot or quest so no one does them just like when entering a zone no one selects hard mode as there is no point or loot bonus or XP bonus to justify it.

These are group dungeons whose level is variable. It is based on the level of the first person in the group to zone in.

Name: Imirian Ravine
Levels: Variable
Zone: Poitain

Name: Oasis of Zaara
Levels: Variable
Zone: Purple Lotus Swamp

Name: Frost Swamp
Levels: Variable
Zone: Lacheish Plains

Do you guys play the game and really do that stuff? because most do all the solo stuff and the solo portions of those regular zones nicknamed public instances.  But they only do the ones linked to quests or have bosses to kill in a group and as it has been pointed out AoC is linear so you go through A to B to C but many of those instances, especialy the solo ones are either quest linked and usualy very small like 20 mobs about Warcraft yeti cave size or they have no quest links so they don't get done.

That argument has been done to death we know what AoC had at release which was all but a few instances added later and there was a big well founded complaint that it was not enough for an MMO.  Content is linear and then end game is very thin so far.  Expansion may help end game but out of the people who stayed, most left do to little content and even Funcom admits it when they demo TSW.

I did most those instances and I could almost tank as an assassin, ToS and many other classes can tank as they are on the easy side. But even if all the content you listed was done regularly and had good risk/reward it still wouldn't compare to most the high end MMOs quantity wise....AoC just doesn't stack up but that is OK it is a nitche game that goes for graphics which take more time to design I bet.

Originally posted by nihce

Noone of you noticed, that poster just came out of tortage? Tortage is extremely solo friendly but after ...

...there are not many players in the 20-75 range so doing group stuff can be difficult AFTER Tortage and the rest of the game is extremlely solo friendly as most alt O'holics solo up do to having seen the content before and it is faster.  Hmmm I know EQ1, EQ2, Warhammer, and Aion there were enough areas to group up and level from the starter area till end game but not sure about Lotro,  WoW had a few gaps but also had the most instances from level 10-60 and that is not counting the doubles like horde had one and alliance had another for some levels. Aion was a good grouping game but grouping was a bit stressful as it wasn't PuG friendly.

AoC has 5 or so instances but yeah it will be hard getting groups up, the one saving factor is they don't require much balance in the party....like anyone can tank and DPS and maybe a healer would be good but no CC required at all or a specialized tank as they are a bit on the easy side.

Maybe the expansion will help but all AoC players know that Tortage and level 80 is where everyone is and the middle levels are much smaller so I'm supprised with the OP's findings.  Also many of the players solo alts to level cap repeatedly so I would be shocked if more than 7% or so of the entire logged on population was doing anything worthwhile in a group which is also inflated do to many people log on once a week to raid T1/T2 in a few hours.

Who knows maybe the expansion will fill up the servers and fix it as they are not raising level cap but less it ups the population by many times the players that played a lot and verteran comebacks will be on their mains.

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by TarotMage

 I'd be really surprised if it the game was digital download only.

if you check some of the last few postings in this thread you will see where they have a publisher and distributor for Europe and in N America so a box release is definite.

Problem is the publisher/distributor deal in N America looks like it was finalized 2 days ago which makes the May date look improbable. Just a guess here on my part but I figure early to mid fall just to capitalize on development and marketing strategy plus mid fall has been proven to be the prime release time. FC is not hurting for operating capital going by their quarterly statements so no need to rush things :::shrug::::. Just my 2 coppers worth

Well the opperating capital also has to go TSW and advertising of both, marketing was a huge expense for AoC's launch.  Also they have to release it before late June or they would need to delay until late september because summer games don't do so well.  If they did delay it the population is just going to continue falling so they would likely get fewer players back.

There isn't much that they have to compete with until late this year and early next, guild wars 2, ff xiv, star wars, cataclysm.  So nw would be the best time probably.  I'm suprised they are not marketing like mad and I know they will be as the reason to box sale it was to bundle the original game so they could sell to new players.  Box sales and publishers are bad for game sales as they take a big piece of the marketing pie. Digitaly releasing it would be much better for profits, heck WoW digitaly sold an item and made 2 million in 4 hours http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178849 .

But doesn't AoC have to digitaly release it as they sold some one year subscriptions with the free expansion bundle.  It doesn't realy matter as MMOs make the money do to subscriptions so whatever gets the most people is best but they need to keep them this time.

Originally posted by TSWBETAROGS

Originally posted by Jackdog

Depending on how good/bad TSW turns out to be, it might turn out to be a great game but chances are it will be another steaming heap of bugs and a poor implementation of good concepts. So far Funcom is batting zero for two with Anarchy Online and Ages of Conan and nothing shows me they have gotten the concept of quality control with their releases. Lets see if the release quality comes up any with the expansion if/when it arrives Right now they could offer me AO, AoC , and TSW for 10 USD and I would pass.

How come you know it all ,And dont play any games(no game historie). AoC was bugged and it was rushed due to investors pushing and the Game director putting in new stuff at the werry end did not help.  AO is free to play anyways if you did not know.  TSW will sertenly have buggs like most MMOs, but they will do better beta testing  this time. Just se how great AoC is now and check out the expantion when it comes in mai/june.   

They should just charge maybe 10 dollars for all subscriptions to TSW, AO, and AoC...Sony does that with station pass and charges 30/month but they have a bunch of games and had a few hits.  The arguement that Funcom needs to recoup cost is pretty poor because if nothing changes, every player would need to pay around 1,000 USD to pay back the development costs and then the subscription would pay for future development and just regular expenses.   Costs are pretty strange as there are free MMOs - DFO http://dungeonfighter.nexon.net/ is fun and free so they can't be the low cost leader but they may be able to price below WoW and get a few more subs but at the same time I have been paying 15/ month for MMOs for the last ten years so they are making less now per sub do to inflation and they can't raise the fee because most other MMOs are many times better with more stuff and are more popular so people would play those

AO was bringing in 1 million USD per quarter AFTER AoC was released so nine years later because it charges for expansions and the ability to play them, while AoC just two years out brungs in a little over 2 million USD a quarter and all income sources equal 3 million which in total is less than Blizzard's CEO makes http://gamersyndrome.com/2009/video-games/how-much-money-does-activision-blizzard-ceo-bobby-kotick-make/. 

Pretty sure AoC isn't that great or more people would be playing it and they didn't improve this game any more than other titles improved their games over the same time period.  Funcom would have needed to improve quality a lot and you mention there where two patches this year but WoW a game that is considered the benchmark for MMOs is comming up on their 6th patch with most dealing with way more issues than AoC's patches. 

I wanted to point out that logical leap that because Funcom released AO and AoC in a bad shape and then went on to release many buggy patches and many things just not well thought out that Funcom will never do such a thing again?  They wont release stuff that doesn't work well like Shrines of Bori, PvP arenas, and many PvP things but also spending two years working on mostly leveling content and anti PvP stuff and they finaly figured out how to make sieges not crash after two years.  They have a poor track record so far and I don't see that changing, your tag is TSWBETAROTGS so we can see that your a Funcom fan but there are very few, Funcom needs to raise the quality of the game by a lot to do well.

I doubt TSW will be even as good as age of conan, that department got hit by lay offs recently so morale must be low and not sure what anyone is hyped about CGI trailors or as the gaming network here said "So empty streets are supposed to hype us" regarding a clip from TSW.

Originally posted by Lateris

This discussion has made me want to explore PvP in the game. I was just taking part in PvE.

The hard core PvP in AoC which consists of mining nodes for the top PvE gear would appeal to PvE players, most the PvPers left anyway and a lot of PvE players reside on PvE servers, otherwise they ganking penalties and guards would not be added after release after many complained. After the expansion maybe Funcom could hire someone who understands PvP to help them develop that part of the game to keep those types of players and perhaps grow the game, maybe they could hire Ming the eletist rogue http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming  or Athene the best paladin in the world, but he uses a bad word towards the end  http://flimmr.passagen.se/movie/athene_1_best_paladin_in_the_world.action  who hyped up WoW's PvP or even some player from Halo or CoD or whatever that knows PvP and plays video games as in players killing each other and competitive stuff. 

The Irony is most online gamers are PvPing in one game or another except those in the MMO market and even in that market perhaps half the players in guildwars are playing elimination arenas and maybe a third or quarter in Warcraft are PvPing as in killing each other in arenas or playing objective games where they kill each other and do some objective and all games give fair rewords for killing each other as in EX or points to boost the score.

It seems most development is for PvE which is well known and discussed so if that will continue maybe some day they will get good at it but most likely development will slow down a lot after the expansion, so if they wish to revamp PvP they need to hire someone who knows what is going on and use the limited resources on PvP and bug fixing/polishing the post release expansion, either get some player or steal someone from a diffrent company that knows how to facilitate PvP.

Not sure if anyone cares about that launch anymore but Age of Conan is an old game and just not terribly popular, there are still issues like legacy mechanics and class roles and stuff to better define and perhaps adding a bit of PvP stuff.  Then the game needs to pick something to do well on the game play side, PvE raids, PvE group instances, solo content, PvP stuff like better mini games and PvP arenas.

If this was to ever be re-launched only one way would work and that would be to release it on the X box as that would be a new market and they would have to advertise what is so great about this game compared to other games.  *Spoiler* X box online players love PvP...perhaps 95% of them are on line killing other players, which I do every day...look at the popularity index it is all PvP games http://majornelson.com/archive/2010/04/07/live-activity-for-week-of-march-29.aspx  so if they want a hit they would need to buff up PvP in the game not just in advertisements.  They would probably do worse in the long-term on X box releasing in this state but FF was an MMO on consoles that did OK, but that game had insane amounts of PvE content and PvE grinds.

However, not sure if it is possible as consoles only have 500 RAM so I could only imagine the graphics tone down and lag or slow down in game if they ported it.

Originally posted by nihce

lol finatic i would love some of your logic. probably helps a lot to chat in a bar or something.

and there were not 1 but 2 welcome back campaigns and I am pretty certain that right after expansion will be another one

That logic works well in business as well why would you have a second welcome back campaign if the first one did not work?  The second brings fewer people back and the third will bring even fewer unless something amazing crazy is announced like some amazing PvP content that yields OMG reviews from PvP players because it is like crying wolf when the game is boasting it is improved and the players see meh.  Free players still cost money with bandwidth and CS and then pin heads like http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=215798 may try to get their 333.69 dollars back for release billing issues.

Anyways, the first was in July and the second probably never happened..I thought I was wrong once but it turned out I was mistaken, so I looked this up http://www.google.com/search?q=Age+of+Conan+welcomel+back as I have never heard anything nor got an E mail and it would have been a big deal and popularized on this forum at least and X fire numbers would be posted showing how popular AoC is like they where during the win back.  There was an endless trial but that was Tortage and my guess is AoC got more new players from the July Tortage retrial because that zone was good anyway but  not enough to replace the dissapointed with 1.05 crowed.  A welcome back is like hey come back and play your level 80 assassin for x time, free.

But your logic is stating that "right after the expansion". the game will be great and polished enough to showcase to players that left, many of that population that would retry the game did after 1.05 and then didn't resubscribe.  Now I'm dubious about the polished enough to showcase as AoC and AO would like to have a word with you, I'm a positive guy but but I looked up the old adage, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me and there is not even a fool me three times because it shouldn't happen,  Glenn Beck just used giving money 3 times to nigerian prince e mails expecting diffrent results, which was the same logic Funcom used to not have win backs or at least not advertise them after July 09 so by my estimate the next win back will be around July 2011.

They only did that once but it did more harm than good as AoC lost subscribers.  It happened last July.  If AoC was top shape, I;m sure they would do it again but probably not for a long time as they want players to pay for the expansion.  If someone tries the game and doesn't like it they won't buy the expansion.  If the expansion has bugs and junk I would imagine it to take  over a year for a veteran player comeback so they can fix stuff and try to reinvite the players who didn't like the expansion.  However, it is doubtful there will ever be a free trial of the expansion, no MMO does that.

Originally posted by SirPaco

and who are the best guilds in Aoc?

 

That chart makes a lot of sence, guilds where not doing well when it was just PvP for Glory because there are so few PvPers who play but now that they changed PvP into a PvE farming and gathering even players on PvE servers who would never kill another player are able to get a lot of PvP points for guild renown and PvP XP.

But it is no suprise as Age of Conan is not a PvP game at all, if you ask about PvP on the official forums they tell you to go back to your cartoon WoW bcause they like mining for artisan and glory and killing mobs for Valor, they don't like killing each other and are glad the game does not make them or allow them to do so most the time.

Originally posted by haratu

 

Expansion looks like it is going to be ready for the next 3 months, they are making it ready, it is definately going to be released around mid year. Trust me, PvP gear is still hard to get, not only that, but unlike WoW the pvp gear in AoC is made to support PvP, not PvE. As such you cant just get PvP gear and have the best in the raid, because you wont.

Before you judge a game, go play it first.

I agree the expansion will be released soon, probably around May 20-Jun 20.  I doubt it will be high quality or anything so it probably should be delayed but they can spend the next two years fixing it.

However, Warcraft's PvP gear has to many stat points assigned to stamina and resilliance so PvE sets would be much better for PvE mobs as they more stats to DPS or Healing, etc and a greater focus on sustained damage.  Warcraft's PvE gear is bad for PvP because it lacks a lot of stamina and resiliance and usualy it has less burst damage (Like a PvE weapon would be 300-400 and a PvP one would be 200-500 so it has a chance to do more. Catyclism is out soon maybe I will go back and play WoW.

I'm not sure how far apart end game PvP and PvE gear in AoC is though but I do know you have to kill players in Arena to get good PvP gear in WoW and if you win you go up but if you lose you go down and ranking determins how fast you get gear.  In AoC so far you can mine resources and do you just have to participate or do you have to win the 1 mini game that people do for badges in AoC?

Dang the curage, carnage, and cleavage needed to PvP competitively in AoC.  I'm pretty impressed it looks like Age of Conan finaly became a  PvP focused game as all the hard core PvPers I knew loved gathering resources and would do that over fighting other players, anyday.  I must be in the very small minority of players that hate gathering resources BUT if I recall didn't Funcom already add resources to border kingdoms to compete over in PvP?  Just way to much PvP in this beast of a title.