With the recent reductions in subscription costs and now this offer to have the expansion free of cost included in the 12 month subscription, there really was nothing to think about for me - ofcourse I went for it!

Really looking forward to this patch. A real revitalization patch with new game aspects that is really needed. Hope testing goes well and fast so we can see this on live soon.

Age of Conan is pretty much twitch-based if you roll a melee class character.

Anarchy Online

Lets bring @pyngvild up in the top 20ies for a spot in the Wall of Fame. The list is dominated by soap opera characters, so lets show them some real competition!

Well, I've seen this one before, but it was well worth a rewatch!

Luckily for you the last patch was the conqueror revamp patch, were pretty much all feats and commands for the class were changed or tweaked, so you are not the only confused conq around ;)

Originally posted by elementsgame

Lolz this thread fails. Of course those 100k that stayed are happy because they are paying for it :) What about those million players who quit Age of Conan after one a month. Are they happy? ;)

Some of them are happy, as they just left and go on with their life in some new game. Others are not as happy as they carry on reliving their lost hopes and dreams, and can only find fulfillment in trying to cause the same loss and despair in others.

On topic: Yeah, I'm happy with AoC and I'm confident that the game will just get better and better from here on.

Originally posted by tuppe99 

My PC is fairly old. Also I tried AoC when it first came out and did not like the small, instanced zones. World seemed small..

Depending on when you tested it out, the client runs much better on older machines now. When it comes to small zones and instanced zones, the beginner area in Tortage has the most of both. Later on the world opens up and some of the zones are really huge. The expansion will bring even bigger and interlaced zones where you can look from zone to zone. If the smallness of the starter area was what put you off, you might want to have a second look.

The memory leak issues were fixed during the autumn of 2008.

Population and community is heavily dependant on which server you chose. If you choose  the pure PvP servers, be prepared to be ganked a lot and hear quite a bit of trash talk. If you can't stand such things, go for a PvE server. You can still PvP on PvE servers in designated areas and in mini games. I don't play on US servers, but from what I've heard, Tyrrany (pvp) and Set/Wiccana (pve) are the most populated servers.

Nice find of that vid from the french site. Really enjoyed it as revealed quite a bit on what we can expect in the expansion.

How did I know that this topic would be about either Tyrranny (us) or Fury (eu) server before I even read the content?

Because posts like theese allways are about experiences at the two most notorious hard core ffa pvp servers generalised to the AoC community as a whole... The other servers are nothing like those beforementioned ones.

The melee combat system with it's combos, collision detection, directional attacks, splash damage and multiple hits and dodging is where AoC really shines for me, but in general I approve of all the OPs points. Also there are a lot of small things, like some of the of the crazier quests you are set out to do which really gives me a good laugh.

Atleast we can ride with cloaks on without cutting the horsie in two these days^^ Quite a few clipping issues has been resolved, but some remains; the female shield clipping being the most significant.

The community of the pure PvP servers and the PvE servers are as night and day. If you had not tried only Tyrrany (US) or Fury (EU) servers you would have known that.

From what I've heard it might take about 30 minutes from when reactivated and until the account is opened.

One thing is the combo system, but the melee experience in AoC is SO much more then that. I love the melee system in AoC and it's a primary reason for me playing the game in the first place. What intrigues me the most is the combination collision detection, dodging, movement while trying to land combo finisher, killing a foe with the second last hit and sprinting up to next target to give him the full wrath of my 4k damage combo finisher etc.. This is what melee in AoC is about.

I find half the posts here about it here whether you need to click one or two buttons utterly irrelevant for my experience, since the melee system in AoC is so much more than what they describe.

Originally posted by afoaa

Originally posted by Vespers

Very true. The "Miracle Patch" which was released a week or so before Launch actually made the game worse and barely playable. 6 months of beta testing AOC was interesting but at least I was able to run the game. That last beta patch totally FUBAR'ed the game and it is just recently getting back in shape.

Interesting the "magic" patch made the game playable for me. Before that it really was unplayable in most of the game areas.

Yeah, I had the same experience as afoaa and Loke on this. The "miracle patch" really improved game performance a lot.

Originally posted by darkcircuit

I think the hostility that the OP is getting from the 'elitists' is due to the fact that his post title is 'The Review of AoC = Fail'. If the OP thinks that a game fails because he was unable to use the first port of call for questions (other players) or use his brain to work out an alternate route then he is very much mistaken. If you tell anyone that their game 'fails' then of course they are going to go on the defensive to protect the game that they enjoy playing.

I agree that the GM should have just told the guy to use crouch but to suggest that the game fails because of one GMs response, makes it worthy of flaming. The only thing that I can say in the GMs defence is maybe he wants to discourage the OP from contacting GMs regarding other 'trivial' issues in future. GMs are not there as a helpdesk (thats what other players are for), GMs are there as the last port of call if the issue is unable to be resolved elsewhere (other players or global chat).

I'm finding a lot of the 'new' players coming back for the re-activation are finding lots of trivial reasons to flame the game, which in my eyes is very disapointing. Thought people would have got over the poor launch by now and judge the game on its current merits, not on its history.

Edit: Typos

Well put and to the core.

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by Tjommis

Originally posted by Frobner

This review pretty much sums up AOC.  Its worth the free trial and if you can enjoy the game with the 500 loading screens in Tortage - then you should maybe consider buying the game.

For me.. as a victim of the infamious memory leak during beta and well beyond (the entire box sub) - I simply can never play this game again.  Every time I load into the game I shiver from discust having to wait at every loading screen.   

Is the game worth the sub ?   Nope its not.  Not for me - ever.  1 more loading screen of AOC and I break my monitor.

 

The number of loading screens you would see during a normal gaming session after you completed Tortage is not many at all. Tortage; with it's small semizones and houses has quite a few; I agree, but many of the later zones are MUCH bigger and chances are you will stick in one zone alone for an entire evening of gaming only to zone to one of the major hubs after you are done for the night. That would total 20 seconds of loading screen for an entire session which I think most could handle..

On a sidenote. In Tortage when you zone in and out of buildings, if you have a decent computer the loading screen is hardly noticable since the entire zone is allready preloaded.

I have no problem accepting that people don't like AoC since it does not have a seamless world and they feel it harms their experience, but I really feel that the focus on the loading screens is HIGHLY exaggerated and that during a normal play session they don't matter much at all.

Edit: Since lag has been the topic in many of the posts here, I just have to mention that. I play on the EU Crom server (mostly) and in the last half year or so I have disconected from lag during game play 1 time a month tops. Agreedly there are occational spikes, but I really don't feel that this game has more lag issues than other games I've played.

 

Sorry m8 but loading screens are MAJOR problem for those that suffered through hours - days - WEEKS through the endless memory leaks both in beta and early launch.  I have seen more of the loading screens than actually playing the game - and I got 3 high lvl characters -inlcuing one lvl 80. 

Have you tried to play an MMO game where you can play for 5 - 10 mins and then it crashes?  Thats what I agreed to play beta for.  But that was NOT what I agreed to pay for.  Still I did that for then ENTIRE time that the sub for the box version lasted.

I have a perfectly good PC to run all games (rated 5,7 )  with 9800gtx, 4gb ram and so on.   If there is something that developers should realise by now that gaming is about having FUN - it has very little to do with sitting and waiting.   Just look what the indie developers are doing now  with titles like Hinterlands and Trine (less than 1 gb dl.  Its pure gameplay - the loading screens are filled with story driven content - voicovers and images.   Thats gaming !!!

Yeah, the game had memory leaks at launch, and I had plenty of those too, but thats not what I'm saying. The memory leaks are no more, atleast not for me and the huge majority (some cliam to still get them at tech forum, I know, but I have not seen any since october last year).

But there is no point in discussing launch anymore. We all know how it was then. My post was on how a normal night of gaming would be in the current situation. And for the reference. I played this game through 6 months of beta, through launch, and consistently to this day of speaking.