PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:n/a | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:n/a
Desktop Client | System Req:
| Out of date info? Let us know!
Age of Conan: Unchained Review: You've Come a Long Way, Baby! - Edit
8
| Pros |
 Deep combat system Epic soundtrack Player cities Stunning graphics |
| Cons |
 Balance issues Lag issues Large hard drive requirement |
I must be honest here, I never really got into Age of Conan when it first released. There were far too many issues I was hearing about for me to break away from my self-destructive obsession with World of Warcraft. I was always intrigued however as anything that combines MMOs and Robert E. Howard was indeed something I had to play one day. The game was inevitably added to the ever growing list of “will get to you soon” and never reached the top.
That was until a colleague of mine discovered I had never played and vowed to have me play this game; it was all I heard about. He would go on to tell me about the engaging combat system, the breathtaking recreation of the world, and the stunning graphics it was portrayed with in painstaking detail. May 2011 came around and Age of Conan went free-to-play and unrated. It was time; I could justify playing the game without spending a cent and hey if it was worth it I might even buy premium access.
Age of Conan: Unchained is your typical MMORPG and functions essentially in the same manner, you quest, raid and PvP all the same. The differences are in the improvements on these traditional systems to provide a completely different take on how MMOs are played. Set entirely in the lore rich world of Conan the Barbarian, players are able to explore a world crafted to a likeness that even Howard himself would approve of.
)
Gameplay – 7/10
As players create their first character and begin their Hyborian Adventure one thing will stand out initially; the combat system. There is no auto-attack, faceroll rotations to be seen within AoC and this is a welcome change. Players can swing their weapon from various directions (left, downward slash, right etc), but this is more than just a gimmick, enemies will defend from different directions more efficiently than others meaning you are constantly changing the direction in which you attack from.
The combat system keeps you engaged and save you from falling asleep during those grind sessions. Combat in Age of Conan really is a thinking man’s games; once you get past this initial mechanic there are combos to consider. Some skills will require you to follow up the initial attack with a directional swing, failing to do so will cancel the skill altogether. This adds a whole new element to combat, not only do you have to keep track of the defense HUD but you must also avoid using combos which require you to swing at a highly defended direction.
When you are recreating a world backed by so much literature and lore there is the task of making sure you bring this to life. Players will level and quest, crawl through solo and group dungeons and follow stories arch along the way. Funcom has done a great job of providing plenty of content for players to sink their teeth into and the inhabitants of the world really feel like they are something you would pick straight out of the Conan Universe. Quests are handed out in hubs, the first being the famous city of Tortage.
Something interesting here is Funcoms approach to questing and grouping, some dungeon areas are a single instance meaning you can just waltz in and see if anyone is around to help. An interesting addition although not quite unique is the single player experience offered within the game, first experienced in Tortage going into “night mode” offers players their own instanced version of the city to quest and explore in on their own. The quests are well written and there is a gripping storyline present to keep players on the edge of their seat.
)
Age of Conan isn’t by any means a casual game, as player progress further into the game into the end-game dungeons there is a lot of frustration that will be met by those unprepared. Staying in line with an engaging combat experience, dungeons will throw everything they have at you to keep you on your toes. Some dungeons will have you creeping through jungle paths trying not to touch poisonous plants while wild pigs charge down the path trying to knock you down while others will have enemies shooting down arrows at you while a boss is throwing down aoe damage. To succeed in this game you need to execute your strategies perfectly.
Innovation – 6/10
Rather than make bold claims and throw out that Age of Conan is an innovative title I am just going to outline a few things that Funcom have done well. Ever disagreed with how everyone in an MMO is a ghost? Seems like Funcom did and everyone in the game is made of solid matter, no passing through mobs or players. When groups of enemies are attacking a player they will spread out and surround them rather than stacking on top of each other.
The next thing Age of Conan does well is take up your hard drive space, with just a basic install my game folder is 21.5GB, it is said if you download everything the folder can get up to around 35GB. This is massive for an MMO, and I am yet to see anything other than World of Warcraft that can match this mammoth size for an MMO. Players will see once they enter the game however, why all this space is required.
Aesthetics – 9/10
Exploring the world is something different, the zones aren’t just wide open spaces spotted with groups of mobs. Each area in the game has its own atmosphere and players will be creeping through jungles, riding on horseback down winding mountain paths and navigating narrow city streets. Each new area possesses a spectacular view that will have players stopping for a moment to snag some screenshots and absorb the fully realized world.
)
Not only is the world massive but the graphics are really holding up well. Some of the sights to be seen in the game are breathtaking, stepping out into the world and seeing the rays of light shine through the trees, tall fields of grass that part at you step through them and some highly detailed textures all make the world come to life. Funcom has gone to great lengths to put every little detail they can into the game. Simple things such as statues have immense amounts of attention paid to each little groove, what material it is made out of and how the light should reflect.
The result is a game that can still stand up with today’s contenders for graphically demanding games. This experience can be held back a little with the clunky ui, while everything works there are some things which still need improving. The map for example has a legend that blocks over part of your view, meaning you have to zoom to an appropriate level and drag that section of the map out from behind the legend.
The audio for the most part is one of the most immersive parts about the game, the soundtrack is absolutely epic and as a player who normally mutes the music straight away due to being insanely picky; I was surprised to find it hard to play without music. The soundtrack fits perfectly and helps to set the mood for each distinct region within the world. To accompany the songs of Conan is a large chunk of audio dialogue; players will notice all their quests in Tortage are given with audio dialogue rather than the standard wall of text. Don’t get too excited however, as this randomly stops later on in the game; this is the only complaint as far as aesthetics and really cheapens the experience once you get to this point.
)
Polish – 7/10
This is a big issue for me, there are a lot of things in the game that are incredibly polished but at the same time there is a list of things that are ultimately broken. For the most part the game is a very polished Free-to-Play title, the game looks great, and there are tons of quests, deep combat systems and some clever gameplay mechanics.
There is however a lot of issues with lag, which for the most part is just due to the amount of information the game, must send to and from the server, but also a lot of balance issues which can break late game for some players. Classes are still in need of tweaking and balancing, a never ending battle for all developers and the difficulty of some of the later raids is questionable. Crafting is something that is also lacking, and needs quite a bit of work to bring it up to date.
Social – 8/10
Nothing brings people together like all-out war, and Age of Conan has plenty of it. Guilds can build their own player cities and engage in siege warfare and large scale world PvP. This creates a bond in a world gone mad, where the lines are blurred between friend and foe. All the standard chat features are here, and players should never have any trouble contacting the players they are after; the social system works great. The game does feature a group finder similar to other MMOs that makes finding a group for particular quests or dungeons a breeze.
Longevity – 8/10
The level cap in Age of Conan: Unchained is 80 and there is plenty to keep players busy, if you are just starting out then expect months of effort before you are rubbing shoulders with the top players. As the years have passed Funcom have managed to expand the game massively, adding in regular Adventure packs and updated content, the latest being the Savage Coast of Turan; inspired by the latest Conan movie.
)
The benefit now is that AoC has had time to mature, the content count has grown dramatically and there is now something in the game for the hardcore full-time players and those who just wish to take their time and do their own thing. There are announcements being made even still for plans to further continue the release of content on a larger scale, but right now there is more than enough on offer for players.
Value – 8/10
Age of Conan: Unchained as a whole provides a very solid MMORPG experience, and the game as a whole is extremely high quality. The problem lies in the subscription model, the games says Free-to-Play but it seems we need a new genre to define AoC and some other titles of late. AoC is more Free-to-Try than anything else, while you can experience a large portion of the game for free; the end game content requires you to buy the adventure packs to gain any value out of the game.
If you come into the game expecting to one day become a subscriber then you will be a lot less disappointed. There is no rush to subscribe for premium or and players can experience the majority of the content on offer before deciding whether the game is worth the time and cash investment.
Conclusion
There are so many factors that need to be taken into account to decide whether this game is right for you, and it really comes down to whether you can look beyond the imperfections. If you are a fan of the Conan Universe, or the pirate lifestyle in general then it goes without saying there is absolutely no excuse not to give Age of Conan: Unchained a go.
)
Funcom has brought the game a long way since its rocky beginnings and a lot of care has been taken in improving each aspect of the game that is currently not up to par. For a game that for quite some time looked like it would cease to exist, it is exciting to see the game back on its feet. There are many hours to be spent exploring this beautifully crafted world, and I completely geeked out many times. The latest Adventure Pack has helped to bridge a large gap between the Tier 3 and 4 raids, an issue that plagued many players and halted progression. With the right eye players will find a magical world full of rich lore, gruesome gore and plenty of barely clothed wenches. What more could you truly ask for?
Link's not working for me.
Yep, link's dead.
I tried it once but could never dte into it, I think I got to level 25 or so. The main things I didn't like was the armor design (I realize it fits in with the story, etc but I just didn't like the models) and the the crafting (hated only being able to gather/craft only in one place). The combat was OK but it was still button mashing just like any other MMO, Graphics where nice, especillly the water affect.
Is it Tortuga or Tortage... I thought Tortuga was Pirates of the Carribean.
It is still a button mashing game and for me it's gamebreaking. Having to press 5-6 keys to do 1 move is annoying to me.
I keep thinking how whenever the amazing combat is mentioned people forget to add that it's true if you're playing a physical damage class. How convenient that spellcasters are often forgotten when combat is mentioned.
Edit: rangers
So, here's a question. The title says: You've Come A Long Way, Baby!
This takes me back to my ultra-whitebread suburban upbringing when men were men, women were women, and the cigarette companies could still push their brand of poison as natural, even healthy.
So, speaking of cigarettes and clumsy segueways, wasn't that the motto for Marlboro cigarettes? Or some brand of cigarettes? So my question is...did Marlboro (or whoever) rip that motto from sometime further back in pop culture history, or did they pioneer the You've Come A Long Way Baby motto?
Yay Conan!
Age of Conan is the only MMO that does NOT feel like a kids game to me, besides EVE.
Virgin Slims (clicky) and an Album name of Fat boy Slim's second album (clicky) which i think is where i remember it from, not old enough to remember the cig's and it was probably and american brand that we never saw in blighty.
Yep, I'm with ya. The problem I have with it, is that it takes what's always been a negative about past MMO's(you spend less time looking at the action on the screen and more on cooldown bars and effect icons) and makes it FAR worse. What good is having a bitchin' move where you rip a dude's heart out of his chest and laugh when you're busy UI staring, trying to set up your next combo?
It's Tortage. Tortuga is a real place in the Carribean, and Tortage is influenced by it.
The combat in this game was hailed as being innovative. It was half way there. Darkfall and Mortal Online were fully the way there.
Age of Conan was always a half way there game for me.
Innovative combat is where you can actually swing your sword around regardless of targeting some enemy. It is where if something comes into contact with your sword it hurts them. Physics not button mashing and auto tab targeting.
Conan failed on this level. It still does.
It is also just a mass of instances. It does not feel like a coherent world. Nothing open to it. Sure some of the instances look big and open but they are just levels in a level based game.
Levels, classes, instances, button mashing ... no thanks. I have had enough of that crap to last a lifetime.
However I will say it did the levels, classes, instance, button mashing very beautifully. You could almost perve on your female avatar if you were sad :)
Yeah oops, just finished watching the new Pirates of the Carribean movie (terrible) the other day, thanks or picking it up ;)
Actually, that's exactly what was possible as everyone who really, actively played AoC for a duration of time would and should know: regardless which mob you targeted, you swung your sword and every mob that was in its range got hit even if you hadn't targeted those other mobs. Smart players manoeuvered in such a way that each hit of them would hit several mobs at the same time.
So yes, your melee attacks and hits were a PBAoE cone, not based upon tabbing to your target, and it was even the case that if you had a longer weapon like a polearm, then also the range within which mobs would get hit would be larger.
Conclusion: AoC didn't fail in that aspect, it is ingame for melee combat, and that's the example you were talking about with the sword swinging comment.
And that's exactly how AoC works for melee characters. You can swing your sword and apply combos, they'll land if the enemy is in front of you and within range regardless of wether you have targeted them or not. Actually when playing a melee character a big part of the game is to position yourself and your enemies so that most (or all) of them are in front of you so your attacks hits them all instead of just one. The reason you usually target your enemies in melee combat is to see which direction their shields are facing (so you can attack in different directions), but as a melee there's no need to even target anyone ever (well, maybe for the charge ability)
No it is not just a button mashing combat... and no it is not just for melee...
Of course you have to press buttons (how could you combat without it?), but positioning is crucial; crucial to avoid damage on yourself and to maximize your damage output in one or multiple mobs; in AoC there is splash damage wich means that a single target attack can damage multiple mobs (again positioning) and this works with casters and melee.
And as said before, your weapon will damage anyone in its cone (and if your target isn't there he won't suffer any damage).
This I have to admit is true.
I am trying to figure out what exactly some people are looking for when it comes to combat. Do they want some kind of mind probe so they do not have to touch their keyboard? Do they want to play a PC game using a console controller?
What the hell?
Of course there is button mashing!
AoC had the most realistic type of combat for melee AND caster types over all other MMOs I have played. If an enemy was within range of the player's intended target, it was struck by the player too. I was able to kill several at once even though I was only targeting one. One of my favorite classes was my Polearm DPS Guardian. I could do massive damage!
Age of Conan was a real pleasure for me to play. I was in Early Access and played for 3 years straight. I just might return as I wait for another MMO am I looking forward to.
Lots of people complaning about the buttons for styles. Once you played your character for more than 10 levels the styles were second nature, and it felt like you were a part of the combat. Rather than just pressing 1 button moves.
Having several 80s (Demo, Bear Shaman, Guardian, and Hox) the game is as shit as ever, PvP is still ruled by the top 5% elite, PvE is a joke and still broken (Wing 3 is still broken to this day) and open world PvP on Deathwish is an awful joke of Anvil of Scrub and other zerg guilds who suck simply using 20 on 1 tactics.
It's worth the DL to goof around leveling and check out the scenery, but it has 0 longevity.
AGAIN another one sided, biased review that does nothing but praise a game and not drop a single line about it's major letdowns.
Subscription based game including a cash shop, pvp gear to buy are i.e. two of the main reasons people avoid the game. Yet you list "balance issues" and "large hard drive requirements" in the cons? Which mmorpg does not have balance issues? And harddrives go for nearly a cent a terabyte nowadays. BTW: where is the "deep combat system" playing a caster?
This site with it's "reviews" has really lost it long time ago. It's all about high raitings and praise.
It did fail. Like all games that try to focus on one primary feature. They wanted advanced combat, they tried to create it. They failed to create decent content. Players quickly got bored of the combat and when they looked up, they saw... nothing. Cookie-cutter kill 10 X gather 15 y quests.
Players left.
It seems like the common trend.
I've always wondered why MMO's can't take after single player games? Stop f*cking balancing the game on PvP... NO ONE CARES. Look at every single game that tries to balance classes for PvP, you end up with a dull, pile of crap.
You do realise you can minimize the legend in the minimap right? I do agree with you though, the UI is extremely clunky and is the only thing in the game that has not aged well.
Never did actually notice that you could do that, but yeah definitely one of the things that still needs an overhaul.
aged well? when the game came out the UI was crap to begin with, it was like they took the AO interface and slashed out all the detailed info and dumped it on AoC
during beta i thought the UI was bad and they haven't improved it since! heck daoc has a better UI than conan, and daoc's interface is awful.
one thing i did like about AoC is that they attempted to make hybrid classes so that casters would be at least somewhat fun.
though i have to admit that they dropped the ball a bit by making PoMs more desired than they should have been, but then again who wouldn't want to play a class that can do damage well and heal?
then again like fc always does, they broke the classes rather than making the classes that lagged behind better.
i swear funcom just loves to chase their collecive tails rather than learn from their mistakes.
it makes me question the worth of getting the secret world or not.
Vanguard does not feel like a kids game and is a very mature feeling MMO.
I think, if you haven't played Mount and Blade, you might not understand why some might say the melee is still button-mashing in AoC.
Try it.. it has a free trial to level 7 or some such (warbands, not fire n blade, that one's game is nerfed to a crappy quest based system instead of a sandbox)
That's the sort of combat MO wanted to replicate (not very well at all). And no, DF isn't anything close either.
Why is AoC's aesthetics not a 10 out of 10?
Overly critical there, champs.
Melee combat is the most fun I've had in any mmo. It's addictive and the major reason why I play this game from time to time.
The awesome graphics (best looking mmo I've played) also help.
You made me curious about Mount and Blade and I will try it; however here we are talking about MMOs, so in this genre AoC combat is different from the majority of the other target-tab-1-2-3 MMO combat systems.
And as I and others said it is not just a matter of mashing; if you combat in AoC like that you will fail, caster or melee.
The big diference between casters and melee is that the caster must select and face one target, but the position still plays its role and you can maximize your damage and reach multiple mobs if you position yourself correctly.
I went back to AoC a little over 2 1/2 weeks ago. I am honestly loving it. I played from beta to about 6 months from launch. A lot of the bugs have been fixed though I do come across one now and again but nothing game breaking. I am having a lot of fun back on my 80 guardian. I went back first for a week on f2p just to see how it was then decided to sub again. There is so much to do and I love the AA system. EQ did it and it made you want to keep playing at max level. Glad they implemented this. Hoping to do some raiding again soon I loved that.
Parts of the UI coding was in fact copy and paste from AO. Actually there were things like tool tips and other stuff containing text blocks from AO in AoC's UI in the beta.
It's my experience exactly. They're trying to push the boundaries, implement 'refreshing' ingredients, while they basically offer the exact same, but add a lot more hassle to it. Combat is still pressing keybind 1 to activate a skill, standard as any other MMO, but it adds directional combat 1+2+1 to activate. Half the time I spend looking at the indicator, trying to fire off what should be a basic attack.
Too bad really, because the atmosphere is unrivalled, no other MMO comes close. Visuals are stunning, movement and animations top notch.
I still love the combat. Sure it is mashing buttons, but I could describe any game I've played except Wii (Mashing Button) that way.
Once I got used to playing a class, I never had to look at the directional keys, just positioning, terrain and shields.
And there are so many details I love, a guard severed in two under a door you have to break down, the way your character's face looks angry in combat, the sound effects are top notch.
If you like the game don't quit just because it places you some gameplay and coordination challenges. Everybody needs some training in the beginning.
Another thing is that every 1-2-1 is a different move from the combo and you do damage with the opener and with the finisher.
Played the game in beta and oh boy it just didn't feel like a MMORPG. You are talking about beautiful enviroments but you're leaving out one of Conans biggest problems.
I n s t a n c i n g areas while well done are small, instanced and very linearic, its the opposite of an open world.
I've played some sort of summoner and found the combat system horrible: - look at your best skill and spam it, enemy AI has been laughable at best yes, they did move but they didn't heal or run away with low health.
There were absolutely no group mobs or even raidencounters outside of dungeons just tons of soloable mobs.
I've read some things about the game lately they may have had some things but going p2w is a big nono for me. You forgot to mention some things like xp scrolls, gear, mounts for real $ on top of a monthly fee thats what unchained really is.
Conclude:
Pros:
- top graphics
- brutal
Cons:
- p2w xp/stat scrolls, mounts, gear for real $ on top of a monthly fee
- incredible small world
- heavily instanced
- heavily button mashing combat system
- no death penalty
- outside of instances you don't need other players
- offline levels
RE: Button Mashing: I always thought of that term as meaning random mashing of buttons without finesse. That is far from how it worked int AoC.
AoC required skill to do well (in melee). I still count my Bear Shaman as the most interesting class I've ever played (maybe second most interesting). The fact you actually had to learn your class rather than hit the same three button over and over made it so worthwhile. And if you couldn't handle it, there was always a caster class for you!
I left the game when the only content left for me was to run the Villa Dailies and farm materials for crafting for weeks until hitting cap. Tortage was still the best newbie area ever, even with the fetch quests. The zones may have been instanced, but they were big enough to allow exploration.
The thing that disappointed me was that mounted combat never really developed into something viable. You had some moves you could do, but the fact was you weren't killing anything challenging without demounting.
Your score is too high.
I suppose that if you were just seeing the game for the first time, and you had very little experience with other MMOs, you might be tempted to give it an 8.
But I've been playing MMOs for far too long.
My score: 6.5
Yeah, because all the other MMORPGs out there right now are soooo much better.
"Its gewd for newbs, but not for us serius MMOerses."
The game is an 8. Its a fair rating.
It's easy to figure that you don't play the game for some years.
Pay 2 win? Wrong.
Spam 1 skill? Outdated. Mobs don't heal? Outdated. No group mobs? Outdated. No death penalty? Outdated.
Instanced? Yes, a lot. Small? Really?!
I have 6 chars with mounts. Didn't spend an euro.
Offline levels, xp potions, pvp (that you can farm) and vanity gear (no pve gear on shop)... you are free to buy them or not. It's really up to you.
When reading some of the comments here it comes really obvious that some are coming from: people that didn't play the game in the last year, or from people that quited in the first 10-15 levels.
AoC real problems are instancing, lag, some bugs (not gamebreaking though) and nothing to do besides killing tons of mobs.
Make me a favor and let me know your list of 7+ MMOs...
You're entitled to your opinion; I'm entitled to mine.
Mine is based off of ~15 years of experience playing different types of MMOs. I haven't played them all (for instance, UO never appealed to me), but I've played enough of them to know what I like.
I liked the graphics in AoC. I didn't mind the combat system, because it was different than what I was accustomed to. But, to me, it has almost zero replayability because it forces players to go through Tortage all over again. Let me bypass Tortage after I've done it once, and I'll re-evaluate my score.
Until then, it gets a 6.5 from me.
My biggest issue with the game? The awful LFG tool. Probably the worst I've seen in an mmo.
If you have one character above level 50 you can make another one free. Thus completely skipping Tortage etc.
There is pvp gear in the shop you said it yourself,so how is it not p2w?
And the zones are small.Takes less than 5 minutes on a mount from one end to the other in any zone.So its not really big is it.
It is his opinion,just as sure that some people feel there are a lot of 7+ mmos,some think there are none 7+.
This is not really a criterium, it takes less than 5 minutes to cross most zones in most MMORPG's, from WoW to LotrO to EQ to Aion, you name it.
If you're referring to this: "All players with characters already above level fifty now have a one time option to create another character that starts life at level fifty.", then we're not on the same page. You're referencing a "one time" short-cut to 50.
I don't want the ability to create a new level 50 character. I want the ability to play the WHOLE game with a different class/character, but I want to skip past Tortage after I've done it once.
Let me bypass Tortage and go straight to my respective starting zone at level 20. Is that too much to ask?
For the PVP gear, you can farm it. Don't need to buy it.So its pay or play... And that's the only gear you get. PVE none.
That talk of the 5 minutes once again you are wrong... Some you can cross in 5 minutes using fast mounts, others you don't.
You really should play the game before keeping on with biased statements...
Yea I have to agree with you on that. I do feel that the combat gameplay is the most annoying.
They should do something about it.
You can leave Tortage after 4 to 6 hours of gameplay... As you I would love to have different starting areas, but if this is your main issue with AoC...
As for the LFG tool yes it is tota crap. I forgot that negative point as I don't regularly use it...
That's your opinion if you don't like it, you don't like it. I just have one problem with what you said here. Button mashing. If you're button mashing in this game you're not going to be completing those moves. Button mashing usually refers to brawlers where you can pretty much press anything and be successful, that does not describe AOC's combat in any way.
I agree with Distopia. It's not a bunch of buttons for one move. At least for physical combat ( I do wish they would add spell weaving into a similar system as they intended). It's different buttons ..performing different attacks from different angles..building to a final fatal blow. You can chain attacks in other games and its fuggin spectacular..but somehow when you do it in AOC..people think its bullshit key-spamming. I don't get the dichotomy.
People want innovation..and when it is added..no matter how slight or major....we still hear bitching. Chronicles of Spellborn also had a nice...different combat -wheel system that took a little bit of pre-planning and a little quick thinking (as far as using combat moves or abilities in a certain way to attain the best result) It also had a decent original and interesting..albeit slightly small..world rendered in a uniquely pleasant and charming art style and well written quests with ,at times, a quirky sense of humor.Look what happened to that game.. most had probably never even heard the name before today.
The starter area of Tortage is the best part of this game.
You can totally skip Tortage. You can also level many toons and still not repeat the same quests. There are many different areas to level in. Can be a totally different experience each time..
Not sure how a Starting Area designed just to get someone to 20ish is a game breaker even if you could not skip it. Every game has a sort of starting process. It takes a few hours to hit 20ish even if you don't skip it.
Just knock out your night missions for some quick decent starting loot. The NIGHT quests in Tortage are DIFFERENT from class to class. (Soldier,caster,priest,rogue are all different)
Please explain how "you can totally skip Tortage". Perhaps I'm reading too much into your assertion but, to me, that means that there is an option available when you create a new character to actually SKIP Tortage entirely, and go to the starting area for your race. If there is no such option, then your statement is false.
The balance of your post suggests that what you really mean that it's possible to shorten the amount of time you have to spend in Tortage. Finding a "work-around" so you can avoid the "Tortage grind" isn't the same thing.
And, unless things have changed, you have to meet minimum level requirements before you can do each night mission. Which means that you either have to do some daytime quests, or you have to grind for levels.
Am I really being that obtuse? Is my request really that difficult to understand? Or are those who are bent on defending this game being disingenuous, and trying to trivialize my concerns by posting misinformation.
Which is it?
I think I remember the guy behind the counter in the Tavern giving an option to "skip" tortage, I could be mistaken though.
I thought AOC was a decent game,it even did some things i liked as in the climbing/ladders and different skills.AOC was alot like VG was for me,it just lacked that little bit of depth in both class and combat design.
I was and still am spolied by what ffxi first created for class and combat structure,so it is hard for me to accept anything less.
Example is combos in AOC were ok,i just lined up my icons on hotbar and really didn't have to any thinking.In FFXI combos were all about team work,whcih i prefer bigtime,solo combos are for single player games.
Aoc does have very nice graphics and good detail throughtout,but i quite often felt like i was in a siongle player game.Again i wil luse an example ..
I make a player in FFXI,i start in a huge city and i am free to go abotu where ever i feel like,this is a true mmo design.In AOC just like many other games you are forced into a linear pattern of gameplay.Even Wow has you attain your gear doing their linear quests,FFXI again did not do that,it was about freedom.
Over all i would say the reviewer gave a pretty good accounbt of the game,i agreed with most of what he had to say.I still feel AOC is a game decent and worthy enough to play just as Vanguard is,but in both cases,the lack of players in a MMO,just makes it hard for me to stick around.
One thing i might mention is ,i really don't liek the EQ clones on how dungeons are done.What i don't like is how there is no way around movement without having to fight.Once again FFXI was more in depth as it had sight mobs/hearing mobs/magic mobs and undead scent.The more a game shows me the depth of design,the happier i am,i hate simplicity,which is why i recently quit FFXI as they turned the game into a real simplistic joke.
One of the NPC's in tavern has an option to skip THE REST of your destiny quest and leave Tortage to the mainland. However, I don't think it is option until around 15th level. I could be wrong. I know I did it once just to check it out and went to Khemet . I can't recall my level at the time but I do know I wasn't yet 20th level.. They do give an option to go right back to Tortage to finish up.
Funcom can't program a game if they tried. Just to see the new stuff I tried logging under my old account, nothing doing even though I could log into it via the web interface. So I created a new account, again nothing doing. Broken authenticator. Another POS brought to you by Funcom.
Not sure about the level (15 or 16), but skiping the destiny quest and leaving tortage are different things. The destiny quests you get at levels 5, 10, 15 and one at 19 to leave tortage. You can skip destiny quests, but if you skip the one at level 15 it'll just mean you'll stay in tortage until you're high level enough to pick up the 19 one, and at 19 you might as well just do the quest and leave than skip it.
To leave tortage earlier you must pick the smuggler's quest, which I'm not sure can be done starting at 15 or at 16, but starts on a note in the wall on the back of one of the last houses you see while going to the boat to white sands island. Your destiny quests aren't skipped this way but you leave the island, and if you want to start them again (next one at level 30 IIRC) you'd need to go back to tortage to do the destiny quests you left or tell your trainer there to skip them.
I mostly agreed with the OP. I have been playing on and off(mostly off) for 3 months or so. I have a demonologist to lvl 40 I think. I am in a guild that no one is ever on. I guess finding a better guild would be better. Graphics, music, gameplay is good. It's basically like LoTRO to me though. It's all questing. If I cba to make a new toon on the pvp server, I might feel different.
The gathering/crafting is a bit odd too. I can't harvest granite til i'm lvl 50? It's not a big deal, just odd. I don't know yet if I want to buy a sub or not. I enjoy logging in and playing some, but if I don't, I don't really care. Odd actually. I guess I will just continue my f2p, I mean free unlimited trial until I decide to stop playing it.
I think I will enjoy it more if I start a melee character as the demo is sorta boring...but I do like watching people burn alive. The HoX looks like fun, but I don't have access as a free 2 player.
Longevity 8 ? are you kidding ? if you play a couple of hours every day you will reach 80 within 4-6 weeks & then what ? even if you pay there is bugger all to do in AoC endgame other than grind for X,Y,Z.
I played from pre-launch & quit january this year. IMHO this game has never reached its potential and (free 2 play aside) in the current direction it is going it likely never will.
After reading the article there are two things that caught my attention. Number one, to be picky, is that Funcom is a company, which is a single entity, so you would say Funcom is or Funcom has, not Funcom HAVE. That was irritating, or should I say, I were irritated.
The second thing is (or were, lol), why didn't you give the graphics a 10 out of 10? Seriously, what game out there right now has better graphics? While many things are subjective, it seems like a game that still, arguably, has the best graphics of any MMO should get a 10 out of 10.
As for the game itself, I made several characters, but never got very far. The graphics are amazing and the combat is unique, but knowing that the end game PVP was weak kind of took the wind out of my sails.
Also, I should mention that, for returning players it can be frustrating to try to play the unchained, free-to-play version. I wanted to check out the new free for all PVP server, but I couldn't make a new character, nor delete an old character to allow me to do that. I returned for that reason specifically, but ended up giving up after I realized that I couldn't even try the server without making a new account. What a bummer.
Gotta say I've always loved AoC and I come back every now and then... The only reason I've not stayed is because simply... I couldn't get any of my friends to touch it with a ten foot pole with all the negativity about the game.(Which I've almost always disagreed with) They won't even touch it now. I'll probably rejoin after they put in the single server tech that they've been talking about.. or.. I get bored with SWTOR/GW2/Skyrim/ Alamar/Witcher 2/Diablo 3... Good thing about this long queue.. MMOs get better with time..:P
THIS is what I don't like about the game.
Actually, the only thing I don't like is the fact F2P accounts are stuck with a 2 gold cap with no cap increase available. Allow me to carry more than 2 gold on a character and I'd gladly come back and play.
People who pay real money for their gear in AoC when you already have a P2P subscription must be total idiots.
Tried this again recently, and I still cannot get past having to enter a password every time I want to execute a skill. It sounds really interesting on paper, but in execution it just does not work. Oh, and it only applies to melee skills. Stupid.
A re-review that skips the PvP portion of the game. Terrific.
Sorry but this re-review reeks of advertising. Though it is preety normal for specialized websites / magazines :/
Some things that was not mentioned about AoC:
cons:
- awful p2w model + if you want to play end-game you have to subscribe anyway
- claustrophobic small zones
- instanced world + loading screens
- game looks nice but still is awfully optimized
Finaly. Here is the re-review after going freemium ;)
"gold do a long way in AoC" Not like in WOW ehere you need 100Gold ore sow to get a mount. In AoC 2gold cap will hold until lvl 60-70. And guildbank can hold money for you.
And the conan world can feel smal in the start, but endgame playfields are 4-5times larger.
Also crafting isn't wothless...infact it plays a hand in making the best weapons in the game.
You hit the nail on the head here. Mount and Blade combat is something that everyone should try and then say that Conan combat is any good. Or oblivion.
Conan was half way there, it was close but no cigar. It was a button masher that simply was not the swing your sword and it might hit something, real physics. Not even close.
Darkfall and Mortal Online did actually get closer to proper combat.
Like nearly every MMO I've ever played, AoC slows down the leveling too much after the first few. It's not as bad as LOTRO (that one slows down to an unbearable crawl by level 12). It's not as bad as Rift (that got boring around level 15). But it's bad. I'm not new to the genre anymore, and I'm not entertained by killing countless things so repetitively that it puts me into a trance. It's okay sometimes, especially if I don't have to interrupt said trance to trot back and forth to various quest givers, but it's not okay enough to spend weeks or months doing it and calling that entertainment.
I want one of two things. I either want something substantially different and more entertaining than a quest grind to 'progress' in MMOs, or I want to level fast. I especially hate leveling fast at the beginning, then getting bored as everything slows down. At least one of the oft-quoted Skinner Box articles claims that fast early leveling, with lots of new skills as rewards, is just a way to condition the hamsters to their wheel and keep them grinding on long after everything slows down and gets boring.
I guess I make a lousy hamster these days, because my reaction to getting bored around level 20 is to roll a dozen alts just to make sure every race, class, and skill combination is equally dull after the first few levels. Then I quit the game in disgust. Which is what I eventually did in AoC, after I realized that pvp really isn't that easy to find or fun for a solo player and doesn't sufficiently compensate for the level grind. However, the unique combat system probably was responsible for keeping me playing long after I would have quit anything else.
M&B combat is fun and takes some timing and skill.Unfortunately we're talking about MMO combat. If M&B were made into an MMO it would likely have hotbar combat like the majority.
Game is still the same ... loading time is gigantic , game lags like hell .... :/
Why do people stare at the UI, okay very obviously for the first few times and with new skills it's logical to get to know them, but in time very quickly you can easely remember them and just look at what's going on and forget about looking at the UI, atleast I can and I can't imagine any seasoned gamer to really have problems remembering something that simple.
Overall I did enjoy the game when I returned in Unchained, I didn't experiance the lag some complain about (apart from a minor mishap on my end at some patch that didn't allow me to play the DX10 version for about a week) but then again I must have a nasa build system (lol), but overall it lacked the feeling of it being a virtual world to me, which I feel would be the the ultimate Age of Conan if it was more of a virtual world aka sandbox game instead the themepark it is.
I know this is not your fault but I have to say that having an SSD helped major time with the problem I had with AoC's loading screens and texture loading.
Yay!!!
My MMO baby gets 8!! Now, finally people start to agree with me. Head over and join us in AoC.
The worlds most underapprechiated masterpice is waiting on you :D
Tried the game last week, and quickly remembered why I quit last time:
- Too much instaing. Up to several load screens just to do a single quest.
- The starting area feels like a solo game. And that's exactly what the night time part is.
It may be better at higher levels, but these two issues broke the game for me.
guys, guys, you are the reason I dont often botter looking at this foruns anymore, but I this case I feel the urge to join th conversation., to me looks like the bashers are in grather numbers then the lovers, and youi konw why?
The lovers are too buzy PLAYING THE GAME!
I will go back to the game and enjoy one of best comunity in game I have crossed paths with.
I will go back in game to one of the most fun combat system ever.
and I will go back to one of the best guilds I have ever played with.
Cya guys
I hope you find your game.
And believe me It will not be SWTOR...
I remember how the promised similarity to m&b hooked me into aoc, back then 3years down to release (early 2005). But it was an empty promise, the AoC combat system is way from the experience you have in m&b. also they completely disregarded mounted combat (what they had in 2008 as mounted combat is a joke, compared to m&b).
i have to admit that after playing AoC I could not play any other "oldschool" mmorpg after that, because the combat of these games (e.g. lotro) felt far more slow and boring after the AoC experience. So I have to say that AoC _to_some_extent_ delivered a fast(er) paced combat.
BUT on a close look it is just more difficult for the user, it requires you to push the skill button and then you must follow a certain combo of directional strikes to unleash that melee skill with special effects (e.g. slow, bleed) and if you fail that it won't come. in other games you would have had the same by pressing merely one button. so really no big deal in terms of innovation. but on the other side it did not offer any more tactical value or depth. e.g. there is no correllation between the directional strikes of your character and the opponent's, as you would have in real combat (and NO, darkfall doesn't have this either, it's just stupid bashing in only 4 directions, that's not swordmanship).
ok maybe that directional defense and shield stuff was new- granted. an insignificant feature in my book.
prior to aoc launch there was a community proposal how to change the combo system, there you would just follow a sequence of directional strikes and IF it correllates to a sequence of a certain skill (super backstab of darkness) it would just produce this move on the go. this system would have had allowed to change the sequence in the go and maybe switch to another strike that has the same beginning but another ending (and effect). which would allow you to produce feints or react to the opponents combo if you was able to anticipate the strike that he is trying to do.
THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN INNOVATIVE. but they screwed it up.
i logged into AOC some days ago for trying the unchained experience and after looking into the item shop and the restrictions the whole thing just felt like a huge money grab to me and i couldn't motivate myself to play this in the f2p version, but neither could i motivate myself to pay a subscription.
so screw it. they haven't learned a bit
"BUT on a close look it is just more difficult for the user, it requires you to push the skill button and then you must follow a certain combo of directional strikes to unleash that melee skill with special effects (e.g. slow, bleed) and if you fail that it won't come. in other games you would have had the same by pressing merely one button. so really no big deal in terms of innovation."
False. In the mainstream / bestseller / traditional (call it whatever you like) MMOs positioning in combat means nothing; or you face your target or you don't; attacks are either single targeted (to the tabed mob) or aoe. And here is the big difference between AoC and them where you hit everyone that is on the way of your sword swings or your spell path. If you didn't realized it, you never learned how to play it. Proper positioning and sometimes slight moves between parts of a combo are essencial.
About Mount & Blade started the tutorial yesterday. To be honest I hated it. Ok don't mash your keys, mash and move your mouse... but I will give it more time and I will try to learn it, although I have my doubts about how much I will enjoy it...
I long for the day a MMO will use a combat system akin to the one in Mount & Blade. It's a bit like Conan, but w/o the button smashing. You click left of the guy, you swing from the left. You click on him, you puncture him. And so on. You actually look at the guy you're fighting. You NEED to look at him, instead of learning silly key combinations. And it is way cool.
An SSD makes a huge, huge difference in playability for a lot of games. I was amazed at how much just getting a SSD improved AoC / Rift.
And the fanboys come out swinging.
Firstly this reeks of a paid review. As a number of people have noted this review is very light on details of the many problems and issus the game has.
Allow me to set the scene. I was until recently a very loyal and hardcore AoC player since launch. At the time I left, I had done everything there was to do with the game including 22 level 80 characters and 10 of those in full Tier 2 (2 in full Tier 3). Suffice to say I'm about as knoweldgeable as anyone else is likely to be about the game. This doesn't make my opinion mean more of course, but it does at least mean my opinion is informed (while still being an opinion ;))
Here's a little writeup on the issues I have I posted elsewhere.
The game is irrevocably flawed due to chronic mismanagement and there is absolutely no sign at all that Funcom have the will, desire, interest or ability to actually sort out the issues. After 3 years, it's clear they can't/won't actually make the game what it could have been. I see a few of these issues have been adressed recently - whoopie! Bare in mind it's taken them 3 YEARS to fix them.
- Bugs still in the game from the very beginning such as the imbalance of damage based on sex (damage is linked to the length of the animation played when your character performs a damage action. Female characters have faster animation so do less damage - I kid you not. This is now supposedly fixed sort of)
- Raids broken and fixed then broken again (the last expansion May 2010 was supposed to come with the Tier 4 raiding but only shipped with 2 of the bosses enabled. Both bosses were broken for a long long time, were fixed, broken again and now lie apparently half broken) Meanwhile, raiding guilds are left with the same T3 content they've been clearing for at least 12 months. (since I wrote this, the expansion has brought T3.5 raids - way to go. Don't fix or expand the already existing, broken T4 that was supposed to be COMPLETE 18 months ago instead introduce something the player base didn't really want)
- PVP exploits hugely unbalancing the game (Jost one is a number of classes, but mainly the Bear Shaman, have a PVP exploit of aborting the combat combination animation (called combo-skipping) that gave them a sizeable advantage in PVP. It's been known about for over a year and only now are they discussing fixing it. (they've now supposedly fixed it but it's apparently introduced other equally game breaking problems))
- Sieges crash repeatedly and randomly - the siege system has been broken pretty much since launch (remember it was one of THE main selling points). It goes through various rounds of being broken then being partially fixed again but mostly broken. Sieges are possible, just about, but still suffer random crashes. The fact that on any server theres 8 siege points and theres not even 4 guilds on any server anywhere that could get anywhere near the 48 needed for a full siege force makes this a moot point however (YES you can join with other guilds, yes you can siege but with 8 siege points, theres really not all that much going on)
- Massive PVP imbalace due to game mechanics - ANYONE who's played AoC in the past 12 months will know all about the Shrines of Bori and the MASSIVE cluster**** that turned out to be. Too much to go into but PVP10 gives you such a massive advantage in PVP that anyone PVP1-5 might as well just not bother (again yes you can work your way up to it over a VERY long period of time but the imbalance is staggering and soul destroying)
- The GUI, interface and guild management options are weak at best - the default GUI is dire and for some classes so bad (Conq, Jugger Guard, Necro) that if you stay with the default GUI you might as well not bother. Addon GUI's exist and make it usable, but that shouldn't be the norm. Guild management options are incredibly weak.
- Bag space is laughable - A minor issue really on the scale of it but when you've struggled to manage and control 7 or 8 "bank" characters because you can't store anything on them it becomes a major pita ;) The latest "F2P" option introduces a multitude of "social" vanity armour and items to buy only it all uses the same slots as your potions, tradeskill items and everything else. Way to go to generate revenue. The items are helpfully BoP.
- Lag, instability and glitches - It was all relatively stable when I left but thats relative. It's been so bad at times that you just had to stop playing for a few weeks until they eventually patched the problems. Every patch night was a running "joke" in the guild. Whatever it was they did on the night before patch ALWAYS caused lag and instability. The lag issues have never gone away. They are always there to some degree.
Need I really go on (because I could, believe me)? I could go on and on and on about the problems and issues. Unless you have been consistently and repeatedly beaten into submission on the game for years.
My complaint lies firmly with Funcom and their inability to execute and follow through on their promises. The game at it's core is exceptional. There is nothing quite like it. But AoC is a tragic story of unrealised potential and missed opportunities (with a hefty dose of dire attitude and approach to boot)
i loved how they choosed "UNCHAINED" for the f2p model..................whast a joke........
I bought this at launch, played less than 2 weeks. Playerbase pushed me out and it was so out of this world, bone headed I couldn't even call it ragequit. I laughed as I logged out for the last time. The area in question was patched shortly after that but it was the player initiated aspect that made me never reinstall the game.
Very early you get access to an open ended PvP zone and I went there at level 10 or so. A level 35 guy caught me at a respawn point and slaughtered me with pointless 1 shots for a good 20 minutes. He got no points, no skills, no tactical understanding from doing it because I never toughed the mouse or the keyboard the whole time and he used the exact same one shot to kill my low health newly rez'ed char. Over and over and over and over and ....
I laughed at it, let him do it for around 20 minutes to half an hr before I just closed the game. The idea that someone was allowed to, willing to and wanted to do something so dumb shit lame painted the game in a bad light for me and it never went away. I played EVE for 6 years, I understand that some players will destroy others work in a mindless impotence just because they can but in EVE the got a cheesy killmail or some 'tears in local' or some other lamer giggle. This guy got nothing. He could have been a macro for all I know.
Its too bad for AoC. I watched forums and I wasn't the only fatality to this lack of forward thing that some people will no matter how stupid, do things in game "cuz".
@ xxGBHxx you bring some negative points, the majority of them already adressed in previous comments (and the bag and bank space I don't find it that important but everyones has the right to state their opinion).
I should also say that your last sentence pretty much summarizes what I feel about AoC.
On the other hand it is weird to see someone who leveled 22 chars to level cap, raided with 10 of them, calling fanboy to others and being so harsh about the overall game experience. So one of two: or you had some good times in AoC even with all the problems you state and in the end it isn't that bad, you are just burned out with this game; or you are a masochist.
(whoops the forum ate half my post)
When I got the game in 2006, it took me at least 3 hours to get through the quarterstaff fighting tutorial, it's not easy. You might want to switch the control of the directional strikes to "relative direction to target" or something like this. this was the mode i got along with more easy than the other two (and it was the original default mode i believe). Over time you will find the perfect rythm for your weapon and how to string attacks etc. if you fight against more than 1 opponent positioning also gets extremely important (but more for defensive purposes, several guy beating you up will kill you in no time).
Also, you might have misinterpreted my ranting so that M&B is a superior swordfighting sim. In fact it is not. From the mechanics other games offer, it might be somewhat innovative. From the perspective of realworld swordmanship it is almost as far from that, as most melee games.
What I liked most in the game was the mounted combat aspect which I find more fleshed out from all games I know of today. You don't have many games where you can charge with your galloping warhorse and a couched lance into a mob of infantry. Also the archery uses a physics model, so being a dangerous horse archer on a galloping horse requires quite a lot of player skill (and char skill on top of that). All in all, it is a nice simulation of medievalish skirmish battles with various troop types (infantry, cavalry, archers). and for some time the promise of this experience to be repeated in AoC was fuelled by Dev posings and so on. When after release it turned out to be far from that and a lot of potential just dumped.
M&B far from perfect, don't get me started on the things that could be improved. Pretty much everything, really! But name me another game with a similar combat experience!
(sorry, something went wrong with my previous posts)
Regarding M&B
When I got the game in 2006, it took me at least 3 hours to get through the quarterstaff fighting tutorial, it's not easy. You might want to switch the control of the directional strikes to "relative direction to target" or something like this. this was the mode i got along with more easy than the other two (and it was the original default mode i believe). Over time you will find the perfect rythm for your weapon and how to string attacks etc. if you fight against more than 1 opponent positioning also gets extremely important (but more for defensive purposes, several guy beating you up will kill you in no time).
Also, you might have misinterpreted my ranting so that M&B is a superior swordfighting sim. In fact it is not. From the mechanics other games offer, it might be somewhat innovative. From the perspective of realworld swordmanship it is almost as far from that, as most melee games.
What I liked most in the game was the mounted combat aspect which I find more fleshed out from all games I know of today. You don't have many games where you can charge with your galloping warhorse and a couched lance into a mob of infantry. Also the archery uses a physics model, so being a dangerous horse archer on a galloping horse requires quite a lot of player skill (and char skill on top of that). All in all, it is a nice simulation of medievalish skirmish battles with various troop types (infantry, cavalry, archers). and for some time the promise of this experience to be repeated in AoC was fuelled by Dev posings and so on. When after release it turned out to be far from that and a lot of potential just dumped.
M&B far from perfect, don't get me started on the things that could be improved. Pretty much everything, really! But name me another game with a similar combat experience!
The fact that this game has an 8 is amazing. And you think 10 out of 10 in anything is accepteable? This game is not PERFECT. 10 out of 10 is perfection. Just FYI
AoC is alright, but nothing special, I have a 80 barb, 71 ToS and a 51 Guardian. The game lacks a steady/loyal population... The AC never has any items of value, it has a very limited section due to the dead/slow population. I have been re-sub'd the past month and located 1 group after playing each night for about 6 days in a row. Funcom, they're beating a dead horse with AoC. The game just never took off from the gate like some of the other MMOs on the market.
The downside is no one really wants to grind out those 80 levels, most people came into AoC for the lore/PVP, but found themselves in a dead zone finding groups, quests for their level. Most were just trying to grind out levels, and from the dead space which is the lack of groups. When the game launched you almost had to just kill mobs from 67-70 because quests were no where to be seen.
AoC had high hopes, but it was a failure in terms of where it is today. Its F2P and still funcom has a hard time keeping people around, and that says a lot. I just hope TSW is a much better game in terms of keeping us fans involved, grouped, and with good steady content, that's actually worth while in game.
I think I recall that, too, but I don't think you could do it unless you were a certain level. After all, no mob in the open world is less than lvl 20. So... there's no real bypass other than the free lvl 50 mentioned above. A couple years ago they gave out unlimited double xp potions. I remember being able to use them and level almost solely on the night missions. That's about as close as it gets to any kind of bypass.
Tortage is pretty cool, IMO. Now, is it as cool as having separate Human/Night Elf/Dwarf/gnome/Tauren/Undead/Goblin/etc... starting areas? In terms of replayability, that would be a big fat no.
This game has its good points, but it has too many bad points for me to continue to play it.
The fact that you can buy items in the store that buff your stats for combat in PvE AND PvP puts it in the "will never play again" category for me. (Well, I'm old enough to know better than say "never", but that's going to have to change, along with some other things, and I just don't see it happening.)
I was one of the early subscribers, but bailed after a month because the game was an overall disappointment. It wasn't Conan. I recently went back (with a different attitude, not expecting the game to be Hyboria, but expecting it to be just a game that played decently) because of the new solo instances, and that's the good part, there are solo instances. There are of course other good things about the game too. The running story, even though it only comes up at certain level points in the game, is a good one, and feels personal. It also is made to adjust a bit to your class, something WoW devs could learn a lot from. Alternate Advancement, always a good thing, not just running around doing achievements so your achievement score goes up, allowing you to get - nothing. Another thing WoW devs could learn from AoC devs.
I love AoC melee combat. The be-headings never got old to me (of course I didn't play the game for years, either. :) ) Cloth melee (Herald of Xotli) - great fun! (Can be frutrating at times, but very satisfying, too.) I hate the fact that the servers get bogged down doing whatever they do, and you can click hotkeys or press keys at times to no avail - it can get you killed fighting mobs that are usually cake to you. Talk about frustrating!
But the game isn't meant for real players, in the end. It's made for players who want to level up without even playing (you get a free level-up every 4 days of paid subscription time), players who think it's okay to buy items that help you in combat (I imagine the absolute best items come from group raids, but you can still get nice items by buying something like $15-25 U.S. worth of FunCom points - I forget what they call them exactly - and using those to buy weapons and armor.) Age of CONAN should be about hard-core MMO R. P. G. - and what it's about is level 80 roflicopterxx ganking your level10 character because he's so bad at PvP he can't beat anyone within 10 levels of his own. (That being said, there is a real PvP server now.)
This game is not worth an "8" rating unless someone paid you to write this article. In which case, I hope they paid you well.
There is no way in he** I would ever play this game again. Funcom treats it's customers as though they owe them for paying to play their crappy game. Their attitude shows in everything their customer service department does and it's not customer service. They should call it customer abuse.
Do yourself a favor and don't bother with this game. It may be fun at first but when you finally realise how imcomplete, buggy and thrown together this game is, you'll agree.
Beautiful landscapes? Maybe, but that doesn't make a game.
This is perhaps the silliest post I've ever read at MMORPG.com. I highlighted the only pertinent information in yellow. Essentially the guy got burned out on the game after playing the hell out of it for years... so for 4 years it was the best game around, and now it's the worst. Sort of like having a manic-depressive as your head cheerleader.
No, 10/10 is as high as can be reasonably expected in one aspect of the game. It's hard to imagine an MMO more ascethically pleasing than AoC.
I think 4 to 6 weeks is very good nowadays, I am no expert in MMORPGs, but regular games take only a couple of days to beat, a week to beat 100%, for MMORPGs, in my little experience I can get to level 30 in DCUO in 2 days, so if it takes 4 to 6 weeks to get to max level I say that's good. But I haven't played many of this games, also I don't know your age, but if you don't live with your parents and work for a living you don't get to play much more than one hour a day, if you're lucky, so at a certain point a game can get boring for taking to long to beat, if you're a sutend living with your parents it's a totally different story, you get bored if you beat a game to fast, so a game must aim for a between to please all audiences. You should consider that games aren't designed just for you when you are rating them.