Video Games : Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Rating: - Superb game!
The graphics are among the best I've ever seen, for all game types! The music and sounds make you feel you're really there - in Hyboria, and the gameplay is really fun. I also like the fact that the quests are much more "alive". In WoW, you don't even bother reading the quests texts, but here you are taking part in the conversation with the NPCs. The combat system is innovative, although I expected something even more groundbreaking. It's Wow - but with a cool twist.

The downside: I had to buy a new graphics card to be able to play it, but then again, I needed a new one anyway ;)

If you're doubting if this is for you - find a friend who has the game, and play 7 days for free. I think you'll opt for getting your own copy after those 7 days!

When FUNCOM manages to remove the bugs, and integrate some of the missing features, this will be a total classic!

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Rating: - Mediocre Game for a Mediocre Genre
I find myself rather bored today, so I've decided to write up this review on Age of Conan (AoC), which I recently purchased and have been playing for the past month (in lieu of WoW). I intend to cover some game play issues, what I think of the story line, and finally just talk about some generic issues I have with the game.

The biggest thing I've noticed about game play is that there is NO sense of exploration to the game. In WoW and many other MMOs you had to explore an area on the map to "reveal" it. Also, the quest system is set up so that it tells you EXACTLY where you have to go on the map to complete the quest. It is like having an in-game version of wowhead.com for the AoC quests. What happened to having to actually FIGURE out where to go and what to do with at least some of the quests? I've realized lately that that is definitely my biggest qualm with AoC. Second, I think, would be the combat system.

The combat system is a rather interesting idea in theory, but in practice, Funcom simply didn't find a way to implement it well enough. There is no "auto attack" in AoC, but rather you must face your opponent and you have three target areas to attack: "to the left, to the right, and down the center". Next they bring in combo skills, which at first work by themselves simply by pushing the hot key, but then begin to require a combination of keys (attacking to the left, right or center) in order to succeed. It is a very interesting idea and may have been just fine in a single player game. But after a few days of constantly fighting useless mobs while leveling up it simply becomes very tedious. I much prefer the standard MMO combat system. One last qualm I will mention before moving onto the storyline of the game is this: the world is not seamless. This means, basically, in order to go to any other zone, there is a load time. What if you need to go someplace that is several zones away? You get to sit through four to five times of seeing the loading screen, which can be quite long considering the high system requirements of the game. Plus the sometimes long walks to get to the next NPC that will "transport" you to the next zone.

The story line. This is arguably the most important aspect of a game. It is what has kept me glued to games such as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Starcraft, and many others (while in other games, bad story lines are what have driven me away, e.g. Neverwinter Nights).

I find the story line in Age of Conan to be mediocre, at best. From levels 1 to 20, is it somewhat interesting. You start as an escaped slave at level 1 outside the City of Tortage, end up working your way into the city (takes a whole one quest to get in), then quickly become a hero in the "resistance" against the city's tyrannical ruler and eventually kill the tyrant with your own hand. It is not a bad story line, the first time through. There isn't really a whole lot of replay-ability, however. All the classes are basically the same, with only minor differences in some of the quests depending on your archetype (rogue, mage or soldier). So there are a total of 3 different versions of the 1 to 20 storyline.

After level 20, the personal story line surrounding your character comes to a screeching halt as you leave Tortage and are able to travel the world. The next quest that revolves around your character's "destiny", as Funcom puts it in game, is at level 30. That quest is basically a one dungeon fiasco (oh, maybe 30-40 minutes) and you're done. Then you have to wait until level 50 for the next part (which I didn't bother getting to). Other quests above 20 are basically like any other MMO with your generic kill collectors and get a number of this item by killing this mob. Now that I'm done with the storyline, I'll move on to some of my general complaints about the game.

One very big flaw in Funcom's design is the high system requirements. If you have less than 2 gigs of RAM and don't have one of the newest video card technology, forget even trying to play Age of Conan. And yet for all of that, the graphics really are not all that impressive. Sure, you get your "professional" reviewers who are probably paid by Funcom to say "The graphics are amazing!". But they're not. There are scenes at an active volcano where the lava is stationary. All the equip-able items in the game basically have the same generic look (I found two robes that are IDENTICAL except for the fact that one is long sleeved and the other is short sleeved). The rivers and waterfalls (uhm, waterfalls can be swum up or down, LOL) could have been worked on to be made to look more realistic.

The looking for group tools and the auction house are pathetic (almost as bad as WoW's LFG tool). You think with a brand new game they'd want to learn from WoW to create an easy way to players of the same level doing the same quest to find each other. Or that the auction house would be set up in a way to easily find the type of item you may consider buying.

I'll leave off at what I call the little obnoxious things which simply add to my disgust with the game. Classes were not at all balanced when the game was released. Mage-types STILL have trouble soloing their way up the levels while the soldier (tank) types blew there way through everything. I mentioned that you start off as a escaped slave at the beginning of the game. Every single time you make a character, you are forced to watch the SAME EXACT cinematic, which gets quite old when you simply want to explore all the character classes. Whenever you load up the game, it takes the liberty of scanning your system to make sure you're up to date with all the updates, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it didn't take 5 minutes every time to do it (even if you're just rebooting). Then, you have to click your way through start-up movies and logo designs before actually getting to the login screen.

Overall, I'd have to give the game 2.5 out of 5 stars. Its not bad for an MMO, but its not good, either. As far as MMOs go, I'd say stick with WoW or wait until Warhammer Online comes out. I wish I had a viable alternative for a non-MMO RPG to give you here, but all the companies seem to want to just pop out their own MMOs and get in the pay-by-month action instead of making a quality game. Personally, I think MMOs have ruined the PC Games RPG genre. I would love to see another Baldur's Gate sequel or something similar.

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Rating: - Disappointing
I was all excited about this game, but it was a major letdown after I left Tortage (the starting city).

Here are some of the things that annoyed me the most:
- unbalanced classes - not having a class may be better than being a Dark Templar for example, plus any class may be nerfed suddenly at the moment, with or without it being in the patch notes
- horrible bugs that still haven't been fixed - for example: don't roll a female char - your weapon speed is 1.46s, males are 1.2s - this means female chars combos take longer
- heavy instancing - unless you are staying in the same zone and in the same instance of that zone, I hope you like looking at the content loading screen
- lack of community and ways to communicate with people in-game - its like playing Oblivion, but online and laggy
- gathering and crafting system - most boring and tedious of any game yet (including EQ2) - that is the parts that are working, because a lot of it is very buggy or missing
- combat system - combat is not really enhanced by mashing 5 buttons with a small pause between each, the pause drives me insane
- stats and gear - tests have shown that, in most cases, you might as well be naked, or are indeed better off naked
- traveling - most people travel by suiciding, that says it all
- bag space very limited - have fun going back to town to sell things far too many times, and I pity you if you didn't get a promo bag to start
- help - need in-game help? you need to stay logged in while petitioning, good luck person #492!

Fun stuff:
- great graphics for first areas
- more adult themed than most mmos - small amount of swearing and nudity

Check out the forums too - it is mostly a bunch of people saying "I really wanted to like it, but I am leaving and here is my constructive criticism," followed by fanboi rants about how no mmo is good when it comes out, funcom is doing their best to fix things, aoc is trying to be different, etc.

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Rating: - Solid MMO, but lacking features compared to WoW
I'm a long time MMO player who got really big into World of Warcraft. I was hardcore in WoW, playing for 3+ years and raiding with one of the top PVE guilds on my server. I've always thought that with the sheer amount of time and development put into WoW, it would be impossible for anyone else to match the bar that has been set.

With that said, I don't think AoC tries to be better than WoW, and in many ways it's not. I'm currently a level 64 guardian on a PVE server, and here's my list of pros and cons I've seen.

PROs:
* Melee combat system of combos keeps you engaged in battle. You have to adapt and pay attention to each encounter which makes fights more interesting.
* Fatalities and decapitations are satisfying
* Graphics are really good (I have a pretty high end machine)
* The death penalty is basically 0. I like the fact that you don't get punished for dying, but then again it makes it a bit silly when dying is turned into a form of transportation because you can resurrect on the other side of the map instantly.
* Decent leveling pace and skill upgrades. I feel like levels don't take that long to get, and the new skills and talents can give you incentive to just get one more level.

CONs:
* Limited number of zones. I know the developers are working on this, but at the moment, there are only 1 or 2 zones for a character of any given level. This causes problems like quests being camped and a lack of variety.
* There are not enough quests to fully sustain leveling up. What I mean is that there will be times when you run out of quests, and when this happens, it can feel a bit disappointing to know that you have to grind on killing random enemies in order to become eligible for the next set of quests.
* Chat system needs work. Sometimes you don't see the proper chat lines, sometimes there's lots of spam, and the transparent chat window makes it hard to read sometimes.
* Crafting system is difficult to get into. There's no good information about how you progress in the crafting trees and the the whole thing seems unfinished.
* Instancing zones adds friction to getting groups started. I think they're working on this because at least you can find out which zone you're in now.

It seems like AoC is getting a much better reception than people anticipated, so the developers are rolling out patches twice a week to fix bugs, improve the UI, adjust balance, and introduce new content. I think that given enough time, this game could fix all the problems I've stated above and become a very compelling game. With that said, there are really only a few key features that differentiate this game from WoW.

* Better graphics
* Different combat feel and different classes
* Possible siege warfare

With that being said, the next expansion of WoW will introduce a new class and siege warfare, so all you're left with here is better graphics and the combo system for attacks.

When you boil it down, AoC is not a bad game, and it will give veteran MMO players something new to do and explore. However, it doesn't significantly change the genre and it has a lot of catching up to do. It's a fun change of pace for me, but I don't think I'll stick with this one for too much longer.

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Rating: - Just another MMO...
After reading all the hype and watching the trailers I ordered myself a copy expecting great things from this new MMO.
I've played many MMO's where you run around and hack 'n slash your way to a higher level with little actual skill involved in fighting or taking down your enemies.

After hearing about AOC's combat system where you can attack different parts of the body and do combo's etc I thought just maybe we finally have an MMO where the fighting really does take much skill...
Well I was dissapointed to say the least. Fighting in melee is not anything special, you press either 1, 2, or 3 depending on where your opponents shields are not, wooppeee! - in my opinion this is a lame attempt to make fighting interesting. Blocking and parrying are things I would like to see of more in MMO's but in AOC its better to rather spend your time just blatantly attacking your enemy than trying to get the timing of your parry's right, as a good parry doesn't give your character any advantage to attack your enemy or put them off balance.

I also played with the Demonologist and resorted to using mainly one spell from my arsenal all the way to lvl 20. This got really boring after a while and the uselessness of the 'pet' I could summon lead me to removing it from my quickbar.

With regard to the games graphics the environments are lovely but still look a bit behind todays cutting-edge graphics. The sound and music score are seamless and the music does a good job of providing the right atmosphere.

I found the game to be extremely stable running Windows Vista and my 8800GTS, performance was smooth with everything on high, however if I turned the BLOOM option on performance dropped considerably.

After leaving Tortage and reaching lvl 20 I have uninstalled Age of Conan. Why? The storyline was good but I really felt I was wasting my time running around killing monsters to get my 'next hit' by levelling up. Maybe I'm expecting too much but I feel its time companies developing MMO's start bringing something new to the table in terms of player economy, ways to skill up and reward instead of more hit points and new spells.