Video Games : Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Collector's Edition

Rating: - Beautiful but frustrating
I've been a Robert E. Howard fan for years having read all of his original Conan stories and many of his other works. The enjoyment of this game comes down to which class you pick. For example the Assassin class (a typical rogue class) can be fun but is very frustrating to play since its so easy to die when soloing. A Dark Templar (a dark fighter who leeches health from enemies) is much easier and thus, more enjoyable to play.

Pros:
+ This game visually captures that world in all of its grim beauty. Amazing backgrounds, detailed areas, and characters that all look different and dress in appropriate clothes for their job. Level 80 characters don't 'shimmer and glow' like the 70's in WoW. In fact, unless you put your cursor over them, you can't tell.
+ Interactive combat system
+ Mature rated game giving brutal fatlities, some more adult humor, and a lot less annoying kids like the ones on WoW
+ Guilds can build cities
+ Voice acted dialog. It lessens once you leave the opening area but Funcom is putting more in over time.
+ Each archtype (warrior, rogue, mage, priest) has a slightly different destiny quest line in the opening area of Tortage
+ The collectors edition comes with a cool book of art on the game and a great soundtrack

Cons
- Crafting and gathering are pretty much useless
- There is no economy since quest items are far better than anything you find
- Classes are horribly unbalanced
- Server populations are getting low meaning it can be hard to get a group together for some of the instances
- You travel to areas by talking to people. The world is not seemless - it is a series of instances (with several of each area running concurrently).
- Buggy. The game has some glitches though Funcom is doing their best to patch the game to make it better
- One one starting area meaning every character you play goes through the same area (though with the different destiny quests).

Overall its pretty fun. I plan to run one character to level 80 and then will probably drop the game unless there's more content to see or an expansion planned. This game won't have the staying power of WoW but is a nice adult diversion from being challenged to duels every 15 minutes on a PvE server.

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Rating: - Alot of potential that just falls flat
I was looking forward to playing this for awhile and was glad to pick it up upon release. The graphics, story, art book and combat system I thought was very good and unique but just could not get into the game. I tried to play many times but just keep getting back to it being just plain boring...

So right now it is still on mine and my friends shelves collecting dust and cannot rightly recommend this to anyone. If things change, I may give it another try but with all the options out there, I do not think that it will happen.

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Rating: - Forget the 5 star reviews
Forget the great reviews here. The 4 and 5 star reviews are going to be people who played the first fraction of the game, levels 1 - 20, in the single lowbie area which is the only of AoC part that's almost finished.

Levels 50+ are just bad content wise. There's no end game. Advertised features don't exist or don't work properly. Their test server for adding content is horrible, so patches made are always unbalanced and filled with bugs.

As of this date, most AoC servers are ghost towns. You can't find people to group with, raid with, or fight against. PvP servers are even worse. Guild rosters are made up alomst entirely of people who've left for other games.

This game needs to have server mergers or, preferably, to be put back into beta and re-released sometime in 2009.

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Rating: - A great game that never was...
I really wish Funcom would have waited and added content to the game before the released it. This game has probably the best combat system ever designed for an mmorpg and that's where it stops. Quests lack depth, pvp isn't fun, end game content didn't work...I could go on and on. Give Funcom another 6 months and this could be a great game but, it is probably too late. Server populations are 1/4 of what they used to be and falling rapidly.

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Rating: - Pretty Good.
Pretty good and the fatality moves are Awesome but think I will be sticking with LOTRO.