Age of Conan

I know this might be asking a lot on the mmorpg forums hah, but can anyone that plays the game give me a fair review of the state of the game as it is now... I'm very interested in playing and would like to get some insight on server population, stability,and fun factor..  I know there are a lot of things funcom failed to reach so far, but I would really like some postives also. thanks

Its a fun game.  Decent content. The server population is good.  I've played since release and have had almost no problems with crashing and bugs. 

Just realize that the vast majority of people that play, really like this game.  And also realize the vocal minority come to the forums and bash the game.  My advice would be to play it.  If you dont like it, then u dont like it.  But dont just take what people say for the 100% truth.

Originally posted by Sevensodd

Its a fun game.  Decent content. The server population is good.  I've played since release and have had almost no problems with crashing and bugs. 

Just realize that the vast majority of people that play, really like this game.  And also realize the vocal minority come to the forums and bash the game.  My advice would be to play it.  If you dont like it, then u dont like it.  But dont just take what people say for the 100% truth.

And I guess the vocal minority also posts on all the other sites too, including the official forums.

Here's a fair review OP  http://rabblog.com/?p=10

Really, it's as good  as anything else that has come out in the last few years, better than alot. the end game is not there yet and changes are coming pretty much weekly.  I'm not going to go on about how this game is the shit, it's not.  It's a good solid game that will be around for awhile. nothing truly wonderful about it or bad.  Most of the crying you see on the forums are from the pvp crowd. ( what a surprise huh ).

My biggest issue with it is the world does not draw you in as say wow, where you see players hanging out , showing off new stuff,  and talking smack. the zone thing really hampers this. I would rate it "C", another average game that was overhyped to be the one. without the hype it would have probably faired better.

   Wait till it goes on sell or get a buddy key, unless you're really bored.

Originally posted by Sevensodd

Its a fun game.  Decent content. The server population is good.  I've played since release and have had almost no problems with crashing and bugs. 

Just realize that the vast majority of people that play, really like this game.  And also realize the vocal minority come to the forums and bash the game.  My advice would be to play it.  If you dont like it, then u dont like it.  But dont just take what people say for the 100% truth.

You have to be kidding me... The vast majority playing may like it, but the vast majority that bought it aren't playing it. It is not a vocal minority that doesn't like the game. That is just SOEism if I've ever seen it.

To the OP. I didn't really like the game from the get go, even before I got out of the intro town that even the people that really hate this game seemed to like. I found the combat to be really clunky. The melee combat had an action style control to it, where you would attack in certain directions and use combos, which would have been cool. BUT, they added a combat queue to it, which completely ruined it in my opinion. You basically had an action style control scheme but had to wait for attacks to happen after you pushed the button.

I also found a lot of graphical errors(not fps errors as my fps was great even on max settings). Thinks wouldn't render right, or just plain bugs such as all of the character features going invisible when you go stealth(this includes clothes, facial features, everything).

Another thing I hated about the game was the instancing. Having multiple copies of each zone completely ruined the immersion for me.

Just my .02

Originally posted by ducks1290

I know this might be asking a lot on the mmorpg forums hah, but can anyone that plays the game give me a fair review of the state of the game as it is now... I'm very interested in playing and would like to get some insight on server population, stability,and fun factor..  I know there are a lot of things funcom failed to reach so far, but I would really like some postives also. thanks

fair review????....here ya go

Escapist Review

http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176/page/1

I'd be happy to.

The game allows you to customize your character's physical appearance pretty well. There's an advanced setting that allows you to morph the face, body shape, etc., so you can look truly funky, if you like.

As for gear right now, however, gear customization is negligible. The itemization of AoC is pretty terrible. There is barely any variety of gear and no way to customize the colors via dyes. This will supposedly be fixed with a massive patch that is due to come out in the next few weeks or months (depending on who's the talking head at Funcom for the week), so hopefully there will be some new variety. For now, though, the armors do have a realistic functionality look to it, which is a nice change of pace. The unique and epic gear does look very nice, even if they are redundant at this time.

Gameply wise, AoC is a lot of fun, imo. It takes some tactics to apply your attacks because the enemies rotate their shield (brackets that form around the targeted enemy that reveals which side they are currently guarding). Careful use of combo attacks and having to pay attention to what you're doing is nice change of pace compared to other MMORPGs that are more click-and-watch/go-get-a-sandwich.

The first 20 or so levels are done in a well done newbie area called Tortage. There are a lot of interesting quests, with full voice acting dialogues to help boost the experience. Tortage is broken up into two different play mechanics - Daytime, which is a more traditional MMORPG style of gameplay with many other people running around and more traditional "go kill X of these or gather X of that" style quests. The other gameplay mechanic is the Nighttime Tortage which is essentially a single player experience which focuses on your character's primary story line and adventure. You'll bounce between these two modes a few times during your noob expeience. There's never a loss of what to do in this newbie area. The one downside to this is that if you're an alt-a-holic like me, you'll play through this same newbie area a lot and will want to stab your eyes after the third time. It would have been nice to have about 3 newbie starting areas, but considering the amount of focus that went into this newbie area, I think we would have been waiting another 3 years for this game to ship, and/or Funcom would have filed bankruptcy.

After the newbie area, you're sent to the homeland of your character - either Cimmeria, Stygia, Aquillonia. From here you'll get the much more traditional MMORPG gameplay, with vectoring, kill, and fetch quests abound. The quests are pretty much flowing well up until the mid 50s, then you'll be hunting around for a quest to do - any quest! Later game questing is pretty difficult, especially for a solo player. Again, Funcom said they are going to address this in their "super-awesome-patch-of-godly-hope" that they say they will eventually release (concensus says it'll be just before WAR is released, and I'm inclined to agree with that), so we'll see. In the meantime, my 57 Conquerer is busy repeating Villa quests (the equivalant on Daily Quests), or I'm playing one of my many alts until the miracel patch comes out. Thankfully the combat system keeps me entertained enough with all my alts, so I'm not really suffering, yet.

There was a lot of problems with stability when the game launched, especially with horrendous lag spikes that were caused by a myriad of memory leaks. A lot of the memory leaks have since been fixed, but there are still some in the game that casue the annoying lag-spikes-o'-death. Luckily these spikes aren't nearly as frequent, but they do still pop up here and there to the point where I want to fly out to Funcom and start beating their programmers with a hob-nailed baseball bat. I know memory leaks in a game are a bear to track down and fix, but never-the-less, they are still very annoying.

Another annoyance is that there are still quests that are broken, but a lot have been fixed. In addition, some quests that were working fine are now broken, which leads me to believe that their internal testing proceedures are pretty much non-existant. Case-in-point: There is a quest that has the player go into what's known as the Spider Caves and retrieve some money off a dead body that is owed to another NPC. The quest used to work fine - go into the cave, kill a bunch of spiders, find the body and loot it. Now, the devs introduced a new gameplay mechanic that is essentially a triggered respawner encounter that has a bucnh of minion spiders crawling down the wall to attack the player. Cool in concept, except that the spawners have collision on them, thus blocking out an invisible portion of the ground from being walkable. And guess where the devs put on of these new spawners? You guessed it! Right on top of the dead guy that the player is supposed to loot in order to complete the quest. BRILLIANT! So, not only do I think that there aren't any testers at Funcom, but it's obvious that the designers don't test their own work, which is unfathomable to me.

I've read the community is a mixed bag, so your mileage will vary. I'm currently on Wiccana and the community there has been nothing but fun and informative. So at least on Wiccana, which is a PvE server, the gaming community has been a lot of fun. The PvP servers, I've read, have been nothing but a newbie gank fest with no repurcussions for killing low level players. Again, this is supposed to be addressed in the miracle patch, so we'll see. Personally, I haven't played on a PvP server, so I can't give an opinion on it. I can't really give an opinion on any PvP yet since I haven't dived into the fray.

Ok, this has gotten way to long, so bottom line is that there were a lot of features that were promised that never made it into the final release, though we are repeatedly assured by Funcom they will eventually make it, but overall the game is enjoyable if you overlook this glaring problem. There is still quite a bit to do until you reach the mid 50s, and depending on the server crowd, the community can be fun. Based on my experience on Wiccana, I can reccomend this game, that is until WAR comes out. And maybe after WAR, depending on how good the miracle patch will be.

Sorry in advance for any typos, but I was typing fast to get this done before lunch. I hope this helps.