Age of Conan

Age of Conan has great graphics, beautiful music, an interesting combat system, and nice character generation.  However, these are not the characteristics of a good MMORPG.  The key components to an MMORPG are:

1.  Content progression:  There needs to be new content to progress to.  This is not a function of just simply existing...there must be a reason to progress to it.  Age of Conan lacks this.  But strangely this might be its smallest fault.

2.  Itemization:  There needs to be items to work towards in AoC.  No matter how cool it is to progress to T2 raids in AoC, there is absolutely no reason to do so because the epic gear is garbage.   Gear 1-80 is substantially useless.  The only gear that matters now are damage gems.   And they are being duped as we speak...for weeks...without a fix (see point 5).

3. Character stability and/or improvement:  You can keep characters static.  In the alternative, you can buff them and improve their abilities.  But in my MMORPG life I have never seen a game devalue abilities/stats/items with such broad strokes before.  Epic gear lost 80% of its resistances.  Crafted gear about the same.  They nerfed shields.  They nerfed LoS.  They buffed mobs.   They nerfed many combos 50%+ without a mention in the patch notes.  Time and time again.  Almost no class avoided the penalty stick.  The character you leveled to 80 in June, who could, across the board, kill 3-7 equal level mobs at a time (depending on your class) was reduced to 1-2 mobs...with NO ability/method to regain that ability. 

4. Freedom of movement:  You can restrict player's movements from the beginning...players will get used to it.  But don't make a world relatively free to move around in and then all of a sudden through up invisible walls.  Nothing kills immersion and enjoyability more. 

5. Cheating:  You simply can't have it for long periods of time with no ramifications.  It is one thing for something to happen (like a dupe bug).  But to ignore it for 3 weeks?  Good Lord.  And this includes epic money bugs in June, raid exploits, you name it, AoC has had it.  And never, not once, were these issues hotfixed. 

6.  Client stability:  AoC is unstable.  I've heard it has gotten worse since I left.

Lit

All true, but I'm sure pretty much everyone realized that its crap months ago.

MMO companies are finally realizing that people won't pay for reiterated garbage.

Its soo true.

In this game the higher lvl you become the weaker you become compared to your enviroment.

There is no balance what so ever, pvp is about who can 1-shot who.

There is no point to anything. You cant get cool gear, there is no reason to own or take a battle keep. There is no content that you need your crafted gear for. There is no rewards for pvp (might change in the near future).

And all this is before we begin to talk about the problems with the things in the game, like the endless bugs that is worse than early SWG, the utterly boxed in feeling you get in the minimal size this game has (42 km2 with about 40% of that behind barriers so you cant move to it). Or like the lack of content after lvl 50, or the lack of any individuality in appearance or the broken class abilities or the broken game systems or the secrecy with the game elements so the players have no idea what things does making them unable to make educated choices about their chars.

And its before we begin to talk about all the hyped game contents that suddenly werent there at release.

Or its before we talk about the horrible way FunCom treat their customers. The way they ignore them, cheat them and treat them with disrespect.

No before all that the entire foundation of the what the game should have been based on is missing.

Intrinsicly is not a word. and if you were going for Intrinsically, it isnt the word you are looking for.

Age of conan failed because the devolopers broke the cardinal rule, they released a broken, unfinished product and expect the customer to apprecieate it.

I didn't even realize people were blaming its failure because of Wow..

but yes I agree completely with the OP.

I am curious what the developers were thinking, letting players level so fast, since there was so little end game content.  That feature just make no sense at all.  The game reminded me of dungeon siege with all the invisible walls, you got the feeling you were being lead around on a string.

This was one of those games that should have waited until late fall, so they would have time to add more content.

When War comes out, the AoC servers are going to be ghost towns.  Get ready for server merges.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

I am curious what the developers were thinking, letting players level so fast, since there was so little end game content.  That feature just make no sense at all.  The game reminded me of dungeon siege with all the invisible walls, you got the feeling you were being lead around on a string.

This was one of those games that should have waited until late fall, so they would have time to add more content.

When War comes out, the AoC servers are going to be ghost towns.  Get ready for server merges.

It's a good question.  I wish I could be a fly on the wall in Gaute's office because some of their decisions don't make any sense unless you figure there was someone who wanted to sabotage the game.  More realistically though we are probably just seeing evidence of mismanagement and a case of over-ambitious development/patching.

There was a glimmer of hope there with Gaute's letter at the end of June but something just fell apart internally.

 The worst part was the communication and organization in what Funcom did. But the game engine was pretty much too heavy to fix. They over focused on the graphics, which they hoped was going to be so easy to scale with other stuff in the world. It is a great contrast. The movements and stupid animations, are only funny the first few times, then it keeps getting annoying and limiting. Invisible walls and instanced world are a "no no" in 2008. You have to put out better stuff than that.

 The communication was terrible. I saw people in all guilds exploiting the AoC game mechanics to gain easy ingame money. I did want to play the game straight up, and was shocked to see Funcom did not care about this. The exploiters got rich, and I got that hopeless give up feeling.. Whats the point playing, when exploiting/cheating does not bear any consequence. When you report the exploiters (not details) on AoC forum, your post will get locked/deletet and you may risk a ban for it. And when you send a mail to them, you will get an automated mail sent back 1 week later, with no assurance that someone cares.

 Sorry Funcom!

Posts like these make me smile,MMo's did not begin with WoW,if WoW had released in the same state as AoC it wouldnt have been a success,WoW brought a whole new generation to on-line gamming and maybe set a bench mark,The reason mmo's are failing at the moment as devs are promising too much and they just cant deliver,it is as simple as that.

I would love to see alot of pre-wow players be here at the launch of WoW,ok it wasnt the shambles of VG or AoC but it was far from perfect with bugged quests,class imbalance and server crashes.

The thing is now it raised the bar with new players wanting the best from the outset but dont forget if you look back to WoW's release they were promising alot of things they still havent delivered and other things they did promise but took along time to add.

WoW's saving grace was anyone could play it on any system but for now times are moving on and even the new gamers want more and devs are trying to promise but in the last few years have failed to deliver...