General Discussion

MMORPG.com Ag of Conan Correspondent Jean Francois Doyon writes this article about his dissapointment with the exploration factor in Funcom's MMO.

Who hasn't dreamed of running through far reaches of sand and stones, humid forests and windy plains wearing only a loincloth and the necessary belt to hold it and your trusty, ridiculously badass-looking sword in place?

Okay, maybe not that many people, but in the vast and rough world of Conan, these are the kind of images that my mind would have expected, along with the scantily-clad women tied to a nearby pole as if we were meant to cross the desert to come across her... Happy was I to find the scantily-clad woman tied to a pole within the first five minutes of Age of Conan, and the rest of the world was lush and lively (for the most part), as I hoped. A pity it was nowhere as vast, however.

Read the article here.

Sadly Age of conan is pretty bland in the area of exploration, but most games nowadays are just as bad. Warhammer has the feeling of a small world also.  Hopefully Some of the future MMO's put more depth into their games.

Edit: also wanted to chime in on this bit:

To counter the unavoidable overpopulation of these small zones, there are instances. You may not choose first hand in which instance you will end up, and even though you can usually switch instance easily enough by running to a respawn point, joining friends, unless you're grouped with them, is somewhat difficult since there are usually at least a dozen instances to scroll through when you're looking for someone. "

On my server(Scourge-USPVP), There has not been any duplicated zones(instances) for about a month. At most there are only 10-15 people in Kheshatta, mostly all powerleveling at certain spots on the map. Every single zone, including capital cities are empty, even during primetime.  I guess I got my wish for not wanting to deal with duplicated zones. 

/sigh

The exact size of the entire AoC world is 42 Km2. But that is the size of the maps. The real land you can explore is about 50% to 60% of the mapped area giving it about 10 square miles of area for the entire world.

WoWs base world before BC were 8 to 9 times bigger.

DaoC is 11 times bigger if you count the TOA regions only once since they are reused in each realm.

Glad to see he played the game for 30 minutes, became an expert on it, and successfully missed 90 percent of the content.   Gratz.

One thing I loved about Vanguard was the ability to explore wherever I saw.  If you see a mountain; you can climb it.  If you want to swim to an island, go right ahead!  There was nothing stopping you, the whole world could be explored.

In response to Pandrax:

LOL - all servers are experiencing the same!  When I first joined this game back in June, the cities were filled with players and there were multiple instances in the gaming areas.  No more.  As of August - the cities reflect FUNCOM's stock price and the realities which others players have decided upon - the stock price has tanked and the players left the game and canceled their membership in the thousands.

According to FunCom's Director of Development for Conan, they sold over 800,000 copies of the game and have an active member subscription of 400,000 as of August.  Really?  Where the heck are they - because they sure are not online playing the game!  The towns are empty - as if ghost towns.  The economy is in ruins.  Empty promises, too little provided to fix issue - too late.  Changes that have been released are entirely off-base, adding inane content not required and just entirely missing the mark of what is required TO FIX a broken game client. 

It's all that our guild can do on the GWAHLUR server to keep going.  I lead a guild with 300 unique members; most using Ventrilo.  Day in and Day out I continually and repeatedly listen to the players frustration and anger erupt towards the game.  The crashes are the #1 killer of this game - period.  Players experience at least 20 crashes a day.  Three months into the game's release  - all the crashes taking place tell me one thing:  the engine cannot be repaired and the development team knows it.  The lack of FULL DISCLOSURE as the WHY, HOW, WHEN these crashes are occurring with the client, by FunCOm, is the most epic snow job ever.  The lack of integrity and responsibility to the paying customer, the player base, by FunCom is disgraceful and disgusting.

Guilds are collapsing everywhere or are consolidating like mad.  To complicate matters; the scale of the game was based upon thousands of players being online and active in their guilds.  The scale of the game in relationship to building cities, sieging, etc. has not been adjusted to reflect the diminished player base and as a result it is nearly impossible to continue building your cities due to the overwhelming amount of resources required.  This further discourages players from continuing the game and feeds into the cancellation of active subscriptions.

I am wondering now if someone will bring a class-action lawsuit against FunCom: (a) false advertising on the retail box with content and functionality not provided as advertised, (b) a faulty product that crashes continually and gray-screens its players, (c) lack of FULL DISCLOSURE as to how bad their problems are in the game itself vs. players spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading their computers thinking their PCs were at fault.

Age of Crashes (Age of Conan) must be going down as the most epic failure of an MMO ever released.  In three months time, the company's stock has peaked at 51 and bottomed at 13.65.  Over 65% of the player base has left the game, canceled their subscriptions or never purchased a subscription; opting instead to cancel, quit and say good-ridens.  This is all a reflection of just how terrible a job the loser of a Director of Development has done, with his team, in this game. 

And now we receive more promises.  Now we receive "we hear you" messages from the team.  Still all more of the same; marketing propoganda in hopes of stemming the vast bleeding that has taken place. 

Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS):  fix the client crashes first and foremost (in fact - FUNCOM just needs to come completely clean and provide full disclosure as to why and how these crashes are occurring in the first place - well past due imo), fix the server crashes, fix the internal mechanics of the game which are BROKEN, then add your content for level 80.  Oh, and by the way, put yourselves on notice and TELL US EXACTLY the DATE in which PvP will be released.  FunCom has lied, deceived, mislead, and abused its player base for this game in the most extreme manner ever in the history of an MMO from my point of view.  The Director of Development for CONAN and the CEO of FUNCOM should be fired immediately.

Am I frustrated?  You bet.  Do I love the graphics of the game?  You bet.  Am I trying to keep the faith?  You bet.  The game has so much potential - and their are egotistical idiots giving us more of the same, day in and day out, in hopes of keeping what few are left. 

FIRE THE DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT and the CEO!

AoC world comparing in size with EQ2 or WOW expolorable areas could fit under microscope and even then you only have one linnear option of moving ...pretty much there is no exploring in AOC. This game suffers from seriously retarded design. It does look pretty if that is all you expect from MMO but fails in every other aspect.

Yep the reviewer nailed it, the game is exactly Dungeon Siege with better graphics.  So for all the hype we got a game where you are sheparded throughout.  Sorry that is NOT a MMO in my opinion.  Exploration has to be part of the game, without it, it is a second rate FPS.

Sorry Funcom you just blew it!

I agree with the article 100%. One of the things that kept me interested in EQI despite the horrible downtime and timesinks, punishment for leveling and painful death experience was the feeling that I was living in a huge, complex world.  Exploring it was a good portion of the fun for me.  As games developed this feeling sort of started to wear off, but never have I felt so much NOT a part of a living, breathing world as in AoC.

Follow the preset paths... port from one zone to another... nothing feels connected, invisible walls everywhere.. and even without the walls, there just isn't that much space to explore.  The zone maps are small compared to even WoW at release, and that game was smaller than others of its time.  I got to about lvl 50 in Conan before giving up just because I couldn't get into the game world.   

True, tt was as pretty as a single player RPG, but that's exactly what it felt like to me- a single player RPG that happened to have a chat room built in where everyone talked about WoW.