Do NOT buy Age of Conan

[Asher]

The game is ass-tastic. It may be a decent game a year from now, but it is not now. Only a complete idiot would buy this game, and even bigger idiots would defend it.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Last I heard, there were 500,000 people playing AoC, I assume 200,000 hate the game, and 300,000 enjoy it, I get this assumption based on the number of people who have said good things about it against the number that have said bad things about it on the official boards.

That would appear to be rather flawed.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
I pulled it from my arse (which has proven to be a reliable source). Last I heard, there were 500,000 people playing AoC, I assume 200,000 hate the game, and 300,000 enjoy it, I get this assumption based on the number of people who have said good things about it against the number that have said bad things about it on the official boards.

I find the quests more interesting than WoW's.

And you have brought up a problem that the Dev's hurt themselves with - a lot of the quality drops after you leave Tortage. But come on, if you take the voice-acting out of Tortage, is the game really that much different from the rest of the game? I don't think so, the voice-acting in Tortage has simply risen the expectation levels too high.

I bet once voice-acting is activated for all quests throughout, the game won't seem so bad to you.

So you're a full of **** fanboy.

[Vesayen]

So it seems.

Hey guys, I want to tell you about this new car I leased!

It cost me $10,000 down and $200 a month.

It has a GREAT paint job!

It is supposed to be REALLY gas efficient! The developers said the minimun gas requirment was 100 miles a gallon highway and 80 city! Well it turns out that it only gets 20 miles a gallon but that is okay, I don't mind they lied to me!

Oh, it also has this GREAT interior.... near the dashboard. I noticed how cool the dashboard is. I did not notice at first how the rest of the car looks awful, but the dashboard is GREAT!

Oh, the spedometer is really pretty too! So is the clock... hey, why does it say 99:00? Hmm.... seems the rest of the display and dashboard are made from maccoroni and don't work.... my dealership promised they would make it functional.... but every time I bring the car in for service, they promise they'll fix it next week!

But at least it has a good paint job!

It comes with this GREAT dvd player er... hey, I just tried to turn it on and my tires deflated... hmm....

I did not notice this now either, but my trunk is full of dead prostitutes.

Well my car has a good paint job but after a cursory inspection it seems it is broken in every manner... but that is okay, I don't mind paying more money while I wait for them to fix the car I paid to be fuctional and of good quality to begin with!

I love applying the bizzare warped logic of gaming to the rest of the world.

If someone promises you a high quality functional product and then sells you a piece of crap which has been painted pretty, that is fraud. Funcom are thieves.

[Space05us]

Originally posted by Space05us
It's an MMO, the first year will be terrible.

Not to mention, it's an MMO, not a car.

MMO =/= single player pc game. It will not be complete upon release, they never are, they never will be. The best time to play an MMO is a year and a half to two years after release. After they work out all of the kinks and before they start releasing garbage and gimmicks to keep the casual players.

[Asher]

LOTRO and WoW both had excellent first years.

IMO, the time of launching half-assed buggy games and excusing it because it's a MMO is over. There are well-polished, AAA-calibre games playable on launch day. So no, it's not an excuse anymore.

[snoopy369]

On an MMO, I think some balance issues are always to be expected (having hundreds of thousands of people play means some of them will find exploits you and I could never dream of), and server load issues are to be expected. Significant client issues are NOT, though, and at least 95% of the content should work, IMO.

[Vesayen]

City of Heroes. World of Warcraft. Asherons Call. Eve Online. Guild Wars. Gemstone.

These are all MMORPGs which when released were fun and were mostly complete games with minor issues at worse.

If we take all the games ever made and average them out, a majority of them are awful. Most games are simply not good, but there is no exscuse that "Every MMO sucks/is buggy as heck/is unfinished at release!" Some of the best MMOs released with no big issues. The thing is, MMORPGs create a fanatical group of fanboys.

The reason what Funcom has done is even worse then normal is because they made the begining VERY high quality, such that few would be upset and most would enjoy it. Then as soon as you leave that initial area, the quality of the game desintigrates.

Crappy developers release crappy games. MMORPGs are NOT all unfinished at the launch. Funcom went ABOVE and beyond because instead of releasing a game which is ALL crap, they intentionally focused on making the very begining as good as possible, to generate hype and increase sales when the game first came out, before word of mouth spread that the game rapidly turned into crap.



Feats are well, abilities. Almost EVERY ability in the game either (a)does not work at all, (b) does not work properly, (c)is mislabeled or all of the above. A majority of the game is simply BROKEN.

There is NOTHING to do at higher levels. There is not much to do at medium levels besides grind boring grinding on kills or uninspired quests. The quality and quantity of dungeons and quests and the landscape is far worse once you leave the starting area.

They made a conscious decision to not finish the game and release it.

[vee4473]

I'm not sure what to make of the game just yet because of the post Tortage feedback i've been reading but have yet to experience. I haven't gotten out of it yet. Yes, tried a couple of classes already...

But, I have no problems running the game, no crashes (yet), avg of 40-50 FPS in all places except when I encounter a new area for that typical brief 2 second stutter.

The combat is more engaging than most other mmos. The fatalities are nice but seem to be more like a random roll chance to happen than a controllable thing. I give them kudos for trying something new. Too early for me to comment on gear or "talents" etc. but what I have access to now does work.

I don't really like the quest journal and the biggest problem I have with the UI is that I can't get my side mouse buttons programmable. It seems (from reading) that FC hardcoded them to be autorun? That's odd..and VERY disappointing. Especially since a core of the combat system is launching a combo followed by a directional attack. I have 3 buttons going to waste here!!

The graphics are nice, but to be honest I think Lotros are better. The only thing that I see better graphically are the character models. Scenery is good, but not any better than lotro IMO.

I think you may be right in that tortage is pretty well produced and that if it does drop off afterwards, then they made a boo boo. You can't serve filet mignon as an appetizer followed by chef boyardee for a main course. IF that's the case. As I said, I am working on getting out of Tortage to find out for myself.

I have been reading alot of the boards and while the aoc boards are all flamed up, I have seen quite a few positive responses too.

And after I launched it for the first time, I half expected my comp to blow after an in game crash. Which is the impression you'd get from reading the AOC forums.

Luckily it didn't happen.....go figure.

The game is fun for now, but maybe that's because it's new. New is always good for a while. Well, usually.

I gotta say though, this is the absolute LAST place I expected to see "fanboy" and such thrown around against someone who just likes the game, instead of just respectful debate. I can get my quota of that on AOC forums.

[FrostyBoy]

Vesayen, believe it or not, I actually do agree with you 100%, but ask yourself, why would FC do something that would ultimately hurt them? There must be a damn good reason right? I'm guessing it could have taken another 2 years to polish the rest of the game. Which by then no one would be interested. Perhaps if they lower the monthly fee, and then increase it back again when the game is finished (to a decent point).

I'm just saying the game is not as terrible as you're making it out to be, the scenery, locations, etc are stunning, it almost reaches Crysis' levels of detail. The character creation and class selection is very good, the classes are far more interesting than your usuals. The battle system is actually quite impressive, only now are people starting to realise the flexibility of attacking, a friend of mine and myself were passing through the Purple Lotus Swamp (On PVP, I am only level 23, he is level 24), on the way in, we witnessed two guys having a battle, we walked over closer, and to our surprise we noticed the Ranger was a level 32 and the other guy (I'm not sure what he was, I think a HoX) was a level 48. The Ranger won; how did he win? By hiding, running, trapping, ducking under the swamp water and shooting from behind (not in that order ), it took him a while, but he got it. The HoX was not some kid either, he was really trying to destroy this Ranger, and he almost did.

In what MMO can you have a fight like that?

[Vesayen]

If you are only level 23, you have not played the game enough to realize how awful it gets and how rapidly it gets there. The "destiny" quest?

At level 30 you get sent on a 10 minute quest.
Same at 50.
Same at 80.

There is your "main" quest line for you.

At 30 it will sink in how awful the game gets. There is simply no content.

Pointless PVP gets boring, there is no point to it, if I want mindless fragging i'll play an FPS without a subscription fee.

[FrostyBoy]

Glad I'm playing the game slowly..

To me, the game is not meant to be rushed, so many people have rushed to the end only to be let down. I don't think the dev's designed the game to be rushed.

By the time I reach level 40, I bet the game will be ready to meet your expectations Vesayen.

[Vesayen]

I did not rush to 32. It took me about a week... I canceled my account on day 9.

The developers did not design the game to be rushed, they did not design it at all.

[DrSpike]

How many hours play to get to 30? Lots of MMOs suffer from lack of high end content to start with (though to varying degrees) but reaching that point within a week seems a bit soon unless you played 10 hours a day.

[DinoDoc]

I've heard that Conan is a good game they just seem to have gone overboard with the sys reqs.