Aada
Part of the furniture
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2004
- Messages
- 6,716
Age of Conan - using a scoring system...10 being perfection, 1 being bleh I wouldnt wish this on my worst enemy.
Review of level climb...
Level 1-20 - The newb area was fun. It was like playing KOTOR with an even better story line. I found myself hoping that just one of those wenches I was busting my hump for would finally stop teasing and well...you know. It was linear yes and frankly not my cup of tea normally but enjoyable nonetheless. I especially enjoyed the night-time destiny quests playing bad guy spy. The ending was fun and I found myself disappointed that I had to leave. I felt a connection with the characters there and genuinely wanted to do every single quest to help them out.
It started to get old and I lost motivation by my 3rd toon though. Like a great book, you can only read it so many times before it becomes boring...the problem with all Linear MMO's. Dont get me wrong Funcom (im told they read this site a lot, in case theyre reading this), I applaud your effort with the newb area. It really was a lot of fun and was worth the $50 just by itself. It just misses a perfect 10 because of replay value. Score 9 / 10
Level 20-30 - The next areas beyond lvl 20 were a real letdown. For starters, the NPC's no longer have voices. The wenches especially were fun to listen to, so not hearing them now was a real letdown. It was one of the few times in my MMO life where I didnt spam-click through quests because I enjoyed listening to the characters.
I really had to force myself to keep playing to give the game a chance at this point. It just wasnt fun and felt like a real grind. lvl 20-30 was a painful quest grind consisting mostly of island hopping quests. Since the area is instanced like crazy, you find yourself constantly hopping a boat to some other place to deliver salt or a note. It was like getting my teeth pulled without painkillers, not fun at all.
Most of the Linear MMO's Ive played tend to let the player work a single area and then move them on. Its a way to teach them where things are and introduce them to gameplay. Funcom makes the mistake of leading you to new places before you've even begun the previous one. I had just landed in a place and already an NPC was having me leave for another land. And amazingly enough soon after that, im led yet again to another place ! I was totally lost after my 4th zone I loaded into.
I didnt know if I should ignore some quests and try and work a single area but it didnt seem possible. Im surrounded in several zones by quest givers and feeling overwhelmed. I never got into a comfortable rhythm of questing + selling items + emptying items in bank + buy new stuff, rinse and repeat.
I tried doing quests that were near me but I usually found myself hopping a boat to another land which would lead me somewhere else. It was rather confusing. I couldnt follow any of the storylines because of the travel and sheer number of quests. Score 3 / 10
Level 30-40 - Beyond lvl 30 I tried just good old-fashioned kill-grinding. I simply couldnt take the quests anymore. I found myself a decent spot in a resource gathering area. It was a swamp (purple lotus something, Im terrible recalling names).
Here another weakness of game design shows its face. You cant grind for long anywhere and make money at it. You only get one Bag to start with and an extra slot for another bag. I managed to buy another bag at a vendor but it only had 4 slots. You do get a bag for quest items only and one for resources but we really need 4 bags for grinding. I constantly found myself deleting items I assumed might not sell as well as other items (and you have to guess because there isnt any vendor price listed on items).
I managed to reach level 38 doing the old-fashioned grind but it was pretty slow. Funcom clearly penalizes mob grinding. Score - 4 / 10
At this point I couldnt bring myself to play this toon any longer (demonologist lvl 38) so I repeated a few other classes but never made it past 23 with either of them.
Graphics Review
Graphics are clearly one of the game's strengths and sometimes its weakness. Im running Intel Dual Core 2400 processors, Win XP, 4 gigs of ram, 7900 gtx 512mb cards in SLI
I managed to get the game to run on High settings (thats max, there is no Ultra high lotr players). I had shaders turned off, who really cares if you see a shadow being cast from something anyway. I got on average 30-45ish FPS in towns and 50-75ish FPS outside of towns.
If I had to make a direct comparison to other MMO's, Id say LOTR is closest to Conan. Age of Conan wins out though because it has more details in its rendering. I thought LOTR had done the best water ever but Conan takes it even further. Water is simply the best Ive ever seen. Conan clearly is tops in this dept for any MMO and will win mmorpg.com best Graphics Award this yr.
Funcom is clearly tinkering with graphics because today I had a noticable performance lag. I was only getting 15-25 fps in towns today and it was laggy. I tried making a new toon and it was even worse in newb area. I was seeing snapshots instead of smooth video. My fps was under 10 sometimes so I gave up for today.
One criticism of Funcom, they need to fix the settings so I can tell what graphic option I chose. You click medium for example and it doesnt highlight it in anyway so you have no idea if its still on medium later on. One time after a patch my settings seemed different so I went back and discovered (by clicking high option) that I must have reverted to Low or Medium. I couldnt tell though because of the lack of highlighted options selected.
The weakness of graphics is that Funcom had to compromise game mechanics. Instances for starters is clearly to blame for high-end graphical displays.
And of course the graphics will limit the sheer number of people who can play the game. Im basing my socre here though strictly on what I saw (not performance issues). Score - 10 / 10
Combat Review
Despite the hype, Conan doesnt really revolutionize the industry with their combat system. Yes melee combat does require you to choose a direction in which to attack but thats about it. It does require a little more strategy than just button-smashing but its still a level-based system with a damage multiplier ultimately deciding the outcome.
Casters are pretty much similiar to other MMO's with one exception. Healers (at least the Priest I played) have a directional cone heal. This is very nice and doesnt require you to target anyone to heal them. It frees you up to do more damage than constantly being ready to target/heal someone.
Finishing moves add some spice to combat. Score - 7 / 10
Sound Review
Sound is often overlooked in MMO's but it sure does make gamplay more immersive if done well. Sound in Funcom clearly had some thought put into it. From squeaking floorboards to the sound of flies swarming over a rotten corpse, Funcom did a fine job here. I would have liked more of that dramatic music we hear at character creation during combat though in-game. Score 8 / 10
UI Review
One glaring weakness is its clumsy UI. It doesnt allow for much customization we've come to expect from MMO's. The maps are pretty lousy. The chat boxes really need to allow for colored text. They need an option for the extra toolbars so we can turn them horizontal (not everyone likes toolbars to be vertical). And we definitely need more than two extra toolbars.
The worst part was our avatar's health is on the bottom left side of the toolbar. You do have one option to put a health bar above the avatar's head but otherwise yuck. And the enemies' health bar is on the bottom right side of the toolbar. Some things dont need innovation. I guess Im just used to the other 20 MMO's Ive played where they all had your stat bars in the top left corner of the screen. Score 3 / 10
Class Review
Age of Conan offers 12 classes. In truth its 4 classes with three different choices. You have your 1) 3 tank classes, 2) your 3 dps melee classes, 3) your 3 caster DPS classes, 4) and 3 healer classes. The classes can be further specialized with a Feat system to choose bonus benefits to your class.
Compared to other MMO's, Funcom has done a pretty good job offering variety here. I personally would have preferred a skill-based system but at least there are many classes to choose from.
Each of the 4 class groups (tank, healer, melee dps, caster dps) has one hybrid class that offers some unique and challenging gameplay. Score 8 / 10
Roleplaying Review
This section might not interest many as roleplaying is a dying genre. Ironic considering the very essence of roleplaying is in the title of the industry...MMORPG.
Funcom started out on the wrong foot with the RP community. First its refusal to designate an official RP-PvE server was puzzling. The players got together on the forums and voted Wicanna the unofficial RP-PvE server but honestly that never works. Majority of gamers dont follow the forums and therefore will never know to choose (or avoid) Wicanna. Ive played 95% of my time on Wicanna and I have not seen any RP whatsoever.
Second mistake was not labelling Cimmeria in-game as the official RP-PvP server. Many players joined Cimmeria with no idea (because they dont follow the forums) that the server was a RP type.
Funcom has since added another RP-PvP server but still no PvE version. It has rulesets in place but isnt enforcing them (not that I totally blame them for this).
Its been my experience that roleplay will die pretty quickly and never return if not enforced immediately on a server. The excuse by some players and Funcom to give it time to sort out isnt really valid. Once players establish themselves on a server, they arent likely to move or change their playstyle to RP suddenly. If RP isnt happening right away, its never going to happen.
RP has so far been reduced to nothing in general chat and limited to guilds. Score 3 / 10
Gameplay Mechanics
1. ) Where to begin,...how about the controvery over instancing. The folks being critical on various forums were right with their concerns. The game has way to many instances and even instances within instances. Thats going over the top Funcom. I felt like I had jumped into a pool, swam down and opened the drain pipe and went in to an underground lake below, then went to the bottom and found a cave which went further in. By the time I reached the bottom, I had no idea where I was or who else was in there with me.
I got used to walking around in large seamless worlds in games such as Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, EVE, and Lord of the Rings. Sure those games have instances but its mostly just for dungeons so players arent fighting over camped mobs. Thats really the only time instancing is useful for players.
The real turnoff for players is mirrored instancing. This is where players can enter a zone but not see each other because of mirrored instances within a zone. Its also a way for PvPers to exploit gameplay (about to lose a fight, switch to another instance)
This game is labelled an MMO but the instancing says to me its an MO. I dont see the masses anywhere.
2.) Moving on to in-game voice chat, umm where is it ? Thats a pretty standard feature players have come to expect these days. And with sieges and raids, its a must. The days of paying for a vent channel are past, Funcom drops the ball here.
3.) Crafting - Its a mistake to leave out crafting until lvl 40. Whats Funcom's reasoning for this ? If you want to engage players in crafting and resource gathering, you do it right away. Another real turnoff, resources in their own seperate zone ??? This turns resource gathering into a seperate chore. Id much prefer to pick up resources as Im busy doing something else.
Score - 5 / 10
Summary Review
Age of Conan is a fun game that quickly putters out. It doesnt have the gas to keep gamers around long enough to enjoy sieges and raiding. And lets be honest, raids and sieges arent going to keep the majority of gamers around. Only the niche gamer stays for that stuff and can overlook the glaring weakness of the game mechanics.
If you were to remove the graphics and opening newb tutorial of this game, you'd see much more critical reviews of the game. It has several glaring weaknesses and in essence isnt really an MMO. Its instances and linear style of gameplay make it a pretty good multiplayer game but a poor MMO.
Total Score 60 / 100
Average Final Score 6 / 10
Seems the guy has spent enough time to warrant a review of the first 38 lvls and after reading this i hope a trial comes out soon as i may send my copy back to GAME.
For the folks on here that have played to his level or higher what are your honest thoughts about the game?
Please list the good and the bad.
Review of level climb...
Level 1-20 - The newb area was fun. It was like playing KOTOR with an even better story line. I found myself hoping that just one of those wenches I was busting my hump for would finally stop teasing and well...you know. It was linear yes and frankly not my cup of tea normally but enjoyable nonetheless. I especially enjoyed the night-time destiny quests playing bad guy spy. The ending was fun and I found myself disappointed that I had to leave. I felt a connection with the characters there and genuinely wanted to do every single quest to help them out.
It started to get old and I lost motivation by my 3rd toon though. Like a great book, you can only read it so many times before it becomes boring...the problem with all Linear MMO's. Dont get me wrong Funcom (im told they read this site a lot, in case theyre reading this), I applaud your effort with the newb area. It really was a lot of fun and was worth the $50 just by itself. It just misses a perfect 10 because of replay value. Score 9 / 10
Level 20-30 - The next areas beyond lvl 20 were a real letdown. For starters, the NPC's no longer have voices. The wenches especially were fun to listen to, so not hearing them now was a real letdown. It was one of the few times in my MMO life where I didnt spam-click through quests because I enjoyed listening to the characters.
I really had to force myself to keep playing to give the game a chance at this point. It just wasnt fun and felt like a real grind. lvl 20-30 was a painful quest grind consisting mostly of island hopping quests. Since the area is instanced like crazy, you find yourself constantly hopping a boat to some other place to deliver salt or a note. It was like getting my teeth pulled without painkillers, not fun at all.
Most of the Linear MMO's Ive played tend to let the player work a single area and then move them on. Its a way to teach them where things are and introduce them to gameplay. Funcom makes the mistake of leading you to new places before you've even begun the previous one. I had just landed in a place and already an NPC was having me leave for another land. And amazingly enough soon after that, im led yet again to another place ! I was totally lost after my 4th zone I loaded into.
I didnt know if I should ignore some quests and try and work a single area but it didnt seem possible. Im surrounded in several zones by quest givers and feeling overwhelmed. I never got into a comfortable rhythm of questing + selling items + emptying items in bank + buy new stuff, rinse and repeat.
I tried doing quests that were near me but I usually found myself hopping a boat to another land which would lead me somewhere else. It was rather confusing. I couldnt follow any of the storylines because of the travel and sheer number of quests. Score 3 / 10
Level 30-40 - Beyond lvl 30 I tried just good old-fashioned kill-grinding. I simply couldnt take the quests anymore. I found myself a decent spot in a resource gathering area. It was a swamp (purple lotus something, Im terrible recalling names).
Here another weakness of game design shows its face. You cant grind for long anywhere and make money at it. You only get one Bag to start with and an extra slot for another bag. I managed to buy another bag at a vendor but it only had 4 slots. You do get a bag for quest items only and one for resources but we really need 4 bags for grinding. I constantly found myself deleting items I assumed might not sell as well as other items (and you have to guess because there isnt any vendor price listed on items).
I managed to reach level 38 doing the old-fashioned grind but it was pretty slow. Funcom clearly penalizes mob grinding. Score - 4 / 10
At this point I couldnt bring myself to play this toon any longer (demonologist lvl 38) so I repeated a few other classes but never made it past 23 with either of them.
Graphics Review
Graphics are clearly one of the game's strengths and sometimes its weakness. Im running Intel Dual Core 2400 processors, Win XP, 4 gigs of ram, 7900 gtx 512mb cards in SLI
I managed to get the game to run on High settings (thats max, there is no Ultra high lotr players). I had shaders turned off, who really cares if you see a shadow being cast from something anyway. I got on average 30-45ish FPS in towns and 50-75ish FPS outside of towns.
If I had to make a direct comparison to other MMO's, Id say LOTR is closest to Conan. Age of Conan wins out though because it has more details in its rendering. I thought LOTR had done the best water ever but Conan takes it even further. Water is simply the best Ive ever seen. Conan clearly is tops in this dept for any MMO and will win mmorpg.com best Graphics Award this yr.
Funcom is clearly tinkering with graphics because today I had a noticable performance lag. I was only getting 15-25 fps in towns today and it was laggy. I tried making a new toon and it was even worse in newb area. I was seeing snapshots instead of smooth video. My fps was under 10 sometimes so I gave up for today.
One criticism of Funcom, they need to fix the settings so I can tell what graphic option I chose. You click medium for example and it doesnt highlight it in anyway so you have no idea if its still on medium later on. One time after a patch my settings seemed different so I went back and discovered (by clicking high option) that I must have reverted to Low or Medium. I couldnt tell though because of the lack of highlighted options selected.
The weakness of graphics is that Funcom had to compromise game mechanics. Instances for starters is clearly to blame for high-end graphical displays.
And of course the graphics will limit the sheer number of people who can play the game. Im basing my socre here though strictly on what I saw (not performance issues). Score - 10 / 10
Combat Review
Despite the hype, Conan doesnt really revolutionize the industry with their combat system. Yes melee combat does require you to choose a direction in which to attack but thats about it. It does require a little more strategy than just button-smashing but its still a level-based system with a damage multiplier ultimately deciding the outcome.
Casters are pretty much similiar to other MMO's with one exception. Healers (at least the Priest I played) have a directional cone heal. This is very nice and doesnt require you to target anyone to heal them. It frees you up to do more damage than constantly being ready to target/heal someone.
Finishing moves add some spice to combat. Score - 7 / 10
Sound Review
Sound is often overlooked in MMO's but it sure does make gamplay more immersive if done well. Sound in Funcom clearly had some thought put into it. From squeaking floorboards to the sound of flies swarming over a rotten corpse, Funcom did a fine job here. I would have liked more of that dramatic music we hear at character creation during combat though in-game. Score 8 / 10
UI Review
One glaring weakness is its clumsy UI. It doesnt allow for much customization we've come to expect from MMO's. The maps are pretty lousy. The chat boxes really need to allow for colored text. They need an option for the extra toolbars so we can turn them horizontal (not everyone likes toolbars to be vertical). And we definitely need more than two extra toolbars.
The worst part was our avatar's health is on the bottom left side of the toolbar. You do have one option to put a health bar above the avatar's head but otherwise yuck. And the enemies' health bar is on the bottom right side of the toolbar. Some things dont need innovation. I guess Im just used to the other 20 MMO's Ive played where they all had your stat bars in the top left corner of the screen. Score 3 / 10
Class Review
Age of Conan offers 12 classes. In truth its 4 classes with three different choices. You have your 1) 3 tank classes, 2) your 3 dps melee classes, 3) your 3 caster DPS classes, 4) and 3 healer classes. The classes can be further specialized with a Feat system to choose bonus benefits to your class.
Compared to other MMO's, Funcom has done a pretty good job offering variety here. I personally would have preferred a skill-based system but at least there are many classes to choose from.
Each of the 4 class groups (tank, healer, melee dps, caster dps) has one hybrid class that offers some unique and challenging gameplay. Score 8 / 10
Roleplaying Review
This section might not interest many as roleplaying is a dying genre. Ironic considering the very essence of roleplaying is in the title of the industry...MMORPG.
Funcom started out on the wrong foot with the RP community. First its refusal to designate an official RP-PvE server was puzzling. The players got together on the forums and voted Wicanna the unofficial RP-PvE server but honestly that never works. Majority of gamers dont follow the forums and therefore will never know to choose (or avoid) Wicanna. Ive played 95% of my time on Wicanna and I have not seen any RP whatsoever.
Second mistake was not labelling Cimmeria in-game as the official RP-PvP server. Many players joined Cimmeria with no idea (because they dont follow the forums) that the server was a RP type.
Funcom has since added another RP-PvP server but still no PvE version. It has rulesets in place but isnt enforcing them (not that I totally blame them for this).
Its been my experience that roleplay will die pretty quickly and never return if not enforced immediately on a server. The excuse by some players and Funcom to give it time to sort out isnt really valid. Once players establish themselves on a server, they arent likely to move or change their playstyle to RP suddenly. If RP isnt happening right away, its never going to happen.
RP has so far been reduced to nothing in general chat and limited to guilds. Score 3 / 10
Gameplay Mechanics
1. ) Where to begin,...how about the controvery over instancing. The folks being critical on various forums were right with their concerns. The game has way to many instances and even instances within instances. Thats going over the top Funcom. I felt like I had jumped into a pool, swam down and opened the drain pipe and went in to an underground lake below, then went to the bottom and found a cave which went further in. By the time I reached the bottom, I had no idea where I was or who else was in there with me.
I got used to walking around in large seamless worlds in games such as Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, EVE, and Lord of the Rings. Sure those games have instances but its mostly just for dungeons so players arent fighting over camped mobs. Thats really the only time instancing is useful for players.
The real turnoff for players is mirrored instancing. This is where players can enter a zone but not see each other because of mirrored instances within a zone. Its also a way for PvPers to exploit gameplay (about to lose a fight, switch to another instance)
This game is labelled an MMO but the instancing says to me its an MO. I dont see the masses anywhere.
2.) Moving on to in-game voice chat, umm where is it ? Thats a pretty standard feature players have come to expect these days. And with sieges and raids, its a must. The days of paying for a vent channel are past, Funcom drops the ball here.
3.) Crafting - Its a mistake to leave out crafting until lvl 40. Whats Funcom's reasoning for this ? If you want to engage players in crafting and resource gathering, you do it right away. Another real turnoff, resources in their own seperate zone ??? This turns resource gathering into a seperate chore. Id much prefer to pick up resources as Im busy doing something else.
Score - 5 / 10
Summary Review
Age of Conan is a fun game that quickly putters out. It doesnt have the gas to keep gamers around long enough to enjoy sieges and raiding. And lets be honest, raids and sieges arent going to keep the majority of gamers around. Only the niche gamer stays for that stuff and can overlook the glaring weakness of the game mechanics.
If you were to remove the graphics and opening newb tutorial of this game, you'd see much more critical reviews of the game. It has several glaring weaknesses and in essence isnt really an MMO. Its instances and linear style of gameplay make it a pretty good multiplayer game but a poor MMO.
Total Score 60 / 100
Average Final Score 6 / 10
Seems the guy has spent enough time to warrant a review of the first 38 lvls and after reading this i hope a trial comes out soon as i may send my copy back to GAME.
For the folks on here that have played to his level or higher what are your honest thoughts about the game?
Please list the good and the bad.
)
