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Bloody Amazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 28
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
-Beautiful Graphics
-Fun Combat System
-Huge World with memorable Quests
-Mounted Combat
-Guild Cities/Castles with Sieges

Cons:
-Interface needs serious work
-Requires a fairly decent machine
-25GB (and growing)
-Group combat is very fast paced and often descends into chaos

Overall the game is insanely fun to play. The combat is spectacular and eliminates the constant 2-2-2-2-2-3 that other MMOs are stuck with. The quests are engaging, though some people might not like having to read so much and make choices. PvP seems fairly balanced so far (level 26) though one or two classes need some tweaking. The interface is absolutely horrible at times, but this is something that can be fixed. Bottom line is that while there are definately some issues with the game, they are not serious ones. The core gameplay is fun, entertaining, and in my opinion far better then anything you will find in WoW, LOTRO, Everquest, or any other fantasy MMO out there. If you have a machine that can handle the game you should go pick this one up as soon as you can.

Stop the "Amazon Reviews" instead of the AoC reviews please!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 22 / 33
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

All the existing "reviews" are of how poor the amazon customer service is, its got NOTHING to do with how great this game is, amazon, please delete the "reviews" so people wont mix the stars of AoC with your own!

Incomplete product, very unstable, poor customer service

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: July 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I purchased Age of Conan two days after its official launch. I played it for the duration of the initial free 30 day subscription you receive when you purchase the game.

* Be wary of reviews that only mention the area designed for new players, or extrapolate upon very minor features such as "character creation". These things, while strong in this game, are going to account for but a tiny part of your overall experience. My review focuses on aspects of the game that will affect your enjoyment from day one right on through day thirty - namely stability, content, and customer service. *

To start, I'll focus on the stability and quality of the application itself: Age of Conan is extremely unstable, being plagued by bugs that will crash your system for a variety of reasons. The game client has a lingering memory leak that has continued to wax and wane in prevalence since launch. As of the writing of this review, the stability of the client is still very poor and the memory leak is still very pervasive (you can verify this by visiting Funcom's official forums for Age of Conan). I attempted to use two separate high-end systems, both different architectures: one has an AMD 64 bit CPU, quad core, with a NVidia video card, the other is a dual core Intel-based system with an ATI video card. The Intel system runs Windows XP Pro SP2 and has 3.5 GB of RAM. The AMD system runs Vista Premium and has 4 GB of RAM. Both video cards are current generation, and are capable of running other modern games at the highest settings without issue. I tried running the client with my drivers and firmware fully up to date, attempted using different versions, and a wide variety of other modifications, but could never run the game with any semblance of stability. To qualify, I am a very well paid IT worker with over ten years of experience. I am currently a network engineer and work with everything from storage area networks to basic system analysis and administration for Netware and Windows servers (and occasionally Linux). I know full well what I'm doing.

Next, regarding the advertising of the product: Age of Conan is missing much of what is promised on the box, including technical features such as DirectX 10 (if you're not tech saavy, DirectX is an "application programming interface" for mutlimedia - graphics and audio. DirectX 10 is the latest and greatest version). DirectX 10 offers more powerful visual effects and cleaner, more detailed graphics. This game only supports DirectX 9. Large scale player-versus-player combat is not fully implemented. End-game "raiding" (content meant for large groups of players) is generally inaccessible to the average player. More on lacking features later.

Regarding game play: The virtual game world is not well realized. Many of the zones (sections of the virtual world) you adventure within may look large and expansive, but only a very small area is actually navigable; you are confined by invisible barriers into very small, track-like spaces. And unlike other MMO's where players can travel freely through an immersive persistent world, Age of Conan is heavily "instanced". That is, only a small number of people can be in any zone at the same time. When more players try to enter zone a new instance is created, which is a copy of the zone in which a set number of players are allowed into. So, although there may be 80 people in one zone, there may be four instances of that zone with only 20 players in each (I'm using arbitrary numbers as an example, it varies by zone).

Again, back to content: the game is very light on this. Aside from the very polished starting area that guides you through your first 19-20 levels, there isn't many fun and compelling activities. The quests are very formulaic and pedestrian (kill x amount of y, bring them to me), and quickly dissapear at higher levels, forcing players to "grind" (repeatedly killing the same creatures over and over again, for hours, to advance in the game). The crafting system, a staple of the MMO genre, is severely lacking. It does not reward appropriately for time spent, feels largely incomplete, and for lack of a better word is terribly boring. The developer is constantly making adjustments to how the character classes function, which is frustrating to players as they are forced to keep "respeccing" (modifying the abilities of their character skills), which costs money. Accruing money consumes considerable time. You get the picture. Many core game mechanics, such as character stats (think the standard Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom...) do not actually work. All of the gear your characters can use look similar, typically some form of a kilt, and is some hue of brown 99% of the time (I promise you I am not exaggerating). I could literally go on all day in this section. Suffice to say the game isn't very fun, as much of it is missing or does not function correctly.

And finally, there is virtually no customer service: in-game petitions for assistance routinely last for twelve hours or longer without being responded too, and more often than not are deleted with no notification, and no reason given as to why. To compound problems, The developer FunCom openly admitted on their official forums that the majority of customer service (both in-game and moderators on their web forums) currently consists of volunteers.

A fair warning to anyone thinking about purchasing this game. Buyer beware.

The potential is there, but...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: July 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It's tough to sort through the various folks on both sides of the AOC fanboy vs. hater crowds, but here's my take after having played the first month and then quit. In a nutshell, AOC is like a St. Bernard puppy- it's probably going to grow up into something awesome, but right now it spends most of its time falling over and leaving messes on the carpet

The good
1) The graphics require serious horsepower, but they do look good. The general feel works well for the mythos- a bit dark and dreary
2) The sounds and music are well done
3) The classes and combat have some nice ideas behind them- directional healing, combo moves, active shielding, etc. Combat is not simple button mashing
4) The initial storyline in Tortage is very well fleshed out with the nighttime quests, decent voice acting and the rest.
5) Writing- the quest dialogs are generally nicely done and some of the quest lines are quite funny. (Check out the early "What happened to my friend" quest in Khemi)

The bad side of the game really comes in two parts: fixable and not-fixable.

Fixable
1) Bugs, bugs, bugs. Some of these are near game killing, such as the female avatar attack speed bug. Female melee characters have different and slower animations than the males do, so they do less damage. Funcom took over a month to even admit this was a real bug, and now a month and a half into the game admits it's going to take at least a month to fix. This isn't the only issue, but it's a good example of how the game was rushed out the door.
2) Incomplete. Want to be an alchemist? Good luck- a lot of the materials simply don't drop yet. Interested in how your stats affect your performance? Well, they don't, at least they didn't while I was playing. (May have been fixed in a recent patch) Virtually all of the nice voice acting on quests goes away once you leave Tortage.
3) Lacking content. Compared to other MMOs, there's a shocking lack of stuff to do. There's exactly one instanced group dungeon (Sanctum) by level 40- compare to something like WoW or LOTRO which has quite a few by this point, and Sanctum is quite small. By the mid-40s you've probably run out of quests and are reduced to grinding
4) Very, very easy. Quest targets and areas are marked out on the map already. Virtually everything can be soloed. The few epic mobs in instances require no strategy at all- simply run in and start hitting them. There is so little penalty for death that killing yourself so you can resurrect on the other side of a zone is the preferred method of travelling.

Non-fixable
1) Instancing. In retrospect, this is what really did it for me. Each area is a (rather small) instance that can only be accessed by a couple of travel points. Worse, there are multiple instances of each area that reduce the total population of the zone to 50-100 people max. This just kills the immersion- there's very little sense of a huge world that you can travel in or of crowds of people all playing together. When you want to group, you all need to run to a rez point and sync up so that you are in the same instance of the zone- you'll probably never see the people otherwise. Other MMOs simply "feel" epic in scope- Conan feels cramped. Even capital cities like Khemi feel somehow limited, especially since you know you can't really swim over to that island you can see in the distance- it's just scenery.
2) Crafting. The gathering portion of the crafting system is just horrible- a few, fixed resource nodes per zone that regenerate the resource slowly but have no indication at all of their status. There's nothing at all fun about running an entire zone to the four sandstone nodes and find that all of them have nothing in them. Worse, to level up gathering you have to get a "magic drop" of a rare resource which can often be impossible to find. Endlessly frustrating and not fun in any way.

I'll probably re-up in 5-6 months to see what's happened. There's a core of a really good game here, even with the instancing, but right now it's just not worth the monthly fee.

My new vacation home

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: May 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Having played Funcom's first MMO title, Anarchy Online (and having been through the most horrible launch period of all times) I have to congratulate Funcom with a job well done.

First impressions:

The class system seems to be ever developing and interesting - and avoiding focus on the classic stereotypes of MMOs (as getting stuck with a healing priest - which makes it virtually impossible to solo effeciently..coughwowcough)

Having played for a few days, the main things appriciate so far is:

*Kids free zone (at least seemingly so)
*Great character creation (the male avatars are actually good looking)
*Solo-storyline as well as team based play, creating content which is both challenging and interesting for the casual, solo based player.
*Great potential for different builds of a character, more based on preference than "must-haves" making it virtually impossible to make an individual choice of feats(for you wow'ers -read talents)
*Active combat system involving the player more than the passive button mashing style. You actually have to strategize your combos and normal hits depending on the area your enemy is focusing his/hers defense.
*Great graphics - comparing this game to a single player mode game is retarded. For a MMORPG this is beyond anything else you have seen.

The creators and marketing of the game are quite honest of the fact that this game is not for gentle souls. Blood, gore and skimpy outfits (if wearing an outfit) are part of the universe in the first place, and thankfully Funcom had no desire to change it. Hopefully they have means to deal with gold sellers and other exploiters when they turn up.

As for the later stages and of combat and levels, well I havent seen it past newbie island - but I am definately looking forward to it!!

May be a great game in time...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I want to mention I have played many MMO's, a few since launch. As far as the launch goes for this game I would say it wasn't bad at all. That being said the game still needs a lot of work but is still fun to play.

In my opinion:

First and importantly for any parents checking the game out for their children: THIS GAME IS MEANT FOR ADULTS. PERIOD. Adult language, sexually suggestive themes are rampant through out the game.

The UI is big, bulky, in the way and needs to be able to be customized (without having to download 3rd party apps). But it does function decently. I miss being able to change chat text colors to my own liking but I think Funcom will eventually add that ability.

Something that many may not know is that the game is pretty much instanced... in other words you and your friend may be on the same server, same zone, at the same time but in order to see and be able to group together you have to be in the same instance of that zone (which can be done with a click of a button). The benefit to this is that it helps your FPS being that the world is very detailed. The downside is (to me) it seems to eliminate much of the "MMO" feel to the game.

The starter zone is small and intimate and very pretty. The story line is pretty good. However you must complete a series of "Destiny Quests" and reach level 19 in order leave the island. This to me felt a bit extreme and I found myself wanting to leave around level 10. By the time I got to 19 I was desperate to leave. I could not imagine having to go through all of that AGAIN with another toon. I hope Funcom changes things a bit by then.

The fighting is interesting and not your usual point and click. It requires a little thought and skill (which developes with use). The skill trees are interesting and give options so that (for example) "Jane" of the ToS class may not have the same abilities as "Jill" of the ToS class at the same level.

Crafting. I haven't gotten this far so am only repeating what I have heard. You can gather nodes similar to EQ2 and rares are indeed very rare, unlike EQ2. Crafting itself seems to still be in developement. Funcom adds more stuff almost every patch.

Overall, I am liking the game and looking forward to seeing the improvements Funcom makes. They do seem to have decent communication via the forum boards about downtimes and updates. And the downtimes are scheduled with adults in mind... during normal business hours or between 2-6 am.

There are some important things missing from the game such as the Traders/Bankers (they were removed second day of launch due to some kind of duping hack and have yet to be reinstated).

Due to this you prety much have to sell every drop you get because you can only hold around 12 (not positive but is bewteen 12-16) items at a time before having to just leave loot on the ground or running back to town to sell. There are better bags you can buy to hold more items but they are very expensive and from what I hear don't offer a whole lot more storage.

Also because of the missing Trader/Banker there really isn't any in game economy yet and money is slow and tedious to come by. But other than bags and a horse there really isn't anything worth buying atm.

There are the usual quest bugs, "stuck" issues and FPS issues that you can encounter with any new MMO. Funcom does seem to be doing a good job at trying to fix them as soon as they can.

I am going to continue to play for at least another month and hopefully will see the needed improvements that will make this game stand as tall as say, EQ2 and WoW (will probably take at least 6 months for this to happen). It definitely needs a lot of spit and polish before then but is a nice diversion if you are getting bored with your current MMO's.

The graphics are more like Dark Age of Camelot's as opposed to EQ2/WoW. Not so cartoonish. I think Funcom is trying hard to prevent gold farmers via the small bag space issue and no auto-follow.

Overall, if you can handle the usual newly-launched MMO issues, I would recommend you give the game a try. If not, might be better for you to wait 6 months and see how things go =)

Note: (May 28th 2008) The Traders/Bankers are up!!! The banker has 50 slots in which you can store items and/or sell items. Too soon to comment yet on any economy.

Technically Poor - No Support

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 23
Date: June 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The gameplay of Age of Conan really has potential, but unfortunately the entire experience is marred by the most technically inept implementation ever. The installation goes refreshingly fast, but that is where everything starts to fall apart. While the program occupies 2 DVDs worth of content, you will immediately log online and download almost 3 DVDs worth of patches that take HOURS to install. Pray you have a fast fast fast computer and really high speed broadband.

Once the system is installed things start out OK. It is not as user-friendly an introduction as World of Warcraft (the current "gold standard" of RPGs), but you'll figure things out quickly if you've played an MMO before. Continuing to play, however, is hit-or-miss. I have about 6 friends trying this game. Every one of them has had frequent crashes. On my system, the game freezes after about 5 minutes of play , guaranteed.

There is NO customer support for the product. You can e-mail FUNCOM, but don't expect to get any reply at all. I've posted in the forums and no one has reported ever getting any reply to a question, whether its about a technical issue or possible fraud capturing passwords. This is just unacceptable.

The game advertises on the bos to be "DirectX 10" compliant, yet its been announced that DirectX 10 support will not be implemented until the fall.

This game is not worth your time, money , or frustration.

Dissapointed That AoC Was Even Released.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: June 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is my first review of anything and I enjoyed the game for the the first 19 levels, which pass by in hours. I have played a countless number of games over the last 20 years in all genres...and aside from the couple that just wouldn't run, this one disappointed me the most, because there is no content and what is in the game is mostly broken.

It seems like all the development went into the first 19 levels, which take place in one zone, as after that there is nothing new and quality drops dramatically, except, the player has time to realize how broken and unfinished the game actually is. At 80 the player can sit around to realize how poor the game is, while they wait on the developers to add/fix content.

Bugs and bad development features include: Poor thought out combat systems, combos(which are special moves) take 6 seconds to perform and fail often due to player movement and phantom misses. the dodge system is not usable in PvP because of player movement. Many class abilities and Feats simply do not work at all. Basically, all classes can do damage, though some can heal or tank. Lack of content, generally is one zone per
10 levels...with go collect this or go kill this as the only quests available. Poor customer service, I once brought up a new player tested game breaking issue issue and was put down and censored by Fun Com, yet no word of the issue has ever resurfaced. The game can't handle PvP sieges, as it becomes a lag and freeze fest, even with the best PC's available. Not to mention technical issues for a wide array of systems.
Gear and player statistics mean very little in the game and in PvP many are intended to not work at all, so there is and never will be much defense Vs. the one shot instant gibbing that occurs all the time in AoC.

The game is actually going to deter world PvP in the future by implementing rules that if you kill another player to often, which happens in back and forth zergs, that player can then kill and lott you.

I really hate being critical, and there is a lot more wrong with the game and I believe I'm missing a few key issues, but at least I conveyed my sentiment. I'm quite disappointed with this purchase and am saddened by the sunk time costs I invested in testing this game.

Poor Customer Service & Alpha Bugs Render AoC a 2/10 Overall

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: July 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Concept 9/10 - The Conan stories and lore make for a great game idea. Funcom did manage to implement many interesting storylines fans of Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and HP Lovecraft will easily recognize.

Graphics 10/10 - There is alot of eye candy and beauty in Age of Conan.

Content 3/10 - Content across all the levels is lacking, but levels 50+ it gets downright pathetic.

Crafting 0/10 - Crafting was quite obviously an afterthought. It's buggy, it crashes people, it's clunky, it's worse than poorly implemented (if thats even possible!). I craft in every MMO I have ever played. I would rather have root canal than craft in AoC.

Funcom Customer Support 1/10 - It's next to non-existent. They change things so often your head will spin and the character you roll up today will be nerfed into oblivion tomorrow. Constant core class changes, broken feats, broken skills, and never a word from the developer on long term goals of any of the classes. YOU must pay for your own skill respecs (very expensive!) everytime the developer patches, which is once a week (currently).

Class/World Stability - 2/10 - Constant game mechanics changes, constant class "re-balancing", broken feats, incomplete and/or broken skills, alpha bugs (bugs that should have been fixed by beta testing and are considered game breaking), server instability, frequent crashes, and frequent restarts needed to address graphical glitches or lock-ups. This list is not inclusive.

Machine Needed to Run - Only the newest and shiniest rigs will run AoC somewhere near where it was intended. However, constant server-side instabilities coupled with poor overall performance (aka "red 10k ping"), will greatly impact even the most beefy of machines.

If you purchase this, beware that Funcom are not currently supporting their own product. Pay and play at your own risk.

This would have been a vastly different review, a few months ago

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: July 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The funny thing about expectations is just how much it can ruin or promote a game. As an example, I was one of those annoying people who ended up not liking Fable as much as I'd hope to (and complained about it to deaf ears) because I had followed it from its first announcement to its eventual birth. In the same way, I have followed Age of Conan far longer than I should have. Four years. Longer than most engagements.

Well, after finally "marrying" Age of Conan (and buying it a "fancy" ring by not only purchasing it, but dropping $90 on its shinier Collector's Edition), I can understand why the divorce rate in America is so high. It all falls back to expectations. For me, things started out wonderfully. We had our honeymoon in Tortage and for the first weekend or so, I was in complete heaven. The first twenty levels of the game are perfectly plotted and staged, with wonderment occuring around every bend. The story that plays out is small and self-contained but feels epic and truly feels like the start of something great.

Then the honeymoon ends.

Leaving Tortage, things start to sour. The story takes a complete backseat, with story-centered quests popping up every 10-20 levels or so, and instead you're treated to relatively empty environments that are stocked with creatures, sometimes with incredibly long respawn counters. So, you think..."wow, this is a huge change from the first twenty levels" but you keep on keeping on because new shiny skills keep popping up.

Undoubtedly, you'll start to run into problems. Instances won't work as they should and some won't even let you in (half of my guild couldn't access the 40-80 level resource instances like Frost Swamp where some of the epic gear starts to drop). The ones that do let you in, you realize, oftentimes have quests that only one person per instance can complete. There you go, having to repeat a not-too-inspired zone five or six times just to complete a quest. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, if the zones were interesting. But they're not; some of them are simply windy small passages resembling mazes that open into larger, empty rooms. Very boring.

At about the level 60 mark, you start to realize that maybe you rushed into this relationship a bit quick. Maybe your friends were right and this person you find yourself waking up next to is a complete mystery. From here until the end, you start to wonder if the developers (Funcom, a group I have/had the upmost respect for--look at my reviews for Dreamfall and The Longest Journey) spent their four+ years of development on creating Tortage.

I divorced Age of Conan last night. It wasn't as messy as I was expecting. There are some good ideas here. Tortage is amazing (the first few times you go through it, at least) and a lot of kudos should be given to the team as they crafted a story that could be told from four different perspectives. The combat system is an interesting take on a stagnant genre and I've discovered that it makes other MMOs feel slow by comparison. And the graphics are unmistakeably beautiful. But like that dumb model, once you strip away the beautiful exterior and the assets, you start to realize that there's not much depth underneath.

I loved Age of Conan in the beginning. Now, I just feel annoyed. There's a lot more I could have discussed (the lack of customer support, petitioning for issues that took days to be resolved, the horrible online community, the horrible lack of community outreach, the boring zones, the broken content, the content that was originally promised then silently scrapped, etc.), but the point is that Age of Conan isn't what I was expecting. Some people might enjoy it, but there's not enough content here to keep me coming back.

In the meantime, I'm getting back in the saddle. There's another one I have my eye on. I've seen Warhammer Online slyly making eyes at me from across the room. I've been thinking that maybe I'll saunter over and say hi. But this time, I'm going to take it slowly and get to know the game beforehand. This time, hopefully, I won't be burned.

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