User Reviews (1 - 11 of 149)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

The Game-killing "Feature"

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 121 / 152
Date: May 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

When I heard about AoC, I was excited about an alternative to the MMO garbage that's out there right now. Lineage II was ruined by botters, UO is long dead compliments of EA, SWG was beaten to death by its devs, and anything or everything that has ever been a genuinely amazing experience in this industry is dead. AoC promised to relieve that with world PvP, mature content, and a compelling storyline. Great. Right? Well, sing us a dirge for poor implementation.

Let's start with the implementation of the game world. You start in Tortage, a large island that plays very much like an interactive movie. The content is rich and engaging but not very liberal--Tortage does not feel like a real MMO. Consequentially, the island and its zones don't give you a good feel for the zones, but they do give you an opportunity to learn the fundamentals of the game. Once you get used to character movement, combat, and NPC interaction, the game is much more fun. But still, until you leave Tortage, it just feels empty, like a single-player game.

After Tortage, you find a bigger, badder world in front of you. This world is more like an MMO than your noob streak was, which is great, because it makes it easier to find people, group up, and socialize. Not so great are some of the "features" that probably didn't bother you so much early on. Age of Conan, you see, isn't really an MMO. It's set up similar to a combination of Guild Wars and EverQuest: the game is heavily zoned AND heavily instanced. The consequences for this, when mixed with world PvP, are incredibly frustrating. Here are a few:

Instanced zones means that a particular zone is allowed a maximum number of character inside of it. When the maximum capacity is reached, another "copy" of the zone is created, so you can have six or seven different instances of your favorite hunting forest. It also means that you have six or seven different places to look if you want to group with a friend who doesn't know what instance he's in. It seriously impacts the social aspect of the game, too, because you will very rarely see the same people in PUGs (pick-up groups) while leveling (which means you won't be making as many in-game friends or allies).

Instanced zones also give PvP gankers or fair-game attackers six or seven different places to run and hide. A favorite tactic of griefers in games like this is to sit at a zone line, gank someone who just zoned in or is on the way out, and then slip through the zone line. Your only hope to track them down is to pray that when you zone through to look for them, you enter the right instance. Good luck! Odds are you won't find him no matter how long you look.

Another frustrating aspect of PvP is fixed resurrection points. When you die in AoC, there are fixed points in the zone where you can revive, but these points are not guarded or secured in any way. Thus, many griefers have taken up the hobby of rez point camping--which basically makes it impossible for you to bring your character back to life until a GM or higher level player intervenes. The staff have deemed this tactic illegal, but it still happens, and often. Support response takes awhile, too, so by the time you get an answer from a GM, the attacker will probably have vanished. Still, even if he gets caught, you could spend a good half hour or longer just wanting to get your character back to life. And this will happen more than once. A lot more. GG.

The graphics in the game, however, are very pretty. The world is beautiful, the animations are smooth, and the item and character models are very well done. Combat is fluid and involved--you can't just sit back and button mash--but this can be a detriment for some people as it is a serious deviation from even active combat games like Dungeons and Dragons Online--nevermind traditional MMOs like EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, or WoW.

World gameplay feels a bit lacking, too, as many previous posters have noted. Your best leveling methods are killing eight hundred million mobs or doing quests, which incidentally require you to kill seven hundred million mobs and acquire one hundred million pelts. I mention this in contrast to games such as Lineage II and, again, WoW, which in their mid-level ranges introduce enhanced encounters such as raid bosses and scripted dungeons. Because AoC is a public world like EQ's Norrath, dungeons are bland (in terms of gameplay--graphically they look awesome) and accomplishments are few and far between.

Consequentially, this game gets a thumbs down from me overall. Even if the issues with mid-game accomplishment and rez camping are somehow fixed, I can't stand this world's heavy instancing. Yes, it is necessary to maintain good performance with an engine as taxing as this game's, but this does not feel like an MMO to me--more like a successor to the Diablo series. My advice: if you buy the game, don't hope on the AoC band-wagon. Play it, see if you like it, and if you don't, stop playing it. Warhammer Online will be out soon, and after it, Aion will be released. I have high hopes for both games. Those of you who are truly enjoying AoC, congrats on your new home. Those who aren't--well--you're not alone. Not by any means.

Amazing Game- Ignore the negative reviews on Amazon

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 115 / 174
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I look to Amazon not always to buy, but also to get reviews on a product. When I looked at the Age of Conan review, I was shocked to see that there were only two stars as this game is absolutely amazing... and then I read the reviews. Folks, if you are against Amazon for whatever they did, that's one thing- but don't blame it on the game itself. It's neither constructive, nor is it helpful to those of us coming on here to make a decision on the QUALITY of the actual video game. Now, me personally, I pre ordered from Amazon on the 27th of April, knowing full well that this game was going to be amazing, got my pre order code off of my account page, and was in EA the first day. Did Amazon send me an e-mail explaining where I could find my code? No, which is definitely a shame on them. However, I did look through every post with regards to Conan on the Amazon site. Sometimes, when we really want something, we need to be proactive and get it ourselves- not expect it to be handed to us.

Anyway- about the game. The game is unbelievable. It is definitely the next generation of MMO's. Beautiful graphics (yes, an upgrade on the computer was necessary in my case) amazing storyline and game play. No lag, and the combat system is fantastic.

Graphics 10/10: Though they have announced that DX10 will not be released till later on this year, I am extremely impressed with the graphics in their current state, and can not wait to see how much better they get once it is released. The scenery is beautiful, the rendering and overall detailing is amazing. You really FEEL like you are there in the jungles- and the character movement itself is smooth. In this game, you run into actual characters- not like a lot of games out there where you run through them. The collision detection enhances the overall experience, making it seem more realistic.

Character Creation 9/10: Amazing. I can spend hours just doing this part of the game. Similar to EQ2, you are able to customize a great deal- body type and size of certain parts of your body, as well as facial reconstruction. You can even make your nose appear as if it had been broken and healed incorrectly. The only thing lacking in this department is hair styles. There aren't a great deal of them. Also, depending on the race you pick your colors are very limited i.e. Complexion, eye and hair color.

Story Line 10/10: From the moment your slave ship crashes, and you are washed up on an island, the game takes off immersing you in the world of Conan. You have to help escort someone to the major town (a lot easier than other escort quests) and right away you feel a sense of urgency with making certain you get out of the jungle. Once you arrive in the town, you have a series of quests that you need to complete in addition to your own class questline. Once you complete this, you move on to your home area... I unfortunately have not yet gotten this far.

Game Play 10/10: The combat system does take a little bit of figuring out, but once you do- wow. Not only does the AI (Artificial Intelligence) respond to what you do, but its amazing how you are able to effect multiple opponents with a single hit of your weapon. The spell casting graphics are quite impressive as well.

In the game play, when you converse with the characters, you're perspective changes and the camera angle zooms into the conversation, making you feel like you are actually there. I really like this about the game as it incorporates the player right from the start. You do have to listen to the dialog and make choices which I know will not appeal to some gamers who don't really care about the lore of the game, however when I play a video game I tend to immerse myself in it... and this game definitely allows one to do that.

Sound: The score in this game truly sets the scene. At night as you run around through the jungles outside of town, the music makes you sit on the edge of your seat in anticipation, waiting for something to jump out from around a corner and grab you. The character voice acting is wonderful- the speech inflection makes you believe that you are actually talking to a live person. You CARE about what happens to the characters, versus them just being paper dolls just standing there doing the same thing over and over again.

So as a recap, I definitely recommend this game, however, I suggest if you don't meet the minimum system specs to a T, to upgrade your system to the maximum specs. The minimum will get you there, but if you upgrade, you may as well go for the best of the best. Gaming is my hobby and I have already realized that I have a very expensive hobby. :)

I hope this helps others and clears up the negative reviews for this game... the ones that really are negative reviews about Amazon.

See you all in Hyboria!

By Crom!! What has happened??

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 43 / 57
Date: May 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

EDIT: I'm editing my review after over a month of playing AoC. This is mainly because the higher in level I get and the more "content" I've explored, my opinion of the game has dropped.

After reading and waiting for months for Age of Conan (AoC), I finally was able to get into Early Access (EA) on Saturday, May 17th.

On Saturday morning, imagine my disappointment when Funcom delays opening the servers by 3 hours! 3 hours?? What am I supposed to do now? Well, I got over my delay disappointment and on the specified hour, I promptly logged in, chose my server (Set) and started creating my character. I had no idea what I should choose so I went with a Stygian Ranger. The character customization is OK in AoC. I spent about 15 minutes constructing facial features, tattoos, scars, hair, and body type. Unfortunately there is a limit to the body and hair styles and there are some of the ugliest facial defaults I've ever seen in my life with one good looking one. Guess which one most people will be choosing? There is a lack of a color palette to choose from as well.

As the intro played, my poor Ranger washes up on the beach of Tortage and is greeted by a creepy old man. Here is where I learned the basics of fighting and interacting with the environment. While combat is tricky at first, I eventually got the hang of it. The main thing I like about combat are the fatalities. I've already had the pleasure of gutting and cutting off the heads of my opponents. I've also gotten some sweet fatality deaths from my bow and arrow. It does my heart good to see enemies fall with an arrow in their throat and blood spewing from their mouths!

This leads me to the "mature" content. Granted, by the end of the weekend I was just level 21 but the mature content is really negligible. The most risque stuff I witnessed was in general world chat (or OOC). Sure, the blood and decapitations are cool and the half-naked women rock, but AoC would get a PG-13 rating instead of an R if it were a movie. EDIT: After a month of playing, there are some topless women and toons which would earn this game an R-rating.

Back to my first day, it was tough. While I had no problems with lag, fps, or any of that stuff (I have a relatively top shelf computer), dealing with so many people scrambling for slow spawning mobs became a chore. Imagine trying to gather 40 hides of crocodile leather and you are competing with twenty other players in one small section of an island where maybe 15 crocs spawn. Remember when I wrote "slow spawning" well, yeah, there you go. I eventually completed these tasks as well as my destiny quests and moved on to my homeland starting area.

As for the environments of Tortage, they are rich and detailed. There is a lot of eye candy and you can move around fairly easily in it though you are limited to specific zones. More on that below. Cons movement wise can be filtered down to a "climbing" skill. I'm not particularly sure why this is here and why it's not user friendly. I have to hit "U" or right click on a ladder or vine to scramble up it. If I don't keep my eye on the chat window and catch the alarm "YOU CAN CLIMB HERE!!" I would have missed climbing opportunities.

Zones. The bane of my existence! AoC is instance/zone heavy. This is a bit disappointing especially since you may find yourself repeatedly going back and forth between them which eats up real time of watching a loading screen. What I would do was gather all the quests I could find and just head to a specific zone (White Sands for example) and stay there until all my quests were complete. I'm sure this is what most people did. EDIT: The more I play this, the more I hate instance/zones. Sometimes they load fast but more often than not lately, they load extremely slow which makes me a frustrated panda and more disheartened.

Anyhoo, toons don't just walk through each other like ghosts but can actually block you. This may prove to be very cool when higher level PVP kicks in as formations would actually mean something. Imagine a bunch of conquerors forming up a shield wall to prepare and defend their battlekeep. God that's awesome. Not to mention that line of sight issues appear to be right on track so far. I can get on high ground and fire down into my enemies without LOS errors or those annoying "evades" you'd always see in WoW. This would make for excellent ambush opps in PVP play as well as full scale battles. I'm really looking forward to it! EDIT: The latest is that full on battlekeep PVP is still borked limiting organized PVP engagements. Another disappointing item that makes it seem that Funcom really did rush this out without completing the Beta.

So far from what I've seen, despite some of the cons I pointed out from my own perspective, this is a fun game. I look forward to discovering more features of AoC as I progress because I know I'm just at the tip of the iceberg! EDIT: As of this date (July 2, 2008), the playability and fun of the game is decreasing for me. Big patches are now being released once a week but some of the updates I've seen, seem irrelevant to the big picture. Fixing the look on an NPC's face over fixing the obvious memory leaks which causes crashing even on high end computers makes me scratch my head in puzzlement.

I'm going to continue to play, but come September, if nothing has significantly changed, I will probably be quitting AoC and moving on to Warhammer Online. If Warhammer turns out to be a stinker as well, I guess I'll head back to WoW and wait for the expansion.

Bleh - Nothing Special, Let Me Explain

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 31 / 37
Date: May 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

You may not agree with my review but for those of you who want an honest and objective look into it please stick around.

There are several things wrong with this game that make it generally not quite as great as it could have been.

These issues are: easy of leveling, tedious collection styled quests, massive empty zones, problems with resource skill gathering, lack of voice content, few zones, lack of a decent travel system, ease of travel between starter cities, darkness, generally bland armor, dumb AI, lack of a good faction system, guild creation, instance zones, and weapon selection.

I probably have heated a few of you up so feel free to respond to my comments if you disagree but I'm honestly hoping some of these issues are addressed within the next few months as the game begins to grow stronger.

Ease of Leveling:
One of the most unique aspects of the game, I believe, is the ease of leveling I've found within it. I understand that with 100 possible levels there is room to allow quick leveling but when your character can handle 3 or 4 same level enemies at once he tends to level much faster than he probably should. I don't know but this is my first week (I got it Friday) and I'm already in the high 30s.

Tedious Collection Styled Quests:
I understand I can ignore quests altogether but the game seems to focus in on collection and kill count style quests more so than anything else. Why not kill 50 of a certain type of enemy? How about the same quest in a different zone with similarly level enemies? It's just very very repetitive. Not to mention, for the most part, on non-collection quests, you'll be forced to run through dangerous grounds to light something on fire or break something only to find all the enemies in the area are dead from constant farming. Farming is an issue with newer games but I think when you ask your players to kill 50 of a certain type of enemy you encourage it more than anything.

Massive Empty Zones:
For the most part, when you don't find farmers at every corner, you'll find yourself running alone. The game world is huge! It's just most of the time you'll find yourself running through the huge world. For instance to get to a secondary town in the barbarian area you have to run through a zone that has all of the same level enemies but takes nearly ten minutes to run through. It seems like, yeah, it's much larger than games like WoW but it isn't the size that matters but rather what you do with it?

Problems with Resource Skill Gathering:
Alright so you're allowed to gather resources from level 20 on. The thing is the resources only exist in this barren zone full of no enemies (from what I've seen) so you can spend an hour running around and find nothing at all --- no people, no resources. The good thing though is while you may not find one resource you may bump into a different type. With Age of Conan anyone can gather any of the resource types removing the significance of the gather role of resources.

Lack of Voice Content:
When you start the game on the newbie island you'll quickly be amazed to find everyone has voice content. You'll be equally surprised that when you leave the newbie island no one has it anymore. The developers say they're going to add it in over time but I don't really see their incentive given by the 20th level a higher majority of people are likely to stick around regardless of the sound if that's the only thing that bugs them.

Few Zones:
Again, as a mentioned above, there are massive zones but there are also very few of them. This means that as a level 20, let's say, you're stuck going to any of the level 20 zones setup for each of the different starting cities (3 of them). That doesn't leave people who like to explore (or find a variety of monsters) much to do. If you like the idea of running around endlessly looking for an enemy to fight or camping a certain enemy this won't bother you but I think there is something about variety that this game lacks in general. I also found it unlikely I'd be wandering into the higher level zones until I did hit some barrier level that made it easy enough to handle a few enemies. So I'm stuck with 3 choices (which I stick to one because it takes me a half hour to run to any other through the barren zones).

Lack of a Decent Travel System:
Binding yourself to a main city is allowed but besides that there is a general lack of a travel system. There are way points in the game which, when you die, you spawn at whichever you select so people often get themselves killed to save time instead of running. The death penalty is laughable so it's not worth wasting the time running.

Ease of Travel Between Starter Cities:
One of the strangest things about this game is how easy it is to travel between the starter cities. From the minute you leave newbie island you can quickly jump from one city to the next for free making it possible to explore all the cities in the game with little effort (besides a 20 minute walk through the barren cities) almost instantly.

Darkness:
This is more of my own complaint than something that really should be fixed I guess but the game is way too dark and there are no items (torches please) to turn on the lights. I've known scores of people who actually turn off the game during the night-time parts of it just because they can't see anything. The deserts are the worst with this because it just is so dark. I think it's brighter in the dungeons than it is outside.

Generally Bland Armor:
The armor doesn't really stand out. You get a new piece at level 30 let's say and it'll look almost the same way as the level 20 one. The only difference will be a +4 to the armor rating. It just feels like the armor lacks variety and it doesn't have a good way of really standing out. Also 'good' armor pieces fall so frequently from monsters I've come out of a run of an area with 3 or so of the same chest pieces. It's just bleh.

Dumb AI:
I've pulled enemies standing directly next to each other, on several occasion, and watched as the enemies did nothing to alert their friends I was fighting them directly behind them. For the most part there is no real AI and you never really get the feeling it would be all that hard to fix a pull to your liking. Yeah, once or twice a bad pull will happen, but as long as the enemy initially sees you, or walks over to you while you're fighting, they tend to ignore what's going on around them. Doesn't seem realistic.

Lack of a Good Faction System:
I feel like each quest I'm doing is for the few copper they'll give me and not to award myself any form of faction with a group. Just seems like as soon as I kill whatever 50 things they want me to kill next I move on to the next group of 50 things (from the same quest giver) that were sitting next to those 50 things. It's really this tedious and it doesn't make sense why they made it this way. Not to mention most of the different types of enemies look almost identical so there is little variation between monsters besides location and name.

Guild Creation:
There is no real control on the process of creating guilds (which may be alright I guess) so there are tons of one person guilds out there. It just seems like the process isn't as well developed as it should be considering a portion of the game is centered towards it. It just seems like a fancy grouping system as opposed to anything significant --- yeah you can rank people but it seems bland at least so far. Perhaps later on it'll get more interesting.

Instance Zones:
The zones are all instanced including the main cities. This makes the load times really fast, yes, but you rarely see people and it makes group in zone much harder. I tend to group at the dungeon location so I find myself trying really hard to find people with no luck when I need them. You'd think this would stop the camping but it's still there. I can hardly imagine what the world would look like without the instances because the camping would be that much worse. It just seems like to deal with issues like this they need a world with more variety, less collection quests, no instances, and more servers.

Guild Cities:
I've seen that the guild cities are also instances. I'm unsure how this will affect gameplay and will have to keep an eye on it as more people join but it honestly sounds somewhat stupid... Why build a city if it's within a closed environment?

Weapon Selection:
The weapons in the game seem to just get a little better each time and you tend to get rewards with weapons of your level or higher so there really isn't a reason to worry about finding a new one. It just seems trivial.

I don't know the whole game seems like a good idea but it's just nothing compared to some of the others on the market. A little more time developing a stronger system of travel, the trade skills, and other aspects would have made it more interesting. Cutting down on the size of zones in favor of quality of zones would work as well. Hopefully at the higher levels things get more interesting... I just hope Conan doesn't ask you to kill 50 dragons or something tedious like that.

I like the game it's just I don't like it enough to keep paying the fee as it stands now.

Also, one last note, funcom has released mounts with some preorders (or Amazon curved bow from amazon). It also releases other items with orders of things like keyboards and mice... It just seems like it's trivializing its own item system to release items that should be gained by normal processes as a reward for buying from them. It's like they're mixing the cost structures of a pay for play with a pay for upgrade which may hurt the internal game economy depending upon how excessively they continue to do so. Who wants to work hard for an item when you can buy a keyboard and get it that way?

Finally an MMORPG not aimed at the teen/tween market

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 37 / 49
Date: May 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm glad that a corporation is finially taking note that people over 18 enjoy MMORPG's too. from my experience, most MMORPG's are dumbed down, or are cutesy, like the cartoon feel of WoW or the over simplified Guild Wars. Conan is a bit more complicated. The combat systems feels like an RPG, meaning it makes players pay attention to which physical attacks they use-- unlike the typical auto attack you can get by with in many situations in other MMORPGS.

Thus far, i haven't been to impressed story wise due to Age of Conan using a rather trite plot device to begin the game: warrior with lost memory slowly regains skills. But, then again, most MMORPGS have odd convoluted plot, if they didnt the game wouldn't strech for 80 levels.
The Conan world is vast, and it has been worked on by many authors: [...]

I am looking foward to playing more of this game for the following reasons: it seems to be inovative, compaired to most MMORPGS; it is designed for adults; it is designed to give players more single player options; and finially, who wouldnt want to ride a mammoth that can knock your enemies away with it tusks.

As a side note for those who own/buy this game, the JuLY issue of PC Gamer Magazine has a code in it for a free Age of Conan item.

Worse MMO I've ever played

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 39 / 55
Date: June 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It has great graphics, and the combat system seems unique and like it might take skill - at first.

But as you get into the game, you find that many things are actually completely broken, and other things just aren't well thought out at all. If you like to gank people, you might like this game, because the combat system is setup in a way that makes ganking extremely easy.

All damage is AoE damage, which makes combat sloppy. Unless you are grouped with someone, you damage them. Thus, it is near impossible for people to team up against a ganker without making a formal group, because if you attack the ganker, you also attack the guy who is getting ganked and would be your temporary help at dealing with the guy. There are no single target spells that all you to control your damage. AoE is great a good bit of the time, but in some situations it downright is awful and crowd control and other things which require working together are non-existant. If you are a healer, you do not have any single target heals. You have only group AoE heals. Thus, you can't heal anyone not in your group at all. Again, all these things work in favor of gankers, and if you are a ganker you will be in hog heaven.

Which btw, my first time stepping into the game outside single player mode is exactly what happened. I spent the first hour of the game getting camped by groups of people 10 lvls higher than me. It does however get better after lvl 20 for the most part. But if you can't handle being ganked repeatedly while trying to level, make sure you roll on a PvE server. Even those who come from other MMO's and play PvP servers might want to do so. Yes, it is that bad because of the way the system works that promotes it.

Extremely immature community as well. I think that might have a good bit to do with the time of the year, and the promoting of gankers.

The forums of the game are extremely monitored. Not for bad language, trolls or anything that makes a community suck. But rather for anything they think makes them look bad. Even mentioning you've cancelled your account in a thread will result in the thread being deleted, and the person possibly banned.

I've played MMO's for years, dealt with many releases and understand the problems. I'm also a developer, and thus also have an understanding from the other side. Current release is what you would likely expect to see in beta testing 6 months to a year before release. Even the stats on items don't half way work, so getting gear doesn't even do much of anything.

Don't recommend it at all for atleast 1 year.

Totally overhyped, shiny outside, shallow inside

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 24 / 33
Date: May 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Sure, never has a MMO world looked greater, sure the new, "harder" atmosphere is thrilling when you start AoC and sure, the combat is interesting with it's action.

But that's were the good ends. With AoC it is like with the mighty wizard of Oz; he seems to be strong and great, but once you look closer its just a thin man behind a curtain.

First off, the steep technical demands will likely rule out a lot of potential players right away, adding the still frequent crashes, lockouts, and the plethora of bugs, it is clearly still beta.

Funcom has advertised their character generation as "you could identify another by appearance" and the reality is far from it. Most faces look more or less the same, women all barbie-style and men... men all look like they fell into a lawn-mower headon. The one halfway acceptable face is usually taken by everyone, and the sliders dont substantially change the face, not in the way other MMOs like SWG or EQ2 allowed to look really individual.

The good beginning in tortage with its 20 levels of more or less soloing through a story is neat and obviously it's were the greatest work went into. Outside Tortage you will find a lot of browns and grey and oh more brown and greys. The regions of the first levels after 20 didnt look so stunning to me. Sure, technically up to date, but little that caught me. Its a bit the Vanguardian soulless-ness in the later landscapes.

In terms of gear (armour/weapons) the game is outright underwhelming. Most clothing looks like a potatoe sack or tailored by a blind, not that a MMO must be a fashion club, but a fantasy game could really have shown a bit more to be excited to have someday. So dont expect many stunning cool armor or robes anytime in time game. Also in terms of loot... you better forget hoping for cool loot at ALL. I thought I had seen the worst in Vancraps endless loot list of skeleton bones, badger livers and other vendor trash. In AoC you will never loot anything to make your 2 hours evening worth the grind.

And grind it is, since after level 30 (of 80 levels!) the number of quests dwindles dramatically! Often you will find yourself with no quests at all, so you need to grind mobs to the next level. Outside the fantastic quests of Tortage, the quests are dull and uninspired, the most mindless Fedex of "kill x of these" or "fetch 20 of z" ad nauseam.

Action combat seems nice enough at the beginning, however, there is a trick. First, once you are around 40 you have the skills you ever get, and then its only the skill tree which keeps you going. So more or less, the game exists only up to mid-level and beyond that... the game is in a more or less alpha-state. Since the progress is always the same lines over Tortage and the rest is also quite streamlined, the replayability seems to be thin. While this action combat feel refreshing and exciting at first, in the long run you realize it is always the same clickfest. Just apply the strongest 3 combos to key and you will click just these three button all over, and its easy win. The entire shield and defense thing is rather superfluous, given the fact that in those fast paced fightings you'll rarely be able to react in time shifting shield around you. So all in all, what feel like cool action feels like a very redundant clickfest over time. Since in every combat a few slashes usually decide the outcome of the battle, there is little time - or need - for tactic anyway. But at least Funcom honestly described AoC combat as "like Counterstrike", so there wasnt much to exect anyway for a MMORPG-player.

One of the most annoying features is that AoC bring instances to new heights. EVERYTHING is instanced and zoned, so if you leave the instanced capital of your race, you come into a copy of the next outside zone, and with bad luck your group gets split all over the copies, since they dont seem to hold many players. It kinda takes the MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER out of the MMORPG.

If you are faint of heart you also are advised to stay FAR away from PVP servers, since they are, at least atm, a gankfest. Nude women running around killing everyone as far as they eye can see. All in all the level of immaturity is surprisingly bad, given the fact the game is only legal for ppl 17/18+. With the lack of a RP-PVE server the roleplay is narrowed down a lot and doesnt give much diversity in the possible roles you may play in this dark and nasty world. Not that I mind dark and nasty, but if EVERYTHING is dark and nasty, it gets old very soon. In asmuch an IP with only humans to select, only 3 cultures and lore all narrowed down to "brutality" and "barbarians", the world feels a little too limited and shallow to me, at least in the longer term when the novelty wears off.

Overall the game has some interesting aspects, but nothing to keep the serious MMORPg player for long. Once the initial hype wears off it will be seen for what it is: more show than substance.

If your system can't quadruple the minimum reqs don't bother

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 23 / 32
Date: June 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My husband and I bought this as an alternative to the monotony of WoW. Our systems meet the suggested requirements (and doubles the minimum req's) even when setting everything to lowest detail possible, the video lag was crippling.

Unless you have better than a 512MB video card and 4 Gigs of RAM, you will likely be disappointed in the experience. Most of our friends had the same problems and quit as well.

Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 25
Date: June 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was all excited about this game, but it was a major letdown after I left Tortage (the starting city).

Here are some of the things that annoyed me the most:
- unbalanced classes - not having a class may be better than being a Dark Templar for example, plus any class may be nerfed suddenly at the moment, with or without it being in the patch notes
- horrible bugs that still haven't been fixed - for example: don't roll a female char - your weapon speed is 1.46s, males are 1.2s - this means female chars combos take longer
- heavy instancing - unless you are staying in the same zone and in the same instance of that zone, I hope you like looking at the content loading screen
- lack of community and ways to communicate with people in-game - its like playing Oblivion, but online and laggy
- gathering and crafting system - most boring and tedious of any game yet (including EQ2) - that is the parts that are working, because a lot of it is very buggy or missing
- combat system - combat is not really enhanced by mashing 5 buttons with a small pause between each, the pause drives me insane
- stats and gear - tests have shown that, in most cases, you might as well be naked, or are indeed better off naked
- traveling - most people travel by suiciding, that says it all
- bag space very limited - have fun going back to town to sell things far too many times, and I pity you if you didn't get a promo bag to start
- help - need in-game help? you need to stay logged in while petitioning, good luck person #492!

Fun stuff:
- great graphics for first areas
- more adult themed than most mmos - small amount of swearing and nudity

Check out the forums too - it is mostly a bunch of people saying "I really wanted to like it, but I am leaving and here is my constructive criticism," followed by fanboi rants about how no mmo is good when it comes out, funcom is doing their best to fix things, aoc is trying to be different, etc.

Age of Broken Things

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 22
Date: June 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Age of Conan could be THE example of how underwhelming a new MMORPG can be. A lot of promise a lot of hype ....and simply no delivery.

It begins with the first 20 levels (of which half are played solo in ... solo instances) which are very very nice to look at ... IF you have a hi end graphics card and play on medium settings. If you don't have at least 2 Gigabyte of memory and a sub 7900 GT card. Forget it. The game will play the ON line part at a stuttering 15 Frames per second or far worse.

Problem is ... underneath the good polished beginnings of this game there is absolutely NOTHING but NOTHING in gameplay value.

The gameworld is closed. You do NOT seem to live in a seamless open world, instead you live in an uploaded series of closed boxes. Walking into a door even gives you "loading screens" of about 5 to 10 seconds. Walking into another zone or even a part of a "dungeon" makes you have loading screens of about 20 to 45 seconds (depending on hardware)
Age of loading...

Age of Instances (copies)

Because IN a zone (even open zones like cities) the game creates instances (copies) of that zone. Meaning you only see a handful of players at a time (mostly between 30 and 40). This is a very OLD technique in MMORPG's to handle the stuttering of your character. Why? Because the graphics take up so MUCH computer power (even on hi end cards), MORE players can not be handled without .... loading.
The worst is that each zone has to be entered at a FIXED entry point. That point of course being camped by complete guilds to prevent you to enter that zone. See PvP below.

In an age where LOTRO and WoW/TBC have open seamless worlds to live in, this is a BIG failure as an MMORPG. Even if you would dislike Wow/TBC(2007): in Outland you can fly your personal acquired mount and fly ANYWHERE over the continent (mountains, lakes, forests, cities) you want AND land ANYWHERE without ever seeing a loading screen. Instances in the latest MMORPG's are only being used for gaming purposes (dungeons or balanced battlegrounds), NOT for the open seamless world.

Personal vs Personal Combat play (PvP): simple: there are NO rules at the moment. Everyone can bash everyone even in your own guild. While this may seem fun for about .. 1 hour, it makes the game broken... because there are NO rules. You don't get punished, you don't get rewards. Nothing. The makers said at the end of the 80(!) levels there would be Siege battles, but they didn't include them. And even when included they would be worthless since everyone plays in his own instance of a zone.

Death is a FIXED respawn point nearby, you can't choose to walk up you body. Just FIXED and meaning you get ganked near those FIXED points when your debuff fades.
Age of noobs PvP.

The battles themselves are nothing but bashing the keyboards with certain fixed(!) combos. After 3 weeks everybody knows the trick ! You either bash the keyboards and use (the same) combo's or you .... MOVE. That's right you heard it. FunCOM found a system where you can't hit with combo's and move!! Casters can't move either when casting.
Age of hampered Combat.

Last but not least: after level 20 everything comes down in PVE: no more polishing and .... no quests enough after level 45 to keep going. Meaning you have to grind: killing mindless everything you see to get some experience ... to get to the next level where you do exactly the same...

In the level 55+ that means killing 700 mammouths to just keep playing.
In the later levels you need MILLIONS of points to reach the next level. just by killing beasts. Fun ???

Worse: on PvP servers most FIXED entry zones are being camped by guilds so yo can't even enter the zones with the most wildlife.
Age of Lost PVE.

Next is the loot: would you believe that most players at level 50 have some gear that's the same as level 1's? Even the stats hardly change and some substats are even BETTER at level 1???
Age of broken loot.

Dungeons: since the FUNCOM Director himself said in an open letter after 2 weeks they would change the dungeons, I wouldn't even comment on that part.
Age of broken dungeons.

Interface: How difficult could it be JUST to (right)click on a person and whisper?; Not with Conan! the interface is - next to Tabula rasa - one of the worst seen ever.
Age of hedious interface.

I don't mind the bugs, the broken quests or the unfinished nature of the game. The problem with this game; it had fatal design decisions from the beginning: choosing graphics that aren't suitable for an on line role playing game (hence the loadings and copies of what should be a world you LIVE in) were even MORE important than basic GAME design.

What could be WORSE for a computer game?

Age of lacking ...game design and polishment.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions