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Age of Conan Expansion Coming In 2009
At the recent Leipzig Games Conference, Funcom developers announced that the first expansion to Age of Conan is planned for a 2009 release. Details about the expansion are sparse, but a significant amount of new areas appear to be in development for that and a free upcoming content patch. Massively points out a video which showcases some of the new content. 1Up has a piece of concept art for the expansion.
Functioning stats, didn't really matter too much. Stamina and Mana were affected fine. It was str/agi whatever that was fubared. As a lvl 70 or so soldier it buffed my damage by about 2 dps (from 98 to 100), so not really something that was making or breaking anything. An enjoyable level experience? I would say that that is highly subjective, but if a highly enjoyable leveling experience is what WoW had at launch, then AoC does trump it heavily. There were loads of quests for each of the 3 races, and grinding wasn't required at all till around lvl 60 if you just ran around and did quests and killing mobs that got in your way doing that. Indeed, AoC also has a whole "singleplayer" questline that follows you from lvl 1 to lvl 80 in your quest to defeat Toth Amon, setting the stage for the final raidboss in the game. I can't really see much of a difference here, other than AoC's character-centric quest line being better done. So, take off the rose colored glasses. WoW wasn't better when it launched.
But I have to ask you... why do you need to be on every side of the world in a matter of minutes? What game mechanic deems this a worthwhile endeavor? If you can't complete a mission line in one area, what's to stop you from taking the "easy mode" way out and jumping to another area to complete their quest line instead? Where's the pride in character development from "suffering" through something difficult and having bragging rights? ("Oh wow, you completed ___ dungeon!? How did you get past ___?")
What do the MMO designers have to do now to determine what skills to give to the enemies and loot drops should be in certain areas if people can pack up and travel at a whim to find fire resist gear in Magma Valley and jump on a flying ostrich and get their frost resist gear from Penguinville. Fast travel is also why people complain about diversity in characters. If every tank has access to the same gear in relative ease, all tanks will look alike, play alike and smell alike. If you have to travel for hours to get somewhere just to get a few points in resistance, you're going to deal with what you have, you'll find tactics to use and you'll look more unique when you meet someone from another region...
With guilds and such, you remove the difficulty and challenge in a game and it becomes a social wank-fest to see who can be the most popular tank in the guild so they can be first invited to ___ raid on the other side of the world for the Sword of Goblin Slaying (because it looks cool, not because you actually fight any goblins...)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.