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First Age of Conan Expansion On the Way
Funcom announced today that they are working on the first expansion to Age of Conan, titled Rise of the Godslayer. In addition to high-level content, it contains new objectives for lower levels as well, in an effort to fill out the leveling process. It also introduces new factions that are at war with each other: "Faction gameplay plays a large role in Rise of the Godslayer, presenting the player with choices that earn them both allies and enemies in Khitai. Through questing and adventure players can advance through faction ranks, rewarding them with treasures such as epic new armor and weapons. Players can choose to continue their adventures with existing characters, acquiring new combat abilities and spells through a robust alternate advancement system, or start over again as a Khitan — an all-new culture." A brief trailer has been posted, and Eurogamer has a more detailed preview of the new content.
Remember that pile of crap I left on your doorstep a year ago? Remember that? Yeah?
Well guess what! I crapped a little extra and put that ON TOP of the old pile of crap! Why don't you come take another look? It's way more awesome, I promise!
Age of Conan... fond memories, those!
I remember how much I was looking forward to test it at a friend's. He had ordered the special edition with the artbook. That one half nude chick in there had me believe that there just might be a god who made it so that the creators of the game actually did have the guts to produce an adult game and who actually had taste when it comes to women... as opposed to stick figures.
Then we installed the game and... yeah, well, that's it, basically.
I guess that those two that still playing will be thrilled!!
I'm one of the people that was conned into buying the game waaay back when it had problems. Does it still have problems? What's the game like now?
A new expansion drops, and most of the current players are happy. Well of the 4 still playing, Ted perfers things the way they are, but the other 3 are psyched. They will be let down though, the new 4 person raid content is useless unless Ted also buys the expansion.
I've been looking forward to an expansion for a while. AoC is a great game that has completely shed the shackles of its lousy launch, but could certainly benefit from an injection of new content. However, I was very disappointed to read this in the press release:
Aw man.. we still have to endure 8 hours of Tortage every time we create a new character? It's a beautiful area with great quests, but every AoC player has played through that entire area about 12 times. It's time to introduce a new starting area. I don't care how they rationalize it in the story but it must be done.
So, are we really talking about Conan here?
...will be known as "The Tonight Show"
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
http://bash.org/?146497
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
An expansion? With so many things still broken they should fix the pvp murder system, fix the rez pad choice after getting almost constantly ganked by 3+ vs. 1 and enforce some policies regarding RP. Leveling after 67 is a tremendous grind and you mostly become prey for higher level players hunting you for your tasty pvp xp. Pvp is a fun part of most games but with the pvp leveling and the murder system there are many exploits and it pretty much ruined the fun. However, it seems that a lot of people like to run around in groups killing anyone they can find and then insult them.
If you get in with a larger guild and play with a group you can get some things done. The AoC world is really pretty and some areas are really creepy so the pve servers can be fun to explore but then you can't pvp without paying Funcom to transfer to a pvp server. But after you've been through it once it's the same, again and again.
After playing since AoC for the past 15 months I finally canceled my subscription and started the open beta of Champions Online, which seems to have fewer problems in open beta than AoC has now. AoC is one of those that had great potential but imo it fell on it's face. I think I even heard Conan crying......
Well, it is crap. What I think was most shocking about the game is that in the end, it simply ain't fun.
Or at least it ain't to people brought up on UO, EQ, SWG, LOTRO, WOW etc.
There is no tactics, no roles. Everyone does DPS, just a bit differently, but there is no saving the day with using the right skill at the right time.
It is one giant hack&slash. It appeals to people who like the korean MMO's. The most basic error introduced were the super-elites. Enemies that took ages to get down, even in a group and you had to wade throught the most boring dungeons since I had my hands on a Doom editor.
I know a lot of people who played the game, tried it in the new trial and spend more time downloading then playing.
Sadly, AoC is just to shallow for anyone who does not think hitten 4 buttons instead of 1 is an amazing new form of playing.
The First Age of Conan: Infant.
Funcom shouldn't be announcing an expansion: they should be announcing that they're shutting down the game. Who on earth would buy this? If I was a Funcom shareholder, I'd be talking to my lawyer right now.
Why buy a new Conan expansion when WoW has:
1) Better quests
2) Better and more classes
3) More races
4) Better graphics
5) Better music
6) Better zones
7) Better dungeons
8) Better PvP
9) About 1000x the population
10) Developers who can continuously fund the game and improve it. 11.5 million players at $15/mo gives a lot of bank.
What game will you find the top raiding guilds in any MMO? WoW. The top PvP players, and the most competitive PvP community? WoW again. No one's going to get sucked into Funcom's latest MMO abortion, sorry.
Age of Conan is a comedy of errors. There are so many mistakes made that you have to wonder just what the hell they were thinking.
Lets start with the start. There are four main classes, the heavy fighter, the damage dealing mages, the health restorers and the light fighters. You may notice that I do NOT mention the usual tank, healer, dps. That is because these roles really just don't exist in the game, but more on that later.
You choose your race and that determines the classes you can choose. You then crash on an island, every race does it, every class does it. EXACTLY the same island.
For the next 20 levels you will do the EXACT same quest except for some minor variations in the main story line quest that are different for every main class.
Does this sound odd? That's right, almost all western MMO's give you different starting points, so that if you create an alt, you spend at least the first few hours in a new area with new quests. Not AoC. As nice as Tortage seems the first time, many a player has commented just how much they hated doing it again and again. In fact, if you want to start in the new area that comes with expansion, you have to go through Tortage ALL OVER AGAIN!
Another huge mistake is the new combat system. In most MMO's you have a thing called auto-attack. This is evil. Nobody actually uses auto-attack (you attack an enemy and you keep hitting with a basic attack until you or the enemy are death, almost certainly you) outside korean MMO's because you get a rich set of special skills that you use to make the fight go in your favor. What these skills are depend highly on your class and a skilled player will learn what skills to use when for maximum effect.
But it can be said that pressing the buttons for these attacks can be become rather routine.
So AoC in a brilliant move did NOT make enemies more intelligent or force more tactical/strategic thinking on how to survive. Rather they introduced a system where you press a button for a skill, then have to press 1-4 more arrow buttons (ALWAYS THE SAME ONE FOR EACH MOVE), for the move to fire. The "trick" is that enemies can have their defences up randomly in each direction and you get best result of your attack has the direction where the enemy is defending least.
It sounds intresting, on paper. But since defence is random it is mostly based on luck and the skills themselves are all pretty much the same "do some damage". There is precious little beyond the direction to choose between the moves.
The effect is that in PvE you could just was well macro the "combo's" and be done with it, you are then left with the simplest of korean MMO's. Those games attract HUGE audiences and are a valid genre in their own right, but AoC made the mistake of marketing itself to a WESTERN audience, the kind of people who cut their teeth on EQ, WOW and LOTRO. They expect roles, tactics even a bit of strategy. Not, go into a dungeon, find enemies randomly standining around in a very wide series of hallways, each of which requires no more then to attack them for a minute or so in an endless slapdown. There really is nothing to it. No thinking, just endlessly pushing the same buttons over and over again. I played it one time with a looping macro and did perfectly. There is not even the satisfaction of finding a masterly put together macro. Just take three skills that hit different directions and you got it.
People put up with SWG and remember it fondly because beyond the bugs was a marvelous deep game. Age of Conan is bugs on top of an extremely shallow hack&slash.
If you are tired of WoW or EQ, then this is not the game for you. If you loved Lineage, then you might like this.
AoC is the example of the game that tried to be different for the sake of being different. They seemed to have thought, "maybe there is reason everyone else do it that way".
The MMO market certainly can do with some new ideas, but square wheels on a car would be new.
It will be intresting to see what The
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Shouldn't they, like, fix all the massive problems in the current game before introducing a thousand new massive problems with an expansion?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
AoC has come a long long way since launch. A change in leadership (old Game director OUT! new game director RAWKS!) has made a world of difference. All you jaded gamers who are still stoking the coals in ignorance shame on you. AoC is the best PvP MMORPG on the market today. All this misinformation rivals Faux News. If you want to limit choice in the genre, go ahead and keep spewing your uninformed opinions. Or (GASP!) maybe go download the free trial and experience AoC as it exists today. Visually stunning, best combat in the genre, best PvP in the genre, and some of the best PvE quests in the genre is what AoC offers.
Can't wait for the expansion.