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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!!
From a technical point of view (i.e. client and game stability), the game has vastly improved since last year's summer. For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking. But subsequent patches and updates made matters much worse, to the point that the client would almost invariably crash after a hour of playing or sooner, with frequent disconnects and clients freezing when loading a new zone. People left the game in droves, not because AoC was a bad or boring game but because it was rather unplayable at the time.
Those problems are mostly gone. There are some very minor issues and the occasional crash, but I'd say the game's stability is more than sufficient, if not quite on par with the industry standard. They've also added some content in free updates since then... If you liked the game itself back then, it's well worth taking another look (though I think you've just missed the recent 2 week free trial offer)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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 was there at release and played for a few months. When I realised that it was the most expensive MMO available I decided to give it up until it had a chance to improve.
They recently sent me an email offering a free retry period.
After a few days, I deleted all my characters, old and new, uninstalled the game and emailed them to ask that they delete my account completely.
You feel like you got conned into buying it?
I feel conned that they got me to reinstall the game and download a couple gigs worth of patches.
I am NEVER going back. And never buying another Funcom product ever again.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking.
Bull. For starters, the game's base stats didn't do anything. Str, dex, etc--they were just numbers and affected nothing. Now I'm no game programmer, but shouldn't the most fundamental stats be the first thing nailed down?
There were also MANY feats that were either broken or just not implemented, though the game would happily let you spend your feat points on them. I did 3 respecs with my ranger before giving up on it, because every time I found that I'd wasted 5-15 points on broken feats. That's pretty damn gamebreaking to me.
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.
Expecting stats to function correctly isn't asking very much of a game. Any game that can't do that is not ready to ship.
This was one of the most botched launches in the history of MMOs, and it came in an era when majorly botched launches aren't tolerated anymore. To say that the game is "vastily improved" is also like saying "the game actually works most of the time now."
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
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.
Not terribly helpful since you don't illustrate WHY you left.
For one thing, I would imagine that anyone who has played this game would understand that.
For another, the reasons are far too many to list here. If I gave one or two of my reasons, by themselves they may seem insignificant and people would wonder what the fuss is about.
Let me put it this way;
If MMOs were a drug, World of Warcraft would be the heroin of MMOs.
Age of Conan would be the methadone.
Its list of adverse effects on the user is far longer than that of heroin. Its very unpleasent to use but still addictive.
You want a concrete example?
The graphics.
Phew, the graphics in AoC are amazing aren't they? Fantastic effects and detail.
But what about the colors? Everything is so drab; all browns, greys and greens.
You may say 'well much of nature is browns greys and greens' and that'd be true.
But in nature the contrast between shades of these colors is noticable.
Age of Conan may *use* 24 bit color but it may as well be 16 bit.
I turned the digital vibrance on my video card up so high it hurt my eyes on the desktop and that produced *some* contrast in AoC.
Thats the flavor of the game; its drab, dull, boring and monotonous. I have never seen an MMO like it.
Interestingly, Funcom is a Swiss company. Perhaps if they had done an MMO based on cleaning, for example, it'd have been truly great.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.