Age of Conan MMORPG Review
Age of Conan Review: Hyborian Adventures
I have been playing Age of Conan for a couple weeks now. I started playing just after it launched. This review is from the point of view of someone who is only level 22 on their main character. So take everything I say with a bit of salt.
First off, comparing this to World of Warcraft is going to be hard. There are some similar aspects, but mostly they made a different kind of MMORPG. Some of which I like, some of which I am unsure about as of yet. But before I get into game mechanics and playability and all that I think I will write a bit about system specs, visuals and such.
I started playing the game with a GeForce 7600. The card was pretty good at the time I bought it and it is above the minimum specs, though not quite at the recommended specs. The game itself had to be run in low visual mode (there are three quick visual settings, and lots of advanced ways totweak visuals). I got 10 fps in some areas, and often times the good looking tiles for a specific floor pattern and such would render right about as I was running on top of it. It looked good, but not great and really was odd visually at times. I can't recommend playing with that card. I decided it was time to use some of my Best Buy gift cards and buy a new graphics card. I looked at the 9600 and an 8800. The 9600 was less money, but in reviewing everything seemed to be not as good as the 8800 with 512MB RAM. I really wishnvidia would have a naming system that made sense to the casual gamer. Bottom line is that the [x]800 series cards are the powerful ones. So I picked up the 8800 GT OC . Turns out it needed TWO power cables to power it, and I thus had to go out again to get some splitters as my power supply had nothing free. That finished I installed the latest drivers and was good to go and less about $270.
The graphics improved dramatically. I am now set on medium, with much farther distance viewing. The visuals are remarkable and my fps is 30-50 depending on the area. One thing that is still a bit slow is when you zone into an area, theNPC's show up a few seconds later (sometimes MANY seconds later). I think this is server lag, and not related to my graphics card. This is really annoying and something I hope they find a way to speed up.
The visuals are pretty realistic. There is no clown colored armor. The landscape looks as it should for a game going for realism. Character creation offers a lot of control and I had a lot of fun reviewing various facial scars and tattoo's I could apply. My first character was a male Assassin and looked the part. My first encounter with a femaleNPC had be a bit surprised. I didn't realize how adult the game would be. By adult I mean a) suggestive and b) language / visuals. I ran the first set of quests with the distinct impression I was going to get laid at some point later in the game. Sweet. Lots of dialog in this game about whores, slavery, etc. You can do some pretty evil things too, though I couldn't get myself to take those quests. :-)
Naturally I had to find out what happens for other character classes and for female characters, so I rolled a female Bear Shaman. She is hot. Her tattoo is 'self check'. Turns out the starter quests are all the same, same place, same characters and far as I could tell same dialog. LAME. She may get laid by the same female NPC as well. So naturally I want to see just how adult the game could get and stripped my character. Screenshot below.
Ok, that out of my system off to play some more. It becomes clear that the game relies on a different sort of mechanic then WOW does. Thats not a bad thing per se , but something to get used to. Instead of one big open world, there are lots of Zones. Starter Beach Zone, Town Zone, all the dungeons are a zone, the solo quest line is a zone. Even the Inn has its own zone. So when zoning it shows a pretty picture and gives you some tips and storyline. The zoning gets a bit old after a while. Mostly when going to the Inn or other buildings with only a few NPCs. Why zone me to a place with only a handful of NPC's? I understand its probably to help with the framerate and such, but still, its distracting, takes time and is hard to get used to for those of us playing games that didn't do such things. Even getting to some islands for nearby quests had us zoning by clicking on a rowboat. sigh.
Something else to note: The starter town, Tortage, is the main zone for people under lvl 20. BUT not all people under 20 can be seen or chatted with. You see, each zone only holds 50 people (that is a number I read on forums, and may be subject to change or inaccuracy). So I may be in a different Tortage instance then my friend if we are not grouped up. So while you do see people running around, its not like your going to see hundreds of people at the auction house for example.
Speaking of Auction House, they have an NPC for that. He is the trader and has an auction system as well as acting as bank and mailbox. Handy to have it all rolled into one. He was broken the first week, but they fixed him right up and I tripped my money the first day by selling green items. Yes, you heard me. They have a similar color code system for items as WOW does. White, Green, Blue, etc. Its a good standard to follow. The auction house didn't have much on it when I have visited thus far. Further the interface isn't very good. I hope some ad-ons help in that regard. In fact, the chat, friends, AH interfaces are all weak. I know the game just launched, but those could have been more polished to start off with.
After finishing some quests and selling off the junk I wanted to do a little dance. So far I haven't found any dance emotes. They do have emotes (took me a while to find how). Something like /emote clap. I haven't spent time to find a list of available emotes, and hopefully they add more over time.
A quick note about combat. Unlike some games, there is no target - attack and go AFK ability with Conan. Instead you press a key to swing your sword or cast a spell. Each and every time. This makes combat more active for sure. In addition you can swing at things your not really targeting, it makes fighting multiple mobs easier most of the time, but also confusing. There is so much activity it isn't clear to me what combo's do most damage, and so on. Did I mention combo's yet? Yes combo's. To fight normally you have three swings. left, up, and right. So they swing at different parts of the bad guy. The bad guy may be defensive to his head, so you swing at his left, etc. Combos are abilities you learn that do more damage and have fun visuals. When you do a combo you first click on the icon (or use the shortcut number) then press the up, left or right swing. So one combo may be called slam and require no follow up keys, others may be followed up by a required swing left and swing right to trigger the combo. That means your always having to pay attention and time the swings properly. My favorite willconk a guy on the head, then shove him back on his ass. If you kill a bad guy with a combo sometimes blood spatters on to your screen. Yes, just like blood spattered screen. Only lasts a few seconds. You can also do afatality , which gives you a buff for a bit. I haven't figured out how I trigger them, maybe a chance on kill with combo? The issue I have with combos is that the descriptions don't give enough detail for me to know (yet) which to do in what order, and sometimes they arelaggy so I feel like I am just mashing keys to kill a bad guy. This may be faster for some, but my attack speed is 3 seconds right now ( I think), so its just sluggish. I think they can do more visually to help track upcoming combo's, activated, and last. As well as track effectiveness. Maybe an ad-on?
So back to questing. You will find two types of quests. Ones you can do with other players, and solo quests. So far the solo quests are related to the story line, and really fun. The quests have good dialog. While you are in the main town each person you talk to has voice acting. The voice acting is even pretty good. It slows things down a bit, but I didn't mind. Once you leave the town then its just text to read, unless its part of the main story line.
The solo quests in Tortage are called nighttime quests. At that point the town changes a bit and you can't group at all. I really enjoyed that. It was like a mini game or mini instance for just me. I think its a great addition.
The other quests can be done in groups or not. I grouped twice in my first 20 levels. The grouping dynamics where ok, but again I am so inexperienced it all went by faster then I could properly keep track. That will change with more experience and learning all the details of the game.
So at this point I have finished the Tortage main area and have moved on to my main city. They game sends you to your home town, which may be different depending on what race you are. Its good to split us up a bit, but what if I want to play with my wife and she is a different race? Speaking of races, there are 3 and all are human. There is no playing as a dwarf or elf or the like.
Now to talk about interface of the game. The mapping is pretty good. The mini map shows arrows to guide you for quests, x marks the spot for specific quest locations and so on. Almost always accurate. I found it VERY helpful as a newbie. The mini map also shows merchant locations, quests available and places you can zone to/from. This really helps make the game playable. Where I had difficulty is with buttons and abilities. There are not a lot of slots to put my combo options, so I found my self having to play around a bit moving things around. Maybe an ad-on will help. My first 3 shortcut slots are taken by left swing, up and right swing. Then the rest are filled with basic combos.
One last quip about interfaces and game resources. The quick launch panel to start the game stinks. It scans my files every time, so its quite slow to load. Also the buttons are all gray, and there is a dark background. So the freaking PLAY button looks like it is grayed out. Small updates to that would help UI so much. Like when the game is actually ready, light up the play button so visually we see it rather then having to read the stupid text. Stop scanning my files every time unless a patch is needed. When I am ready to exit, I press the Esc button, but often I have to push a few times for the damn menu to appear. Lame. All of these are small things, but stuff that needs to be fixed and should have been before launch. Regarding game resources, their website lacks much of anything useful.
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