Age Of Conan Warcraft Killer Or Not?

For years AOC has been hyped as a revolutionary World of Warcraft killer for serious and mature gamers. Next generation graphics, gruesome finishing moves, and all the sexy female NPC's you can wiggle a mouse at. I went searching for the truth and here's what I found.

For starters the installation, 2 compressed DVD's extract 25 gigs of content and 3 small elephants to your hard drive. Needless to say it's time consuming. But wait theres more! Once you finally log-on for the first time your going to have to download another 4 gigs of patches! Expect to spend the better part of two days installing and updating before you get a chance to play the game at all! Either that or wake up early and drink lots of lattes.

One thing that has lived up to the hype are horror stories of the minimum requirements. Your in for a sub par gaming experience unless your using the latest gaming hardware. If you've been looking for an excuse to upgrade your system this might work out for you but for the budget conscious don't expect to be pleased by the rig requirements.

These gamers prefered death to the steep PC requirements Age Of Conan demands

The graphics are excellent, the realistic blood and guts is a stark contrast to the cartoonish graphics of Warcraft. However it's not exactly fair to say that these graphics are superior to the other considering the style of the art. But theres definitely a gritty feel to the streets in AOC, they have a very lived in and urban look. One can get used to the cruel environments ambiance it's like a standing invitation to crack some skulls open.

AOC earns a mature rating for intense graphical depictions of violence. Sexual content while present is merely suggestive your forced to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. M rating or not, there are lots of immature players. Many of them are probably under 18. Face it most parents let their children watch television with edgier content. There are moments when naked female avatars go streaking through the streets but not enough detail to send them to court for obscenity. Besides as long as game developers let people strip down to their underwear you will always get 40 year old virgins looking for a good time with pixels.

Just in case the heads on sticks didn't get the M rating, naked disfigured corpses for the win!

Basic game play is similar to WoW if you have ever played that game then AoC will be very familiar. Combat is however quite different, the auto attack system is not embraced here, you actually have to target where you want to strike opponents. Your best moves require a combination of keys entered successfully in order to work. This sort of play lends itself better to game pads than the typical mouse and keyboard style of play. In fact I found it hard to enjoy the game until I setup my game pad. Funcom is obviously banking on the success of the Xbox 360 version which has yet to materialize and thus made serious concessions to console players. The finishing moves are worth the trouble though.Lopping someones head off is the perfect way to start the day, and this can only be accomplished via successful combos. It's a shame the combo moves feel so awkward to pull off though.

Pulloff the right combo move at just the right moment and blood splatter is your reward! Sweet!

Character customization is achieved via a system of feats and skill points a system common in most RPG games. The layout is extremely similar if you had one too many beers you might get confused for a moment and think you are playing Warcraft instead of Conan. Perhaps this is the only practical way of laying out a skill tree but I think it's intentional. The slighter the learning curve for Wowcraft players the easier it will be for them to enjoy Conan, and this is obviously their target audience.

Perhaps the saving grace of AoC is it's unique blend of character classes. There are 4 major archetypes Priest, Mage, Rogue, Soldier. Each has 3 different subtypes which makes a total of 12 playable classes, each has its own unique abilities. Soldiers concentrate on close combat using melee weapons, Rogues specialize in dealing high amounts of damage but have little armor, Mages can summon all sorts of creatures and launch devastating spell attacks, Priests are excellent healers and can even bring the dead back to life. There are more than enough classes to keep you playing the game for months. Casually exploring each of them and mastering different play styles could take a year of your real life to accomplish.

Just 4 billion more monsters to go till I reach level 80!

For the first 16-20 levels Newbies cut their teeth in a starter zone called Tortage. It's obvious a lot of effort went into perfecting this area. All of the quests contain quality voice acting which while entertaining at times is annoying at others. Often I found myself skipping past the chatter to get back to the missions quicker. Listening is by far slower than reading the line or two of text that spills quickly across the screen.

The entire game was sold on the expectations created from Tortage. It's no wonder they want to make sure people play this area thoroughly. The dialog is well written and the quests are numerous, some of the missions are hilarious I will not give anything away since it's the kind of thing you only get to experience once but the content certainly entertains a mature audience well. Theres just one problem, you can't leave Tortage without fulfilling a number of single player quests. There are numerous sideline quests you can complete with others but these fail to contribute to your solo quests. You are forced to finish these if you ever want to get off the damn island! At best it's a blessing and a curse. Your free to make all the mistakes you want and get accustomed to the different classes, etc. Even though the story line is enjoyable, it's tedious to play the second time around. If you enjoy making alternate characters your stuck re-living Tortage over and over, enjoy the repetition!

Volcanic demon infested noob paradise - Tortage

For the first ten levels every class is just about even, they all suck! Once you surpass level 10 and unlock your class specific feats things start to become a lot more interesting. By then the nuances of the game are second hand and your one step closer to becoming an ass kicking machine. The focus of AOC is of course combat and in the early stages of the game that's all there is. You will be hacking and slashing or spell casting nonstop for at least the first week of game play.

Traveling through the dungeons and the cities left me feeling like there was more content intended to be issued upon release or implemented later. There are numerous dead ends and doors you can't open littered everywhere you go. The decoration looks just as good as the functional variants so you may often find yourself testing doors just to see what happens next. This can be quite annoying the only thing more annoying are treasure chests used as decoration which AoC is guilty of littering their dungeons with as well!

Dying in the game is a mixed bag, the initial penalty is so slight its often more convenient to die and be resurrected at a temple than to travel using conventional game mechanics. Why run through the entire city when you can attack a guard, die and resurrect outside the city instead? While this is practical on occasion one has to be careful as the penalties can stack up to three times. So if you keep dying you either have to continue playing with the penalties dispel them or wait 30 minutes for them to expire. Whenever you die a small tombstone is left on the map you have to reclaim it to dispel the penalty. However if you get disconnected or just log off and come back while the penalty is still active you may find your tombstone has disappeared. This is another annoying little bug yet to be squashed. On the bright side there is no damage taken to weapons for failure and you loose none of your gear. So when you look at the scales the penalties are just a slap on the wrist. Additionally if another player kills you in combat there is no penalty at all.

Dying only gives a slight penalty which is good because this guy is about to get gang raped!

Leveling up quickly by performing repetitive tasks like missions or killing the same bad guys is called “grinding”although seemingly unavoidable in AOC the dynamic leveling system helps ease the pain. Essentially as you grow stronger so do the mobs. Loot also gets progressively better as you level too. But there are often times a low level item and a higher level item have the same bonuses which can be frustrating.

At the heart of any great MMO is group play and AoC stresses this point by providing benefits for higher level players to group with lower level ones. Through a system of mentoring a higher level player in a group effectively increases a lower level players skill just by being in the same group and mentoring him.

AOC is an intense game the group play is as rewarding as any good MMO, however there is a significant issue with lag which acts like a wet diaper to destroy any fun that may be had. At it's worse all of the action freezes, monsters glide by without attacking and every once and a while you just simply get stuck. A reboot of the client often helps but by then the damage is done. Luckily the penalty for death is slight, but this is not much comfort when your slowing down the action of a group.

Ultimately I found the client to be riddled with a multitude of bugs which effected game play usually during the most exciting moments. While my results are perhaps unique to my system players have on average expressed similar results with the game.

For 50$ you get the box set and a months worth of game time, after that the monthly fee is 15$ for an MMO it's premium priced. With that said however the content is actually quite good. If you are willing to look pass the lack of stability and have faith Funcom will fix it's product over time then theres no reason not to give AoC a try. The experience of Tortage alone is worth the price of admission.

Minimum Requirements / Recommended Requirements
Operating system: Windows XP ( Service Pack 2 ) or Windows Vista
Ram: 1GB / 2GB DDR2 Video Card: GeForce 6600 / GeForce 7900 GTX Video Ram: 128 MB / 512 MB
Processor: P4 3 GHZ / Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ
DVD-ROM: 4X Hard Drive: 32GB Free

Snide Remarks:
Don't blame Funcom for putting out a buggy game they had to beat Warhammer and the new Warcraft expansion to market. If your trying to steal the other guys customers, you don't wanna be caught with your pants down and end up competing head to head. But it's unwise to put an MMO on the market thats unfinished. Gamers want software to be near perfect as soon as it launches. There are plenty of options out there and new ones are coming every year especially in the hack and slash RPG genre.

The Good News: If your burned out on Warcraft and feel like trying something new out then AOC couldn't be better. If you are familiar with the former then you will be at home.

The Bad News: If you think warcraft sux and want something radically different you are in for more of the same. It's different enough to be different but similar enough to be the same.

Bugs:
As part of Funcoms trademark gaming systems it's quite possible to get stuck in the this game without having any way to get out. And by stuck I mean trapped in the terrain. I first experienced this joy while playing Anarchy Online, it's good to see they haven't changed a winning formula. Theres nothing more miserable than trolloping along through the goon infested countryside only to slide down a mountain and find yourself stuck! The only thing which could be worse is waiting for a GM to respond to a /stuck request in order to free you! If your a new player and this happens to you it may take some time to figure out that there is a teleport ability called “Path of Asura” you can use to free yourself.

The client seems unstable with random unprovoked crashes happening on more than one occasion. Usually just as things are starting to get exciting. The game is undergoing constant patching though so this may or may not get worked out in the near future.

Tips:
The quests are where the gear is at, the merchants seem to be selling all junk. If You complete enough of the quests and kill enough baddies you will get good drops and not have to worry about buying from the merchants at all.

Depending on the server you play on you may experience some griefing when you attempt to play the instances. I got ganked a few times by a mob that was just running around killing people and camping the resurrection zones.