Thanks for the preview it gives some good info in there, But on the other hands were some serious grammar nazis in this thread.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =The best bash.org quote ever= Curt teh Juggler: our graduation ceremony was today, and right when some gamer nerd got his diploma, someone in the audience played the zelda "get item" music and he did the zelda spin-hold-out-item stance Curt teh Juggler: it was quite possibly the most amazing thing ever.
Some of my best friends are intelligent but terrible spellers. I don't let that little failing bug me. And I may tease them occasionally, but never rudely. And I don't police them. They know their failings, as I know mine. We accept with grace. To paraphrase: Take the log out of your own eye before you worry about the splinter in someone else’s eye.
So melee combat in AoC is pretty much like other mmorpgs, except you have to press 2 keys instead of 1 to excecute a skill. There is no auto-attack though (is this a good thing?).
Magic spells are the same as other mmorpgs , you target and press 1.
Bow users get a crosshair though, and have to aim at the target. Thats a plus.
Zoning in AoC takes a loong time. Hope they optimise this. Zoning into the first city takes like 2-3 minutes. What about bigger cities?
AoC got some interesting classes, and you get feats at level 10, like talents in wow. There is fansite who has a list of the feats.
Zoning in AoC takes a loong time. Hope they optimise this. Zoning into the first city takes like 2-3 minutes. What about bigger cities?
2-3 minutes if that's true is way too long. However Anarchy Online had long zoning too, but nothing that long. I remember zoning between Omni-trade and Entertainement and it was taking between 4-5 sec to 20 sec depending of the time you play.
Omg, who gives a sh*t!? so what if there are typos and f'ing sentence fragments! anyways good review i feel the same way from the weekend beta. Looking forward to hearing about some of the 'surprises' they have in store for you guys on the beta.
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers.
You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn.
EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Everquest 2 originally started along the same lines. I forget if you were a slave or not, but you were shipwrecked and had lost all memory. Now that I think about it, there are several other RPGs where you started out as a slave, or in jail, or something like that. As long as there is a story, then I'm fine with however you start. It is up to you to decide your future right?
Yes, several other single player RPGs, not MMORPGS, have these backgrounds decided for you. I played EQ2, and starting shipwrecked is fine. I don't seem to recall starting with amnesia though. I don't mind well-crafted tutorials that guide you through a story either. It's the fact that FC is deciding that I'm a slave to start with that bothers me. Even the most linear of games give you the freedom of deciding your personal history.
Nah, you never had amnesia in EQ2, you was just a refugee.
Morrowind on the other hand...
I guess they say nothing is born in a vacuum right? :P
The more I read about this game the better I feel.
My only issue with the review is the talk about the combat being more engaging because you had to do a bit of "keyboard dancing" to start the combo and then hit the appropriate direction.
I think the keyboard dancing thing isn't a good thing. And most players will simply rebind their keys to be more direct. So instead of going 1-2-3 1-2-3 you'll go 4 (combo bound there) 1 4-1 4-1.
I just don't see how it's any different once you start executing combos. Sure it's a small step up by attacking up, left, or right, but that doesn't sound any more complex than using positionals. They both require the skill of hitting the appropriate action at the appropriate time.
It's obvious that the directional attack thing failed, and now it's only a shell of it's former idea. There used to be 6 or 7 directions, then 5, and now 3. While this is obviously due to feedback from beta testers, I think it shows that with the lag and such that can be in MMOs, active directional combat just doesn't work how you would like it to. I give them kudos for trying, but it's just like any other MMO now. You hit buttons in a sequence and you kill the mob. This isn't a bad thing, and I think it will make the game more accessible to the common MMO players. It will definitely be easier to get accustomed to the game now.
I definitely plan on trying the game out for it's story and it's PvE, but I don't plan on playing it for it's PvP. I've heard too many bad things about it from the PvP weekend, and from my own perceptions of it.
--------------------------------------------- I live to fight, and fight to live.
"you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried."
As a web journalist I would just like to say from the bottom of my heart, lighten up son.
And also that web writing is a different kind of beast than print journalsim. Sometimes there is no time to run things through editors. Everyone makes mistakes (there are two in your line I quoted above), even the educated. *GASP*
But do go on. We are dying to hear more about how grammatical errors are intimately linked to the end of civilization.
I agree with the person doing the review. Just from reading the details (and trying to skip over the 'i love this game!' overexcited comments) I already feel like I'm emmersed in deep story gameplay and like the game is interacting with players on a suitable level when compared to games lacking in player/story interaction.
All in all, this game is very promising.
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies." Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
"you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried." As a web journalist I would just like to say from the bottom of my heart, lighten up son. And also that web writing is a different kind of beast than print journalsim. Sometimes there is no time to run things through editors. Everyone makes mistakes (there are two in your line I quoted above), even the educated. *GASP* But do go on. We are dying to hear more about how grammatical errors are intimately linked to the end of civilization.
Btw, you don't have to use combos, you can still just hit in any direction you want to, your call. But, some combos do some special things, like stun. I actually do a lot of trying to hit an enemy where he is most vulnerable, his side not guarded. When I'm panicked, I tend to forget the combo keys anyway. lol Just whapping away still works. Combos work better.
Ranged combat has combos, too, whether ranger, mage or priest. And bows still work in close melee. The magic skills might be interrupted, but the bow isn't. That may change, nothing is written in stone, afterall.
Omg, who gives a sh*t!? so what if there are typos and f'ing sentence fragments! anyways good review i feel the same way from the weekend beta. Looking forward to hearing about some of the 'surprises' they have in store for you guys on the beta.
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers.
You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn.
EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
I'm just saying it doesn't really matter, it was readable. (My mind actually skipped over the typos subconsciously) , plus I bet he just was excited to tell us about his beginning experience, lol
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers. You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn. EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
Ok, wow, where to start.
First. Have you never had a bad day?
Second, have you never rushed something to publication that resulted in a number of errors? Even us "educated" people make mistakes now and again.
Third, I take my profession very seriously and I take pride in my work. I was embarassed by the quality of the editing in this piece and I was very clear about owning my mistakes and correcting them. If you knew me, I think that you'd find that that's a life philosophy of mine.
I have been writing professionaly for three years now and I can tell you when you act as both writer and editor, and you're trying to hammer out a decent article on the morning of publication because you wanted to be able to include as much info as you could about the game you are playing, sometimes things slip through. Still though, I must be unprofessional and "uneducated". Like I said before, mistakes do happen. For example, did you know that you wrote this:
"bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article."
Maybe before spouting off about how uneducated I am, you should read the About Us section. I currently hold two bachelor's degrees one in English and Theatre and the other in Education. I took several writing courses and even have a year of journalism school under my belt.
well the "open" beta has been a bust. There is no tech support from funcom for it. The majority of people are crashing every few minutes if they are in game. most people even with top end systems have to run at low settings to get decent FPS. when they zone they are having 7-8 minute load screens. These are people with cable internet, daul cores dual cards and such. The issues are not limited to vista users either. Rumor has it that they gave FP a 3 month old build for their beta. If so was a big mistake
What is odd is I did the PvP stress test and even with max settings I never crashed had 50-62 FPS not an once of trouble
Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads! Swords for everyone!
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers. You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn. EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
Ok, wow, where to start.
First. Have you never had a bad day?
Second, have you never rushed something to publication that resulted in a number of errors? Even us "educated" people make mistakes now and again.
Third, I take my profession very seriously and I take pride in my work. I was embarassed by the quality of the editing in this piece and I was very clear about owning my mistakes and correcting them. If you knew me, I think that you'd find that that's a life philosophy of mine.
I have been writing professionaly for three years now and I can tell you when you act as both writer and editor, and you're trying to hammer out a decent article on the morning of publication because you wanted to be able to include as much info as you could about the game you are playing, sometimes things slip through. Still though, I must be unprofessional and "uneducated". Like I said before, mistakes do happen. For example, did you know that you wrote this:
"bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article."
Maybe before spouting off about how uneducated I am, you should read the About Us section. I currently hold two bachelor's degrees one in English and Theatre and the other in Education. I took several writing courses and even have a year of journalism school under my belt.
Just needed to get that off my chest.
Okay, now I am getting pissed off. First off, my reply wasn't to you or any of your writers, it was to the person who had an "I don't care" attitude towards grammar. If you look at my post that this was replied to, you'd see that. If I forgot to quote the person I was replying to, then I apologize. Second off, if you read my entire post, you will see that I said I make mistakes and am terrible at grammar. I also said that is why I am not in journalism. Thirdly, I fully realize that professionals make spelling mistakes on a regular basis, that's why there are editors. I also realize that more and more, writers are expected to proofread and edit their own work. Mistakes happen, and if you read my first post in reply to this thread, I never even mentioned the mistakes. I was just put off by the "I don't care" attitudes people had about spelling and grammar errors. It is one thing to care and make mistakes and an entire other thing to "not care" and make the same spelling and grammar mistakes. It's all about the mind set. Those who care will make mistakes and will try to improve next time. Those who don't care, like some of the people who replied negatively to the spelling and grammar crack by the other poster are a blight on our society.
Feel however you want about me, but I don't like people who have the "I don't care" attitude towards education and their writing skills. As for this article, wouldn't it have been better to post pone posting it for half a day so you can edit it? Isn't that what "quality" worksmanship is all about? I'm just asking, because there are pretty obvious mistakes in the majority of articles written on this website. Mistakes that would have been caught if the writer read their article just once before posting it.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
well the "open" beta has been a bust. There is no tech support from funcom for it. The majority of people are crashing every few minutes if they are in game. most people even with top end systems have to run at low settings to get decent FPS. when they zone they are having 7-8 minute load screens. These are people with cable internet, daul cores dual cards and such. The issues are not limited to vista users either. Rumor has it that they gave FP a 3 month old build for their beta. If so was a big mistake What is odd is I did the PvP stress test and even with max settings I never crashed had 50-62 FPS not an once of trouble
That's why it's beta and they are doing mucho stress testing. I think they recognize they have many stability problems. I have a low end computer and play on all low settings, but I can play. For so many people, it depends on more than just how good their computers are. There seem to be other issues too.
And wasn't it mentioned, written even on their website and in the forums, that you need a good computer to play Conan? It has some amazing graphics and I know the devs are working on stability with great strides in each patch. They are under a deadline now. It must be tough trying to create a quality game with such far visions and then run into the constraints of people not having computers with ability to play it. And then having deadlines on releases. That's why there is so much tweaking that continues after release.
Players say a game shouldn't be released if it isn't ready, and while that's true, there are the producer's demands on a reasonable release date because of money invested. World of Warcraft didn't have the stability problem because of the cartoon graphics, But, they too left a lot of planned game elements out until after release. It's the nature of the beast.
My only complaint about open beta, is that you have to pay for a beta you can't play. Perhaps Funcom will make some kind of adjustment because of that.
I might mention, I bought a moderately high end computer because I saw the reality of future games constantly demanding better machines. I played Conan for awhile on it, but could only use moderate options. The game still looked and played amazing. Unfortunately, the computer had problems and is now being troubleshooted. And no, Conan didn't cause that.
This is a post a friend of mine made in our guildsite forum:
So I thought I would give you my impressions of Conan having gotten my initial class and interest to lvl 13, The Guardian.
GRAPHICS: I'll get this one out of the way first, because while nice to look at, I don't find them a game breaking issue.
The graphics of the game look really good in all honesty, the animations are especially nice, even the battle animations are top notch. They have all the new age bells and whistles like bump mapping etc. Now during the open beta I had to get rid of the resource hogs in order to improve other things, mostly because of all the server info gathering that was going on slowing things in beta as you guys know.
The main ones I turned off were bloom and shadows, lowered aliasing as much as possible, and used 2.0 shaders instead of 3.0 shaders. Then I cranked all my textures to High, and added all the reflections and such for water and maxed out my view distance at 3500. I ran the game at 60-70fps with the odd drop to 20-30fps when on the rooftops on Tortage overlooking the entire city at once.
QUESTING: I have to say a lot of the quests are the usual fed ex, or go kill x enemy, or go kill x enemy until y number of items drop off them. But they have done one thing I really must thank them for, they seperated your inventory in 3 sets. Backpack, Quest items, and uh.. something else I can't think of right now.
That being said I have found the quests and the quest text to be very enjoyable and more realistic then in other games. They didn't as I had feared, overuse swearing and such to sound "adult" it simply fits with the text and makes sense where it is used.
I also found the Storyline to be a lot of fun, but I won't go into detail for those who haven't played it yet. I am in the process of doing every quest I possibly can do, now that I have hit the 13 cap. There are a lot of quests I still have around 15 or so and I have completed roughly the same number.
COMBAT: This is really the heart of Conan, the combat. Now I can't really talk about magic users or ranged combat because I have only tried one class so far, The Guardian. Melee combat though is incredibly enjoyable.
You begin the game with 3 basic directional attacks. Forward, upper left and upper right. Later on there is room to learn lower left and lower right I believe. As you level you gain combos, which are very fun and remind me a lot of DAOC chain attacks. When you hit a combo move for example Sweep as my first skill, you hit the key and the move doesn't happen right away. A small window appears showing you what you need to hit in order for that combo to finish and activate. In this case you hit Sweep key, and then upper right. You then do a sweeping left to right swing that hits everything in front of you.
The other awesome thing they've done with combat is you can hit multiple enemies with each swing of your blade, mace, daggers or what have you. So you can position yourself in combat in PvE to take out 2 opponents at the same time, instead of 1 by 1. Strategy plays a HUGE role in Conan combat. Using your skills effectively will be the difference between winning and dying.
An example of a couple of my Favorite skills. Devastating blow, does a 3 attack swing animation for good dmg, plus adds a dot bleed over time. Especially effective when you line up 2 enemies they both will bleed. My other favorite attack is Shield swipe, which swipes upwards in an uppercut motion with the shield and then the sword. This knocks the enemy flying away. When you lineup 2 or 3 enemies it's very satisfying to send all 3 flying in one blow.
Also if you double tap the movement directions you dodge in those directions as well as gain mini buffs in some cases. For example if you tap forward twice you charge forward a bit, gaining a very short boost to dmg, and a high chance to stun an enemy with your next attack. You also have a Block key you can hold down to try to deflect enemy attacks. Blocking and dodging both use up stamina fairly quickly. You can also attack while running which is more effective in PvP I would wager, since the enemies tend to run around oddly when you try to circle strafe them lol.
Shields play a major role in Conan combat, but I'm not talking about the one strapped to your arm possibly. In Conan you have 3 Shields that represent your defense and the defense of your opponents. You can use Ctrl+ 1,2,3 or 4 to setup your shields how you like. You can set your shields to left, middle, right, and all shields respectively. What this does is increase your chance to defend in one area, but makes you open to dmg in another. Watching where your enemy is defending and exploiting their weakness is a key to victory. Especially if the enemy is your level or higher.
Shields also play a role in Fatalities, as you can only do one if you use a combo or spell on an unprotected area of your opponent when they are low in health. I have done various ones such as stabbing them in the heart and shoving them off my blade, or simply cleaving their head from their shoulders. I'll have to equip a polearm and see what kind of fatalities they have when using it.
OVERALL: I'd have to say I am really enjoying my time in Conan far more then I thought I would. It feels like a real living world with many different factions working out and around each other, with you seeking profit from them all if you're lucky. Combat even for a Melee Tanker class is enjoyable and fun, and quest text is spoken for the most part and quests have been a lot of fun. I will be posting some screenshots for you guys so you can see my character and a bit of tortage.
well the "open" beta has been a bust. There is no tech support from funcom for it. The majority of people are crashing every few minutes if they are in game. most people even with top end systems have to run at low settings to get decent FPS. when they zone they are having 7-8 minute load screens. These are people with cable internet, daul cores dual cards and such. The issues are not limited to vista users either. Rumor has it that they gave FP a 3 month old build for their beta. If so was a big mistake What is odd is I did the PvP stress test and even with max settings I never crashed had 50-62 FPS not an once of trouble
That's why it's beta and they are doing mucho stress testing. I think they recognize they have many stability problems. I have a low end computer and play on all low settings, but I can play. For so many people, it depends on more than just how good their computers are. There seem to be other issues too.
And wasn't it mentioned, written even on their website and in the forums, that you need a good computer to play Conan? It has some amazing graphics and I know the devs are working on stability with great strides in each patch. They are under a deadline now. It must be tough trying to create a quality game with such far visions and then run into the constraints of people not having computers with ability to play it. And then having deadlines on releases. That's why there is so much tweaking that continues after release.
Players say a game shouldn't be released if it isn't ready, and while that's true, there are the producer's demands on a reasonable release date because of money invested. World of Warcraft didn't have the stability problem because of the cartoon graphics, But, they too left a lot of planned game elements out until after release. It's the nature of the beast.
My only complaint about open beta, is that you have to pay for a beta you can't play. Perhaps Funcom will make some kind of adjustment because of that.
I might mention, I bought a moderately high end computer because I saw the reality of future games constantly demanding better machines. I played Conan for awhile on it, but could only use moderate options. The game still looked and played amazing. Unfortunately, the computer had problems and is now being troubleshooted. And no, Conan didn't cause that.
If it was a beta I woudl agree with you. However it is an "open" beta apperently using a build that is 3 months old. Therefore there is very little information they can gather from it. Example they have a knownen memory leak with totage in the open beta build they they apperently fixed a few builds ago in the real beta. ( i use real beta name to reflect the closed beta that is still going on and is seperate from the open one on seperate servers with the current build) A week ago they announced they had gone gold with their build. One woudl think that would be the build they would be using.
Second I belive a quad core , 4 gb ram withdual 8800gt in sli, 2 500 gb HD in raid 0, water cooled, a killer NIC game adapter is decent enough to run AOC AS i mentioned I played the stress test pvp and ran it pushed to the max never crashed never froze and had fps in the 60's. MY complaint is they are using a very old ( in dev terms) build for the open beta.
Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads! Swords for everyone!
i personally had an awesome time with my conqueror. this is definitely a new game Ill be playing for a few or more months from now :P. already joined a guild/clan already. hehehe for PVP server. so im going to have a blast.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
1) To the guy who said his characters are based on the live free or die idea. You are on a slave ship, you crash, you confront your captor and he basicaly says your my slave, you say no and you fight him for freedom. So i think that would tie into the whole live free or die trying.
2) The only thing i think is bad about the game is the complete lack of description of your abilities. I played the Bear Shaman class and i recieved combo abilities with descriptions along the lines of "increases damage while tricking target into not focusing attention on you." Ok so this attack makes them not attack me and increases damage. Later i got another different ability with a similar description of increasing damage. I want some kind of number on the description. I need to know what the increase in damage is so i actualy know whats going on. The feat abilities similarly vague descriptions of their actual uses.
Some of my best friends are intelligent but terrible spellers. I don't let that little failing bug me. And I may tease them occasionally, but never rudely. And I don't police them. They know their failings, as I know mine. We accept with grace. To paraphrase: Take the log out of your own eye before you worry about the splinter in someone else’s eye.
I'm too lazy to read through all the forums so I'm just going to ask. Anyone know if the game will be group heavy or solo heavy? I'm really thinking about getting into this game. I am just trying to avoid the "EQ Grouping" thing. Thanks to all who reply!
Comments
Thanks for the preview it gives some good info in there, But on the other hands were some serious grammar nazis in this thread.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=The best bash.org quote ever=
Curt teh Juggler: our graduation ceremony was today, and right when some gamer nerd got his diploma, someone in the audience played the zelda "get item" music and he did the zelda spin-hold-out-item stance
Curt teh Juggler: it was quite possibly the most amazing thing ever.
Some of my best friends are intelligent but terrible spellers. I don't let that little failing bug me. And I may tease them occasionally, but never rudely. And I don't police them. They know their failings, as I know mine. We accept with grace. To paraphrase: Take the log out of your own eye before you worry about the splinter in someone else’s eye.
So melee combat in AoC is pretty much like other mmorpgs, except you have to press 2 keys instead of 1 to excecute a skill. There is no auto-attack though (is this a good thing?).
Magic spells are the same as other mmorpgs , you target and press 1.
Bow users get a crosshair though, and have to aim at the target. Thats a plus.
Zoning in AoC takes a loong time. Hope they optimise this. Zoning into the first city takes like 2-3 minutes. What about bigger cities?
AoC got some interesting classes, and you get feats at level 10, like talents in wow. There is fansite who has a list of the feats.
2-3 minutes if that's true is way too long. However Anarchy Online had long zoning too, but nothing that long. I remember zoning between Omni-trade and Entertainement and it was taking between 4-5 sec to 20 sec depending of the time you play.
Omg, who gives a sh*t!? so what if there are typos and f'ing sentence fragments! anyways good review i feel the same way from the weekend beta. Looking forward to hearing about some of the 'surprises' they have in store for you guys on the beta.
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers.
You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn.
EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Thanks for the preview!
Hopefully they'll come out with a 14 day trial or something similar ... I always hate plunking down $50+ just to try it out.
It does sound very promising though.
Waiting for the preview of lvl 20+. If its giving false impression compared to what the Closed beta is doing then I encourage those ppl to speak up.
Yes, several other single player RPGs, not MMORPGS, have these backgrounds decided for you. I played EQ2, and starting shipwrecked is fine. I don't seem to recall starting with amnesia though. I don't mind well-crafted tutorials that guide you through a story either. It's the fact that FC is deciding that I'm a slave to start with that bothers me. Even the most linear of games give you the freedom of deciding your personal history.
Nah, you never had amnesia in EQ2, you was just a refugee.
Morrowind on the other hand...
I guess they say nothing is born in a vacuum right? :P
The more I read about this game the better I feel.
My only issue with the review is the talk about the combat being more engaging because you had to do a bit of "keyboard dancing" to start the combo and then hit the appropriate direction.
I think the keyboard dancing thing isn't a good thing. And most players will simply rebind their keys to be more direct. So instead of going 1-2-3 1-2-3 you'll go 4 (combo bound there) 1 4-1 4-1.
I just don't see how it's any different once you start executing combos. Sure it's a small step up by attacking up, left, or right, but that doesn't sound any more complex than using positionals. They both require the skill of hitting the appropriate action at the appropriate time.
It's obvious that the directional attack thing failed, and now it's only a shell of it's former idea. There used to be 6 or 7 directions, then 5, and now 3. While this is obviously due to feedback from beta testers, I think it shows that with the lag and such that can be in MMOs, active directional combat just doesn't work how you would like it to. I give them kudos for trying, but it's just like any other MMO now. You hit buttons in a sequence and you kill the mob. This isn't a bad thing, and I think it will make the game more accessible to the common MMO players. It will definitely be easier to get accustomed to the game now.
I definitely plan on trying the game out for it's story and it's PvE, but I don't plan on playing it for it's PvP. I've heard too many bad things about it from the PvP weekend, and from my own perceptions of it.
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I live to fight, and fight to live.
"you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried."
As a web journalist I would just like to say from the bottom of my heart, lighten up son.
And also that web writing is a different kind of beast than print journalsim. Sometimes there is no time to run things through editors. Everyone makes mistakes (there are two in your line I quoted above), even the educated. *GASP*
But do go on. We are dying to hear more about how grammatical errors are intimately linked to the end of civilization.
I agree with the person doing the review. Just from reading the details (and trying to skip over the 'i love this game!' overexcited comments) I already feel like I'm emmersed in deep story gameplay and like the game is interacting with players on a suitable level when compared to games lacking in player/story interaction.
All in all, this game is very promising.
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies."
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Btw, you don't have to use combos, you can still just hit in any direction you want to, your call. But, some combos do some special things, like stun. I actually do a lot of trying to hit an enemy where he is most vulnerable, his side not guarded. When I'm panicked, I tend to forget the combo keys anyway. lol Just whapping away still works. Combos work better.Ranged combat has combos, too, whether ranger, mage or priest. And bows still work in close melee. The magic skills might be interrupted, but the bow isn't. That may change, nothing is written in stone, afterall.
Omg, who gives a sh*t!? so what if there are typos and f'ing sentence fragments! anyways good review i feel the same way from the weekend beta. Looking forward to hearing about some of the 'surprises' they have in store for you guys on the beta.
I don't know, maybe professionals and educated people give a damn. You've gotta admit, even a spell checker would have fixed most of those. Journalists typically submit their work to an editor before it is published. This shows that this website hires writers without college degrees or at the very least, writers who has taken college writing. Or, it shows that the journalist's work isn't submitted to an editor first, which only shows that this isn't a professional website, which to educated people, means that their opinion's hold less weight to websites that do employ professional writers.
You need to learn to think more critically and to start giving a damn about education. The future of mankind depends on education and people who give a damn.
EDIT: No, I'm not oblivious to the fact that most of you probably don't give a damn about education, pride in worksmanship, or the future of mankind after you are dead and barried. After all, this website does have a heavy population of people who don't mind mediocrity. However, some of us do care and it does irk me that people have an "I don't care" attitude about how they write. Sure, there are intelligent people that are bad spellers, and I am terrible about grammar, but they pick a different profession than journalism. For some people, bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article. It's not really about if you can spell or have good grammar to me, it is more the attitude people have about this topic.
I'm just saying it doesn't really matter, it was readable. (My mind actually skipped over the typos subconsciously) , plus I bet he just was excited to tell us about his beginning experience, lol
First. Have you never had a bad day?
Second, have you never rushed something to publication that resulted in a number of errors? Even us "educated" people make mistakes now and again.
Third, I take my profession very seriously and I take pride in my work. I was embarassed by the quality of the editing in this piece and I was very clear about owning my mistakes and correcting them. If you knew me, I think that you'd find that that's a life philosophy of mine.
I have been writing professionaly for three years now and I can tell you when you act as both writer and editor, and you're trying to hammer out a decent article on the morning of publication because you wanted to be able to include as much info as you could about the game you are playing, sometimes things slip through. Still though, I must be unprofessional and "uneducated". Like I said before, mistakes do happen. For example, did you know that you wrote this:
"bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article."
Maybe before spouting off about how uneducated I am, you should read the About Us section. I currently hold two bachelor's degrees one in English and Theatre and the other in Education. I took several writing courses and even have a year of journalism school under my belt.
Just needed to get that off my chest.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
well the "open" beta has been a bust. There is no tech support from funcom for it. The majority of people are crashing every few minutes if they are in game. most people even with top end systems have to run at low settings to get decent FPS. when they zone they are having 7-8 minute load screens. These are people with cable internet, daul cores dual cards and such. The issues are not limited to vista users either. Rumor has it that they gave FP a 3 month old build for their beta. If so was a big mistake
What is odd is I did the PvP stress test and even with max settings I never crashed had 50-62 FPS not an once of trouble
Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads! Swords for everyone!
First. Have you never had a bad day?
Second, have you never rushed something to publication that resulted in a number of errors? Even us "educated" people make mistakes now and again.
Third, I take my profession very seriously and I take pride in my work. I was embarassed by the quality of the editing in this piece and I was very clear about owning my mistakes and correcting them. If you knew me, I think that you'd find that that's a life philosophy of mine.
I have been writing professionaly for three years now and I can tell you when you act as both writer and editor, and you're trying to hammer out a decent article on the morning of publication because you wanted to be able to include as much info as you could about the game you are playing, sometimes things slip through. Still though, I must be unprofessional and "uneducated". Like I said before, mistakes do happen. For example, did you know that you wrote this:
"bad spelling and grammar stick out like a soar thump and actually takes away the focus from the topic of the article."
Maybe before spouting off about how uneducated I am, you should read the About Us section. I currently hold two bachelor's degrees one in English and Theatre and the other in Education. I took several writing courses and even have a year of journalism school under my belt.
Just needed to get that off my chest.
Okay, now I am getting pissed off. First off, my reply wasn't to you or any of your writers, it was to the person who had an "I don't care" attitude towards grammar. If you look at my post that this was replied to, you'd see that. If I forgot to quote the person I was replying to, then I apologize. Second off, if you read my entire post, you will see that I said I make mistakes and am terrible at grammar. I also said that is why I am not in journalism. Thirdly, I fully realize that professionals make spelling mistakes on a regular basis, that's why there are editors. I also realize that more and more, writers are expected to proofread and edit their own work. Mistakes happen, and if you read my first post in reply to this thread, I never even mentioned the mistakes. I was just put off by the "I don't care" attitudes people had about spelling and grammar errors. It is one thing to care and make mistakes and an entire other thing to "not care" and make the same spelling and grammar mistakes. It's all about the mind set. Those who care will make mistakes and will try to improve next time. Those who don't care, like some of the people who replied negatively to the spelling and grammar crack by the other poster are a blight on our society.
Feel however you want about me, but I don't like people who have the "I don't care" attitude towards education and their writing skills. As for this article, wouldn't it have been better to post pone posting it for half a day so you can edit it? Isn't that what "quality" worksmanship is all about? I'm just asking, because there are pretty obvious mistakes in the majority of articles written on this website. Mistakes that would have been caught if the writer read their article just once before posting it.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
And wasn't it mentioned, written even on their website and in the forums, that you need a good computer to play Conan? It has some amazing graphics and I know the devs are working on stability with great strides in each patch. They are under a deadline now. It must be tough trying to create a quality game with such far visions and then run into the constraints of people not having computers with ability to play it. And then having deadlines on releases. That's why there is so much tweaking that continues after release.
Players say a game shouldn't be released if it isn't ready, and while that's true, there are the producer's demands on a reasonable release date because of money invested. World of Warcraft didn't have the stability problem because of the cartoon graphics, But, they too left a lot of planned game elements out until after release. It's the nature of the beast.
My only complaint about open beta, is that you have to pay for a beta you can't play. Perhaps Funcom will make some kind of adjustment because of that.
I might mention, I bought a moderately high end computer because I saw the reality of future games constantly demanding better machines. I played Conan for awhile on it, but could only use moderate options. The game still looked and played amazing. Unfortunately, the computer had problems and is now being troubleshooted. And no, Conan didn't cause that.
This is a post a friend of mine made in our guildsite forum:
So I thought I would give you my impressions of Conan having gotten my initial class and interest to lvl 13, The Guardian.
GRAPHICS: I'll get this one out of the way first, because while nice to look at, I don't find them a game breaking issue.
The graphics of the game look really good in all honesty, the animations are especially nice, even the battle animations are top notch. They have all the new age bells and whistles like bump mapping etc. Now during the open beta I had to get rid of the resource hogs in order to improve other things, mostly because of all the server info gathering that was going on slowing things in beta as you guys know.
The main ones I turned off were bloom and shadows, lowered aliasing as much as possible, and used 2.0 shaders instead of 3.0 shaders. Then I cranked all my textures to High, and added all the reflections and such for water and maxed out my view distance at 3500. I ran the game at 60-70fps with the odd drop to 20-30fps when on the rooftops on Tortage overlooking the entire city at once.
QUESTING: I have to say a lot of the quests are the usual fed ex, or go kill x enemy, or go kill x enemy until y number of items drop off them. But they have done one thing I really must thank them for, they seperated your inventory in 3 sets. Backpack, Quest items, and uh.. something else I can't think of right now.
That being said I have found the quests and the quest text to be very enjoyable and more realistic then in other games. They didn't as I had feared, overuse swearing and such to sound "adult" it simply fits with the text and makes sense where it is used.
I also found the Storyline to be a lot of fun, but I won't go into detail for those who haven't played it yet. I am in the process of doing every quest I possibly can do, now that I have hit the 13 cap. There are a lot of quests I still have around 15 or so and I have completed roughly the same number.
COMBAT: This is really the heart of Conan, the combat. Now I can't really talk about magic users or ranged combat because I have only tried one class so far, The Guardian. Melee combat though is incredibly enjoyable.
You begin the game with 3 basic directional attacks. Forward, upper left and upper right. Later on there is room to learn lower left and lower right I believe. As you level you gain combos, which are very fun and remind me a lot of DAOC chain attacks. When you hit a combo move for example Sweep as my first skill, you hit the key and the move doesn't happen right away. A small window appears showing you what you need to hit in order for that combo to finish and activate. In this case you hit Sweep key, and then upper right. You then do a sweeping left to right swing that hits everything in front of you.
The other awesome thing they've done with combat is you can hit multiple enemies with each swing of your blade, mace, daggers or what have you. So you can position yourself in combat in PvE to take out 2 opponents at the same time, instead of 1 by 1. Strategy plays a HUGE role in Conan combat. Using your skills effectively will be the difference between winning and dying.
An example of a couple of my Favorite skills. Devastating blow, does a 3 attack swing animation for good dmg, plus adds a dot bleed over time. Especially effective when you line up 2 enemies they both will bleed. My other favorite attack is Shield swipe, which swipes upwards in an uppercut motion with the shield and then the sword. This knocks the enemy flying away. When you lineup 2 or 3 enemies it's very satisfying to send all 3 flying in one blow.
Also if you double tap the movement directions you dodge in those directions as well as gain mini buffs in some cases. For example if you tap forward twice you charge forward a bit, gaining a very short boost to dmg, and a high chance to stun an enemy with your next attack. You also have a Block key you can hold down to try to deflect enemy attacks. Blocking and dodging both use up stamina fairly quickly. You can also attack while running which is more effective in PvP I would wager, since the enemies tend to run around oddly when you try to circle strafe them lol.
Shields play a major role in Conan combat, but I'm not talking about the one strapped to your arm possibly. In Conan you have 3 Shields that represent your defense and the defense of your opponents. You can use Ctrl+ 1,2,3 or 4 to setup your shields how you like. You can set your shields to left, middle, right, and all shields respectively. What this does is increase your chance to defend in one area, but makes you open to dmg in another. Watching where your enemy is defending and exploiting their weakness is a key to victory. Especially if the enemy is your level or higher.
Shields also play a role in Fatalities, as you can only do one if you use a combo or spell on an unprotected area of your opponent when they are low in health. I have done various ones such as stabbing them in the heart and shoving them off my blade, or simply cleaving their head from their shoulders. I'll have to equip a polearm and see what kind of fatalities they have when using it.
OVERALL: I'd have to say I am really enjoying my time in Conan far more then I thought I would. It feels like a real living world with many different factions working out and around each other, with you seeking profit from them all if you're lucky. Combat even for a Melee Tanker class is enjoyable and fun, and quest text is spoken for the most part and quests have been a lot of fun. I will be posting some screenshots for you guys so you can see my character and a bit of tortage.
And wasn't it mentioned, written even on their website and in the forums, that you need a good computer to play Conan? It has some amazing graphics and I know the devs are working on stability with great strides in each patch. They are under a deadline now. It must be tough trying to create a quality game with such far visions and then run into the constraints of people not having computers with ability to play it. And then having deadlines on releases. That's why there is so much tweaking that continues after release.
Players say a game shouldn't be released if it isn't ready, and while that's true, there are the producer's demands on a reasonable release date because of money invested. World of Warcraft didn't have the stability problem because of the cartoon graphics, But, they too left a lot of planned game elements out until after release. It's the nature of the beast.
My only complaint about open beta, is that you have to pay for a beta you can't play. Perhaps Funcom will make some kind of adjustment because of that.
I might mention, I bought a moderately high end computer because I saw the reality of future games constantly demanding better machines. I played Conan for awhile on it, but could only use moderate options. The game still looked and played amazing. Unfortunately, the computer had problems and is now being troubleshooted. And no, Conan didn't cause that.
If it was a beta I woudl agree with you. However it is an "open" beta apperently using a build that is 3 months old. Therefore there is very little information they can gather from it. Example they have a knownen memory leak with totage in the open beta build they they apperently fixed a few builds ago in the real beta. ( i use real beta name to reflect the closed beta that is still going on and is seperate from the open one on seperate servers with the current build) A week ago they announced they had gone gold with their build. One woudl think that would be the build they would be using.
Second I belive a quad core , 4 gb ram withdual 8800gt in sli, 2 500 gb HD in raid 0, water cooled, a killer NIC game adapter is decent enough to run AOC
AS i mentioned I played the stress test pvp and ran it pushed to the max never crashed never froze and had fps in the 60's. MY complaint is they are using a very old ( in dev terms) build for the open beta.
Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads! Swords for everyone!
great writeup. The character creation has a VERY cool and original concept. I also agree with the sound/music, its simply amazing.
i personally had an awesome time with my conqueror. this is definitely a new game Ill be playing for a few or more months from now :P. already joined a guild/clan already. hehehe for PVP server. so im going to have a blast.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
1) To the guy who said his characters are based on the live free or die idea. You are on a slave ship, you crash, you confront your captor and he basicaly says your my slave, you say no and you fight him for freedom. So i think that would tie into the whole live free or die trying.
2) The only thing i think is bad about the game is the complete lack of description of your abilities. I played the Bear Shaman class and i recieved combo abilities with descriptions along the lines of "increases damage while tricking target into not focusing attention on you." Ok so this attack makes them not attack me and increases damage. Later i got another different ability with a similar description of increasing damage. I want some kind of number on the description. I need to know what the increase in damage is so i actualy know whats going on. The feat abilities similarly vague descriptions of their actual uses.
this sounds exciting I'm really looking forward to see the game in the shelves.
Well said.
Hello all,
I'm too lazy to read through all the forums so I'm just going to ask. Anyone know if the game will be group heavy or solo heavy? I'm really thinking about getting into this game. I am just trying to avoid the "EQ Grouping" thing. Thanks to all who reply!
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