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Gamespy verdict: wait on it
Arcona
Member UncommonPosts: 1,182
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/875522p1.html
Funcom's Hyborea is a Wonderland of variegated landscapes ranging from the raw jungles of the Baruchan Islands to the stark desert of Khemi to the severe slopes of Conall's Valley. All of them offer immediate treats to the eye but even more fun for the dedicated explorer. Funcom's Hyborea is unfortunately segregated by instances into self-contained landscapes bounded by invisible walls, but when there are delicious little details waiting to be discovered with every step (check out the "road apples" in Tarantia) this is pretty minor.
The game's setting is also honored through a series of well-written PvE quests that are filled with a tongue-in-cheek disregard for any kind of civilized morality. A particular favorite is an early quest in which a merchant murders a group of religious pilgrims by abandoning them in an area infested by crocodiles. The player is then tasked with killing the crocs, cutting them open and gathering up the valuable gems the pilgrims were wearing. A later quest has a distraught family ask the player track down a missing family member in Stygia. When the player discovers the missing man has been killed and eaten by one of the giant pythons that wander freely in the Stygian capitol, their reaction is joy that the man was "...chosen by Set to serve Him in the next world."
Quests do tend to fall into the classic "bring me eight foozle tails" mold, but the developers make PvE questing interesting by layering lots of low-quantity fetch-and-carry quests into the landscape. That means that rather than requiring the player to get fifteen or thirty corrupted wolf tails they may only need three. Odds are, though, that the player will have a half-dozen or more similar quests requiring the same creature or others in a tightly contained geographic zone. The result is lots more "ding" and "quest complete" moments that keep any single quest from getting boring.
The biggest technical headache so far has been the loss of the Traders and the shenanigans of exploiters. Traders are in-game NPCs that serve as a player bank, an auction system and a mail system. As earlier games have found out, launching without a viable auction system is a major handicap; while Funcom has stated that the issue is minor and it's working on the problem, this is an issue that needs to be resolved quickly.
Certain aspects of the game also suffer from a distinct lack of polish. The UI, for example, is a clunky collection of buttons and controls that hide rather than highlight important information. A tiny triangle on the radar, for instance, allows players to switch instances in common areas. This is important because in order to keep the game smooth and populations in common areas fairly low, the game is heavily instanced. That means that getting groups together takes an extra five minutes just to get everyone in the same instance.
The game's chat system is also atrocious. It uses poor color choices and tiny fonts for text that can't be changed from within the game. It's also annoyingly difficult to properly tab conversation channels or subscribe to the right ones. Guild controls are weirdly split between the "Friends" and "Guild Management" buttons.
There's much more to explore in Age of Conan, of course. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the early game (especially the first twenty levels) is that they're intensely focused on questing and killing monsters. There's a much richer world of crafting, keep-building, organized (and unorganized) PvP, guild-vs.-guild competition and brutal siege warfare to discover. We'll see how much fun it is to get there and whether it was worth the trip in our official review. Check back in a few days for our final verdict on Age of Conan.
Initial Verdict: Wait On It It may need some polish and tune-up time, but Funcom's just-launched MMO based on Conan's world is still bloody, barbaric fun.
Full review to be posted after further testing!
Comments
QFT
I couldn't agree more. Good game but, man, do they HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO!
Thank god, they have Modded UIs for AoC already. I couldn't stand the default UI. so very atrocious!
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
The ui seems fine to me but it should be simpler, the Trader part needs a fix fast!
The game is just plain fun!
Ajax
Now there we go - finally a true review. Both pros and cons.
How hard can it be ? MMORPG.COM maybe needs to learn something from this instead of beeing biased like proven repeatedly on these forums.
Lets allow the fanboys to start flaming now so posts get lodked instead of dealing with the flamers... Fanboys dont flame - only doomsayers.
as a "fanboi", I find this review to be accurate, unbiased, and well written.
I am curious as to why the traders were disabled in live, as they seemd to function VERY well in CB.
As mentioned, there are already UI mods for the game...thankfully. Also, there is a guide somewhere on modding an XML file to change the text colors in the chat window.
However, I would personally not "wait on it", since the game is intact, and smooth enough to provide a weath of enjoyment as-is. Since it can only really get better from here, I anticipate a long stay in Hyboria for myself and my guildies, who seem to be having as much fun as I am.
I also completely agree with this review. Anyone care to link the UI mods?
Currently looking for core members, feel free to visit http://www.aoc-dynasty.webs.com/ for more info, and forums link.
There were 3 diffrent ways of duping an item with Traders . It had been reported numerous times before they actually disabled it.
Id recomend ppl to wait. We are currently playing the areas and lvls that had more attention from FUncom than what l8ter lvls did (always happens...) Bigger issues will probably show up when we get closer to endgame. Then we will also start to see the balancing issues. Got the feeling it will also be the first time Funcom will see them.
No complaints here. Gamespy's "Wait on It" is leaning closer to "Good" than "Bad" judging by the tone of the review, but I can definitely see why they're tipped just over the "wait" line.
I don't know why Traders were removed either; I remember seeing something about it in the patch notes during the open beta, how they were supposed to be fixed in time for the Early Access. I can't remember if it was a bug or an exploit that was behind it.
(EDIT: I need to lrn2read kthx. See post above)
More importantly, people in my guild are already in the low-40s after playing through the Early Access. Sure didn't take people long!
WerikUI at Curse.com
I am pretty positive that the traders were closed because of an exploitive issue.
WerikUI at Curse.com
Brilliant thanks
Currently looking for core members, feel free to visit http://www.aoc-dynasty.webs.com/ for more info, and forums link.
Good thing FC caught it early, that could have destroyed the economy really quick
Good thing FC caught it early, that could have destroyed the economy really quick
I agree we dont want to have a SWG economy, where Cdef pistols go for 16k just becuase of inflation.
-Jive
WerikUI at Curse.com
Brilliant thanks
I would wait abit with using mods since there will be huge amounts of patches going through next few days and weeks. Alot might be UI changes that will be afffected.But theis mod looks fine. Id love to finally be able to change the dam chatbar fonts since it so ugly.
I agree with most of your post. Although I wouldn't wait on getting the game as there are still tons of things to do still while leveling if you want to get a head start on everyone. The quests are really fun imo, and if you're a level grinder there's allot of mobs to kill.
Still has kinks.. but I definitely see myself playing this for a long time.
I figured the trader thing was probably due to a dupe....glad they caught it...I bet the QA testers are being REAL careful after the level thing, and the dual-core AMD patch that accidentally went live before being rolled back.