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Player Review from a level 40+ live and beta player. (Includes HoX class review)
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Member Posts: 5
Greetings and welcome to my review of Age of Conan and the Herald of Xotli class, AoC is one of the quickest selling pre-order titles to date and is said to be a benchmark in MMO gaming, but is this all true? Over the course of this review you will see my views on weather or not AoC makes the grade and if it will have lasting appeal!
I will be breaking this down into sections for easier digestion to allow for YOU the reader to skip to the part you feel is relevent.
so lets get the ball rolling with the world!
The World of Hyboria:
The World of Hyboria is a dark and gritty place where sell-swords are plentiful and vices are as common as a Greggs bakery on a high street, Funcom have done a great deal of work and put in a lot of effort in trying to capture the dark atmosphere of Conan's world and it has come up trumps, There are vagabonds and thieves in about every corner of the cities as well as drinking dens and whores to satisfy the every need of the weary traveller seeking sanctuary after a hard days battle.
However can it really be called a World? Here is where one of the major gripes with AoC comes in, to me as with many, a world is vast with plenty of places to travel and means to travel to them. In AoC you cannot help but feel that you are but a sardine trapped in the can crying out for the lid to be opened only for the ring pull to break. To every area you must travel by ship, stagecoach or randomly placed door in the middle of nowhere, and with travel comes needless loading times, albeit fast go a long way to pulling people out of immersion. As an ex-beta player it was explained that the loading times were necessary to keep the world of Hyboria lush and beautiful, of which I do not deny Funcom has made one of the most eye massaging, gorgeous games of our time If AoC was a pin up poster, it would be Nell McAndrew. Sadly AoC is supposed to be a MASSIVELY MULIPLAYER game and hits a large pit hole on the word MASSIVE. My only hopes are that some of the needless zoning and instancing are stripped away to give AoC a more "Worldly" feel to it.
Score: 7/10 Pretty and jaw dropping with buckets of character, but not really much of a World.
Graphics: Not one person can deny AoC is probably the best looking game on the MMO market, The big wigs at Funcom really went all out to give us a visual feast, this game is so damn good looking that it gives current single player games a run for there money! There are few graphical glitches however, such as animation occasionally freezing while in combat and some minor clipping issues on cloaks and a couple of armor pieces, but to mark it down on these minor issues would be nit picking and not doing it justice.
Score: 9/10 Beauty in the home of the muscular barbaric beast!
Gameplay: Now ladies and gentlemen, the part that usually makes or breaks a game in my eyes at least! Funcom have really stepped outside the box with there combat system and made a very enjoyable combat system indeed, Using combos is a simple matter of following the cue that comes up in an easy on the eye box that appears on screen when you activate the combo, Spell-weaving is nothing short of brilliant, building upon Funcoms past successes with Anarchy Online's buffing system, where you will "buff up" and increase your powers prior to combat, of course you can mess it up but you would have to be daydreaming and not concentrating to do that.
The A.I in AoC is ruthless, Mobs will shout to others for help, they will run away try to flank you and even archers and caster will skirmish with you, moving in attacking and moving back out, however some of the mobs have a nasty habit of constantly using stun and knockdown abilites making a fight frustrating and very against a player which can often lead to a player getting very annoyed and logging out.
Soloing is also very plentiful in AoC, perhaps too much so. You are never out of options for mobs to fight or quests to do alone but there are very few times where a situation really calls for a group, If you are the grouping type you can find plenty of action to suit your pallette in epic instanced versions of playfields, but most of the time soloing is so easy that is the prefered method and grouping only occurs in the games few situations that call for it (sanctum of the burning souls and the Ymirish commanders). Although it is appreciated that there all solo options, I cant help but feel the game has been catered too much to soloing and can feel like an offline single player game at times and become a rather anti-social affair indeed.
Questing is the mainstream way of gaining exp, with plenty of quests to do right up to level 50, however after level 50 quests become lacking and grinding does begin to set in, again though the grind in AoC is a lot more forgiving than most MMO's and feels much less of a chore as you bring your sword cleanly across you enemies throats, watching there head bobble around the floor as there body lifelessly crashes to the ground. Questing does currently have a lot of bugs with some quests either not completeable due to the goal constantly repeating to the quest targets not spawning, this can and is in situations where your epic story questline can break a very frustrating affair and has been a severe source of much of the players woes.
Trade skilling unfortunatley is an area I'm unable to comment on as it is largely unfinished at this time and to base a review with trade skilling in it current unfinished state would largely tarnish the review, giving the gameplay of AoC a much much lower score than it deserves.
Score: 6.5/10 Although the combat system is new and interesting, the flaws in the group content and quest system really put a negative impact on the gameplay experience as a whole.
Customer Service: The customer service at the time of writing is very poor, extremely lengthly waiting times for an answer, or to simply have your petition deleted in some cases, to waiting over 4 days for an answer to get an offline message for others. People that have been answered are saying that the lower end of the customer service (the player volunteers) can be quite unhelpful and leave the player more frustrated and still none the wiser to if there problem is going to be addressed. Those that finally do get answered by the higher end of the customer service (the Funcom CS employees) sing there praises of how professional and helpful they are, unfortunatley you have more chance of seeing the next arrival of Jesus than you have of speaking to one of these people, therefore it leaves a rancid taste and a feel of being "cheated" out of money for a poor service in the mouths of the many. Much needs to improve on the customer service front if funcom want AoC to be the great title that many hope for it to be.
Score: 2/10 Poor response times and unhelpful customer service for the majority, an improvement needs to happen and fast!
Herald of Xotli: I decided to include this class into my review as it was boasted to be an entirely new style of class that few have seen in the realms of the MMO universe, having played it both in beta and live I feel that yes the class is different, but not different enough. The Herald of Xotli is a caster/melee hybrid that deals significant amounts of damage with the abilty to temporarly change into a demon to bolster there combat abilties. Boasting both heavy melee and heavy magic damage a Herald of Xotli usually makes short work of there opponents and have some nice tricks up there sleeves if they should come under heavy fire (area of effect roots, frontal cone fire breath, the ability to pull someones heart out and eat it for a quick hp boost as well as having a stun effect added to there demon form and a self rez if they purchase them with there feat points). To me the Herald feels more like class evalution than class redefining, which in many aspects is a good thing. It feels like Funcom have taken pieces from some of the best loved classes of the mmo genres and thrown them all into one pot to form the Herald (the area of effect damage of wizards, the melee damage capabilties of berserkers, the crowd control potentials of sorcerers, the ability to change form slightly like druids) and made a more complete class.
For myself personally I welcome the evalution as it makes for a intensely playable and interesting class, although it doesnt really break any new ground it finally defines the term hybrid as it should be.
Score: 7/10 More evalution than ground-breaking but still a good move.
World: 7/10
Graphics: 9/10
Gameplay: 6.5/10
Customer Service: 2/10
Herald of Xotli class: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
A fair figure for one of this years best looking games, however I feel in some aspects the score may be too kind due to the gameplay issues and terrible customer service. If you dont mind the problems this game could be very well a breath of fresh air for the older gamers and an escape from the single players for the new, Due to AoC still being young and bugs/issues being an expectancy at its age, I'll re-review AoC in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Comments
Pretty interesting review. I haven't purchased the game yet, but I'm likely to do so later on. I was most interested in the aspects of gameplay.
As well, I'd like to learn more about spellweaving and crafting.
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Blog -Transcendent''s Tomb - Reviews, Polls, and tortured opinions from the minions of MMORPGS
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Hhussk
I am not seeing this mob AI you are talking about.... I've played my main to 51 or maybe 52...
In my experience I've never seen a mob run off and get help or even back off to use ranged attacks once engaged. I' have never seen a mob call for help.
What I do see is that ranged mobs will use ranged attacks. Once you run up an engage them ranger types will follow you in melee casters will not. Mobs do require line of sight mostly. So mobs will follow you around corners and stuff if they use ranged. This is good.
I have seen mobs run off but I think it is a bug or something. They generally run off and never return or sometimes they path back. I actually think this is a pathing issue not a feature.
When you attack a mob there is a proximity agro or maybe it's just linking. Really makes little sense how and why mobs come. Sometimes I attack one near another and both come. Sometimes I attack and only one comes. Sometimes I'll attack one by himself and another mob from a group in a nearby camp will come. Sometimes I'll attack one and everything comes. One time I was trying to agro one mob with proximity and another mob on the other side of the room agroed while the one I was trying to agro didn't come at all? One thing I will say is t hat the agro rules in this game are beyond my understanding...
Mobs do use abilities which is cool. If you watch there is a timer bar that shows the ability they are using. This gives you some opportunity to maybe shield it or actively block. Mobs do kick you down. This is predictable and makes sense as it happens with only certain types of mobs. Bosses in dungeons seem a bit over powered in some cases. Spawning lots of adds, fearing you, and draining endurance and mana around them. A good example is the boss in the dugeon off Field of dead. Toir.... something. That boss spawns a bunch of epic adds and does all sorts of nastiness. He is like lvl 52 and a group of 54's get owned.
Anyway I'd give the mob AI pretty low rankings at this point. I like to hope a lot of it is bugginess and will be fixed soon.
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Ethion
I played around with the Herald class in its early levels (pre-20) and have read some info on the main forums about them. While they are a pretty nice class, some people are disappointed by their transforming ability. Not that there's anything statistically wrong with it, but some players don't like the idea that the level 80 form looks exactly like the very first form you obtain prior to Tortage. Necromancers seem to get a few different looking pets over their levels, and I think (but I'm not 100% sure) the same applies to Demonologists. It sounds fair that HoX should also get a few different looking options so that they feel they are progressing, at least aesthetically. However, I must also mention it has been pointed out that this could be an advantage for PvP, as someone can't simply judge your level range at a distance based on seeing what form you are in. Although you can turn on level tags that clearly display someone's level when you're in close enough range to target them, so this argument doesn't hold a lot of water.
Besides that drawback, they seem to be a great class, at least when it comes to PvE as I've not tested them out for PvP. They'd probably fall short to a ranger because of their cloth armor, but then again many classes easily fall to rangers who get the jump on them. I still would definitely encourage anyone who plays AoC to give the class a try; I feel funcom has done a pretty good job on it over all.
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Nice review. Though I have to say your version of MOB AI is not the AI I see in game. ::shrugs:: Maybe I do not notice it because I am to busy plinking arrows and taking heads with my blade. ^_^
Ethion has hit the nail on the head with his comments. That is exactly what i have experienced and i don't make sense of it. It don't break the game too much i still enjoy it mostly but sometimes the mob reactions are just plain stupid.
I have not seen any of this AI as well, it is pretty standard fair at the moment, except everything seems to come in groups of 3. Which is actually a good thing because most of your attacks hit the mobs around you, and it means you can complete the many kill x of y quests quickly. ( theres a lot of go kill 50 of this, 120 of this, 30 of that type quests)
Right now the problems I have with this game are:
Far to many loading screens, the instancing does not really bother me as much as I thought it would, but I never thought there would be this many loading screens in the game. It seems to get better outside of tortage since you can plan it so you do all the quests in one zone first, then turn them in, do the next lot, and so on. Involves a lot less loading, and therefore it is not as frustrating.
I have experienced a lot of bugs, and a lot of crashes, I am not really sure what the producer for this game was smoking when he said this is the best launch in mmo history. Lord of the rings online was flawless on launch, the only downside it had was lack of content. This game certainly is no where near as smooth as that game was.
Some of the bugs at the moment that are particually annoying, my spell icons keep dissapearing despite still being active, the game has a memory leak in a few zones although it has got a lot better since the last patch so I think they may of fixed it. One of my spells charge keeps launching me half way across the map lol (I am a dark templar)
Lastly the most annoying bug at the moment for me at least, is the mouse takes longer to activate a spell than pressing the keyboard does, I am hoping this one gets fixed first since the other ones are more annoying, this one really effects the gameplay.
Right now I would not call this game an mmo, it lacks the massive part of it and is more an online RPG. There are always people around, so it is not as bad as Guild Wars for anyone worrying about that, but it just does not feel like an mmo in my opinion. Because the zones are quite small, the loading of zones makes the world feel very tiny and segrated, and generally even the most populated areas theres about 40-50 max before it starts creating a new instance.
The itemisation in this game is horrible, I have not upgraded some of my gear since I first got it at level 1 I am level 23 now (had the game 2 days played about 7 hours in total) and I keep running past level 40-50 with the same gear as me which is worrying.
On top of that, although my gear has upgraded there does not seem to be very many item models, for instance my boots have not changed in looks even though I have replaced them about 6 times now. Lastly everyone runs like a spastic in this game, I really hope they fix that at some point lol
The UI is bloody awful. Half the quests are really hard to find because there are so many icons overlapping each other. You need to go through very long processes to do things as simple as inspecting someones gear. None of the stats have explanations for what they do and so on.
Lastly, for god sake add some more item slots, all I ever see is There is no more room in your inventory >< the first bag you get is 50 copper which is hard to get, for a grand total of 4 extra slots -_- The bigger bags are 2 gold, 30 gold, and I think 6 gold from what I have seen, not sure how big they are but I know a gold is very hard to get. At the moment I have 3 silver, 50 copper , 46 tin and it took me 24 levels to get somehow I do not think Ill have a mount at level 40. You can sprint though which cuts down on travel alot, and as I said this game is small so I doubt the mount really cut down the travel time as much as it would in say WoW.
The money in this game in general is very hard to accumulate at the moment, which I do not mind to be honest as there are no repair costs, and you do not really need to buy anything other than your mount at 40 from what I have seen so far. There is no durability and there is no real death penalty, so you generally just gain money, there does not seem to be any money sinks untill mid levels.
Now what I like about the game so far.
The combat system is fantastic, and it has hidden mechanics such as pressing keys multiple times for a single combo can cause you to do twice the damage. The fatalitys really do add to the combat, it is not a main feature I think, but it is one of those little details that make the combat much more engaging.
The community is very mature in game, out of game it is another story, but do not let them put you off it is a nice community in game. Which is part of the reason why the lack of social features is a pain, of course this is an mmo supposedly as well, which again makes you wonder what they were thinking when it comes to grouping.
The world looks amazing, especially since I only have it on low (I can run of medium but low runs much smoother and looks great anyway). I upgraded my computer recently to a geforce 8500, with 3 gigs of ram, (I have a single core 3.6 ghz proccessor) with that I can turn the view distance to max, load everything in under 15 seconds apart from larger zones but even that is 30 seconds. I was not expecting to get much higher than low this game is a system hog after all, but even then it still looks great on low settings.
The cities are very cool from what I have seen so far, at the moment I am questing in a area that seems to have a egyption theme, it is very cool. Theres lots of small alleyways, npcs running around, amazing views, and it deffinatly feels conan-esk (The bodies hanging from walls, and cages with slaves in has something to do with that ;p).
The quests are quite interesting, although it is very dissapointing when you leave tortage and theres no voice over anymore ;/ but that said most of the quests are quite interesting, they are all standard fair though as in go kill x of y, go here etc It feels a lot like Lord of the rings online in this sense, where a lot of effort went into making engaging quests in terms of story and the world, then it boils down to go kill x of y.
Despite the amount of problems with this game at the moment, I still enjoy playing it. So I really hope they fix the problems soon as this game has a lot of potential. I do not realistically see instancing, and zoneing changing so do not get your hopes to high in that aspect, I think I can personally put up with the loading if they stay less that 30 seconds long.
The instancing as it is now I do not mind, as like I said there are always people around it never feels like a single player game, that said there are never huge amounts of players in a zone, it really is a constant 30-40 players in most areas I have visited, and the most I have seen in an area so far is 60 in aqulinn or whatever the first town after tortage is called. ( I am still getting used to the names of places as obviously ive only been playing for awhile)
I still am not sure they should be charging monthly for what this game is either as although it is a very good game despite its many flaws, it is still no where close to being an mmo. I think if you like the look of the game and it seems interesting then wait a bit for the trials and play then. Alot of the problems now are fixable. Mostly bugs, crashes, itemisation, and lack of content in certain levels( which I have not experience yet as I am not high enough) can all be fixed/patched in in the next month or so.
Btw I am level 24 at the moment, and I am playing a Dark templar. Also I am on a PvE realm because I did not want to play the game on a PvP server when I lagged so much at the start. Now that I do not lag at all, I cant really be bother to go through tortage again lol That is another flaw btw, there is no replayability Tortage does get very boring very quickly. There are 4 main zones that you quest in, underhalls, white sands, Tortage itself and archolean ruins which the average gamer will probably take about 10 hours to get through probably shorter if you get lucky with respawns unlike me lol.
The other zone, is the bit outside tortage and the area you start off in after character creationg but you spend so little time there it does not matter to much and it is hard to get bored of an area you are in for 20 minutes at the most, and another area you only really need to run through 4 or 5 times if you plan your questing correctly.
Sorry for the long post, did not see the point of starting another topic. I agree at this point in time this game is probably a 7/10 which I would say it means its above average but not quite great.
"Questing is the mainstream way of gaining exp, with plenty of quests to do right up to level 50, however after level 50 quests become lacking and grinding does begin to set in, again though the grind in AoC is a lot more forgiving than most MMO's and feels much less of a chore as you bring your sword cleanly across you enemies throats, watching there head bobble around the floor as there body lifelessly crashes to the ground. Questing does currently have a lot of bugs with some quests either not completeable due to the goal constantly repeating to the quest targets not spawning, this can and is in situations where your epic story questline can break a very frustrating affair and has been a severe source of much of the players woes."
Sorry m8 but you are a bit off here,from level 53 onwards is a real grindfest and nothing but nothing can hide that fact,I finished questing at around 53 and grind out 4 levels of killing the same thing over and over,or at least until I lost my grinding spot to other ppl,even come level 57 when you get another couple of quests you are scared to do them as you know you will be in for a bigger grind,guess what you would be right,really you shouldnt be at aztec or thunder river till 60/61 and even then the quests are spare,they have said they will add another 55-60 zone in the summer but not sure if that is true.
Crafting is really bad at the moment,well at least the 1s I tried are(gemcutting)being about the worst ,all it does is take up room trying to do the 1 quest and you cant even sell them to npc and ofc not many ppl need them in game.
Also really bad maybe even worse than the grind is the damn travel,was so glad when I got 3g to get my horse and riding skill after soooo many trips from ep mountains to noble district for the main system runs etc just to find it doesnt go that much faster than running on foot,still the fastest way to travel is through death and respwn closer to where you want to go.
Sorry but this game is nothing more atm than a quest(till around lvl 54) then grinding game,sure you can watch your guild city get built but other than that there is nothing in the game to keep you going,also at this moment there is no atmosphere in the game other than through your guild,you will only be chatting with ppl in your zone through ooc and trust me that could be a very quiet place,nice graphics and some good quest lines at that start but unfortunatly it doesnt hold for long,this is for sure a game to check out in maybe 4 or 5 months.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8