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First Impressions
TheHorror
Member Posts: 29
I almost picked up the collectors edition before the game came out, but held off when I read some of the first reports from the beta. When the hatred started getting spouted I reassured myself that it was the right move not to get it. Then a few days ago on a whim I picked up the game from my local store. Here is what I think of it so far:
- The game has the potential to be a brilliant MMO. The game doesnt feel like its finished though.
- The night time quests in Tortage were excellent. Great idea and well implemented. Why are there no night single player quests after Tortage?
- Game crashes for me every 1-2 hours. Many textures in the game look rushed. Clipping problems happen every now and again (teleporting NPCs, bits of flesh poking out through character clothing, once I fell through the ground to my death).
- No voices for characters beyond Tortage was disappointing, but minor detail.
- I dont understand the point of the resource building zones. Two or three player cities can be built in each zone, but it seems like there were plenty of resources to go around in that huge zone. Why would the guilds fight and destroy each others cities? I understand that the city zones are instanced. Why? Why not just one of each of the three zones, letting guilds construct cities anywhere in those zones and letting them all fight over the limited resources in the area?
- Lack of a player economy. Why are there npc sellers? The only thing I do is sell stuff to them never buy anything. I keep wondering through markets and thinking how cool it would be if players where running those stores. But the powerful quest items and global auction house eliminate all possibility of local markets developing under player control. If the game stopped giving out anything above a green item from missions, forced all mission items to be character bound, forced players to physically move goods from one region to another using slow moving caravans, and allowed players to put their items for sale only through individual merchants in different zones - that would create an incredible player economy. I just dont see the point in the system implemented now.
- I am convinced that after Tortage there is a day/night cycle in the game. The problem is the night is almost as bright as the day time. If there wont be night time single player quests like in Tortage why not use the day/night cycles to increase immersivity? Just make most nights really dark. Force people to run around with torches outside of cities, and increase incidence of bandit attacks. Make people run for the safety of cities during the night to run their city quests, to socialise in the taverns and to try to make some money in the markets.
- I was going to unsubscribe from the game after playing it for two days in Tortage and Stygia. Then I decided to head over to Cimmeria and I was blown away. Bodies littering the road. Corpses dangling from trees. Quests where you have to impale your enemies heads on spikes. It was awesome. That is what Conan is all about.
In summary: Its sad to see a game with so much potential being so poorly executed. After the fun I had in Cimmeria I have decided to remain subscribed to the game for at least another few days. Frankly though, pve content is much better in Tabula Rasa, and player driven pvp is much better in EVE online. They had the shot to combine the best of both pve and pvp into the one kick ass setting, but somewhere along the way the baby was born prematurely and dropped on its head. I dont think it will ever recover.
Comments
Great review and sad but truthfull conclusion. Damn shame really. I believed in AoC for a long time. Bugs, unstable clients and lack of content are all things that can be fixed in time, but wrongly laid foundations like the instanced public zones are a different matter. It still could be a great game, in a year or so ... provided AoC will stay alive for that long. If they would have adressed stability and content (pvp, quest, profession and item wise) and had balanced the classes a little more before launch, they would have certainly kept a solid amount of subs to keep improving.
They screwed up on everything except eye candy however, and maybe dug their own graves by this premature release with WAR, WotLK and a few others lurking around the corner.
My brand new bloggity blog.
so you bought the game to just find out what every one else has been saying for months?
you're worse than the people still actually playing the game
Good review.
What I find strange is that Funcom clearly didn't say what type of game AoC was. Erling Ellingsen said it was a PvE game and then followed up saying it was a surprise most players played on PvP servers...I couldn't believe that...because whatever hype and feedback and interviews I read in the months before release I got the impression this was a PvP-focused game..."Heads will roll" anyone?
I think apart from hype not being delivered on and poor communication (which has improved somewhat after Q2 report) the not clear PvP/PvE focus is maybe what has turned AoC into a failure. And yes I say failure because even though Funcom never intended to be a WoW-killer, every interview, hype and whatnot clearly showed they expected around 1 million subs after a few months and being #2 on the MMO block. Some say AoC expected only 300K subscribers...that is the biggest fanboi BS I've ever heard.
#1: Funcom bragged about having the most beta applications a few months before launch (as I recall short below 1 million). Wouldn't that indicate they would have a lot of players wanting to buy it?
#2: Their serverfarm(s) were able to handle 600,000 players but shortly before launch they were upgraded to accomodate 700,000. Why use money on extra hardware if you were expecting only 300,000 at launch?
/rant off.
RIP Blackguard. May a resurrection come.