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A detailed AoC review. Raid and Siegeing a must for true reviews.
Jasma
Member Posts: 126
I think this weekend must have been one of my best AoC experiences ever. I have finally completed significant Raids as well as an awesome Siege. Having done this I just want to say, noone can review AoC before they have tried the AoC siege. I dare to say that the AoC siege is one of the most epic experiences out in the MMO market today. Truly fantastic andreanalin pumping mad mad fun. Having just completed one this weekend I finally feel that I can give a good full reveiw of AoC in the state it is now. I'll be as fair as possible (And yes I will kick FC in the groin where that is needed).
PvE Combat: 10/10
I love and adore all the various aspects of PvE combat. It is so god damn fun to blast 3-4 mobs at the time, hacking limbs and going mad. Noone can match AoC here. Even grind is fun in AoC. This combat system beat anything out there, and in particular since they sped it up and took out some of the key strokes for the longest slowest combos. Also if you ever can master the guard shields, 3-4 mobs easily can be upped to 5-6 mobs. Great system, that turns even greater for the specialists
PvP Combat: 9/10
Also here, is the AoC combat system working absolutely great. AoC PvP combat was not a 9/10 before patch 1.03 when all the changes was made to the combos. It simply took too long time to fire off the longest combos. People would have moved out of the way by the time you could get the final blow going. You can run after characters and fire off combos at the same time, but it's not all people that can handle this... so the old combosystem could be frustrating for many melee players, since casters would not have to deal with this. Now on the other hand, things are so swift that the length of the combos is in perfect proportion to the running speed of a player. And the introduction of missed blows giving -xx% damage on finall blow, basically prevents people from just charging up to get in that massive final blow damage. All in all, this is going very well now. Spell casting is flawless, nice animations and nothing much else to say even though I notice that the whole spellweaving thing is carrying it's own weight very well now. It's a lethal experience getting up close with a spell caster. The reason I deduct a point though is that there is some more balancing to do, in particular for ToS. Patch 1.05 is promissed to take care of this though.
Questing/Leveling: 7/10
The stories and Quests in AoC are fantastic. Not just because of Voice Overs (on level 1-20 and other big questlines), but due to being very unique and well thought out. The stories are well written novel quality. You will definitely appreciate the quest leveling experience in AoC. There are tons of stuff to do and it is very fun doing it. There is also a pretty good replay value now in AoC as there is fare too many quests for a leveling character to do (Unless he want to do a bunch of grey quests). I substract some points though for 2 reason. Quest content between level 74-78 is somewhat thin (The Tarantia Commoners district to arrive with patch 1.05 will take care of this, but it si still not in game). Another thing that also pulls down, I think the quests rewards could have been better. Right now it reminds too much of the other stuff mobs drop. That is kind of unnecessary I think. This is also to be firmed up with patch 1.05, but still not in the game as it stands right now.
Endgame PvE and Raiding:10/10
I have never been able to join too many raids, but this weekend I spent the full Saturday raiding and I say FC you have done a fantastic job here. It was running supersmooth and it was damn fun. It give a very special feel when 24 guys are teaming up on these epic monsters.. It's epic scale battle and you will fall permanently in love with the game once you have completed your first raid. It's just insane. Those Bosses have some real cruel AI programmed into their brain thats for sure. I am very very pleased to see FCs job on this.
Siegeing: 10/10
I was very lucky to join in on a siege this weekend. I have only done 1 of these before, but that was a long time ago, performance was not that great back then. But now, it was flawless and I do not even have a great system either. It's just absolutely insanely epic to do a AoC siege. You have seen some vids here lately by Axles and you can see that it looks fun. Well let me tell you this, you have to try it. It last 1 hour and it is just one hour of continous wild defence attack strategy and blood flows in rivers.. a 10/10 for the AoC siege is actually not enough. I would actually go as fare as to say a Reviewer can't give a full public review of AoC before he have completed a siege. It is that Epic. Fabolous work FC.
NoN PvP Harvest: 4/10
4/10 is not good, but then again I would probably give most MMOs 1/10 on this because it is simply not fun to spend time harvesting stuff. I looked on that DF stream today and oh my god it looked mindblowingly boring to harvest. Some dude was hacking away with terrible animation on this tree that never fell for about 20 min. He wanted to make himself some arrows. Same for WOW and/or most other MMOs. In AoC though, you at least have those jealous prospectors jumping you giving you a good fight while you are harvesting stuff. But overall still not that mindblowingly fun. I also pull down for that the leather and skin harvesting is done by drops. I think there should be a skill
PvP Harvesting: 8/10
My god it makes a difference when you know that people can see on the map that you are gathering PvP resources for your Battle keep. It makes you nervous. It get the blood flowing, because you know that you in any moment can get jumped by another player. So you eventually hide, stealth behind some trees, wait for a minute, then you see someone slipp out of hide themselves... You evaluate the guy... Is he strong, can you take him... Maybe you then jump him, lol.. and so on and so on. The new dynamics introduced with the PvP resource system is very fun, because you can loot stuff from you oponents and it is so exciting to steal those nodes and then later run off to sell it or even drop them in the guild bank.
Crafting: 5/10
I don't like that you don't have to go to a specific place to craft. I can stay out in the jungle crafting a whole new and very advanced armor if I want. This is one of the few things I don't like in this game. It is not realistic. As well as the general crafted gear is not the best in the world either. So all in all... this is something that should be revamped at a later stage. I gave it a 3 first, but then I came to think of all those nice culture armor stuff they added on patch 1.03. Non raid Bosses in obscure places in hybroia are dropping special Culture armor receipes that actually make a difference. This equipemnt is sort of on par with raid equipemnt and is very much worth the job...One of culture helmets look like a dreadlock helmet, so I give AoC a 5 here, but I am still not letting AoC of the hook on this one.
Graphics and animations: 10/10
This have been commented on so much that I will not touch on this one much more. Let me just say that there are many games with quite pretty world graphics, but with very bad character graphics and embarrasing dynamic graphics (as in character or mob animation). AoCs strongest point is the detail level to not only the world but also the characters, all mobs, bosses, pets and so on. And as if that was not enough, the animations of these individuals are just absolutely outstanding. It is beyond me how smoothly this all is woven together. Take the fatalaties i.e., that is something that is very hard to implement without it hampering gameplay.... But yet again FC just hit the nail on the head here. Even people that have 8 level 80 characters smiles with pleasure when they crack a fatality. It never gets old, because it is all so damn well made.
Score/Sound: 10/10
This has also been discussed so much before that I will not say much more. The composer got some Hollywood price for his work on this for crying out loud.
Performance: 10/10
This point is always a subject to discussion as some peoples hardware might have more issues than others. But let me say this, I have nothing special in my rig. I have a 8 series GTX card, a dual core 2.4 GHZ and 4 GB RAM. This baybee is still running smooth for me on high. I have not maxed everything out, but the default settings are still very very high quality and there are no problems what so ever running the game. AoC is rock solid in all zones I have been to at least.
Itemization: 6/10
Items look absolutely fabulous. And to be honest the amount of looks available are staggering. There have been a even and steady flow of new items coming with every patch into AoC, where patch 1.02 made the biggest changes. BUT, as we know the meaning of the stats on the items in AoC is less than optimum (to be firmed up with patch 1.05). I like gear not to be that important, but then again stats and stat bonuses should be much more important (in my opinion), and it just is not.
Feats and skills: 8/10
FC have done a fantastic job balancing and improving feats. Feats are virtually flawless now. Also another thing I love about the way they have managed to set it up. You really need to know what you are doing. You can be as skillfull you want but if you screw up the feating of your character so that his feats does not match your tactics, you are out. This is great, I am normally not getting things right before I have refeated a couple of times, and this makes it so much more interesting. We all know what happens to games that are just to simplistic. Well AoC is not. Great job here FC. Skills are all working fine, but some of them feel a bit more redundant than others...meehhh... so all in all I give Feating between 9 and 10 out of 10 and skills more like between 5 and 6. so it's like 7.5/10, but just because FC did not turn Skills into a skillpoint grind like in WOW I up that score to 8/10. I hate running around to first grind your sword skills up, then your axe skills, then you.... blablabla.. In AoC all that is in the feats, you can spend points on what you want to master once and for all. Skills are more for noncombat stuff in AoC.
Character Customization: 9/10
AoC have really good customization options. There are no other MMOs on the market and hardly any other RPG on the market that allows for as many looks as AoC. In other words are FC breaking new land here. But just for the reason that the AoC characters are not that easy to make ugly I will deduct a point. I know, maybe it is unfair as this already is probably the best in the market already. BUT, I really like to make a character with some really distinct features (as in ugly), and even as it can be done I think it should be easier. Not everybody want to be photo models. I'm already in RL 
Community: 9/10
This is probably the most controversial score I will give. Here is how I justify it though. The AoC community has been through hell and back again. The fans left at this point realy know much about the game and love it so fiercely, they are the best partners to have for any new gamer starting in the game. Also the impressed notes coming from the resubbers makes the AoC community to a very optimistic, hopefull and good place to be these days. Of course you have smack talk on the global chat, but this is mostly restricted to Tyrrany in US and Fury in EU (to judge by forum posts). Also I don't think it is nothing more than in other PvP games I have played. I find in general in game characters very helpfull and good with me. As I said the AoC community is thriving and I think it is a very positive place to be these days. We are all welcoming any new players, we strenghten our guilds, and keep living the lore of R E Howards.
Summing up over my funny groups and points I get 125/150 points = 8.3. But this is a score where crafting and harvesting was given greater significance for the reason that I wanted to split it up and give it some more detail. 30 of 150 points can be made on crafting and harvesting only (while 10 out of 100 is normal), so it would only be fair to weight crafting and harvest importance some down. I also want to take the liberty of giving AoC a +0.1 extra for the reason that Siegeing and Raiding is so damn epic. All in all AoC is a 8.5/10 game (But have even potential for getting better with patch 1.05).
Edit:Changed title as some people thought that would be appropriate
Comments
This 'review' is funny
Music is the only part of AoC that would get a 10/10. No other part is not even close to that.
MMORPG.com gave AoC 6/10 and although the review is a couple of months old, it's still pretty accurate description of the state of the game.
Excellent review. The fact you waited to do sieging and raiding is a plus when putting your thoughts down on paper about this game.
I agree with your score, and hopefully MMORPG takes the time to check out these systems to get a clearer picture.
Cheers
This game is definitely a 7, maybe an 8 with 1.05.
The only thing really bugging me are the servers/community. It's hard to find a nice crowd to play with; either you join the popular servers filled with a-holes, or you join a nice but deserted server.
Guess there just aren't enough casual/friendly people playing this game.
7
7 months old data
Is this the first time you have raided or PvPed? Because the PvE raids are extreemly generic and the PvP system needs loads and loads of work. If you like sieges in this game you should try warhammer though, they do sieges 24/7 usually and it also has a 1.4 ish GCD so combat is identical.
Thing about AoC is it does not do anything aside from graphics at an average level or above.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
Cheers
Isnt there a whole thread about a rereview?
Yes, there is. But this gives a good overview about this players own personal review having just completed a siege and raids. He did the right thing as otherwise it would derail the other post.
Thanks
An interesting read.
I'm willing to give AoC another chance, but it's going to take some effort from Funcom, or specifically, a free month. I fully expect in the next few months they'll do just this, but until then, they've gotten enough of my money.
Funcom has pulled this stuff twice, first releasing a buggy mess with Anarchy Online, and now with Age of Conan. I honestly thought they had learned from their experience with AO, but I was mistaken. Hopefully they'll be able to turn all this around, before they run out of money at the end of 2009.
I don't know, I have heard this before, but I don't agree. I think the AoC community is some of the better ones I've ever been in. These people really love their game, and have a very helpfull positive attitude. I have not played on Tyrrany though. The rumor is, if you want mercyless bloodshed with everything that comes with that, you start on Tyrrany (or Fury in EU). I think that is ok as long as it is more or less confined to just a couple of server. BUT I can understand that someone just strolling in the door on Tyrrany will get mildly shocked of the activity there. Set is packed alright, and Tyrrany is by the word of it much denser populated. I can only imagine how that might be.
You should try Agony, Ironspine, Set or Wiccana, they are all very nice an live servers. The latter two being very populated.
Not true. CoX has far more customization options than AoC, and the good news is, you don't have to buy them or worry about what stats they give you.
Other than that, if you were to subtract 1 from nearly every category, I'd be in agreement. Even though your issues with PvE harvesting, itemization and whatnot were fundamental ones, you still gave them a "better than average" rating. Even by relative standards, comparing to other MMO's, those two things fall short of most other MMO's out there. Using absolute standards, they'd fare even worse.
Good review, and good point on the Siege/raiding being essential to critiquing the game.
I don't know, I have heard this before, but I don't agree. I think the AoC community is some of the better ones I've ever been in. These people really love their game, and have a very helpfull positive attitude. I have not played on Tyrrany though. The rumor is, if you want mercyless bloodshed with everything that comes with that, you start on Tyrrany (or Fury in EU). I think that is ok as long as it is more or less confined to just a couple of server. BUT I can understand that someone just strolling in the door on Tyrrany will get mildly shocked of the activity there. Set is packed alright, and Tyrrany is by the word of it much denser populated. I can only imagine how that might be.
You should try Agony, Ironspine, Set or Wiccana, they are all very nice an live servers. The latter two being very populated.
Fury has the worst community I have ever seen in an MMO. Average age must be something like 14. All the bottom feeders and total losers are there. If you play EU choose anything but Fury. I'm serious.
Thanks for your review. Although I would like to make a little comment, performance is not 10/10. I would say something like 7 or 8 out of 10.
Performance was 4-5 in closed beta and 5-6 when it launched. Now it's much better but no way near 10.
Personally I think that overall this game is an 8 out of 10.
Stay away from Darkfall then.
Fury features the regular crowd of casual crowd mmo people that want to PvP, and of course you would have to expect a lot of asshats in global chat. I play on Fury, and can understand how someone with a slight glance at the global chat might find it in them to judge the entire server of beeing "bottom feeders and total losers" (uuh), but like I said, it's something to be expected when playing online with other people in a game like this, but still, it doesn't mean that everyone is like that, seeing as there are several mature guilds going on who respect their players and each other.
Unless someone is trolling the global chat with dumb questions and statements, players *usually* get help and answers when asking.
It's not THAT bad, and you are exaggerating.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
Stay away from Darkfall then.
Fury features the regular crowd of casual crowd mmo people that want to PvP, and of course you would have to expect a lot of asshats in global chat. I play on Fury, and can understand how someone with a slight glance at the global chat might find it in them to judge the entire server of beeing "bottom feeders and total losers" (uuh), but like I said, it's something to be expected when playing online with other people in a game like this, but still, it doesn't mean that everyone is like that, seeing as there are several mature guilds going on who respect their players and each other.
Unless someone is trolling the global chat with dumb questions and statements, players *usually* get help and answers when asking.
It's not THAT bad, and you are exaggerating.
LOL - I love Darkfall but you're right about the community. These l337 kids think they are so e-hard with their mannerisms and general cruelty towards other players both in game and forums. They think they're so cool by using cliche terms like "Carebear" and "go back to WoW" and the latter being a general response to any criticism leveled at the game (warranted or not). I love PvP but it really does bring the worst group of people to the game: e-thugs.
Stay away from Darkfall then.
Fury features the regular crowd of casual crowd mmo people that want to PvP, and of course you would have to expect a lot of asshats in global chat. I play on Fury, and can understand how someone with a slight glance at the global chat might find it in them to judge the entire server of beeing "bottom feeders and total losers" (uuh), but like I said, it's something to be expected when playing online with other people in a game like this, but still, it doesn't mean that everyone is like that, seeing as there are several mature guilds going on who respect their players and each other.
Unless someone is trolling the global chat with dumb questions and statements, players *usually* get help and answers when asking.
It's not THAT bad, and you are exaggerating.
LOL - I love Darkfall but you're right about the community. These l337 kids think they are so e-hard with their mannerisms and general cruelty towards other players both in game and forums. They think they're so cool by using cliche terms like "Carebear" and "go back to WoW" and the latter being a general response to any criticism leveled at the game (warranted or not). I love PvP but it really does bring the worst group of people to the game: e-thugs.
Well this touch on a good thing with AoC. The game has different zones, some for only PvE and others for only PvP. You can really choose if you make sure you start on a PvE server to start with. I am on a PvE server and I just visit the Borderlands whenever I am hungry for some PvP or whenever I need to help building my guilds BattleKeep. can also of course jump in on the minigames whenever I want to.
How is the borderlands on a PvE server? I haven't really bothered checking them out yet on my server (PvP), so I was just wondering if you PvE'ers regularily go there to snuff each other out.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
How is the borderlands on a PvE server? I haven't really bothered checking them out yet on my server (PvP), so I was just wondering if you PvE'ers regularily go there to snuff each other out.
Hell yeah. We have guilds, Battlekeeps and everything else also on PvE servers. Packs are roaming back and forth PvPing over those resources. It is really hopping, and thats why I say PvE servers in AoC is actually a very new thing to the MMO industry. PvE servers are in fact not ONLY PvE, they are PvP in borderlands and in sieges over battlekeeps. Zoning can be a very good thing because it allows for different rulesets in every zone.
Fury has the worst community I have ever seen in an MMO. Average age must be something like 14. All the bottom feeders and total losers are there. If you play EU choose anything but Fury. I'm serious.
I have 2 characters on Fury and it truly is a haven for scum of the earth. Majority of players are so immature it's unbelievable.
PvE servers in AoC are great in offering those that don't want the 24/7 threat of PvP over them but still want to have PvP in not only minigames or completley planned a good option, areas with and without PvP, pluss the rest of the whole package with minis and sieges.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I wouldn't expect a new review by the specialized media to be near perfection at all, but likely much better than one done several months ago.
OT,
i would agree with you on pretty much evrything BUT itemization
imho AoC have a very poor itemization comparing to the size of the game, yes items looks fabulous like pretty much evrything else in the game, but there are eally very few of em (again: taking in consideration the size of the game).
i dont know who's bright idea was that but i hope he/she is fired, poor itemizations kills gathering, crafting and trading and therfore destroys any hopes for a real in game economy.
Hey I thought you just started playing the game??? Wouldn't you think that you should heed my comments on balancing a bit more. First of all I have played multiple characters to 80, while you have played one to 30? Second it is very common to get PWNed in the start in AoC, because the way you feat your character means a lot. It is very normal to refeat a few times till you get it right. AND Melee rocks.. Noone fcks with my conqueror. I am basically the guy that have to behead the ToS when he goes crazy....
Another tip, realize that many of the spells/skills of ToS and other spell casters have cooldown time. I normally hold back before their first as bad as bad can be spell goes off, put on some spell resistance buffs and go in beating the crap out of them. YOU HAVE TO THINK!!! Thats the biggest appeal of AoC. You can develop any tactic you want, and you will win as long as you outsmart your oponent. It's pretty well balanced, even though ToS still is a bit OP.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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