250 Days Later

slipline · March 2009

So... I was sitting there trying to decide what to do. Play another run of Crysis, Log into WoW for another boring Naxx raid, pop into EVE and see what wormholes are all about, download and play one of those F2P MMOs, talk a buddy into a CB key for one of the MMOs under development or go outside and do something? Since it has been raining for the last 3 days and none of those other options sounded fun, I decided to give AOC another shot. Everyone on the forums has been talking about how much better it has gotten so why not see what all the fuss is about. I have a gift card from Christmas I need to spend anyway.

Finding The Client

First…Dont go looking for the client to download it anywhere. I had the collectors edition but packed it up in the attic about 2 weeks after launch, when my computer could no longer load the game. I found some torrents with the old beta client. From what I read, you could download the beta and the patcher would install all the updates to the new client for you. There are not too many seeds out there so this would be painfully slow. The old FilePlanet offer was removed so no go there. I had to go dig into my box of old software and use the DVDs to install. (It still takes forever to install) You can buy a new copy from the game from Direct2Drive or Steam of some other source if you really want to pay for a new version of the game. I am a returning subscriber though.

Note to FunCom: Put your client on the web somewhere. Torrent it if you are cheap. If you want people to play, and old subscribers to return - ease of access is number 1.

Patching

After you get the game installed there will be about 3gb or so worth of patching to do. This takes a while. 2 hours for me on a great connection (18mbit DL) The patcher speed is a mixed bag. Some files will smoke down upwards of 1.5mbps, others hang in the realm of circa 1996 modem speeds. So anyway, a couple hours later and the patcher hung on stage 4 of 4. I restarted the game and it went right to "Play". Here we go!

Note to FunCom: Fix the patcher speed please!

Servers

If you are an old player coming back you will find that your server has probably been merged with another. Don’t worry it’s not too bad. At least there were some people around when I logged in. Some players have reported having numbers added to their names from this process. For example PrettyPrincess may now be PrettyPrincess26556 because there are 10 of them on the server now. As for myself, I am one seriously ugly, level 56 Priest of Mitra. Kind of a hybrid Healer / DPS class in light armor.

The Game & Graphics

My bars were still setup. So that was nice. The first thing I wanted to do was check performance. Would we have stutter problems? I wanted to see if my graphics card upgrade was going to work out as I wished. You see, I started on launch date with 2x8800gts in SLI. During that launch we found that SLI had little to no impact on performance and mostly introduced a whole new set of problems. The fix was to run a single card. I now have a Radeon 4870 1gb edition. The rest of my rig is pretty much the same as it was on launch. DualCore CPU @ 3GB, 4gb ram, sata2 hdds. After a stop in the video tab of the game menu and setting everything to max, AA to 8x and AAF to max, I saved the settings and restarted the client. Hey look mom, no lag, no stutter! FPS appears to be solid.

So yeah we know the game looks great. That was never really a complaint from anyone. Rest assured the game still looks very pretty. I don’t have the same 8800gts card so I can’t do apples to apples here, but it is playing very smooth for me now. There is still no DirectX 10 option. I am not sure it needs it but it would be nice since this was on the box at launch and all. Ok enough about graphics, first pass says that stutter problems for me are gone and hey, I can login, so that’s 100% better than it was.

Note to FunCom: The graphics are great but where is DX10?

Questing & Transport

Well why don’t we go find some action and get out of this player city? Oh yeah because I have no idea where I am anymore. It has been over 200 days since I played. I can’t remember wtf to do or where to go! Perhaps one of these nice players will help me.

I messaged a level 80 barbarian standing close by and asked if he could help me get to one of the new zones for lvl 60+ players. Not only did this guy show me around, he showed off some of his armor sets including PVP and some of the Raid armor. It does look pretty cool. It’s not over the top. In fact it looks like what you would expect. He has a nasty 2h axe and his chest armor looks more like a few straps of leather tied for decoration (Think 80s/90s Hulkster). I like the art direction! So after he does this great dress up show he asks if I have a horse.

Now you probably remember the fiasco with horses. The first ones were a joke. If you had maxed your run speed you could outpace a horse. The preorder mounts were a total waste, slow huge and annoying. So of course I told the guy no, I have a PVP preorder mount but no horse. He offered me 1 Gold and took me to a place where you can buy a horse. The horse is 75 silver and the skill to ride is 25 silver. You can buy faster horses, and armored horses if you are rich. I got a Brown horse, clicked the skill to learn it and then clicked the horse.

Mounting and dismounting still sucks, but the speed of the horse is much better than I remember. They are worth having and using. The best part is you can summon it anywhere you want. My screen does a strange phase out thing when I mount or dismount but it is not game breaking. If you need to get off the horse fast there is a quick dismount which has a cooldown. Overall Horses get a B+.

Note to FunCom: Mounts are better than they were but still not very gratifying for the cost. Please look into the cost balance and variety for lower level players.

So now that I have a horse, my new Barbarian friend says follow me to Ymirs Pass. (I think this is one of the new areas) It is near Eigophian Mountains, which is where I remember that I began to run into content issues. (Lack of content that is) I pulled up the map to get myself oriented and the first thing I noticed are A LOT of new places on the map that I haven’t seen before. Many dungeons and zones have been added. That is a good thing. Conan is instanced, and even though some of the zones are pretty big the game still had a very small feeling to it. Not anymore. It’s obvious I have a lot of exploring to do. I will tell you that I am not much of an explorer, but I do enjoy having craptons of content. That way when I get bored I can go find something new to cut my teeth on. Props to FunCom on making the game world larger. A ever Growing game world that can outpace my leveling would be nice, lets see how long they can keep the pace up.

So, we make it to the new area and my new friend wishes me luck. He has a raid to attend and so must go. This was certainly one of the better experiences I have run into. I have played MMOs a long time and it is rare that you run into a player who will part with money and give returning players a leg up. Now that I have a new horse I need something to do. In less than half an hour my quest log was full of quests for the area. I certainly have something to do now.

Note to FunCom: I am not sure what kind of bait you are looking at to bring old players back but consider giving them a mount, some larger bags, a stash of potions and a cape or something that makes them run faster. Travel overall still kinda sucks due to the instance thing and I REALLY wish my horse was faster.

The quests are not anything unique. It is more of the same but at a point in the game where previously one had to essentially resort to grinding out levels by AOE farming with broken skills, this was a warm welcome. The XP per hour gain was good. I went from 56-60 in a day of lazy exploring and questing. This is a pace I can deal with. I branched out and tried a few of the other areas like Atzel’s Approach and Thunder River. The areas are interesting and varied. Lots of quests but money still seems to come in very slowly.

Trade, Crafting and Banking

Remembering back to AoC launch the trader (bank and auction house) was a huge issue. Now that I had me some items worth selling I thought I would zone back to a major city and try out the trader function. Again, because of the server merges the cities are populated. On a Sunday there was what I would call a light load of people. The trader works now. There were a vast number of items on the auction. The prices varied wildly. Any single item may be listed 20 times with a price range from 1 gold to a few copper. I was able to outfit my character with several blue items and some crafted pieces.

The mail system where you pickup your goods, is…. simple. It works. One thing I don’t like is that when you sell stuff the item stays in your bank. Bleh. Slots are a rare commodity. So the bank, mail and auction system are not fantastic or anything, but hey it works! I had a bunch of gems and cloth from launch so I was able to offload those and I ended up making a few silver by the end of the day. Still a long way to the 50+ gold I would need for a kickass horse. Money might get easier at level 80 but it certainly doesn’t flow in from 55-60.

I heard that crafting is not really so hot yet. The main reason for this is because the gear is not a significant leap in looks or quality over the base gear and doesn’t even come close to the raid gear. As has been stated by FunCom the stats system in the game was not designed to give gear a major emphasis. I for one feel that this is an understatement. Gear still has almost no meaningful impact on performance. You can get gems now and I guess some of those might be nice at high levels but for a toon leveling up, I cant see any reason to craft or gather. Resources are all over the AH and there is no rhyme or reason to the prices. This is one element that probably needs a total revamp. This is mostly due to the stats system in the game. The crafted items are not sought after because they have very little impact on how the game plays.

Combat Engine & Stats

FunCom has publically stated that they are reworking the item and stats system in the game. I am going to wait to pass judgement on the system as a whole until this has been completed. I will review the state of the system today and my thoughts on how they have fixed the obviously broken parts.

I guess this would be a good time to talk about character sheets, skills and the heart of the MMO that many addicts thrive on, the combat engine. I am still unsure of what exactly FunCom wanted to do with this system. Some of the issues with the classes were addressed but many were not. The game breakers have been resolved for the most part. I am still sad that going down the skill trees does not offer a more significant impact to your progression. This is much like the problem with gear. When you are talking about skills that only offer performance gains of 1 or 2 percent, those are almost invisible. This is especially true when you start talking about damage ranges of 500-1000 per hit. What is 5 or 10 damage per 3 second cast really going to add to the fight?

Some feats are still broken. The code for some of the feats to scale properly never got fixed. What I mean by scale is that if a feat offers a plain +50 damage increase, you get that same increase at level 50 or level 80. One would expect it to jump a large amount by level 80 because +50 to a spell that does say 1500 damage is worthless. I may be wrong here and again I am only reviewing my class (PoM) in this write up. Overall though I really feel like the feats and skills are sorely lacking. In priority order I guess they focused on the game breakers first. Lack of content, bugs, crashes, exploits, and the like. Still here we are almost a year later and the feat trees are, well to be honest with you, quite less than interesting.

Note to FunCom: Thank you for making the game stable and adding content. Now that you have that out of the way please focus on skills, feats and spells.

The skills still do very little to set you apart from others in your class. Run speed, climbing and the like are very niche. Other mechanics are still, odd.

The lack of any direct healing may still trouble some of you. Let me say it again, there is no direct healing. It is, still, all area effect based on cones and proximity. I did some research in the forums and, what do you know, a guide I wrote almost a year ago is still stickied in the POM section. I thumbed through all the most recent comments about builds and such and really found no new information. It appears that most of the time has been dedicated to fixing bugs or completing content. The skill trees (at least for PoMs) were not revamped. So this is a little bad news but also some good news. It means you won’t have to learn how to play your character all over again. So, feats and skills are not completely broken but not completely worth spending time worrying about either. I found that I could still manage to play just fine no matter what build I picked. In PVP this is more of an issue because you stand the chance of getting utterly dominated without some armor, reduced cooldowns and buffing abilities.

FunCom did do some balancing. I cant AoE down 9 or 10 same level mobs anymore. On occasion when I got jumped by 5 or 6 and had all my cooldowns ready I could survive. One couldn’t really sustain this level of play solo though.

Grouping with others is the best way to mow through mobs and get good xp. The LFG interface is pretty weak. I don’t think it is working properly but it may be. Its probably an issue worth mentioning that I could not tell. The development team should go back to usability testing on this one. I didn’t give it much after I selected my zone and looked for other players and it gave me the same results no matter what zone I picked or was in.

I managed to get invited to a guild that has a full city built. They do raids on a regular basis. I am looking forward to finishing the grind to 80 and testing them out. I will play out my month of paid time now and see how it goes. I was not overwhelmed with delight at the state of the game but it is leaps and bounds better than it was. If the item system comes out quickly and FunCom gets moving VERY QUICKLY on the feat and skill issues I might stay subscribed to this for a while.

A note on the forums.

I dont think FunCom gets it here. This is probably the worst aspect to the game. They should be MUCH MUCH more active on the forums than they are. They are very slow at getting things done on the boards that take nothing more than a little time to write about. For example the Advocate Program. This was to be part of the community shortly after lauch. I had applied for it in the early days and we never heard anything, not a peep. It just died a silent death. In Febuary, Famine brought up the subject again and took applications. There has not been a peep about it since then.

It does not, and should not take over a month to get a community program going. I know this guy is busy but seriously. There is absolutely no excuse to take over a month to launch any community activity like this. Quick action on these types of things are what will bring the community back to the game. hire a fulltime lead for AoC or get some volunteer resources to do it for you. there are simply not enough dev posts or timely mod posts in the boards, period. The forum content is dated. I work for an industry giant and we do many more community programs on a huge scale with only 2 paid resources. This team simply doesnt get it.

Summary:

Stable, appears to be more balanced, large content updates, most features working as they should. They did hit the critical stuff first so the game is very playable now. When they fix the issues around depth and solve some of the class specific concerns I think it will be back in serious contention for my money on a regular basis.

Here is my scorecard based on a mid level toon climbing to 80:

Overall Score 6.7 – Stable but needs depth

Patching 5 – Long, can be slow, massive
Graphics 9 – Fantastic even without Dx10
PvE Gameplay 7 – The gameplay is fun, different and better in groups
Questing 8 – Content gaps are mostly gone, there is plenty to do
Items 3 – They look cool but have no solid purpose. Raid loot is another story.
Sound 10 – Great soundtrack, more voiceover work would be cool
Population 6 – So far so good, nice folks, not too crowded but can be desolate as well
Crafting 2 – No use for this as a leveling toon, seems like a money waste
Stability 9 – I had no crashes, random logouts or lag for that matter
Travel 4 – Mounts are improved but still expensive
Dungeons 8 – More have been added, others fixed, good encounters, loot looks cool and functional but doesn’t do much

Halandir · March 2009

Thank you for posting this. I really appreciate all the work you have put in to this.

Your review is (imo) as objective as a single persons view can be. Neither filled with hate nor love but rather a realistic/balanced roundup of AoC as it is currently.

If I had not already tried AoC I would probably do so based on your review. The difference would be that I would be trying it with realistic expectations.

I will be looking forward to reading your take on the future itemization/skill/feat patches.

I hope Funcom's PR dept. and the local correspondent are taking notes here

Ubie · March 2009

Very nice current and realistic review. Planning on giving AoC a 3rd try if Funcom would get their $#@t together and offer a free trial or a "win back customer" program.

xaldraxius · March 2009

This is a really good review of AoC.

I was really hyped for this game when it first came out, and like many I was very disappointed. I tried the game again a couple months ago and I saw that a lot had improved, I really liked Ymir's Pass, and some of the quests in that area are better than your typical go find this/ kill x amount of that, but much of the game is still lacking (Like the weapon and armor stats the OP mentioned, and crafting). I only played for a few weeks out of my paid month though, as this was before the merges and the place was pretty much a ghost town.

ObliviousX · March 2009

Decent review, but how can you make a AoC review without mentioning the pvp element? It's a large chunk of the game play. Also, how can you ignore the combat system?

I don't completely agree with the crafting, it's not very good indeed but deserves more than a 2. The good recipes are hard to find and boss drops, but once you have them you can craft some pretty decent stuff.

As far as items go, yes, i agree and most of the community agrees too. And funcom heard our complaints, cause the next patch will completely change the way gear and stats work.

But still, pretty accurate review, i personally would rate it at 7.5.

Cheers.

abal · March 2009

Thanks for your review. I think you did a good analysis of several aspects of the game.

Did you post this in AoC forums?

openedge1 · March 2009

This review is 100% exactly how I feel on how what is wrong with the game is more on the companies shoulders than the game itself.

The game offers the type of action I have wanted out of an RPG style fantasy game. Visually it is great, music is the best in an MMO...yet, all issues boil down to company decisions that have made the game the target of many a person who dislikes Funcom, or feel the need to have an MMO to attack.

Funcom does it to themselves by not offering better incentives to play, better understandings of stats and making such a large 'instanced" world not easily navigable.

Until another game offers what I want comes along, I will play this game. But, believe me, if the changes are not drastic in gear and stats and if DX10 cannot get more stabilized on TL and "fixed" (as it still has bugs), then yes, the next good game could get me to leave.

Great review. Hope to hear more soon.

steven1966 · March 2009

Sounds about right. 6.7 out of 10.

Your score will change once you are at lvl 80 based on

Do you find meaningless pvp fun?

The boredom of grinding that you experienced the first time you played because of lack of quests kinda comes back at 80. There is about a week's worth of content to do, but then you run around saying 'now what?'.. and what most current players do is just random, meaningless pvp. They have filled up the content from 1-80 pretty well, but there is still nothing to do at endgame (compared to other games).

You can keep subscribing and 'waiting' on the new content for another 6 months, or you can switch to other games that add content regularly.

openedge1 · March 2009

Originally posted by steven1966

You can keep subscribing and 'waiting' on the new content for another 6 months, or you can switch to other games that add content regularly.

I am trying to think of the games I could play that add more content...

That leaves me with EQ2. I am just not up to playing that game. It grows tiresome with the slow leveling pace and cloned quests for the various levels. I also think I am done with Elves and Dwarves, so this does not help.

As to other games..I can look at LOTRO, but they have not added new "content" since Moria, so it is going on 5 months now without any new content for those who have burned through (and it is not fun to me). WoW? No new "content" since expansion. And I have been there and done that for too long.

And no other game interests me at this time (WAR is just a bad game, L2? No WAY!, Darkfall? not even a game to me...)

I think I will wait on Age of Conan...thanks.

NoizMchn · March 2009

Age of Conan is now available on Steam if you need a download option.

Naranar · March 2009

Originally posted by openedge1
I am trying to think of the games I could play that add more content...
That leaves me with EQ2. I am just not up to playing that game. It grows tiresome with the slow leveling pace and cloned quests for the various levels. I also think I am done with Elves and Dwarves, so this does not help.
As to other games..I can look at LOTRO, but they have not added new "content" since Moria, so it is going on 5 months now without any new content for those who have burned through (and it is not fun to me). WoW? No new "content" since expansion. And I have been there and done that for too long.
And no other game interests me at this time (WAR is just a bad game, L2? No WAY!, Darkfall? not even a game to me...)
I think I will wait on Age of Conan...thanks.

I feel same that is reason why i resubed back in january 09 but even though i had great fun 1-60 fine fun 60-74 and boring grind 74-80 after i got to 80 it didnt felt good.

I dont know why but this game is feels somehow dumb to me gives me no reason to beat this boss or even to get Battle Keep expect some stupid buff that is against walking god called Tempest of Set anyway very useless so now i just log in sometimes and log out when i had enough of kheshatta pvp...

When my subscribtion runs out i guess i will switch kheshatta for Guild Wars arenas and when I'm not playing AoC I'm trying out some F2P mmo's.

To mention review it is indeed masterpiece very balanced and explained almost everything (missing PvP there )

Daffid011 · March 2009

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by steven1966

You can keep subscribing and 'waiting' on the new content for another 6 months, or you can switch to other games that add content regularly.

I am trying to think of the games I could play that add more content...

That leaves me with EQ2. I am just not up to playing that game. It grows tiresome with the slow leveling pace and cloned quests for the various levels. I also think I am done with Elves and Dwarves, so this does not help.

As to other games..I can look at LOTRO, but they have not added new "content" since Moria, so it is going on 5 months now without any new content for those who have burned through (and it is not fun to me). WoW? No new "content" since expansion. And I have been there and done that for too long.

And no other game interests me at this time (WAR is just a bad game, L2? No WAY!, Darkfall? not even a game to me...)

I think I will wait on Age of Conan...thanks.

I am not saying Conan is great or bad, but I think you hit on a very interesting point about the genre right now. Lots of games adding content here and there. The timetables seem to be changing from game to game, but it doesn't really matter. Overall there seems to be one giant wave of meh...

I don't really know how to put it in the proper words, but I get the feeling that so many people are homeless gamers right now that are just settling for something to do. The timing seems right for another game to make it huge.

Smikis · March 2009

how can you take review serious from someone who supposedly bought COLLECTORS edition. and trashed it 2 weeks latter..

funcom have client setup for download.. it cost 4 bucks tho i still.. or maybe it doesnt

patcher is slow , cuz it have limited speed, so everyone have good enough download speed.. if you think 2h is long time to update game from beta to latest build.. your mentally ill

and sli works.. i used it my self.. there been probably atleast thousand graphic cards reviews including aoc in test.. ati allways did better in aoc. but thats not to say sli doesnt work

you probably probably is 8800 gts which is what 3 years old now.. and have rly crappy sli scaling .. and maybe old drivers..

Raston · March 2009

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by steven1966

You can keep subscribing and 'waiting' on the new content for another 6 months, or you can switch to other games that add content regularly.

I am trying to think of the games I could play that add more content...

That leaves me with EQ2. I am just not up to playing that game. It grows tiresome with the slow leveling pace and cloned quests for the various levels. I also think I am done with Elves and Dwarves, so this does not help.

As to other games..I can look at LOTRO, but they have not added new "content" since Moria, so it is going on 5 months now without any new content for those who have burned through (and it is not fun to me). WoW? No new "content" since expansion. And I have been there and done that for too long.

And no other game interests me at this time (WAR is just a bad game, L2? No WAY!, Darkfall? not even a game to me...)

I think I will wait on Age of Conan...thanks.

Actually, LotRO is adding book 7 in a patch today. but yes, the speed at which MMOs update content seems to be slow, but I'm sure it isn't a simple process for them to do so either. The only game I've ever known to have constant updates to content was Asheron's Call.

dhayes68 · March 2009

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by steven1966

You can keep subscribing and 'waiting' on the new content for another 6 months, or you can switch to other games that add content regularly.

I am trying to think of the games I could play that add more content...

That leaves me with EQ2. I am just not up to playing that game. It grows tiresome with the slow leveling pace and cloned quests for the various levels. I also think I am done with Elves and Dwarves, so this does not help.

As to other games..I can look at LOTRO, but they have not added new "content" since Moria, so it is going on 5 months now without any new content for those who have burned through (and it is not fun to me). WoW? No new "content" since expansion. And I have been there and done that for too long.

And no other game interests me at this time (WAR is just a bad game, L2? No WAY!, Darkfall? not even a game to me...)

I think I will wait on Age of Conan...thanks.

There is a difference between a game with lots of content already adding EXTRA content, and a game which is still adding content to merely get the game to the state it should be in at launch.

Kyleran · March 2009

Good review OP, appreciate the time you took to document all of it.

I've given thought to returning one day, this helped move me closer in that direction.

(as mentioned by others, something about the PVP would be great)

vasilcho · March 2009

um, they still havent added dx10 support?

dhayes68 · March 2009

Originally posted by vasilcho

um, they still havent added dx10 support?

Nope. But someone will be along shortly, I'm sure, to tell you how its just around the corner!

vasilcho · March 2009

Originally posted by dhayes68

Originally posted by vasilcho

um, they still havent added dx10 support?

Nope. But someone will be along shortly, I'm sure, to tell you how its just around the corner!

Oh, Im pretty sure about this also

openedge1 · March 2009

Originally posted by vasilcho

Originally posted by dhayes68

Originally posted by vasilcho

um, they still havent added dx10 support?

Nope. But someone will be along shortly, I'm sure, to tell you how its just around the corner!

Oh, Im pretty sure about this also

I would agree.

Oh, I have heard it is just around the corner.

slipline · March 2009

Originally posted by ObliviousX

Decent review, but how can you make a AoC review without mentioning the pvp element? It's a large chunk of the game play. Also, how can you ignore the combat system?

I don't completely agree with the crafting, it's not very good indeed but deserves more than a 2. The good recipes are hard to find and boss drops, but once you have them you can craft some pretty decent stuff.

As far as items go, yes, i agree and most of the community agrees too. And funcom heard our complaints, cause the next patch will completely change the way gear and stats work.

But still, pretty accurate review, i personally would rate it at 7.5.

Cheers.

I plan on doing PVP later but right now I want to get to 80 and then explore the PVP system. The combat system I assume you are talking about is the combo system , which only works for melee classes. I find it amusing but broken. This is due to how the server calculates combos. I may have a spell that makes me invulnerable but the server begins calculating combos when you start them. So even if I hit my immunity spell beforfe you finish your combo, you still land the combo. Thats bogus. I also dont like how you are locked in motion to start/ finish combos. Its a great idea , needs polish. I am sure this was added for the console crowd.

I have yet to find much worth in crafting. I think more and more games are ruining crafting. It either becomes a crutch for endgame, making you soak up subscription time, or has no true player value. I am not a big crafter and it has to be pretty important for gameplay before I will do it. Thats just me. As a leveling toon in age of conan I see no reason to spend any extra time doing it. From looking at the auction prices it wont make me rich. I have a feeling this will change with the stats patch and then I will proably have a new look at it.

Datastorm · March 2009

Originally posted by Ubie

Very nice current and realistic review. Planning on giving AoC a 3rd try if Funcom would get their $#@t together and offer a free trial or a "win back customer" program.

Yes i would be tempted to give it another go if they offer a 10 or 14 day trial/welcome back program kinda thing, they might be waiting until they sort out the classes and items before they try to get people back. The review is just what i had been looking for, Great work.

slipline · March 2009

Originally posted by Smikis

how can you take review serious from someone who supposedly bought COLLECTORS edition. and trashed it 2 weeks latter..
funcom have client setup for download.. it cost 4 bucks tho i still.. or maybe it doesnt
patcher is slow , cuz it have limited speed, so everyone have good enough download speed.. if you think 2h is long time to update game from beta to latest build.. your mentally ill

and sli works.. i used it my self.. there been probably atleast thousand graphic cards reviews including aoc in test.. ati allways did better in aoc. but thats not to say sli doesnt work

you probably probably is 8800 gts which is what 3 years old now.. and have rly crappy sli scaling .. and maybe old drivers..

I put the game away in my OLD Software box when I could no longer load the client. That was a few weeks after release. I did not trash it.

I should not have to shell out more money just to download any game client that cost me $15 a month to play. I could not find a link to download the game for free so that's a problem for Funcom. There is no main page download link or prominent placement of a download link on the pages I visited. FunCom directed their paid google link to an offer page for purchasing the game or buying a download. I dont need any of those options because I want to try it again.

Compared to other games this is an issue for me. I know they are trying to save money on distribution but they could simply make download of the client based on authentication of a valid user account. These are easy problems to solve for acompany like FunCom. Even though I did not trash my DVDs I can bet you that some folks did. I am willing tobet they WILL NOT pay to buy another copy. When companies like CCP and Bliz offer their clients for free you must offer a compelling reason to deviate from the standard.

At launch SLI did not work properly. End of story really. I dont care to debate it with you because I was there and deep in the mix with benchmarks and testing trying to fix it for FunCom & Nvidia. It was covered in depth on both company boards. FunCom did a board wipe during lauch so some of that traffic may be hard to find on the FunCom site.

Not to turn this into a nvidia vs ati thing, but overall im quite happy with my ATI card. The cost for performance ratio is fantastic and I havent found a game that I couldnt play yet. I also output this to a home theater projector and that is an even more pleasant experience with a 160 inch picture.

AmazingAvery · March 2009

Hey thanks for the time in writing such a long and detailed experiences. I think that is awesome. I have a couple of points I'd like to touch upon in conversation which will be just highlighted in the quote.

Originally posted by slipline

So... I was sitting there trying to decide what to do. Play another run of Crysis, Log into WoW for another boring Naxx raid, pop into EVE and see what wormholes are all about, download and play one of those F2P MMOs, talk a buddy into a CB key for one of the MMOs under development or go outside and do something? Since it has been raining for the last 3 days and none of those other options sounded fun, I decided to give AOC another shot. Everyone on the forums has been talking about how much better it has gotten so why not see what all the fuss is about. I have a gift card from Christmas I need to spend anyway.
Finding The Client
First…Dont go looking for the client to download it anywhere. I had the collectors edition but packed it up in the attic about 2 weeks after launch, when my computer could no longer load the game. I found some torrents with the old beta client. From what I read, you could download the beta and the patcher would install all the updates to the new client for you. There are not too many seeds out there so this would be painfully slow. The old FilePlanet offer was removed so no go there. I had to go dig into my box of old software and use the DVDs to install. (It still takes forever to install) You can buy a new copy from the game from Direct2Drive or Steam of some other source if you really want to pay for a new version of the game. I am a returning subscriber though.
Note to FunCom: Put your client on the web somewhere. Torrent it if you are cheap. If you want people to play, and old subscribers to return - ease of access is number 1.
Funcom have it set up for returning subscribers who have no got their disks anymore with a DL from the account page, although this is at 19.95. There are some pretty simply steps to get there, plus I agree, once an account is re-activated the client should be a free DL and not 19.95, (if your re-activating)
Patching
After you get the game installed there will be about 3gb or so worth of patching to do. This takes a while. 2 hours for me on a great connection (18mbit DL) The patcher speed is a mixed bag. Some files will smoke down upwards of 1.5mbps, others hang in the realm of circa 1996 modem speeds. So anyway, a couple hours later and the patcher hung on stage 4 of 4. I restarted the game and it went right to "Play". Here we go!

Note to FunCom: Fix the patcher speed please!
I don't think it is fair to rate the patching process if you are getting the torrent and that is slow. I reinstalled the game from my collectors edition disks two weeks back I was patched in 77 mins to latest client. Installation was 20 mins tops. I can assure you it takes Lotro and VG longer in the patching process, but that is neither here nor there, I think that this is very dependant on how your ISP packet shapes it's network. I have patched after reinstallation from disks many times on a 7.5mb, 10, 15, 25 and 100mb connections. For instance I have had a few files DL from their servers way fast. Never experienced the hanging part though. I find it fast compared to most games tbh. The only other game client that DL'd quicker was DF beta 8.5gb in 30 mins. Now that was a dedicated server! I haven't seen large AoC update files go less than 200k/s p/s and that is from west coast canada to east US servers.

Servers

If you are an old player coming back you will find that your server has probably been merged with another. Don’t worry it’s not too bad. At least there were some people around when I logged in. Some players have reported having numbers added to their names from this process. For example PrettyPrincess may now be PrettyPrincess26556 because there are 10 of them on the server now. As for myself, I am one seriously ugly, level 56 Priest of Mitra. Kind of a hybrid Healer / DPS class in light armor.
The Game & Graphics
My bars were still setup. So that was nice. The first thing I wanted to do was check performance. Would we have stutter problems? I wanted to see if my graphics card upgrade was going to work out as I wished. You see, I started on launch date with 2x8800gts in SLI. During that launch we found that SLI had little to no impact on performance and mostly introduced a whole new set of problems. The fix was to run a single card. I now have a Radeon 4870 1gb edition. The rest of my rig is pretty much the same as it was on launch. DualCore CPU @ 3GB, 4gb ram, sata2 hdds. After a stop in the video tab of the game menu and setting everything to max, AA to 8x and AAF to max, I saved the settings and restarted the client. Hey look mom, no lag, no stutter! FPS appears to be solid.

So yeah we know the game looks great. That was never really a complaint from anyone. Rest assured the game still looks very pretty. I don’t have the same 8800gts card so I can’t do apples to apples here, but it is playing very smooth for me now. There is still no DirectX 10 option. I am not sure it needs it but it would be nice since this was on the box at launch and all. Ok enough about graphics, first pass says that stutter problems for me are gone and hey, I can login, so that’s 100% better than it was.
That's good to hear that the FPS is working out for you. I will agree myself in that having 2x8800 cards it seemed no difference right at launch however, I did some testing end of June and got 60% difference with SLi on those cards when enabled also allowing for a higher setting with smoother FPS too. As for DX10, it is on test server, as been there over 3 months just. There is a video in my sig from dx10 settings from 2 months ago, and there will be another one soon with the new settings they have patched into that particular client V. soon. If your interested set yourself up on test server forums at least and you can read all about it's progress and get a better opinion on how it is coming along.

Note to FunCom: The graphics are great but where is DX10?
Questing & Transport

Well why don’t we go find some action and get out of this player city? Oh yeah because I have no idea where I am anymore. It has been over 200 days since I played. I can’t remember wtf to do or where to go! Perhaps one of these nice players will help me.

I messaged a level 80 barbarian standing close by and asked if he could help me get to one of the new zones for lvl 60+ players. Not only did this guy show me around, he showed off some of his armor sets including PVP and some of the Raid armor. It does look pretty cool. It’s not over the top. In fact it looks like what you would expect. He has a nasty 2h axe and his chest armor looks more like a few straps of leather tied for decoration (Think 80s/90s Hulkster). I like the art direction! So after he does this great dress up show he asks if I have a horse.

Now you probably remember the fiasco with horses. The first ones were a joke. If you had maxed your run speed you could outpace a horse. The preorder mounts were a total waste, slow huge and annoying. So of course I told the guy no, I have a PVP preorder mount but no horse. He offered me 1 Gold and took me to a place where you can buy a horse. The horse is 75 silver and the skill to ride is 25 silver. You can buy faster horses, and armored horses if you are rich. I got a Brown horse, clicked the skill to learn it and then clicked the horse.

Mounting and dismounting still sucks, but the speed of the horse is much better than I remember. They are worth having and using. The best part is you can summon it anywhere you want. My screen does a strange phase out thing when I mount or dismount but it is not game breaking. If you need to get off the horse fast there is a quick dismount which has a cooldown. Overall Horses get a B+.
The cost of 1 gold can now easily be attained + more via quests up to level 40 (the requirement) first time round I was able to afford a horse at level 44, now from scratch with the extra additions (quests+content) to 40 I end up with close to 2gold at 40. I think there is a enough variety in the looks of the horses, costs I think are very balanced now, maybe a tad on the high side at launch. As for your dismounting bug, maybe try the verify patch process to see if that helps? You used to be able to run as fast as a horses "trot" but not if your were both running on a horse + general running, this has been tweaked too.

Note to FunCom: Mounts are better than they were but still not very gratifying for the cost. Please look into the cost balance and variety for lower level players.

So now that I have a horse, my new Barbarian friend says follow me to Ymirs Pass. (I think this is one of the new areas) It is near Eigophian Mountains, which is where I remember that I began to run into content issues. (Lack of content that is) I pulled up the map to get myself oriented and the first thing I noticed are A LOT of new places on the map that I haven’t seen before. Many dungeons and zones have been added. That is a good thing. Conan is instanced, and even though some of the zones are pretty big the game still had a very small feeling to it. Not anymore. It’s obvious I have a lot of exploring to do. I will tell you that I am not much of an explorer, but I do enjoy having craptons of content. That way when I get bored I can go find something new to cut my teeth on. Props to FunCom on making the game world larger. A ever Growing game world that can outpace my leveling would be nice, lets see how long they can keep the pace up.

So, we make it to the new area and my new friend wishes me luck. He has a raid to attend and so must go. This was certainly one of the better experiences I have run into. I have played MMOs a long time and it is rare that you run into a player who will part with money and give returning players a leg up. Now that I have a new horse I need something to do. In less than half an hour my quest log was full of quests for the area. I certainly have something to do now.

Note to FunCom: I am not sure what kind of bait you are looking at to bring old players back but consider giving them a mount, some larger bags, a stash of potions and a cape or something that makes them run faster. Travel overall still kinda sucks due to the instance thing and I REALLY wish my horse was faster.
Good suggestions. Although if you have the money the "swift" horse is really worth it and makes a better incentive I feel. You will also notice that there are more NPC's providing fast travel to all area's that just a few for some before.

The quests are not anything unique. It is more of the same but at a point in the game where previously one had to essentially resort to grinding out levels by AOE farming with broken skills, this was a warm welcome. The XP per hour gain was good. I went from 56-60 in a day of lazy exploring and questing. This is a pace I can deal with. I branched out and tried a few of the other areas like Atzel’s Approach and Thunder River. The areas are interesting and varied. Lots of quests but money still seems to come in very slowly.
I would suggest some dungeons, and there are some solo instances that scale with your level such as the Oasis and Frost Swamp in the resource area's, such area's now have items that do drop that are better and sell for nice money. A bit higher up you will find some moral centered quests and more branch type quests.
Trade, Crafting and Banking

Remembering back to AoC launch the trader (bank and auction house) was a huge issue. Now that I had me some items worth selling I thought I would zone back to a major city and try out the trader function. Again, because of the server merges the cities are populated. On a Sunday there was what I would call a light load of people. The trader works now. There were a vast number of items on the auction. The prices varied wildly. Any single item may be listed 20 times with a price range from 1 gold to a few copper. I was able to outfit my character with several blue items and some crafted pieces.
The mail system where you pickup your goods, is…. simple. It works. One thing I don’t like is that when you sell stuff the item stays in your bank. Bleh. Slots are a rare commodity. So the bank, mail and auction system are not fantastic or anything, but hey it works! I had a bunch of gems and cloth from launch so I was able to offload those and I ended up making a few silver by the end of the day. Still a long way to the 50+ gold I would need for a kickass horse. Money might get easier at level 80 but it certainly doesn’t flow in from 55-60.
You should notice an improved flow via the quests in thunder river from 60+. Ymir's boss encounter can provide decent items for some nice money. Also if you go after resources they can get you decent money too at any level.

I heard that crafting is not really so hot yet. The main reason for this is because the gear is not a significant leap in looks or quality over the base gear and doesn’t even come close to the raid gear. As has been stated by FunCom the stats system in the game was not designed to give gear a major emphasis. I for one feel that this is an understatement. Gear still has almost no meaningful impact on performance. You can get gems now and I guess some of those might be nice at high levels but for a toon leveling up, I cant see any reason to craft or gather. Resources are all over the AH and there is no rhyme or reason to the prices. This is one element that probably needs a total revamp. This is mostly due to the stats system in the game. The crafted items are not sought after because they have very little impact on how the game plays.
I can assure you that Cultural Crafted Armors are very sought after and go for a high price in relation to the time it takes to get them. Their stats are based on not only this but also of comparable quality to items you will find in dungeons. I would recommend doing a bit more research into this area and the "parts" sells well and often, across the 2 main servers I play on at least.
Combat Engine & Stats

FunCom has publically stated that they are reworking the item and stats system in the game. I am going to wait to pass judgement on the system as a whole until this has been completed. I will review the state of the system today and my thoughts on how they have fixed the obviously broken parts.

I guess this would be a good time to talk about character sheets, skills and the heart of the MMO that many addicts thrive on, the combat engine. I am still unsure of what exactly FunCom wanted to do with this system. Some of the issues with the classes were addressed but many were not. The game breakers have been resolved for the most part. I am still sad that going down the skill trees does not offer a more significant impact to your progression. This is much like the problem with gear. When you are talking about skills that only offer performance gains of 1 or 2 percent, those are almost invisible. This is especially true when you start talking about damage ranges of 500-1000 per hit. What is 5 or 10 damage per 3 second cast really going to add to the fight?

Some feats are still broken. The code for some of the feats to scale properly never got fixed. What I mean by scale is that if a feat offers a plain +50 damage increase, you get that same increase at level 50 or level 80. One would expect it to jump a large amount by level 80 because +50 to a spell that does say 1500 damage is worthless. I may be wrong here and again I am only reviewing my class (PoM) in this write up. Overall though I really feel like the feats and skills are sorely lacking. In priority order I guess they focused on the game breakers first. Lack of content, bugs, crashes, exploits, and the like. Still here we are almost a year later and the feat trees are, well to be honest with you, quite less than interesting.
I have mixed feeling about the feats, on one hand working them upwards as you level it opens up better spells and ranks. As a PoM player too I couldn't wait to attain the Soul of Mitra spell Remember with the re-itemisation project not only stats on gear will differ but also the damge attained and received as well will differ. It is something that impacts a huge portion in this area. As another healer like a ToS that I play (since release) some of the feat progression works a bit differently and you can see instead of a spell dealing 2x you can see it doing 3x the dmg numbers off mobs when you get to that level + feat amount selected in that particular feat. With others the difference is not so clear in some classes. That I agree with and hope and already have put forward suggestions for better tool tips.

Note to FunCom: Thank you for making the game stable and adding content. Now that you have that out of the way please focus on skills, feats and spells.

The skills still do very little to set you apart from others in your class. Run speed, climbing and the like are very niche. Other mechanics are still, odd.

The lack of any direct healing may still trouble some of you. Let me say it again, there is no direct healing. It is, still, all area effect based on cones and proximity. I did some research in the forums and, what do you know, a guide I wrote almost a year ago is still stickied in the POM section. I thumbed through all the most recent comments about builds and such and really found no new information. It appears that most of the time has been dedicated to fixing bugs or completing content. The skill trees (at least for PoMs) were not revamped. So this is a little bad news but also some good news. It means you won’t have to learn how to play your character all over again. So, feats and skills are not completely broken but not completely worth spending time worrying about either. I found that I could still manage to play just fine no matter what build I picked. In PVP this is more of an issue because you stand the chance of getting utterly dominated without some armor, reduced cooldowns and buffing abilities.

FunCom did do some balancing. I cant AoE down 9 or 10 same level mobs anymore. On occasion when I got jumped by 5 or 6 and had all my cooldowns ready I could survive. One couldn’t really sustain this level of play solo though.

Grouping with others is the best way to mow through mobs and get good xp. The LFG interface is pretty weak. I don’t think it is working properly but it may be. Its probably an issue worth mentioning that I could not tell. The development team should go back to usability testing on this one. I didn’t give it much after I selected my zone and looked for other players and it gave me the same results no matter what zone I picked or was in.

I managed to get invited to a guild that has a full city built. They do raids on a regular basis. I am looking forward to finishing the grind to 80 and testing them out. I will play out my month of paid time now and see how it goes. I was not overwhelmed with delight at the state of the game but it is leaps and bounds better than it was. If the item system comes out quickly and FunCom gets moving VERY QUICKLY on the feat and skill issues I might stay subscribed to this for a while.
A note on the forums.
I dont think FunCom gets it here. This is probably the worst aspect to the game. They should be MUCH MUCH more active on the forums than they are. They are very slow at getting things done on the boards that take nothing more than a little time to write about. For example the Advocate Program. This was to be part of the community shortly after lauch. I had applied for it in the early days and we never heard anything, not a peep. It just died a silent death. In Febuary, Famine brought up the subject again and took applications. There has not been a peep about it since then.
It does not, and should not take over a month to get a community program going. I know this guy is busy but seriously. There is absolutely no excuse to take over a month to launch any community activity like this. Quick action on these types of things are what will bring the community back to the game. hire a fulltime lead for AoC or get some volunteer resources to do it for you. there are simply not enough dev posts or timely mod posts in the boards, period. The forum content is dated. I work for an industry giant and we do many more community programs on a huge scale with only 2 paid resources. This team simply doesnt get it.
I think you will find an increase of dev replies to many of the questions you have asked on the test forums, there is a definate up turn in productivity there with open floor discussions going back and forth over ideas. Whatever, happened in the past they can't change, but moving forward the old decent idea's are back and literally about to be implemented with the class leads.

Summary:

Stable, appears to be more balanced, large content updates, most features working as they should. They did hit the critical stuff first so the game is very playable now. When they fix the issues around depth and solve some of the class specific concerns I think it will be back in serious contention for my money on a regular basis.

Here is my scorecard based on a mid level toon climbing to 80:

Overall Score 6.7 – Stable but needs depth

Patching 5 – Long, can be slow, massive
Graphics 9 – Fantastic even without Dx10
PvE Gameplay 7 – The gameplay is fun, different and better in groups
Questing 8 – Content gaps are mostly gone, there is plenty to do
Items 3 – They look cool but have no solid purpose. Raid loot is another story.
Sound 10 – Great soundtrack, more voiceover work would be cool
Population 6 – So far so good, nice folks, not too crowded but can be desolate as well
Crafting 2 – No use for this as a leveling toon, seems like a money waste
Stability 9 – I had no crashes, random logouts or lag for that matter
Travel 4 – Mounts are improved but still expensive
Dungeons 8 – More have been added, others fixed, good encounters, loot looks cool and functional but doesn’t do much

Not bad on a toon at level 60 ish but not 65? I think many things open up expecially in crafting if your in a guild with a city, dungeons are more commplace, travel, now has plenty of fast travel to all areas / zones of the game from major hubs (give them a look out:) )
I think if you started from scratch your score would reflect differently, but it would be most interesting to see how you move forward either way. Good job with the feedback and time taken to put your points across!

I'd like to add that I believe the reasoning that the inital Advocate program didn't take off was that there were ample people giving feedback at the time on the test servers. Now the game is at a stage where tweaking is more key, it is a good time for its comeback.

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV