AOC - General Information

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Tred

Uh oh wardrobe malfunction!!!

lol nice

[spronk]

the class balance changes a lot after level 25

[Axire]

Originally Posted by spronk

the class balance changes a lot after level 25

Expand on this please.

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Drajakur

Fuck smooth release already for an ultimately minor subset of people who are going to be there at launch.

What I want to know is: is the game any fucking fun? So far the only person to comment on the content 1-20 said it was boring. Am I going to be collecting fucking bear pelts and rabbit cum and whatever the fuck else I don't care about all over again for the 100000000000 time? Is there anything substantially interesting about the early content...or no?

Dude 1-20 doesn't even FEEL like an MMO. The quality level is pretty much on par with a "real" game, in fact, I feel a lot of people criticize it overly just because it's kind of an uncanny valley effect. The quests are second-to-none. The landscapes are incredible. The only legitimate gripe I've heard is that there is a lot of loading in Tortage.

Good enough shill for you? In all honestly it is really great though, funcom really pulled through with it. 20-80 isn't too bad either but it definitely becomes much more MMO-y - NPC's don't have any more voices dialogue, quests become "ok just give me experience" and such. Less loading, though, you can easily stay in one zone for 6+ levels, and the environments are still gorgeous.

[Tyen]

Check out this fan-made video. Best video I've ever seen made.

The City of Tortage on Vimeo

Old Tarantia on Vimeo

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Axire

Expand on this please.

Well, for one thing, priests get their first "real heal" at 25. Just an upgrade to an old spell but a huge one. It also unlocks one of the first good tiers for feats I believe. Still, it changes even more dramatically at 80.

Originally Posted by Draegan

To bad I'm starting to believe Assassins are slightly gimp.

Unholy Stance seems broken - my friend hit something for like 1300 last night using cunning strikes at level 27.

[Jabberwhacky]

Honestly I think the game is not worth the 50 bucks right now. There's still an awful lot of shit that's going to have to be changed and could have a rather large impact on the class you chose (IE the time you invested).

Examples!

Itemization. Still weird. There's no Armor Class in the game, apparently replaced by Defense Rating, except there's no way to see what effect that has on anything. Seems like there's very, very little difference between the armor types. Maybe there is a large difference between the types, but you sure as hell can't tell by looking at the stats. Weapons are goofy too. You can get a store-bought 1H sword that does 28 DPS at level 10 (!!) and yet gives .8 strength. Point 8. Less than 1 strength, and yet the DPS is 3 times your level. Can't wait to be using those 240 DPS 1-handers at lvl 80 that give me 6.4 strength! They also use a system of Invulnerabilities that doesn't seem to leave much room for mudflation. Before level 10 you can already get items that have more than 1% invulnerability toward various resistances, including melee. It'll be interesting to see how high this shit gets at lvl 80, and if stats (str, dex etc) will mean anything at all or if everyone's just going to be covered in Invulnerability and anti-Invulnerability gear.

Skills and Feats. I played a DT to the low teens, and I'm convinced their basic Aura and their basic Feat (Blighted Touch) do absolutely nothing. They're both supposed to add a chance on attack to do damage, or give you a buff, or some shit, but in multiple levels of having them, I haven't seen jack. I'm sure DT is not alone in this regard, but it really makes figuring out if you like the class difficult. Also consider how hard they nerfed Rangers, even if they did undo part (all?) of it recently, and consider how some classes (PoM) seem awfully strong, maybe even too strong, and the likelihood of getting raped by the nerf bat. People will say "Ah that happens in all MMO's!!" but here it seems like a guillotine looming overhead, ready to drop the second you start really enjoying the class. Or, conversely, it'll prevent you from enjoying a class you might otherwise (like me with the DT) when they don't work right.

You WILL get sick of Tortage. The Night quests (solo) are somewhat different between the archetypes (Rogues stealth around a bit more, soldiers just kill), but follow a similar path, and the Day quests are identical. I'm already really tired of many of the quests I have to do just from doing some Open Beta and 3 more chars now on the EA servers. You won't be in Tortage forever; my DT hit 13 in just under two hours, but that slowed down a lot once I ran out of Night quests (certain parts require you to be lvl 10, and then level 15, so at least in my experience, I've been forced out into the Daytime to level up), but there's no WoW or Vanguard-esque noobie zones that you can go to for a change of scenery/storyline, it is the same coconut-gathering, snake-venom-harvesting bullshit every time.

In conclusion, if you're on the fence, I say wait. There's a lot still up in the air that will have to be changed, and you might as well wait to get the full experience, and avoid the roller-coaster of emotion that is sure to follow this release. None of my issues are game-breakers, but I feel that they add up to something quite less than perfect, or even 'very good.'

(imo)

[Rhaze]

PVP is kinda... meh.


My class Tempest of set can't even aid people being ganked because of their AE effect.

Im currently being camped at the GY at the white isle... like when I respawn im one shotted and dead.


So, dunno.

Anyone on Deathwhisperer wanna get together and bang out quests? Name is Rhaze ingame, 13 ToS

[Tred]

Meh your complaint about the lowbie experience you can say about any mmo imo. After you do it once or twice you've done it enough. There's no changing that. And I can't possibly imagine any class issue like blatantly broken skills/feats staying for unfixed for an extended period of time. Even slow as fuck blizzard fixes that kind of thing fairly quickly.
And personally about your loot issues I could give a shit. If you're (generalization, not you in particular jabber) that loot centric then sure maybe you'll have a problem with it but the fun of the game far overrules any loot issues of a day old pre-release.
I found it quite humorous people complaining about running out of stuff to kill then you find out they haven't done any day time quests. Well no shit you ran out of stuff switch to day time and do a handful of quests to hit the next night time level cap - level 10, 15, and I would assume 20 but I'm only 13 at the moment.
If you're on the fence but you're leaning towards wanting something new then I'd say absolutely give Conan a try. You will at least get your free months worth out of it I think.

[Twobit Whore]

Tortage is incredibly good... the first time. The second time as a different archetype it's neat just to see how the destiny quests are different but tie together. It's like you are doing things that enable others to do something else. After that though it's fucking awful. It would be like playing WoW and every time you rolled a new character you played a human and did Westfall over and over.

[Aria]

Yeah I was grinding at nighttime trying to hit 10 and was like "this sucks dick". So I switched to daytime just so there would be more mobs and instead found my map covered with !'s.

[Tred]

Yah it's almost overwhelming how many quests there are in tortage to do during the day time.

[Jabberwhacky]

Originally Posted by Tred

Meh your complaint about the lowbie experience you can say about any mmo imo. After you do it once or twice you've done it enough. There's no changing that. And I can't possibly imagine any class issue like blatantly broken skills/feats staying for unfixed for an extended period of time. Even slow as fuck blizzard fixes that kind of thing fairly quickly.
And personally about your loot issues I could give a shit. If you're (generalization, not you in particular jabber) that loot centric then sure maybe you'll have a problem with it but the fun of the game far overrules any loot issues of a day old pre-release.
I found it quite humorous people complaining about running out of stuff to kill then you find out they haven't done any day time quests. Well no shit you ran out of stuff switch to day time and do a handful of quests to hit the next night time level cap - level 10, 15, and I would assume 20 but I'm only 13 at the moment.
If you're on the fence but you're leaning towards wanting something new then I'd say absolutely give Conan a try. You will at least get your free months worth out of it I think.

You can't say it about any MMO, I gave two counter-examples in my very post. I'm not saying that the Barrens is a whole different game than Westfall and Duskwood, but it's a hell of a lot more variety than you'll get in AoC.

I don't know anyone who plays MMO's who doesn't have a loot-centric mindset. Have you not read a single thread about WoW, that tiny little game with 100 billion subscribers? Ok, I'll grant you that if one does not care about loot, one won't be disappointed by AoC's loot system. Touche, you master debater.

I ran out of stuff to kill specifically because I was doing Daytime quests and everything was fucking dead. I'm thinking specifically of White Sands and that Pict temple area, the one where you have to kill 30 of them and find a Demonic pict. I was with a partner and the whole front portion was empty so we go deeper only to get owned by 5 lvl 15 mobs. Not an enjoyable experience. And why would you say "No shit I ran out of stuff to kill in Night because I was doing only Night stuff"? It's SOOO much to ask to be able to do their self-touted awesomely important storyline as one contiguous adventure? Up until a month ago, I thought their whole goal was in fact to have 1-20 completely offline. I would have sworn they advertised that shit. I'm not saying it's bad; my point is that I actually LIKE the night MORE than the day and want to do MORE of it, not less. You're telling me "Go do those boring, generic bullshit quests in Daytime LOL" and I'm saying nein.

It's also rather irrelevant if you can't imagine broken class abilities, because they're a reality. My personal experience lies only with the DT, but in this thread, people have talked about lots of Conq's auras doing fuck-all, and Necro pets being 1-shotable and damn near useless in PvP. I'm sure there's plenty more shit to dig up, too.

This post sounds an awful lot more "I HATE AOC!!" than my last one, but I don't, I am in fact playing on the $5 'trial,' I'm just trying to put out an opinion for those who value their $$. Also, don't take my caps too seriously, I'm not really too worked up about AoC. You're still my friend, guy.

[Elerion]

Jabberwhacky, I find it hilarious that your biggest gripe with the game is reduced to the placement of the decimal point on stats, and you're still pissy.

[Tred]

Yah I think he just likes to hear himself complain. *shrug*
I didn't say I thought there were no broken abilities. I said I couldn't see them staying blatantly broken for an extended period of time without being fixed. There's a difference there.

Bottom line it's a new game and it has it's issues but it's fun as fuck to play. That's what matters to me the most in the end and based on that I can recommend someone at least try the game.