AOC - General Information

[Dashal]

I cant imagine it's like Vanguard. With all we know now about what happened with that game, well it's just in it's own class. That said, I played Vanguard to cap from release and had a great time doing it.

[mexpak]

Gecko has the most spot-on, rational commentary about the game in this thread. Where as this is the true coming of the apocalypse according to the rest of you.

However, if I can't pick a snake up and shoot it like an arrow, this game won't live up to my expectations.

[ShroudedMist]

ALL NPCs better have voice overs AT LEAST as cool as James Earl Jones. Now THAT would be sweet.

[ajiatus]

Well, after trying the PvP weekend, I would say that Conan's greatest flaw is probably the fact that it is an average MMO. It's neither "doomed" nor "great," mostly something that we have already seen many times before, and the real questions (that cannot be answered by this test) for me are the following:
(1) Is the world going to be alive with players, with an active player community, and will it be immersive, or will it be another vast empty Vanguard?
(2) Will the PvE part be more than just hack and slash, and provide some scripted events and surprises past the solo part?

In my opinion, the classes are mostly boring, the graphics are mediocre (in terms of seamlessness of the objects with the background, and the placement/interaction of the avatar with the playing world), and there is nothing that I find compelling. I also feel that the game is built around melee combat, with the other mechanics (ranged and spells) as simply uninspired skills just like in every other MMO. Again, this is only based on the limited content of the PvP weekend.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Flight

The problem with the PvP test folks making judgements on balance are that a lot of classes get their first defining abilities at lvl 20. There is certainly a lot of balancing to be done, but letting folks do a massive PvP event at lvl 20 specifically, was a poor decision.

As an aside, there is one class that is overpowered and I'm not referring to Rangers. Refer to my previously posted skill tree for a clue. kudos +1 for the first to identify it.

The higher level class that is the most OP currently is the Barbarian. I'm not sure how that correlates to endgame PVP as I have limited exposure to that.

For the Gamespot weekend, I tried the maps and played a bunch of characters, and the Ranger was just silly sick overpowered for that. I know that's not the case at high levels, but for the purpose of the test and that level the Ranger was a killing machine.

The Tempest of Set definitely needs to have snake arrows.

I'm not sure how anyone can say the graphics are mediocre. You can gripe about the gameplay, but the game looks gorgeous.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Updated Q&A - Beta Weekend - PC News at GameSpot

So far the beta testers have loved the world. They have loved the core gameplay, the hands-on action, and the feedback level of the combat. They have loved the innovation and the freshness. They have loved the maturity of the setting, they love our nipples and our fatalities. They have felt our patches are massive and take forever to download (we have patched six gigabytes' worth of data, three times now! Funcom makes deployment of Vista SP1 seem small). I can promise our testers that this will not happen once the product goes live. The product is on two double-layer DVDs and the install [is] roughly 15GB--which is most likely among the biggest games in history.

[rinthea]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

You pussy, like they will track your IP down and ban you from the beta. It's going live in a month anyway, if this game is the next coming you need to start talking about it. The time to impact the launch is at hand, if you wait for the NDA to drop you have already missed the train.

I highly doubt you would even make a blip on Funcom's radar by posting your thoughts and observations regardless of NDA, and even if you DID blip I doubt they would do a thing about it. 6 months ago ? Surely. Now ? With launch around the corner, I don't see how or why they would.

I approve this message

[Tarrant220]

15gig game....good lord god almighty.

Still looking forward to it though.

[Schatze]

Thinking of pre-ordering it to play during the interludes between training this summer.

Is there a certain date you need to pre-order it by to get the bonus mount + early start time, or any specific process you need to go through other than simply preordering from best buy or whatever?

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Itzena

The game launches next month, and there's still an NDA in place for the non-stress testers.

Does anything else really need to be said?

The game is surprisingly closed-to-the-world for an MMO. I think it's a pretty respectable trial, we'll see if it was a mistake or not soon enough I guess.

Granted there was a recent interview where the lead designer was like "oh we're holding a few features back for release just to make sure they're kept secret" and it's just like... yeah right.

So it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's certainly not the next vanguard. If you're on the fence about the info/content you're seeing I'd say just give it a few months and try it out if the chance comes available.

Originally Posted by ShroudedMist

If people aren't willing to break the NDA and tell the world how great this game actually is then......it probably sucks.

Usually people don't break NDA's because a game is good, granted, LOTRO proved that wrong enough. Same with WAR even though that doesn't really count since it's still in development.

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

You pussy, like they will track your IP down and ban you from the beta. It's going live in a month anyway, if this game is the next coming you need to start talking about it.

It's not the next coming. It just doesn't deserve the shit some people are putting on it.

Found some nice videos some may be interested in from the PVP weekend. YouTube - Age of Conan PvP Weekend: Priest of Mitra check his related, he's got one for every class, all with commentary. And yes, there's good and bad points, they're fair videos, not oozing fanboyism.

[ModernDayDruid]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

Found some nice videos some may be interested in from the PVP weekend. YouTube - Age of Conan PvP Weekend: Priest of Mitra check his related, he's got one for every class, all with commentary. And yes, there's good and bad points, they're fair videos, not oozing fanboyism.

Yeah, the vids are good examples. I posted his blog here:

Originally Posted by ModernDayDruid

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog » Blog Archive » Keen’s AoC PvP Weekend Impressions

I thought this was very well done.

Good resource for those who have not gotten a chance to test.

[TwiNCannoN]

Ah, my apologies, I figured it would have been posted by now but didn't notice it.

[Convo]

Just watched all the combat videos on Youtube. The guy did a great job on them. It looks like the Devs have a good amount of class balance to do. The Demonologist and Necro look horrible at PvP.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

I also just watched all of the videos. That "Keen" guy comes across as much more level-headed in those than in his Funcom-ass-kissing blog write-up.

I love the healer class. My best PvP experiences are as a healing-only type class keeping my team up and fighting. I'm too damn old and slow to be the "twitch" DPS guy in these games.

If this thing isn't *HEAVILY* modified/balanced by release, I foresee intense screaming about the gross imbalances between melee and casters which apparently makes casters automatic 1-2 shot kills by any melee in the game (good luck getting anybody to play a healer if they're looking at a loading screen all damn day). And if the Ranger class isn't about 90% nerfed, this game will definitely lose 75%+ of its players in the first month, as a few above have surmised.

[Tolanin]

class balance is always the hardest thing to do, lucky for them if the main pvp focus is on big group battles its a little easier since they only really need to make sure that no one is super wtf uber oneshot and the small imbalances will be less noticable than in WoW where the focus is on very small group pvp.