Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (PC, 2008)

I have been waiting for Age of Conan for a long, long, time. I had hopes it would be the next great MMORPG (which it is and the sales and servers are showing that to be the case). The game looks great but to my dismay Funcom disabled DX10 and announced 2 days before launch that the game wouldn't have DX10 support until the Xbox 360 version comes out later this year. That was a major disappointment for me (and lame of funcom to do right before launch!) since I just spent 2 grand on a super computer to run the game. With the game on DX9 and maxed graphics at 1920x1200 resolution I was only getting 30-40 average frames per second. and I get 19K on 3dmark06! So obviously they need to do a lot of optimizing. The DX9 looks amazing but it's so unoptimized they knew if they released DX10 the only people who could play it on DX10 would be those with extreme edition CPU's and tri/quad SLi or Quad 3870 video cards.

The first 20 levels are strange, at night you are playing single player doing missions and in the day you are at multi player. The night missions ussualy advance the story and since you're in SP mode the world can be dramatically altered for those missions. I thought the first 20 levels were very well done, in fact it's the most thought out, well designed, starting area ever seen in a MMO of this scale. The big problem though was the lack of polish made the transition from day to night and back kind of awkward.

Overall the biggest gripes I had with the game were the terrible UI, performance issues, no DX10, and the world is broken up into instances (think LOTRO) Not just raiding dungeons and area's are instanced but even the map areas are. I feel that that is such a cop out when WOW was able to do it years ago...

The b est part of Conan are undoubtedly the Combat system. What a revolution for the genre! This is going to make this game stand out BIG time. It changes everything. Suddenly skill matters and not just the gear you got when you tagged along with that really awesome guild for a few weeks. The system is an active blocking system, you can see where an enemy (and yourself) is defending and you can change what area you want to defend more so than others on the fly in battle and so can the enemy. It makes for amazing battles.

The City I've seen so far tartia (or something like that) is truely amazing. It looks so cool with huge inclines and wide streets, changes of elevation everywhere. It's sweet.

The missions in AOC are pretty neat too. When you go into a new area and start grabing your ussual "collect 10 bear teeth" and "go get me my ring I lost when the monsters attacked" type missions, they tend to layer missions on top of each other so when you are out grinding these missions you tend to complete several at a time before going back to turn in and it creates a sense of getting a lot done.

The best part of AOC will no doubt be the player guild cities and outpost seiges. Players will spend resourses to build thier own cities that will give their guild buffs and allow item purchases and such, and 8 outposts are allowed at any one time and will be attached to player cities, each week guilds will be challeneged and whoever wins gets the right to build/rebuild the outpost. This will give hardcore players something to shoot for.

All in all I think it is a very solid offering and wil no doubt wreak havok on WOW's sales. essp. when DX10 and the 360 ver arrive. Go buy it, trust me evetually you will.

Well - bought this game from looking at the previews and thought I'd be up for a more-adult MMORPG that had a little more realistic combat and action sequences. This is what I got:

Pros:
1)Fast-paced combat - you control the direction of strikes and blocking
2)Bloody - you can hack off limbs with various combos
3)PvP settings - you can join a guild and build buildings in a base-like area that can be attacked by various enemy siege equipment.
4) Everyone can eventually steath from enemies - great in pvp areas.
Cons:
1)Very high-end graphics requirement. I am using a duo-core 3gig processeor with AMD Anthon with about a 800-1gig shared memory. and still looked choppy on the lowest settings.
2)Limited travel ability - the game sets you up like you're going to be able to explore the world. But in reality - from lv's 1-20 you can't leave the main stage area. From 20-30 you're stuck in the main cities and can't escape except for some limited pvp action. And no mount till 40 - and unlike WoW there's no flying mounts. There is a skill that allows you to run faster - but it doesn't make much impact on your speed.

3) Limited races and classes. All human - and most classes are race-specific so you you can't custom-class or be very unique except by appearance only. And with limited gear selection, even that can be tough.

4) Classes are unbalanced - and melee fighters are no match for groups of missile based enemies. You had to be 2-3 lvs higher than the enemies around you just to survive.

Bottom line:
If you got a maxed out system and have the patience to wait till atleast lv 40 to see the world of conan - then this is the game for you. If you're like me and just like to wander around, level as you go and have fun without pressure- play WoW.

Awesome Graphics - Great Game :() 5 STARS

So far I have spent my time exclusively in the Northern Grasslands, the first area most high-level players will experience when they start digging into the expansion content. After stepping though the gates of Khitai, I was greeted by a courtyard full of Khitan soldiers training and marching. This area functions as the first quest hub, and gave me about ten quests. A river runs along the south to north of the courtyard, and serves as the main landmark for most of these quests, while the town of Chow lies a little further east. I'll get to these quests in a minute.

The feats menu has an additional little button down the bottom of the "general" side labeled Alternate Advancement. Clicking this button opens up the new Alternate Advancement window. Shocking, I know, but that's what we in the business call "user friendly". For the class I am currently using (Tempest of Set) there are 52 different perks, most of which have five ranks. Each perk can, once you've reached the max level of 80, be trained one of two ways. Experience you get now also goes towards earning AA points, and once a point has been earned, it can be spent on the various perks. Alternatively, you can select a perk and you will start learning it over time, regardless of whether you're slaying enemies or even logged in. You can do both, and will likely have to if you want to get the better alternate advancement abilities any time soon, as it takes quite a while to even earn the more basic perks.
Either way, these perks look like they will take a good long while to learn. Each AA point requires one million experience points to earn, and higher perk ranks require multiple points. If you're training a perk over time, it's still going to take a while. For every alternate advancement point a perk would normally take, it requires 18 real-time hours via the alternative method. As a result, I have so far earned a grand total of zero perks. But the perks themselves look interesting, benefitting a range of different characteristics, from resistances from magic and ailments, to increased stats and damage, and even a few new skills.

Now, about the quests. I've only done a handful of basic quests, but the quest text has stuck out as being hokey in the extreme. There's a sequence after a quest to collect brains in particular which made me cringe for all the wrong reasons. The very first quest NPC I met was the one who dishes out the quests to align yourself with the various factions of the new zones, and you have to talk to him about four times to get a scroll of recommendation for each faction, and each time he says the exact same thing, only changing faction names. It just felt a little lazy.
The land, or at least what I have seen of it so far, is very beautiful – especially with DirectX 10 turned on. The opening region is rocky, walking the course of the river provides some very picturesque moments and secret little nooks are seemingly hidden everywhere. A little further out the grasslands become grassier and a lot less exciting (unless you're a grassochist. Ho ho ho!), but deeper still there are a couple towns and a swampy-looking region.

I also stumbled clumsily into the Kang Pagoda, a dungeon near the regions gates, and got my ass thoroughly handed to me. To be fair, the Pagoda is designed for a group. In fact, there are very few people currently in the beta, (although you can change that by heading to fileplanet and grabb

I give AoC an "Average" rating, but it has the "potential" of being the next HUGE MMORPG for PC. It just needs a lot ... and I mean a TON ... of work from Microsoft to get it to that level.

I am a LONG time World of Warcraft player and a bunch of us pre-ordered AoC. I even dropped almost $3,000 on a new "Super Gaming Computer" to play AoC because it was marketed to be played on a DirectX 10 Platform. Then TWO days before the game was released, Microsoft announced it would not be turning on the DX10 Platform until later this year.

Don't get me wrong, the graphics in the game are stunning even using DirectX 9 on a Windows XP PC ... provided you have a "Super Gaming System with Windows XP". However, I personally want to see the game the way it was marketed. If you have an average gaming system with Windows XP, be prepared for a laggy game that you have to play on the lowest video settings. AoC is in its beginning stages of growth and you will find the game locks up on you a lot and can be a really big headache.

Like most Microsoft Products, Age of Conan was simply released to the public WAY before it was ready. Right now you have to play with DX9 Graphics when the game was marketed as a DX10 "wet dream". The first 20 levels of play are GREAT with imaginative talking NPCs that take you through the world. Incredible Voice Over Cut Away Scenes with the NPCs. You are led to believe he entire game will be like this.

WRONG ... Once you hit level 20ish and have to leave Tortage, the starting city, very, VERY few of the NPCs have Voice Overs in the Cut Away Scenes. You are left having to read Walls of Text for each quest giver. It was a really BIG let down.

Microsoft is working on the game with at least two patches a week. They are promising more Voice Overs. The game WILL get better with time. You just have to be VERY patient while waiting.

The biggest let down of all is the fact that this game will be out for XBOX 360 in a few months. So basically you can pay a small fortune for an Uber Gaming PC with Vista and DX10 or just catch a sale at Wal Mart on an XBOX 360 around Christmas, buy the game then, and play online with the same people who are on PCs.

After playing World of Warcraft for two years, I was ready for something different. After playing just a few levels of Age of Conan, I got my wish. Age of Conan is great MMORPG in many ways. Instead of your normal click action button game, you are confronted with a combo system. The combo system does not reward button smashers, but it rewards gamers who want to feel more connected with their character. You start with a combo starter, and then you get an onscreen command telling you the next button to push to continue the chain. I feel much more in control of the damage that is done to my enemies this way.

In terms of graphics, DX10 is included for the video cards that support it. Without DX10 enabled, the graphics are not as detailed, but the performance is amazing. I played Age of Conan with a XFX HD4650 and had average performance in DX10 and great performance in DX9.c I upgraded my video card to a XFX HD4890, and I am getting around 20-25fps in the city, and this is with full graphics with DX10 enabled. Overall, the graphics are terrific.

The presentation of AoC is top notch. All of the quests that I have come across are interactive. This means that you can choose what your character says to the NPC (non playable character). While this feature alone would not persuade me to continue to play, it definitely does make Age of Conan special.

Overall, I am thoroughly satisfied with Age of Conan. I have stopped playing WoW, and am now a diehard AoC fan.