Review by Travis Meacham.

It's been three months since Funcom's fantasy, hack 'n slash, MMO Age of Conan launched and now it's time for a critical look. Is the real-time combat system and integrated story still interesting in the mid to upper levels?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/0 [...] an_review/

AoC is and will continue to be a joke and a humiliating experience for JokeCom!! This game is a great example of what NOT to do if you want to create a successful game. for Three months after launch, the game still crashes and freezes regularly; I'm not the only one who's observed this behavior and reported it on death ears! the patches always broke something and some of the fixes were small, trivial, and stupid...who cares that there's a *Ding* when I level up compared to the game crashing?

Even though they've reached 1 million purchases, only half of those people are still playing and the consensus is that most of those are still on their 30 day free trial. In another month or so, we'll see the actual number of active subscribers drop in half again.

I was playing as a woman for the one character I bothered to get to level 65 before becoming bored.... gave me an entertaining passtime waiting for people to turn up after they'd joined my groups from half way across the globe...

Are you serious? Is this sarcasm that I am missing? This is an MMO, not a regular video game. People pay for the initial cost of the game and continue to pay a monthly fee on top of that, why would you do that if all you’re doing is leveling your character to max level and then shelving the game? The last thing any company hosting an MMO wants is for people to quite the game after reaching the last level, they want to keep their player base. This can’t be done if there is nothing to do once you’ve reached the level cap. For this reason alone the score of the game should drop to no more than 6, and only that’s if everything else is working great.

That’s why there needs to end game content. Seriously, no end game content for an MMO is like buying a $50 video game and then completing it in about 10 minutes and then getting board of repeating it after about 30-40 minutes.

AoC may have its short comings such as lack of end game content. Its not that end game isn't there, its just that there isn't much of it; 3 raid bosses and some epic zones. However, if you check the forums you will find out that the game is having a huge turn around coming in the next month. Heres a small list

*A brand new PvP nortierity system that makes players criminals and forces them to "go underground" and get items through a blackmarket
*3-5 Brand new zones including a lvl 80 zone full of quest.
*Fixes to and opening of raid content
*A revamp to the crafting system. More armor/weapons being added including epic armor and culture armor.
*A revamp on how stats affect the game. Currently stats add a "negligible" amount to anything HP, DMG, defense etc ... It still a noticeable amount; however, not enough to allow characters customizations of their classes through armor.
*A revamp of armor stats and progression for the same reason above.


Also, as far as crashes are concered, the last few patches addressed most, if not all, of the causes. The game runs great now; however, there is the occasional lag spike.

It may not be perfect, but I wouldn't say that its not a 7/10 worthy.