Age of Conan: First Week Impressions

[tmeacham]

Article by Travis Meacham.

Funcom's new fantasy MMO Age of Conan released last week and we've played through the opening 20 levels to bring you our impressions. In this early look we focus on the questing and combat that dominates the beginning of the game.

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/05/29/age_of_conan_first_week/

 

[ryanlord]

I agree, this is a really great MMO, at least so far. I have a level 30 Sygian Ranger right now, and I'm having a blast.

One thing I appreciate is the quick leveling. I'd expect that I personally can max out my character with casual play within the next month or two. In some of the other MMOs, that'd be close to impossible, especially while going at it solo.

Also can't wait to get my mount, and then take part in guild wars and major seiges.

 

[Oh Snap]

When I loaded up the client I just saw two dudes getting it on. I think there's something wrong with my game.

 

[Guest]

You must have loaded the toms second take videos on accident

 

[Oh Snap]

OH SNAP SON

 

[Oh Snap]

Honestly though, can't wait for Age of Nakedman patch

 

[spuddyt]

I'm really enjoying myself as well (although I sometimes get drawn into hardware discussions.....), although Tortage started to drag towards the end i found, it was quite liberating to get off the place but i've now joined a guild (and saw some of the city being built, woot i glitched the game and got stuck in a trading post )

 

[robwright]

You must have loaded the toms second take videos on accident

Ouch. Funny...but ouch...

 

[Pmid]

After reading this uninformative - but glowing - review I get the feeling you did very little beyond moving your character from quest to quest. Age of Conan is plagued with many problems and far from having a smooth launch. I’m not going to do your job for you but I’ll list a handful of them.

Registered users have been randomly locked out of the forums for over a week - some are still unable to visit the boards for help. Petitions queues stretch on for well over a day. Emailing support often results in a form letter response that doesn’t even remotely touch on your problem, and no phone support is available at all. For the most part Funcom's communication has been abysmal.

Inside the game, severe exploits and dupe bugs from beta made there way to the retail product. Players have reached the level cap (80) within days of the launch. Many people are having problems claiming pre-order rewards. Basic MMO functions like a bank, mail and auction system weren’t even operational for the first week of launch. In-game mail still isn’t working properly, often resulting in the loss of items. Guild functionality is heavily bugged. Voice-over acting and much of the single-player game you rave about ceases to exist once you leave the starting island. It feels a lot like a bait and switch, as does the removal of DirectX 10 functionality even though it’s advertised on the box.

Performance issues have many subscribers unhappy and technical problems are keeping scores of people from playing. Extended downtime for the U.S. servers happens every day and takes place in the middle of the afternoon or during primetime rather than the early morning hours. Ridiculous problems like graphical options not sticking to their user defined settings are a constant source of frustration for many players with lower end hardware configurations who are forced to heavily tweak their visuals. That problem you expressed regarding low resolution textures randomly popping up in your scene isn’t a bug like you think it is. It’s a documented feature of the game’s engine – it scales down graphics on the fly to maintain a level of performance. Obviously if you think it’s a bug it’s been implemented poorly - and while it's possible to disable that annoying feature, doing so leads to peformance issues - making it feel more like a band-aid hiding a larger problem.

As a game journalist you might want to spend some time investigating your next game instead of just playing it.

 

[spuddyt]

he said in the article that its not a review.... he said "These are strictly my early impressions of the game"
and does any MMO launch without bugs?

 

[tmeacham]

After reading this uninformative - but glowing - review I get the feeling you did very little beyond moving your character from quest to quest. Age of Conan is plagued with many problems and far from having a smooth launch. I’m not going to do your job for you but I’ll list a handful of them.

It's not a review. It's a look at the first 20 levels.

Registered users have been randomly locked out of the forums for over a week - some are still unable to visit the boards for help. Petitions queues stretch on for well over a day. Emailing support often results in a form letter response that doesn’t even remotely touch on your problem, and no phone support is available at all. For the most part Funcom's communication has been abysmal.

A vast majority of MMO players never go to the official forums.

Inside the game, severe exploits and dupe bugs from beta made there way to the retail product. Players have reached the level cap (80) within days of the launch. Many people are having problems claiming pre-order rewards. Basic MMO functions like a bank, mail and auction system weren’t even operational for the first week of launch. In-game mail still isn’t working properly, often resulting in the loss of items. Guild functionality is heavily bugged. Voice-over acting and much of the single-player game you rave about ceases to exist once you leave the starting island. It feels a lot like a bait and switch, as does the removal of DirectX 10 functionality even though it’s advertised on the box.

Here's the thing, I was able to enjoy the first 20 levels without banking anything, sending any mail or joining a guild and I was able to claim several pre-order rewards without difficulty. This article reflects my experience which I also stated in the article.

Performance issues have many subscribers unhappy and technical problems are keeping scores of people from playing. Extended downtime for the U.S. servers happens every day and takes place in the middle of the afternoon or during primetime rather than the early morning hours. Ridiculous problems like graphical options not sticking to their user defined settings are a constant source of frustration for many players with lower end hardware configurations who are forced to heavily tweak their visuals. That problem you expressed regarding low resolution textures randomly popping up in your scene isn’t a bug like you think it is. It’s a documented feature of the game’s engine – it scales down graphics on the fly to maintain a level of performance. Obviously if you think it’s a bug it’s been implemented poorly - and while it's possible to disable that annoying feature, doing so leads to peformance issues - making it feel more like a band-aid hiding a larger problem.

The number of people having trouble is much much lower than the number of people enjoying the game. I assume you're referring to the official forums for these problems which, once again, is only trafficked by a very small but extremely vocal minority of players.

Sounds like you're not enjoying Age of Conan. Can I assume you'll stop playing it then?

 

[purplerat]

After reading this uninformative - but glowing - review I get...

I'm getting more and more discouraged by the utter lack of critical reading abilities of many of the people on this forum (a forum that I often attribute as having an above average level of intelligence amongst it's members). The gripes you are going on about have nothing to do with the article. Instead you apparently just saw- not read- an article where *gasp* somebody was praising portions of a game you obviously do not like. So rather than actually consider what he was saying you just pulled out your Jump-To-A-Conclusion mat and away you went.

Anyways after playing to level eight I agree with what Travis is saying. The game looks great visually, the combat system is very fun compared to other MMOs. However the first person ranged combat just doesn't do it for me and I have a feeling it's not what they were going for. I haven't had much more time to play (it's been too nice out to play any game much). I understand there are many complaints although I've yet to have any major ones. I hope Funcom works to fix them because this game has a lot of great potential based on what I've seen so far.

 

[bydesign]

The game has had the smoothest release of any MMO to date and that includes WoW which was up and down the first 3 weeks and had fewer initial players I believe. So over all I am extremely impressed with the game engine. I could never go back to playing a WoW like game again. They still have much work to do for sure but the game is solid and is different enough. They need to improve the social aspects of the game and world interactivity but they have had a great start.

I wish they would have not included pet classes as they look out of place in the world. The combo system is love/hate and for me its hate for me and add no value what so ever to the game. As such I’m running with a Priest now problem solved. I frequently drink while playing and that doesn’t mix well with the higher level combos at least for me. It’s also a little too fast to level at this point easily twice as fast WoW at least up to 30.

 

[purplerat]

Even while Funcom has clearly stated AoC is not intended as a WoW killer I find going from WoW combat to AoC like going from black and white to color. I may still play WoW occasionally, but only with my already 70 character and for end game content. After just going through just the first few levels of AoC I can't imagine have to level another character in a game with such a relatively boring combat system.

 

[Cyberqat]

The game is great..... until you need customer support. Then your s--- out of luck.

I just blogged about this:

http://blogs.sun.com/gameguy/entry/aoc_the_c_is_for

 

[Cyberqat]

The game has had the smoothest release of any MMO to date and that includes WoW

This isn't true and is unfair to NCSoft. Every NCSoft launch I've seen has been smoother. A bigplace AoC falls down is customer support-- something that NC excels at.

All in all, if you ignore the impossible customer support, the launch of AoC hasn't been bad but it has NOT been as clean as City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars etc....

 

[purplerat]

All in all, if you ignore the impossible customer support

Actually the degree to which you can ignore customer support is a great indicator of how good any product really is.

 

[Cyberqat]

Actually the degree to which you can ignore customer support is a great indicator of how good any product really is.

Absolutely. And if we *could* truly ignore customer support then the fact that customer support ignores us wouldn't be an issue. (Thats not really fair, I admit. They don't ignore us. They are just saddled with a system that makes it impossible for them to actually help us.)

But there are ALWAYS at least 200 people backed up in the CS queue by 8pm at night.

So, by your own observation, this does say something about the state of the game. I don't knock them for this because, honestly, ALL MMOs have these sorts of problems when they first hit scale. But they *should* have had a reasonable CS system in place to handle it. And they don't.

 

[ryanlord]

Sony's Everquest used to be just as bad with getting support. They ended up having to bring on a ton of customers and train them to do low tier support, all for having their monthly fee waived. I had a roommate that did it for quite some time, and he put in a lot of hours helping people with his seer account (or whatever they called it). I was pretty surprised back then that they weren't at least paying the seers minimum wage, but hey, they called it "volunteer" work.

Give the guys at Funcom some time, they'll get the queues cleaned up. Right now everyone is new, and there are tons and tons of probably needless petitions. I know some people think a quest is broken because they can't find an item or enemy spawn, and then put in a petition, when the item / enemy is right near the area that they're at or just needs to spawn. It's stuff like that which backs up the queue.

 

[Cyberqat]

The really infuriating thing is the way the throw your ticket out if you aren't there. I don't care how nicely you put it, there is no way that will do anything but upset the customer more.

And, as I showed in my analysis in my blog, it actually makes the problem much much worse then it has to be.

 

[Pmid]

Actually his article states that it is not a “full review”. It then goes on to give his “impressions”. If you’re giving your opinion about a game you’re giving a review of it – regardless of whether it’s a full or partial review. Pretending this isn’t a review is ridiculous and several of you are nitpicking terms.

Ryan - EQ initially had poor support but in all fairness it was the companies first MMO and one of the first of its kind. Their situation was understandable – Funcom’s isn’t. They’ve been in the MMO business for 7 years now and after the disastrous AO launch one would think they’d strive to be better prepared this time around. How many years do you suggest we give a company to get things right?

As for the review – sorry, your look at the first 20 levels which we’re not calling a review – it’s clear you stuck your head in the sand and plowed through the first 20 levels without really paying attention to anything outside of your own little world. That may work in a single player game but I expect more from a review of a massively multiplayer world. At least try out the basic features beyond combat – which while new and interesting should have required no more than15 minutes of your time to investigate before moving on to something else. You hype up the night-mode single-player experience without explaining that the feature is mostly absent once you leave the starting island. So is the voice acting.

If you’re going to focus on the first 20 levels why don’t you mention the complaints about the replayability of the game and the tedium of leveling alternate characters – mainly because there’s only one starting area to progress through for the first 20 levels? Sorry – you don’t pay attention to the forums. “The number of people having trouble is much much lower than the number of people enjoying the game” – either you have access to data the rest of us don’t or you’re content with being a reckless journalist.

You touched on loot but I’m surprised you didn’t mention the limited bag space and the annoyance of having to leave a majority of your loot on the ground while adventuring – made much worse by a broken storage system. You got through the first 20 levels without using email - leaving you unaware that it's mostly broken. That's the problem - you didn't bother to look around at the features of the game. I guess you never tried trading with another player only for your traded items to end up in your quest or resource storage bags rendering them useless. Did you bother doung anything during your first 20 levels to get an accurate impression of the game beyond just moving from quest to quest?

Numerous bugs and exploits are plaguing the game. Maybe you chose a PvE server and didn’t realize players are running around abusing bugs which allowed them to one-shot each other. Player cities – which were supposed to be the pinnacle of player achievement, already exist a week into launch thanks to duped gold ruining the economy. Again, your article reeks of someone who ran around playing an MMO mostly solo as if it were a single player game. That’s fine for random players but game reviewers should be stepping outside of their comfort zone and touching all aspects of the game. Ignoring the forums is ignoring the community, which is part of what makes an MMO an MMO. Maybe it'd be best if you stuck to console reviews and someone more qualified reviewed Age of Conan.

Had you actually visited the forums you would have realized the low-resolution problem you complained about was a feature and not a bug, and then you could have properly criticized its poor implementation instead of just assuming it’s a problem that’ll eventually work itself out. Funcom is more likely to fix the negative aspects of their game if reviewers are more honest and informed. Here's to hoping someone else reviews the next 20 levels.

 

[tmeacham]

If you’re giving your opinion about a game you’re giving a review of it – regardless of whether it’s a full or partial review. Pretending this isn’t a review is ridiculous and several of you are nitpicking terms.

It's not a review. It's a look at the first 20 levels. And it's one person's impressions. You disagree with it. That's fine. What's important to you in an MMO isn't important to me. It's OK to disagree, even on the Internet.

Since the game is so much trouble though can I assume that you won't be playing it or visiting the official forums anymore? Seems kind of silly to continue to play a game that you don't like or frequent the forums for a game you aren't playing.

Or, are you still playing it. And if so... why?

 

[bydesign]

The game has had the smoothest release of any MMO to date and that includes WoW

This isn't true and is unfair to NCSoft. Every NCSoft launch I've seen has been smoother. A bigplace AoC falls down is customer support-- something that NC excels at.

All in all, if you ignore the impossible customer support, the launch of AoC hasn't been bad but it has NOT been as clean as City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars etc....

What you are ignoring is they went live with 400,000 subscribers. None of the titles you have mentioned had half that amount launch. It's much easier to provide support when you have a much smaller base to deal with. Your first two titles also sucked and Guild Wars is disputable as even being a MMO. Further more none of them even tried to push the envelope in terms of technology.

Not lashing out at you just pointing out that this was a hugely successful release on a massive scale.

 

[purplerat]

Some of you are being real idiots with you criticism of the article. Criticize the game all you want but why are you jumping all over an article which based on it's title and the author's own statements, both in the article and outside of it, clearly define this as by no means being a be-all, say-all, definitive look at the game. If you've all really played it so much (rather than just picking up on the rants of others) then go ahead and write your own definitive, comprehensive review of the game and beat THG to the punch.

 

[Pmid]

Yes, your article talks about combat and questing – both of which should have taken less than a single play session to form an opinion on. While it takes time to master, the essence of the combat engine can be grasped within minutes. Seeing as you barely bothered with the other aspects of the game I have to wonder what you spent all that time doing while leveling to 20. A review of your journey to fill your experience bar 20 times makes for a rather pointless MMO article. You didn’t even bother to mention that some of the features you enjoyed – like nighttime solo play - are no longer available once you leave the starting island. Based on your article I’d be purchasing the game believing it had a strong single player element when in reality it doesn’t.

Despite the repeated claims that your not-a-review only focused on combat and questing, at least 60% of it touches on economy, graphics, performance and stability. You speak only from your own experiences but please consider what makes for a more informative statement?

“I can only speak from my own experience here but I'd categorize this client as very sound.”

or

“The forums are full of technical problems and complaints about performance, but personally I haven’t run into any issues yet”.

People reading the former - who haven’t played the game - will walk away from your article with the impression that AoC is relatively problem free and a safe purchase. Your head-in-the-sand review style is misleading. And while that wouldn’t matter if you only reviewed the combat and questing systems I remind you that you did spend half your article discussing how well the game looked and ran.

If you spent less time backpedaling and more time focused on improving you might actually be decent at writing articles one day. As it stands every time I come across a review at Tom’s which has me rolling my eyes 99% of the time your name is tacked onto it. It gets old. If it’s not bad game reviews it's bad movie reviews chock full of spoilers - probably because you can't figure out what else to fill the article with.