To say that Age of Conan had a good launch would in my opinion, be a bit of an understatement. Age of Conan has been live now for over a week and downtime has been few and far between. OK, so there have been a few hiccups along the way; there are bugs aplenty in game but you can't expect an MMO to launch with all the flavors.
For the last 3 years, Funcom have been waving their banner quite angrily when it comes to Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. They really wanted to get our attention before the game launched and I can safely say that they achieved that. It is arguable that Age of Conan has had one of the best advertising and hype campaigns for an MMO to date. Age of Conan has topped the sales charts at multiple game retailers and has also become one of the fastest selling PC games in history so Funcom and Eidos must have done something right.
Sadly, mammoth sales and elaborate launch parties don't prove a game. That is up to the content within the game. As far as I am concerned, Age of Conan hasn't flopped like other more-recent entries into the MMO world.
First Impressions
There will be problems. That is the first and possibly the most important realization you have to come to when you log into a new MMO for the first time. Age of Conan is no different. There are problems and quite a few of them. What you make of them however will depend entirely upon how many times you have played an MMO from launch. I can't deny that Age of Conan has its host of problems but what I can say is that, out of any MMO I have played from launch, Age of Conan has to be one of the least problematic. 1 month ago, in closed beta, I was using one of the most bugged and problematic game clients for any game I have ever played. Age of Conan was resource hungry, crash happy and anything other than user friendly. This was 1 month from launch and as such, fears spread that Age of Conan just wouldn't be ready for launch. It really was a lag-tastic mess that required massive amounts of patching and server downtime. I really did worry. Thankfully, my worry was not needed and my fears were misplaced.
There were two main milestones for Funcom. The first was open beta to Early Access [EA] and aside from a few problems with people not liking the lack of EA keys, this went better than most expected. Then there was the mammoth task of getting from EA to retail release. This was the part that most worried about when it came to launch day. Yet again, Funcom proved themselves and saw in Age of Conan with what can only be described as one of the smoothest MMO launches in history. I've been playing the game now for a little over a week and I am impressed. There are bugs and there are problems but they are few and far between. The game runs like a charm and the game play isn't teeth grinding. This is exactly what you want from an MMO launch. Other development and publishing studios should be taking notes.
That said however, there are complaints. There are always complaints.
One thing that does stand out is the possibly-mad system requirements. In order to play Age of Conan without any issues you will need all the new Windows updates, a LOT of RAM and a pretty juicy graphics card. These requirements alone have annoyed a fair amount of gamers out there, who settled for budget systems primarily due to World of Warcraft not needing much in the way of horsepower. At the end of the day however, there are those of us who appreciate such high graphical standards. OK, so you may need to fork out a little to get your World of Warcraft-capable system up to Age of Conan standards but then, it isn't just Age of Conan you'll be upgrading for. World of Warcraft is old now and games coming out in the next 12 months aren't going to cater for 512mb of RAM and a single core processor. Despite what is being said about the system requirements by some, Age of Conan really does have some impressive graphics. If you can set things to high, you will notice it. I am impressed with how much attention was paid to detail in most places. Armor for example, has some intricate patterns displayed that rivals games like Oblivion in some cases. Funcom have gone to every corner to try to make this game look as realistic as possible whilst not compromising on game play. The only other MMO I can think of that almost pulled this off was Lord of the Rings Online. In my opinion, Age of Conan does it far better. There are a few graphical bugs that I have encountered, such as my hair cut randomly changing but for the most part, things are very impressive in the graphics camp.
So it launched well and its graphical standards are high but what about the content? What, if anything, does Age of Conan add to the already-bloated fantasy arm of MMO gaming? There are few major innovations in Age of Conan but then, why change a proven formula? That isn't to say there aren't changes. There are and they do redefine several widely accepted standards.
One of the more noticeable, “changes,” is who Age of Conan is aimed at. Age of Conan isn't aimed at kids by any stretch of the imagination. Overflowing with sexual innuendo, mature dialog and scantily clad NPCs, it is clear that Age of Conan attempts to appeal to those who like the more mature fantasy franchises out there. There's no happy-jolly feeling to Age of Conan that I can find. If you aren't brutally killing your old slave-master, your brutally killing mindless slaves. There's none of this, “go and get my kitty out of the tree,” malarkey and if there is, it is probably achieved by setting fire to said tree. Age of Conan is dark, brutal and quite effectively mature. Whilst Age of Conan has achieved much in this sense, the dialog is a letdown. It tries its hardest to be really, really interesting but I've found this to generally not be the case. OK, so Funcom have served us a decent portion of storytelling here but a lot of it is quite boring. A third of the time, I follow through with reading what the NPC is saying and I think about my choice of retort but at the end of the day, it is still just an accept quest button dressed up to look like something it really isn't. To make things worse, I have to click this button several times in several different formats before the quest actually enters my quest log.
Another feature is the starting area of Age of Conan – Tortage - which includes single player introductory content. Funcom claim that there is 20+ hours of single player game play at the start of Age of Conan. This acts as a way of introducing players to the combat system, basic game play functions and also to make everyone feel important in their own little bubble right from the get go. By day, you can play with your friends and enemies but by night, you play on your own through a series of introductory quests. You can alternate between day and night by speaking to NPCs. Once you complete the single player content, you are sent away from Tortage to the Hyborian mainland, where you lose the ability to switch between mutli and single player content all together. You will now have to duke it out with everyone else on your server, just like in most other MMOs.
One of the more noticeable deviations from the accepted fantasy MMO standard is the combat system. Players are given several directional attacks. To start with, you can attack from the left, the right and above. As you level up, you will unlock 3 more directional attacks. These attacks can then be used on their own or they can be strung together in a series of combinations which results in casting more powerful attacks. As well as this directional system for attacking, players and monsters have access to a directional shield system as well. Monsters (and players) can move 3 arrow-looking shields to different directions to provide more protection. For example, you could stack all of your shields on the left, providing you with a superior amount of damage reduction on your left side. This however, would leave your right and top sides undefended and these would in turn take more damage than if they were shielded. Personally, I think the shield system is rather untidy and may only server to bloat the game and confuse the player base. We shall have to wait and see. There are also fatalities. That is to say that every so often, a successful combo will result in the player pulling off a highly detailed, “finishing,” move that splatters blood all over your screen.
One thing that I must point out now before I continue; Age of Conan has one of the most ugly UIs I have ever used. Funcom set a high standard with the Age of Conan hype campaign that for the most part, the game itself keeps up with. Sadly, the home team is let down massively by the UI. Bloated, unfriendly and highly dysfunctional, I really don't know what the guys at Funcom were thinking when they implemented it. I'll give you an example. The Guild UI has to be the worst aspect of the entire UI. Firstly, you can't define your own ranks and you are restricted to selecting from a list of very limited predefined government types which give you access to a varying amount of ranks. You can't modify rank permissions or create your own ranks and this really does make you feel like Funcom is the Guild Master of your guild and you are just administrating the show in their absence. There is no stand alone roster. It's all combined into one horrific example of a social UI that lists your guild members and your friends in exactly the same list, differentiating them using color. It feels like someone has taken the initiative and tried to streamline the whole affair but failed miserably. They failed so badly in fact that the poor workmanship here stands out like a sore thumb. I'm told that a new UI is on its way and I sincerely hope this is the case as the current one just won't do at all.
Another let down is size. Age of Conan is small. When you compare it to games like Lord of the Rings Online, Worldof Warcraft, Eve and so on, you will probably be a little surprised at how small it actually is. On top of that, Funcom have decided to instance so much so that every 10 minutes, you will subjected to a loading screen. This wouldn't be a problem if loading times were fast but in a lot of cases, they aren't. You'll end up sitting there for minutes waiting for something as simple as an inn to load up. For an MMO with such a small offering in terms of landmass, you're left to wonder why so much is instanced. Perhaps that will change with time. You never know. Personally, I prefer an open landmass with limited instancing and I hope that Funcom explore this route in the future.
All in all, Age of Conan so far is a very good game. There are a few hiccups and a few problems here and there but on the grand scale of things, it is probably one of the smoothest on-launch experiences I have had with an MMO to date. To top that, it feels like a Conan game should feel. If Mr. Howard were alive now, I'm pretty sure he would be mightily impressed with what Funcom have done with his franchise. As a Conan fan myself, I am very impressed indeed. As for all the people out there saying that it isn't a World of Warcraft killer, you are right. I really don't think Age of Conan will lead to the demise of World of Warcraft at any point in the near or distant future. What I do think is that Funcom haven't designed a game geared towards this task. I don't think they ever intended Age of Conan to be a World of Warcraft killer.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a brilliant entry into the fantasy MMO world and is so far the best MMO I have played since vanilla World of Warcraft. Thumbs up to Funcom.
