Age of Conan is a mess, as the twice-weekly massive patch notes attest. But it’s a great and gloriously fun mess. Just take this example that I wrote describing one of the classes for someone who asked:
You BURN THINGS. You BREATHE FIRE AND BURN THINGS while swinging a REALLY BIG SWORD and things DIE in FIRE. All your combos do WTF massive AOE damage. You can also turn into a demon for even more burnination, assuming things are not already burned to death. Eventually you get Fire Lance through a talent which can do thousands of points of burst damage. HoXs are good if you like the combo system, like spells, and like making things burn. In fire.
Sure, there’s hundreds of bugs, including some really head scratching did they REALLY do that ones, and class balance is kind of a sick joke and content gives out eventually… but fire! You SET THINGS ON FIRE! Age of Conan clearly has staked out a niche: people who like burning things. My suspicion is that this may be a fairly large niche.
And yet the “established wisdom” is that in the post-WoW world, you have to have a polished launch, you just can’t do the usual MMO screwups that we’re all sadly accustomed to because players just won’t put up with that anymore. Well, clearly this isn’t the case. Age of Conan isn’t polished – in fact it’s almost aggressively unpolished. One especially cringeworthy patch note, for example, announced that a key Mage buff, which had a five minute duration, would have a one hour COOLDOWN when instead they meant it would have a one hour DURATION. The difference is somewhat important. It’s now a tradition to find all the stuff in Funcom’s patch notes that they kind of forgot to add.
But… it’s fun. A critical review (which is almost entirely accurate in all the things it takes Funcom to task for over AoC) has been shouted down on F13 because… the game’s fun. Did I mention you can burn things? Also, there is nudity (NWS). But you’ll note what I fixated on, which probably says a lot more about me than you wanted to know. Also, you can burn things. In FIRE.
Age of Conan has also done some pretty impressive market jiu jitsu, whether intentional or not. The insanely high system specs limit their market to the PC gaming hardcore (at least until the Xbox 360 version is released). The mature environment (which, in addition to immolations, decapitations and nipples includes a very morally dark and corrupt world and a hardcore Shadowbane-esque full PvP implementation on PvP servers) limit their market to adults or people who can pretend to be adults in game stores. But both of these things very much set the game apart from World of Warcraft. It’s a large niche, and a safe one.
Of course, much remains to be seen – will the bugs and the inevitable class balancing nerfs chase off customers? Is there enough stickiness in the largely unimplemented elder game to entice customers to keep playing? But I think we have reinforced one lesson from World of Warcraft that perhaps hasn’t been reinforced enough: fun trumps everything. Everything. You can have a server bugfest and a client that barely runs on year-old machines – but all is forgiven, as long as you can set things on fire.
Oh, and you can set things on fire.
#1 by Bonedead on June 12th, 2008
I haven’t even considered getting this game yet, that means I win right?
DAOC FO LYFE
#2 by saylah on June 12th, 2008
I post with similar feelings. It’s not perfect, innovative, NextGen, a WOW-killer or the 2nd coming of Christ. It’s a game and IT IS FUN! The combat animations are over the top cool without the busyness of EQ2 where I hardly knew what the heck was going on because the display becomes so covered with animations.
I’m a Bear Shaman and my buff animations are HOT. Killing multiple mobs simultaneously with quick, furious moves is awesome. My knockback and slam moves actually…wait for it, KNOCK PEOPLE BACK. This game has the combat sugar rush down cold and I find the zones (mob zones) interesting and varied – not always outside. I like that they’ve decided to employ public dungeons vs. only reserving those for group instance content. Sure, I’m squishy and need to some balancing fixes. But I dont just kill things, I maul the heck out of stuff and it’s FUN.
#3 by Chacki on June 12th, 2008
Burning stuff , chopping stuff up with a big sword it is fun … for about a week.
Then we got past the polished bit , and into the ‘under construction’ bits.
Suffice it to say i know of no one who is planning to subscribe after the free month.
All this promise of patches just doesnt cut it anymore from any game. Call us jaded but – been there done that.
With other games on the horizon , we feel we can happily move on without loosing to much sleep.
#4 by Sweetmeat on June 12th, 2008
The female 26% damage debuff would seem to explain why my characters seem to end fights with such low health. I just figured they didn’t want people to solo. Instead they just don’t want you to play girls. If they fix that I might actually look at picking up my lvl 12 tank again. And I agree even playing female characters with the attendant debuff, I have been enjoying it a lot. Of course I enjoyed Vangaurd up to lvl 12ish as well. I’ll have to get someone past 12 and see if it stays fun.
#5 by Ed on June 12th, 2008
Time will tell how this plays out. I suspect a lot of the sales are coming from folks who never would have played an MMO before WoW and are looking to check out the next big game. I also suspect that a lot of these folks won’t be subscribers very long, if at all.
#6 by Freakazoid on June 12th, 2008
It sounds like you’re having fun because you’re playing a class that is overpowered.
#7 by Ian Parker on June 12th, 2008
Oh, the irony. The first major MMOG release that I choose to leave on the store shelf turns out to be, quite possibly, one of the most fun to date. What are the odds that this would happen after over 10 years of testing and playing every one of these damn games.
In any case, you are correct and you set the point ON FIRE. Fun is fun no matter what the context. Sometimes, when players are having lots of fun as intended, they’ll even make some fun out of the bugs. I got a kick (no pun intended) out of the video of the player using his mount to kick other players off the mountain. I do realize that the ability was intended, but my point is that players will take fun in-game mechanisms and often make them even better.
With that said, I’m off to spec out my new gaming rig so I can start playing sometime before the end of the year.
#8 by Dave Rickey on June 12th, 2008
So, I hear you can set things on FIRE? That sounds like fun.
–Dave
#9 by nerd gone bad on June 12th, 2008
I would pretty much agree with everything that yougamers says. But there is also some fun for sure. As to how long it will last and how many will bail? I reckon it will be alot in the short term, but depending on how Funcom continues to patch/develop/improve and fix it up, the game might get alot better in a year or so.
I think what’s happening possibly with alot of big MMO’s now is they change game plans and features too much during development and at some point…they have to put an actual product out and so we have games like Vanguard and Conan that seem very un-polished and unfinished and even unclear on design direction overall (i mean…stats on weapons doing nothing?).
I guess at this point, it seems like AoC was a much better launch than AO for Funcom, so, perhaps they are getting better
#10 by NBarnes on June 12th, 2008
You’d think that no new MMO had launched really big, not much on the back of its own merits, but on the back of dissastisfaction with the previous market leader, and then tapered off as people went back to the market leader after getting a taste of the alternative.
*coughACDAoCSWGSBAOcough*
#11 by NBarnes on June 12th, 2008
Darnit, didn’t mean to submit.
None of this is meant to imply that AoC is only being successful because of disgruntled WoW players, or that it won’t be a success on its own terms. I think it’s likely to attract and retain a fine core audience. But the amount of hype the game is getting is getting silly.
#12 by Dave Rickey on June 12th, 2008
We’ve been expecting this. Sooner or later, WoW was going to lose it’s luster, through some combination of dated technology, familiarity, and mudflation. At any given time, around 15-20% of the population of a mature game is ready to bolt for the new shiney. AOC’s accomplishment was being a fun game with passable production values that came out in the right window.
And that’s not a small accomplishment, nor is it a small payoff. If it can sustain 1M subs (history would indicate 600-800K is a more reasonable target given this initial launch) we’re talking about $200M+ in revenue per year. That’s not quite WoW’s “more GDP than a small African nation”, but it’s a shitload of money hats any way you slice it.
–Dave
#13 by Count Nerfedalot on June 12th, 2008
you can set things on fire!
Now that IS pretty cool. Reminds me of being a flying blaster in CoH. “I get to blast things right and left, AND I CAN FLY!!!!”
Of course, eventually I hit the levelling wall and got tired of slogging through the same old content over and over and over again. Then they nerfed me because they were getting ready to add PvP. Then they did it again. Eventually (slow learner sometimes) it was “buh bye CoH!” Because being overpowered is fun, and relatively not too much of a problem in a game with no economy or PvP, but add either or both and it is ABSOLUTELY NOT TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
So, enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t get used to it.
Yes, I’m jealous. If I ever get a machine that can handle AoC and actually play it, I’m sure my gaming experience will be much blander than yours, as all the fun powerful stuff will have been nerfed into bland mediocrity by then, because that’s the only way you can possibly have it when PvP is involved.
#14 by Comstar on June 12th, 2008
This sounds like a review of D&D 4th edition. Fighters can *do* things now instead of walk up to 1 enemy and attack each round till it dies.
#15 by Apache on June 12th, 2008
I think AoC is a great game. I just would suggest that they be a little more forthcoming when documenting patch changes.
#16 by Jaera on June 12th, 2008
I enjoy the game, but it has several really annoying ‘features’ I hope they fix. My character is a girl, so I swing 25% slower than a male character. That’s a pretty big bug, to me. Travel is a BITCH. It takes way too long to get anywhere, and you can’t go afk while you do it like in WoW or DAoC. You actually have to run your character all over the place. It gets old fast.
I play on a laptop, which is a serious no-no. It’s a high-end laptop with a good video card, and I still get around 10 fps. I’ve tweaked it like crazy, and it’s still pretty bad. You have to have a really good computer to play it well, and especially if you want to participate in PvP.
But you’re right. It’s a lot of fun. The combat system alone is incredible. The quests actually make me want to go rescue people because there is a big sense of danger with all of them. It’s very dark, and I like that.
#17 by neofit on June 13th, 2008
Honeymoon still not over?
It is customary for games nowadays to add a few things to add something to the world besides combat, like, you know, some things that we can do to get our minds off the violence. Some games have collection quests, valuable trophies you can place inside your home, achievements like in LOTRO that make you see stuff, collect stuff, kill a little then get a title and maybe small bonus somewhere.
Heck, even TR (in which people keep saying that there is nothing to do) has this achievements/titles option in the form of “Targets of Opportunity”. EQ1 and others have faction work. Vanguard had all of three pve character advancements paths (adventuring, crafting, diplomacy) – many things were not working, but the idea was there. What ideas do we have in AoC? Grind a few quests for 3-4 weeks until you are 80, then go pvp. But I like me some fluff in my MMORPGs.
Crafting at the moment is a joke. Equivalent to dropped stuff, to be obsoleted 3 levels (i.e. a couple of days) later. Too bad, in many games crafting is fun and useful.
We have community projects, like building a guild city. None of the buildings do anything yet, but that’s is another issue. To build this community project you need a lot of materials, but there is no community harvesting. Come on, VG had group harvesting from the start, even before there was anything to build for the community, but in AoC guildmates are supposed to steal nodes from each other
for their community project?
Combat is still the best I’ve seen. Yeah, burning things up, decapitating and stuff was fun for all of two weeks. But there wasn’t enough extra-combat PvE content in AoC for me to keep me interested, and I’ve got WW2OL for proper class-less, level-less and item-less PvP, and
If we compare games that only do combat with no fluff, I’ve had more fun in this spring’s version of TR than I’ve had in AoC.
#18 by D-0ne on June 13th, 2008
Monthly fees are so last year. Nope, not gonna pay ‘em any more. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.
You say it’s actually fun?
#19 by Jeremy on June 13th, 2008
Your description of the HoX is spot-on, and this is exactly why he’s my class of choice. Every class I’ve played in AoC has been quite capable and a lot of fun, but the Herald has a particular style – if you like swords, and you like demons, and you like FIRE, the HoX is the ticket.
AoC’s combat is, as our President would say, “pretty awesome.” Aiming matters, positioning matters, player collisions matter, timing matters. Even in PvE, these things matter. Fatalities are glorious, and I’ve seen at least 3 from the HoX so far: one in which the enemy is immolated and screams in pain as his charred body falls to the ground and continues to smolder, one in which the enemy is decapitated, and one in which the HoX drives his blade into the enemy’s chest and laughs maniacally as he withdraws it in a fountain of blood.
Oh, and there’s also a special HoX combo/fatality called “I eat your heart.” It’s exactly as insanely cool as it sounds.
Of course, almost every major game element other than combat is a pale, buggy clone of WoW’s, but I’ve decided that I’m OK with that right now. AoC has the kind of combat and art direction I now realize I’ve always wanted to see in an MMO, and it’s taught me a valuable lesson: MMO combat doesn’t have to be stupid and lame.
I should be clear – I do think AoC’s limitations and glitches will push me away after a month or two, but there’s just no going back to WoW-style combat now. In this small but vital area, Funcom has actually raised the bar – combat in future games needs to be at least as good as AoC’s, or I’m not buying.
#20 by Cedia on June 13th, 2008
Lum, please cover Funcom’s latest genius move. Check out today’s comic at http://www.thebrasse.com for a pretty good synopsis. I was liking the game in spite of the bugs, but this latest patch made me run for the hills in five minutes.
#21 by Stupid on June 13th, 2008
For one brief shining moment, I actually believed Scott was targeting a blog post directly at me. And then I read it.
This is possibly the first time in the 20+ years that i suddenly was sorry about my chosen nom de plume.
#22 by Matt on June 13th, 2008
“I was liking the game in spite of the bugs, but this latest patch made me run for the hills in five minutes.”
I was most concerned about AoC taking a City of Heroes approach after launch: that is, nerf everything into the ground. “Fixing” all of your game’s wonkiness to a more WoW-like balance assumes that people will still want to play your game in that new, tighter formulation.
WoW has obscene amounts of content and quests. Cryptic apparently didn’t realize that their lack of content was being made up for by players making up their own challenges: unconventional builds, taking on higher level mobs, and so on. Once they killed off all of the unauthorized fun and made their game more predictable, they also took out the fun for a lot of folks.
Hopefully AoC doesn’t fall into the same trap. It may be that the officially endorsed path to 80 is not one that will attract as many players as they currently have.
#23 by Paks on June 13th, 2008
The game has tons of bugs, No doubt. But. Why do we play MMOs, or games at all? To have FUN! AoC IS fun! Not for all mind you but it is for many and that, IMO should be the bottomline for playing MMOs.
Oh and yeah sure looking at a screen and seeing something you just fought writhing around surrounded by flames is kinda neat. :p
#24 by Bor on June 13th, 2008
I don’t get the fascination with the combat system. Having to hit the ability, then a sequence of keypresses , which don’t always register properly, is innovative how? I mean, did they get a patent on the redundant extra keypresses technology? I assume there’d be prior art.
The animations are cool, so is the “everything is AoE aspect of it”. The action aspect of it, well if you’ve played CoH/CoV it’s not really that new. Ultimately, the novelty wears off faster than you’d think, leaving you feeling a bit empty. And the combat is really the only thing the game has going for it.
Btw. for some nutty reason turning image quality to high and turning off shadows runs better on most machines than the low setting. It runs acceptably for me that way using a 7800gt (with an e8400 and 4gb), so the hardware requirements aren’t -that – inaccessible.
#25 by Viz on June 14th, 2008
It’s fun, but it’s fun in almost the same way early-era WoW was fun and you will forgive it for the exact same faults that early-era WoW suffered from. By all accounts the bugs and imbalances are worse than they were for WoW, and the content is much thinner, which together mean that you’ll start noticing and stop tolerating the bad stuff much, much sooner than you did for WoW.
#26 by Anonyous on June 15th, 2008
MMORPG-lite/on rails–reminds me of GW with a sloppier, less balanced combat system–where I press the same four-button sequence over and over and over again. No exploration, no meaningful group dynamics, no meaningful PvP despite this having been a (the?) key component in the game’s marketing, basic components of the game (like stats) not doing anything, bugs out the ass, boring loot, PvE combat even more mindless than usual for the genre. Fatalities more annoying than entertaining when you’ve seen them dozens of times. Practically nonexistent “mature” content, much of which was cut from the game post-release, and none of which holds a candle to The Witcher. Toxic, bitter community seemingly made up of people who somehow couldn’t hack it in WoW, and who therefore feel compelled to constant reminds the OOC channel how awful it is.
The first 20 levels are quite polished–hence a lot of the positive reviews from the kneejerk/payola gaming press. And yeah, it’s pretty. But not pretty enough to keep me playing when the content ran out in the 60s, or to create another character to level up in all the same zones, since there’s nowhere else to go. Never expected the F13 folk and other “cynical veterans” of the genre to become Kool-Aid drinkers, but maybe that’s just because a few years have passed since the last major MMORPG release, long enough for me to forget that they’re all drooling fanboys at heart.
My advice, which I’m following myself: come back if/when the promised PvP content is patched in. Every other aspect of the game is done better elsewhere.
#27 by dmosbon on June 16th, 2008
‘Fun’ is what I could do with putting back into my PC…all it does recently is will me to type more words…arggh!
…will the ‘fun’ last ’til WARtime?
#28 by Trippin Ninja on June 17th, 2008
AoC was ok I guess, I admit it had me pretty pumped at the beginning and then it just felt lackluster within a few weeks. Graphics and gore are really the only things I like about the game atm. Main reasons being:
- combos are awesome in pve when your enemy stands there, not so much in pvp when everyone runs around
- 9 zones to level in, this game is tiny compared to most other mmos and theres barely any free roam ability, reminds me of an adventure style single player game
- you get a very limited amount of abilities, after about level 30 its just upgrades to your current ones and you might pick a few more in feats, I know some people dont like having a lot of situational abilities but personally I love that
- ITS NOT FINISHED, a lot of people are letting them slide on the amount of content and bugs but Im not. I have been around for a few mmo launches and realize they are never perfect but this game is missing more than any of those mmos did.
I guess I can thank AoC for making me go out and buy 2 more gigs of RAM, 2 9600gt’s to run in sli and a razer keyboard. Most would be mad they spent over $400 on a game they aren’t even going to play but Im gonna take the glass is half full approach and pick up some games I couldn’t try before like Crysis.
#29 by Openedge1 on June 17th, 2008
**hrrmmmm
*Clears throat
*In his best Beavis and Butthead voice
FIRE, FIRE…hehehe…FIRE…hehe
*Clears throat again…
“Thank you”
Takes a bow
(PS: AoC is pure unadulterated fun…bugs aside…and I have the gear to run it…which makes it all the better…)
#30 by DarkMan on June 18th, 2008
I don’t think this is a game meant for all of the idiots who were so captivated by WoW (most of the said idiots being obese teens who had no life other than getting their Night Elf to level 70). This is a game meant for mature adults who don’t want cartoons to run around with, emphasis on the mature; not all of the idiots are under 18.
AoC was meant for old people, who like blood, boobs, and… well, fire. Lots and lots of fire. And blood. ANd more fire. And a little electricity. But mostly fire. And boobs. And as for the guy who said he saw a lack of mature content… boobs? Blood? Decapitations?
Fire?
#31 by isobelle on June 19th, 2008
conan becomes unimpressive very fast.
oh boy fire. if that’s the selling point, then a free book of matches from the local pub has the game tied.
it’s honestly just not finished. the fun is there, in short bursts, but then you hit “the big empty” and everything comes GRINDING (see what i did there?) to a halt.
i’ll check back on it in 6 months, but i’m not paying to beta test this. my account was cancelled 3 days before my first “billing cycle” would have began.
side note: the M = Mature argument is ridiculous. this game has WoW beat hands down in the immature 12 year old douchebags dept.
#32 by AoC Sycho on June 20th, 2008
I have just read everyones post about AoC…
I just have to say after playing WoW for 2 yrs and LoTR’s for 4 months,AoC (countless bugs aside) is a great game and yes it’s a shitload fun to play.I to rebuilt my computer to run AoC and was disapointed with the eye candy,combat system is insane and the fatallities are also insane.
Reguardless i wont be playing WoW anymore,ive done all there is to do in WoW and it bores me to death WoW so AoC is fresh breath in MMO’s with it’s bugs and glitches,which i hope they fix up very soon.
#33 by Anonymous on June 20th, 2008
Just as an aside, though it may no longer be an issue, Funcom will close your account as soon as you cancel, even if you still have more time remaining before you’re scheduled to pay.