Age of Conan Poll... staying... going... trying... what !?!

[Tizer]

I plan to try it but i highly doubt i'll be able to quad box in it without a /follow built into the game. Besides, sometimes its just nicer to play a single character so i think i'll try AoC while my shaman accounts are "on pause" see what i think, and if i like it, swap, if i dont, i'll reactivate wow and carry on. I might even play both once S4 hits anyway.

[geoffdavison]

game is fun... easy to get into and out of in regards to time.. i was on limited time last night.. jumped on played for 30 minutes finished up some quests.. and bam.. off to hang with the wife before aggro built up

[glo]

The final phase of the beta was extremely buggy and from what I hear quite a few of those bugs made it into the release version.

It's not going to be fun to box in my opinion and it has a "skill" based combo system that is easily made into a single button press with a programmable keyboard. As far as boxing goes it would take my upgrading all but 2 of my machines to even try it out, if you are one of the type that plays 4-5 copies of wow on one machine you can forget about it, not going to happen.

This is going to be a hard sell for most new customers, I for one couldn't see offering a trial to a friend or co-worker unless I knew 100% they would be into the gore and graphic content. I just don't see this going over with anyone except immature boys who are eventually going to get back to the excitement of occasionally hearing a girls voice on vent ;)

[Kel]

My boyfriend is buying a copy so I'll be trying it out on his version.

If it's good then I may purchase a copy of my own, but it would need to be really good for me to stop playing WoW because of it (good enough to get most of my guild over there).

I'm somewhat put off by the seemingly sexist nature of the game (though the info I get is mainly from male players who may have scewed priorities), but I'm hoping that the game play doesn't just revolve around tits and wenches.

[PyrostasisTDK]

the game doesnt revolve around tits and wenches.

Its the lore... Conans times were rather shitty for women. There were slaves, murders, thieves, etc. You dont walk into town and see 500 naked women riding poles, you do see women scantily clad... and looking better than in most mmo's, but its not a porno by any means, and the game is quite fun.

[Kedash00]

I got it and have been hardcoring it, it's a beautiful game and the blood and such is cool and it does have some nipples in it...
The game is very heavily instanced, like if you travel anywhere outside the main cities (like org, UC) you go into a instance...
The one bad thing is i'm a necro and any melee class it seems can pummel me and i get ganked every 10 minutes and it pisses me off to no end! but besides the ganking it's really fun, alot more in depth than wow in some ways, leveling is no where near as easy and i dunno about end game yet.

Player cities are just starting to be built barely, and siege battles haven't happened yet, the crafting is hard as hell but you can pick up everything but you just have to walk around and find stuff, they dont show up on your map or anything like in wow. The story is really really good, you get your own personal questline that you go offline to play so you dont have to worry about getting ganked, that part was nice.

Anyways i'll keep you guys posted, it's still a little buggy but not very bad at all, i haven't personally had any problems but people in my guild have said they have crashed.

As far as hardware wise, you will need at least a dual core processor 2.0 or above, 8800 or up video card, and 2 gigs of ram to play it smoothly.

[elo]

Yeah, I cancelled my 5 WoW accounts and am currently having more fun single boxing in AoC than I had in 4 months of 5-boxing WoW. I will say though, the game is not finished, not even from an MMO perspective. I've hit several bugged quests/bosses, I can't believe that the loot tables are complete as is, and the quests have trickled away on me here in the late 30's. I think they basically needed a cash influx to keep going. If they finish the game out the way they started I think it will be stellar.

'Loyal to WoW'... that's just hysterical that anyone is 'loyal' to a game.

Anyhow, is it a WoW killer or all that buzz? WhoTF cares? Why does any game have to be 'killed' in the name of any other? For me AoC is fun, exciting, and new. When it stops entertaining me I'll go look for something else, maybe that will be WoW again, maybe another MMO.

BTW - I'm on Stormrage as Elothyn playing a Tempest of Set. Come gank me some time! BTW - ToS is possibly THE coolest healing class of all time! Considerable AoE damage + HoTs = the sh*t! I'm so loving the gameplay!

[Vyndree]

Suvega picked up two copies on Friday, and we spent the weekend leveling his assassin and my bear shaman.

These are my initial thoughts...

The Good
- The game does hybrid classes justice (i.e. heals+dps) -- the bear shaman class is one of the most enjoyable hybrids I've played. I really enjoy hybrid classes but hate having only one "workable" role in the endgame. Bear shamans are forced to melee in order to effectively heal, which I think is a great class mechanic.
- Quests are interesting -- while there are some collection quests they pretty much drop for everyone in the party. The quest icons on the maps is also a great touch.
- Combat system is somewhat difficult to pick up, but I like it that way. Too many games are "too easy" -- I love the combo system. However, I have to admit that not allowing you to 'queue up' your next swing properly and being quite finicky about the timing of your combo swings can be annoying - particularly in PvP
- Gathering professions can be learned by all - 1 crafting profession per character. This ensures an adequate supply of mats -- or just go collect them yourself.

The Bad
- UI definitely needs work. Sucks majorly, non-intuitive. I couldn't even FIND my spells until I was level 15 -- all I could see were my combos and I spent much time wiping due to not having many heals.
- Many quests/zones are bugged. Suvega has fallen through the world on more than 1 occasion. Several quests are unable to complete because of bugs. Suvega's character has bugged out and not been able to attack things for some time.
- Trade/auctionhouse is disabled due to bugs.
- Grouping UI sucks, as does the broken /follow and other various tidbits like "summon to instance" being bugged. You can't see what instance you're in. Party healthbars are teeny tiny in the corner of your screen. Party minimap dots are gray colored and hard to identify.
- Resources: the forums are either queued FOREVER or just bugged. They won't let me in. The few wiki's and non-official forums I found have little to no information. With the number of bugs, it would be nice to know of a "known issues" list so you can avoid the buggy areas. Skills (feats) and ability tooltips are vague, so it's hard to make correct decisions on what you should be using. The /petition report feature has a queue that spans for miles and is very hard to figure out how to use.
- Speaking of resources... The [OOC] chat is filled with what's worse than 14 year old barrens chatters -- they are now 18 year old foul mouthed college fratboys who relish in the fact that they can get away with telling you to suck their **** when you're asking for help. When they're not swearing, they're bragging about their graphics cards and having heated WoW vs AoC discussions.
- The level 35-40 zones are nonexistant. We talked to a couple level 80's and were told just to grind it out. We looked up a progression map online and found NO zones tailored for 35-40. While levels 1-35 are FULL of quests and quests and quests, you are literally dumped in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do at level 35.



As for "tits and wenches" -- there are boobs. And lots of them. IMO, the feel I get from the shirtless boob appearances is that it was thrown in as a "added bonus" to the horny male gamer crowd, and as an afterthought they tried to make sure that it was ALMOST tastefully done to appease the significant others and/or female gamers. I get a laugh out of it at the very least -- one of my quests for my female character was to sleep with a drunk (wasn't shown -- just a fade to black) and the dialogue between them afterwards was humorous. The character models can be tweaked to have a bigger/smaller bust size but even at the smallest size your character will end up looking like breast implant barbie.

Your character loses nothing nor gains anything stat-wise from being female -- for the lore, male NPCs will flirt with females (sometimes female NPCs too) and female NPCs will flirt with males. There's some random flashing of breasts in some quests, but in places where it would logically be due to lore (i.e. naked girls flee'ing from a harem, etc). You'll wonder why some of the NPCs don't topple over due to the weight of the two ginormous basketballs adhered to their chest, but if you have a sense of humor you'll realize the only reason why they're put there is to reel in the lonely male gamer crowd -- as a girl, get a good laugh at how obvious it is and, if it works, how pathetic the poor lonely male gamers are. I'm not poking fun at any of the guys here -- as long as you didn't buy the game specifically for digi-boobs. ;)



All in all, my impression is that is a VERY buggy game with big issues and could've used a much longer "polishing" phase. As a software tester myself, I'm abhorred at the vast number of in-game issues. If these issues were resolved or are resolved in a timely manner, then my opinion will improve. As of now, it's a intriguing combat system thrown into a rushed-to-production game that hasn't been tested properly. I may or may not stick with it (along with WoW) depending on how well they execute their fixes.

I realize WoW wasn't perfect at first release either, but it's the AMOUNT of bugs in the FIRST NEWBIE ZONE ALONE that astonished me, and the bugs haven't tapered off since leaving that zone either. There's literally bugs EVERYWHERE.


Suvega and I are on Tyranny server -- named Suvega and Vyndree respectively.

[Lyonheart]

I am playing on the Zug server. I play a few hours a week with some friends. The game looks GREAT if your pc can handle it. It is buggy and that a shame! But it just might be a great game as it works out the bugs and adds more to the game. I'm not leaving WoW. I am more excited about WotLK tha any new MMO or expansion ever. I like the additions they are doing to PvP/Mounts. And the fact that every raid zone will have a 10 man option is good. I'm hoping at least a few of those will have some boos encounters that are MB friendly. But thats another topic. AoC=7 out of 10 for me.

[bodefeld]

I've started playing AoC the day it was released in europe. My experience is somewhat different from Vyndree's. My guardian is now level 34 and so far I have not encountered any serious bugs. It was a pleasant gameplay altogether. True, the interface and GUI need improvement, but today's patch has already made it better. Surely, once interface addons are out, customization will be possible too. I never got stuck, the game never crashed, and out of the 50ish quests I did so far only one did not work (due to a non-existant questmob).

As for the game mechanics, AoC is different. When I bring to my mind that I have been conditioned to WoW over a period of almost 3 years, it becomes understandable that the first 10 levels or so demand an unusual amount of thinking. Besides my guardian (the def tank in a way), I have played together with a mitrapriest and from what he told me, he does not have to melee to play. No combos for essential healing etc. either. It should be mentioned that no class is restricted to healing or dealing or tanking alone, really. I.e. the priest needs to deal damage in order to heal better. And they deal quite well. Healing appears to be non-targeted, sort of like a cone of cold or area of effect type of spell. At least from what I have learned so far. I have played solo most of the time and most of that was in defstance and using a tactical buff called "enduring defense maneuver". It is still quick and a lot of fun.

With today's patch I noticed a couple of little buttons that appear when in a group. One of those reads "follow" and one reads "assist" when mouse-hovering over them. I will look into that in a while. I have no information whether macros are or will be possible.

I'm excited and optimistic about how the game will develop.

Regards,
George