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The launch of Age of Conan was probably the most eagerly expected MMO launch this year, and all things considered, it went very well. Actually, 'very well' is a bit of an understatement when you consider that it sold more copies at launch than World of Warcraft did - that's a pretty big achievement.
We're a bit late with this review - we had a few problems, and didn't want to base the review on an incomplete experience. It's hard enough to balance an MMO review as it is - the goal is to get the review out there in a timely manner, but also have enough experience of the game to be able to give someone a decent idea of what to expect after they've been playing a while.
Age of Conan is an MMO based in Robert E. Howard's Conan universe, and they've done a good job of that, with familiar places, characters, and lore – there are even quotes from various stories on the splash screens, so you can appreciate the writing in between hacking people to pieces.
Starting The Game
Character creation is pretty nice - if you're desperate to get started, you can just click gender and class, choose a name, and go, but if you want something more detailed you can customise your appearance pretty well, with detailed options for each part of the body.
The game starts with a cutscene showing your character on a sinking slave ship. You get washed ashore, and find yourself with little memory of who you are. Your old master also survived, and you have to race to find him, and kill him, so that you can start a new life.
You will spend the first 20 levels of the game in a newbie area called Tortage - the quests here are very well done, with lots of voice-overs in the cutscenes, and some pretty interesting characters – the bitter, jaded, once rich traders now suffering poverty because of the blockade enforced by the tyrant who runs the city. The callous, nasty guards who enjoy their power a bit too much and the whores doing what they must to get by are just a few examples. The dialogue is well written, and if you are playing on a PVE server, it's well worth taking the time to read, or listen, to it all. We'll get to PVP servers later.
Your first 20 levels are taken up with a mix of night-time 'Destiny' quests, which are a single player experience, and a little levelling up in between in the daytime, multiplayer version of Tortage.
The Destiny quests are different for each archetype - as an example, healers will find themselves defending fleeing villagers, while rogues will find themselves sneaking in to places to kill people. There is some overlap, but there's enough difference that you could create one of each archetype without getting bored of the Destiny quests.
There are 12 classes in the game, three for each archetype. When we started playing, some of the classes struggled a bit through the destiny quests (Necromancers, for example), and some found them very easy - the Herald of Xotli and Tempest of Set being two examples. The classes are being balanced, and this is getting better. All classes improve a lot at higher levels too.
As you level up you get points that you can spend on feats (think World of Warcraft talents), and other points that you can spend on skills, such as climbing, hiding, perception, and casting concentration. There are a decent number of talent choices, and so far it looks like it would be pretty hard to totally mess up a character - I've filled my character slots trying out different build choices, and while some level faster than others, they're all viable from what I can see.
You can respec your feats for a small fee, although the fee increases each time you do it, and respec your skills very easily - if you only have a couple of points in a skill then it's free to remove those points. If you have, say, 150 points in a skill, it will cost you 1 silver to remove those points, with the cost increasing the more points you have in the skill.
The Combat System
By the time you finish Tortage you should have a decent sampling of skills for your class, including, if you are a melee player, some combos. The combo system is one of the unique things about Age of Conan. As a new player you have three attack directions, and you can perform combos that require you to select a move, then hit a direction (or several directions) afterwards. If you complete the combo successfully, then you will do a large amount of damage, and get any other effects that the move offers - for example a bleed effect, or armour reduction.
If you kill someone with a combo, it often gives a 'fatality' – some of the fatalities have very nice animations, and the blood spattering on the screen is pretty cool.
Later in the game the number of attack directions increases to five - be aware of that before you spend ages installing and setting up a custom UI - some of them don't support the two extra directions yet.
Another part of the combat system is active block. Your character has three shields, which by default are set up as one in front of you, and one on each side. If you're backed into a corner, and can't be hit on one side, you can change the shields around to give yourself more protection on one of the other sides. You could also change the shields around if you know an opponent always hits you in one particular area. It takes a while to get used to, but it is worth doing.
Finally, you can dodge and move to get benefits - if you double tap backwards, or sideways, that gives you a defensive buff, which can make all the difference in a tough fight. Double-tapping towards an enemy gives your attacks a chance to stun.
The animations for these moves feel like they take forever, so I find myself resisting using them, because I keep thinking I'm missing out on attack time. That's probably just me though!
I spent a lot of time playing the different healer archetypes, since it's what I enjoy in other games. The healers all get quite similar heals - a small heal over time, a bigger heal over time, and an AE big heal on a long re-use timer. Healing mostly consists of keeping the heal over times up, and using knockbacks and stuns to give people time to get the benefit of those heal over times, along with using the big heal as a panic button if there's a sudden spike of damage. It's nice to see a change from the single target healthbar balancing and 'whack-a-mole' of other games, and in most cases it works quite well, although it can be frustrating if you're playing in a smaller group.
Everyone can hide in the shadows, and hiding is a good way to sneak past things you can't be bothered to fight - or want to avoid fighting because they'll kill you. At the bottom of the mini-map there's a little gem, which is dark while you're in shadow, and light if you're likely to get seen because you're standing in a well lit area. Rogues are better at detecting people who are hidden, and are the only archetype that can move while hidden without it costing them action.
Stealth isn't the only tool you have for getting around. You can also climb - up ladders, on to rooftops, up vines - there are lots of spots where you can use your climbing skill. The climbing spots are usually for quests, but it's nice sometimes to just head up there to see what you can find. There are some quests at the moment that require high climbing skill, so it's worth keeping a few points spare ready to put in climbing.
Life After Tortage
Once you've finished the end battle and leave Tortage, you'll be sent to a new city. Which one you go to depends on your starting race, but it's not hard to meet up with friends of other races. You will need to go back to your home city to continue the Destiny quest at level 30, but travel is fairly easy - there are networks of caravans and horses to transport you to different parts of the world.
I do wish you could just walk between the cities. It looks like you should be able to, from looking at the world map, and I find it a little annoying that the zones are so small and you have to use transport to move between each one, then wait for it to load.
After Tortage, dialogue sections don't always include voices, but the dialogue is still well written, and the quests are interesting. There are a lot of quests in each area, but you may find that once you hit the mid 30s you end up doing quests that are green con or lower to you - this means no experience for the monsters, but the quest experience itself is still pretty good. Alternatively, you can go to dungeons, or just grind on monsters to level up. While we were working on this review, Funcom actually gave some of the 40+ areas a bit of an update to alleviate the problem I'm describing - I gather this update is the first of many, so it shouldn't be long before there's a steady flow of content for every level.
You have a choice of doing each instance in normal mode, or heroic mode. The heroic versions are hard. Very hard. I wouldn't recommend doing them unless you have a very good group - but if you are in a good group, they're a nice challenge.
Server Types
Age of Conan has a few server types - normal servers are ones where PVP is restricted to a couple of zones. PVP servers have PVP allowed everywhere except the capitol cities, and Culture PVP servers are similar to PVP servers, except players cannot attack people of the same race.
For a couple of weeks after release, PVP servers were full of people thinking 'Cool, I can attack ANYONE! Ohh... there's someone.... Kill!' - this has calmed down now, and for the most part, people are concentrating on levelling.
Tortage City is a safe zone on the PVP servers, but the instances around it are not. From my experience, most of the instances are relatively 'gank free', except for White Sands, which seems to attract the more bloodthirsty people - perhaps because there are a wider range of levels going there - it's one of the first places you get sent, but you end up going back quite a lot as you level up. Some professions mature more quickly than others, so at the lower levels you may find yourself dying a lot, or you may find yourself able to dispatch your opponent with ease.
There is no penalty for death, so getting killed by a player is merely an inconvenience. If you have a friend you can quest with, this makes you less of a target, and if you find that you are getting killed over and over, the best thing to do is just swap to a different version of the instance you are questing in. If you are just running to deliver something, a combination of stealth and a heroic instance is a good way to do it, as these are usually quieter.
Some people have taken to killing people while they are handing in quests. When talking to an NPC, you're in a mini cut-scene - vulnerable to attack, but unable to respond. People aren't supposed to exploit this, and you can complain if they do it repeatedly, but there's not much that can be done about a one off. For this reason, if you're handing in or picking up a quest, hammering '1' repeatedly to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible is the best thing to do on a PVP server. So, if you want to enjoy the PVE game, read quests, and role-play responses (choosing diplomacy of killing, or vice versa, when you have an option), a PVP server isn't the best place to do it.
Funcom are promising updates to the PVP server system to make PVP have more of a point, and discourage high level players from killing every low-level player they encounter. Note the term is discourage, not prevent. PVP servers are meant to be tough, and scary - and they allow players to make a choice as to how they deal with the people they encounter. If you are the kind of person who finds themselves wishing they could kill that annoying person who just ran past you and engaged the boss you need for a quest, you may thrive on a PVP server - as long as you can cope with being killed yourself.
There are some PVE and role-play things on the horizon too - including a combo based dancing system. That's something I'd hoped Star Wars Galaxies would introduce, but I can see it working in Age of Conan too, and can't wait to show off my moves in the Guild Keep when it's introduced.
Player Cities and Crafting
The player cities and crafting system in Age of Conan is pretty in depth. You get your first introduction to crafting at level 20, when you can head to one of the player city areas, such as Poitan, and pick up the gathering professions. You can't get very far with them at first - you can only do the first couple of quests for basic resources, then you need to level up to move to the higher tiers.
You don't get to start crafting until level 40, but since levelling is pretty fast in Age of Conan, don't feel discouraged - it won't be long before you get started.
Building a player city is a huge undertaking. Your architect needs to complete quests to unlock each building type for the different tiers, and you have to build not only the buildings, but a wall around your city - it takes thousands of each resource, and a lot of gold (around 200) to build a full city. The guild that I'm in is medium-sized, and each player is pitching in resources and gold, but we still haven't quite finished the building. It's easy for a big guild, and a nice project for medium guilds, but it does leave smaller guilds somewhat out of the loop, as high tier buildings are required for crafters to be able to make certain things.
Resource gathering is fun, but a slow process - you have to explore resource zones looking for nodes, and when you gather from a resource it is depleted by 10% - when a resource is depleted, you have to wait for it to regenerate. There are certain rare resources that you have a chance to get from each node, but the chance is very small, so gathering the rare resources takes a long time. As you gather, you have a chance of getting attacked and interrupted - so you could be gathering silver and have a jealous prospector come along and attack you. The things that attack you are always around your level, so it will be a fair fight.
As well as fixed resources, there are animals classed as 'prey' which can be killed for leather. You can get leather from normal animals too, but there's something fun about chasing the cows around before you kill them.
As well as the PVE cities, which are unlimited in number – when one instance fills up, another one is made available for other guilds to claim, there are PVP cities. The PVP cities are finite in number, and competition for them is stiff. The idea with the PVP cities is that you can set a window during which time the city is attackable, and the bigger the window, the harder it is for the city to be taken. This is to stop people from being able to take a city while the entire enemy guild is in bed, but also to encourage people to not just set the smallest window of vulnerability.
Our guild isn't up to PVP cities yet - they're waiting to get a Tier 3 city set up, and for everyone to finish levelling up first. The level 80s in the guild are having fun with general PVP, though.
General Impressions
The DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan isn't out yet - but it is expected within the next couple of months. The DirectX 9 version looks gorgeous, however, so I can't wait for the DirectX 10 one to come out.
The game runs well on both XP and Vista, although it is quite a memory hog – you can run it on 2GB ram under Vista, but I'd recommend more. There's a massive difference between the performance on my system (Dual Core AMD 64, 2GB RAM, and 2 GeForce 7800s), and the machine my colleague, Blaze, uses (Quad Core Intel Q6600, 4GB RAM, 2 Geforce 8600s).
We did both go through a period where the game struggled with TDR errors (that annoying black screen and Display Driver has Stopped Responding error) – I fixed it on my machine using the registry changes listed here.
Blaze left his alone and the error went away for him. I assume this means Funcom have made some changes. Some of our guildmates still get the error, but they have older graphics cards, so it could be a problem with their hardware.
Lag has been an issue for some people. This is partly down to the fact that the game is hugely popular, so the servers are very busy. I think it's also partly down to hardware - the game is very demanding, and many people are playing it on old machines. If you're thinking of buying the game, check that your PC meets the requirements first.
The game looks gorgeous, and runs well on a decent machine. The combo system takes a while to get used to, but is a fun addition to the MMO genre. PVP is pretty twitchy - if you stand still, you will die. It's nice to see a game where moving around, and brains, can trump equipment and level. I have fond memories of heading to White Sands at level 10 on my Bear Shaman, Blaze was playing his Herald of Xotli. We got jumped by a level 17 who seemed oblivious to the Herald. I managed to live just long enough to maneuver them into a position where the Herald could smack them in the back and pretty much obliterate them. I died, but it was nice to see that two smaller people have a chance to take down one big one.
I love some of the little touches in the game, such as thin, wild dogs munching on the corpses of dead animals in the back streets of some of the cities. Sick people lying in doorways, the severed heads of enemy factions standing on pikes outside of certain cities. Little things like that add to the immersion, and make the game seem that little bit more polished.
I also like the extra chat features - like the way the game announces in guild chat when you level up . I'm lazy, and I can't be bothered to type 'ding', so it's nice to have the game do it for me.
The game still has some bugs - many of them are very annoying, but, it's a new game. It may have been released before it was totally ready, but unless you're a hardcore player, you should find that Funcom patch most issues before you encounter them. It's perfectly possible to reach max level in 10 days if you're a all-day, every day player. If so, you have the pride of saying 'I played a Necro back when they were hard', or 'You think XYZ is overpowered now? I remember when Tempests of Set were twice as powerful as that!'. I enjoy being there at the start of an MMO, and watching it evolve, and I can see Age of Conan as a game with a lot of potential.
If you're a casual player - a few hours a night around a real job, then you'll really enjoy the format of Tortage, and if you take your time doing all the quests in each area after Tortage, you should find plenty to keep you entertained as you level up - it's not the fastest way to do it, but it is fun.
The player city system is nicely executed, if expensive to get started with, it's brought my guild together - we're a bunch of ex-Star Wars Galaxies players, and I think it's fun to have a group project to work on once again. The PVP is a nice challenge, and the world is well made and quite immersive. There are even a few people in the guild who normally say 'I don't like that swords and sorcery junk, sci-fi only for me'. To pull in people like that, the game has to have something going for it.
I can see Age of Conan being a massively popular game a few months from now. Some people believe it will rival World of Warcraft – I'm not sure if, from a PVE point of view, that will ever happen, but I could easily see this being the PVP game of the year. If you're sick of button mashing, timer focused PVP, and want a game where skill and brains plays a part, then look no further than Age of Conan.
I hate numbers scales for reviews of such vast games, but if pushed, I'd give Age of Conan an 8/10 - it's got a lot of potential, and the bits that are polished are very, very polished. It could easily grow up to be a 9 in a few months. |
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