MMORPG
Character
Monuments

Introduction
Well the time is finally here. On May 20 Age of Conan, one of the most highly anticipated MMOs to be released in years will finally be ready for the masses. Most likely you have heard or even read the AoC FAQs and boards during its development. However, if you want to know more about AoC (and its prime competition, Warhammer Online) Take a look at the game summary I wrote HERE.

I was lucky enough to have been brought in to the General Beta several months prior to this game's release. Funny enough I was awarded the beta account by being one of the winners of the 'AoC Beta Prayer' contest with my article on the odds of getting a beta invite (Read it HERE). I guess someone at Funcom has a sense of humor and enjoys irony. But this gave me an opportunity to get the inside of what AoC really has to offer the MMO player.

This article is about What to expect from AoC..a bit more than what you get from FAQs or boards, but an in depth look at my experience playing this game. I am not for or against AoC: Like the AoC vs WAR rivalry you see on the boards. I honestly believe that both games will have substantial playerbases and future success.

I recently finished a walkthrough of the first 20 levels ( HERE ) and levels 20-40 ( HERE )

If you want to learn how to survive in PvP. See my AoC PvP Guide.

So, with that introduction, lets begin.

Game setting
Most reviews start with character creation. However, that is NOT the first feature you encounter upon starting this game. You will find that the games greatest strength is the story and its ability to draw you in. Once you hit that Start button after creating your account....the real world fades and you are thrown into the Game world. Age of Conan is based on Conan set 10.000 BC in the world of Hyboria. And you feel it even before you've made your character. As soon as you choose your server..you get a splash screen with Conan himself scowling at you. His eyes piercing clearly "Your in MY WORLD, Boy! ...step out of turn...and I will slice you to pieces!"

Character creation
The first scene is your flight onto a slave ship...being pursued and attacked. Slaves man the oars (those which are still alive) trying to escape, High seas and storms surging, rain pelting and thunder rolling across the rotting planks. Here you choose which slave you will start as. The game allows the standard Male or Female choices, 3 'races' (but all are human...no elves, no Lizardmen) which are Stygian (Dark skinned desert dwellers), Aquilonian (Proud, advanced, cultured), and Cimmerian (The good ol barbarian types from the north). If you want to start quickly, just pick your name and your Classes. There are 4 standard types and 3 subtypes in each, I wont go into them specifically because I already did that in this article HERE.

You start off with a random face/body. you can just enter your name and choose a class and then go right into the game. However, you can also choose to customize your character. The character customization is very advanced. You can easily create a very unique avatar. The first tier of customization allows for variations of Body size, Voice (you gotta scream as you chop off peoples heads now!), Tattoos ( body and face separately), skin color, eye color, hair style, facial hair style. Now are eye color options necessary? probably not, but its yours to change. I would like a little more skin and hair color options, but all its a nice way to make the character really yours. However....

There is a Second Tier of character customization! Hit the customize button again and you can specifically change body aspects like Chest size (big and small...you can guess why), bosom (and again) hips, butt, arms and legs sizes. Then you can move to the face and change eye , nose, ear, chin angles/length/depths etc. With all these to play with...Your character looks will be yours alone ....all hidden under the clothing/armor and helmets.

With that, enter the world
...and your Ship is Destroyed!!! Screams of everyone aboard cry out...fade to black
...and your in the game....

Game Immersion
Let me tell you now, this games greatest strength is in the Game immersion. Funcom, in my mind, did this right. They want to put you in the pages of a Conan Graphic Novel. In this they have succeeded. I would say that only LOTRO can compete in storyline to AoC. To draw you deeper into the world, when you click on a quest NPC, there is no scribbles of text that you read, but your Point of view camera is set as a Face shot. many have voiced dialogue allowing you to hear the fear, sadness, hate or frustration that goes with each quest story. It is a refreshing way to go through what many players now dread...the grind.

The world of Conan was written to be dark and gritty. This game captures that and augments it 10 times. You wont find any Heroes here...No Cavalry to the rescue...the only happy ending is the one where you split your enemies head open. Examples of this include
1. Decapitated corpses are displayed on pikes, or dangling from ropes on the city's walls. Blood flows freely.
2. Fatalities. The killing blow of each fight has a small chance to be 'Fatal'. with that you enter an animation where you could decapitate your opponent, or run him through, or several other specific animations appropriate for your weapon/class. Blood spurts freely..and splatters on your screen. After a while I didn't think the screen splatter was all that cool and became somewhat annoying and obtrusive especially if I was fighting more than one foe.
3. Sound. The music is ok and appropriate, I didn't think that much of it. The ambient sounds are very loud at times. drunks whining, belches, cries and screams. In the tavern especially I thought it became a bit childish..only because every 3 seconds was another belch.

PVE Gameplay
AoC has great gameplay. First I applaud the fact Funcom went the extra mile and placed collision detection for all players and Mobs. About time, no running through this way and that. There is no /face or /Stick that I could find. Combat is directional, you have to be facing your opponent. There is autoface in PVE,if your fighting more than 1 mob, as soon as you kill one you will automatically turn to the next. In PvP however you will be in trouble if your opponent is more nimble at controlling his characters movements than you.

There are many quests and each will give significant XP for the time you invest. Not all quests are "Kill X Mobs" Some are gathering plants, others are delivering messages. Still there are plenty of Kill X mobs, but most are very doable. Understand that for the most part you can fight 2 mobs at once and win 95% of the time. Most mobs will be found in groups of 2 or 3. so killing 20 Mobs goes very quick. The miniMap has build in quest locator function. It will show you where quest NPCs are around you, it will have arrows pointing you in the direction of where your quest targets can be found and a big X marks the spot when you arrive. This makes questing very easy and a very efficient alternative to straight grinding.

For the grinder in all of us, there are many packs of mobs to grind on. The respawn rate is quick but not so quick that your worried about immediate respawns after a kill. One concern I have is that Im not sure there will be enough Mobs. I can see that, at least in the early 30-35 levels that there may be a lot of competition for spawns. Once you tag a mob , it is yours, and cannot be stolen from you if someone else attacks and kills it. A small LOCK icon is displayed by the name of the mob to show others that they cannot get XP from this mob. However, if you pull a group, you better damage everyone in that group..because unless you do, they are fair game to anyone who comes along to take. So watch out when this game is released...it may be frustrating trying to level because there just isnt enough mobs and too many players....a huge number of servers on release may address this in part. That remains to be seen.

A very unique aspect to the game is "your story' quest lines. basically it is a series of solo play quests that only you participate in. No one else around. The first example of this is the tortage Night quest. Again, this game is about immersion, and after you complete this quest line you will see why.

Another concern that has been brought up a lot in discussion forums is the fact that the game isnt a seemless open world which many players are used to in games like WoW, DAOC and the like. AoC has many mini zones which are instanced together. I will agree that some zones feel more like linker regions...They dont serve much purpose other than being a hallway to various instances. The outskirts of tortage gives you this feeling, as well as connarch where you arrive at lev 20. The instances themselves themselves are also a bit linear. There really is one or two paths which are well marked out and which you and anyone with you must follow. However, Ive seen this in many games when they are first released. Now many players have argued that this takes away from the MMO. I disagree, at no point did I ever get the feel that the game was a series of instances. They did flow well. There is a lot of potential in each one and I expect the zones we seen today will be vastly different a year from now.

I would also like to give a shout out to the best scene Ive had in MMORPGs to date....After thwarting the a Sorceress' enchantment atop a volcano...the volcano erupts and just when you thought you had won...its time to run for your life. Escaping the volcano's fury was a heart pounding dash down the mountainside racing to the exit....exploding boulders falling all around you... the ground was shaking (7.8 on the Riechter scale)...you enemies screaming , many engulfed in flames only to die in a burning husk.....priceless!

PvP Server gameplay
Life on the PvP server will be hard. I took it upon myself to try out the pvP servers. Let me tell you it is just not for everyone. That is not news by any means. Ganking is a part of all PvP servers in MMOs. However I write this because there has been a lot of discussion on the Roleplay-PvP servers where 'roleplayers can control/police'. For the first 30 levels, I would consider this game a gankers paradise. note: Everyone has stealth ....let me repeat that...EVERYONE HAS STEALTH. Rouges, Warriors, Archers and casters alike. many of the MMO veterans well know the power of choosing your fight, setting up the conditions and having first strike.

The PvP server issue becomes even more pronounced when you take into account the zone travel is narrow. A lot of the travel to and fro can only go through certain areas due to geographical barriers (Mountains/gorges). Also, many zones are small, as such, your movement (and everyone elses) can easily be predicted or seen by anyone. The counter to this is simple...move in stealth. Honestly, that isnt so bad either..movement in stealth is not nearly as slow as in other games. However, moving in stealth for non rogue classes drains a lot of stamina. Thankfully when you get out of tortage and into the wild lands do the zone areas really open up.

A further issue is that stealth is broken on attacking (makes sense) but also with interaction like obtaining or turning in a quest, buying and selling from a merchant, falling, and zoning. This leads to several occurrences of zone camping, quest camping, and NPC camping. Expect this a lot at the early levels.

Now, for everyone whos reading this and saying "OMG, that sucks..how can Funcom have done this" I will deflty reply. "Because, this is what a lot of PvPers WANT!". Some people like it hard.... they want a game that has a 'WTF' setting. PvP servers are NOT for everyone, but just because it is not for you doesn't mean there are not a substantial number of players who enjoy the chaos. But I do want to let those players considering PvP servers (Especially PvP-RP) as an option thinking it will have an underlying civility, some unspoken rule of honor....Heed my words: THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

The great Flaws of AoC
No game is perfect, Aoc is no exception. There are minor issues in this game and some I have outlined above. But as a whole those are either fixable with time and growth of the game, or are something to be expected. However, I will confess that the biggest issue of this game..the one where I feel Funcom has miscalculated is simply the

System Requirements.
The last patches during the final days of AoC Beta significantly ...I would even go so far as to say impressively improved the gameplay for lower end computers. However, the system requirements of this game still remain higher than every other in this genre of PC games . Even with the last patches the game runs very clunky unless you can beat the standard. I list the system requirements in my earlier article HERE. Basically it boils down to you need a fast processor, a good graphics card and a Lot of RAM. If you are missing ANY of these, you will find yourself banging your head against the screen in outrage. The lack of one of these components cannot be made up by improvement in another. You must meet them all! failing to meet any of these and The loading of the different zones can easily become a bathroom break. FPS can fall to a crawl in EVERY city. The cities are something to behold ...but it will seem like a postcard than a 3d MMO if your system is lacking.

I've heard several people say that you need to have 4 gigs in order to run AoC smoothly, since Vista 64 uses 1.5 to 2 gigs. I dont claim to know this as a fact, but I will say..if you have less than 2 gigs RAM you are in big trouble....no matter your operating system. I will tell you that you should have at least a graphics card that is 256mbs. If you sport a 128, I would also seriously consider this when deciding about this game. Processor, well there are a lot of them out there, the specs talk about 3GHz Pentium...again, I would say you better beat that.

In fact, if anything I would say that the current listed minimum specs to run this game are set TOO LOW and may cause a false sense of security. I am not saying its intentional. But to think that you buy this game with a P4, 1 gig of ram and a 128 mb graphics card is just silly. Yes, perhaps the game will 'run'...but I wager the game will be unplayable! In the end AoC pushes the system requirements for this game genre, but it's nothing you cant overcome, in time and $$ investment in your system.

And there lies the problem. The fact is the current MMO climate is dominated by WoW. And WoW is FULL of players who are just burning out left and right. Many are desperate for a new game. Coming from computer that runs WoW just fine to a game that will lock up, crash , or simply put them at a severe disadvantage against everyone and everything will be a HUGE disappointment. Especially if you just plunked down $49.99 for the AoC standard or even more for the Collectors Edition not to mention the Game Cards and Strategy guides. This is the games greatest flaw, because the backlash from the growing pains of this game can have long lasting effects. In MMOs the first impressions are the most important (exemplified by the release of Vanguard). The players with systems who cannot take it...may fall back to WoW.

Inconsistant Gameplay
It is now no secret, AoC was released before it was fully ready. A fact that was not lost on the Beta testers (myself as one). In the end what happened is they front loaded this game. The first 20 levels (as I describe above) are what a LOT of players want in this game. However, after you leave Tortage ...much of what was great, is lost...or at least diluted. The NPCs (except for the destiny quest series) no longer have voices. You are now left to read the text and lose a bit of that great immersion. Unfortunatly, there is no backdrop to the quest text. Thus on several occasions you find the text is too difficult to read as it becomes washed out against bright backgrounds. This, when combined with the spoon feeding of quest locations on the minimap and the strong desire to level up as fast as possible leads to a problem...you play the minimap, and not the game. Entire zones may flash by while you simply follow a gray arrow leading to a yellow X ...guys, I did that back in the days of Atari 2600 and Intelvision. The game eventually loses much of its immersion and the grinding becomes more apparent.

Too many leaks in the Dam
It is now no secret, AoC was released before it was fully ready (Did I say this before?...no, not me.) However, the TIMING of the release was perfect! Its just that the game wasnt ready. The two are not as mutually exclusive as you may think. No doubt that the MMO world needed an escape from WoW..AoC provides it. However, by using their Big Picture view ..they have missed a lot of substantial holes.
1. Significant class balance issues should have been realized before release especially when over half your servers are PvP.
2. There was no hiding the salivation of the gold farming industy. Yet little has been done to stem their influence or the annoyance of constant spam via tells and in game mail.
3. Significant bugs in quest NPC causing entire lines to be incomplete or worse...Quests to Nowhere!
4. Itemization was bland at best and dismal for some (HoX..I feel your pain!). Much of the armor was the same look just with different stats. making it very difficult to stand out in a crowd.
5. Crafting just didint work initially. However this has significantly improved over the last several patches. It has reached the level of "OK,I can craft ....but not anything of value" .

Recent Improvements made to AoC....Take Heart!
However, all is not lost. Most of these issues can be rectified as the devs put in updates in content and bug fixes. When you step back, wipe away all the burnt out MMO haters who constantly spam the forums and judge this MMO with an unbiased eye. AoC is a GOOD game with the potential to be a GREAT MMO. Rival WoW ..it very well may, but not now. After 6 months of updates and content...expect it! So the question eventually comes back to you...are you really willing to play WoW for the 5000th hour /played, or will you take part as being one of the first in the next BIG MMO even with all its faults?

Here are some of the Improvements recently made to AoC on the 7-17-08 patch


Helping make your computer run AoC
For those players who have a solid computer, but dont have a lot of money (after putting down $50-$70) to spare. I would say that the best bang for your buck to run AoC better is to upgrade your graphics card. I know that RAM is likely the cheapest, but if you put up an investment in the graphics card, it will take you a lot farther than 2 more gb of RAM.

For the Settings, The biggest memory drain Ive found is the Shader. If your having FPS issues, make sure your shader is completly off. Water effects should be taken completly off as well. Set your view distance to 500. On those systems who are really struggling, turn off ALL particle effects by sliding the particle distance down to 0. Have more tips? Leave them below so everyone can benifit.

Hope this helps

Summary
AoC is a great PVE game.
The Immersion and storyline is one of the best currently released
The gameplay, customization and handling is enjoyable
Its about time a MMO put in a combat system with both directional combat and object collision..thankyou Funcom
The PvP servers will be bloody and tough, more so at the beginning...you have been warned
The System requirements will be the make or break factor for players of this game. Do not be reassured about meeting the minimum specs...you must significantly beat them
The Game was released before it was complete, yet at its core the game has a VERY strong foundation. The next 6 months of patches will make this game the one to beat.

Good Luck and I hope this helps. Want to contact me? Email me at Admin@TheBurialGrounds.Com

Level Quickly! Class specific PvP Tactics! The AoC Class and Strategy guide!	Make your Age of Conan life easier by using the AoC Gold Guide

Other Age of Conan Related Articles I wrote

Age of Conan Vs Warhammmer Online
Age of Conan Lev 1-20 Tortage Walkthrough
Age of Conan Lev 20-40 Walkthrough "Life as a Hyborian Tween"
Age of Conan Leveling guide: 40-60 Walkthrough - "Mommy, are we there yet?...No!"
Age of Conan Crafting guide: "Harvesting for the decapitated"
Age of Conan PvP Guide: "Mama Said Knock You Out!"

Players who generally agree with this article said	Some players would add these changes
good review
nice~	What's your view on the game's use of instancing? Good? Bad?
Great review! The patch though made it faster and faster performance.	World feels small, too many pre defined paths to follow, too many loading screens in every zone and every door...if this game was more like a seamless world type of game it would be the greatest mmo...what can we blame for it? the graphics are too heavy to have a seamless world with big zones you can explore...
Belgariad Very good review !!! You could had in your summary something about the combat system... since it's new !!	I will not be getting this game due only to the system specs. Too high for my computer and dont want to spend the money right now on a new one just for a game.
Smintar I somewhat agree with you but I do believe that you missed some pts.	If you don't have the rig to play it, don't complain about it in your review - it's not relevant.
Katinka Best MMORPG evar	I think that AoC misses an addictive feature, so far, I didn't feel like logging in and just did cause I had nothing better to do. It's my biggest concern about the game. Specs are not that crazy, If you're a computer gamer, you should be able to run this game. You can't call yourself "gamer" having a pentium IV anymore.
Balas The lore, the gameplay, the characters makes this game much,much better than World of Warcraft. The pvp system is good and funny, not ez mode like in WoW. The pve is good too.	Smintar Combat system isnt all that great, you can still control your character with your mouse by clicking on the tool bar or chose to use you KB. Climbing is a + it only happens in quest so far. Character creation is very much like EQ2 and the quest system very much like KOTOR and Blauders gate.Graphics is verry much like EQ2 as-well. I didnt feel like this game is even close to being rdy for Launch. and I had aloot if trouble running the game with my system. AMD 6400am2 dual core, 8 gigs of ram 8800gt 512 XP 64 I would suggest that good players gamer stay away the did to this one as they have done to Anarchy On-Line.
Mett The pvp battles seemed to last 10 minutes or so for me. I have a 2.4 dual core, 4 gb ram, vista 32 and an 8800 gts 320mb and I ran the game fine. the graphics are incredible even on medium.	Stealth for non rogue classes drains stamina quickly so its not a good alternative. 2ghz dual core and 3gigs of ram can run the game fine on xp, 4 gigs is better under vista... mainly cause its a memory whore. However, hit up newegg.com and you can build a pc that can run AoC rather easily and for less than 800 bucks.
Very nice review. I overall agree. -mike470	how long is the average pvp battle would have liked to know that.
Quentin A 2 GB RAM requirement is no big deal these days, but many motherboards cannot take more than 2 GB.	Is there any crafting in this game?
Just wondering, how much is there 'to do', theres a LOT to do in WoW.. a heck of a lot. It just seems like there is very little to do in this game. Dispite this i think it still looks great, and it was a very good review. !	Exactly as posted till last days of beta. Game runs flawlessly on older systems now with fixes to shader problems, memory leaks, etc. Simply night and day to those of us who played general/closed beta for months. PvP is fast paced and brutal and FUN! Min reqs for the game were updated by Funcom and are accurate. Definitely a good time and their dx10 upgrades/improvements are coming since they heeded everyones requests to fix dx9 issues first for everyone not on Vista!
Everything is well documented except you may wish to add an update on the last 3-4 weeks of closed beta and the enormous upgrades that went into the game.	Eldiroth As for system requirements, this game is very video card dependent. That, and recent patches have *drastically* improved performance for everyone. My story: To start with, I had a 3.6 Ghz P4 (single core!), 2 Gb of ram, and a Radeon x1900 XT. I could barely run in low settings - like 10-20 FPS. Obviously my major limiting factor appeared to be my slow processor, by today's standards. Well this game is very video card dependent. I didn't think I'd get any advantage from upgrading video cards. Someone else in beta said they had a similar processor and the exact same card as me. They bought a new card, and saw a HUGE difference. So I went for it, and bought a Geforce 8800 GTS SSC (640 Mb) for about $200. That, combined with MAJOR performance improving game patches in the last week, and now I run on High settings with almost everything maxed. I get 20-30 FPS in cities, and 40-60 FPS in unpopulated areas. The game is beautiful. All with an old 3.6 Ghz single core Pentium 4. The game is also sucking up less of my ram after those patches. So while you do need a formidable system to play this game, I would say by release if you at least meet their minimum or recommended system requirements, you should do ok. And if you have an old (but fast) single core processor like me, but a card that is 3-4 generations old - buy a new card and you'll see a great improvement.
Rolius - Aquilonia Euro server You NEED to run this game at medium/high or better just high. I have a 2.6 intel duel core, XP, 2 gig of ram and a 9600 GT and its doing high fine with a tiny amount of occasional lag in cities. My point is that I lowered it to medium to see if it looked ok and the difference was vast, it really does need to be on high settings to get the full monty. However I've leveled up to L10 now and it is 'so far' the best start to a mmorpg I've ever played, and I'm a wow vet with xp of lotro and eve too. Its the best because I've yet to have any grind at all and the story is very well done indeed. Combat is twitchy and fun. My only gripe is I don't like jungle enviroments that much (in any game) and thats what your stuck with until L20... I always went out of my way to avoid STV in wow...	I could meet the specs, but got burned once by vanguard when not enough other could. Not happening again.
You say "system requirements of this game still remain higher than every other in this genre of PC games" I think Vanguard Saga of Heroes beats it, simply because even with the recommended 2gigs RAM you still lag in that game haha. Also, system requirements are only a fatal flaw for people who are behind on the upgrading. Most stock computers at Best Buy have 2gigs now anyways for Christ's sake. :-P	Tebbycakes I dont see how high system req's is a game flaw. It may be a marketing flaw, but it shouldn't reduce gameplay for people who can run it. Also for people who dont want to upgrade "Just for one game", if your computer cant run this then it cant run most recent games, so upgrading will bring you a whole bunch of new game to play.
DrowNoble Pretty much spot on review. I will add however that any gamer that doesn't know to exceed the min specs.... shouldn't be gaming in the first place. The "flaw" you pointed out wasn't really a flaw at all, EQ2 did the same thing in 2004 and it's still around.	Since a growing number of notebooks and laptops are now being used for gaming, it would be helpful if some reviewers talked about the hardware requirement for them. Since most notebooks now have dual core processors and 2gb of RAM, the only sticking point seems to be the video card, which of course in a notebook is NOT upgradeable. I'd like to see some reviewers focus on how well games like this work with notebooks.
Mo I have a notebook with 3.4 ghz processor, 2 gigs of ram, and a 256mb video card, and the game will not even display the main menu. That's a waste of 50 bucks.	High system req is not a flaw.
Dude, you pretty much listed it all. I also expect lots of polish in the next year making it a sterling MMO. Most people forget WoW's launch and all the patches and server crashes that went on for a good year, and now look at it. I am sure given a little time AoC will eastablish itself well in the market.	Great combat system. Sistem specs is not a flaw either you have it or you dont. And i heard someone compare AoC's graphics to EQ2...LOL, Have you even played the game?
Well rounded review that has a balanced view and considers the pro's and con's of the game. Good job.	Stupid comment about WoW and AoC and disappointment. If player is not mature enough to realize that AoC is new MMORPG and not perfect in release, then it is better to stay in WoW with other kids.
Finally a fantasy game that does well without needing to have eccentric fantasy races such as elves etc. etc. - i was sick of the repetitive use of these characters.	You spelled 'finally' wrong on the first line, along with other errors. Might want to do a grammar check next time.
Nines I plan to try this game, this helped me alot!	Cynthane High system requirements is no big deal - any decent computer, even average, I might add, purchased recently will run this game without any trouble at all. I have a laptop with 2GB of RAM, a dual-core processor (pre-Santa Rosa) and a x1800 GPU, and at low to medium settings things run smoothly. Game experience this far (lvl 30) is entirely positive, and the ranger class is the single most intuitive addition to MMORPG's since.. well.. anything, really. Thumbs up :)
Many of the players reporting in the AoC forums the days past launch (20th-25th of may) state they don't see a lot of improvement on their FPS when they lower the graphical settings, including resolution. I have the same experience myself. The players reporting have systems from average to top of the bill. So it seems likely this is a game-side issue, one that can be adressed.	JDH [SPOILER INCLUDED!] The brilliant solo quest stuff seems to finish after Tortage, though, and the NPC voice acting, which is great, also seems absent once you've left that first big lobby, and I feel pretty cheated by that. I'm sure it'll get fixed later, though.
Too all those who say "high system requirements are not a flaw" i would agree if this was a single player game where the player base isn't really important... However AoC is supposed to be a MMORPG, where you want your player base to be as large as possible so if this game had at least some graphical scaling to allow older computers to play it, its launch player base may have been larger and more players = more money = more to go into fixing its other flaws and before anyone says it no having an expensive computer is not a filter which reduces immaturaty	Dan I'm sorry but I totally disagree with the writer saying that small zones aren't an issue. If anyone has played LoTRo they will notice that it too has instanced Zones as well, BUT they are freaking huge and have no predefined paths. You could go anywhere. Small instanced zones break immersion and generally suck. Also, when you look at the actual environment it really doesn't look all that impressive. For the system requirements this game takes the environment should look alot better IMO. It's like all the extra poly's went to the game character.
Yep the system req is a bad thing...sitting on a amd 3800+ dual , 7900gt 256mb, 3gig ram...and with low settings its ok.	High system requirements??? Its a blessing! If you ahve played WOW recently, you would have realised how overrun the game is with little kids running around shouting "For Sparta" and any other crap that is on TV recently. Though WOW might be a great game, it is ruined by the endless kids that play it. Spend 30 min in Org or any other capital city and the general talk is full of endless crap. Sorry but the kids have ruined WOW along with free epics for those kids, just by attending PVP you get epics. If high system requirements means more mature players, this game is winning already..
Great post, the one thing about AoC you need one hell of a system to run it well in medium settings. I have a decent machine and runing AoC in low settings can bring me down to 8fps. E8400, 2g Ram 9600gt x 2 os XP ( not oc but soon will be )	Not all classes can stealth... Only the rogue arc type. That's 1/4 of the classes.
JDH Nicely done review, all good comments. It's a good world with a brilliant look (if you can handle the hgih specs) and a vicious feel to it.	This game is sh#t
Information about any crafting systems, how to make money, tips on what weapon differences mean in PVP, how many patches they have released since launch, what kind of vehicles/mounts there are, etc.	I have not tried this game yet but I have played many other MMOs and I'm just reading reviews looking for something to replace WoW. WoW is a great game, but the community is so terrible and arena is such a bad measuring stick that it'd be nice to see a contrast in the way that AoC does PVP in relation to WoW.
AoC is a fine game, but like any other MMO that just released, it needs some tweaks, updates and bug fixes. My experience with the game overall has been good. While WoW was a great game, I'm ready for a change.	Switche I would fall very far from calling the system requirements a "fatal flaw" or even unreasonable, and I object to such sensationalism when using this for the title of your review as you clearly don't consider the game moot on this point. Not only does performance optimization improve over time in MMOs with patches (you saw how horrendous performance was in Beta), but it is paralleled by hardware market improvements and inevitable system upgrades. You have clearly failed to understand this, implying that it is not one of the "fixable" issues. It is. It will go away even if Funcom doesn't fix it, but they are bound to. I've also never known anyone who banks so much on accurate **ESTIMATED** system requirement for games. New, cutting edge games demand more powerful systems than a 2 or 3 year old rig can offer. Sorry, WoW turncoats, but that's just a fact. WoW is closing in on 4 years old. To cry flaw when a WoW player is crawling with the same system they've always used is like saying someone who played Doom 2 for 4 years should be accomodated for when releasing Doom 3. If you have a system thats major components are at most a year old (from their original release date, not the purchase date), you can play this game with no problems. I truly am sorry if anyone thought they had a good rig because it could play WoW; a game thats technical achievement was outdated a year before it released almost 4 years ago. This is a different game altogether and it demands a little more from a system to be enjoyed *right now*. You make a good point when musing about the MMO market, considering the satisfaction of the clueless WoW player looking for something new, but it certainly does not kill the game--as you suggest--to lose a potential player based solely on their refusal to accept that their system has reached its point of upgrade. All other points I think were very accurately portrayed in my experience.
BearClaw System specs can be a flaw if they are innacurate. I have the recommended specs, not the miminum, and still can't get a consistent framerate or even one above 30fps on low settings. Hell, it drops to single digits during solo night quests. If the game says it runs well on a certain spec but that information is incorrect, it is definitely a flaw.	Ole The biggest flaw is the fanboys who can't wait to tell everyone how their "rig" runs it so well (as has been demonstrated within many of the comments above.)------ too much like compensating for a certain body part which may be too small. This is why I haven't logged back in a week. Constant bombardment on the ooc by WOW flamers making little to no sense (they act like the kids they are railing against) and people touting to others how "my system doesn't have any problems.......but I have a (fill in the blank). Seems like a haven for people who wanna be somebody, but just have the view from mamma'a basement. As for this review.....very good....the man expressed his opinion---which last time I checked was what a review was for, If you disagree write your own. Otherwise a good game ( that I too could run---before i get some hate for previous comments), but needs some time to let the hardcore cave boys get burned out and moved on to the next big thing (maybe war this summer), before I would take up permanant residence....
BearClaw System specs can be a flaw if they are innacurate. I have the recommended specs, not the miminum, and still can't get a consistent framerate or even one above 30fps on low settings. Hell, it drops to single digits during solo night quests. If the game says it runs well on a certain spec but that information is incorrect, it is definitely a flaw.	Flaw my ass.... the game fucking rules!!
I don't understand how anybody who's played other MMOs can praise this game. I fail to see the appeal yet there seem to be droves of mindless Conan fans ready to retort any argument. The system requirements, thank god, are too high for me to waste my time in this game. I've played Ultima, EverQuest, EverQeust 2, Lineage, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online and many, many other MUDs/MMOs and this game not only lacks genre defining elements but clearly also lacks the required development team to support it. The graphics are not impressive when placed next to the requirements. I think the phrase is "over-the-top". Remember. Just because it requires a brand new 1000+ dollar computer doesn't mean it's the shi*.	Open Beta was a laggy affair , 4800+ x2 , 2 gig ram, SLI 8800GTS here too , well above average specs
Sanjuro I am an old-time fantasy fan of Robert E Howard and although my son used to play WoW, I kept reminding him that the Hyboria in the books is a much better imagined fantasy world that the somewhat dumbed-down (for ESRB reasons?) world of WoW. Elves, Orcs, Taurans? and WTH are those Draenei? There is no comparison. WoW is a fantasy world created by fan fiction writers, not a true genius like Howard...	Ryan Ok, first off, this game is friggin awesome. Been having a great time playing, and my system runs it pretty well. So system reqs are a flaw???? This is an MMO, it's not some game that people are going to play for 30 hrs and then move on to something else. A successful MMO will have it's target audience hooked for YEARS. Sure the system specs are high NOW but what about in 3 years? High system requirements help ensure that the game will have a little staying power.
Thank you for mentioning high system requirements as a flaw. If it prevents average users from playing the game comfortably, it will never overtake WoW, not even close. And as we all know WoW desperately needs legitimate competition.	RogerBarrington How exactly does a faster computer make you a more mature gamer? The same juvenile behaviour that is found in other MMOs are also present in AoC. At least now, they can overdose on bare breasts and fatalities.
This game runs smoothly on my system on medium (e6750 OC 3.4ghz, 8800GTS 512, 2 GB Ram) But there is only 1 oceanic server which is a shame >.<	Appalling that the released a game in this state/stage We're paying for a beta game that uses far more resources for graphics than it should, and doesn't even look at that good But that is a minor issue to most people The real issue is all the missing features that were advertized and the army of bugs I suggest this game re-released in December, or sometime next year
Ameekal Just wondering if there are graphics changes you can make in-game, which would apply to those WoWers out there (my brother is one and wants AoC but can't afford a new computer heh)... I haven't played this game before, but if the PvP system is anything like EQ1s or EQ2s (before all the shitty changes and nerfs that weren't needed, people just needed to get balls and learn how to defend themselves), this game will be the greatest MMO ever.	i wouldnt call the requiret system specs for a flaw, a few years back, most new games set new standarts for requirements. I recall a game being the first to require a 3d card, and people and reviewers doomed it dead before it was released. but players DID buy a 3d card, So dont call it a flaw, its simply a normal way to go
AnOldLady Unlike WoW graphics which are considered by most ot be rather dated. Age of Conan requires a fairly robust graphics card to play at reasonable settings. With my old ATI 1900xt I could max everything out in WoW without any issues. Along with most other games I played, BF2, Oblivion:TES, etc all at reasonable settings at 1280x1024. With AoC, I couldn't manage more than 15fps average which is not very good for fast paced action. I upgraded to a 9600GT, making my current setup an e4500, 2GB ddr2, and the 9600gt. A very modest setup, that minus the harddrive upgrades, cost me barely 400 dollars. Prices seem to be on the decline moreso in the graphics card arena, but for the small investment I now see 35-40fps, and huge spikes of 85+ in dungeons since the latest patch. My enjoyment of the game has gone up considerable, mostly in part to just upgrading my video card. Now that isn't what people like to hear most times, but stepping up your video card may be a great boon to your gaming experience.	Jimmy The system requirements for this game are not that stiff. Atleast 2GB of memory, a video card from two generations ago, and a semi-fast processor are atleast what you are going to need to smoothly play any next-gen game. No other game coming out (especially MMOs) will be any different. If your big into PC games, these system requirements should not be an issue.
Funcom are doing agreat job patching it allready. ok, patching means server downtime, but you cant have bugs fixed without it, and i'd rather the server to be down more at this time, than living with bugs and errors until they make a "massive bugfixing patch"	Kassanna (ymir - 24lvl Assassin) I like Conan and I still remain a fan of WOW but would diagree that the game has a great PVE element. I would say its good but not exceptional, the game in my opinion is heavily weighted towards PVP where as WOW is mainly PVE. Great elements from a PVE aspect are the solo quest lines, the city architecture and environment's. Unfortunately the immersion elemnt offered by solo quest lines and spoken conversation with the quest givers drops away at level 20 and you left with no real solo line til 30 and grunts and strange noises from quest givers from level 20 onwards. The main PVE adventuring areas post 20 are what you would expect but with limited PVE challenge. i.e. run to grinding point kill monsters then run straight back. A lot of work is in the 1-20 levels and the detail and experience are excellent the amount of detail drops away as you pass 20. The quest directions and grinding pointers in my opinion are a distraction from the game and degrade the PVE element, you don't need to follow the quest directions or instructions just check your map and X marks the spot. In my opinion AOC will draw PVP players away from WOW but will need to offer solid PVE experience through the group instance element, this is an area which i haven't seen in detail yet and remain open to, but limited experience in this area hasn't been hopefull.
Right a solution to your graphical performance issues out there it may not work for all but it defiantly worked for me. My gaming rig is: Pentium Q6600 2.4ghz core 2 quad. Nvidia Geforce 8500GT 256 dedicated (total 1Gb) 2Gb RAM Vista 32bit Home edition Not the best spec in world. This meets recommended. when i first played conan i was gettin fps rates of between 5-20. not always a constant 20fps, very jumpy, and dropped in fps dramatically to 5fps. especially in buildings inns etc. The solution: In game before logging in go into settings, video settings, basic tab settings. Click "High" graphics setting. Go into advanced tab turn your shadows off/disabled and put the shader model down to 2.0. and thats it. Apply and Log in and see what happens. i know it sounds very odd but it worked for me. i now get good graphical quality plus fps between 20-40 constant, no drops. Also putting AA at either "2x" or "4x" helps but maybe not for all. Low resolutions seems to help also. JUST TRY IT! You may get lucky. I know this is irrelevant to the topic but i felt i should spread the word. Its worth the try.	Impaler Ultima Online started it all back in 1994 or 1995. I cant remember. MMO's have come a long way since then (Graphically). Game play has suffered hence PVP catering to whiny kids. Ultima Online was brutal because you could kill anyone, and it was realistic because you could loot anyone. AOC has brought that back. However you still cant loot once you kill someone. But I like the fact that I can group with my buddies, and kill anyone or try. This is more realistic. I like seeing blood fly and being in the *heat* of combat. AOC has brought this to the forefront literally. I think this game is fun, realistic for the most part, keeps annoying 11 year olds at bay ect. Its brutal to see a head go flying off and blood spraying, awesome!! I like this game, WOW was well, not realistic, the characters look stupid, kids control the game because they whine about gear, and all that ect.. ect... Cheers to AOC for the sheer brutal combat system!
Estrogenheal Thank you for posting this article. I have been playing WoW for almost three years and was interested in this game, but no one had anything intelligent to say about it. Sadly, I will not be able to make the switch due to a flaky 3.2ghz, 2gram, and a messed up Radeon X600 graphics card. Everything in this article was extremely helpful in sparking my jealousy of those who can make the WoW switch. My only other concern though with that, is when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, how many players will switch back?	Crartahn (doomsayer) You cant judge a game on system requirements, stop running a crap build. And you dont even know what your talking about "i think you need 2gbs and a p4 over 3ghz... but i dont know durka durka durka" i cant believe this review even came up on google, and if you play past tortage you will see that instancing virtually dissapears and that the worlds are HUGE!!!! Greatest mmo ever, but you cant judge it on the fact that wow players will have comp problems, lame excuse.
Vasj Totally agree. Quit Wow 2 weeks ago. Now into AOC its great nice graphics but sadly full of "BUGS". No doubt its going to be 1 of the best mmo of all time with a big majority of adults :)) I hope I will get to lvl 80 asap & do some end game content raid ^^ cheers. Give AOC a try & pls dont compare it with WOW as WOW is full of kiddies & omg blizzard r giving epics out like Santa lol. 1st time im urge to play many many different classes in a mmo. Will create atleast 6-9 toons to try out all the combos. Ty Funcom for creating such a creative mmo that is really unique & im sure this game will have a big majority of adults due to need a greater rig to play on. (My complain for now is AOC after this new patch... keep on crashing & it said the reason is short of memory i have 2gigs of ram lol) AOC give new life to mmo world.	If you can't exceed the game's minimum specs, you probably don't play many games.
Zenga WOW adult's should try out AOC. Yea theres glitches here & there but who cares as early birds r nearly the same as beta testers. Its a game not to be missed. its HOT!!!	-Zach The game, in my opinion, is a failure. It seems they completely missed the mark on gameplay and replayability. There's nothing compelling me to logon. The combat system is clunky at best and the AI of the mobs is horrendous. It's like I'm back to playing Wolfenstein 3D and mobs just charge at me firing away with no real aim. Spellweaving is cool but wholly impractical. Healing has become even more of the bastard child it is with other games and has taken a further back seat, much akin to Rosa Parks, only we don't have the option to just sit at the front of the bus. The world is very barbaric but dreary. I admire the backend of things as a coder, knowing how much work they put into the graphics, but it's boring, droll, and generally makes me want to go take a nap. I find the general amount of players switching this game to think of themselves as righteous and mature which brings a rather pompous attitude. "OMG ADULTS PLAYING! YEAH!" That's great, most of the people saying that also suck at the game and are more into the lore then actually playing well. Which is fine, but seriously, don't suck and spec like a retarded sock monkey. All in all, the game suffers from an overall lack of direction and focus. There's no REAL reason to want to logon and play and nothing about the gameplay itself is compelling. I applaud funcom for trying to be unique and create it's own little snowflake, which they did, it's just one that's likely to put you to sleep.
EssBen thank you for looking into how low end systems run with it. My own mighty gaming rig is fine, but the other half wants to try it too so there is no way I'm buying till we can both play (or she'll just hog my system/account like she did with wow :) ).	Good game. Has potential. Engine is a joke. Might be playable in 6 months. Lots of bugs.
Rkhan I've been playing this game on the european servers (PvP) and concur with the article in that it is tough. My average lifespan (out of stealth) is approx. 10 minutes. Nice game otherwise... Re-installing WoW now :)	I am Sorry but this is a next generation MMO game, if it's only flaw is it requires a higher end system to play it, then so be it. Yes it requires a beast to run in full high with a goodish framerate, and dx10 does look better than dx9, confirmed with same build of pc, one running xp one running 64bit vista. It is hasnt been the smoothest of launches with countless bugs and issues but if FUNCOM put some damn hard work in over the next few weeks, they have a real diamond. The PVE is fun and compelling, the voice acting is a step in the right direction for mmos although some of the voices are so bad it's cringe worthy material. The combat isnt as ground breaking as originally advertised BUT it is still fairly fun as a melee class, casters need spellweaving introduced soon. For me, the games strongest feature is the graphics and environment......this game looks truly stunning and this is deffinately a big big step for the future of mmo games.....the bar has been risen deffinately!
Kjetil Can all you silly girls please stop complaining ? This is an adult game for adult computers ; all you WoW-lovers should have thrown away the Amiga many years ago ! I have a ok computer and not a toy-calculator , and don´t experience any lag with all the graphics turned on max (except anti-alising ; only 8 times...) The only issue in this game are the bugs(being fix with new patches every week) and the long running distances (press autorun button and relax...) I´m allready on my 3. class and still going strong :) PS : If you are old enough to play the game , you are old enough to get a job and the money to buy a new pc( computers are stupidly cheap in 2008 ! )	I find it ridicilous that people allways want to dis the WoW players, calling them kids etc. You have to realise that the game is meant for FUN?!?! YES, it might actually come as a shock to some of you but thats how it is, now later on in the game, you do find a lot of players to play with and ofc you start throwing all kinds of stuff around :P it makes the game abit less boring. But many of the stuff you have heard happening in WoW WILL be heard in AoC aswell, if not even some new stuff made up. So quit that "OMG IAM AN ADULT AND MY RIG IS BETTER THAN YOURS, THEREFORE I WIN IN LIFE!" shit. Now that the rant is over, id like to add(Note: i havent played the game myself yet), as much as everyone else has said allready, IF zoning hell is as bad as ive heard, AoC might have grim future ahead of it. Iam not saying zoning itself is a bad thing, more like the literally SMALL and cramped areas arent to my liking and the "pipe-running" as in going through designated paths aint either. Have to see in more reviews what people say it... anyway thats my 2 cents
18 years AoC for adult players : WoW for women players	The Shadow This is an adult game, for adult computers.
Crafter YES THERE IS CRAFTING IN AGE OF CONAN !	I Have bought this game and was disappointed. the textures (ground/clothes/stone) are so poor compared to the character models and details. Tortage offers greats story lines and voice acting but the instancing is very annoying, mainly as you get a Quest to go in a instanced area, you do it and return it ,then follow up sends you back to the instance. through the loading screens again. After quest after quest of running back and forth, I lost all immersion in the story's. After lvl 20 and entering the real world, all voice acting disappears. the detailed dialogue gets so regrettably boring and i found my self skipping pages of it, form pre 20 being the best part of the game it becomes the worst. harvesting leaves much to be desire. You go to a resource region just grab the Quest and harvest. resource node do not de-spawn but but lose 10% health every time you mine them, and the node regenerate 2-3 % hp every few minute or so. there is not wandering mobs in these regions but mods do spawn depending on your lvl, so you manage to find a node with 10%+ hp and get you begin harvesting (point and click) then a mob spawns like "jealous prospector". I have found that many times while you battle another player will grabs your node. there is many instances of the these zones so if you happen to be the player who enters the zone and creates a new instance, enjoy your mountains of resources. another problem is the some players do not kill the mobs which spawn and just leave them and these do not de-spawn for some time, so there's packs of lvl 20-80 mobs running around causing a ganking spree of low lvls. no crafting until 40, so i haven't tried it. this game feels like race to lvl after lvl 20, If you and your guild gets to 80 first you get to build a player city first you will have no competition of resources and you will be the first to get a battle keep and once at that point you will have access to the best gear and resources rates in the game. And it will be a battle of the basement gamers while the 90% of the players will struggle to find fun or resources at max lvl. I would not recommend this game to casual players who want solo or small guild fun. Funcom thinks people play for the end game.lvling is just a time sink in aoc the hardcores get through it in 5 days. I prefer to think the journey should be a central part of a game i feel funcom thought this until lvl20. If you are one of these people who power lvls and used bots and pay for characters them this is the game for you as they are not need in aoc.
If you have a deasent pc you shouldnt have any problems...I didnt	This game seems to be a gank fest. I like to explore and craft and sneak about and nothing in the game seems to allow for that. I can't explore the world until level 20 (stuck in newbie-ville). I have to wait until level 40 for any crafting at all. My assassin can't get within 15 feet of an enemy without being seen. (Talk about a pathetic assassin!) The "revoluntionary" new combat system simply means my carpal tunnel gets set off quickly with all the extra button mashing. Some of the combos do not respond properly - it takes 5+ times to get the second keystroke to register - so my character stands there and gets smacked around for a while as I desperately try to get the attack going. It's stupidly easy to draw a huge chain of enemies no matter how hard to try to draw just one or two in. The graphics are nice, but not awe-inspiring. I have a very good rig (well beyond the game specs) but I get random lag (and I keep seeing others have the same complaint.) I walk into Tortage and it takes 20-30 seconds for NPCs to spawn, so I see question marks and exclamation points sitting on the ground until their respective "owners" pop up. Loot so far is almost non-existant. You're so limited on bag space you ditch a lot of stuff instead of being able to sell it. At L15 I'm not getting much better stuff than I did at L5, save for quest rewards. Some of the players seem nice, but a lot are either lying about their age or "Mature" in physical age only. (Yes, you can see digital representations of whores and boobs. We know. Next subject, please.) I'm probably going to ditch the game when my 30 days are up. I'm already having a hard time psyching myself up to actually play and I've heard the game gets even boring for non-ganksters past L20.
Conan Im a girl blablabla and I love WOW	Darkoracle The Game has allot going for it, nice ghx,interesting combat, good story line..(up to 20) and pvp is fun if unbalanced atm but it has a fatal flaw, one that took all the fun out of it for me. Zoning/Instancing, I would like to meet the dev who thought that people would respond positively to playing in little micro worlds connected by traveling npc's. There is no amount of bling they can add to the the game to make it worth not having a seamless world, and in the end thats why I put down the game after a day or 2. All the little bugs etc can and will be fixed in the coming months, but instancing and zoning will remain a core element and its just not worth it. My 3.7 cents
Raven nice article.But really cant believe what some people have written back all this Aoc is better than Wow because they are just a bunch of immature kids or women is well lets face it very immature, so if these peeps are playing Aoc not going to be much different their then is it? I for one (not having played it yet) hope Aoc is a success ,competition is always healthy personally i love EQ2 but for those Wow knockers yes it may be a bit dated and yes there are some idiots on their but then if you have 9 million subscribers must be something they doing right .Last rant im all for progress and try to keep my graphic card fairly up to date but software houses must make specs clear on their products to save disapointment ok rant over have a nice day :)	Top A bout week before launch, a version of the beta was released that locked up about ever 20 minutes or so.... It also had almost double the frame-rates. Anyhow, point is that I believe there will be a sizable performance patch some where down the road that will help with the frame rate problems.
The word is you're not your. "your" is a possessive meaning something that belongs to YOU. Your inadequate grammar. You're is the contraction of YOU ARE You're here, You're goiong to fight. Such stupid errors degrade an otherwise good article.	MrKnaga Not bad just needs some time.
Nakor Amazing. All of the people I've read the comments for on here have complained about the game running badly...then they list their specs. Do you think part where they tell you how good of a video card you need is them just kind of joking? You should have a video card with 500 megs of RAM PERIOD. You would be better off with two. The article is pretty good but I don't agree that the system specs are a fatal flaw. It is great to have an MMO that doesn't look like crap. There are many MMOs out there for you to choose from. There are MMOs with low system specs and MMOs with high system specs. If you can't handle a high system spec game and are too cheap (or broke) to upgrade your computer, then go back to WoW or whatever until you are ready to play something like Age of Conan.	This is an Adult game for Adult computers. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Please. Just because you're in you're mid 40's and have extra money to spend on a better pc because you don't have anything else to spend it on, doesn't make you anymore Adult than the 14 y/o kid who builds you're pc for you on forums. Now with that said. Aoc has potential. Its beautiful and the system reqs aren't really that big of an issue for someone who plays pc games (WoW doesnt really count. As stated before, it's like 4-5 years old). The biggest problem to me is that there's no "addiction". Nothing really keeps you coming back. It's new. It's fun. It'll get old and die. Like most MMOs. I think once WoW's WotLK expansion comes out, people who left out of boredom will just go back to it. Enjoy AoC's beauty while you can. Maybe it'll be just another "EvE".
AOC Kicks ASS!	I'm disappointed at AoC but then I would be because my idea of a good mmo is PvP/RvR. This is the first PvE mmo I've played. I'm not into spending days weeks and months in order to be able to play the end game. PvP is a joke on this one. RvR siege has potential but the PvE grind in order to build and maintain it is to much for me. The WoW players seem to like it, if your more of a PvPer than a Raider then stay well away. I won't be renewing my sub after 30 days.
Itsonlyagame Review is spot on. I'd love to play this on all the highest settings but since i haven't had to upgrade the system in a year or two my spec is only meeting the minimum. I have a 6800GT, 1gig ram and a P4 3.0. It runs well (35fps) on all the lowest settings then when in new areas is chugs (4 or 5fps) then recovers. The temple is nearly unplayable when there are many players using buffs and spells. I've found that if you don't use the entire screen for the view you can save a few fps but not much for the loss of immersion in the game. I will play this! I've seen the wonderous detail it holds on my mates PC (8800GTX) and i want it. Just can't affford it yet :-(	Running a top of the line alienware labtop (SLI 512 megs nvidea) and it just sucks. I thought about upgrading to a desktop cause of this game to see if it could handle it, but hell my computer can handle bioshock perfectly at full settings. There is some ISSUES with the engine of this game that needs fixed. Hopefully they will find the problem and fix it or the game will be dead before it takes off. I am looking for a reason to quit wow and hope this is the game. They got to fix the engine of the game first imo.
Horix Id like a bit more depth on PvP, the PvP videos ive seen post launch show people running close proximity rings around their opponents, its looks awful and actually makes the wow point and click system it was supposed to out do look fantastic. A couple of reviews ive read say it plays as hideous as it looks and id like some clarity on this Thanx for the info on PvP stealth i had no idea this was implemented. At one point the devs had stated there would be no such ability even for rogues, looks like a complete U-Turn and not one i like the sound of. I think for now ill hold out for Darkfall. Additionally: Incorrectly stating minimum system specs is bad and will obviously detract from gameplay. People stating "you should know to aim above minimum" are wrong, you pay for what you read on the box. Fraudulant advertising and half assed games are all too common in todays gaming market e.g. SWG, KOTOR II	Running a top of the line alienware labtop (SLI 512 megs nvidea) and it just sucks. I thought about upgrading to a desktop cause of this game to see if it could handle it, but hell my computer can handle bioshock perfectly at full settings. There is some ISSUES with the engine of this game that needs fixed. Hopefully they will find the problem and fix it or the game will be dead before it takes off. I am looking for a reason to quit wow and hope this is the game. They got to fix the engine of the game first imo.
Darko187h Pakks your long rant not only was foolish but also ...oh wait it was just foolish. Anyways your comparing this game to HGL where u can kill 50 mobs solo but since you use tactics its a real game . you need to look into what games are all about each one is different with different tactics in order to complete a goal , i for one will grind and lvl and get gear only to have a upper hand on another player . pvp reigns. people want a game thats a challenge not another WoW , and PVP is so important to some people , real gamers want real challenged i know i do . i want to lose exp when i die because it puts a valu to my life i want detrimental effects to things that are BAD happen to my character . its a real game no HGL newbs allowed.	DiSpLiFF i have an older system, 2.53 gig p4, 1 gb ram, 512 mb vid card. i gotta say the only bad part for me is the way it runs, at the same time i've seen it on my buddies super computers and it looks fantastic. all around great mmo, the pvp servers are hella fun, now that its starting the mature a bit there are guild beefs making it a lot more interesting.
I agree with the system requirements being a flaw. The reason it is a flaw is for MMOs you HAVE to appeal to the widest audience possible. If you cant sustain a certain # of subscriptions, the MMO dies. Lowering the system reqs could probably add 10,000 subs easy.	WOW is for fags............... nuff said......
I have not played the game or anything, but I thought your review was extremely well written and interesting. I especially like that you gave tips throughout the review. Your article was also set up very nicely, making it very easy to navigate and find what I was looking for. Great review.	This game is basicly a single player grindfest with other people around! It is NOT imo a true mmo. Its a race to max lvl where u get to buidl a city, woohoo. Great graphics decent combat enless u like caster classes, then ur screwed, but basicly the same as other mmo's just more mashing. crappy ui ect... very upset with this game over all and have alrdy quit playing in the mid lvl 30's. Guess ill play eq2 intill Darkfall comes out! GL
The latest nerfs to the game are driving many of us over the edge. PVE, which was a strong point, is now painful and tedeious. There is next to zero communication between the dev team and the player base. There are phantom nerfs, hiddien from patch notes, and changes being implemented that have nothing to do with player needs. This review was dead-on at releast. As of July, I would tell everyone to go elsewhere and check-back in about six months.	HaWkEyE Hot Damn.....biggest pissing contest i have seen in a while! FunComm really missed the boat on this. HAd they timed this this release with the Release of WHo Or WOTLK and targettted heavily on advertizing on demographic ally driven stations like SpikeTV and channels like it with a more polished finished product we would be sitting on a winner here. As of this moment...theis Steak has little sizzle and even less Texture
Those of you who say you have a 3.4 ghz processor, 3gb of ram, and a 256mb video card are doing something seriously wrong if you cant play. unless your card is an ancient 256mb card...	Crazyharry Running the game on a quad core HP w/ 8800 GTS and it is butter smooth with max detail and 4x AA. That is a chump computer - $1800 at best buy months ago - probably midrange now. Not sure how anyone can say this has high system requirements. Just sell your craptops and buy any good midrange desktop $1300-$1800 and you should be fine. Can make that in a month at McD's; not much money.
Jake23 This game has been a pretty big let down. I have played pvp extensively with eq2 and am used to various glitches and unbalanced character classes but this game was supposed to be designed from day one for that type of game play. The client side memory leak and server side lag spikes that lock and crash the game play at least once an hour is also a no go.	Crazyharry Running the game on a quad core HP w/ 8800 GTS and it is butter smooth with max detail and 4x AA. That is a chump computer - $1800 at best buy months ago - probably midrange now. Not sure how anyone can say this has high system requirements. Just sell your craptops and buy any good midrange desktop $1300-$1800 and you should be fine. Can make that in a month at McD's; not much money.
	I cannot stmoach the way the world has been designed. The constant zoning and loading ruins the immersion for me. I agreed with the person above who said this would be thegreatest MMO if it had a seamless world.
	At time of writing the game is 2 weeks out of the box now, and still woefully short of finished. The official boards are overflowing with posts about innumerable issues which really should have been resolved before the end of Beta - and by far the most aggravating flaw is the utter lack of official response to the complaints - so many of which are made about the dismal failure of Customer & Technical Support. This should have been such a marvelous, innovative, market-shaping game - but instead it's probably doomed thanks to being rushed out well before it's ready and starving it's paying customers of support. Frankly, the customer base needs the critically important issues addressing BEFORE the servers are taken down for 8 hours to apply a patch that adds a sound effect to levelling up (which doesn't work anyway!)
	Although I agree with those who say the system requirements are not soo insane for computer gamers. MMO survival is rarely about apealing to computer gamers. It is about pandering to the masses. If the subscriptions start dropping off after release the game dies. If they go up the game makes it. Thus far there has not been an exception to this rule and I doubt AoC will be the first. In short first impressions determine the health of the game. My first impression is like so many others: Almost but still misses.
	i suppose anyone who is moaning about the way this isnt a seamless world plays WoW. enough said.
	Crazy Computer Salesman I sell computers for a living. I have at least 1 WoW player a day come in to buy a world of warcraft running machine. This is easy to do with any computer I have at my store. I recommend this and that, but ultimately ANYTHING we have will run WoW respectably. This means every new machine and even older machines can run WoW. This is a HUGE advantage to WoW. Im not saying WoW is a better game but about three quarters of WoWs audience cannot use their same rig to play AoC. This means that most of them cannot transfer over to AoC. I had 4 guys come in to buy AoC capable machines and minimum they were looking at 1000 bucks (I dont work at the cheapest place so you could probably put something together for 600-800 or so). All of them moaned and groaned. They refused to get one and settled on a better machine to play WoW. This flaw is a fatal one. The reason WoW has been so successful is you dont even need to look at system requirements. The average laptop much less desktop, even with vista, can run world of warcraft. Less than 1 in 10 people i surveyed in my area DO NOT have a machine capable of playing AoC and dont plan to drop that amount of cash to play a game when a more popular choice is out there. 9 out of 10 could play WoW. The other 10 percent had windows 98 or 2000 era computers or didn't have a clue on system specifications on their rigs. Most players dont want a game they have to spend 800+ dollars to play. That is more than the Playstation 3 by almost 2 times. Even if you upgrade it is a costly affair. You may argue "Games are always pushing the limits of comsumers machines. If you cant play it, upgrade or stop complaining." Im banking they will shut up and toss this game in their desk to gather dust because they cant run it. Sales are good now, actual subscriptions are going to suffer. Ive already had a few dozen people try to return this game because it didnt work on their machine. That is not a good sign for the mass market. WoW is successful because it catered to a casual market. A market with 300-600 dollar machines that are 1-6 years old. This alone will keep them going long into the future. AoC will fall very short of WoWs success. They already limited their sales from development. A fatal flaw, I would say.
	Bigcat If you old timers remember the launch of Anarchy Online then you will get a feel for the launch of AoC. Pentium D 830 Dual Core 3GHz, 800FSB Windows XP Media...OS 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 512MB Nvidea 8600 GTS 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive 7200RPM Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive When the game first became live, I could play flawlessly. The starter area that takes you to level 20 is fun and fast. My FPS were running about 30-60 depending on where I was. After the first patch on 6/9 my FPS droppped to 5-20 (20 if I was lucky) in the city of Olt Tarantia and the Noble District (A level 40 quest area) and 15-25 out in the wilds. Startted getting "Out of Memory" error crashes 3-4 times a day. I was not alone...there is a 62 page thread on OOM errors on the teck forums and another 4-5 threads on FPS issues. Funcom has not responded to any of them and in fact the customer service for this game in non existant. There is no economy, the crafting is bugged and pretty much useless for any good rewards, the gem sysytem is bugged and will make your system crash, and there are many quests and instances that are broken. IMO, I would wait at least 3-6 months before trying this game out and knowing Funcoms record it may be longer. I actually enjoyed the combat system and the questing before the FPS and OOM drops. The game is unplayable for me at this time so I cancelled my sub. Good luck if you try it.
	PVE immersion? You're kidding right? Review past the first 20 levels, where Funcom put all the polish and get to 40-50. Grindfest game polished up with "revolutionary" PvP that is broken due to stats/stealth/classes/cities/PvP games/quests not working. It's so obvious Funcom released this is beta shape in order to get the jump in subs over WAR and WotLK. And it shows so very much. Disappointed.
	I have been playing almost a month, and I have serious doubts now. I sense a cancellation soon. Aside from the graphics and combat which are superb everything else is iffy to poor. My gripes: -There is no PVP in this game. There is only ganking. People will only PVP when they are 100% sure they will win. i.e 20+ levels highter, 4 on 1, spawning/gate camping and other acts of cowardice. There is nothing yet done to discourage this, (yet). Getting continuously ganked by people you have absolutely no chance against isn't PVP. And the world isnt that large, its almost impossible to avoid these people. -The communication system (Chat/player/guild) sucks, I mean its a technological step backwards compared to other MMOs. Crafting is TERRIBLE. BUGS, there are tons of them. Broken quests, clipping, lag, unbalanced classes, missing/broken features, crafting certain items, etc. The vaunting Siege combat -there has been only 1 event so far. -Missing Content. Lots of grinding, I could go on. The customer Service simply non existant. I still cannot post messages on the official forum and FUNCOM has bothered to reply to my emails, -a month later. The GMs are hopeless, they are not able to do anything except cite company policy about why their game is INCOMPLETE. This game has potential, but it was RUSHED through beta and it shows. My guess they wanted a headstart on WAR.
	Ariasa - Hib - Pendragon (DAOC) There was a guild on a server that will remain nameless that was warring with another guild. A player was being ganked by the guild so he called to a GM. The GM showed up and said the two guilds could no longer pvp since they couldn't fight fair. The two guilds were told (both GM's we're summoned to the spot) that they could no longer attack each other due to them not being able to 'fight fair' and 'respect other players'. One Guild master said a comment that is NOW floating around on the internet and is infamous of the sorry excuse for customer service. "You mean we can no longer pvp on a pvp server?"
	Funkeh if you are in a pvp server be prepared to die ! ! !
	Lord E Was pretty fun, yet not as fun as i anticipated. I have cancelled after my thirty days, and agree with several of the posters here. Back to COV and WOW for me, but perhaps I'll return down the road.
	Played AoC for nearly a month - cancelling my account due to lack of interest - wonder why!?!
	The reason for high system requirements is due to past MMO experiences. WOW has always been very system friendly, even when it was released. The result is that the game now looks terrible, even as it struggles to maintain its popularity amidst a growing field of competitors. The way you can fend this off is by making an MMO absolutely cutting edge at release. As the population grows slowly over time, the system requirements will become increasingly cheap and accessible due to the evolutionary nature of technology. Thus, the game will have a great deal more longevity, and will still look 'fresh' even years down the road.
	Pakks This game is not FUN. Especially compared to hellgate london. Combat system much more fun in HGL. review AoC: not fun, just pick a button to push, as opposed to HGL which is exhilarating! movement, dodging AND push buttons; but mainly, I feel POWERFUL in HGL, but in AoC I feel like I'm working; just get thru this, then on to the next slightly interesting quest, die, irritating. I don't want to play a game that irritates me so much. Don't misunderstand though: I have issues with HGL Developers also. Games are improving as gamers also evolve through time. Most gamers are tired of long grinds, long waits, difficult mobs with little reward. Sure, there are the macho guys who demean a game if it's too easy, but they are just bragging. Macho as in: "yes, my fingers just got chopped off, but it's nothing, just a scratch." Actually, in EQ, WoW, EQ2 and AoC the characters and classes are ALL WHIMPS. hehe. yes, they are. takes multiple hits to kill one mob. and if you get more than 2 or 3, you are very likely to die. What HGL got right is: you are powerful! You can go into a room with up to 50 mobs in it, and if you are smart, you can kill them all. solo! and, it gets harder if you are grouped. so no reason to cry "too easy". or, too easy still: go elite, or Nightmare, or Hardcore. hehehe. The complaints I have with HGL is: 1. pvp is balancing classes, messing the game up big time. 2. too much repetition! even tho the instances are made on the fly every time. 3. this happens with all games now: A few months after release from beta (way too soon btw) they fire the brains, then hire a 'support' team, who have no clue, can't fix bugs, are too limited in ability and skill. I'm sorry I spent $50 on age of conan. be forewarned: save your money.
	Chosa Frankly i don't know what the fuzz is about.Ive seen people post here stating they have decent machines and their fps drops to single digits. On the AoC servers i encountered several people who claimed the same. I recently upgraded my rig but i also managed to play AoC on an AMD athlon @ 2200 Mhz with an ATI X1650 vid card. In cities i had single digits framerates, but outside i had like 15 to 20, in single player mode even more. The latter was even playable, not that it all ran smooth. My point is i hear way to many people claiming its the fault of the game while i seriously doubt their abilities to optimize a computer for gaming. The people on the server who claimed they had bad framerates on pretty decents machines never heard of a registry cleanout, junk file removal , closing off unneeded services and didnt even bother to install the latest drivers. What do you expect then. So yes the game does need a decent machine, but not too the extend claimed. Overall i like the game alot. Especially the immersive part is done well. Storylines are quite interesting, scenery is jawdropping to behold at certain points and the pvp is promising. I only feel that the game needs some more "fun" elements. like soccer with a freshly decapitated head ;), oh and fish. Yes i really do mis fish in the water. Apart from that a great solid game @ launch and therefor much to look out for in the future.
	Stoop Kid WORLD OF WACRAFT > AGE OF CONAN LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE > AGE OF CONAN Don't bother. it didn't live up to the hype.
	Evalina Fact is WOW fucked up, Arena sucks, Last thing i want to do is get locked into a team for months on end and hear yelling and screaming on vent from same assholes day in and day out. Havnt played this yet, loading it now. WOW didnt evan have pvp on release, Not bg's anyhow. So the simple fact of that means you will need better specs. Alot of info for a new release game. And my god I hope its more PvP related and i hope i get to pvp with my guild, not pugs. I have two wow chars in full s3. My guild handed me my gear. Really fair to the peeps who dont have a guild in couple pieces tier 6 with thyre s4 gear pretty much on day on s4 patch. I personally jsut want to play a game that has a fucking WAR in it...lol...Towns to demolish, territorys to own,,,could care less bout raiding anymore. What is so great about looking up boss's specs making sure your group has the specs to down em. Down time is Lame, and really a serious waste of life..lol...and HELL,,SUNWELL is still bugged...pft..Its new game,,looks fun for change,,,waiting on WAR too. But wow was bad on release ,,,i mean almost every instance was implemented after release there too,,,brd st mara,,,ug..and i also love how everyone on this page says the same shit over and over...Talk of possibilitys for this game,,,Its the people who WOW awesome,,reporting bugs and talking shit on forums, That is how games are made great, by the people who play them and know how to help the company make it better. But im in need of serious upgrade rite now, and im sure tons of old school wow players are all there, I played wow beta on this comp..Its OLD, gotta get new gig before WAR, If this game has potential mabe sooner, So somone plz say somthing else besides specs,,,i think its been said enough:P
	TwinkletoesFlinstone The game is a snorefest after tortage. Geta is bland and meaningless and every item looks the same, The NPCS look 10x better than the PCs. PvP is busted and it is all solo PVE. It is not even compelling PvE just Pez dispensing NPCs that make the same hither-youder arm motion. The quest are all - go to this X kill Y and rinse repeat. Some are down right retarded fed ex quests- take this note to the guy standing next to me.. and he send you to Timbuktu for a whopping 500 xp. Loot is 99.99% garbage and there isnt really more to lok forward to other than bashing the same 2-3 buttons with your old spells.attacks (which are just now higher rank) Crafting is pointless - the economy is crap as there are few decent goods looted or made. What little PvP which occurs is zone line ganking. The game has severe crashing/texture issues, massive lag spikes and memory leaks. The world itself looks pretty much its very on-rails there isnt much to explore or do just follow the quests. There are no fcations. unqiue rewards and fighting tough mobs/nameds yeilds the sam crappy loot as a lvl 1 rat. Im not a fan of Wow but dammit even that wa smore fun than Age of Gonad.
	TwinkletoesFlinstone The game is a snorefest after tortage. Geta is bland and meaningless and every item looks the same, The NPCS look 10x better than the PCs. PvP is busted and it is all solo PVE. It is not even compelling PvE just Pez dispensing NPCs that make the same hither-youder arm motion. The quest are all - go to this X kill Y and rinse repeat. Some are down right retarded fed ex quests- take this note to the guy standing next to me.. and he send you to Timbuktu for a whopping 500 xp. Loot is 99.99% garbage and there isnt really more to lok forward to other than bashing the same 2-3 buttons with your old spells.attacks (which are just now higher rank) Crafting is pointless - the economy is crap as there are few decent goods looted or made. What little PvP which occurs is zone line ganking. The game has severe crashing/texture issues, massive lag spikes and memory leaks. The world itself looks pretty much its very on-rails there isnt much to explore or do just follow the quests. There are no fcations. unqiue rewards and fighting tough mobs/nameds yeilds the sam crappy loot as a lvl 1 rat. Im not a fan of Wow but dammit even that wa smore fun than Age of Gonad.
	Omgconanblows Up to level 45 here in about 2 weeks of play. Im only playing because one of my friends likes it better than warcraft. The graphics are amazing and its nice to see a healer that can still do dps. Otherwise i loathe this game. You never really get a sense of what is going on with the world or your character. With warcraft, it is much easier to identify with the character and the quests generally have some sort of purpose. Im praying for blindness, carpal tunnel or a quick merciful judo chop to the back of the neck so i can stop playing it. Warcraft has its flaws and downside but it is sooooooo much better.
	Impaler After playing to lvl 55 I came to this conclusion (BUGGY half baked game, kind of like eating a pie that is not even cooked, and tastes like shit). This game reminds me when Ulitma Online first came out. Nothing but bugs, and endless patches. I can say that Blizzards WOW, steam rolls this game when it comes to code. Funcom just well.... sucks... Not sure how else to say it (funcom shut your pie holes with empty promises). The name Funcom, even sounds stupid. Very dissapointed in this game. They lied about direct x 10 support, pvp gameplay, and other issues I will not mention here. I have stopped playing this for the simple fact that it is boring. Also not very realistic when you should have to repair your weapons and armor. When will they come out with an MMO that has it all?? Oh ya Funcom has no customer support, none, nill, nata.
	it needs a mac version!
	Well I have actually played the game to level 75, and have been playing PC games for 15 years, so here's my opinion. I quit playing the game at 75, because the end game content is either missing or broken, and the constant lag spikes, memory leak, disconnects, and crash to desktop, drove me nuts. The game engine itself is at fault, not your system, as the same game engine was used for other MMO in the past, and they had similar tech problems. The PVP is 60% broken, and the crafting side is 85% broken. The patches have fixed most of the broken quests, and trust me a lot of them were broken, but 95% of the quests are simply disguised grind, (go kill 10 of this, or go collect 20 of that). Level 1 - 20 = No tech problems and fun Level 20 - 50 = Tech problems start, and content begins to get thin on the ground at the higher levels. level 50 - 80 = Expect to grind several levels, (welcome to Villas), and to lose the freedom of choice to play solo or group, because you have to group at higher levels. Level 80 = broken, nothing to do. I really did want to like this game, as I was looking forward to its release, but it was released at least 3 - 6 months before it should have been. Even if Funcom now add the missing content, and fix the tech problems, the game still feels devoid of a central hook / purpose. Yes, I was in a guild, and that's half the fun of a MMO, but most guilds imploded with so many players abandoning the game. Last time I looked, xfire was showing the game losing 66% of it's players in the last month, (similar fall of the month before), the developers Share Price was down 60%, there were petitions in the official forums to merge servers, as there were not enough players on some of them, and the developer was starting to delete / censor there own forum of any negative comments. Recommendation = the game is still in beta, and you should delay buying the game 6 months, and then read up on the internet to check that the content has been added and tech problems fixed, before you buy AOC. You have been warned.
	Jake23 I built a game rig specifically for this game: e8400 duel processor, 4 gigs mem, gts 8800 oc, duel clean install xp/vista. The game is going to frustrate wow players on laptops and older computers, it is that simple.