Age of Conan was officially launched on May 20, 2008 though this reviewer signed up for the Early Access program which gave me access on the 17th. I choose to play an assassin and as of this writing I am currently level 56.
The Good:
Age of Conan features a innovative combat system involving combos which, once initially triggered, requires the player to press a certain combination of follow-up buttons in order to complete the combo thus doing damage to the target. Different combos have different effects such as damage, healing, and debilitating effects. This system in itself is where Age of Conan shines and is its best feature.
In addition the fatality system is a nice little addition to the game as if the player kills a mob or a player with a combo then there is a small chance that the player will do a fatality at which point the player will regain a small amount of stamina for a short period of time.
The game world is another of Age of Conan’s best features. The world is lush and detailed much more so than any previous Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The game takes advantage of the latest graphical technology and the system requirements for the game are very extreme.
The Bad:
There are many things wrong with Age of Conan at the moment and many of these issues lead me to believe that the game did not go through a proper testing phase.
Most if not all of the dungeons in the game have ludicrously short respawn timers and if a group inside dies on the way to an objective then they must fight their way through most if not all of the mobs they had previously encountered. This in itself is a severe problem as it requires players to spend a disproportionate amount of time in a dungeon. I feel in this respect that FunCom did not properly test dungeon progression or else it is intentional.
There are also many graphical issues as well. Many times for no apparent reason combo buttons in the interface will “lose” their graphics. While the combos are still there and the user can still use them the graphical loss makes it sometimes difficult to know which combos are being triggered unless the user has memorized where he or she put any specific combo.
Animations for monsters are also currently bugged. Many monsters seem to “float” across the ground while waving their arms because their walk animations did not properly initialize. While this is comical at best it is still a major graphical issue.
In addition textures on players, when they are killed by an electrical fatality for example, stay on the player’s character for up to half an hour even after the player has died and respawned.
While the graphical issues are not game breaking issues the bugged quests and the lack of working end game content are. For example:
Currently most if not all of the crafting system quests are bugged. Players are supposed to be able to choose only one profession, but because of some sort of coding mix up players can choose two professions only one of which will work. In addition the end game crafting is not worth even taking up because FunCom has yet to properly scale crafted items so as to compete with items garnered through quests and drop rewards. There is also currently no way to drop a profession once it is chosen.
In addition many quests simply do not work. Objectives are not always present in the game and for those that are sometimes they do not work even when the player has properly completed them, leaving the player with a sense that they have wasted whatever the amount of time it took to do the quest.
Another game breaking issue at the moment is the lack of a banking system or an auction house where players can sell their items to others. Because of this lack of an auction house (which are known as traders in Age of Conan) there is no in game economy to speak of and because crafting is not worth even taking up there is little need for a banking system or trading system, a fact I’m sure FunCom is aware of. Though it must be noted that the reason there are no traders is that there is a game exploit of some sort with them.
The greatest issue at the moment involves the Player versus Environment cities that each and every guild can create. Currently guilds can build their cities but other players can attack and destroy them much to the dismay of the city’s owners. This is an unintended ability and FunCom has acknowledged this fact.
Another issue is game crashes. Currently the game client is not very stable. This reviewer has had his entire computer crash while playing game and was forced to power off the system to resolve it. There is also the issue of certain areas of the game world forcing users to crash. The solution oddly enough for some people was to turn off the game’s sound completely while in those areas. These crashes happen often and to many different players with different hardware setups.
While there are other issues with Age of Conan I believe that I have listed the major ones that effect every player of every class.
In conclusion I must say that while a certain amount of bugs and glitches are a reality with every newly released MMO I must conclude that there are too many game breaking bugs to even suggest that this game was ready for release. The game has a lot of potential and only time will tell if FunCom can deliver on that potential.
