Age of Conan review

[hejkin]

A lot of ppl said that AOC(http://www.ageofconan.com/) will be WOW's killer, see from this review it seems nice, but a lot of stuffs look similar to WOW.

Age of Conan Review

"What do I know of cultured ways, the guilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.

The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when broadswords sing;

Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king." (Robert E. Howard, 1929, p.35)



So what is with the poem, I hear you asking. Well, my friends, the answer is simple. This week
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[kalniel]

Isn't it still in beta?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

nope its rleeased in 2-3 weeks time

[TiG]

Thats a YES then. Its beta, and from what i've experienced its not even ready to be called alpha. Open beta's are supposed to be load testing. Its bug ridden, cut scenes where my head is out of frame. Absolutely shocked that people are saying they are enjoying this, the bugs completely spoil it.

If this does go gold in 2-3 weeks before its ready and stable it will flop. Its no where near ready. A buggy game at release will kill it off before its got a chance.

TiG

[j.o.s.h.1408]

so why are many people saying its good then? have u played it TIG? go play it and make your own judgement about it plus the open BETA is like a 6month old build of the game.

the purpose of the open build is to test the servers.

[TiG]

Josh, re-read my post. I talk in the first person about "my head" not appearing it talking cut scenes. I can't judge if its good if i keep getting issues with it. Plus the load times are awful for a MMORPG.

I'm making the point of people won't wait about if they have these issues to see if its good. They'll get fed up with the bugs and leave it alone.

TiG

[j.o.s.h.1408]

but say if teh reial dont contain these bugs? would you consider it a good game? i mean besides the bugs is teh combat rubbish? graphics? etc? bugs can be fixed but gameplay cant

[TiG]

As far as i'm concerned its the latest build, There is no point them putting up a 6month old build. That means the bugs are in there now. Just before release. That means we'll have rushed code to fix them and we'll just end up with a ****ty game that they will fix with patches.

The only point an MMORPG should be bug free is the absolute point of release. It should be perfect at this point. Its all about getting the right word of mouth going.

If I have issues I might go back on WoW and tell guild mates and say oh that AOC is full of bugs, if filters through the biggest mmorpg playing population. Then people I play with might not even try AOC. This is how MMORPG's work.

There is a lot of people that are awaiting something that provides something interesting and new after WoW, but its got to work, you can't have a buggy game it will just die on its arse if its not perfect.

There is nothing more annoying in WoW when bugs occur, it causes huge flames on the forums. If you are going to build a successful competitor to WoW you can't afford to have any issues at release.

TiG

[kalniel]

As far as i'm concerned its the latest build,

To be fair, in between the typos, Josh does have a point - it's quite common to put up an old build for an open beta. If you are wanting to test server load and/or gameplay balance then you are primarily interested in stability, not visual polish. So you put out your most stable and most thoroughly tested build regardless of whether you have a more recent build that might look better - the lack of testing your recent fixes makes it too risky.

But that doesn't change the point that the game is still in beta and thus any reviews are going to be slightly inaccurate. Triply so for a MMORPG where reviewing the game outside of it's native environment of annoying brats, griefers, n00bs and the like doesn't represent the gaming experience one might reasonably expect. No, any review should firmly be classed as preview until at least a month or two past launch.

[TiG]

I've never been in a situation with an old beta, LOTRO didn't, WoW didn't. The version numbers of the AOC build doesn't look old.

Guess we'll just have to disagree, but on a personal level in my software coding and building experience, it does not make sense.

You can't test server stability unless you have the current version of software on it. You could have software bugs that renders this whole testing completely invalid as the software glitches and causes hardware issues.

I can't ever imagine being in a situation where you would want to test 6 month old code.

TiG

[beanbandit]

I have a feeling that the Beta is final code. They released a very last minute patch on Thursday that seemed to effect everyone. But for final stree testing you should be running final code, otherwise what is the point? I've seen to many problems with patch changes in wow, and then see problems, some minor, some major, then have Blizz release mini patch to fix. It just doesn't make sense to not use the full, gone gold game, for stress testing of the servers.

My views of Beta.

I gave it a short try on the 1st. Not impressed at all.

How many patches? Just stupid for a game that has gone gold.
Jerky movement.
Low frame rates. (27fps)
Stupidly long load times. Not just getting into game, but loading up the char select screen.
Talk to a char, and have the "cut scene" or whatever they call it, cut my head and the other chars head off. Plus not being able to move camera around while in said scene.
Chat box is pathetic.

This game just feels like its trying too hard tbh. I know its early days, but some of these faults are unforgivable.

If they want to compete in the MMO environment they need to come up with something that doesn't require stupid system requirements. From my short time so far, it looks like they've concentrated on the gfx, which may look nice, but they just slow the game up so much.

I know lots of wow players, most of them don't have modern PC's, they won't upgrade or buy new PC's just to have a try of AoC.

[kalniel]

I've never been in a situation with an old beta, LOTRO didn't, WoW didn't. The version numbers of the AOC build doesn't look old.

Guess we'll just have to disagree, but on a personal level in my software coding and building experience, it does not make sense.

You can't test server stability unless you have the current version of software on it. You could have software bugs that renders this whole testing completely invalid as the software glitches and causes hardware issues.

I can't ever imagine being in a situation where you would want to test 6 month old code.

TiG

6 months is a bit much, but it depends what you are testing. I don't have any experience of commercial MMORPG game development, but in my experience of non-commerical MMORPGs and commercial single player development I have come across several situations where you do want to use older but more stable/verified versions. You can still update that version as newer versions pass testing/milestones.

But I agree, it doesn't do much for stability testing with regard to the software, and in anycase if other big MMORPGs used latest code for the public beta then I expect AoC to follow suit.

[Tel_Tech]

I've heard a mix of good and bad, the good seems to always start with "If you can look past the bugs", which is never encouraging.

[kalniel]

At least the good thing with an MMORPG is that you can usually assume that the sustained revenue will enable them to keep polishing the product in the future, so you can wait and buy the game at a later date when it meets the standards you're after. Or if it doesn't, don't - I know I won't

[j.o.s.h.1408]

plus if it realy is the bugs thats putting u off this game then come on lads, bugs can be fixed people. i mena besides the bugs what else is bad about this game?

[TiG]

Josh.

Here you are, why did you buy a PS3?, because the xbox360 has bugs.....

What else is bad about the xbox360....

TiG