AoC-Hyborian Adventures

[Cus_de_Sparta65]

Has this game been a success? I have read a good few reviews by gamers saying it was great. So I was surprised to be able to buy it brand new for just £5 and it comes with the usual 30 day trial.
Never played any MMO before as none of them really appealed to me. My son is a WOW freak and is never off it. I also have Warhammer AoR but I never got round to actually playing it as it looked like a bad copy of WOW (it was a present)

Conan does look like it's own thing though and I am looking forward to it arriving in the post soon, although I don't know when I will actually get to try it as Fallout 3 is taking up most of my game time just now.

What are your thoughts on Age of Conan then?

[Bleak]

It hasn't been as much of a success as they hoped. Funcom were running very low on cash and had to ship the game early and largely buggy and incomplete, but I thought the first 20 levels or so in Tortage was great. There weren't enough zones and you had to grind way too much at higher level.

I played the game when it came out and despite constant updates the bugs just weren't sorted quickly enough and I stopped playing after my first free month.

Only a month ago I had a mate who'd started playing this again whilst taking a break from WoW and he convinced me to give it another go. After nearly a year of extra development the game is actually quite good. The servers aren't exactly throbbing with activity and I'd advise going PvE instead of PvP because the latter isn't like WoW. IIRC players can attack others almost anywhere and the amount of ganking that goes on makes the game unplayable, heard rumour in some zones people couldn't even hand quests in without getting attacked.

Funcom seem to be losing money head over heals though and they're pretty much giving the game away in hope of picking up some subscribers. Hopefully there'll be a few more that give it a go and carry on playing.

[Haiku32]

I played the trial and levelled a Barbarian to level 22. It was great at first, but became increasingly boring with the amount of quests in one area. You will literally spend hours upon hours in one little area doing the same type of quest (go here, kill x number of y). It feels like you are doing it forever without making any progress.

[Cus_de_Sparta65]

Not a great deal of enthusiasm coming from you guys really. Still, a fiver, delivered too! you can't be angry at that.

Thanks guys, Cus

[Haiku32]

I would definitely give it a shot. It's great fun for the first few hours and it might just be your thing. For me, I just didn't enjoy it all that much (MMO games aren't my thing though).

[shackahn]

I heard that the servers are practically empty these days (for an mmo.)

A good friend of mine who has played ot regularly says the lower levels are boring and tedious but the high end content is superb.

So if you can stick it out you may be rewarded

[alexrose1uk]

I recently returned to AoC.

Most of the technical issues are gone, and it runs pretty reasonably if you have a powerful machine, especially if you want to run the graphics on higher settings; as it's without a doubt the best looking MMO currently on the market. There are a lot of balance issues in PvP at the moment, with casters being distinctly more powerful than melee, whilst having a similarly large HP pool since last patch, however this should get ruled out in time as the devs can understand the impact of the recent patch and assess necessary changes with the new system.

The item revamp of the last patch has also made gearing make a lot more sense, previously the numbers and figures could be extremely confusing at first glance until you did a lot of research into the system, whereas it is now much more accessible, and similar to the majority of other MMOs out there.

The servers unfortunately as mentioned aren't throbbing, someone on my server mentioned there being about 1000 people total being on on the server in the middle of the evening, on a Friday/Saturday, so the thing that's really looking to kill it at the moment is loosing so so many people in the first few months. The game is almost a completely different beast now, which in many ways is a good thing.

Ultimately, if Funcom can recoup some of the lost playerbase with the rumoured expansion, or through act of god, the game has the potential to last quite a while, but the subscriber numbers will really make a game like this.

If you can, give the game a trial, remember that Tortage is the most polished part of the game, and see what you think, the game is honestly in a much better [general] state now, than a year ago.

[Ferral]

Eurogamer are giving away 1000 copies of this today with 30 days free play. You have to register on the site first to b eligble for it. Still, pretty good and worth trying out.

[Geist]

I thought about trying the free month as I was bored but since its a 15GB download I didn't bother

[Ferral]

I cant get the link that they supplied to work. So unfortunately cant get it downloaded at the min. Will see if one of my mates have the CD's

[Ferral]

Managed to get it downloaded from my account at funcom last night, been playing it today quite a bit and have to admit love it at the min. I dont like some of the during the day quests as mentioned they are just the usual fetch or kill quests, having to do some of them though to level up to carry on at night.

I love the way you change over to night mode and do the single player stuff, it works seamlessly and add a decent story to the game. I have a 30 day trial at the min and will see how I go with it.

Also bought Warhammer yesterday with 30 days play so it will come down to content and story for me. I do like the way there is open party quest areas, you can start off yourself and before you know it there is a big group of you all doing the same thing. So you dont have to hunt around or constantly ask about joining a party.

[Cus_de_Sparta65]

I have to say that this has turned out not to be a game I am into. I mean you cannot grumble at £4.99 but it is just too slow and repetitive for my liking. Be lucky if I have spent 2 hours on it in 3 weeks.