Age of Conan comes to my PC

As the title states I have recently picked up a copy of Age of Conan (AoC) and installed it on the previously mentioned new rig that I put together. I decided with something as important as a semi-review for a new MMO I would divide it up into audio, visuals, game play, and my personal impressions of the game.

So, to kick things off I am going to start off with the audio that is present in this particular online world. When I first got the game, which I downloaded before my retail copy even got into my hands, I was unable to play it for a week. However, I was able to fire up the login screen and the first thing I noticed about the game was even the music for the login screen felt epic in its quality. Moving forward into the game I have to say that my love for the score of AoC only became more profound. The combat music really makes you feel like you are thrown into a visceral and unforgiving environment where danger is around every corner. The ambient sound is top notch providing the player with sounds of the wild like occasionally having random wild beasts belting out their various howls, snarls, growls, etc. The different background music definitely sets the mood for the zone you are in for instance when in the desert region of stygia you get what you would really imagine hearing if you went to a desert region in our world and listened to their cultural music, the same follows for the other zones like the highland like Cimmerian tribal region. Overall the sound is top notch and to me that is 50% of the battle to release a good game.

On to the visuals in the game. Now I want to add a disclaimer here, the visuals are obviously heavily dependent on the load that your computer is capable of handling, so the phrase "your miles may vary" is appropriate here. For me, on the new rig, the game looks amazing and I have the settings primarily maxed out. There are some big issues with the overall optimization of their engine and some technical issues with some of their settings in the game. For example when running the game turning off the shadow component yields about 20 fps which is insane. Shadows are taxing on the best of computers but to have a difference of about 20 fps (frames per second) is beyond anything I have ever seen to date, to the point that I don't know a lot of people that would sacrifice 20 fps for the slight visual bump. A lot of people are also saying that turning up some of the settings to a higher quality actually seems to improve performance instead of detracting from it, which makes no sense at all. Aside from the glaring technical issues the game truly shines as one of the best looking MMOs I have played to date. All I can say is you will see what I am talking about when you get into the first real group dungeon called The Sanctum of the Burning Souls. The scale of this place is jaw dropping and the atmosphere and detail are flawless. It is hands down the best looking dungeon design I have seen, and it's fairly early on in the game so you get that epic feel of the dungeons without having to raid at end game.

Game play, one of the most important areas of an MMO in my opinion. A game can look and sound great, but for me if the game play is horrible it's a deal breaker. Luckily at its core AoC has some phenomenal game play. There is no auto attack in this game and you have to attack your opponents in their weak spots using directional attacks and a "combo" system, which is basically special attacks using the directional combat system. The system is engaging and I have never found myself nodding off during combat like I did in the World of Warcraft. Truthfully in this game if you aren't paying attention you simply aren't going to win the fight period. The direction combat system primarily affects the melee classes and the ranger class, the casters play typically how you would imagine from other MMOs. I won't go into too much more about combat because there still has to be some wow factor when you first try out that game so I will leave it at that. There is PvP in the form of PvP servers, battle group type mini games, and eventually when the game matures more it will open up siege battles to the end gamers. Siege battles revolve around one of 9 player held keeps in the world of hyboria. The keeps are held by guilds and bestow special and very important buffs to anyone in the guild that controls the keep. Of course with all such valuable things other people will covet them and desire to take them from you. Herein lies the essence of what a siege battle is. One guild wants your keep, and has amassed their army to try and persuade you to die and hand it over. Of course due to imbalances in guild sizes, availability, etc... these fights could become very unfair. It is for that reason that Funcom implemented the mercenary system, which does exactly what you would imagine, both sides of the siege can send out a call to other players that are for hire to come help either storm or protect the keep and will pay them for their services.

My personal opinion of the game is that, for me at least, it has replaced WoW as my current MMO. It's not that WoW is a worse game, but AoC offers me something new from the tired repetition that I got from wow after 4 years. The game in it's current incarnation has some big bugs that still need to be ironed out, but with any MMO that is starting off it's always been the same story even WoW. For a launch Funcom did a very good job, one of the best MMO launches to date. Also the speed at which Funcom is attacking and fixing their problems is something that I find unusually fast and I am pleasantly surprised. I will post up some screen shots when I get some I think are worthy of a captive audience.