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"GAMING - AGE OF CONAN"
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GAMING - AGE OF CONAN
Total Articles:
3
The Age Of Conan Online Game - a MMOG I started playing in June of 2008.
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I have been jonesing for a new MMOG game for months, so bad, I've been playing through all of my original games. Today, Funcom put Age Of Conan up for digital download. FINALLY. If they had put it up for DD a few weeks ago, I'd have already downloaded it. The digital download was 15 gigs. So I started it at 10am and was ready to play by 9pm that night. Ok, I didn't play that night, but the next day.
Wow, what a beautiful game. It is as if they took Far Cry and Lord Of The Rings and spliced them together into one game.
I created "Jehunnin" on the server "Hanuman" and chose to be an Aquilonian Dark Templar.
Here I am washed up on the beach after I fell off a slave ship.
The interface is not very intuitive, but it is a hell of a lot better than Vanguard, but not quite as good as Lord Of The Rings. I was not happy that certain keys (like X, A and so forth) are hard coded into the game. If you try to change those keys you'll be told they're unmodifiable. That sucks because there are certain keys that I use for all MMOG games and it is nice to be able to be familiar. Still, I was easily able to modify my keys and get going.
The graphics selections are sparse, but get the job done. There are still some graphical anomalies that drive me nuts, like it not saving your settings sometimes, or if you hit the wrong key, you blow everything back to normal. But it does support your AA, shaders, and what not and I was able to get a decent frame rate.
The game is very much like Far Cry, or some pirate game. The water and jungle is beautifully done, although I was not happy with the foliage - it moves WITH the camera, rather than being static. I know this saves GPU time, but this is an old DOOM trick from 1993.
Your paper doll and inventory are hard coded and can't be minimized or resized. And they open up right over the top of only two sidebars given to you. That means you can't drag and drop into the top positions, you have to put it in a lower box then move it once you close your inventory.
The paper doll is bland and lacking. Other games have far more resources available to you. This is just brown bagging it.
Combat. Combat is very hard. You target a mob, but you don't automatically attack. You have to mash one of three swing buttons in order to attack in front, or to each side. So you will find yourself mashing buttons and that is tough when fighting more than one mob. Combo moves are not on random timers like some other games, but can be used with enough stamina on your bar. You hit a combo key, and then an adjoining key and if you are in range you can do some pretty decent damage.
I have died several times in fights because of combo key cool downs, and of course, whoops, I didn't mash my keys. Of all games I've played in MMOG, this one has the greatest amount of button mashing I've ever seen. Mash. Mash. Mash. MASH!!!
Here I am taking down a boss level 3 poacher. Mash Mash Mash!
The landscapes are beautiful. The jungles are believable with beautiful backdrops and well placed mobs.
After going through the initial tutorial - which you do solo - you end up in a small town called Tortage with a large shipyard. Buildings in the town are all instanced like LOTRO making their insides bigger than the outside. There are guards, craft people, an auction house and more, with plenty of quests to do and things to see.
One thing that bugs me about the game is each encounter with an NPC Quest Giver takes you away from your third person into a first person. This means anything going on around you disappears as you talk to the NPC in a "Picture Frame" kind of way. The language in the game is corse and expect to see heads, arms, legs and that sort of thing cut off and flying in places.
Jeeze, am I showing some titty or what?
The ship yard is pretty cool and a frame rate eater.
Some complaints:
- It plays like shit in a window. If you alt-tab out, it minimizes. That's bad.
- Often when you alt-tab out and come back, the graphics are so hosed you have to restart the Client.
- Quests are presented to you in a full screen, rather than an on screen window.
- Level ups, pick ups and so forth are broadcast on your screen in large black lined windows that go across the entire screen. When you pick up many items at the same time, or fulfill quests, or what not, they take up so much of the screen, you can't tell what you are doing. They should be in the window below.
- The Client takes over three minutes to get into game.
- You can't bind the middle mouse button.
- Your character will not step "up" onto steps or platforms that are obviously easy to step up onto.
All in all the game has been very enjoyable and with a few deaths here and there, It has been a real pleasure to play. I'm not going to have a lot of time to play this month as I'm getting ready to go on vacation, but so far, I've had a blast.
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AOC just came out of the gates a few weeks ago. This last weekend, I played and had a somewhat fun time - even though the serious amount of bugs that I found.
This week they released a patch that really fucked shit up. I'm serious, it seriously messed shit up.
Graphical anomalies, quests bugged and a whole hell of a lot more.
Personally, I figure they released the game in order to beat Warhammer out of the gates.
Well they failed. I logged in last night and I couldn't play at all. Quests broken, missing quests from level 7 through 11, graphical problems that made it nearly impossible to play.
I got onto the AOC site and cancelled my subscription. I'll come back later if they get their shit figured out. But for now, they can fuck off.
Well hey, look at that, Everquest II just gave me TWO months free for "Father's Day" "please come back". Ok, I'm off to play that then.
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I logged into AOC tonight to see if anything had changed. Nope, not a goddamn thing.
Black screen. That is what I logged into. A fucking black screen. I could hear stuff, see people talking, see chat, but I couldn't see anything.
What a POS.
Funcom, go fuck yourself.
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