Age of Conan gets new RPG system Comments by Oli Welsh

Wow. Awesome news! But it's already 12 hours and the servers aren't up yet! Dun dun dun duuun :O

I resubscribed briefly but found it very hard to get back into. I might try again in the winter when I'm less inclined to go out in the evenings I guess.

I think it is time for a short resub ;)

Yeahhh....finally its coming. We all waited a long time for this.

NOW WITH FREE HAT.

So the game is finally in the state it should have been at launch?(Or is there still no DX10?)

You really are an easily forgiving lot EG...

I sincerely hope AoC turns itself around. I'll be paying close attention to it for the next few weeks with a view to a short re-sub at some point.

I can't be bothered to start again in this - I didn't get anywhere near lvl 50 first time round. Kudos to them for sticking with it, and it does look like a lot of Conan fans are now enjoying it, but this ship has sailed for me.

I'm undergoing an MMO hiatus for a couple of months!

Might be time for eurogamer to do a re-review of it then

" but the reception of the changes in Update 5 will be crucial to its future."

No it won't it's DEAD. D-E-A-D.

MMOs do not get second chances, let alone third or fourth. They might take a long time to die, they may even launch expansions in an attempt to get more customers, but their fate is set practically from the day of launch.

"but their fate is set practically from the day of launch."

Nothing practically about it, all MMO's will shut down one day, even the mighty WoW.

Some may just get there quicker than others.

Seems they have a seven day trail so might be worth a bash after my account got deleted waaay back over the whole preorder code bonus thing.

Just fired up the game after patching - and wow! (no, not that wow :)) Talk about massive changes to both the effects and menu presentation of character stats, talents (free respec) and items. Everything is just so much more transparant with just about every relevant number presented in a clear and easy to understand fashion, and items stats certainly do seem to have a much bigger and very obvious impact on your character stats now.

I'm only level 36 on my highest level character though (started playing a couple of months ago but got sidetracked with other things and then jumped in again a few days ago), so this is still just the impression of a noob :).
And since I won't have time to play properly until later today this is all I've seen so far.

And to Lemming81 - DX10 was implemented a couple of months ago (right after I started playing actually), but the DX10 client is still considered beta and it does have some issues, the biggest in my opinion being a fairly severe framerate hit even in areas where there are no obvious DX10 effects like much improved lighting and shadows.
I'm on a quad core system with 8 GB RAM and a GTX 260 and I've been sticking with the DX9 client so far, although I'll probably give the DX10 client another try soon. Some of those extra effects really did look rather lovely.

1.05 (update 5) is a jolly big update, but not as big as Funcom would have you believe. Character and item stats 'n' tweaks are well 'n' good, but at first glance the stats haven't changed at all, merely been given a new coat of paint.
Nonetheless AoC's community has improved a lot over the last six months (which of course, has nothing to do with Funcom) and grouping, raiding etc is now a lot of fun.
DX10, although useable, is still in 'test' mode and will likely stay there forever more.
There are no free hats on offer.

I'm gonna give the trial a go this weekend.

Funcom does tend to have an awkward way with the larger patches, so I'm certainly expecting a bit of a shakedown period. I've only had a chance to play for around 20 minutes so far, but it does seem like quite an improvement, and hopefully helps solidify the basis for some really killer content.They always had great production values and fun combat; over time, they got rock-solid client and servers. I hope Update 5's changes are the final bit of polish. Can't wait to get into some PvP and to see the new areas and dungeons.

So they've WOW-ed it up. There goes any chance of me resubbing. If i wanted to play an item focussed game with pvp minigames might as well just play WOW.

Conan had such promise, shame they rushed it out and now resorting to dumbing it down to try and keep people in it.