Conan's Second Coming Comments by Rob Fahey

I will probably return to this if I ever get bored of the other MMOs. But LOTRO, WAR and Champions (soon) are keeping me really busy and satisfied.

Hehe!

what is up with sexual innuendo in the title?

and

ya

first!

dang correction 2nd!

Can't help but think it's too late.

Do you have to create a new trial account with these keys or can they be used to activate an old account for seven days?

@Dizzy

How much free time do you have to be able to play 3 mmos?!

This is the only MMO that I've ever been fully interested in, besides EvE, but alas Conan seemed to suck at launch. Maybe it's better now; I guess I'll have to try.

the free items ploy makes this smell a bit desperate. I'm in no rush, I doubt 20k keys are going anywhere soon.

cant help but think what might have happend if it had been released this july with said item overhaul and all the stuff now in it, rather than vomited out last summer with only 20 lvls of the game finished. "ponders"

Have they fixed the god-awful GUI yet though?

Thanks for the trial key, never played a game of this type.

Cant see me paying monthly for it though I hate wasting the meagre money I have; cant even justify xboxlive gold at the minute.

I have friends who pay £8.00 a month on that WOW game it would have to be damn good for me to pay that.

Shocking stuff!

Actually, Im pleased to read this. I enjoyed Age of Conan, but stopped playing because it was just too empty and riddled with bugs, and returned to the still-incredible Lord of the Rings Online. But I'll give AoC another go, and see how it fares these days.

@Bartacus: I used to think that way, but then, with the amount of content in a game like this, and the amount of time you can play it for, I don't really mind so much. A normal game lasts what, 6-12 hours these days? You could go through several normal games a month, and even if you just rented them, that would cost more than the £8 for an MMO subscription.

Its not really an exact comparison but thats the way I chose to look at it. You could of course argue that buying / renting new games each month would be a different experience each time, but you could argue the same of an MMO with different character classes and regions...

Played so many mmo's, and i dont know why i ever join them before at least a year passes

The first six months on AO were hellish

The first six months on planetisde were terrible (then it got better, then worse, then better, etc, etc)

WoW, despite what the fanboys would have you believe, was piss poor in the first year (great now though)

WAR is the same, in at early lunch, gone after two months

As i said many times, Conan will improve, and if Funcom are smart in their marketing, they can start clawing back subscribers. They don't need 10 million, but if they can target everyone that left, and find a way to bring them back in, they're on to a winner

@TitusCrow - Indeed. If Conan was launched in the state it's in today, rather than effectively having players beta-test it through a tortuous year of fixes and updates, it would be a massive hit. Now it's starting from a position where it's got a really negative image for most players. I don't know if it'll be able to overcome that - but based on my experiences in the last three weeks, the game IS good right now, and improving rapidly. It's worth a shot if you've got some free time to plug into it, definitely.

>How much free time do you have to be able to play 3 mmos?!

I do not sleep :)

It is all about planning....

One thing that favours Funcom versus other mmo-developers is their stamina - I think their dedication to improve their game shows that they're in this for the long run. Clearly, that's the sort of thing that brings in the discriminating mmo-types. I think little Conan will be just fine. Slow, but expansive growth over a few years and then it'll be among the top mmos.

"It's worth a shot if you've got some free time to plug into it, definitely."

As Harry Hill would say, no it isn't.

It's exasperating how this site tries to dig up MMOs that have died and been buried (Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Conan), never mind how it reviews them (usually along the lines of "early days but shows promise", which is probably what Hitler's parents said when he was born).

Folks, don't waste your time or money. These games had their chance and fluffed it, and especially in Funcom's case they don't deserve another. Wait for one of the new MMOs that are coming out which at least have a chance of being popular.

I'm going to try the trial its a huge download but im going to use my unis connection to make it less painless

@Gurgeh

So many things wrong with that paragraph that i barely know where to start...

Quiet time Gurgeh.

Yeah, that's one piece of advice I would give - before ANYBODY considers subscribing to AoC, make sure you've completed the Tortage quests (and are above level 20) as the the tutorial segment of AoC sets a high standard from which it crashes spectacularly. So before you part with your subs, make sure you're out of that zone and that the game is still "fun," otherwise you'll be severely disappointed when you reach the "real world" and have to pay for it.

By Gurgeh's logic, WoW should have been dismissed out of hand because of the huge problems it had in the first six months. Although that's conveniently forgotten by revisionist gamers these days, for the most part :)

By Gurgeh's logic, WoW should have been dismissed out of hand because of the huge problems it had in the first six months. Although that's conveniently forgotten by revisionist gamers these days, for the most part :)

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I'm by no means a WoW fanboy, but Wow's launch compared to AoC was a walk in the park. Indeed, aside from the registration screwing up and the -bizarre - "use Firefox" workaround, I didn't encounter any issues with WoW on launch day. AoC on the other hand was still screwing up 2 months after I started playing and the balance issues were still present when I quit after about 3 months.

More power to anybody wanting to play it, but I don't think this "revisionist" attitude is limited to those criticising AoC.

@shinji
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if wow shouldn't have been dismissed. It imposed its gameplay style on mmos as such, and it's one taken straight from korean grinders which, personally, I think are epitome of boring. Nowadays any mmo at works seems to be aiming to emulate wow and does so by copying its worst parts. Hard to find something different on the market. Rare titles that escape this mad circle, like EVE or darkfall, are few and far in between.

What massive problems did WoW have? A particularly reputable game site gave it a very positive review, including comments like "This is the greatest fantasy MMO in existence, the absolute state of the art in orc-bashing." and mentioned only "incredibly minor problems".

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_wow_pc

I remember everyone and their dog playing it, which meant maddening server queues. But it was accessible, there was no dearth of content - you could get all the way through without questless grinding, and it was very stable.

I don't think Conan is compared unfavourably to WoW as it is now. Well, maybe it is - but I think it's also compared unfavourably with WoW at launch, and fairly so.

I've played a fair bit of WoW, and a month of AoC (don't play either anymore). I thought AoC was quite fun, especially the flavour and combat, but still essentially not different enough from WoW to keep my interest.

I dunno. I think that saying WoW had "massive problems in the first six months" can be more fairly accused of revisionism. Especially when AoC's what it's being compared to. AoC was still a bit of a mess when I played it a couple of months ago, and I understand it was worse on launch.

For full disclosure I should mention my PC wasn't really up to AoC. I may not have been seeing it at its best.

Does this game have PvP anywhere, anytime like Mortal Online will have?

@iokthemonkey
I'm by no means a WoW fanboy, but Wow's launch compared to AoC was a walk in the park. Indeed, aside from the registration screwing up and the -bizarre - "use Firefox" workaround, I didn't encounter any issues with WoW on launch day. AoC on the other hand was still screwing up 2 months after I started playing and the balance issues were still present when I quit after about 3 months.

More power to anybody wanting to play it, but I don't think this "revisionist" attitude is limited to those criticising AoC.

No-one is saying AOC doesn't have it's problems but none the less, WoW did have serious problems with the reliability of their login, billing and world servers for months after launch (due mainly to the huge influx of players), then huge problems with loot lag and other issues. I'm not commenting on AOC as I only played the beta/demo and that was enough for me but it doesn't change the fact that WoW had serious reliability and performance problems for the first year or so, those are now (perhaps rightfully) forgotten by a lot of people who point at it as having had a fantastic launch. It was frustrating as hell a lot of the time but was a good enough game that people were more than willing to put up with it; one of the main reasons I think was that, unlike AOC, it had content all the way to the level cap.

I can only speak for my experiences, but - as I say - the only issue I ever experienced with WoW on launch day was that I couldn't register it until I tried using Firefox.

The rest of the experience was smooth as a smooth thing that's just had a waxing.

AoC on the other hand...

I just started playing AoC a few days ago, and while I'm just a level 18 Guardian still stuck on the starter island, it's definitely looking very promising so far (I'm a casual solo player in MMOs).
I love the very active combo based combat system for melee characters, and the graphics are pretty damn impressive with everything cranked up to max (the new DX10 engine definitely needs some optimization before they remove the "test" label though, even with several features disabled, I typically get 20-40 fps on the DX10 client and an overall less than smooth experience, even when there are no obvious DX10 effects in sight, while I'm between 40 and 80+ fps most of the time with the DX9 client on my GTX 260).

Conan is now pretty good. CONFIRMED.

EG does seem to give AoC more coverage than it deserves.

Tbh, I saw this coming from EG. Call me paranoid and cynical but they've been giving Funcom some inexplicably 'benefit-of-the-doubt' bordering on favourable interviews leading up to this.

This is one of those rare times I'd rather wait for an alternative independent gaming site to re-review the game.

In the words of Clint Eastwood - deserves aint got nuthin to do with it.

Unfortunately Miths Tortage is awesome (first time at least) but heart breakingly its all downhill from there.

"as the the tutorial segment of AoC sets a high standard"

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I laughed at that (no offence). Oh boy, was it ever a horrible chore to play even to level 12. Also for the reviewer, best fun since starting a Death Knight? Even Elwynn forest in WoW is superior to that tired joke.

It's going to take a bit more than this to make an MMO appealing and since WoW got Nintendoed with the newest expansion it'll probably be a good while before I'll be touching another MMO.

Bring on Diablo 3.

More sponsored bullshit from EG on an utter failure of a game. I thought they had learned their lesson with the rereview, after overrating the original release and allowing Funcom to sell loads of the boxes despite the fact the game was an abhorration. Apparently not.

This reads like an advertising feature and the amount of press they've given this pish is unprecedented. AoC cannot be fixed, it has several fundamental flaws. Let's just forget about it.

"It's going to take a bit more than this to make an MMO appealing and since WoW got Nintendoed with the newest expansion it'll probably be a good while before I'll be touching another MMO.

Bring on Diablo 3."

Yes, but first bring on Jumpgate Evolution :). While I'm enjoying AoC right now, I've really been longing for a good sci-fi MMO (hoping JE will in fact be good :p), and though I've tried a few times I just can't seem to get hooked on Eve Online again.

I'll give AoC a go in a few months when end content has been improved and itemisation has been fixed.

It's also obvious that some people here are just plain haters. Did you know that today it is lame to hate?

WoWs launch was amazing. I didn't have one single problem with it at all. Like none at all.

I don't remember having problems in WoW either. Nor in AoC except the first week I played. Perhaps I'm so used to buggy releases that I have stopped noticing them or they stopped bothering me X)
Many others obviously have had problems with both games so, yeah, I'm not going to dismiss that.

"But why should you give Age of Conan a second chance after its launch disappointed so many last year?"
Because people paid on the basis of...well it was a bunch of lies.
Direct X 10 on the box at launch, it's fully working now right? ;)

"Age of Conan isn't perfect yet, by any means, but the game is finally living up to its early promise."
Buy again, now! It's almost as good as we told you it was going to be! But not quite.

That this abomination is still alive yet again proves there's no hope for humanity.

I never tried AoC but I remember being in Anarchy Online at launch and it was absolutely dire - despite saying they'd learned from their mistakes they didn't, which I don't mind too much, it's evidently not childsplay to get one of these out with all the pressures involved. I've just got one of those keys now so I'll give it a go.

I still have a character mid way through the 70s in WoW though so most likely I'll stick with that. I don't have time to play two MMOs, and even if I did I can't afford over £15 a month in game subscription fees.

Edit:

[quote]32gb and then a 3gb patch[/quote]

Oh. Nevermind then.

People don't seem to remember the poor launch WoW had, possibly because people tend to remember the games as they were when they left them (or are now if you're still playing). Well that and then the simple fact that more than half of WoW's players didn't buy the game before the release of TBC.

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Again, I can only speak from personal experience, but aside from the registration issue - which I was able to resolve by installing Firefox about an hour after trying to register using IE - I experienced no problems playing WoW on the day of launch. That's not true at all of my experience of AoC, which actually started badly and was no better after 3 months, at which point I cancelled my account.

I tried to get into Conan I really did, but it was Dark Age of Camelot all over again. It just feels so backwards...

I agree with the poster above who said that MMOs have stuck too closely to WoW's template. Hopefully some of the sci-fi MMOs coming up will change more than just the setting.

You'd think developers would strive for something more than making their games equal to WoW launch by now, and then how a lot of players can settle for that is nothing short of pathetic.

I re-subbed to conan a few weeks ago, then quickly re-unsubbed.

The combat is great, fast paced and entertaining, i didn't have any issues with content gaps or tech difficulties. My issues mainly came from the server i transferred to was filled with horrible horrible people. The changes to pvp have lead to a mass ganking invasion whereby virtually every respawn pad has an all out chaotic war going on around it. It was fun for a while and as i was with a group of friends most of the time we gave good account of ourselves, but it began to wear me down. Half the time your fighting mobs in a populated zone you end up looking over your shoulder, get into a difficult battle with a few mobs and a ranger will pop out of stealth and root you, before his assassin buddy comes and stick his daggers up your rear-end and your dead before you can move.

The itemization is still godawful, both in looks and utility and that has always been a major sticking point for me with conan.

But yeah my advice to anyone considering a trial/resubbing is don't roll on the fury PVP server, roll on either aquilonia rp-pvp (which the SCUM guild aside are nicer people and a bit less likely to kill you before the map has finished loading in) or the PVE server, which means you will miss out on pvp until level 80, which is a shame because if there was a bit of rhyme and reason to the pvp it would be great.

@jockie

Indeed. A shame Funcom didnt consider the 'cunt factor' when designing a free for all brutal kill fest. In theory it sounds great but in practice its just a game where ganking is encouraged. The whole thing needs to be mastrfully done in order to work.

"Ive got a Collectors Edition sitting on my shelf (chalk that one down to getting over-excited on launch day..groan)...its been long uninstalled from my PC. How many gigabytes of patch am I looking at, if I do a reinstall for the trial?"

I bought the boxed version last week, if I recall correctly the patches amounted to a little over 1.2 GB. Fortunately the servers were fairly fast (I was getting 1-1.5 MB/s most of the time, though it did slow down a bit on the last 20% or so), so I was playing less than an hour of initial installation.

I just checked the size of my AoC folder - 27.8 GB. That's quite a whopper :).

@Slabbathepave

Not all servers have free-for-all PvP. I knew I would quickly become fed up with getting ganked constantly, so I chose a PvE server. As previously mentioned I'm still on the starter island (should be leaving today with my main character), but I believe even the PvE servers have PvP areas?

Too late, just give up already.

There were parts of AoC that I really liked. That island off the coast of the starter area had some interesting areas, and playing my Tempest was involved enough to be busy all the time. Once I'd finished the starter area it got old quickly.

If they've really fixed it, I see no reason for all this hate for it - most people who have played MMOs before know the ropes. I do agree that it may be too little, too late. Since WAR has come out, I can't imagine having enough time to play both games, and I'm still enjoying WAR enough to keep on with that particular time sink.