Customer Reviews

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Collector's Edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Below is my review of the game; however, I did purchase the Collector's Edition and I have to say that the CE reminds me a lot of the game. Flashy, beautiful on the surface but ultimately lacking. You're basically spending $90 on 5 buddy passes (which requires your friends to use your discs for installation or they have to pay $3 to download the game), an ingame item that only works up until level 40 and didn't really provide a big boost, a really nice artbook, the soundtrack, the artbook and a map. Sounds like a lot, but I had buyers remorse; and it's $10 more expensive than the Warhammer Online CE which included a lot more items...if you're set on purchasing AoC, I would just go with the standard edition.

On to the review:

The funny thing about expectations is just how much it can ruin or promote a game. As an example, I was one of those annoying people who ended up not liking Fable as much as I'd hope to (and complained about it to deaf ears) because I had followed it from its first announcement to its eventual birth. In the same way, I have followed Age of Conan far longer than I should have. Four years. Longer than most engagements.

Well, after finally "marrying" Age of Conan (and buying it a "fancy" ring by not only purchasing it, but dropping $90 on its shinier Collector's Edition), I can understand why the divorce rate in America is so high. It all falls back to expectations. For me, things started out wonderfully. We had our honeymoon in Tortage and for the first weekend or so, I was in complete heaven. The first twenty levels of the game are perfectly plotted and staged, with wonderment occuring around every bend. The story that plays out is small and self-contained but feels epic and truly feels like the start of something great.

Then the honeymoon ends.

Leaving Tortage, things start to sour. The story takes a complete backseat, with story-centered quests popping up every 10-20 levels or so, and instead you're treated to relatively empty environments that are stocked with creatures, sometimes with incredibly long respawn counters. So, you think..."wow, this is a huge change from the first twenty levels" but you keep on keeping on because new shiny skills keep popping up.

Undoubtedly, you'll start to run into problems. Instances won't work as they should and some won't even let you in (half of my guild couldn't access the 40-80 level resource instances like Frost Swamp where some of the epic gear starts to drop). The ones that do let you in, you realize, oftentimes have quests that only one person per instance can complete. There you go, having to repeat a not-too-inspired zone five or six times just to complete a quest. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, if the zones were interesting. But they're not; some of them are simply windy small passages resembling mazes that open into larger, empty rooms. Very boring.

At about the level 60 mark, you start to realize that maybe you rushed into this relationship a bit quick. Maybe your friends were right and this person you find yourself waking up next to is a complete mystery. From here until the end, you start to wonder if the developers (Funcom, a group I have/had the upmost respect for--look at my reviews for Dreamfall and The Longest Journey) spent their four+ years of development on creating Tortage.

I divorced Age of Conan last night. It wasn't as messy as I was expecting. There are some good ideas here. Tortage is amazing (the first few times you go through it, at least) and a lot of kudos should be given to the team as they crafted a story that could be told from four different perspectives. The combat system is an interesting take on a stagnant genre and I've discovered that it makes other MMOs feel slow by comparison. And the graphics are unmistakeably beautiful. But like that dumb model, once you strip away the beautiful exterior and the assets, you start to realize that there's not much depth underneath.

I loved Age of Conan in the beginning. Now, I just feel annoyed. There's a lot more I could have discussed (the lack of customer support, petitioning for issues that took days to be resolved, the horrible online community, the horrible lack of community outreach, the boring zones, the broken content, the content that was originally promised then silently scrapped, etc.), but the point is that Age of Conan isn't what I was expecting. Some people might enjoy it, but there's not enough content here to keep me coming back.

In the meantime, I'm getting back in the saddle. There's another one I have my eye on. I've seen Warhammer Online slyly making eyes at me from across the room. I've been thinking that maybe I'll saunter over and say hi. But this time, I'm going to take it slowly and get to know the game beforehand. This time, hopefully, I won't be burned.

Age of Conan is a well-constructed, beautifully-rendered, multi-layered MMORPG that includes features for every playstyle in the genre.

For those adventurers who prefer to explore solo, the world is vast, beautiful, and dangerous! In addition to the creatures, beasties and wild humans providing nail-biting combat with a fantastic AI, on two of the server types (FFA (free-for-all) PvP (Player vs. Player) and RP (roleplaying)-PvP), there is the added danger of edge-of-your-seat combat with player characters. There is, of course, a Player vs. Environment (PvE) ruleset on some servers that will allow the more reticent to get their game on in style without the added fear of being ganked.

Solo gamers who join AoC will find that all of the classes are solo-friendly to some extent. Funcom has included robust potion play for those OMG moments, though it's not so over-powering that it feels like going into god-mode.

Though Solo play is encouraged through many game-mechanic devices (such as the level 1-20 "destiny quests" which are 100% solo), the real meat of the game is in the group and guild play. The character classes compliment each other well - none is so overpowered as to have the proverbial "I Win" button. Healing is mostly over time, so priests can get into the fray and smack it up with the best of them without having to stand back and spam heals. Caster, range, stealth and melee classes round out the options, with choices offered being determined by race.

PvP, in addition to "out in the world" fights, can take place in "mini-games," similar to the Battlegrounds of WoW, but at a much faster pace. The options available in the beta were "Capture the Flag" and "Annihilate Opponents," both of which were engaging and fast-paced. The learning curve isn't too steep - We found with a little organization and an understanding that thr group needed to stay together, we won more times than lost.

There is crafting at level 40 (the cap is currently level 80) but I haven't seen that part yet. Crafting professions include armor, weapons, gemcutting, architecture, and alchemy. As crafting is one of those things that can make or break a game economy, I'm really looking forward to getting involved in it as soon as possible.

Questing is really rich in this game - dialogues are played like cut scenes, and the voice acting is top-notch. The quests include single runs and long storylines. Rewards are appropriate and always helpful depending on your level. The cities are teeming with NPCs, and most will have somethign to say to you or some quest to offer.

All-in-all, a fantastic game with a lot of potential for deep involvement. My final score, heading into launch, is 4.5 out of 5 stars, with .5 off for restricting crafting to the later levels.

****UPDATE****

I received the collector's edition from Gamestop yesterday, and I am overall very pleased with both the presentation and the contents! The art book is not hardbound as advertised, which is a disappointment, but both the artwork and behind-the-scenes storytelling are phenomenal.

The leatherette map is a nice touch - it's not really readable for the small fonts, but it's nice looking is a cool piece of Conan memoribilia.

The soundtrack, on the other hand, is the real gem in this collection. Atmospheric, often moving, sometimes even heartwrenching, this soundtrack is fantastic. We've had it in heavy rotation since we got up this morning, and it's lovely.

I recommend this collector's edition for the true fans of the genre - it's a great immersion into the AoC world, and I'm glad I spent the extra cash on it.

Thanks for reading!

(I posted this review on the regular version of the game as well, so if you are reading it and it sounds redundant, that's why... I did add the part about the Collectors Edition though!)

This game is unbelievable. It is definitely the next generation of MMO's. Beautiful graphics (yes, an upgrade on the computer was necessary in my case) amazing storyline and game play. No lag, and the combat system is fantastic.

The Collectors Edition is an amazing package- from the ingame items that can be given to all your characters, not limited to just the first one you have claim them to the package that you receive. The map, I have to admit, I am not certain what I will do with, but it is a nice addition. The score is beautiful and I can't wait to play the cd that they give to hear it all. The art book is also great value. If you can get your hands on one, I recommend it!

Graphics 10/10: Though they have announced that DX10 will not be released till later on this year, I am extremely impressed with the graphics in their current state, and can not wait to see how much better they get once it is released. The scenery is beautiful, the rendering and overall detailing is amazing. You really FEEL like you are there in the jungles- and the character movement itself is smooth. In this game, you run into actual characters- not like a lot of games out there where you run through them. The collision detection enhances the overall experience, making it seem more realistic.

Character Creation 9/10: Amazing. I can spend hours just doing this part of the game. Similar to EQ2, you are able to customize a great deal- body type and size of certain parts of your body, as well as facial reconstruction. You can even make your nose appear as if it had been broken and healed incorrectly. The only thing lacking in this department is hair styles. There aren't a great deal of them. Also, depending on the race you pick your colors are very limited i.e. Complexion, eye and hair color.

Story Line 10/10: From the moment your slave ship crashes, and you are washed up on an island, the game takes off immersing you in the world of Conan. You have to help escort someone to the major town (a lot easier than other escort quests) and right away you feel a sense of urgency with making certain you get out of the jungle. Once you arrive in the town, you have a series of quests that you need to complete in addition to your own class questline. Once you complete this, you move on to your home area... I unfortunately have not yet gotten this far.

Game Play 10/10: The combat system does take a little bit of figuring out, but once you do- wow. Not only does the AI (Artificial Intelligence) respond to what you do, but its amazing how you are able to effect multiple opponents with a single hit of your weapon. The spell casting graphics are quite impressive as well.

In the game play, when you converse with the characters, you're perspective changes and the camera angle zooms into the conversation, making you feel like you are actually there. I really like this about the game as it incorporates the player right from the start. You do have to listen to the dialog and make choices which I know will not appeal to some gamers who don't really care about the lore of the game, however when I play a video game I tend to immerse myself in it... and this game definitely allows one to do that.

Sound 10/10: The score in this game truly sets the scene. At night as you run around through the jungles outside of town, the music makes you sit on the edge of your seat in anticipation, waiting for something to jump out from around a corner and grab you. The character voice acting is wonderful- the speech inflection makes you believe that you are actually talking to a live person. You CARE about what happens to the characters, versus them just being paper dolls just standing there doing the same thing over and over again.

So as a recap, I definitely recommend this game, however, I suggest if you don't meet the minimum system specs to a T, to upgrade your system to the maximum specs. The minimum will get you there, but if you upgrade, you may as well go for the best of the best. Gaming is my hobby and I have already realized that I have a very expensive hobby. :)


See you all in Hyboria!

I'm editing this after having "finished" the game. First off I'm more PvE than PvP so if PvP is still where it's at then go for it.

Hands down funcom had a good idea but never fulfilled their commitment to improving the game. End game content was nothing more than tank and spank, grinding at certain levels was horrible, hours of just killing things around your level to get to the next level only to be disappointed by finding out there is nothing at the end other than some raid bosses that were nothing more than tank and spank. In game exploits to create unlimited gems never got fixed, FUncom nerfed the gems to "fix" the problem. FUncom would put in patches without testing only to find the system became more unstable. Zone crashes would happen 3-5 times a night, not just my computer, since our guild is on Vent, during raids we'd all get kicked only to be relogged in a zone with repopulated mobs and half the time the party would end up in different instances and couldn't get back together, calling a GM would take an hour or 3 days, if you que'd a petition, you'd get deleted if you didn't update it.
Guild Cities never worked, maybe they do now but it's too late for me, all that time and resources to build a tier 3 city only to find out buffs weren't working, Keep battles were a joke, walls that couldn't be destroyed, or holes in them so the attackers could just walk through.
Male/Female toons not attacking at the same speed so they nerfed male toon attack speed instead of fixing female toon speed but not adjusting mob attack speed, nerfing every class, necro for example 50% decrease to spell damage across the board, but didn't adjust the amount of aggro. Also when attacking with pet, you can have them attacke a mob, hide, go into another room and as soon as your pet attacked the mob knew exactly where you were and would make a bee line for you ignoring the attacks of the pets
More gold spammers than I've ever seen. Come on, when you search for people and there are 150 on the server and 60 of them are lvl 1 guardians with names like Assdssdfg and Assdssfgh? Grouping? never found an easy way to do that in PvE, if you were more than 5-7 levels differnent you'd lose XP and trying to find a group in your level range for a given quest was near impossible, even in a guild of over 75 active players we mostly ended up solo'ing all the PvE content to the end and tried the raids. Started beating the bosses but quickly realized that all the bugs in the game were ruining our game experience, we all left for previous MMO's or moving to Warhammer.

Travel was never fixed or sped up. Yeah wonderful graphics but having to spend 45 minutes to run from one side of the realm to the other for a raid or party quest is annoying, so if there was a party you could find, they'd have to wait for your to run from zone to zone to zone and run through each zone. If you do play the game, get a game card, enjoy it till you cap a toon, try a raid and then get rid of it. FUncom is coming out with an expansion already and they haven't even fixed the first release.

EDIT: I'm editing my review after over a month of playing AoC. This is mainly because the higher in level I get and the more "content" I've explored, my opinion of the game has dropped.

After reading and waiting for months for Age of Conan (AoC), I finally was able to get into Early Access (EA) on Saturday, May 17th.

On Saturday morning, imagine my disappointment when Funcom delays opening the servers by 3 hours! 3 hours?? What am I supposed to do now? Well, I got over my delay disappointment and on the specified hour, I promptly logged in, chose my server (Set) and started creating my character. I had no idea what I should choose so I went with a Stygian Ranger. The character customization is OK in AoC. I spent about 15 minutes constructing facial features, tattoos, scars, hair, and body type. Unfortunately there is a limit to the body and hair styles and there are some of the ugliest facial defaults I've ever seen in my life with one good looking one. Guess which one most people will be choosing? There is a lack of a color palette to choose from as well.

As the intro played, my poor Ranger washes up on the beach of Tortage and is greeted by a creepy old man. Here is where I learned the basics of fighting and interacting with the environment. While combat is tricky at first, I eventually got the hang of it. The main thing I like about combat are the fatalities. I've already had the pleasure of gutting and cutting off the heads of my opponents. I've also gotten some sweet fatality deaths from my bow and arrow. It does my heart good to see enemies fall with an arrow in their throat and blood spewing from their mouths!

This leads me to the "mature" content. Granted, by the end of the weekend I was just level 21 but the mature content is really negligible. The most risque stuff I witnessed was in general world chat (or OOC). Sure, the blood and decapitations are cool and the half-naked women rock, but AoC would get a PG-13 rating instead of an R if it were a movie. EDIT: After a month of playing, there are some topless women and toons which would earn this game an R-rating.

Back to my first day, it was tough. While I had no problems with lag, fps, or any of that stuff (I have a relatively top shelf computer), dealing with so many people scrambling for slow spawning mobs became a chore. Imagine trying to gather 40 hides of crocodile leather and you are competing with twenty other players in one small section of an island where maybe 15 crocs spawn. Remember when I wrote "slow spawning" well, yeah, there you go. I eventually completed these tasks as well as my destiny quests and moved on to my homeland starting area.

As for the environments of Tortage, they are rich and detailed. There is a lot of eye candy and you can move around fairly easily in it though you are limited to specific zones. More on that below. Cons movement wise can be filtered down to a "climbing" skill. I'm not particularly sure why this is here and why it's not user friendly. I have to hit "U" or right click on a ladder or vine to scramble up it. If I don't keep my eye on the chat window and catch the alarm "YOU CAN CLIMB HERE!!" I would have missed climbing opportunities.

Zones. The bane of my existence! AoC is instance/zone heavy. This is a bit disappointing especially since you may find yourself repeatedly going back and forth between them which eats up real time of watching a loading screen. What I would do was gather all the quests I could find and just head to a specific zone (White Sands for example) and stay there until all my quests were complete. I'm sure this is what most people did. EDIT: The more I play this, the more I hate instance/zones. Sometimes they load fast but more often than not lately, they load extremely slow which makes me a frustrated panda and more disheartened.

Anyhoo, toons don't just walk through each other like ghosts but can actually block you. This may prove to be very cool when higher level PVP kicks in as formations would actually mean something. Imagine a bunch of conquerors forming up a shield wall to prepare and defend their battlekeep. God that's awesome. Not to mention that line of sight issues appear to be right on track so far. I can get on high ground and fire down into my enemies without LOS errors or those annoying "evades" you'd always see in WoW. This would make for excellent ambush opps in PVP play as well as full scale battles. I'm really looking forward to it! EDIT: The latest is that full on battlekeep PVP is still borked limiting organized PVP engagements. Another disappointing item that makes it seem that Funcom really did rush this out without completing the Beta.

So far from what I've seen, despite some of the cons I pointed out from my own perspective, this is a fun game. I look forward to discovering more features of AoC as I progress because I know I'm just at the tip of the iceberg! EDIT: As of this date (July 2, 2008), the playability and fun of the game is decreasing for me. Big patches are now being released once a week but some of the updates I've seen, seem irrelevant to the big picture. Fixing the look on an NPC's face over fixing the obvious memory leaks which causes crashing even on high end computers makes me scratch my head in puzzlement.

I'm going to continue to play, but come September, if nothing has significantly changed, I will probably be quitting AoC and moving on to Warhammer Online. If Warhammer turns out to be a stinker as well, I guess I'll head back to WoW and wait for the expansion.

I've had this game for a couple weeks now and I've played it fairly regularly during that time (70+ hrs. accrued), so here are my thoughts on it:

The Pros:
This game is very entertaining. The graphics are very good. Engrossing storyline.

The Cons:
1. Still very much a work in progress with system issues. At the time of this writing, there are still major problems with the game. (Ex. Gemcutter profession causing crashing to the desktop.) While FunCom is working to address these, these should've been handled prior to release. When you first install, expect to spend literally hours or days (depending on your connection speed) to download the updates to fix them.

2. Playability issues - I've only had experience with the Necromancer class, so I can only report on that (as well as general issues):

A. Resource Gathering - At level 20, you become able to gather resources, but if it comes from anything other than fallen enemies, it comes from a resource node. These nodes have terrible recharge rates (ex. I went to mine Silver and needed to wait for the node to recharge. I waited an entire 45 minutes and the node was at less than 30% capacity after that). Expect to spend tons of time waiting for resources.

B. Boss/Quest Item spawning - Like resource nodes, these have terrible spawn rates. Also, be wary of other players present, because if you need to kill X, the game only recognizes the first player (unless you are in a group) as to damage X as the "killer" of X. Ex. People A & B need to kill monster Y. B hits first for 1% and then gets slain by Y. A finishes it off. B gets the credits (and spoils) where A gets nothing and will need to wait for Y to spawn again.

C. Unreasonable targetting - As a Necromancer, one gets to summon undead minions to help you (obviously). Well, once you send your minions to attack, the adversary immediately tracks and attacks you, and ignores your minions. Why? I don't understand this aspect. I've sent various minions to attack at extreme range, and then I go around a corner to hide, and yet, I am still targetted. Why? The monsters have no way of seeing me or detecting me. (There are skills that reduce the auto-targetting, but these generally are worthless (1% reduction of being attacked automatically = useless in my book).) I guess I'm expecting more of a realistic approach (like in Guild Wars), where one's minions are treated as valid targets for attack just like everyone else.

3. Very poor documentation - A lot of aspects of this game are not covered or are just plain wrong in the manual. Ex. "Spells can be acquired from merchants" - no, they are acquired by levelling up or spending points for feats which grant spells. There are no skill/spell merchants (as in Guild Wars). Ex. Item distribution in groups. If an item is acquired by a group a window pops up showing the item with buttons of "Need" and "Greed". Nowhere in the manual is this discussed. So, one is often left wondering what the heck to do. (Yes, you can go online and check various forums to get the necessary info., but documentation should cover basics and be accurate).

4. Ambiguous quests - This is mainly the resource tree quests. You will be given quests like "Gather Tin". Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you where to get tin. Only through trial and error (or looking at the online forums) you find out that it comes from a copper resource node, and hope that while you're collecting copper, you'll get a tin drop.

General Overall feeling:

This game is neat and the storyline is intriguing, but feels like that I'm playing a beta version of the game. While I fully believe that FunCom will address all the issues (system and playability alike), these shouldn't have even arisen in a "live" version. (Especially with a subscription-based model.) The various extras that came with the Collector's edition are nice; I especially liked the soundtrack.

I started playing this game the second servers opened up for Early Access, and I must say this game is simply amazing! I played WoW for 5 years, and countless MMO titles prior to Age of Conan, and this game leaves them all behind!

While it does require an up-to-date system to run, it was worth every cent I spent upgrading my computer, and I already know that this game will keep me more than happy for years to come.

Playing on day one of early access, May 17th, this game showed no signs of any problems at all. You'd think this title had been up and running successfully for years. No server lag, no buggy feel, no crashes, for me at least, a few have mentioned problems, but their systems met only the bare minimums to play this game.

I have an SLI setup with two 8800gts 512s, and a quad core system with dual AMD Windsor processors, and 4gigs of ram, and am running Vista Ultimate 64bit.

I play the game in 1920x1080 on my 40" Sony Bravia HDTV, so a system not as good as mine can play this game perfectly with high frames per second on a smaller monitor, and/or in a lower resolution than mine.

It is without a doubt the best looking game I have ever seen in my life, and the combat is the best thing to happen to this genre since the conception of MMOs! Buy this game now! You will not regret it!!!

As beautiful and innovative as this game is, its not ready for prime time, and you should save yourself a tremendous amount of heartburn by waiting a few months until it is.

As of this writing (6/6/2008), these are the problems being experience by myself and the 80+ members of my guild on a regular bases.

1) People can't log into the game at all after the patch (a week ago). They try to play the game, and it just goes to a black screen. Some have used the Windows task manager as a work around to get logged in, but the game is unstable afterwards. FunCom has made no effort to provide a solution, they simply say they are monitoring the reports. There are people who have everything from the minimum configured PC, the the "uber" PCs.

2) Its an instancing game ... that is, x number of people play in a zone, when there's too many, a new instance of the zone is created and players are put there. This approach works only if players can change instances to meet up with friends. Right now, changing instances is broken.

3) For the PvP environments, there are absolutely zero mechanics to deter level 80's from hunting down and harassing level 20s. And because so much is broken at the moment, that's all the 80's have to fill their time with.

4) Zones/Instances just stop responding, and there's nothing you can do but exit the game. Before we could change instances, but since they don't allow that anymore, you have to quit the client.

5) Group mechanics are totally broken. Group members are randomly dropped, or players are not able to see they are in a group when in fact they are. Sometimes they is a simple log-out and back in. But sometimes you have to completely shut down your PC and do a cold boot.

6) The Guild City mechanics don't work, or are turned off by FunCom. The players don't know which because the Developers won't tell us.

7) The crafting system is broken. If you make a crafted item and fit it with a socket, it doesn't match the data structure used by the rest of the inventory system ... so every time you mouse over it, or anything that compares itself to it, the game crashes.

8) Harvesting of resources is broken. Resources are "tier" based and you are required to complete the gathering of one tier before moving to the other ... but the items needed don't spawn the in the game.

9) They have a volunteer GM corps that handles all the petitions for problems in the game. But this corps is under trained, over-worked, and pack a huge attitude towards the players. It can take days to get get a response from a GM to your petition. But the average seems to be between 12 and 16 hours. There are some GMs that are stellar, but the vast majority are rude, short, and usually can't help you with your problem because they don't have the privilages needed. But rather than escalating your petition, they clear it and you have to start all over. If you are offline when they get to your petition, too bad, they clear it anyway and send you a message saying, "Sorry we missed you."

10) This game takes you from level 1 to level 80 fairly rapidly. Even legitimately people can get to 80 in about 3 weeks. This is fine, because the game is about the "end game" not the level grind. The problem is, there's very little content for the 55+ range. What content there is, is so over camped its simply an exercise in frustration to try and get quests done. If their instancing system worked, that would be a partial solution, but it doesn't. There needs to be much more content in the 55+ levels.

11) Quests are broken. You can't complete them, or if you do them with a group, you have to reset the instance and do it over for every member of your party.

12) Bugs in buffs and debuffs that allow exploiters to just grief people while remaining immune. They either stack far beyond what they are supposed to, don't expire when they should ... allowing the player to add another. Or, in the case of a debuff, they won't expire when they are supposed to and you have to log out and back in to clear them.

13) The trading system (Auction House) does work, but its so 1970s by design the Developers should be ashamed. Its not really an auction house, its just a system where you post an item and set a price. It always breaks items you put up for sale ... because if they don't sell and you decide to vendor them instead ... they won't show up in your list of items to sell at at the vendor once they've been listed on the trader.

14) The vendor system that looks like it was a complete "after thought" ... we have a better vendor system in MMO's 12 years ago. Its simply a list of everything in your inventory (except equipped gear) presented in a list. If you accidentally sell the wrong thing, you can "undo". But once you close the vendor, the undo goes away, there is no "oh crap" and going back and getting it. Also, there's no what to flag an item as a "no sell" item, and they all use very common icons ... so you're constantly sorting through your inventory for what you want to sell and what you don't.

15) There is a bug where if a zone crashes, or you are apprenticed when you level ... the next level's (or even the current level's) total experience requirement doubles or triples. And there is currently no fix, and the GM's just tell you to gut it out, because again, they don't have the authority or privileges to fix it.

In the two years that I've had this computer, I'd never seen a blue screen on it. Sure, I'd seen crashes, but I'd never seen a blue screen. I see at least one a day while playing this game. As does viturally everyone else in my guild.

I, like many others, had great hopes for this game, and still do. But right at this moment in time (again 6/6/2008) the game is nothing more than a broken version of "Guild Wars" on steroids.

And unfortunately, we get little from FunCom except the acknowledgement that there are problems in two sentences, and then paragraphs of what they are going to do for us in the future.

So my recommendation to my friends here; Wait for the future before you buy this game. Stay in touch with someone in the game who you can trust, and when they say its actually ready, get it it. If it weren't so broken, it is definately worth playing.

In game moderators banning people left and right in game for utilizing terrain to defeat mobs. Forum Mods banning and deleting any post that is critical of their game flame or not. In game issues like falling through the world and your petition for help spans for days without response. No directx10 what so ever. System spec to run game are wrong on the box. Very poor support for 32 bit systems.No responses to emails to their supposed service desk and the list goes on and on. Do your self a favor and pass on this game. The 50$ you save will be better spent in your fuel tank.

Age of Conan is hands down the most beautiful MMORPG on the market, and most likely will be for the forseeable future. Funcom has pushed the tech envelope with this game, which will cause some people heartache because they may not be able to run it with all the bells and whistles. I am running AoC on an Intel C2Duo e6600, 8800GT with 3 GB on Vista 32 on high settings and getting 40+ FPS and no lag. Here are the features that set AoC apart from the other MMORPG leaders:
-Incredible voice acting
-Excellent Celtic soundtrack
-Best visuals of any MMO, and even bests most non-MMO RPGs. Spell effects will floor you.
-Character creation that rivals Oblivion
-Great classes unlike you've seen in other MMORPGs. Priest classes in this game don't sit back and heal. The Priest is on the front line with the tanks basking in the glory of combat. Rangers, Assassins, Barbarians, Tempest of Set, every class unique and fun to play.
- Mature rating makes for some great quests. The quest system is great and the quests very fun and dynamic
- Combat system is the most involving in the genre. You can't get up to use the bathroom in the middle of a raid in this game! Fatality animations are INCREDIBLE and really make for a fun PvP experience
-You can choose to solo (best do that on a PvE server) or run raids and PvP matches in group. Great content no matter which type of player you are
- Creates the true feel of Robert E. Howard's world. Conan lives on in this game!

Needs work:

- UI a little clunky, Zboard or G15 keyboard is recommended but not necessary to enjoy the game
- Crafting system is a little weak
Good news is both of those issues can eaily be addressed. I have not had this much fun playing an MMORPG for many years. If you are a fan of the genre and have the PC to run it well, you don't want to pass this game up.