Age of Conan, with modest to decent coverage in the earliest days, continues to proclaim impressive numbers.
Not only did Funcom declare that a million signed up for the open beta, and indeed boast that the Collector’s Edition sold out pre-launch, but now it appears to be one of the fastest selling PC games of all time.
400,000 people are already playing in the lands of Hyboria in the first few days, announce Funcom, rather excitedly. YouGamers point out that this is still a couple of hundred thousand short of the server capacity, but it’s only been available for the weekend – helpfully a holiday weekend in both the US and UK. Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas states,
“The initial sales and reviews are very encouraging, and it’s great to see that so many are enjoying Age of Conan. This is just the beginning, and we already look forward to massive updates and cool new features. We believe our focus on making Conan unique and groundbreaking is a key reason for the initial success. This is a focus we will keep and reinforce, and players can expect continued quality and innovation as we enter a new era for the game.”
He failed to add: and here is a video of the game where a lady shows her boobies.
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Opinions not insults, please.
Unless it has permadeath – and I’m fairly certain it doesn’t – I’m just going to consider it to be World of UlimaQuest Online XI.
For the moment it’s proving to be reasonably fun, mainly due to the combat mechanism, but I get the nagging feeling that all it is is a series of variations on gather 10 bear spleen quests. The UI is pretty terrible, I find myself fighting against the chat and slash commands whenever I try and use them, there should be no excuse for this. I’m a big fan of WoW’s visual style, but I’m enjoying the looks of AoC and it’s atmosphere, the ancient world feel to it is refreshing compared to the countless numbers of medieval themed fantasies.
As far as gameplay elements are concerned, Conan is something of a step backwards on WoW. Apart from the combat system, which ultimately is somewhat superficial, the game steps away from open, loading-times free world design, does not encourage productive world-PvP, and backs down from heavy death penalties in favour of a near unnoticeable minor debuff to your character on death.
On top of this, characters barely specialise as a result of talent trees, and there is a horrendous lack of gear, to the point that everyone is wearing 90% the same items the entire time. Itemisation is further undermined by compulsory quests that give items at, say, level 40, that are superior in every way to level 50 optional quest rewards.
The game can only ultimately aspire to be a WoW clone, and as such has carved itself a niche in the sense that it actively courts the older, more ‘mature’ player, who FunCom appear to hope are jaded by WoW’s player-base, and so will switch to AoC for more of what they know, but less of what they dislike. There is evidence among player opinions that this is working very well, with snide, anti-WoW comments (mostly unfounded and wholly innacurate) being chucked around constantly, by the players. Sadly, the manner in which it defines itself as ‘mature’ is via breasts and blood, which is somewhat ironic. Also, it’s doubtful that the game’s rating will really keep out all the supposed 14 year olds that ‘ruined’ WoW, and regardless there is still a healthy population of totally immature people, regardless of what their age may be in reality.
A very pretty game, but one that is ultimately a WoW clone, and is designed in such a way as to never be capable of being patched beyond that. In fact, game design is so clearly rigid that I worry how the game will attempt to evolve itself in order to remain entertaining. WoW’s engine and design was very open-ended, with additions in mind. AoC is the stark opposite.
Thelps, were you reviewing WoW or AoC there? I couldn’t quite tell.
There is a few fourm psoters who make all the noise. now there going out and spreading there message
Age of Conan is a fun MMO with a solid launch. It has gained a lot of popularity, both from casual and hardcore gamers alike, and has a strong foundation for future updates.
That sounds a bit like a press release.
I do know that Conan were words before being Arnie’s pectoral muscles. But still I like to think that AoC is, as Mr. Wisely put it, based on a “camp Arnie flick from ages ago”. That’s wrong but amusing.
And I’m almost sure that, for a lot of people born in the 80s, especially where English isn’t spoken* (or actually, read), “Conan” is firstly that “camp Arnie flick from ages ago”. So I’d venture to say that there was something relevant in Mr. Wisely’s comment about the attraction of such licence. Hell, it could even has been irony ! Even if (we know) it wasn’t, smile, people :D
* In french, we have a famous spoonerism with Conan le Barbare. If you switch the ending sound of both words, you have something that sounds like “Connard le Barbant”, which translates to (pardon me) Dickhead the Boring
Arsewisely: Warhammer will prove more compelling as a basis for an MMO than Conan? Firstly – I’m not a Conan fan – I’m a Warhammer fan. Secondly, what a totally moronic statement. Comparing something as rich as the Conan ouevre (and remember, I’m not a Conan fan) to something as contemporary and geekboy as Warhammer (and remember, I AM a Warhammer fan) is like comparing the Warcraft universe to Tolkien’s (and I’m also a Warcraft fan).
Yes, I am aware that Conan was the ‘geekboy’ fad of its day but Howard – whilst he built off his own influences – wasn’t quite as obvious about those influences as the Warhammer creators (who are, I hasten to reiterate, awesome – because I’m a fan of Warhammer xD).
Both will be interesting in their own way, I’m sure. But it isn’t likely to be because the Warhammer universe is ‘more compelling’ than Conans. They’re more likely to succeed or fail based on their individual merits as games.
You’re just an arse, Arsewisely, for opening your mouth about something as huge as the Conan universe without employing a teensy little bit of thought (or, god forbid, as someone else pointed out – Google) first… Yes, it’s your opinion but people would have more respect for it if you actually thought about it first.
Have you played WoW lately? Pretty much everyone is wearing their bloody honor-bought PvP gear. Not much a difference there. In both games, if there’s superlative gear that is relatively easy to get, people will always use that. Besides, WoW’s openness is really just a masquerade: pretty much every zone has got one entrance and one exit, and no loading screen.
While the instancing of AoC does bother me, there are ups and downs. WoW does not have any collision-mapping for players, but AoC does. So, it’s easy to see why thinning out the number of people in one place is beneficial in the latter game. Not to mention it’s easier on the hardware.
I’d say that WoW and AoC essentially operate in the same space, but appeal to different people. In this case, those people are primarily bored with WoW, which is fine.
The most important and better content in WoW is instanced also anyway. Even the best open world content doesn’t come close to the greatness of the average instances. That greatness is possible exactly because they’re instanced.
So, does AoC work in a similar way to Guild Wars then, with the various instances of the same area you can jump to and the like? Not totally sold on that but whatever if the game is solid and what it tries to do it does well.
Still, I wish more companies would treat their MMOs like the Eve developers. They don’t try to cash in on expansions for example, they make the expansions “free” to keep people interested in order to keep paying the standard monthly fee (which is also more reasonable than that of other MMOs).
Let’s see what FUNCOM does with their game but sadly, I bet that given its success, they’ll go to the cash in route…
Having never played Guild Wars, I can only give you a hearsay kind of affirmation that AoC works similarly. Having actually played Tabula Rasa, I can definitely tell you that the two are almost identical in their handling of instancing.
However! It isn’t very easy to coordinate who is in what instance when you’re in a party. They probably should have made a more simplistic visual indicator of what instance you’re in, outside of pulling up this damn menu and looking for a little icon that may-or-may-not be correct. I suspect that they’ll be ironing that out, since it is a minor inconvenience if you anticipate it. Having come from WoW, I’m not really used to that sort of thing, but as I mentioned earlier, I’m also not used to players having collision mapping either, so I feel like it’s a decent compromise.
The game is great. However, there are still some fundamental flaws, imbalances, and it’s pretty much still in it’s childs shoes. This will all be fixed most likely within a month or 2, however, i am afraid there will be lots of whine and gripe as the developers simply can’t iron out the bugs before the masses reach to the levels where bugs and… design flaws become more and more apparent.
I think the game is terrific. It’s the first MMO to top Wow quality wise for me. The gameplay is very refreshing and the world design is totally awesome.
Some feats aren’t implemented yet but they are patching regularly.
I see lots of people saying that there is a lack of endgame content but there are 4 raid dungeons and 8 lvl80 group dungeons if I remember. That’s a lot more than what wow had at launch, and even for the next year !
I think the game has very good endgame PvE content for a release, and with the PvP cities, we have lots and lots to do before we run out of content.
My guild has built some buildings already and it’s hard and expensive, but in a few months it’ll be really awesome :D