By Jim Rossignol on December 21st, 2009 at 1:43 pm.
Funcom have announced that Age Of Conan’s trial will, up to January 1st, allow anyone who signs in to play up to level 20 for free. That’s the whole of Tortage Island, arguably one of the best bits of the game. Thanks to the dangers of gold-farming scum exploiting this system you won’t be able to trade with other players or use public chat channels during that time, but there are some in-game bonuses if you do decide to sign up for full access.
Interesting promo. Might be enough for me to give it a try.
On the other hand, not being able to chat or even trade? That’s one of the biggest parts of any mmorpg. Where’s the mmo in it when you can’t communicate?
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Might I just say that all MMO trials have have a trade restriction. If not, you will simply have thousands of gold farmers abusing it. All though, I think a chat restriction is stupid. As in, a bad move by Funcom as it will greatly diminish the MMO experience but wouldn’t really be a problem if allowed. Unless Conan has a particular problem with spammers that other MMOs don’t.
CAPTCHA? WTF! When in hells red fields of blood did RPS start having spammer problems?!! I WILL NOT BE TREATED WITH THIS BS! Show me spammer proof!
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We’ve had loads of spam over the past few weeks, hence the captcha.
If you register and log in normally, then there is no captcha.
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Jim Rossignol: Gotcha, wasn’t aware of spammer problems. Also, was not aware I could log in to stuff here. Hmmm… the world is opening up to me.
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You should be able to chat and trade with other Trial account users
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You only can not use the public chat channel. Group chat, whisper and so on works like normal.
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What is the best in life? Not having to download a 20GB client to play a shoddy broken MMO.
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Anyone remember all the bull we were told before launch – they actually said that even if you did not sub to the game you would continue to play the games starting area. They are only following through on that promise, but with for a limited period. Saying that, the amount of bull flying around from the developers was truely epic … DX10 on the box and how long did that take to appear?
Shite game from a shite bullshitting company
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Yeah, no thanks.
I went back to the game the last time they gave a free week of play to former subscribers because people kept telling me how much the game improved only to find out it really didn’t.
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Yes, same here. Went back to find it abandoning many of the ideas that made it interesting in the early days. It’s more mainstream dungeon grind/loot-fest now than before, and I personally don’t like it. That’s probably mostly because I dislike the modern mainstream MMO style (read: WoW and all that). We need a true ‘World of Evecraft’ more than ever.
And oh, many game-features are half-done, broken or the like. PVP quite a mess.
But it retains it’s awesome graphics, good sidequest stories, epic locations and immersive music – no doubt about it. So it’s worth a shot for those of you who are new. Just don’t expect the rest of the game to be as well-polished as Tortage though.
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My Post Mortem Analysis still rings true!
http://www.r1ft.com/age-of-conan/age-of-conan-a-post-mortem-analysis/
YE BE WARNED
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You’ll be able to play that section forever if you log in before January 1st.
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This is a bit of a desperate attempt from an MMO developer struggling against the competition of WoW, innit? Like the “Play for free up to level 10 – forever!” promo in Warhammer (which I tried and found it boring).
Also, 20 GB? No way I will even consider it.
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I was, also, kind of interested until the whole 20gb part.
No.
Way.
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Yeah, a bit too much for someone with a 30 gb monthly cap…
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I brought that up when the demo/trial was enormous. The people I was conversing with reacted like it was the most normal thing in the world and I was terribly behind.
Thank the bandwidth gods it is not (Incidentally I think Crom would be the god of bandwidth; he’s an earth/resource god that’s stingy and capricious. It’s right up his alley)
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Oh, you negative nellies!
It’s actually a rather decent MMO now. Content caps have been patched, UI stupidities fixed, instability is gone etc. etc. Yeah, the large-scale PvP stuff might still be broken, but who cares.
The game’s barrels of fun, especially if you happen to appreciate R. E. Howard’s literary output.
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I love REH.
The Conan MMO to level 20 is… about three days play max. IF you have a life.
Worthless promo for a broken, unappealing game.
Discounting the download, AOC to level 20 is fun enough, but the prospect of doing it again and again with each new character…
Fortunately you can get through Tortage in a day with all quests done.
Then the grind begins.
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If you find AoC’s PvE after lvl 20 grindy, you’ll find any MMO grindy. The only thing separating the post-20 game from Tortage, is the lack of voice acting in most of it. The writing of the quests is the exact same quality, sometimes better. The post-20 game also has several interesting group instances which don’t show up in the pre-20 part.
I’ve been away for a few months, as I’ve been periodically unsubscribing and then resubbing, but unless they’ve broken something major recently, I wouldn’t call the game broken. There’s a number of small bugs that have gone unfixed since the release, but none of those are gameplay-affecting.
Actually, my biggest problem with AoC was the community. Not in the way you would think though. I’ve been playing on Hyrkania, the PvE-RP server, and the community is almost *too* friendly, in a way that I haven’t seen in any of the maybe dozen MMOs I’ve tried. The community was so friendly and close, that actually playing the game would get difficult. I’m not a terribly social person in real life, but I tend to repay kindness with kindness, so my friends list would just get longer and longer, and I’d get bombarded with tells constantly.
In the end, I’d have a friends list of 80 people in two guilds, and I’d know the intimate details of many of these person’s lives, from someone’s mestrual cycle to what meds someone else’s girlfriend is taking for her depression. And all this time I just wanted to Crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their women.
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I was really tempted by this as I do like a nice bit of Conan.
Sadly clocking in at 20gb it can get stuffed!
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Signed up last week and I’ve played up to level 6. It’s interesting and the environment is pretty. But there’s just something in the mechanics and character animation that seems…fragile and skittish. Doesn’t seem smooth, I can’t put my finger on what exactly irks me.
Still, it’s been interesting and worth the download. I wouldn’t put it up there with DDO and WoW yet.
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I cannot stand the spellcasting system in AoC. Standing still on the spot because you can’t do anything while moving, is just bad. It feels incredibly bad when you just stand there with a melee creature beating your face in, trying to get your spell off in time.
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The 20 first levels have nothing to do with the other levels. So to me this is shoddy…
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Just look at it this way, they are offering you a chance to play everything that is good about their game for free, since the game is total and complete shit past 20. Anyone dumb enough to subscribe at this point gets exactly what they deserve.
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“since the game is total and complete shit past 20.”
Have you even played the game anytime recently (or at all even)? No? Then please don’t run your mouth off on stuff you have no idea about.
There’s no shortage of content for leveling at this point, no grind, plenty of quests for ALL level ranges and plenty of areas to level in. You have three areas for level 20-35 or so: Connal’s Valley, Wild Lands of Zelata and Khopshef Province each of which has a unique theme and a completely different vibe to it. Then you have The Field of the Dead (35-50) and Tarantia Noble District (40-45), and after that the Eiglophean Mountains (50-60), followed by Ymir’s Pass (56-65), Atzel’s Approach (60-70), Tarantia’s Common District (78-80) and Kheshatta (70-80) all of which are filled with more than enough quests for you to reach 80.
If anything, now that I’ve seen the rest of the game, Tortage is no longer my favorite part.
The only thing that’s different at this point from the first 20 levels is the voice acting, which is nigh non-existent once you’re off Tortage.
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