I first heard about Age of Conan from one of the blog sites I visit. I was interested by the combat system and the idea of having DX10 graphics in an MMO. Already looking for a WoW killer, I was hooked. I told all my friends about it and begged them to unlatch themselves from Blizzard's comforting nipple and come over to Conan with me. None came because of the ridiculous system requirements. My computer was already out dated so I decided to future proof myself (hopefully...) and get Conan. So then Conan arrived and I played away on my little Assassin - reliving my D2 days. The class balancing was terrible when I played the game and it seemed like my class as well as others had an awful time of leveling. I initally thought that Funcom had upped the anti when it came to questing. I had been used to the incredible ease of WoW so I shrugged it off to that. But then I tried to solo a night quest that was green to me at the time. So I go in stealthed, ready to spread some pain-filled mayhem, when i notice that there are mobs all in groups of at least 2, all at level 20 (my current level). I quickly look at the quest log again and sure enough it's still green to me. I charge in and get spotted by one and then I unleash my fury upon them both, killing one but dying to the second. Strange I thought. I figured there might be some sort of trick to stealth past them so I look at the Assassin forums. Sure enough there are pages and pages of people pleading Funcom to fix the Assassin class because we are so weak. I was outraged. Wasn't this what the beta was for? How can one class be so rediculously weak while other classes like the Barbarian and Ranger were sneezing over groups of 10 with ease? So after that I rolled a Ranger and what a difference. I could solo anything by myself. But I had played a hunter in WoW and was tired of the whole ranged combat deal.
Another thing about that game that bothered me was the environments outside of Tortage. Tortage was a lush jungle filled with life and stuff, but beyond that I went to a desert that was arid and lacking any sustance other than the occiasional creature. Tortage seemed to be what the entire game was meant to be, but for some reason, they rushed it and gave us a pay-to-play beta.
Don't even get me started on professions. Half of them were bugged and caused errors whenever I tried to gather materials.
So that's pretty much it. 1.5 stars for the combat system (which the only thing that kept me logging in for the early acess period), and .5 a star for the graphics- even though they aren't DX10 yet.
Also, to all the inevitable "it's an MMO, it will have bugs at the start....give it time.". Stop saying that. Really. There is no excuse for a gaming company no matter what they are selling to release a game in a broken state. NONE. Looks like Anarchy Online duo for Funcom.
