Anybody tried Age of Conan?

MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
edited January 2010 in Gaming
I burned out on WOW a long time ago. Mainly because I play solo or in small select groups. I like to have to use some strategy to complete an objective. I went back to playing City of Heroes/Villains for a while, but it quickly reminded me of how boring it was. I got interested in the Star Trek online game which is from the City of Heroes/Villains company. It turns out to be COH/COV with space ships so I went looking for something different. Ended up in Age of Conan. It is rated mature and requires you be age 17+ to play. It is mature for several reasons. First is the GORE. When you hack someone with a sword, the limb may come off, or the head, or organs. Blood sprays all over and drips off you and your equipment. Combat is different in that there is no auto attack. You hit a key for each swing and where to hit. You can "read" your opponent and where he is defending so you try to hit where he is not. Magic works very similar. If I immolate someone they will catch fire and run twisting and screaming until they collapse as a smoking blackened corpse on the ground. This is definitely not WOW!. You can also fight from horseback and can have giant siege attack mounts (mine is a mammoth) to attack with against city fortresses and in large battles they will sweep tusks side to side rending troops and players into pieces.

The character models are very attractive and realistic. This is also what adds to the mature rating. When they get "naked" they are completely nude except genitals (very small thong). The NPC's even flirt and a lot of innuendo is used. Language is also more realistic and adult when interacting with the NPCs.
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The game is set in the period after the "Conan" movies when he is left being the King so he is mentioned a lot. You don't start out in his kingdom, but one of the bordering kingdoms so you interact with a lot of his "people". Quests all seem to make sense and the story line is very interesting. One unique thing is that when starting a character and doing the early quests you get the same story from that characters unique perspective. My Ranger/Rogue had to sneak and climb around and hide to gather intel or steal an amulet, while my mage had to infiltrate as the evil mages apprentice and report back about the amulet so the rogues could steal it. Each class you play up you learn more of the back story and how things happened and why the resistance made the choices they made.<O:p></O:p>
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I know this game had a lot of bugs when it came out, but it runs very smooth for me right now and is a very interesting and fresh take on the MMO.<O:p></O:p>

If you played, what did you think of it overall? I only have 3 level 20 characters so far (level 80 is max). I was so impressed with the trial I paid for a year up front (makes it about 7 dollars a month) so i am kinda "stuck" with it, but I still would be interested in what some seasoned players thought.

I'm really enjoying the game so far. If you get bored one weekend give it a try. Don't think you can just hop in for a quick look though. My game directory is almost 20Gb after finally downloading the full game. The trial is 13.8Gb I believe. The price for HD textures and models I guess.

Comments

  • Gate28Gate28 Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    tl;dr

    I played AoC for a month when it was launched and hated it. It played just like WoW except instead of being able to auto-attack, you had to pound the directional buttons to do anything. I played though Noob Island and was pretty underwhelmed and once I got past there into the real game the monotony of the quests and the blandness of the cities and surroundings totally turned me off.

    I will say, though, that I was impressed with the idea of mounted combat and their implementation of guild cities, except that you had to cross the whole goddamn game to get to your city.
  • doozerdoozer Florida Member
    edited January 2010
    I also played AOC when it first came out, mainly because there is a class named "Bear Shaman". I got to around 30 and quit for pretty much the same reasons Gate said. It's very linear and has very little appeal to max out and start gearing up, I heard they actually started making your first 20 levels or so free just to make the game a little more populated.
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