Age of Conan: A mini-review

Look at me following through so quickly. Nice new banner, not made by me, and a mini-review!

So, I think its safe to say that I have come to dislike MMOs in general. WoW was great, EQ was great but since then, all have fallen short and I can't get back into them. LotRO was nice, is nice, but I don't have the heart to grind out to max level and start again, or deal with other things.

Age of Conan is the newest MMO to come out and has a lot of hype behind it. Some say its better than WoW, or at least equal to it. So after sitting through the rather long install and a longer patch, I fired up an Assassin and went to work. Combat is different and probably takes a lot of getting used to. Instead of auto-attack, you select where you attack your enemies. Left, Right or Center. There are white arrows that show where the enemies defense is the strongest, which is helpful since you want to place your attacks where there is none. Its confusing at first but you can get used to it. Instead of special attacks, there are combos. Hit the combo button, the correct attack direction and bamo! Spiffy attack. Its interesting and may get better after more time with it but thus far, I prefer the auto attack for normal attacks and special attacks on timers.

The graphics are good on my rig, though I do not meet the "recommended" specs. Your character is a little to shiny for me, though it may get better with a better system. At the early stages, like EVERY OTHER FRIGGIN MMO OUT THERE, you look like a homeless person and not a would-be-hero. Again, this may change but I doubt it. More of a personal pet peeve of mine. Still, combat animations are smooth and the world looks good. Sounds are well done and the voice acting, which I think only EQ 2 has really done for every quest, is solid.

There are different servers, PvP, PvE and RP. You would expect that servers would be just what they claim to be but after going to the first area outside of the starting city, I was promptly ganked by someone 10 levels higher than me, while he was in combat. Fun? Not fucking really. I hate PvP when I don't expect it. If I want PvP, I go to it. Main reason I stay the fuck off PvP servers, because being ganked is fucking annoying. I don't expect to log into a RP server and get ganked by some PvP jack ass. Now, in the manual it does say that RP servers are RP/PVP but it does not say that on the server list. Fucking stupid. Which means, my un-happy ass has to start the newbie area all over again because I refuse to play with people who enjoy ganking each other.

Anyway. There you go. Some good things, some bad. If things don't get better, I can't see my self becoming attached to this game past my free 30 days. Again, though, that can change.