Age of Conan: "Real" launch imminent / Reward for testers
Age of Conan: "Real" launch imminent / Reward for testers
This recent picture of our beta character in Age of Conan not only shows why it is interesting to have Scandinavian designers program an MMO (note how craftily we have placed the headline so that you are "forced" to click on it to see the whole picture), but also that Dorcas is in urgent need of the reward item Funcom has just offered to loyal beta testers a few minutes ago: If they register for a full version of the game, they can claim The Drinking Cape:
As a sign of gratitude for your aid, we are pleased to offer you the in-game item used by those loyal to King Conan: The Drinking Cape. This item will allow your characters (one game account only) to free of charge demand the very sought after alcoholic drink of "Ambrosia" - free and in unlimited supplies for life! After having claimed your cape, merely find one of the kegs in the finer Inns of Hyboria and click it whilst wearing your cape to receive your drink.
While buyers of the regular version will still have to be patient for another two days (for them, Age of Conan starts on May 23), pre-order customers with special "early bird" accounts have been playing since Saturday night. According to Funcom / Eidos, 700.000 pre-ordered copies of the game will be shipped (or maybe arrive at the customer's door steps?) on May 23, which would make, again according to Funcom, Age of Conan the most successful PC game launch of all time. According to our own experiences in the closed beta as recent as yesterday, we are not sure that the experience for all those customers will be bug-free, or that every last sentence in the German version will already be translated. But the bugs we've encountered in the last days were only medium to minor ones, and few and far between.
Overall, Age of Conan looks very promising, although it's not the totally new MMO experience some players might have hoped for. The adult content (some half-nudity, blood-spilling finishing moves, some harsh language, violent scenes or backgrounds) is a refreshing sight after all that annoying cartoon-fantasy in WoW. Also, the main story missions seem to us a little more refined than is standard in many MMOs. But they still are very "MMOish". The acclaimed combat system does not differ much from the buffs or special-attack clicking frency in other MMOs -- with the exception that there is a lot more clicking. For example, we mostly did not care where opponents shielded themselves, attacking accordingly, because firing off one special combo after the other usually does the trick. Also, you have the same old "collect 30 this" and "kill 50 that" or "wait for boss Z's respawn" missions, even if there are some that are more complex than that. Above all, the basic game structure is perfectly similar to all big MMOs around. Having said that, we enjoyed getting Dorcas to level 23 (which took us about 20 hours of real time), and would like to keep playing Age of Conan...
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Funny and informative news! I'm waiting for my pre-order, and please have Dorcas put on some clothes, it's not decent :-)
The guy is wearing a thick cloack, the girl nothing? :)
I wonder if I should start playing an MMOG again...
My Experience with Age of Conan was a mixed one, the first twenty levels were great, a lot of different quests and a good story that held it all together, but the levels 21-42 (never played farther then that) became more and more dull, with simple random quests and no governing story (that I could notice), after a while I stopped reading the quest texts all together.
Also, alot of the first quests came with full voice-overs which impressed me quite a lot, but the further I progressed into the game, the more quests were simple text.
What do you think about the combat system?
I didn't mentioned that for a reason :-)
The truth is, I read about it, but I never used it. Not the sword-fighting system that is. I always created magic users (Demonologists), so I never fought in close combat. But from what 'I' saw it's pretty much like in WoW, you press tab to lock onto an enemy and then press the numbers 1,2,3 on your keyboard to use your spells/specials/combos until the enemy drops and you repeat the process. (Further into the game you get of course more numbers :-/ )
I know that this is pretty much a genre-standard, but I played Tabula Rasa before this and that system was complete different, now it seems pretty boring to me that I can kill an enemy without even looking at it.
I am really looking forward to playing this game very soon on my new pc that I will order at the beginning of June. The last advantage I will take from my recent stay in the UK will of course be that I just buy the english version instead of the german one. This game is meant to be for adults, so I also want the adult experience in my olden age. ;)
Probably it's going to be the same as every other MMO out there after a while, yes. But what I heard and saw so far just makes me want to play the game rather right now than only in approximately 2-3 weeks. The only shame is that I really only found out about how good this game could actually be far too late, and so there is no chance for me to ever get a mammoth as a mount.
But hey, whatever. How do the Germans say: "Das Glück der Erde liegt auf dem Rücken der Pferde." :)
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