I've been busy, so not much AoC has been happening on my computer. I'm getting ready to head back to the Midwest, and my poor laptop won't run AoC, anyway.

It looks like poor Krisroe has already quit, though. The game had a lot of initial passion about it, but it looks like that passion is wearing off. Why is that?

Putting on my designer hat, I think one problem is that it is a lot like previous games. That leads to a sort of familiarity when getting into the game; however, it also leads to a sort of contempt in that you definitely feel like you've played the game already. Unfortunately, the game isn't deep enough that you have to take time to discover hidden little gems in the gameplay. Plus, the fast leveling is a bad thing in this case, because you don't spend much time getting attached to the game.

So, I think there are going to be a lot of people in the same situation: they hit the end of the content, aren't really excited about another run through Tortage, and leave. The good news is that games do change over time, so there's the definite possibility that AoC could develop into a really interesting game. But, it's not one right this moment, beyond the "ooh it's NEW!" feeling. Plus, it's often hard for people to give a game another chance to see how it has changed.

So, what now? I might work up my Tempest of Set more. I still need to play around more with tradeskills, although the general consensus seems to be they're not really that interesting yet. I still have my Bear Shaman sitting near the end of Tortage; with more experience in the game it might be easier going for me. But, I'm not sure I'm eager to do all the same quests all over again.

We'll have to see where the game takes me, and how it changes while my subscription is active.

Well I canceled my subscription today.

It's not so much that AoC wasn't good, it was just a lot of little things, and my time that I had to game. For in game issues, I found grouping to be few and far between which takes away from the MMO aspect. I might as well go play a fee-less RPG on PlayStation3.

I liked the voice-over quest dialog from 1-20 and was disappointed to see it go once you're off Tortage. At least do it for some of the main quest lines in the area. No you don't need to do it for the quests to collect ingredients or kill 10 Vanir, but how about all quest chains that lead to a dungeon? Would make them much more interesting, make people want to do the dungeons for the storyline, instead of hitting 11111 and then clicking on the mini map to see what they actually have to do for that quest.

Some other nagging issues like the guild bank interface, the find a group interface, the guild members/friends interface.

The biggest thing for me is time though, so these other points are really irrelevant. The game could be fantastic but if you only have a couple hours between getting home after work and school, before you get up before 6am to go to ROTC training or even sleeping in to 7:30 for work, there are other things I'd rather be doing. Unfortunately Age of Conan is not it for me.

This will be my last post obviously - hopefully you've gotten some sort of benefit out of my posts. Enjoy your time in game.

-Krisroe

It's a bit strange to consider that my post about playing a new character is only about 2 weeks old. I've already worked up my Tempest of Set to level 48.

It's funny reading Krisroe's post below about running out of quests, because I'm in exactly the same position. The Fields of the Dead quests are running out quickly, and I'm forced to do some orange/red quests above my level, too; my character is powerful so it's not too bad, but I haven't been upgrading my equipment very throughly. Unfortunately for both of us, it seems that most of the quest content runs out at about this level, so we'll both be stuck.

One nice thing about AoC is that you can still get a fair amount of experience from doing older "gray" quests. I've done almost every solo quest so far, and have gotten a lot of experience. But, even that doesn't help if I'm running out of quests to do.

One thing that's hurting me currently is that one type of quest seems to be broken. I can get some quests from signposts in the Fields of the Dead, but when I complete the quest it disappears instead of letting me turn them in. So, no big boost in xp from finishing the quests. I don't know if the quests are bugged for everyone, or if I accidentally broke something when I re-read a sign just as I was about to turn in one of those quests.

Anyway, I might go back and give my Bear Shaman a bit of love as things are slowing down for my Tempest of Set. I'm not eager to just grind with the character to see the highest levels.

In my late 30's I did a lot of questing in the Wild Lands of Zelata which worked out well - theres a lot available there. I did Sanctum of the Burning Souls twice, but the single mob pull nature of the instance didn't make for much excitement. I did get a few nice rare drops though which should last me a while.

Around 38-40, I went around to all the areas where I had "Deliver this item" type quests, mostly down in the Stygian region which I had yet to go to. It was a good thing I did because I had an incomplete part of the Destiny Quest line from Knopshef Province...oops! I did a few quests in the area since I could fly through them. Even though a few were green or even gray, they still provided decent XP. I then worked my way over to the Pyramid of the Ancients and the Treasury of the Ancients. Unfortunately, the Pyramid is bugged out. The 'Enter the Pyramid' quest never gives you credit, which I'm sure has a followup to it to explore further in, and the quest later on to collect the eyes for the statue never gives you credit when you turn in the eyes, it just offers you the same quest again. Oh well. At least the Treasury was a fun event. Kind of a stamina type event with statues coming to life every 20 seconds or so.

By this point I made my way to the Fields of the Dead. On the way, I soloed a few gray elite quests in my quest log in Conall's Valley which had been lingering far too long. Groups never seemed to make it that far back in the elite region to ever complete them. Slow going, but good XP actually.

Finally, I entered the Fields of the dead at level 41 I believe. I worked through the tons of quests available, which quickly turned all orange, red, and orange elite. I struggled through the orange ones fighting mobs 2 and 3 levels higher than me. One mobs at this level I could handle, it was when I got 2, especially one melee and one ranged where I had to move them around to be able to do AoE, or knockbacks.

I am now 45, and only have red and elite quests left in the Field of the Dead. Not really sure where I will head to next - the region is listed as 40-50 so maybe I'm missing some quest givers. I'll have to check it out. I also have a couple quests in the resource region (name escapes me now, Zaara something) that are green elite. Might try those out before struggling again in the Fields of the Dead. I also picked up the alchemy quests which I can do for a little XP.

This is the first time where I don't have an abundance of quests to do where I have to plan out a route to maximize quests completed. Hopefully this doesn;t last too long.

One of today's patch notes stood out to me:
"Bonuses from items (strength, wisdom, dexterity and constitution) will now affect your character properly."

Wait, what? So, all that time agonizing if 3.14159 stamina was better than 2.71828 bonus damage to magic spells was previously worthless? Gah. It's kind of surprising that a game can launch without something like bonuses to statistics working.

Now, game mechanics don't have to be all in the open and clearly explained; although, I think it's better if you can understand the differences between two different stats. But, at least having basic stats have an effect on the game seems to be somewhat important to gameplay.

This is also problematic because it means that the game hasn't been properly balanced with these stats taken into consideration. Now, admittedly, the stats in AoC aren't huge. That 1.41421 bonus to Wisdom added to my base 200 points of Wisdom isn't going to make a huge difference. But, if someone were to take all those pieces of equipment and add them up, whats the effect? Did game mechanics take this possibility into account? Did it anticipate this and balance the game expecting this? If the system wasn't working initially, then probably not.

So, now we'll see how those few extra points of Wisdom affect my Tempest of Set.

So, I did my first PUG (pick up group) this evening with my Tempest of Set. It went pretty well.

In some games, getting a PUG can be a really painful event. There have been a number of times in previous games where having to rely on others was really painful. Stories about about how even one person not pulling their weight can ruin everyone else's experience.

What's interesting is that my character, currently a level 40ish Tempest of Set, is supposed to be a priests. Traditionally, priests in RPGs focus on healing. In online games, they are assumed to be an essential part of a group. In some cases, it can be really hard to play a priest solo. But, since AoC seems to support solo characters so strongly, I've been able to play my Tempest of Set with only the occasional brief group to share a quest spawn.

But, I had a number of quests for the Sanctum of the Burning Souls, so when I heard someone forming a group I offered to go along. It was a varied assortment of 5 other people. It took a bit for me to finally figure out how to get to the Sanctum, but once there the fighting started fast. Healing was interesting, since I didn't have to target individuals, just try to get them in the general area of the healing effect. Since I'm mostly soloing, I've built my character to do a lot of damage. Unfortunately, lots of high-damage AoE spells tend to generate a lot of thread, which made me popular with a few monsters if the tank didn't get aggro before I let loose.

On the other hand, people seemed to be focusing on going quickly through the instance. I had to catch up a few times as I tried to find some of the quest items I had to collect. I also had to grab the quest items when I could, since it seemed to be "grab what you can". Thankfully, it looks like there were plenty of quest items to be found in the instance.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience. We'll see if that holds true at higher levels.

As a former WoW player, there's one thing that has really impressed me as both a player and a game developer: the quests in AoC.

Now, there are some problems with AoC's quests: the dialog system takes me out of the game, most notably hiding the chat window so I can't see important messages while interacting with an NPC. I also had one situation where a quest's cutscene happened while a monster walked by. By the time the scene ended and a boss monster started to attack me, I was down to less than half health! I died quickly once the boss monster came up and beat on me a few times.

The one redeeming characteristic: almost every quest's items drop every time. When I'm told to go gather crocodile skins from crocodiles, I get at least one skin per kill, if not more. That's the nice way of doing random quest drops: monsters randomly drop more than one of the needed item!

Compare this with WoW where some quests really took you out of the game. "Why does only one out of every three monsters have eyeballs (or whatever other random part you need for the quest)?" Some quests' drops were so rare that sometimes you weren't sure if you were even killing the right monsters for the quest. "Are you sure these are the monsters?" I'd ask my friends. "Yes!" they'd respond, "I got a drop from them yesterday!"

The one quest so far that I have found that does not guarantee drops was not so tough: a quest where you have to gather gems eaten by different beasts. You generally kill enough beasts for other quests that you find the gems you need. But, this is one quest out of the dozens I've done so far like this.

For me, this is a lot more fun. It's nice to know that once you find the monster, you don't have to worry about if it'll drop the item or not. You also don't have the random number generator screwing you over and making you kill a small patch of monsters over and over again because the drop didn't trigger as often as the designers thought it was going to.

I was talking to a friend the other day, and he said hew as playing Age of Conan, too. So, I decided to make a character on his server.

Now, I really enjoy PvP when its done well. Unfortunately, most PvP isn't done very well, in my opinion. One of the biggest problems is that most games are based on level. This usually means that no matter how clever, skillful, or whatever you may be, your level 30 character simply cannot win a battle against a level 50 character. Often this means that at lower levels, you're going to be a victim to people who are bored and have higher level characters.

In addition, the crew I usually game with aren't terribly fond of PvP. Only one of my friends I play WoW with is playing AoC, but he rolled on a non-PvP server so I did, too, initially.

My friend on the PvP server said that the current top classes for PvP are Barbarian, Ranger, and Priest of Mithra. Two rogue types and a... priest? Of course, it's the type of priest I haven't played yet. But, I decided I wanted to try an Assassin. One imagines that an Assassin has to be good at PvP!

Another problem with PvP is that it usually restricts how you play the game. On a non-PvP server, I look at my feats and wonder, "Huh, what's this do? That sounds interesting...." On a PvP server, you generally have to develop your character in a much more specific way. There is generally one "accepted" build that you should follow for maximum power. It's sometimes frightening to think about the amount of effort put into cracking a game system to optimize power.

Finally, as with most game systems, PvP is rarely balanced at launch. There will be obvious problems and generally a few people will discover subtleties in the system that allow them to gain a constant upper hand compared to other characters. This makes PvP less of a contest and more of a slaughter if you aren't one of the character types that has an upper hand.

So, we'll see how PvP goes. The general feeling is that the developers aren't going to regulate it much at all, so the game will be pretty unapologetically harsh. It could be fun, or it could send me running back to my non-PvP server.