I can't help but wonder what is going on with the necro class and wtf the devs are smoking. Buff, nerf and buff some more.........

It's clear they are just trying to pad their patch list...nothing to see here.

I have to agree with Wired. Personally, for a new MMO I think they're doing fantastic. Those complaining are too used to a mature MMO. Go play them, there's plenty. WOW and EQ2 didn't "settle down" for about a year (well, maybe a little less for WOW, but Sony is teh sux0r). I seem to remember a post in the very beginning from one of the beta testers that if you're not willing to put up with the quirkyness of a new MMO that has a lot of balance and bugs to work out (like all new MMOs) then wait 6 months. Yet, here we are, ONE month later, and still all the complaining and "I quit" posts from people who should have known better.

It's like being the first to own an iPhone, that you paid $599 for and it only has 4GB of memory. Now you can get an updated one with 3G and GPS, 16GB of memory, for like $299. Either you are one of us who has to be first, or you wait for it to be refined, but don't be first and bitch about changes in technology... That's just annoying.

I just wish more games would have the smooth kind of launch that LotRO had.

I'm just annoyed because there are some things that seem like major issues to me, that I wish they would fix. But the problem is, they have yet to even acknowledge that they are bugs. So while all these things they are doing are great, none of them are of any use to me.

And yes! I am being selfish!

Yeah, but they fix all kinds of things without first announcing they're bugs that need fixed. I'm with you, it would be nice to hear something about stealth and if its a bug or working as intended, but, they're spending time fixing things instead of taking the time to tell us what they're working on and what's being fixed in the future. Sure, the PR guy can talk all day, but he has to get the information from the developer. Can you imagine the conversation?

Funcom PR: "Hey, whatcha workin on?"
Funcom developer: "Stuff. Busy."
PR: "Seriously, give me something."
Dev: "Ok, like 30 and 50 level quests, some new content, some speech stuff, and items. Now go away, I'm busy."

See how they can get small tidbits of long term projects, but something specific like "are you working on X bug" is probably not going to be in the conversation between the two groups. So, the PR guy doesn't know the specifics of what they're working on, and a Dev is only going to take a very small amount of his/her time to communicate the information to the community. It sucks, but its how most development (even non-IT) goes. You have the mission guys and the support guys, and the mission guys don't want to be bothered by the support guys.

And, in the end, the Devs have a growing suscriber base and they're likely to sell at least the million copies they've already shipped. So, communicating with us doesn't even seem like a priority to them yet (the devs, not the community types).

Well said (so why are you running away?) I agree funcoms communication needs work, but I also see what they're doing and I know it isn't easy. You as a software developer have to admit that identifying a bug, fixing it, and releaseing that fix in a week, when there's also a backlog of other bugs to work on, leaves little room for testing. Now, if all bugs were identified and we didn't see a fix for a month, then I would bet that's because of testing time. Right now I don't think they're waiting and testing, they're crossing fingers and launching.

I can tell you stability went up and glitches went down with the last patch. My wife's machine doesn't CTD or BSOD now and her map works, to name two. No indications of what they did to fix these are in the patch notes, but they're damn good fixes. Maybe while Funcom settles in, slows the patch process, tests more, and communicates better, we can just play the game and enjoy it. Looking past the occasioal bug, knowing a fix is comming, isn't that hard, is it?

Edit - atleast they're not SOE.

I'm canceling for the month as well until they do something to make the game seem worthwhile. As I play I increasingly feel like it's just a great waste of time. Yes, all games can essentially be classified as a waste of time, but this seems to be the MMO that makes characters completely interchangeable. I realized that I really wouldn't care if my account was hacked and someone sold all my stuff and stole my gold. Gear does very little except boost your health/mana/stamina pools, and once you have a horse gold is all but worthless. The fact that they make gear stats apply even less in PvP just further ruins it for me. I can take off all my gear and still do practically the same amount of damage as with it. If there is any difference at all it's unnoticeable unless you break out a combat log parser of some sort. All I really miss is the health, but even then I'm perfectly capable of doing most quests naked if I want. It makes it hard to get excited for that new bracer or shoulder piece when you realize if you took it off you wouldn't even miss it except for the graphic representation on your character.

The instance design is very shallow from what I've seen (admittedly no raids or end game stuff). Deadmines, generally the first instance you do in WoW, was more complex and demanded more interactive team work than anything I've seen in 62 levels of Conan. Perhaps later on boss fights magically become more complex and you fight something more interesting than just a really tall scaled up human model, but having the whole game so far consist of just killing the same dudes over and over is monotonous. I kill Picts, Nemedians, and Ymir, then some bandits (all humans in different outfits) then do it all again in a different zone. I guess it sticks to the lore of Hyboria or something, but I'd like to see some more exotic enemies. We see the occasional werewolf, zombie, and undead guy, but they are all essentially just human models with different textures. To be fair I did kill some panthers, gators, and apes in Tortage, and endless wolves in Field of the Dead.

The game just seems extremely weak when it comes to instance and boss encounter design, and I just don't see Funcom suddenly innovating in this area any time soon considering all the existing game bugs. It can be a very beautiful game, and a lot of the quests are interesting and well written, but the shine is wearing thin for me.

Don't guys turn into big demons and beat the crap out of people?

I agree with WA here. This game sticks much more closely to the source material than I ever expected it to. The only thing that sticks out as being vastly different is that there were no Cimmerians outside of the northern lands in the original stories. I love it to pieces honestly.

The thing is that I've slowly come to realize that too many people on my RP PvP server have both no interest in RP and think that this is a PvP _only_ game (as opposed to a game with objectives and quests that those lower than them are attempting to complete when you stab them in the f*cking back while getting quest info... *grumble*). Because of this realization I've gathered a few friends and started playing on a lower population PvE server in hopes of less frustration.

I was going to cancel for a while until things balanced out, but I think I'm just going to take a break from my assassin until then. When more PvP bugs/balance issues are worked out and the Assassin is a viable class to roam the wilds in, then I'll go back. Hopefully there will be some good RP going on at that point too.

I log in daily. I love levelling my assassin and HoX (both female and therefore gimped). I have never had the need to grind. I've put over 120 hours into these characters and it has been FUN. Tortage (the first two times) has been a neat way to intro players to MMOs. Doing the destiny quests was great and meeting Conan was fricking awesome!

However...

Funcom's experiences with AO led me to believe they'd learn a few things like communication with their fanbase and community. I have had progressively worse and worse performance since Tortage -- be it CTDs, massive lag spikes, grey maps, blank chat texts, etc. Let's put it this way. I have RARELY logged off normally. I almost always end my nights in AoC with a CTD or some sort.* I have had a series of small niggling UI issues which on the whole really try my patience. Cripes sake hotkey the /-key already. Travel between certain areas hurts timewise, and I have a freebie token from PC Gamer which helps out once a day. Itemization was ok in the lower levels but past 50-60 I see no improvement in gear. The crafting is a mess and a real downer. Did I mention my female toons are all attacking 33% slower or something? But hey, the fix is coming after weeks of outcry from the community. It'll just take a month or two to correct, at best. Finally, I am starting to see a real lack of diversity in quests past 60. Instead of finding 10 things I now need 30 things. Lazy!

So, in the end I have no problems giving them the money I've spent but the unending palm --> face that I do just makes me cringe. I define tragedy as a sense of the waste of potential. Age of Conan is quickly becoming the ultimate MMO tragedy to me. Where I had no problem forking over for a lifetime sub to LOTRO I cannot conceive doing this anytime soon if it were offered in AoC.

*- my comp is a Blackbird dedicated to gaming, and nothing else except surfing and mailing, so i think it ain't my rig.