Age of Conan General Discussion

If that's the case then I'll definiitely start playing again. I liked the game. Not enough to pay a subscription, but certainly F2P and I'll pay the one-time fee to open up my old alt character slots.

AOC f2p live today

Big content pack as well. One of the content highlights to me are to solo dungeons that scale to your level from 40-80. I wonder if those are cash shop items... It doesn't say anything about them being cash shop or free.

It's still an absolute behemoth to download. I'm updating from a DVD v1.0 install (which is about 23GB) and the minimum you can download to get going is 4GB, and the full lot is 9GB. It's nice that they've sectioned it off though, depending what level you are, but not quite as slick as GW/WoW.

Back when I bought Rise of the Godslayer, the install was well over 20GB. IIRC it was around 30GB. Of course the crown goes to WoW which I believe is probably between 40-50 GB.

So, for someone who was casually interested in the concept of the game, is it worth the super lengthy download to check out?

Better get home and start installing this beast. That'll make 4 MMOs I have installed now. WOW, Rift, LOTRO (lifetime/f2p), and now AOC. Good thing I don't care about progress!

Benticore wrote:

So, for someone who was casually interested in the concept of the game, is it worth the super lengthy download to check out?

Yes, even just to experience the first 20 levels in Tortage. It gives a great example of how introduction to story and game can be achieved. Also it's free.

Budo wrote:

Better get home and start installing this beast. That'll make 4 MMOs I have installed now. WOW, Rift, LOTRO (lifetime/f2p), and now AOC. Good thing I don't care about progress!

I'd be interested in which of those you like best and how you could POSSIBLY have 4 MMOs on your computer You dont actually keep each of them updated do you?

PAR

par wrote:
Budo wrote:

Better get home and start installing this beast. That'll make 4 MMOs I have installed now. WOW, Rift, LOTRO (lifetime/f2p), and now AOC. Good thing I don't care about progress!

I'd be interested in which of those you like best and how you could POSSIBLY have 4 MMOs on your computer You dont actually keep each of them updated do you?

PAR

Keep in mind I solo my MMOs.
It depends on the gaming mood I'm in. Wow is light and fun, LOTRO is for more serious story driven gaming, and Rift is the third MMO I play for three months and then move on. Conan was fun but not with a subscription.

AOC is good because you can go on a PvP server, yell CROM DEMANDS BLOOD and slaughter the weak.

Scratched wrote:

AOC is good because you can go on a PvP server, yell CROM DEMANDS BLOOD and slaughter the weak.

This.

Benticore wrote:

So, for someone who was casually interested in the concept of the game, is it worth the super lengthy download to check out?

They have options on your account page (or is it the option page on the launcher?) to download the game in chunks. I think the smallest size is 15gb. You get long loading screens if you go somewhere that needs downloading.

Budo wrote:
par wrote:
Budo wrote:

Better get home and start installing this beast. That'll make 4 MMOs I have installed now. WOW, Rift, LOTRO (lifetime/f2p), and now AOC. Good thing I don't care about progress!

I'd be interested in which of those you like best and how you could POSSIBLY have 4 MMOs on your computer You dont actually keep each of them updated do you?

PAR

Keep in mind I solo my MMOs.
It depends on the gaming mood I'm in. Wow is light and fun, LOTRO is for more serious story driven gaming, and Rift is the third MMO I play for three months and then move on. Conan was fun but not with a subscription.

4 is small time...

currently installed and relatively updated (may be behind 1 or 2 on ones i dont play all the time)
AoC
SWG
SWGemu(requires seperate install)
Pirates of the Burning Sea
APB
WoW
DarkFall
LOTRO
RIFT
World of Tanks
WAR
Black Prophecy
Vindictus (if you want to count it)

And this is after i've cleaned up a few F2P ones

Yeah I recently cleaned up a few mmo's off my system.

At one point I had:

WoW, rift, gates of andaron, battle of immortals, vindictus, aoc+rotgs, black prophecy, lotro,war, forsaken world, eq2, vanguard, global agenda, sto, aion beta

edit: this download is slower than molasses. It hovers between 200KBps-700KBps with most of the time between 200KBps-400KBps. And I have a 1.5MBps connection.

I don't know how you grognards do it. But did mention I'm married, have twin 5 year olds and a career?

Budo wrote:

I don't know how you grognards do it. But did mention I'm married, have twin 5 year olds and a career?

same minus the twins

The twins, I love them, but they're the major time killer in respect to gameplay. I absolutely cannot touch the PC until they are asleep. At 5, if something as interesting as a game is on my monitor, it's lap time, push keyboard buttons, mouse fighting, leading to twin fighting. The weekends are going to this magical place called "outside" so they can play.

I grabbed the F2P version a few minutes ago; I meant to give it a shot when it launched, but never got around to it.

Budo wrote:

The twins, I love them, but they're the major time killer in respect to gameplay. I absolutely cannot touch the PC until they are asleep. At 5, if something as interesting as a game is on my monitor, it's lap time, push keyboard buttons, mouse fighting, leading to twin fighting. The weekends are going to this magical place called "outside" so they can play.

I'm an uncle and my nephews come over they want to shoot the bad guys with me. Trick is dead mice and keyboard.

I control everything still. I let them direct me though and they think they're helping. Of course its normally not at the same time. Not sure if i could pull that off with twins.

OK, so I installed it and updated it (took more than half the day as expected), and I hopped right back in. Yes, you do get to unlock 2 of your prior toons, regardless of their approved F2P class. An additional unlock is $15 per slot. So after futzing around with the game for about an hour....it's still Age of Conan.

Same beautiful graphics, ambient sound, horrific UI, unforgiving difficulty, slow pace and stale interface graphics. I played a hunter as my main, and switching from missle to melee and then keeping up with the combos is a hand-mangler over time.

I then jumped into Rift for comparison, and I quickly realized that I was having a LOT more fun with Rift. It's not a fair comparison I know, since Rift is basically MMO candy to AOC's steak, but hey: feelings are feelings.

Normally I'm not so reactive in my opinions, and I give a game a chance. But my first "re-impressions" (which are backed several hours playing in the same game) basically confirm that I quit subscribing to this game for all the right reasons - I simply wasn't having as much fun as I was with other MMOs. Still, it's undoubtedly a good MMO overall, it's F2P and I have plenty of room on my hard drive. It's definitely worth the install, but it will never be more than the MMO I pick when I'm not in the mood for WoW, LoTRO, or Rift (and then SW:TOR). And that is a pretty tough gauntlet for AoC to deal with.

Budo wrote:

Same beautiful graphics, ambient sound, horrific UI, unforgiving difficulty, slow pace and stale interface graphics. I played a hunter as my main, and switching from missle to melee and then keeping up with the combos is a hand-mangler over time.

1 rule from the start of the game. UI mods are needed after lvl 20. There's some (somewhat) standard ones out there now. Knowing the keys and where they're map (not just for hunters) makes life easier.

Then it is rough coming back from long time off and breeze through the combos. If i stayed away for extended time i'd always start back with a new toon or lower lvl one to get the hang of doing combos.

Then it is rough coming back from long time off and breeze through the combos. If i stayed away for extended time i'd always start back with a new toon or lower lvl one to get the hang of doing combos.

This is what I am struggling with now.

The problem is that when you delete a character to free up a slot, the empty slot becomes locked. And I don't see any option to unlock it so it seems that you have to delete all your existing characters (maybe save one) to start a new one.

This is a really poor implementation and I think they are charging way too much for character slots. I mean seriously, your choice is $15 a month or $90 to have access to your characters. They could have done it on a tiered system where the first 2-4 characters are $5 and the rest are $15. Or they could have lesser subscriptions where for $5 a month you get 4 character slots. How about a celebratory sale on AOC store points?

I just hate these systems with so much potential that limit your options to just one or the other.

I started playing, got about five minutes in and uninstalled. The UI is just awful. Back to waiting for SW:TOR

Wow really? Are you sure this isn't the MMO equivalent of "her knees are too skinny"? I mean, EQ1's UI is "just awful" and makes me not want to play the game. I can't imagine AoC's being that bad. It's only 3 years old. It seemed fine to me when I played again 1.5 years ago. What is it lacking in your opinion that's truly necessary to enjoy the game and not just icing that would be nice, but is not critical?

Khoram wrote:

Wow really? Are you sure this isn't the MMO equivalent of "her knees are too skinny"? I mean, EQ1's UI is "just awful" and makes me not want to play the game. I can't imagine AoC's being that bad. It's only 3 years old. It seemed fine to me when I played again 1.5 years ago. What is it lacking in your opinion that's truly necessary to enjoy the game and not just icing that would be nice, but is not critical?

Hand holding I've got limited time and a giant pile. If a game doesn't grab me in the first five minutes, and at least give me some feedback on how to play, instead of 3 arrows and well over a hundred undifferentiated tutorial windows, I'm gonna drop it and move on to the next game.

Err, ok. Different strokes for different folks then, I guess. I can't see how anyone who has played any MMO ever could have not been able to figure out the first 5 minutes of AoC, but whatevah!

Tanglebones wrote:
Khoram wrote:

Wow really? Are you sure this isn't the MMO equivalent of "her knees are too skinny"? I mean, EQ1's UI is "just awful" and makes me not want to play the game. I can't imagine AoC's being that bad. It's only 3 years old. It seemed fine to me when I played again 1.5 years ago. What is it lacking in your opinion that's truly necessary to enjoy the game and not just icing that would be nice, but is not critical?

Hand holding I've got limited time and a giant pile. If a game doesn't grab me in the first five minutes, and at least give me some feedback on how to play, instead of 3 arrows and well over a hundred undifferentiated tutorial windows, I'm gonna drop it and move on to the next game.

This. The pile is huge and rare is the game time.

Getting back in with an old HS friend. One night a week. Any busy career peeps want to meet up?