First Impressions: Age of Conan

Seriously, wtf? Long story short, i just built a new computer thats been giving me crap all week, I played Age of Conan for an hour earlier this week before i had to reinstall Vista. So i get home early on a Friday afternoon with the intentions of playing but I can't login. What retard messed this up? I was going to take some screen shots of the character creator to write a post about, but I can't even do that, so instead I rant. Let me at least give you my impressions of of my first hour.

To start off, I haven't had a nice computer in ages, so I was excited to see how beautiful Age of Conan was. The game is gorgeous. However, with a game this beautiful, the slightly awkward animations make it look and feel a little awkward. Especially after GTA IV being the last game I played, where characters would react to the geometry of the world, for example if you stand with one foot on and one off the curb you don't float, Niko will bend on leg slightly. But with MMORPGs of course we can't expect things like that, it's just that the game looks so beautiful that the animations really detract form the experience.

The character creator is incredible. I like the inclusion of 12 character classes. The last MMO I played was Lord of the Rings online which lacked in that department. It's good too see there is quite a bit of variation here. Players used to the normal fantasy setup will be surprised to see that all the Races are human, (let me remind you that I know nothing of the Conan universe so if they aren't called humans, I'm sorry). Don't think that because all are human, players will be hard to distinguish from each other, there are TONS of customization options. At first I was mildly impressed by all the options from scars to tats to hair, there are roughly 20 items per category (give or take I wasn't counting). Then I noticed an "Advanced" button which opened roughly 20-25 options ranging from mouth size, to eye spacing, to butt size. It's pretty close to the detail found in games such as Oblivion and other character creators. One thing is for sure, you will have a hard time finding a twin in Hyboria.

Now you can likely find all this generic info anywhere so I'll be looking at this game from a different perspective in future Impressions segments giving my opinion rather than simply stating facts. I love MMORPGs, I really do, except for the whole MMO aspect. To me, RPGs need be great in 2 of the following categories to be good: Story, Unique Battle System, Character Customization, Item Collecting. MMOs usually have great character customizations and item collecting, both of which I love, I just hate that I am forced to play with other players once I reach mid game. Guild Wars tried to solve the problem with NPC teammates but they are useless. I will give the social aspect another try with this game, but in future installment I will likely give my opinion on it as a single player experience or those few who might be in agreement with me. I'll give the whole social aspect another try, but in the past i have been disappointed.

Apparently my login for Funcom and Conan is different....my bad. At least I can play.


Note: Due to Blogger not working properly it took me several days to get this posted, and the layout is still crappy, for which i apologize. Future Conan impressions may come more as tidbits as they are more interesting than these long winded articles. Keep the faith, 50 Rounds 4 life!