Review, The Ranting Insider
The Ranting Insider Reviews: Age of Conan
May 30, 2008
So I’ve been playing MMO’s for a long time, and I’m one of those people that still thinks that one day, someone will actually release an MMO that is purely skill based, and not a test of endurance, i.e. a FUCKING GRIND FEST! So that said, I will be reviewing the newly released Age of Conan: the Hyborian whatever the fuck up until level 20. That is as much as most people with a life will level until they find a way to get some Far East sweat shop to powerlevel their shit, or get perma-banned enough times and do what I do: hire an intern to do it for free. You know, the politically correct Western workaround.
The character creation in AoC is solid. It’s not anything special, but good enough. Actually the thing I liked about it was that every character, no matter how hard you try, always ends up looking like king Leonidas from 300, an outcome that was no doubt intentional. I can just imagine the day after the creative director on the project saw the flick, came in all geeked out and started yelling, “Hey guys, I’ve got a great new reference for our characters!” As far as the female toons go, it’s a gigantic tit fest. No complaints here, but it looks like a bad case of elephantitis plagued someone at Funcom. We’re guessing it’s some form of revenge for the post-300 change of art direction.
Once you load up into the game, you hear the first of what will be a long string of what is possibly the worst voice over ever recorded for a game with this kind of budget. I mean I myself have recorded bad VO before, but this is beyond terrible, when you play the game you will remember my words clearly.
Gameplay during the progression from level 1 to 5 is pretty fun, and if you play a Melee class you will be privy to the game’s most innovative contribution to the MMO combat arena. They call the system “Real Combat.” Which it’s not. But it is designed to make you feel more in control of your character. It achieves that result better than most MMOs. You can’t set your player to auto-attack an enemy, instead you can choose every swing from what angle you wish to attack. If you click on a special, you will need to follow it up with a predetermined series of attacks before the special is properly triggered. For Caster and Ranged classes its old skool MMO shit, spam the F keys as fast as you can.
Once you reach level 5 you can quest in the city of Tortage up until level 20, this is where I spent all of my time and it’s some good shit. The main quest chain is surprisingly fun, and the occasional times you get sent to White Sands Isle (the only place available as open PvP zone for levels one to 20) the action is a blast. I’ve never played an MMO where it has been this fun to PVP at this low level. Ganking feels great, spawn camping is as gratifying as it’s ever been. Only camping bitches in THEED in Star Wars Galaxies can compare.
So all that said, lets get down to the ultimate means of scoring an MMO: cash money.
Back in the day the urban myths surrounding Ultima were all about rich Wall Street wankers paying three grand for souped up Ultima toons. I dropped at least a grand into Star Wars Galaxies, and yes I bought a Jedi…okay a couple of’em. I at least broke even on WoW by selling off some accounts, hiring and firing power levelers and gold farmers. The last estimate I heard put the value of the WoW gold and leveling industry at around $500 million dollars a year. Blizzard basically inspired the biggest gypsy movement since the Grateful Dead.
Which brings me to an interesting thing about Age of Conan. I dropped a grand on it before I even leveled up. I had to buy a new computer that can actually play it. This game was kicking the shit out of my old PC. An XPS with duo Intel 2.4 GHz core, an Nvidia 7900gtx, and three gigs of RAM… that is better than 80% of the comps of the people reading this right now and it wasn’t enough to play AoC. That computer was kicking the shit out of every game out there, but AoC made me keenly aware that MMOs are crossing over to the next-gen world particularly in regards to graphics. If you want to play, you have to pay, for a new computer that is, with at least 2.6 GHz dual processors, four gigs of RAM and anything less than an 8800gtx is a waste of time. And yes, dropping the money on a new machine was worth it.
And, by the way, I only made it to level 17.
The Ranting Insider is an anonymous columnist written by a video game industry insider. The editors of DasGamer.com hope to one day go to white-collar prison protecting him as a source and hopefully landing a fat book deal.
Buy a copy of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
