Wow, this is a good game!

Terranah

First off, let me say that I did play the game at launch and promptly terminated my subscription after the first 30 days.  My biggest complaint was related to performance, followed by my dislike of their zone/instancing which seemed very excessive.  I prefer a more open world, one free of zoning and instances.  There were times when I would see 20+ copies of a single zone.  It just wasn't what i was into, and certainly not the direction that I wanted to see mmos go in the future.

 

Fast forward a couple years.  Load screens and instancing are pretty common now so it's hard to fault them for a mechanic that is being used by so many other games.  And my new computer seems to run AOC acceptably.  My new rig:

 

i7 2.8ghz

ATI hd 5850 1024mb

8gb ram

1 tb hd 7500rpm (wish it was faster...)

 

Let's talk about the things I didn't like before first, and get that out of the way.  Perhaps because the game's population has fallen so dramatically, there is much less use of instancing.  It's not uncommon for me to be in the only copy of a zone.  It makes getting together with friends pretty easy.  And the couple times my buddies and I were in different instances, we just tabbed down on the instance button and joined the appropriate instance.  Not a big deal.  I still prefer an open world, however this is a design choice they made and I'm no longer as strongly opposed to it as I used to be.

 

Perforformance was my other big gripe.  With my old computer, 3.6 p4, ati card (forget which one now) and 3gb of ram, the game ran fine in Tortage but poorly once I left the island.  And by poorly, I mean 8-12 fps on average, sometimes 24 if I looked at the ground.  Yeah, my performance sucked.  There was no enjoying the game.

 

On my new rig, performance is much improved ofcourse.  Running dx10, shader 4.0 on high and without messing with any settings I was getting 40 to 60 in the wilderness and 30 to 50 in the city. I thought I was getting better fps until a friend pointed out I could mouse over a little indicator on my toolbar to check fps/latency.  Atleast for me, it ran acceptably, and the game is beautiful (more on that later).  I switched to dx9 with shader 3.0, high settings, again not messing with any other settings, and the fps doubled.  Yeah, wilderness I was seeing 100 to 120 and city 60 to 80.  Sometimes I see odd spikes in performance, which i noticed more when I started running fraps to see my fps.  I saw performance spikes of 180 and other times I saw it drop to around 40ish with dx9.  

 

Basically, when I am running around by myself taking screenshots or exploring, I go dx10.  If I'm running with a group, I switch to dx9.  I've since fiddled around with a few settings like ambient occlusion, turning it off to gain 10 to 20 fps I think...and increasing view distance to max which seemed to either do nothing to performance or slightly increase it.  Go figure...

 

Graphically, I've always said the game is beautiful. But really, with dx10 enabled this mmo is the best looking mmo out right now.  This is just my opinion, others will doubtless disagree.  I think as far as environments go, AOC is the best looking mmo ever, or maybe tied with LOTRO.  I think they are both aesthetically speaking very different so it could be a matter of preference, but I would have to say AOC takes the prize once you factor in the avatars which are much more beautifully modelled and animated.

 

And now combat.  Another often contentious topic when discussing AOC.  They tried to do something different by adding the changing npc shields and directional attacks, and using directional combos to actuate specials.  This is also something that I wasn't really crazy about in the past.  This time around, I decided to buy a logitech 110 gaming keyboard and bind my specials.  I've heard even the AOC staff use gaming keyboards so I didn't really think of it as cheating.  At any rate, it allowed me to get back into the game. 

 

Fast forward 60+ hours into game time, I no longer use my keybinds.  I was in a group and levelled and didn't have time to rebind all my keys.  So I set them up in a way that made sense to me and.....damn....I was missing out on a lot of fun.  I actually like the combo system a lot better now and no longer use my keybinds, except for a ranged 'pull' macro I made.  So combat is fun, it's a lot more indepth with shields and what not and is much more engauging.  But for people who still dislike hitting multiple buttons to fire off a combo, go with a gaming keyboard.  I read even the devs use them.

 

Levelling seems to be at a good pace.  After experimenting for about a week with various classes I settled on the barbarian class and hit level 32 last night.

 

I've spent a fair amount of time exploring the different zones, and they can be quite varied which is nice. 

 

Running around with my APB friends (we relocated to AOC) is a blast.  I love the emotes.  This game has a lot of RP potential and I've already started rping.  Ofcourse...there is the typical, "Are you a girl in real life?"  It seems to be inescapable. Either answer usually causes the conversation to devolve from their so I see little incentive in answering it anymore.  "You a homo?"  Frequently follows, "No I'm a guy."  But that seems to be universal accross mmos.  (Sigh). 

 

Fatalities really add that extra something special to the game.  I love them, and I love the bonuses they afford.  Sometimes the animations don't sync up perfectly, while other times they are a thing of beauty.  I love beheadings!  I was surprised yesterday when I got beheaded though.  It was the first time.  I was shocked, but thought it was hella cool.

 

Sound.  Damn, as if they didn't nail it with graphics, they go and hit it out of the ballpark with sound.  Ambient sound is very good, but I like the musical scores in the background as you are adventuring.  Very well done.  My buddies have also commented on the sound in the game.  It's something that you notice when it sucks and often times ignore if done adequately.  But done well, people take notice, and atleast in my little band of brothers we enjoy it.

 

There are some areas where the game is rough and could be improved.  For instance, why are pathfinders not on the map?  They really help to fascillitate grouping when people are spread out everywhere.  For my part, I have begun exploring and marking every pathfinder I come across onto my map.  The trader also does not show up on the legend in the map, unless I missed it.  Trader is your bank, auction house and also mailbox so it's extremely important.  Yet they are spread out to thin in the world and don't show up on the map.

 

Bugs.  I noticed them in Dx10.  I guess that's why they refer to it as DX10test.  Suffice it to say, the bugs are forgivable atleast to me since it is some kind of beta of dx10 I guess.  DX9 is very stable though, atleast for me.

 

I could write more.  I probably will. 

 

But for anyone considering this game, if you have a rig that can run it and you are looking to join a game with some friends, I think AOC is a great game.  Even if you just want to solo and make friends along the way, I think it's a great game.

LuckyDucky

I have been playing the game for a couple of months or so and I have enjoyed it very much. A  number of players on the boards slam it for one reason or another, but AoC is a great game if you  enjoy PvE gameplay. Quests are fun, grouping is always a good time, the combat is very good,  and the Conan universe is a blast to be in. It's a rock n rollin' game, what more can I say? If there was a PC game out I thought was more entertaining, I'd be playing and posting about it instead.

Terranah

The writing and story telling in the game are also very good.  Top notch for an mmo.

GTwander

One thing about fatalities; no matter how much you might hate getting your ass handed to you in PvP, when you get your head removed from one it tends to be just as satisfying as if you had done it to someone else.