Mystic Worlds

It’s Picturesque to Say the Least

Note: combing through my archives I found a couple of articles that I'd neglected to move from draft to publish.  Doh!  Publishing now even though the are very old.

I teetered between re-subscribing to EVE Online and logging back into Age of Conan to work on my Bear Shaman.  For the moment, Conan won out.  The first thing that struck me when my character materialized in game was, “Damn, this game is beautiful!”  I’d logged back in standing somewhere in Conall’s Valley which instantly reminded me of why I had run off to upgrade my video card to play.  I appreciate pretty – I need NEED good graphics in an MMO.  For me, graphics are an essential part of the immersion.  They don’t have to be realistic.  High quality stylized like World of Warcraft will do just as well, as long as it’s done VERY well.

Less than enthusiastic about running the long jaunts to turn in the pile of quests I had completed (lots of funky issues with the map I’ll QQ about some other day), I was encouraged by my surroundings.  If you’re not able to play AOC on high settings you’re really missing a treat.  As I was ducking behind trees and skimming along the sides of the mountain to avoid engaging the roaming mobs, I marveled at the foliage, landscape, encampments and surrounding animal life that blended together so well.  Yeah, this is why I play MMOs – to see this and feel like this feels.  Now if I could do this with less of the BS, such as zoning, running back and forth for trivial reasons (quests), bugged interface elements such as my map that is now gray and I have no idea where the heck I’m headed, MMO life would be much better.

Unsubscribed from Age of Conan – for Now

Current economic climate coupled with some other ways I’d like to spend my discretionary funds, I’ve decided to un-subscribe from Age of Conan (AOC).  I hadn’t played in about three weeks and the time I have available for an MMO, has gone exclusively to EQ2.  Before I made the decision to cancel, I logged in for a bit.  The thing that I really enjoyed about the game was still there – amazing visual rendering of Hyboria and kick ass combat.  I ran around for about 30 minutes killing stuff.  I joined an opportunistic group to kill a mini boss and turned in some quests.  As someone who doesn’t quest much, loves to tinker around in games and craft, AOC just wasn’t hitting enough of my sweet spots.  Because I solo grind to level – that’s what I enjoy, I have to have things to do in between and there’s not a whole lot of that in AOC.  You can’t start crafting until level 40.  Anywho, no disparaging remarks from me.  I think the game has lots of promise and I can see myself going back in the future.  It’s just not where my head or interests are for the present.

Funcom Sends a Customer Survey

When I checked my email yesterday, I found a survey from Funcom requesting my opinion on Age of Conan.  I almost passed it by but then decided to complete it.  I won’t go into all the questions or my exact answers.  Instead, I’ll summarize it.

The survey wanted to know on a scale of 1 to 5 (worse to best) what I liked about the game, customer service, what needed fixing and what I was most concerned about having them work on for the future.  There might have been about 25 to 30 questions in all.

For the questions related to gaming experience – how things were working in the game, I gave all questions related to combat 4s and 5s.  I’m happy with the combat mechanic even though a bit button-pressing-frantic, it is the most unique and pleasing aspect of the game - fluidness of motion, realistic even when fantastical animations, are all executed extremely well.  When I answered questions about content and questing, I replied rather neutrally.  I don’t find the quests as a whole more or less better than other MMOs  I’ve played. 

AOC: A Few in Game Images

The world of Hyboria is looking better all the time.  Sometimes I can play with the graphics set on High and other times I can't, without suffering very low FPS.  Here are a few images I was able to take recently.

Age of Conan and Instanced Content

One of the charges leveled at Age of Conan (AOC), is that it’s too heavily instanced.  Be these instances public zones or private group dungeons, the world is restrictive and lacks the ability to roam and explore.  There is no counter argument to those sentiments because that is the nature of how Funcom decided to design its Hyboria.  I hazard a guess that players who are dissatisfied with that design feel that it violates one of the core tenants of a Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), much like players dislike people who want to solo in an MMO.  However, if we take the term MMORPG on face value, there is nothing about massive that means seamless, and nothing inherent in the word multi-player that means grouped.  Yet many players do expect a pretty seamless world where the content is meant to be experienced in a group format.

If we look at the notable MMO titles of today, we see that these two elements – seamless and “group required” content are handled on a wide spectrum.  In terms of group content, I think AOC handles itself much like the other popular massive titles.  There is a lot of content that you can do solo.  It appears thus far that you can reach the maximum level solo.  However, if you do so, you will miss the group designed content and rewards.  They’ve also implemented explicitly solo content, called Destiny Quest.  This is a private instance that is very large – from levels 1 to 20 it is a duplicate of the starter city, Tortage.  If the Destiny Quests were the only or at least the majority of the instanced content, some of AOC’s detractors would probably be happier.  But it’s only the first of many such zones.

Ashron’s Call 2 Fans Rejoice. Come Play Age of Conan

It’s hardly worth mentioning that there were fans of the now defunct game, Asheron’s Call 2.  Clearly, there weren’t enough of us to keep the game alive.  Yet that doesn’t mean that we didn’t exist at all.  *Smile*  I tired of the game toward the end.  There was no “end game” to speak of, something I wasn’t even conscious of at the time.  Having graduated from AC2 to numerous other MMOs since then, I’m clearer about what was missing and why I was logging on less, as I got higher in level.

Regardless of all the launch issues, persistent bugs and lag that couldn’t be fixed to save their lives – or their game, the developers put in features that remain favorites of mine to this day.  Player item persistence, seasonal landscape changes, pieces of lore and nostalgic items scattered throughout the content for “real” explorers to find.  Enough places in the world of Dereth where you could run off and just “be”.  A blending of leveling that employed quests and grinding in such a way that they felt one and the same – it all sort of blurred over the lines.  Vaults – OMG how I loved vaults.  The thrill of figuring out how to solo them by hook or by crook, was one of my favorite pastimes.  That was followed by graduating to the group Master Vaults which were mass confusion, riotous and pure lag-hell fun.  A reward and itemization system that didn’t dominate or decide the outcome combat.  Your spec and play-style, both highly customizable, determined your success.

AOC: Struggling with Combat

I don’t play melee characters.  I especially don’t play melee characters where positioning is required to execute skills.  So why am I rolling a melee class in Ago of Conan where positioning is absolutely key AND you have to execute actions in specific sequences to maximize damage?  ‘Cause I’m crazy I guess but my game play is starting to show the strain of that decision.

The more skills I acquire, the more I’m beginning to struggle with the combat execution.  If there’s only a single mob I do just fine.  It’s when I’m trying to pull two to three and they are at my own level that I’m starting to die.  I get a bit flustered and my health as a Bear Shaman is actually low compared to other classes.  With a 1v3 fight, I’m going to finish with just a sliver of health in the first place.  Therefore if I make any mistakes at all, I’m dead.  Most of the time I die AND the final mob dies at the same time.  One hit sooner, one combo sequence not missed and I would have finished alive.
There are multiple factors making this hard for me:

1. I’ve played for many years with all my skills on the left side of the keyboard.  I custom map 1 to 5, Q to R, A to F and Z to V.  Primary skills are on A to F which is natural hand placement for touch typists.  Secondary are Q to R, personal buffs Z to V and things I only cast only (long cool down spells) 1 to 5.  My right hand is for movement and the right side of the keyboard for out of combat commands like long duration buffs, food, mounts, switching gear etc.  This setup doesn’t work well for AoC where I have to go off the 4 rows of skills all the time for combos.  When I’m trying to execute in a hurry, I may hit the wrong key because it’s fast combat, I’m trying to move while I’m hitting and sometimes there is a lag between what I’ve pressed and it’s execution on the screen.
2. No auto attack means if you’re not spamming buttons you’re just standing there taking damage.  I find that I often forget to press hit keys after executing a special command that doesn’t have a combo key sequence.  Struggling with the basic combat now, I can’t imagine adding in proactive blocking too.
3. I’m not used to playing a melee character.  The only melee class I’ve ever played is the Paladin in World of Warcraft.  I leveled her for the AOE grinding spec which was fun but went Holy at 70 to heal in PVP.

Age of Conan: Please Fix Itemization NOW

I’m still having fun playing Age of Conan.  However, one glaring issue stares me in the face every few minutes.  AoC has the worst itemization I’ve ever seen in a game.  I mean it is so bad, it’s like a room of monkeys randomly put stats on the items, and I don’t mean just the gear.  The consumables don’t make much more sense either. 

What am I supposed to think when a randomly dropped level 1 item is superior to a Quest Reward that was red to me at level 13????  Sometimes I laugh at the drops from the higher level mobs and quest rewards.  Other times it’s rather insulting and it minimizes the achievement. When I’ve walked through brimstones at my level to complete a quest and I’m not a quest oriented person, it irks me to look at the reward say, “WTF is this useless piece of crap,” and walk away still wearing the same lower level stuff.  It’s disheartening for someone that is trying to stick with the quests to get a bit of the lore.

Age of Conan: Did You Know

I have two brief tips I’d like to share with my fellow Age of Conan (AoC) players.

You can Erase Death Penalties
I guess it’s not obvious to many players.  I know my son wasn’t aware even though it was included in the small gaming guide that shipped with the game.  The Death Penalty can easily be removed.  It’s important to remove the it because it applies de-buffs that reduce your survivability and damage.  You will know that you have a death penalty applied by looking above your stats area.  There you will see a skull for each death penalty.  Hovering over the skull will tell you the de-buffs and the remaining duration.  The duration is in game time not real-time so logging out for 30 minutes won’t help.

To remove a death penalty, you must return to the location where you died and double click your headstone.  Doing this completely removes the penalty for that particular death.  If you don’t remember where you died, you can use the skull that is placed on the mini-map to find your way back.  I’m surprised by the number of headstones I see scattered in the questing areas.  Often I see clusters of them near socially linked mobs which means some poor player had a hard time killing or getting by them, and is now running around significantly handicapped.

1st and 2nd Extended Hotbars are Customizable
There are three hotbars available.  The first is the primary hotbar docked at the bottom of your display.  Two additional ones can be displayed by turning them on in the Interface dialog box.  By default, they will anchor themselves to the right side of the user interface.  You can move them like you would any Windows interface item (click and drag).  You can change the hotbar orientation by right mouse-clicking the [+] sign on the left.  You can drag the right edge of the hotbar to increase or decrease the number of button slots displayed.  Use the Controls interface dialog box to assign hotkeys to the hotbar.  The extra bars are called 1st Extended and 2nd Extended.

AOC: Guess I’m NOT a Bitter Gaming Hag

I’ve been so bleh about many of the games that have released in the past couple of years.  I practically stomped on Pirates of the Burning Sea based on my BETA experience.  Vanguard has remained a punching bag for all that is wrong with releasing a game too early.  Given the stream of negative views, I started to wonder if I had become a bitter gaming hag – been playing too much for too long.  I considered if it was time to take a break from MMOs completely in order to regain a better perspective.  Now having read some of the reviews and podcasts coming out about Age of Conan, I’m rather surprised to find myself among those talking up the brighter side of AoC.  I hadn’t really been reading or listening much lately.  Time is short and the bit of time I’ve had free, I’ve spent either playing or reading the AoC forums and not the other blogs.