Mystic Worlds

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.

Age of Conan: The Road between EQ and WOW

When I first decided to roll multiple characters before choosing a main, I wasn’t looking forward to the task.  The opening story is the same for everyone and the Destiny quests identical across a class from what I’ve heard.  Who in their right mind would be looking forward to doing that repeatedly back to back?  I was surprised when I found myself doing it the third time and not caring that it was for the third time.  I was shocked when I was doing it for the sixth time without feeling bored.  It made me wonder why.

The implementation of a more interactive combat style is part of the reason the same content provides more replay value.  Combat manifests itself differently for each of the classes which results in the encounters unfolding differently, even within the same class.  Playing a straight Mage archetype such as the Demonologist or the Necromancer is very different from the Herald of Xotli even though they are all Mages.  The healers are more reminiscent of what I recall from Asheron’s Call, where they maintain strong offensive capabilities in addition to healing. Additionally, I don’t seem to fare any worse for not having a healer, something else that I appreciated in AC.  Healing is necessary for instances I’m sure but it doesn’t seem to be a requirement for leveling.  Downtime among the classes I tried was non existent.  By the time I reached the next pull I had full mana, health and stamina.  This means that the pace is constant as you move from mob to mob and quest to quest.  I haven’t experienced any those annoying lulls where I get to watch my character drink and eat.

Age of Conan: I am Bear, Hear Me Roar

I didn’t expect to have such a hard time choosing a class in Age of Conan.  My main is always a caster of some sort and preferably one with a pet.  When you like to solo as much as I do, having a pet provides more options for setting up encounters.  Even a weak pet can be used to pull or distract mobs.  Following that strategy, I was an Enchanter in AC2, Illusionist in EQ2 and Warlock in WOW.  WAR was the only game where I’ve had to consider something different because there is no caster pet class in Warhammer.  And I have no intention of being a Greenskin to tend squids as pets.  Knowing that I only plan to play AOC until WAR or Spellborn, I wanted to pick carefully to avoid wasting time.  However, the classes and the combat in AOC are different than most other games I’ve played so I decided to do a bit of sampling.

I started with the Demonologist which is supposed to be the most powerful straight nuking caster class.  It doesn’t have a pet but I figured I’d look here first.  The combat style was pretty good.  She easily held her own from level 1 to 15 – which is more of an experience than the WOW 1 to 15.  You’ll have less spells than you might have in WOW by that level.  However, the journey is a little more engaging.  I could see why the class had received some recent nerfs.  I was playing post nerf and just mowing through things pretty much at will.

Next I tried the Necromancer which is a caster with a large variety of pets – often more than one out at a time.  From the start I didn’t like this class.  I didn’t like her base animations.  I especially didn’t like the gory looking pets I had following me around.  DISGUSTING!  Even the special pet that spawned randomly based on me doing chain kills or fatalities, never figured out which, was pretty gross.  Nasty looking pets and awkward animations sealed the coffin on this class for me.

Age of Conan: Very Early Impressions

Now that I’ve been running around the game for a couple of days, here are some very early impressions.  I WISH I could run the game on maximum graphic settings.  Lush virtual worlds are a key element of pleasure for me in MMOs.  The first evening I saw the game I wasn’t so impressed.  On Low settings it looked like a minor upgrade to the Asheron’s Call 2 graphics.  However, with my new graphics card and my dialed down High settings, there is a huge difference.  I’ve taken a peak here and there with everything on HIGH and wish I could play the game that way.  But alas and alack, I cannot.

I’ve read about the User Interface being clunky.  Eh, the UI isn't the worst I’ve seen. It has a few things that I like such as the maps that aren’t full screen so you can’t see where the heck you’re going with them up unless you download a mod.  /Cough Blizzard.  The maps stack like cards and you can move them anywhere on the screen.  They also zoom in and out with the scroll button which is very convenient.  Similar to what I recall from the PotBS BETA they have markers on the map directing you to quest objectives.  Maybe that was GW and not Pirates that does that, hmm.  Anyway, it’s convenient even if the so-called hardcore players think it’s noobsauce.

The Road to Playing Age of Conan - Mileage May Vary

I'm not hating or anything but the road I traveled to get Age of Conan playable with a reasonable amount of performance was LONG.  Please note that my computer which is a Dell XPS 3.2Ghz Duo Core, 3 GB RAM and Radeon 850XT was more than the minimum requirements.  It should have been somewhere near medium performance expectations.  I did expect to have to tweak a few things or update drivers since I'd heard that people with ATI graphics cards in the BETA had issues.  The luck of the Gods was not with me.  I didn't fall into the "Magic Combination" of factors that produced a reasonable registration, installation and optimization that many others did experience.

I think a person with average computer competency would have given up.  I almost did.  I never did hear from Tech Support.  I contacted Amazon to see if they'd take the game back since I couldn't register the key and hadn't had a timely resolution from Funcom and they said yes.  I'm a HUGE amazon customer and I knew they'd take anything back within reason.

I decided to give it few more tries and over the course of another day and evening, I finally got the game working to an acceptable level.  GO BEST BUY GEEK SQUAD.  I was at the point of just giving in when I decided to take it there.  I think many people would have and WILL bail if they encounter this many issues.

I'll let this picture speak for itself.  You'll want to click the image to view the larger version.

Graphics Pains with Age of Conan

Late into the US holiday weekend, I was finally able to register/activate my game code so that I could play Age of Conan (AoC).  I quickly found out that my inability to register wasn’t going to be my only problem.

I knew going in that the graphics requirements were pretty steep.   I did however, think that my computer, Dell XPS gaming system was up to the test.  My only real concern was reading that some players with AMD graphics cards were having issues, which meant that my Radeon 850 XT might give me a problem related to performance. Unfortunately, what I had was bigger than performance problems.  First I had the black screen issue which I found an answer for on MMORPG.com.  Then there was the screen stutter which I found an answer to on some other web site.  After a couple of hours I finally got into the game and created a character.

To even move around reasonably, I had to have everything on low which left the visual absolutely unacceptable to me.  I must have good looking graphics.  They don’t have to be realistic but they have to be high quality or I just can’t be bothered.  I pushed on anyway to get a feel for the game and then I started getting over heating warning from my graphics card.  At first it happened once in an hour, then twice then every few minutes.  I would stop playing for a while and turn the PC off.  Unfortunately, that didn’t resolve the issue for long the messages just kept coming.  The card’s fan was running and the air flow fine.  I went back to the internet, did some research and downloaded some tools.  By this time it’s Monday midday and I’ve spent more time on the internet trying to resolve problems than playing.

Age of Conan - Fix for Bad Activation Key / No Offer Found

If you're in the situation where you're Activation Key isn't accepted on the registration page or it was consumed during registration and you can't log in, don't wait for Customer Support to email you!  I read forums with people complaining about having gone several days with no response yet from Customer Support.  Just to see if anything had changed, I went back to the registration page and instead of trying to log in, I tried registering the key again.  This time I received a message that explained the problem as a batch of Activation Keys that have to be replaced.

The message will tell you where to email your key and what information to include in the email in order to have a new key sent to you.  I just sent my information and am hoping this is resolved before the long weekend passes.  If not, then I guess I'll just get around to some other things that I haven't had time to do much of lately.

Good luck!

Bad Start to Age of Conan

I've held off playing AoC.  Didn't do the BETA even after I suffered through the long download.  I pre-ordered for early access but I read about the BS drama with access keys really being "while supplies last".  I wasn't in a particular hurry and still very busy at work, so I didn't bother following up on mine.

I did however, want to SEE the damn game when it arrived today.  After installing and patching, I was greeted by audio and the BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH.  I tried accessing the Support forums but they're locked to only paying customers.  I go to register my key and give them my credit card.  So why oh why, couldn't I login to anything AT ALL??? Dunno.  It says user/password invalid.  Tried registering again but the activation key was consumed so that didn't work.  I tried requesting a new password but it says it didn't recognize my email address. Grrrrrrrrrr.  Very strange since I still get BETA email from them and it's the same email I used when giving my game's activation key.  Suffice it to say, that I'm not happy about it grabbing my key and credit card information but not knowing who I am now.

After updating every damn thing I could thing of and having the game check Verify the Resource database it still didn't work.  I searched several unofficial forums and found that I wasn't alone with this problem.  I tried things that had worked for others but it didn't work for me.  Finally, I ran across an article on MMORPG.COM which provided two XML files that needed to be replaced in order to get the video working.

I downloaded them, placed them in the designated folders and voila video.  All I saw was the game introduction which looked like crap on these downloaded settings.  I hear the game looks good so hopefully, they're are fixing this video driver issue and patching it toote sweet. 

Not a good beginning Funcom.  Bugs and the video thing I can deal with for a first launch.  Being locked out of the official forums, support and the login because your registration is fucked up, I don't like one bit.  I especially don't like the game key being consumed with payment information while being told immediately after that I don't exist in your database.  Not cool at all.  The first thing that came to mind was, "Aww hell nah, I wasted money on another Vanguard??"

I hope that's not the case.  I'll give it a few days and see if the email I sent to technical support gets a response.  If not, I'm going to be one pissed off...

Age of Conan Cometh

I got invited into the technical BETA.  I started the LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG process of downloading and patching the client then figured, eh, I’ll just wait.  Today I received a FilePlanet email about BETA keys for subscribers.  I started to check out the link and read the details, but once again I decided not to bother.  No reflection on Funcom or AoC but this game was never on my list of MMOs I wanted to play this year.  I’ve only considered it since the games I thought I’d be playing have been repeatedly delayed.  Okay, well one of them has been delayed where as The Chronicle of Spellborn won't way when that is coming our way. Do they think they're Blizzard or something??

I think I’ll just wait to read what reviews come out of the Open BETA.  I’m curious about two things.  First thing is what people think about the initial solo play period where it plays like an RPG.  Was it a valuable experience?  Did it allow them to introduce epic storylines or special interactions like LOTRO does with the solo instanced quests?  Is the initial learning curve for the combat system so challenging that you need alone time to get going?  I really want to know what gives with this idea.  As curious as I am about that, I’m  more interested in reading player reactions to the FFA twitch style of the combat.   

I’ll admit to not having read much, so I could be way off base.  However, I believe it’s supposed to lean more toward the Free-For-All (FFA) style, combined with the fact that it is somewhat twitch-based like a first person shooter.  For console gamers that might not be anything new.  Where as for pure PC MMO players, that’s a bit of a twist.  I want to see how people respond.  I think many people take auto-attack and sticky targeting for granted.  It’s probably all that they know.  Other than the game statistics crunching behind the scenes to determine the probability of your accuracy, hitting a target is pretty much a sure thing.  My understanding is that it won’t be that simple in AoC.

Veteran or hardcore PVPers aren’t likely to have an issue with a serious FFA environment, and perhaps those are the only players that will actually play the game.  However, I’m kind of expecting that there will be players who purchase the game because they love the IP but won’t like how FFA feels up close and personal.