05/04/2008

Age of Conan Beta After 24 Hours

Written By Dagny

As I begin, let me preface everything that follows by saying that I fully realize this is BETA and not a final version.My personal review, for anyone who cares, will include both positive and negative things I experienced, and while there are some aspects that weren’t thrilling, I do expect that things will change as the game goes live, I am merely giving my own opinions after just one day’s play.

I think I’ll also mention before my critiques that I have overall enjoyed myself and I see a lot of potential. I anticipate myself being in Hyboria for a long time. I am a fully pre-paid Collector’s Edition owner, so my perspective is from one who plans to play and hopes that my feedback provides something useful.

I rolled myself a Priestess of Mitra. So let’s start with character creation. Overall I thought the variety of options for customizing my character was quite high. I won’t say I’m in love with the final product. I guess guys will be thrilled with the ability to make a hot body for the female avatars. I was not so thrilled with my best efforts to make a cute face. I realize this is not a huge issue, I am merely providing feedback in the order in which I experienced each aspect. I know the Hyborian life was a tough one so the people probably weren’t overly ‘cute” anyway. This was only cosmetic and not a big deal.

The world is beautiful, simply put. I can’t criticize the landscape in so far as it looks. One big disappointment to me though was that I felt forced to head certain ways. What I mean is, I like roaming around the world and I sorta felt like I was being herded down pathways. I’d like more opportunity to cut across fields, climb over hills with no paths, etc. I understand what we are seeing is a very small portion of the game and the world so maybe what I’m looking for exists, I just haven’t seen it yet. This isn’t huge, but for long term gameplay I would like more freedom of movement. It’s a beautiful world, let me go see it up close.


There are lots of quests, and I love the NPCs having a face to face chat with me and not just reading a text box, very nicely done. It was nice being greeted on the beach as I arrived and more or less pointed in the right direction. I will admit I got a little frustrated the first hour or so. Without an instruction manual I felt myself fumbling for comfort in controlling my character. This is not a knock, because even without a manual I was able to get a good grip on the controls very quickly. The layout and thought behind the hotkeys and controls was well done, and honestly it was refreshing to be a little lost. This is a new world and I’d rather it not be exactly like every other game, otherwise I could just play them.


I was able to find my way around reasonably easy. This is, in part, a negative for me. I don’t really like to be spoon fed a game. Referring back to my comment about feeling “herded”, there isn’t much of a feeling of exploration since you really are limited in where you can go. Once again, this may just be because it’s a starter area.

I also wasn’t thrilled about how your quest targets are lit up on your radar/compass. If an NPC is going to tell me to hunt down someone who is “lost” and then an “x” is placed on my compass showing me where the lost person is… how lost are they? Kinda takes the joy out of searching for, and finding, them. I know power-gamers probably love this because their goal is to level as fast as possible, but I’d really prefer that I got to feel like I accomplished something, that I took an NPCs vague directions and “found” the missing person. I don’t really want the game to go so quickly. I know this sounds like I’m being negative, but the game is really fun, if it weren’t I wouldn’t waste time sharing what I see.

Leveling is too easy. I played my Priestess to 13 in a short time, all of it solo. I know early levels are usually very fast, but this was almost too easy. Maybe the Priestess is over-powered, I can’t say. This will be my class at launch so it’s not like I want to get hit with a nerf bat, but aside from 1 death from a bad pull and a few from lag and disconnects, I had no trouble climbing the levels without outside assistance. I may be a bit odd when it comes to leveling. I want to play a lot but not level so quickly. Again it boils down to a feeling of accomplishment. There are enough quests to have plenty to do without grinding and still be able to level. I’m not saying I expect this to change, just my perspective here.

Money seemed easy to come by. Equipment I could use dropped pretty readily so I didn’t have to spend much. I know 50+ copper isn’t a lot, but it seems like it is since there’s really nothing for me to buy. I don’t know if there is the ability for larger pack space but I do find I get way more loot than I can carry.

I’m actually not going to spend much time on lag or loading issues. For the most part it wasn’t awful. There were too many disconnects for my liking, but since the whole point is stressing the servers and this is to be expected, I won’t complain. After public launch, I’d complain, but this is to be expected so for me it’s frustrating but a non-issue.

All in all, I like AoC a lot. I’m enjoying the game even in its limited state. There are things I would like to see and have mentioned them, but none are deal breakers. The design team did a great job and I see a HUGE amount of potential. Of all my issues, the biggest ones are freedom of movement and the speed of leveling. Without access to the entire world I don’t know if my concerns will hold true, but they are what I have from what I can see.

I’m on beta server 3 as “Aliantha”, if anyone needs help in game feel free to message me when I am online. I’m no expert but I’ll be glad to help out as much as I can. The chat channels are hard to follow right now because everyone is a bit lost and all talking at the same time, so send me a tell /tell Aliantha <message> and if I can assist, I will.

Enjoy the game, I know I will be doing a lot of that!

Written By Dagny

We also just posted 60+ In-game screen shots from the beta Check them out here,  And Here