But unlike many other games, this isn’t a problem at all
because the most outstanding feature in
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan is the
way combat feels to the general user. Time and time again Ten Ton
Hammer staffers (and other publications) have extolled the many virtues
of AoC’s combat system: the fluid feel of swinging your
sword, the reactionary method of fighting, and the chest-pounding
critical hits are all still in the game.
Yet the final release version of the combat system has attained a level
of polish that many beta testers wouldn’t have believed
possible. Each strike of your keyboard is registered with the
AoC client, and players who are spam artists should be wary that they
don’t augment their own attack combos with too much button
mashing. The combos themselves – although a bit difficult to
master at first – have been honed to the point of gently
scaling to the players’ increasing mastery of the controls.
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You'll see some
frightening figures in AoC, even in the early parts of the game.
Among the Ten Ton Hammer co-workers, many of us have talked with each
other and note that if there’s one thing that
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan
achieved to near perfection, it’s the hands-on combat system.
Even now as I try to log on to older games, the mechanics just feel
clunky and slow. Especially for individuals who have played melee
classes in the past, the combat mechanics are a step above and beyond
anything we’ve seen before.
For example, at level 10 I had received a quest to go into a nearby
cave and kill twenty scorpions and twenty snakes. In most games, the
daunting task of killing forty enemies, even in a nearby area, would be
a huge headache and a giant speed bump in the overall quest grind. When
I entered the cave in Age of Conan I was immediately beset by foes and
began driving them off to the best of my ability. As I kept progressing
through the cave system – which was gorgeous – I
dropped more and more of the creatures, each of them falling with a
fair amount of difficulty to my blade. Finally I reached the end of the
cave, but when I looked up I realized that I had long since completed
the quest task set for me. Killing forty creatures had been
accomplished in the blink of an eye.
It Takes Baby Steps
Although my positive attitude is clearly evident now, it
wasn’t so blatant when I first tried to jump into the game
during the Early Access weekend. With hours of server maintenance,
forum crashes, and general high load issues, the Early Access program
didn’t hit that sweet spot many MMOG gamers like to find when
they’re plowing through the game’s early portions.
For those of us with limited time, it was fairly distracting when our
leveling adventures were interrupted by a one hour….then two
hour….the three hour wait.
On top of that, the client download time was fairly horrendous. With
the thirteen gigabytes of information slowly channeling through a
server, you really can’t have enough bandwidth to go around.
It took me a day and several hours to get the client downloaded, and
that was on a cable connection with a fairly strong up-down limit. Once
the game was installed, however, it ran like a dream. I have a fairly
humble machine, with the only high-end part being an 8800GT graphics
card from Nvidia. Everything else (Pentium 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb
RAM, average motherboard) runs right on the mid-line recommendations
for running the game, and it runs just fine in the "Medium" graphics
setting.
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The graphics - even
at the Medium level - are fantastic.
All things considered, however, those initial baby steps have really
contributed to a solid opening week for a game that many thought would
have numerous crashes, server lock-ups, and general issues for the
first few weeks of the experience. Compared to the
style="font-style: italic;">Anarchy Online
launch from many years ago, Age
of Conan looks like a bright-winged angel.
Parting Thoughts
The wait is over. Five long years have finally concluded and here we
are standing on the precipice of greatness. Frankly, my initial
experience with Age of
Conan – and the experience of a number of my
co-workers as well – has been nothing but enjoyable. With no
crashes, huge graphical glitches, or mysterious hard drive explosions
to speak of, the official Age
of Conan launch (not the Early Access launch) has to be
one of the smoothest experiences in recent memory – ranking
right up there with the launch of Lord
of the Rings Online.
For those of you that haven’t taken the plunge into the world
yet, I strongly urge you to check out the game. If you’re
looking for a title that brings a different sort of flair –
one that is bloody and violent – to the MMOG space,
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan is the
place for you to go. Although this isn’t my official review,
things would have to drastically alter in the post-20 level experience
to sunder my opinion of this game.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Age of Conan: Unchained Game Page.
