Age of Conan at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Frankly, most of the character classes in the game have quite a bit of flavor and flair; their own uniqueness that brings a sense of individuality to each player. Although some players argued that this wasn’t the case at the time of release, as the weeks progress more patches continue to bring more unique options to the character classes. As an example of this, one of the classes that players were most concerned with – the Necromancer – has received a large dose of love from the Funcom developers, giving them more pet options to choose from and making them a true pet-based AoC class.

Along with the patches, the feat trees that are available to AoC players bring a certain sense of individualism to each class as well. Each feat tree is filled with a variety of different options to choose from when you spec a character, and I’d imagine that Funcom will continue to hone the classes until each brings with it a particular feel to the AoC gaming experience. My Brute-based Conqueror certainly plays differently from his Carnage counterpart, and even more distinctly from the 2H or 1H based Barbarians in the game.

At the time that this review was written, a large number of the classes were still undergoing their own “revamps” from the AoC developers, and I’m sure the character class patches will continue on into the future. In a few more months the drastic changes should be leveled off and players should hopefully have a “stable” class by that time.

Delving into Dungeons

Another one of the more solid features in Age of Conan has been the dungeon experience. Despite the unfortunate lack of group-based dungeons throughout the earlier levels in the game, the group and instanced dungeons that do exist are quite entertaining to play through.

The beginning of the game, during your time spent in Tortage, you’ll encounter some of the most entertaining solo-based dungeons in your first 40 levels of AoC. With its story-based interactive play and key objectives to go find, the Tortage dungeons are fantastic and truly an enjoyable experience to play through. Unfortunately, the quality does slip a bit as a player ventures out of the island city, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the instanced dungeons are sub-par.

Dungeons in Age of Conan feature a variety of gruesome monsters.

Quite the contrary, anytime I could venture into an instanced dungeon space on my own, I took the leap and really found some entertaining adventures to enjoy. The team at Funcom is working hard to integrate more content into the game, especially story-driven quests like what was experienced on Tortage, but at this point the land outside of Tortage simply feels less interactive than what was going on with the bustling new player city. If Funcom can continue to build on their solid dungeon foundation, they’ll continue to attract players, but at this point there simply isn’t all that many to enjoy.

However, once a player reaches level 37, all of those problems come to a quick and epic end. Upon hitting that magical number, players will be tossed into the Sanctum of the Burning Souls, a group-based combat dungeon filled with tough monsters and epic bosses. As Ten Ton Hammer’s editor-in-chief John Hoskin voiced, this group-based dungeon is really an exciting and refreshing experience after having a number of levels where quest-grinding was the only way to advance. Exploring through the Sanctum also gives players the opportunity to finally find interesting loot, and I’ll explain the lack of loot progression in the outside realm in my next section.

In essence, the Sanctum of the Burning Souls is an encounter that should be seen through every level section within Age of Conan. Low level dungeons are a great way for players to really get a feel for the group-based encounter, and if there aren’t enough of these areas within a game new players simply won’t know how to jump into these situations once they reach the harder encounters.

Being Social in a Social World

Speaking of group content, it’s important to mention a few things about Age of Conan’s grouping mechanics. With combat being one of the more important aspects of Age of Conan, it makes sense that group-based combat would also make up an important section of the developers mind set, and players will find a number of features that make AoC stand out from their competition.  

One of the more interesting features you’ll find in AoC’s group encounters is the “passive” group buffs that occur only when a player is grouped in a combat situation. For many of the character classes in AoC, certain group situations will proc certain group-based abilities to activate. For example, the Conqueror has a fantastic group ability called “Furious Inspiration.” If this ability procs when the Conqueror is in combat, the Conqueror may automatically resurrect one of his fallen allies and allow them to rejoin the battle. The Barbarian – on the other hand – gets a bonus whenever he groups up with other Barbarians, utilizing the ability “Rampaging Horde” (which is documented in our class interview). Each class has one of these buffs along with his or her standard buff abilities.

Grouping in Age of Conan is terrific once you find your group.

However, my experience in finding a group proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of my experience in Age of Conan. Like most MMOGs, finding a group can often be a difficult proposition, but the tools in Age of Conan really don’t make it any easier. Funcom has stated that they are working on many of the functionalities of grouping and guilding, but overall the toolset is rather lackluster. Along with the fact that finding a group isn’t the easiest proposition, the game is also based on an instancing sort of system, so even if you find a group you often have to switch instances in order to actually be in the same area as your teammates. Couple that with the mini-map often not working to display all of the groupmates, and you have yourself a sticky situation.

Creating a solid grouping toolset needs to be one of the top priorities at Funcom, and essentially all of the social function within Age of Conan need a major overhaul. Each patch may bring in some more useful features for socializing within Age of Conan, but things need to continue to improve if there’s ever going to be a cohesive hierarchy of well-communicating guilds within the top echelons of the game.