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

From the moment I stepped into Age of Conan, I knew that the chat functionality was going to be lackluster. At the beginning of release, the social mechanics within the game were the number one issue for many of the players. The chat going on within your UI was often hard to read, and you’d often need to reset your channel settings every time you entered a new zone. A number of these problems have been fixed, but the general social UI needs continued work. Social players are often the foundation of any MMOG, and Funcom needs to insure that those players are around to tell the world what they think of AoC.

Crafting Your Keep

Crafting is something that needs a bit of improvement in AoC.

When any major MMOG is released in the modern era, guilds are often concerned about two things: leveling up their members and creating any piece of equipment that’s going to assist them in the long run. Thus crafting plays a fairly important role in an MMOGs early development. While the crafting system in AoC was in place when the game first started – mostly designed around the building and creation of guild cities – the players aren’t actually allowed to begin crafting until level 40. Once players hit 40, they can begin developing their crafting skills, going through the various crafting “quests” and eventually being able to help craft whatever their guild needs.

In the estimation of this reviewer, introducing crafting at level 40 is a bit high for most players. With the second destiny quest and a number of other special options being unlockable at level 30, it seems like 30 might be a more appropriate number for crafters to begin their work without forcing them to level up for two weeks (or more) to get to their crafting encounters.

Loot and Quests

One of the other major issues within Age of Conan – at least when this review was written – was the lackluster itemization of the standard areas within AoC and at the item vendors. As I journeyed throughout the world with my Cimmerian Conqueror, I was often stunned to find that I had very little to spend my money on when I would cash in my loot. Essentially I purchased a new set of armor and equipment at level 20 and a new set at level 30, but the levels in between were full of rather unoriginal loot that either looked exactly like the piece I was wearing/wielding before, or with just a slight alteration.

Although the weapons are often much more varied in their style and structure, the selection of items in the game needs to expand. Thankfully, a recent patch seems to have introduce better itemization within the game, but MMOG players are often never happy unless they have a whole treasure chest full of hats, boots, swords and staves to choose from. Monsters also need to have their loot tables increased to give players a chance to pick up some terrific armor or weapons off of their corpses. Luckily, the quests within Age of Conan do provide quite an assortment of armor and weapons for players to earn, if they’re willing to undertake the quest. Who wants to play an MMOG without the phat loot?

Most gamers love getting new equipment for their characters.

Even if the loot for a particular quest doesn’t necessarily match up with an item that your character might need, I would personally recommend pursuing almost all of the quests with Age of Conan. In all honesty, the writers and storytellers at Funcom have done a fantastic job creating a backstory for each of the quests that a player encounters within the game. From interacting with Kern in Connall’s Valley (who also happens to be the protagonist in the first few Age of Conan novels) to the sinister snake priests that slither around Stygia.

Despite the quests being beautifully written, I was a bit taken aback when I first journeyed from Tortage to the areas beyond the island stronghold. Unlike the NPCs within Tortage, a scant few of the non-player characters outside of Tortage will actually have professional a professional voice over. Funcom is hard at work incorporating voices into the most played through quests within the various provinces, but it remains doubtful whether the entire game will ever reach the fully voiced threshold.