Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

This game is well worth the price, its now free to play (additonal content is at a cost)

It sports an interesting and exciting combat system, a wealth of content and superb graphics. Forget world of warcraft, this is WoW for mature gamers. The game had a lot of problems and criticism on release, but its really grown since then and is now I think one of the best MMO's ever made.

The only big problem with the game now I think is that the servers are not very crowded now, if you join the wrong server you might find it hard to get a good group together at non-peak times.

If you are looking for a brutal and bloody mmo without the neon glowing rotating armors, elfs orcs etc, this is your best bet.

I played the game from launch until I gave up for reasons stated by many reviewers already (buggy and lacking in content). I returned about a year and a half later, and has enjoyed every minute of it since then. The game is now definitely the best mmo on the market.

Pros:
- Great game-play
- Excellent graphics
- Music/Sound effects are extremely well done
- Combat is good fun and a lot more challenging than the ordinary mmo tab-aiming (at least if you play melee)
- Healing is also more fun with the aoc-system (directional heals and HoTs)
- Entertaining quests

Cons:
- Frequent zoning (less in the expansion)
- Needs more optimization on sieges (battles for player cities)
- Same starting area for every alt you make

have been back on this game now for a week after not resubscribing after launch and i must say i am very impressed with the improvements taht FC have made.Their are some very nice guilds out there to join with good social communities gameplay is very much improved with very nicely written quests the graphics are breathtaking very nice to look at and the combat is great fun.Like all mmo,s its down to personal experience but i would say to any body for the price this game is going for now which is less than a months subscription fee give it a go to try it is to love it

Don't believe any of the negative feedback this game is the best online experience ever, and with each new update gets seven better.
The graphics and combat have to be seen to believed.
The land where the play takes place is living and breathing with wonderful detail.
I have seen the DX10 version of this working and its breath taking.
One piece of advise, roll PvE, because the PvP is just a gankfest and gives a bad impression of the game.

Age of Conan is an interesting game on many fronts but first lets get a few things out of the way.

When the game was launched it was bug ridden, unbalanced and full of exploits. Much of what is reported here was true but the key to that statement is WAS true. The fact is that much of what people have reported here is no longer true. There are far fewer exploits than before and while no MMO will ever be exploit free exploits are continuously fixed.

The combat system is far more balanced and number of "God mode" builds have been erradicated. Thats not to say there isn't still siginifcant balancing and "fun" modifications to do but they are diminishing with each patch.

The quest hole in the early 60's was eradicated with a new area and whilst there is still a large hole at 75+ the next patch should fill this hole.

The game as a whole has matured considerably and the leveling experience is now pretty smooth. There is certainly still some issues with quests not working as intended but these are very few and far between, well documented and trivially repaired by the GM's.

As a framework and as a game AoC has considerably more to offer than most current MMO's. The fighting control method and the graphics offer a huge scope for future development and upcoming patches offering more endgame content and a re-itemisation of the entire game making items worth more (and potentially providing an economy) are also coming.

AoC has its flaws (lack of endgame content, poor raid loot system, poor itemisation, leveling holes after 75 etc.) just like an other MMO but as of right now the game is a LOT of fun and can offer many 100's of hours of gameplay for the money. The game will only get better from here and now is a great time to give it a go.

G

i was extremely excited for the original release only to be disappointed after less than a wee of playing, most of the thing which they said were going to be in the game, just simply weren't in it, and i hear still are not. Classes were very unbalanced, and solo questing was very hard( i was on a pvp server, Because pvp was the biggest aspect of the game i was attracted to, yet didn't deliver) as people would rather just kill you and steal the quest goal than team up, this is because you can simply kill anyone regardless of race. Very disappointed with the game.

I had planned on writing up a review for this game, and I suppose this can be considered a review of some sort, but I decided I would rather just make a pros and con list. This is my opinion after playing the game for 36 hours:

[Pros]:-

Fun combat system. It's not as innovative or unique as they try to market it, but it's fun nonetheless. It mostly only applies to melee classes, magic users still have a standard MMO feel to them (from what I've heard)

- Best graphics for an MMO to date. The game looks good; characters, environments, it's all pretty. However, it takes a damn good PC to run the game at max settings with a high frame rate. Keep that in mind.

- A decent character creator. I wasn't wowed by it, but it good enough.

That's basically it for the pros. I'm having a very hard time coming up with anything else to praise besides one of the core aspects of the game, combat, was actually interesting and mildly entertaining. It was a fresh of breath air from other MMO games, but it's not something that will make you suddenly hate how any other MMO is played after playing this. At least not for me.

[Cons]:-

- Tons of bugs and glitches and game exploits. People have power leveled to 80 (max level) within a couple days because of exploits in certain classes. People have gotten stuck in places (me included). People have lost money in the game. Quests are broken. Now, I understand it's an MMO and most MMO games have rough starts, but seriously, there are a lot of bugs that could have easily been squashed during beta. How were these overlooked?

- Lame UI. No customization to it.

- Lame chat box. The chat box has already had an update from a patch to make better because of how many complaints there was for it, but it's still subpar. There needs to be more options for it. Cliche as it might be, it needs to take a lesson from WoW.

- Poor party system. If the people in your party aren't 50 feet from you, they don't show up on your radar or map. It can be a burden to find them.

- PvP is a wreck at this point. Some people disagree, they will tell you to "learn 2 play", but I can play video games just fine, and this PvP system is in dire need of a change. Besides the balance issues (which are expected for an MMO at launch) the combat system, the good part of the game, does not mesh well for PvP. If you're melee, a lot of people will escape you. Unless both people stand still and fight, it's extremely hard to pull off your special moves (called combos) on them. If you run in circles, strafe, try to dodge, like you should be doing, it's almost impossible to use combos, you just have to use basic attacks to try and win a fight, and that's boring.

- Quests are no better than any other MMO. This doesn't bother me too much, but I'm sure it's something others won't like. They are your basic fetch, kill, and messenger quests. Nothing new.

- You need somewhat of a "super computer" to play this with reasonable fps, I spent over £500 for completly new hardware, graphics card etc. -

- Bugs galore! - broken quests, pvp, craft, stats.

Overall, I felt stupid buying this game, for such a big hype, it's let me and many other gamers frustrated. I've spent possibly $545.99 altogether to play this, a failure by FunCom.

However, the game still has enjoyable points that I enjoyed while playing, a unique combat system & character creation.

Now the game is really enjoyable. After Funcom hired a new game Director everything is looking better. The last few patches has made the game so much more enjoyable and I can now rate the game with the 5 stars that it deserves.

Excellent story, excellent gameplay, and wonderful graphics!

Brilliant game only problem is i now dont have a social life!!!!!! Everyone friendly first mmo i have had did have a brief go on swg mmo but got bored this game is fantastic sure had a few glitches but every pc game does when new would recommend 2 anyone over 18!!

I've been playing AoC for about 3 months and I only have had 4 or 5 issues with bugs. Just ended the application and restarted and continued from there.
Little hassle if I have to say.
No problem since the last patch which introduced nice Player-vs-Player features (and more should follow soon).

I'm enjoying it quite much, and I like the people I encounter in the game too.
Undecided about 4 or 5 stars. Some things could have been done better, of course, but I think this kind of game is not though of been perfect from the start. It simply cannot be, since the developers must make it evolve with the players.
Since many gave just 1 star because of fishy or unrelated problems, I'm giving it a 5.