Age of Conan - Review @ AtomicGamer

Asbjoern

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So, the period of reviews has begun for Age of Conan. AtomicGamer serves a review calling it the "best MMO since WoW":
Just because you can run WoW at 25fps, though, doesn't mean you'll necessarily be jumping for joy in Conan. The system requirements are about as brutal as a two-handed mace crushing a skull into little bits, or at least it might seem like that on your three-year-old laptop or $500 budget PC. Just about any CPU that's either dual-core or the equivalent of 3GHz or better should be fine, and while 1GB RAM is the official minimum, I'd consider 2GB to be a much better starting point - and if you're running Vista, consider 2GB the flat-out minimum. Once the CPU and RAM are at a decent level then a solid video card is the biggest measure of the game's performance, especially if you start turning up draw distances, screen resolution, antialiasing, and more in the game's Video Options. The requirements list an Nvidia 7950 GTX under its recommended system, but I'd say that's closer to being a bit above a good minimum. If you're trying to play at high resolutions with the detail set to High, don't even show up without an 8800-level card.
But once you get that together, you will know where that upgrade money went. Conan has fantastic textures and plenty of great art, with sprawling cities and interesting NPCs (many of which have decent and/or amusing voice acting attached). It also comes at a cost of hard drive space as well, though: Age of Conan is almost 25GB fully installed. But that's miles and miles of high quality textures all over everything, and as long as you have the machine to be able to see it all, you'll be duly impressed with how the game looks.
More information.
 
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My character is lvl 11 now, and so far, the game is entertaining and beautiful. Not quite sure yet how the long term playability will be, so far I noticed little room for social interaction. But compared to earlier offerings in the MMORPG genre since WoW, AoC is above par.

How well it runs, depends on the hardware, btw. I have everything maxed and haven't seen slowdowns below 22fps - others with stronger computers seem to have a lot slowdowns and even stuttering. That's strange.
 
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Another review based on the first few levels with the game.

After the first 20-30 levels, the game falls apart and the tech forums are ablaze with severe technical issues. Somehow, Funcom managed to fool everyone with the starter area (Tortage) which is more or less problem free - and the fan base is even more fanatical than usual.

It should be interesting to see the development during the next couple of weeks, and how Funcom deals with what can only become a devastating backlash.
 
Well, I'm now level 41 or so and have seen a fair few glitches and bugs, however, I've also seen some impressive sights and run my first 'real' group instance - Sanctum of the Burning Souls and having real fun exploring this game.
 
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I recommend the RP-PVP servers:

Yeah, the RP-PvP servers are vastly different than what i hear coming off the PvP servers. Most people at least try to play nice, AND there was a large guild summit a few days ago, a lot of guilds attended... i am sure its just the beginning of the RP set up for the server. Anyway, most will at least demand money, or sex or throw a insult your way before attacking.

There is little spawn camping, loading camping ETC.. going on on our server. And if it does, see slayers postings.

Guild summit? Sounds like an rp alliance forming...similar to ERPA in UO europa.

And RP-PVP servers are win. Me and my guildie were waiting on a respawn in Conall Valley (we are both Stygian) when two Cimmerians come up and basically try to cut in line. We do some light RP by claiming the camp for Stygia, and calling them Cimmerian pussies or some shit....the guys decided to have a go at us.

We focus fire quickly on one, the other guy just takes off running. It was freakin hilarious. So, we finish off the ranger and prepare for the inevitable revenge attempt. I have my friend hide, and I start running around like I'm alone fighting shit. A few minutes later they take the bait and are throughly trounced again.

The dude warns us that if we don't leave Conall Valley that we will be killed repeatedly by his friend. I figure he's talking shit, so we just go about our business. About 15 minutes later, a guy about 10 levels higher and the original ranger have tracked us down and killed us. Sonofabitch, that never happens. I thought people always threatened with friends that never show up!!!

They get us once more in the valley, and we ended up fighting some spawn campers on top of the hill. It was a couple guys that had us by maybe 8 levels each, so we'd kill one and eventually they'd get us. Apparently, the Cimmerian guys dislike spawn campers more than Stygian Dogs, and in the middle of one fight we were in...out of the blue they help us out and kick the campers asses royally. Through some tells later, we decide to make a truce and agree to help each other again if any dickwads start up again.

This is the kind of interaction you don't get on a PvE server. Sure, I coulda made one more level had I not been scrapping with all the guys...but I tell ya what, I had more fun doing the PVP than any ding grats. So there is my take so far on RP-PVP.
 
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I had the "pleasure" to be part of the EA and I think I can thruthfully say: This game, as well as its developers are one big disaster. The game is totally unfinished on so many levels, that beta really does not describe it. Well, it's Funcom... I should have known it.
 
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I had the "pleasure" to be part of the EA and I think I can thruthfully say: This game, as well as its developers are one big disaster. The game is totally unfinished on so many levels, that beta really does not describe it. Well, it's Funcom... I should have known it.

Thats why Im waiting to start until they finish it. I got the game weeks ago and still havent used the free month. Theres no reason when goodies like this are still in works:

Paral:Several mid-late thirties dungeons are getting a complete overhaul (Black Castle, Pyramid of the Ancients and Treasury of the Ancients)
* Several quests are being made fuller and more entertaining. If people wish to revisit these quests, we will add a system to let them try them out again.
* we are adding first a batch of quests in Eiglophian Mountains (lvls 55+)
* We are also adding in a bunch of quests that didn’t quite make it for launch in the 30+ areas.
* Around 60 quests through the game have been flagged as “Lore Quests”. They will now be patched out with full Voice-Over. (Roughly 1 quest per level after level 20).

They say june as the releasedate for that but well see. I can always wait.
 
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The levelling is rather smooth up to 50 or so. After that, some grinding will be needed. Several of the members in my guild simply stopped levelling at 50, and instead started to grind materials for the guild city. The first real instance, Sanctum or Sanctuary (or something similar) seems solid enough, and has a bunch of high quality drops for level 40 players.
 
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I'll let you know when I hit this 50+ mark how the game goes from there. I'm not rushing it though and have but in some solid hours so far. I'm on a normal PVE server for the moment as I don't want other obstructions getting in the way as I check out the game. Oh and Zakhal, that Conan book you brought up the 'Centenary Edition' is an edited version of Howard's work. The Del Rey versions are not censored (so I here from the Lore forum here) so I guess you're better of going with them.
 
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Oh and Zakhal, that Conan book you brought up the 'Centenary Edition' is an edited version of Howard's work. The Del Rey versions are not censored (so I here from the Lore forum here) so I guess you're better of going with them.

I read about that but even with the "editing" (censoring of racial slurs) its still good. Many people have given it 5 stars so I didnt let the censoring of some racial slurs bother me (purists might think othervice). Main thing is its still enjoyable, cheap and combined with all the books.
 
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Yeah, it's just annoying that they can't leave things be really. Do you know how much was actually edited?
 
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Yeah, it's just annoying that they can't leave things be really. Do you know how much was actually edited?

Its not very clear but atleast one story is censored. From the conan forums:

No one seems to know how "unedited" Grant's versions are, so that still leaves a bit of a question mark hanging over The Conan Chronicles.

Sadly, the Conan hardback collector's edition The Pool of the Black One published by D.M. Grant was recently found to contain unnecessary editorial alterations to the text.

Most of the changed were done to make the text more "politically correct." Racial slurs, names, and other "potentially offensive" remarks and phrases were edited, as well as some tampering with adjectives, deletions or words, and some punctua

Censoring of few racial slurs dont really sound that bad. IIRC howard was a bit of racist.

Hers another example of censoring in the Lancer/Ace version of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" (not sure if its the one used in centenary)

Howard wrote: "Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the barbarian's lips."

De Camp re-wrote: "Foam flew from the barbarian's lips as her maddening laughter floated back to him."

Only purists would complain about somthing like that. ANd its not like editing is always a bad thing.

There are much worse editions of conan out there. Centenary is among the better ones imho.

I think not even the DelRey and Weird Tales texts are that different apart from a few spelling errors. When I checked the Del Rey appendix, I could not detect any words or sentences that have been changed when Howard's original texts were edited for the Weird Tales publication.
 
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I don't care much for Howard (racial slurs or not) but the quote you gave zakhal is not an edit but a rewrite.
 
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"Howard wrote: "Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the barbarian's lips."

De Camp re-wrote: "Foam flew from the barbarian's lips as her maddening laughter floated back to him."
 
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The quote was from here:

The re-writing did serious harm to Howard's conception of Conan, but I won't go into that. Buy James Van Hise's "Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard" if you're interested in the nasty editing that de Camp has done. An example of de Camp's unwarranted editing can be found by taking just one of the sentences from the unedited version and comparing it with the Lancer/Ace version of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" --

Howard wrote: "Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the barbarian's lips."

De Camp re-wrote: "Foam flew from the barbarian's lips as her maddening laughter floated back to him."

Do you sense a different impact between the two sentences? Which sentence seems more powerful? Which one evokes a greater image? It's obvious, Howard's phrasing is superior.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=8838

Not sure what you mean by the editing/rewriting but I think who ever wrote that "It's obvious, Howard's phrasing is superior" must be insane. Or then its just my lack of skill in english that I dont see the superiority.
 
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Well, I actually agree with you that De Camp's phrasing is superior but that's not the point. Point is that Howard wrote at certain moment in time and in certain style so, while editing might cater to our modern sensibilities, re-writting changes style of the original author to the style of the re-writter and that's not what the role of editor should be. If he/she thinks that his/her style is superior let them come up with an original story, write it and have it published.
 
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