This would have been a vastly different review, a few months ago

I expected more | Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

pc & video games:


	• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Windows \| Eidos, 2008 average customer review:based on 145 reviews view larger image
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Ehh...

When I bought this game I had heard way too much good stuff about it. Funcom made it seem like they were reinventing the genre. Its just another mmo, still grindy and a lot of running.

This would have been a vastly different review, a few months ago

The funny thing about expectations is just how much it can ruin or promote a game. As an example, I was one of those annoying people who ended up not liking Fable as much as I'd hope to (and complained about it to deaf ears) because I had followed it from its first announcement to its eventual birth. In the same way, I have followed Age of Conan far longer than I should have. Four years. Longer than most engagements.

Well, after finally "marrying" Age of Conan (and buying it a "fancy" ring by not only purchasing it, but dropping $90 on its shinier Collector's Edition), I can understand why the divorce rate in America is so high. It all falls back to expectations. For me, things started out wonderfully. We had our honeymoon in Tortage and for the first weekend or so, I was in complete heaven. The first twenty levels of the game are perfectly plotted and staged, with wonderment occuring around every bend. The story that plays out is small and self-contained but feels epic and truly feels like the start of something great.

Then the honeymoon ends.

Leaving Tortage, things start to sour. The story takes a complete backseat, with story-centered quests popping up every 10-20 levels or so, and instead you're treated to relatively empty environments that are stocked with creatures, sometimes with incredibly long respawn counters. So, you think..."wow, this is a huge change from the first twenty levels" but you keep on keeping on because new shiny skills keep popping up.

Undoubtedly, you'll start to run into problems. Instances won't work as they should and some won't even let you in (half of my guild couldn't access the 40-80 level resource instances like Frost Swamp where some of the epic gear starts to drop). The ones that do let you in, you realize, oftentimes have quests that only one person per instance can complete. There you go, having to repeat a not-too-inspired zone five or six times just to complete a quest. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, if the zones were interesting. But they're not; some of them are simply windy small passages resembling mazes that open into larger, empty rooms. Very boring.

At about the level 60 mark, you start to realize that maybe you rushed into this relationship a bit quick. Maybe your friends were right and this person you find yourself waking up next to is a complete mystery. From here until the end, you start to wonder if the developers (Funcom, a group I have/had the upmost respect for--look at my reviews for Dreamfall and The Longest Journey) spent their four+ years of development on creating Tortage.

I divorced Age of Conan last night. It wasn't as messy as I was expecting. There are some good ideas here. Tortage is amazing (the first few times you go through it, at least) and a lot of kudos should be given to the team as they crafted a story that could be told from four different perspectives. The combat system is an interesting take on a stagnant genre and I've discovered that it makes other MMOs feel slow by comparison. And the graphics are unmistakeably beautiful. But like that dumb model, once you strip away the beautiful exterior and the assets, you start to realize that there's not much depth underneath.

I loved Age of Conan in the beginning. Now, I just feel annoyed. There's a lot more I could have discussed (the lack of customer support, petitioning for issues that took days to be resolved, the horrible online community, the horrible lack of community outreach, the boring zones, the broken content, the content that was originally promised then silently scrapped, etc.), but the point is that Age of Conan isn't what I was expecting. Some people might enjoy it, but there's not enough content here to keep me coming back.

In the meantime, I'm getting back in the saddle. There's another one I have my eye on. I've seen Warhammer Online slyly making eyes at me from across the room. I've been thinking that maybe I'll saunter over and say hi. But this time, I'm going to take it slowly and get to know the game beforehand. This time, hopefully, I won't be burned.

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I expected more