Onward with Age of Conan then! I'm not sure what I was expecting to be honest, and find myself in a somewhat unique position, playing an MMO that I didn't really choose myself. Oh, certainly, I picked up the box, and plonked down the credit card details, but as noted previous, I'm mostly there to keep in touch with friends.
I'm finding it gives me a strangely detached view on the game itself; neither fanboy, nor hater. My expectations can't be crushed, or confirmed, simply because I didn't have any in the first place; I did no research, followed no forums and the first thought I gave to race/class combos, was when presented with the actual character creation screen itself.
I went with Herald of Xotli in the end, mostly due to the sheer preposterousness of the concept; a cloth-wearing wizard type, who gets two-handed swords! Just thinking about it makes me giggle, given the relentless training I've had over the years about A Wizard's Place. That place, generally, is Not On The Front Row, and is one of the reasons I generally avoid caster classes. I like to get stuck in! (Just ask any of the TNC about my propensity for Mesmer tanking, against all common sense!)
After some play, up to 21 so far, I was rather surprised to discover that actually, a hell-crazed mage type set up for close combat is not only fun, but actually works! The Herald is essentially a kind of DPS off-tank assist, in basic game function. They get an awful lot of spells dishing out fire damage, but virtually all of them have to be delivered at sword-point. Those few that don't require a melee weapon seem to have a very short range anyway, so you can't just stand at the back and wiggle fingers, even if you wanted to. Its all very hands on, and made even more engaging by the basic nature of AoC's melee combat, where position and spatial awareness seem more emphasised than in the more standard fare.
They get no armour to speak of, and only a minimal amount of magical defences, so you wouldn't get away with being main tank for anything major, but then again, this is nothing new to the more traditional Rogue DPS types anyway, and I'm more reminded of that, than any kind of Wizarding I've seen in the past. To further drive home this unexpected kind of gameplay, a recent ding gave me 'Hellstep', an ability that functions more or less like WoW's Warrior 'Charge'; a sudden highpseed sprint at the target, taking you right into the fray, only in this case, it also sets me on fire and make me explode on contact! Neat!
I was trying to play it all cold, calculating and mystical, but frankly, the skills and abilities so far positively encourage berserking gameplay. I think I've found my niche!
Tortage is good. Seen a lot about how much of a prison it is, but I'm only on my first go through the place, so am not feeling that myself, yet. Only been playing a week, at a fairly usual kind of place, and am already eligible to leave the place if I want, although I have done a lot more group-based Daytime questing than is absolutely necessary. There is indeed a lot of running backward and forth involved in the early questing, which probably does annoy a lot of players, but I've never minded long walks in the countryside, and in all fairness, this particular countryside is very well done; detailed, brooding, full of hidden menace.
I've also heard a lot about how life beyond Tortage isn't nearly as well put together or purposeful. I guess I'll see that for myself soon enough.
Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised on the whole 'Conan' thing actually. Indeed, the Conan Mythos is hack'n'slash guts and glory pulp of the trashiest literary order, but I guess there's a certain guilty pleasure to that. While not being that familiar with it all myself, I'm definitely getting the sense of a real world there, rather than a collection of random Fantasy Adventuring Necessities, plonked down in some arbitrary game-facilitating manner.
On some level, it is just the same old collection of mobile bags of improvement, monster gunk collections and fed-exes, but at another, well... suffice to say that its taking me a lot less effort than usual to sit back, and start to see through the mechanics and catch glimpses of a heroic saga of which I'm some kind of part. Jaded wanderer that I am, I'm surprised to even feel faint twitchings of my long-shrivelled and largely vestigial role-playing gland, and I wonder if perhaps this is a world I can embrace, in which I can maybe even be, rather than play.
There are certainly 'Conan Moments', my most memorable so far being the Acheronian Ruins; sinister epic music playing as we cleave and incinerate our way up the massive stone stairs of the cyclopean ruined temple to ancient and dark gods, on our way to combat demonic forces and steal great treasures for glory! An excellently done zone full of majesty, ruin, hectic combat and bikini and/or loin-cloth clad heroes cleaving out individual destinies. Its cheesy, certainly, but well-done cheese, and from my limited familiarly, its supposed to be cheesy. Surprisingly easy to just let go and embrace the cheese!
Mind you, I do rather wish my companions and I had stuck to my own Three Month Rule; there is indeed a fair bit of work to go on the bug front. I don't know about the wider issues; siege warfare, PvP balance, DPS 'Women's Troubles', etc, but have certainly experienced my own personal troubles in a variety of forms. Bugwatch this week includes:
An almost routine and regular corruption of my Resource database, which means I need to watch a Verification progress bar churn its way through for ten minutes before a session can even start. Apparently, this is optional, but it must be prompting for a reason, surely?
A particularly frustrating bug which causes quest dialogue text to show as black on black, making it impossible to see what you're replying with. Possibly a memory leak of some kind. I also get grey minimap textures a lot too. The only time I'd ever seen similar symptoms before, was in Second Life, a game that streams everything to you as needed. That uses grey textures as placeholders until it finally receives the texture it needs. Surely AoC isn't streaming this stuff? What the hell is the 24.7GB install for then, if so?
It might be streaming actually...every now and then, I take a very long time to load a new zone. Took me a while to realise that it was actually patching during zone transitions! I have no idea why they've done it like this, only Guild Wars does similar, and it's sub-patches are far smaller. Why not just wait until next log-in like everyone else? Frustrating, and also seems to cause framerate hell on the other side just afterward. Easier just to log out entirely and come back if that happens.
Then there's the 'Lockup for several seconds just after first login' one. Apparently, a report has been sent in the background. That's nice. They've had at least ten of these from me alone by now...ought to be enough to work out what's going on, no?
There's lag spikes, but then few games escape that, so I'm less picky about those. On the plus side, at least they fixed my Missing Hair After Demonform problem, which is just as well. I can be very superficial sometimes, and it was stopping me using what is an otherwise useful skill in company!
Some work to go yet, I think, but it is playable, and when the 'Conan Moments' come together, it can be quite easy to forget how bumpy the thing still is. Not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone now, but ought to be a fine game indeed, in a month or two. Since I'm there now anyway, I think I'll keep at it myself...