Age of Conan - open beta thoughts

Ive played as much of the open beta of Age of Conan as they will let me, but as far as that goes, I believe this should be a success for the AoC crew. Despite a 13 (out of 80) level cap, and several features (and "features", more on that later) being disabled, the game comes off very good in this open beta.

After the jump, the good, and yes, even some of the bad of 13 levels of Age of Conan.

First, the good, because theres a lot of it and I want to gush a little.

Just to get it out of the way, yes, the game is gorgeous. Great graphics, and congratulations on taking my 7950GX2 and 2 GB of system ram machine and driving it to its knees. Time for an upgrade. You need a monstrous system for this game, but thats not a bad thing at all, and the graphics are wonderful to look at. Sound effects and music are actually great too, this is one of the only MMO's Ive ever played with the sound on. Most MMO's, the repetitive and constant sound effects, coupled with a distinct lack of any kind of immersive environmental sound, have me reaching for my speakers power button. AoC, on the other hand, has the local cats trying to find out where the damn tropical bird is in my room.

Sound also gets wisely used for voice on every quest giver Ive run into in a too short foray into the game as a whole. This is very very welcome, even if it must consist of a substantial part of the 12GB on my drive this game takes up. An MMO with excellent voice acting, where NPC's are throwing out curses straight out of a Conan book and you get to throw back things like "flea-bitten dog" and "Has the jungle raped your mind of all reason"? Yes please, Ill take more of this.

Writing and the effort the developers have gone to to immerse the player in the Conan universe is flat out my favorite part of this game. The classic, somewhat overwrought dialogue of a Sword and Sandle fantasy would have justified the M for Mature rating, and payed it off all by itself. And Im glad that the writers have cut loose given that they dont have to write to a pre-teen audience. The quests, while very often just the same old Fed-Ex stuff you get anywhere else, are made far more entertaining in how they are presented to you, and how you may choose to react to them. Being given the option, when presented with a truly trite request, to say "No you didnt just.. No, just no" is a welcome change, even if the quests themselves are often depressingly typical.

AoC has a unique, and worthy of much praise and outright copycatting, system for solo players. There is an option to switch to a set of interlinked quests described as "Destiny" quests, and the fact that it involves the game sucking you into what amounts to your own instance of the game world is wonderfully woven into the game world itself. During the day, you are in the shared world, interacting with hundreds of other players on your server and taking quests meant for all kinds of players. Check in with the person who gives out your destiny quests, and you are sent to the same areas at night, where its just you and the bad guys, and the plot is more tightly woven to the type of character your playing.

I dont know if that solo style lasts past level 20 (the first 20 levels basically being the training wheels portion of the game). I hope it does, in some capacity, because its an excellent device, and it gives less-than social players such as myself something to do in the game that feel rewarding.

So, I like this game, its nice to look at, good sound, excellent writing. Conan is a beloved IP, so high marks for executing that well. But I may not end up playing AoC, even though WAR has been delayed multiple times.

So, the not-so-good and even the bad.

First, Rated M for Mature does not mean mature people play this game. It was a controversial move on the part of AoC to go for the M rating, but I had approved of it for a couple of reasons, and added another reason after I played for a bit. Conans world is violent, sexy, and crude, and an M lets the developers be completely true to that. And the developers did not pass up that opportunity. By going with an M, they limited their market, but the market they limited themselves is far more likely to have the kind of machine needed to play this game, so in the end that was a good deal. We get pretty graphics and some much vaunted nudity, gore, and foul language, and AoC still gets the audience it wanted.

But even if the person on the other side is 43, having them run up to your female character (who's only armor happens to be a tattered shirt you scavenged off some dead Picts corpse in the jungle, what with you washing up on the beach damn near nude and all) and repeatedly screaming "NICE NIPPLES BITCH" is off putting. Yah okay, my character is nipping out a bit, thanks for pointing that out. Now shoo, the grownups want to play this game.

The saddest part of behavior like that is, the open beta has the more naughty bits on the female characters covered or removed. Some nipples through a shirt (or, on some of the female models, the shape of the nipples are still there in the nude, but they are the same color as the rest of the characters skin) are about all your getting. And if that kind of thing is enough to get you all tingly, nothing stops you from just making your own character, swinging the camera around, and going to town. So if this is the kind of thing one can expect in the actual game (and I ran into it enough that it drove me a little crazy) where theres actual nudity, well... it might not be worth wading through that just for some good writing.

I havent really touched on gameplay much, and thats because theres nothing really to say here. The open beta barely gives you a taste of overall gameplay, and what it does let you see, is pedestrian. There is the much hyped combat system, but in PvE it just reduces to madly clicking some buttons for the most part. The actual strategy in PvE is very shallow (some mobs attack both slowly and predictably enough for you to adjust your "shields" to react, but for the most part you have 2 or 3 guys on you, and you cant afford to leave any portion uncovered. Your getting hit everywhere. There is some potential for skill in PvP to play a huge role, but I suspect instead that PvP will be dominated by the Ranger (ranged-damage badass with the ability to stealth) and possibly the Tempest (full up tank with heavy armor and attack spells, some of which life-tap to heal you). Carefully selecting where to hit those two types of characters in PvP, and taking the time to adjust your defenses, is probably not going to make any difference at all as they spam their techniques until you die. Certainly, I couldnt make it so.

The rest of gameplay (spells, agro, skill use) is pretty much MMO standard. Its neither a plus nor a minus, MMOs are starting to mature as a gametype, and just as I dont complain about the WASD model for controlling your character being standard, I dont complain about mages getting some nukes, some DoTs, and some snares.

But it doesnt draw me irresistibly to the game the same why some of the mechanics in WAR do.

I could go on, but over all, Age of Conan is a worthy game, but sadly not something I see sucking up my time between now and the release of WAR. Its lacking some kind of spark for me, which I lament, because Conan is one of my favorite universes.

Perhaps, after the May 20th release, there will be an opportunity for the rest of the game to convince me otherwise. Im certain some people are hooked by the 13 levels we are presented with in the open beta, but the hook just didnt quite stick for me.