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Gaming: Age of Conan MMORPG
Fri, 27 Jun 2008

Updated end of month; see below

(Aside, I'm working on a new, extra crappy simple blogging system. Fun stuff for a couple hours.)

World of Warcraft pretty much took over the "MMORPG" (multiplayer life-destroying role playing games) market, with millions of players (literally.) Thankfully other companies have attempted to get into the market as well, with most being destroyed in the process.. but competition is good. Funcom's Age of Conan is the new darling on the block, the one that will possibly dent WoW a trifle (not likely can anything dethrone WoW besides apathy which will come in time, but if any game is to get on the radar it will be AoC, or perhaps the upcoming Warhammer Online.)

AoC does a number of things right, and a whole lot of things wrong.. but in this particular market that is more the norm; the UI needs work, there are lots of bugs, etc and so on but it will evolve over time, if the players give it that much rope.. and with the voume of units sold (already a million IIRC) then it should have the momentum to carry on for awhile. Good.. competition is good, and they at least are innovating in a few ways (not many, but a few.. enough to keep things fun. Good job Funcom!)

Anyway, I thouht I would note down the two most annoying "by design" things I've noticed so far. I'm not over-worried about bugs or UI clunkyness or the like as I imagine they will sort that stuff out over time. Heck, one of the two items is a distant restatement of the first, so really it comes down to..

Handholding.

AoC is advertised as a more mature game; blood and gore and rated-M, and more popular with the Player Vs Player crowd (Good!) So handholding seems out of place -- I'm not a great gamer by any count so I like easier games but having every quest objective clearly shown on the minimap with a series of X's seems a bit _much_ doesn't it? On the one hand, the cities seem large sprawling complicated affairs which is cool and a little more realistic and players get often lost.. but theres no reason to read the quest text when you can just follow the Xs. Anyway, fine, whatever. Where it really gets me though is that the first areas anyway (which take up probably 20 hours of playtime or more) are entirely enclosed .. and its made it totally unfun for me.

ie: You start in the city of Tortage, a seedy pirate and warlord run port and are given dozens of quests to run arond here or there. Well and good and its a pretty good introduction to the game world. Kudos to funcom for giving a decent single player experience in an MMO.. fairly unique really for the genre. But really.. when I want single player, I have Oblivion. I'm here for multiplayer and for giant worlds and exploring, so what I object to is the being hopelessly entrapped within this planned out single player experience, and in the city itself. A single player training camp is a good idea and gives you a safe place to learn the interface and start growing your character. Fine. Just too long - too much. Pretty decent though not up to true single player game quality, but not bad for being bolted onto an MMO.. and not too much 'grind' so it didn't feel like a day job to play it much. But I was seriously looking forward to getting out of Tortage and into the "real world" of the game (which is at about level 20, since it is level locked to escape. The level cap is 80 currently, meaning you spend a quarter of your levels in one place. Naturally the later levels are longer to work through so its not a quarter of yuour play time, but still.)

After long work (remember, I don't get much time to play anything in a given week) I managed to get through level 19 and escape Tortage, looking forward to exploring the world. Poof, the quest dialog explains how you get sent to your hometown ... in my case it was some city Old Tarantia. Looks huge too.. you appear on the wharf and look around at the skyline in all directions.. wow, nice job Funcom. But wheres the gate to get out? Looking at the map it took me probably 5 or 10 minutes of wandering to find may way out one of the gates.. whew.. so close, finally get to see something other than city. But wait, theres a wood fence around the whole exterior?

Talking to one of the city guards, I am told no one leaves the city, except via caraven or ship.

Wait a minute .. perhaps that is easy to do, or perhaps its a lot of effort, or levelling, or quest BS. Either way, it means more skulking around to figure out _how_ this is done and its the straw that breaks the proverbial camels back .. for Croms sake, its an MMORPG -- the whole point is exploring a vast world. At this point I'm utterly sick of being trapped on the "rails" and being forced into cities. I will post in a forum to find out if you can get out of the bloody city or not, but this is the crux of my issue..

For a supposedly mature and violence multiplayer game, you're handholded into utter boredom. I'm sure its a great game once you get out of the cities..... bloody hell. It should let you follow the quest line, or not. I'm not paying lots of money for a mid-quality single player game.


Update two weeks later

I actually cancelled the game in my first month; still level 19 as I've not played in a couple of weeks. ie: After leaving Tortage it turned 'grindy' (like a day job).. lots of quests around, but really just the same old fedex and kill-the-critters grinds. At least those woudl be a bit more fun than in WoW since the combat is a little more interesting.. but it comes down to what I eluded to above -- the lack of a seamless world.

Now, AoC is not the only MMO game to do 'instancing out the wazoo' .. GuildWars also does it I am told; but myself, I played MUDs back in the day, and I've played WoW .. and these did it 'right' in this regard -- large expansive seamless worlds. To me, that is one of the defining elements of a big MMORPG game. A big world, with thousands of other people walking around in it with you. If they're in a parallel dimension, you might as well be playing a multiplayer game.. not a 'massively multiplayer game'. ie: They're cheating on the definition IMHO.

But more .. as a supposedly heavy PVP (player versus player combat encouraged) it seems rediculous that people can switch from one instance of their current zone to another (a requirement so that people can quest with their friends) and essentially bug-out when being chased or see something threatening. Furthermore, if you're amid a fight and want to get some distance and take off, or just want to outrun and escape opponents.. well, you might not be able to, since the zones are limiting. Or perhaps mid-fight you can just talk to an NPC and get teleported to the next instance. Either way.. this is weak sauce. Too many good times were had in the past as I stalked a group of enemies halfway across a continent, waiting for the perfect time to exact revenge for some prior insult.. or the reverse, as dozens of search parties tried to locate me after some stunt I'd done in enemy territory. Good times... and they need large worlds to hide in.

I suppose this touches on one other thing that irks me a little, though it is not the games fault per se; having a few playable 'races' (different groups of humans) is fine, but really there are no natural enemies defined. Players can be any of the races and still talk freely with each other, and quest together and so on. So PVP is purely 'random skirmish' one on one, or more well defined 'mini game' Siege play say, or perhaps played organized guild-versus-guild. No sense of 'war' though, no sense of purpose or urgency. No reason beyond the fun of PVP.

For all its weaknesses, WoW has a few things right; the seamless world is one, and another is the Horde versus Alliance. In that universe it is questionable which side is right or wrong and so on, but the key underpinning is something I'd done in my own MUD decades back -- the two sides speak different languages, and cannot speak easily to each other beyond basic gestures and body language. Spitting, dancing, pointing, farting, and so on. Further, you can only attack those on 'the other side', which can be annoying, but it creates purpose. Most of the 'mini game' PVP is side versus side. You start low level in a safe area and grow your character and increasingly spy out the 'enemy', more so as you level up until you're seeing them all over, and forever running into skirmish.

So while AoC might have better combat mechanics, and some newer more modern features, it lacks drive and purpose. For a suposedly PVP game, they're missing half of what its all about.

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