Defiant Discussion

Hello again,
If you’ve read my previous post you know my mental state when it comes to MMO’s at this time, but I wanted to follow up and give my impressions on Age Of Conan since it was with much reluctance that I spent the money to purchase it.

My expectations for this game were very low between what I had heard about the blood splashes on the screen and that it was Conan in general wasn’t very appealing.  I started and played several class types, but found myself having the most fun so far with a Ranger and a Demonologist.  The Demonologist has turned out to be my favorite so far and I’m happy to report as of last night I’m now level 16.

The Good:

Graphics are excellent - best eye candy by far out of anything I’ve played on the MMO market.  The drawback to it is I can see it requiring a very high performance machine in order to fully enjoy what it has to offer.

The storyline of your character is worked into the game in such a way that it remains fun and you want to get to the next leg of the story to see what transpires.  Your story is only progressed through a series of quests and events done in the “Night” instance, which is pretty much and instance just for you.  During the “Day” you are free to complete dozens of side quests that each have their own story.  The quests usually have just the right amount of difficulty to them.  You DO still have to do a lot of back and forth quest turn ins, but the quests and the givers are fairly close together and if you plan your quest order a little it isn’t so bad.

The inventory is way on the small side, so I frequently find myself making stops into town I wouldn’t otherwise make, just to sell all the crap I picked up.  It also seems a bit lacking in terms of action bars.  After WoW I’m a bit addicted to having a lot of action bars to put stuff on.  I believe I have four right now, but whereas WoW had like ten or more slots on each one, this has like six.

I haven’t used the market at all to buy/sell as I feel I’m too low and nothing I’m getting is really worth putting up there.  Quests and random drops have kept me decently geared and I don’t find that I need to buy anything really.  So thus far, everything I loot and sell is pretty much for 100% profit.

The blood splashes and gratuitous gore do fit the Conan mythos of course, but the only time I’ve really seen any was when playing a melee character.  Since I play a caster class it hasn’t been an issue at all.  There are several “instanced” areas that seem to be PvP free-for-all areas.   As I discovered the hard way, people will hang out in them just for the sake of ganking people trying to do quests.  It sucks and doesn’t really belong and is probably my only major complaint at this point.

Every MMO to date has had either PvP enabled areas or ways in which you could PvP enable your toon specifically.  This game just seems to make any instance area PvP enabled.  So what this means is either you get used to spending several hours to complete quests that should be done in about fifteen minutes or you stay until those quests are green or gray and then go back and do them.  I’ve done the former, hoping not to miss out on any gear rewards that would be useful now.

Luckily there seem to be enough quest instances that you can hop from one to another depending on which one is full of more buttheads…the zones are fairly large too so you can sometimes sneak around the would-be offenders.  This is on a RP server by the way - I can only imagine how much worse the ganking is on a normal one.

As for RP, I’ve not seen any to speak of, but in fairness it is still the starter city and everyone seems focused on leveling and questing.  I’m hoping this improves as I move higher in level and into different areas with higher populations of RPers.

So in conclusion, while my expectations were very low, I’m actually very pleased with the game so far and I’ve passed that ten level hump and I’m still not bored.  There may be hope for me yet.

It’s Interesting to me these days, specially with what I am going thru in my personal life how those things effect my gaming life. I will give my last night example to sort of explain where I am going with this.

Actually it started the night before. I had just respawned and was trying to heal up from that. This other player game up and started toying with me, he was a few levels higher and guess thought it would be fun to see how low he could keep my health without actually killing me. This went on for a couple minutes, then he killed me, possible twice, I am really not sure. Most times this doesn’t really bother me, I usually take the ignore approach and they get bored and go away. I had thought about making note of these people for later use, but really, I am not sure I care that much. I went on my way, grinding myself up.

Last night, I have traveling thru the same area, just about done for the night. As I am crossing a bridge I see none other than the same guy that toyed with me the night before, and it looks like he was just invloved in a skirmish of some sort has his health was well under 50%. He must not be grinding very hard either as I was not just a level or 2 under him. Of course, without even thinking about it I attacked and killed him. It felt good, I mean it was surprisingly satisfying. The respawn point for that area was just a few meters away, I could have went back and toyed with him (if he was brave enough to respawn that close, which usually that type are not) But I just went along me marry little way once again.

So what I am getting at is that it seems to me these days especially that my emotional state, or needs or current state of being really feed on the MMO world. My character is almost involuntarily effected by my mood or what’s swirling in my head. It feels different now, and I have been working on making a better connection with what I am feeling in real life. Its not like the good old days of SWG and attacking a jedi as a bounty hunter, and its not like FPS games like Call of Duty and that little rush you get when you get a knife kill. Its different, and I am not sure I am describing it well enough to make my point.

Now I dont think its at an unhealthy level, but I do notice the difference, it wasn’t the competitive rush like playing hockey (or your favorite sport) or like my other example, of besting another person in a game, like the jedi hunt. The revenge I achieved last night was just satisfying on a level higher than just playing a game, I didn’t gloat, I didn’t dance on his corpse, I just continued on and it felt nice, I smiled and moved on.

I feel like other aspects of my play are effected like this now, my character direction has hints of my real life. I know that people play these games and try and be someone they are not, I guess in a way, I am trying to play this game and work thru who I currently am.