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[AoC: Unchained] Beheading is now free to all!
Arthil
Lord Commander Ursus MaximusRegistered User regular
Lord Commander Ursus MaximusRegistered User regular
Age of Conan: Unchained
Important Information
Currently no PA guilds.
Who’s Playing
Arthil: Hjorn, 51 Conqueror. Sadubo, 59 Assassin Both Wiccana.
Gnome-Interruptus: Grazkor, Wiccana.
MyDcmbr: Alyanya 80 Priest of Mitra, Kacelly 80 Conqueror, Kierstyn 80 Assassin, Alyisha 80 Demonologist, Kety 69 Barbarian- Wiccana
Kadoken: Krovok Level? Barbarian- Wiccana
UI Mods
Curse has a nice small collection of UI skins/mods
http://aoc.curse.com/downloads/aoc-addons/categories/skins.aspx
MirageUI
SS: http://ledmirage.net/files/aoc/AoC_MirageUI_v1.2_SS01.jpg
Download: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=19979
WerikUI
Download:http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=23081
Others: Check out the official UI mods forum here.
Mini-Leveling Guide (Technically spoilers)
As an extra bit of help for brand new characters, here’s a thread for secrets around Tortage: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=13063
Old guide is below, but here is a link to a far more detailed guide on the official AoC Forums: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=71780
Know something important that isn't here? Send me a PM and it shall be added.
General Information
Screenshots of awesome:
Playable Races
Aquilonians
Cimmerians
Stygians
Currently no picture, sadly.
Khitan(Only available with the Rise of the Godslayer expansion)
The 12 classes of AoC:
Free To Play
As a F2P player, you will have access the following features:
4 out of the twelve Classes: Guardian, Barbarian, Priest of Mitra and Demonologist.
Full access to all AoC: HA Adventure Zones.
Access to the Gateway to Khitai 20-40 zone.
Non-premium dungeons, I’ll try to get a list of exactly what this means.
Access to 2 End-game Raids.
50% of normal Personal Bank Space at the Trader.
2 Character Slots.
Full access to Guild Renown.
Basic Level 40 Mount Training.
50% Bag Space(May not be 50% let me check on it).
A 2 Gold money cap(All excess it pooled and becomes available upon becoming a Premium subscriber).
As a warning, if you purchase the Rise of the Godslayer expansion and are not a Premium subscriber, you will not be able to access the content of the expansion except for Khitan character creation.
Important Information
Currently no PA guilds.
Who’s Playing
Arthil: Hjorn, 51 Conqueror. Sadubo, 59 Assassin Both Wiccana.
Gnome-Interruptus: Grazkor, Wiccana.
MyDcmbr: Alyanya 80 Priest of Mitra, Kacelly 80 Conqueror, Kierstyn 80 Assassin, Alyisha 80 Demonologist, Kety 69 Barbarian- Wiccana
Kadoken: Krovok Level? Barbarian- Wiccana
UI Mods
Curse has a nice small collection of UI skins/mods
http://aoc.curse.com/downloads/aoc-addons/categories/skins.aspx
MirageUI
SS: http://ledmirage.net/files/aoc/AoC_MirageUI_v1.2_SS01.jpg
Download: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=19979
WerikUI
Download:http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=23081
Others: Check out the official UI mods forum here.
Mini-Leveling Guide (Technically spoilers)
As an extra bit of help for brand new characters, here’s a thread for secrets around Tortage: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=13063
Old guide is below, but here is a link to a far more detailed guide on the official AoC Forums: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=71780
Spoiler:
Know something important that isn't here? Send me a PM and it shall be added.
General Information
Screenshots of awesome:
Spoiler:
Playable Races
Aquilonians
Cimmerians
Stygians
Currently no picture, sadly.
Khitan(Only available with the Rise of the Godslayer expansion)
The 12 classes of AoC:
Spoiler:
Free To Play
As a F2P player, you will have access the following features:
4 out of the twelve Classes: Guardian, Barbarian, Priest of Mitra and Demonologist.
Full access to all AoC: HA Adventure Zones.
Access to the Gateway to Khitai 20-40 zone.
Non-premium dungeons, I’ll try to get a list of exactly what this means.
Access to 2 End-game Raids.
50% of normal Personal Bank Space at the Trader.
2 Character Slots.
Full access to Guild Renown.
Basic Level 40 Mount Training.
50% Bag Space(May not be 50% let me check on it).
A 2 Gold money cap(All excess it pooled and becomes available upon becoming a Premium subscriber).
As a warning, if you purchase the Rise of the Godslayer expansion and are not a Premium subscriber, you will not be able to access the content of the expansion except for Khitan character creation.
Arthil on
Posts
So how does the game stack up against all the other "freemium" titles we've seen lately, namely Lotro, CO, um, EQ2? Some others I'm sure.
How does it merit my not-money?
GJ otherwise.
I havent played EQ2, but AoC is very competitive for a free game offering.
The combat system is dynamic and engaging, so you won't necessarily be doing the same combo of moves every fight, even when clearing trash. Also, the classes are supposedly balanced, so the 4 free classes are just as good as any of the premium classes (unlike CO).
The graphics engine is a bit clunky, but can have the pretty turned all the way up to LoTRO levels or close to.
I havent hit 20 yet, but all the quests have an interesting story to them, the only downside is that the quests so far send you all over, instead of focusing on one area at a time until it is cleared.
Be sure to make use of the Vanity armor slot, since some of the armour looks like what it is, just a strip of beast hide or some bones strapped together. (I had a rather nice looking outfit at 12 or so, but then upgraded the pieces and looked like poop for a while.)
I guess everyone has a different opinion of what's clunky and what looks good. To me LoTRO is down around Aion levels and AoC is above both of those. Probably worse performance on older machines, but looks much better on newer ones.
The graphics look great, the engine is just clunky and doesnt load textures etc very fast or well.
EG: Teleporting to the Thirsty Dog Tavern then walking outside, it will take 15+ seconds for the engine to load in the NPCs in the area and all the textures for the ground.
Characters!
All on Wiccana:
Alyanya: 80 PoM
Kacelly: 80 Conq
Kierstyn: 80 Sin
Alyisha: 80 Demo
Kety: 69 Barb
Alphard: Varies from day to day.
It died because it's a Funcom game and they are fuckawful at doing things they promise in an even remotely timely manner. They release broken, unfinished games at full retail price which gets people in the gate, until they realize what the actual product is (i.e. post-Tortuga) when they flee en masse.
But now it's at least free to try out, and maybe not a total failure after all since Funcom has kept working at it.
Yeah but it is not beating/exceeding/killing WoW! Obviously huuuuge failure.
Anyways, no the game's not dead, and WoW had nothing to do with AoC's failure to hold a large enough number of subscribing players. Well, other than being a game people would rather play than this, but that's hardly a fair charge to lay on Blizzard or their product.
Unfortunately, the game broke me when I realized that you unlocked two more combo buttons later on. Between the first four, and those two, I realized I was going to end up putting in combos that'd make a Street Fighter veteran envious, and that just wasn't fun. Especially in PVP.
I don't believe the problem with the game was inherently because of Funcom. Funcom itself is capable of making awesome games (See, Anarchy Online.). The problem is that they tend to have a bad habit of hiring lead devs during the development process that have no fucking clue what they are doing. This leads to atrocious releases, and it largely being a matter of chance as to where they can get things fixed before the population runs screaming from the game.
The guy they had for AoC basically faffed around for so long trying to hype the game up that they had to cut/merge something like 12 classes (Some of them quite awesome.) from the game. And the lead dev thought people would play the game through release just because of titties and nudity (Which they later half-way butchered too, since most countries had an issue with showing naked bits on women. This is why all female characters have what looks like painted on low poly underwear.). So when it came time to release, the game was only half-way done.
The asshole then complicated things by refusing to deviate from his beliefs, to improve the game (Something i'll give games like FFXIV credit for. Even if the launch was a complete mess, they're working to fix it and the game has improved by a massive amount, since then.), leading to the literally millions of subscribers who bought the game (The game was technically a commercial success in sales. It had a huge number of release day sales, if I recall.) at release trickling down to like a few hundred thousand after a single month. The game probably had one of the quickest die-backs of subscribers in the industry, outside of the NGE.
Not long after that, the current lead developer announced he was "retiring from the company", and they brought someone competent in. But the damage was pretty much irreversible by that point.
All in all, the lead dev they had prior to release was basically the equivalent of that guy who was the lead dev for Warhammer Online. Alot of talk, no actual managerial/creative substance. A marketer more then anything else. It seems that's a trend in the industry, when it comes to failure.
Thankfully, it looks like Funcom's learned from their mistakes in AoC and AO. Secret World has a highly respected and competent lead dev heading the development process, and word is that's where Funcom's really put all of it's talent/hopes. So it'll probably be decent.
$15, but to play as the Khitans you have to actually buy the X-Pac which is like $15.
And yes, there are TONS of Khitans running around.
The biggest problem I've had this weekend is trying to figure out which class I want to play/focus on for the next month or so while I decide if I want to stick with this game beyond that (I've been having fun playing a bunch of different games this summer, but I think I'm just filling time waiting for swtor to come out and hoping that it doesn't suck).
Also, this game is really pretty (though I need to see what's beyond Tortage, I think).
Also, Barbarian is one of the best classes to start off with. Go Berserker and it's almost impossible to die because of their self healing, and they put out a TON of DPS.
Is it still like that with the terrible combo system?
Thats the reason I stopped playing. Not because it lacked content later on, or the guild city/keep shit was buggy... no all those "new released MMO" problems were not a reason to stop as they "can" be fixed. It was that god awful combo system. I like the idea of comboing stuff in an MMO, but not a bunch of fucking auto-attacks in random directions that serve no purpose other than a timegap between real damaging attacks. While casters just giggle and push 1 button. Combos should be like Aion, where I use one ability and it enables the use of 2-3 other ones in a branching tree type sequence.
As for the combo system, it's still like that. I don't mind it very much myself, and it's actually one of the only MMOs where I feel that my fingers are actually getting a decent stretch from having to do them.
Oh I couldnt prep a combo as a barb while stealthed... I would just hide behind something and start one. My point was, doing combos was fucking stupid as the swings that make up the combo can be done into thin air and not worth the hassle of trying to land them all when the other person could just interrupt you before your last swing.
I think if you initiated a combo, the swings that build it up should do something more than being normal attacks. Say if a combo takes 5 swings, you get like 10% more damage per swing that connects. Maybe they've added shit like this, i dunno. When I did play it was just idiotic and a waste of good keybinds for where I normally want my constantly used attacks in a MMO.
Its a shame, because the game is just packed with potential in all the other areas of a what is fun in an MMO.
Speaking of which, there's a patch coming soon that's gonna make it even better. They're addressing combo cancelling (long considered an exploit by some, a skillful strategy by others) and removing the root/lag effect after each combo to make for much smoother batles. I tried it out on Testlive and it feels great.
Comfortable, permanent
Undisputed, every tense
Not a trace of what went left
More equal than the best
Unparalleled success
Everybody, V-impressed
I did like my Barbarian, and as it happens he's one of the characters who wasn't purged... So I may end up playing him again should I return to the game.
On the other hand, my Conqueror has a few three-hits but I've not seen anything beyond that yet.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=236681
Apparently more than 300,000 players have at least tried Age of Conan in the past month.
They have changed it then, because on launch I got to 60 something and combos took I think over 5 swings to complete. And it was a waste of time then to do the whole combo on your target... just do it safely away from your target and go finish it on them, then slow/snare/stun/etc and do a complete combo maybe.
I would hope it has changed though... if a melee class that isnt immune to knockdown didnt prep their combo on nothing, it was impossible to deal with some of the casters. Even then they were stupidly OP just because they played like a normal game without the spamming of attacks.
Aside from that issue though, the game was stupidly fun for me.
edit: oh, just read about the racial ones having different classes for each race which might not be that great.
There are only three servers types now. PvE, PvP, and Death & Glory which is the more hardcore PvP type. One character on the server, no guards, and when you die you can possibly drop a random piece of BoE loot from your bags.
Edit: Beat'd by Arthil, but that PvP server is way more hardcore than I thought! I... guess some might like that.