Avian Gamers Network

Interesting first impressions from early open beta and it appears that solo play up until level 20 is gone, to a certain degree.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/870744p1.html

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

I just got an email from funcom telling me they upgraded me to full general beta access starting today:)


I had so many plans for yardwork tomorrow.....

Havent gotten very far yet but it is still fairly buggy but I am enjoying it

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Section 6

Just a quick drop in to give you a quick impression of my open beta experiences:

• I've played a Barbarian, Demonologist, and am starting an Assassin once I complete this post.
  
• Buggy, as Daishus says, yes. Some of the same problems that I saw in the PvP beta weekend are still there but the game is very playable and pretty smooth for a beta. While disappointing, I don't think this means a horrible launch - they just need to put in some overtime in Norway.
  
• The game is friggin beautiful! I was seeing 35-45 FPS with my graphics set to High (computer specs below) and rarely saw anything less than 60 with them set to medium. And as I said, it's beautiful. AFAI can tell, we're running and only have access to the DX9 version.
  
• Combat is different, yes, but I can't say it's "revolutionary." Shields are represented by three chevrons that surround your character, mobs and other players. These chevrons are always displayed at your target's left or right or above them (indicating shields at their front). For me, combat has so far existed of little more than watching for where the shields aren't and attacking there while I wait for my specials' cooldowns to end. Speaking of specials, they're used by clicking the special attack (or combo as they call them) and complete it using the directional attacks. So, in short, I can't say this combat (spamming attacks as appropriate) is all that different from that of WoW, CoH, SWG or practically any other MMO. It was a creative attempt to make something new but it's only slightly different, IMHO.
  
• Quests have yet to really grab me. Between the flakiness of the beta client (yes I know that part should improve), the UI and NPC interaction, I'm not enjoying the quests. I do them for the XP and that makes me feel like all I'm doing is grinding - not the way I want to start a new game.
  
• NPC interaction (all of it apparently) takes place as a cutscene with your questions and comments available as a menu of selections. IMHO, the cutscene presentation does not add a cinematic feel or anything like that, rather it detracts from the immersion - a very important factor for me. Further, a couple of them seemed to hang for a while - long enough for me to start to wonder if the client had crashed. This is a little bug and I don't hold that against the game as I know that should be pretty easily fixed, just thought I'd mention a specific example of the types of issues.
  
• The music is awesome. Period.
  
• The sounds are awesome. Period.
  
• The voiceacting is better than most games although the accent and voice sometimes do not seem to match what I imagine the people should sound like.
  
• The UI, as I suggested earlier, ain't nothing to write home about. So far, it doesn't sound like we're going to be able to write mods for the UI, only re-map keys. Having seen what I've seen of the game, I would make allowing for UI customization a major priority if I were Funcom.

Ok, so this turned out to be kind of a mish-mash of plusses and minuses but I'll sum it up in this: I cancelled my pre-order for the game today. After seeing the game and playing it, I knew I'd be ticked in a big way if I had paid money for the experience. I'm going to continue hammering at the beta to see if I change my overall opinion of the game. I very well may pick it up a few months down the road, but I won't be there for launch.

This is what comes to mind right now - please feel free to ask me questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the information.

So far I have a bear shaman, a guardian, and a barbarian (of course!) cresting upon level 10 where the traits come into play - where you actually start becoming a class more than a generic swing hit kill person. I haven't played a caster yet, but that will change this evening.

It's so nice playing without the test beta issues. Loading between zones is time consuming right now, but from what I've read there's a lot of debugging code in the client slowing that down currently.

Like Liro said, the environment is awesome. So detailed and realistic. The animal and insect sounds of the jungle are rich. Frame rates are great even at full blast. I'm running a GeFroce 7900 GTX w/ 512megs on a dual core 6600 with 2 gigs of ram. I've taken lots of screenshots this time and will post up later.

The combat, so far, isn't the ground shaking, world changing mechanic, but it is fun and very involved. It's button mashing but on a faster scale. You really need to think about what you do when handling multiple mobs. Taking on 3 same level mobs is difficult so far. Either intentionally or I just stink right now. But what fun is it to walk into a guaranteed victory?

There's quite a few bugs (ended up in the ocean under the town of Tortage somehow earlier), but that's expected. I don't know how different the IGN Open beta is against the Closed beta I'm playing in so hard to compare experiences with others right now. Which beta is everyone in? For closed, the NDA is for up to lvl 13, so anything after that, I'll need a subtler forum to speak in (access pls!)

More to come.

Oh yeah, if you're in closed beta, which server and names are you?

I've been on Closed Beta 2. Slyclonis is playing along too so send me a tell to either Baylor, Nartet, Crelt, or Bayclonis and let's group up!

I'm sure I'll have 3 or 4 more characters by end of the weekend. But hey, I've got til launch to play

To be honest I can't really tell if I like the game or not. I've played conqueror and necromancer so far to level 11, and I'm just not having as much fun as I thought I would. I think alot of it comes from how unpolished the game feels, and that could be because of beta but it is pretty darn close to release. PvP feels a little weak to me as well. For melee classes it feels really random just running in circles around each other swinging in every direction till someone dies.

for all you disheartened beta testers... Keep in mine what set was like in beta. The game was barely playable, countless bugs and crashes. They shut it down 3 days before release and the community was up in arms. In those 3 days they applied the games release patch and the stability and gameplay seemed to improve a hundred fold seemingly overnight. Wouldn't suprise me if a similar occurrence happened here as well.

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~Ravage™
~I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
~The problem with facts, is that sometimes they don't support your opinion.

Please keep in mind this thread is for discussion about OPEN Beta for AoC. If you are in closed Beta for AoC make sure you are adhering to the NDA when you are posting here.

Thank you.

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"Loose with Dignity"
Robert
Second President, Avian Gamers

DDO - Cannith - AlistairItor - Rogue/Ranger (5/3) - Main
DDO - Cannith - Guijanitor - Paladin/Rogue (4/1)
DDO - Cannith - RicochetItor - Rogue (5)

My NDA doesn't really go into effect until you hit new info after lvl 13. Other then that the general reviews are under no tighter controls that anyone else.

And don't worry the dev notes and news aren't something I am going to share anywhere here. Atleast closed beta specific data. Everything else is comon knowledge now.