FunCom’s much-awaited MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, has finally reached the shelves of retailers and the hands of the expectant masses. The MMO Gamer’s most recent addition to the editorial family, Paul Sherrard, has been exploring the lands of Hyboria since launch, so that we can give you an idea if the latest entry into the MMO arena is worth your time and money.
Requirements and Technical Issues
Before getting into the game itself, I’d like to discuss the system requirements and some of the technical issues players have come across since launch. Though the minimum requirements posted on the box are reasonable for a game launching in 2008, the actual recommended system turns out to be something of a monster. In fact, even playing with the recommended Core2Duo 2.4GHz, 2GB of ram, and 512 MB Nvidia 7900 GTX may not give you an optimal experience.
To get a good idea of different systems’ capabilities, the game was installed on 3 different configurations:
PC 1: 20″ iMac
CoreDuo 2.0 GHz, ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 256, 2GB ram, Windows XP SP3
PC 2: Home-built Gaming Rig
Core2Duo E6300 clocked to 2.1 GHZ, ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB, 2GB RAM, Windows XP SP3
PC 3: Macbook Pro 15″
Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, Nvidia 8600 GT M 256, 2GB Ram, Vista SP1
The 20″ iMac was found to run the gam, but only just. 8 t o 10 FPS , Low Settings, windowed mode.
The Home gaming rig runs playably at anything from 13-25 FPS at 1680×1050, on medium settings.
The Macbook Pro is the best performer of the bunch, running the game at 20-30 FPS on medium settings.
It should be noted that although DirectX 10 support is displayed on the box, the actual game does not currently support DirectX 10. In fact, the option to switch to DX10 was removed by FunCom in a patch after launch. FunCom has announced that DirectX 10 support is coming at a future date, to be announced.
Your mileage will certainly vary depending on your system, but be aware that even very high-end systems (quad-core machines, 4+ gigs of ram, SLI’d 8800 GT’s) are experiencing framerate and other performance issues at this time. FunCom has not addressed these problems on their forums, and the community continues to wait for solutions to their technical woes. At first, problems seemed to be only with ATI cards not supporting the game very well, but as more reports came to the forums it became clear that the stuttering gameplay, low fps at any setting, and frequent client crashes are not limited to any single make or model of card, operating system, or CPU.
It’s not all doom and gloom in the tech forum, though. In fact, tweaks and recommendations from the Age of Conan forums went a long way to achieving higher FPS on our machines, and I’d recommend you make use of the forums to help get the best performance, and see what current tech issues are being addressed.
The starting area was brilliant. Strong direction with good voice overs gave an immersing feel to the game. This is why most reviews are so positive. Unfortunately once you move away from Tortage, the game desends to your standard MMORPG. Missions are simplistic and easy to follow. Many loading screens between areas travelled take away from the expansive feeling of the world that WoW gave you. Several missions are bugged. Content beyond level 40 is sparce. Party interface is small, uninformative, and locating party members on the map is difficult. Chat interface is clunky, hard to change channels and seems out of place to the overall graphic structure of the game. All NPC chats are cutaways. (On PVP Realms you still can be attacked while talking to a NPC, you just can’t attack back) Crafting is near useless as items generally are not as good as found items. Resource farming is slow and awkward. Resources spawn in set areas and are slow respawn. The rock/tree/cotton bush are there but you have to wait till it gets past 10% supplies. (On PVP Realms, resources are a call to be ganked.) While the overall graphics are beautiful, the gameplay for casters isn’t that much different than any other MMORPG. Some of the promised content isn’t there. Siege Warfare, DX10, Spell Weaving. End game content is near zero. Overall I would say give the game 6 months to straighten itself out. Don’t believe me check out the game forums at http://forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8
I have reached the vaulted level 80 so I post this with more experience then the original author, though with less writing skill. One major issue I disagree with the original poster on is “more RPG then MMORPG”. At level 80 there are 6 instances I know of to farm for level 80 gear. 4 Short(30-45min) and 2 LONG(1hr 30 min -2hrs) dungeon crawls. There are also 6 dungeons that I currently have quests for, though finding 24 players to attempt them has been hard. Instances however pickup groups seem relatively easy to form, more so if you willing to take a 70 something vs a level 80. I do not recomend this as bosses can be up to level 83, and without a group of level 80’s it is near impossible.As for fps, there is a shader cache problem that is causing the fps lag. The shader cache file grow to large over time and it greatly reduces framerate. Players running nividia cards 8800 512mb or better will have few problems. Players running ATI cards regardless will have a signigicant FPS difference. I swapped out my 3870 512mb card for my friends 8800 gt. I went from 20-30 fps to 35-48 fps, on standard high settings.Content In levels 50-80 is not so much sparse, but its changed. You go from solo quest to group quests, from 1 questing area per level to 3. Content spreads out, and you must hop zones every 2-3 levels to find the new quests that opened up in each zone. The good news, alot of bugs fixes in first 3 weeks, most issues with crashes ext ext are not occuring anymore. Level mid 30-mid 40 zone being added to smooth leveling, and another mid 50-mid60 zone is being added soon. They say this is priority and should be out in 2-3 weeks on there forums. This will make leveling for new characters or alts much easier.The bad, crafting is broken alot right now but they working on fix and was almost live but then got pulled back last patch for more work. Player cities can be built……. bad news is they took out NPC’s and attackablity till they work out balance to them. good in a way cause losing 500g t1 city would ruin anyones day. let alone t2
Yeah, I have played this and Wow…honestly, in the times we are in, AoC isnt doing anything new and for the hefty system requirements, its going to lose alot of the casual games that WoW was able to get.
Also, no one has leard that a HUGE chunk of WoWs success came form being able to play it on a Mac….these nuggets are beating teir brains trying to figure out how to stop WoW and the first MMO that comes along and is Mac Native will have a huge chance, until then, keep trying. I wasted 50 bucks on this game and the 3 months card only to go right back to WoW…..and with Lich Kinh comming up…good by AoC, we barely ever knew ya…..
Nice blog, just what the gamer world wants, please keep
up the good work!
Pretty great post. I simply stumbled upon your blog and
wished to mention that I have really loved surfing around your blog
posts. In any case I will be subscribing in your rss feed and I hope
you write again soon!