AoC

[Ocellaris]

I picked the Guardian class and its some fairly rough going in the early levels (up to L12). Its not really doing great damage, takes a lot of damage (at this point in the game anyway), and has no ranged. So I just run up to mobs until I body pull them, then if I get 2 mobs, I am usually fine. Anytime its 3 mobs around my level, I have about a 75% chance of getting killed, thats with the best armor and weapon sold from thr Tortage vendor. I am using a pole arm and getting in the two "Cleave" type attacks I have to hit multiple enemies + the ground smash. I am just getting hit too hard Using a sword and a shield does not seem to be giving me a great increase in survivability. Any thoughts on this? Is the Guardian class just a bitch to level, or am I doing something wrong?

 

[keefusm]

For all of you wondering about buddy keys, I noticed under my account that they just added an option for this, however it is not yet up. When I click on the link it states the following:

Buddy Key

The buddy key program will open as soon as server capacity allows. Please check back later.


FYI.

Thanks,
K

 

[supeg]

Weird with my CE edition i got like 6 buddy keys each with there own little piece of paper.

 

[aFive]

I picked this up yesterday, and rolled a Dark Templar. I have a couple of stupid questions:

1) What is the penalty for dying? I died 3 times in the first instance (the solo instance where you have to talk to the slave master). There didn't seem to be any penalties associated with death, but I can't image that AoC wouldn't have some sort of penalty for death. Are there different PvP/PvE penalties?

2) The Dark Templar has a skill (available at level 6 or so) that boosts the life gained from life-tap. But what is life-tap? It doesn't seem to be a separate active skill. I'm not sure if it's a passive class ability, or if I'm missing something obvious. But I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't get a skill to boost life-tap's effectiveness, unless I already had life-tap.

Lifetap is your ability to steal life from the enemy. It's actually quite cool. You get 2 skills that increase your lifetap for short period of time; another that adds a little for few hours. You can also allocate points towards lifetap, allowing you to heal yourself while you fight stuff.


Compared to LOTRO this game is pretty cool, to whoever asked. There are parts of LOTRO I enjoy more, but this one is worth a try. You really have to get used to trees, I do not think they look realistic at all.

 

[Dan_D]

I picked this up yesterday, and rolled a Dark Templar. I have a couple of stupid questions:

1) What is the penalty for dying? I died 3 times in the first instance (the solo instance where you have to talk to the slave master). There didn't seem to be any penalties associated with death, but I can't image that AoC wouldn't have some sort of penalty for death. Are there different PvP/PvE penalties?

2) The Dark Templar has a skill (available at level 6 or so) that boosts the life gained from life-tap. But what is life-tap? It doesn't seem to be a separate active skill. I'm not sure if it's a passive class ability, or if I'm missing something obvious. But I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't get a skill to boost life-tap's effectiveness, unless I already had life-tap.

Well question one is easy to answer. There are penelties. They are relatively minor. Basically you'll have a negative to your attack and defense ratings for a period of time. This effect is cumulative every time you die. You can remove the penelty by finding your tombstone which is left where you died. Click on it and it will dissappear. Once that happens you are good to go again. (Kind of reminds me of Diablo II and going back for your body.)

The second question I can't answer because I'm playing a Barbarian so I have no experience with your class of character.

 

[char507]

Okay so i've been scanning these thread and a few others for this topic but i've yet to find it.

Let's talk about zone sizes. I played the beta up to level 13 (and then had to reformat and lost the install) but from what I saw, the zones were fairly linear. Run down this path, kill this guy, run down that way. My question is: is the entire game like that? Do the zones open up after you get off Tortage Island? They don't have to be as be as EQ2 or WoW but I want my MMO to feel...well massive.

Can anyone speak to this?

 

[KaOTiK]

Okay so i've been scanning these thread and a few others for this topic but i've yet to find it.

Let's talk about zone sizes. I played the beta up to level 13 (and then had to reformat and lost the install) but from what I saw, the zones were fairly linear. Run down this path, kill this guy, run down that way. My question is: is the entire game like that? Do the zones open up after you get off Tortage Island? They don't have to be as be as EQ2 or WoW but I want my MMO to feel...well massive.

Can anyone speak to this?

Once you leave Tortage the zones become very very large. When you complete the night quest and get teleported to your home capital city I was blown away of the size of the place (cimmeria city). The city was split with half on one side of the river and the other on the other side and it being on the side of a mountain and on slopes and hills. Was very impressive running around there.

Tortage is basically there to hold your hand as you get your barrings on the game. So it is linear and very straight forward without any places to really explorer. Once your done there the game changes a lot as you are then giving total freedom it seems so far. I'm only 23 so can't say for sure.

 

[Cousin Patty]

Once you leave Tortage the zones become very very large. When you complete the night quest and get teleported to your home capital city I was blown away of the size of the place (cimmeria city). The city was split with half on one side of the river and the other on the other side and it being on the side of a mountain and on slopes and hills. Was very impressive running around there.

Tortage is basically there to hold your hand as you get your barrings on the game. So it is linear and very straight forward without any places to really explorer. Once your done there the game changes a lot as you are then giving total freedom it seems so far. I'm only 23 so can't say for sure.

sounds like how guild wars started out. the whole first section of the game was more of an extended tutorial and was not a great representation of the rest of the game. once you went post searing, everything really opens up.

 

[Replicant1911]

Well question one is easy to answer. There are penelties. They are relatively minor. Basically you'll have a negative to your attack and defense ratings for a period of time. This effect is cumulative every time you die. You can remove the penelty by finding your tombstone which is left where you died. Click on it and it will dissappear. Once that happens you are good to go again. (Kind of reminds me of Diablo II and going back for your body.)

The second question I can't answer because I'm playing a Barbarian so I have no experience with your class of character.

Mine is -2 attack and -2 magic. Maybe its a different rez sickness depending on class. To the guy that asked the question: You can see it onscreen its a little skull right above your healthbar. They stack too.

 

[Ocellaris]

Mine is -2 attack and -2 magic. Maybe its a different rez sickness depending on class. To the guy that asked the question: You can see it onscreen its a little skull right above your healthbar. They stack too.

stuff like this is why this game needs a ui overhaul. I ran around with death penalty multiple times not even aware I had it. its hard to tell what you have and what you don't at a glance. it took wow a very very long time to make their stock ui good, lets hope conan catches up faster or allows for user ui interfaces soon.

 

[[H]ea\/y B]

I'm playing on Tyranny. Rolled a Dark Templar and am having a lot of fun with it. If anyone else is on the same server, send me a tell. Name is Kurak.

 

[Dan_D]

Mine is -2 attack and -2 magic. Maybe its a different rez sickness depending on class. To the guy that asked the question: You can see it onscreen its a little skull right above your healthbar. They stack too.

Same thing for me. At the time I posted before, I couldn't remember the exact penalties for dying. Yes, they can stack, as much as three high as far as I know. Never had it up to four. If I die that much I take a break from the quest that got me killed and I let the penalties run out before attempting the quest again. If I can get my tombstone back and remove the penalties I will, but sometimes that's easier said than done.

 

[Dan_D]

stuff like this is why this game needs a ui overhaul. I ran around with death penalty multiple times not even aware I had it. its hard to tell what you have and what you don't at a glance. it took wow a very very long time to make their stock ui good, lets hope conan catches up faster or allows for user ui interfaces soon.

I have found the UI to be much more intuitive than the ones in other MMORPG games. WoW I thought was confusing in regard to its' interface, and Guild Wars, while relatively simple had a steeper learning curve if I recall correctly. (I haven't played it in over a year, so I'm not sure that's accurate.)

Also to be fair I didn't play WoW very much as I didn't really like the game. I played to level five or something like that and gave it up. I just didn't have fun with it. Age of Conan however I've only stopped playing when I had other things I had to do. (Like work, or bathroom, eating, etc.)

 

[Kreator]

Agreed Dan. This game so far has made me want to keep getting quests and grinding them out. In WoW, it seemed the whole leveling experience for me was "do whatever is the fastest to get to 70". I love WoW, i've played it since day 1 of release and maybe i just need a break but this game really has me hooked right now. Could change with WOTLK release.


I just pulled the trigger on the following stuff for this game actually:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
OCZ Gold 8GB (4 x 2G 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit English 1pk DSP OEI DVD

I'm looking forward to their DX10 pack and Vista to be honest. I'm a die hard XP fan but its time for me to swap over. By the way, Newegg had a great deal on the memory i got.

Thanks government stimulus check!

 

[Blade]

how would this hold up you think?

2.40 Ghz Core 2 Duo
2GB Ram
Sapphire Radeon X1950 video card

I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about low fps rates

 

[Kreator]

I have 2GB at the moment and i'm finding its not enough. The game requires more than just a decent video card from my personal experience. I have an 8800GTX but there's a 4200X2 processor and standard DDR memory behind it and i'm having problems on anything but "low" graphics right now.

 

[aFive]

Okay so i've been scanning these thread and a few others for this topic but i've yet to find it.

Let's talk about zone sizes. I played the beta up to level 13 (and then had to reformat and lost the install) but from what I saw, the zones were fairly linear. Run down this path, kill this guy, run down that way. My question is: is the entire game like that? Do the zones open up after you get off Tortage Island? They don't have to be as be as EQ2 or WoW but I want my MMO to feel...well massive.

Can anyone speak to this?

I just left Tortage. Zones are still meh, it's has more of a GW type of a feel. Compared to WoW or LOTRO ( 2 mmo's that I have played/play for some time) there is not really a comparison.They are bigger than GW zones, not the size of WoW though.

 

[aFive]

how would this hold up you think?

2.40 Ghz Core 2 Duo
2GB Ram
Sapphire Radeon X1950 video card

I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about low fps rates

[H[ is being really gay today, doesn't even let me quote .
Well, depends on the OS. Your videocard is a bit on the low end; do not expect to run the game maxed out on high resolutions.

 

[KillerPotato]

Would I even be able to run this on low on my Macbook Pro (under bootcamp). It's the 2007 model with a 128mb 8600gt and 2gb ram. I'm pretty interested in this, but I'd probably end up waiting until after finals to get it, given that it runs of course.

 

[Drexion]

The game is a lot of fun. Even if you don't subscribe the 1 month of gameplay you would get with the game is definitely worth the price.

I'm amazed at the visuals in some of the areas, its the best looking MMO to ever be released till date, it can even be compared to single player games graphics wise.

Of course there are a couple bugs and definitely some things that need polishing - but the launch was very smooth (EU), especially in comparison to other MMOs.

I'm having a blast, definitely worth the price. Don't know what the outlook will be for long term gameplay, but I like what I've seen so far.

Note that some of the areas (especially if the instance you are in is crowded) need a beefy as hell PC, with the amount of stuff going on on screen and the level of detail on everything.

 

[Frostex]

I picked this up on friday when it was released, got home at 5pm and rolled an assassin, was up until 2am playing, then spent all of sat playing from mid day until 3am.

I'm level 22 now, and I have to say this is a lot of fun, I will simply list pro's and cons, and there will be some comparison to WoW to show the difference. I should also mention that I've only just left the noobie area which is upto the first ~20 levels. it's a small town with 3 main adventuring areas around it, it's sort of a singleplayer which gets you used to all the different elements of the game and introduces all your skills to you, although this is a "noobie area" the adventuring zones do allow PvP if you're in a PvP server, and you can group with others although for the most part its not strictly needed. So my experience purely stems from this first starting town, it may be a lot different once you've left, I'll find out today and amend anything here that's wrong as I adventure further.

*edit*

Edits are in red now I've played more of the game outside Tortage the starting area.

Pros:

• Looks fantastic, it has a wide range of video settings which allow you to force high quality models at long distances, this makes the game look stunning, graphically it's far superiour to WoW at least on a good PC - City outside Tortage looks excellent
• Battle system is interesting, you have a directional attack (left, middle, right) and some of your combos need to be set attack patterns, but the enemy can block with difference strengths on each side which greatly lowers damage done. So you really have to pick which combo to use carefuly based on what your enemy is doing
• More playing, less waiting. Of the first ~20 levels which is the starting town, you spend most of your time fighting, your health regenerates very fast, and you move quite fast too. You can kill mobs very quickly and you can usauly attack groups of 2-3 mobs at a time. All of this means you get a lot of killing done with little waiting around for things to recharge etc. For example being tasked to kill 30 mobs seems very high and doing so would bore the shit out of you in something like WoW (grinding) but it's just more fun and much faster in AoC
• Something that supports the above point well, is that death penalty isn't too harsh, you return to your gravestone (if you so please) and it elminates the death penalty you have, which is like a 30 min debuf, and this can stack, you need to retrun to each gravestone to remove each buff, visiting one will only remove one debuff, so it's quite relaxed, the debuffs aren't too bad and allow you to continue fighting if you only have 1.
• Less reliance on gear for PvP it seems, because of the attack system mentioned above you can deal out vastly different amounts of damage with the same gear, so PvP is more based around who's skillful with their combos, stances and timing etc, i've seen people level 18 get the drop on level 14's and the level 14 has won.
• Adult rating, this means swearing (often frequent with some chars), lots of blood and guts, the finishing moves in particular are very nasty with a dagger lunged into your enemies throats directly forward, and exits from the side. Nudity, yes the minimum you have to wear is a thong, the female characters are nice to look at, it has to be said.
• Lack of what i'd call "WoW kiddies" so far, the main chat channel is quite good, even on a PvP server, everyone tends to be quite polite and helpful, theres not any real bitching or fighting, theres no groups of people standing around in the cities just dancing with their tops off.
• Surprisingly little PvP asshattery on the PvP server so far, if anything I've seen people punish "unfair" PvP, I ran into one guy who killed me while I was in the middle of fighting a few mobs, and when I respawned close by he was killing somene else while they were pre-occupied as well, so I stealth and backstab the guy and take him out, so me and this other guy /tell each other and go spawn camp his ass a few times before he gives up. i've seen many other incidents where people have saved me from spawn campers, anyone camping a spawn basically tends to get attacked on sight, and so doesn't happen a great deal.
• Quests are interesting, they eb and flow between certain areas at the start, enough so that you're traveling around a bit and exploring each area in more depth each time you revisit it, which means they're not just a linear path following adventure. You dont seem limited on quests you can take either which is nice.
• Dialogue is great, the quest givers and important people in the starting city all have voiced audio and all sound unique and all have very unique personalities, this isn't like oblivion where everyone feels generic, or like WoW where you feel like you dont have any real interation with your quest givers. - Quest givers with dialogue outside the start area is rare, only the main quest lines have them
• The world feels real and therefor believeable, WoW in hindsight feels more like a anime (japanese cartoons) with its overbright...er everything, its toon like characters etc. AoC feels nitty gritty and real, everytime you inflict a neck wound and send blood spurting across the scenery and all across your view point you're reminded of this.

Cons:

• Loading is frequent inside cities due to shops interiours being zoned, this is a bit irritating but to be honest with a fast machine (specs in sig) once you've already loaded that area once, loading becomes very fast afterwards.
• System hog, not so much that it unfairly uses system resources, or that it wastes them per se, it's just a really nice looking game, so if you have a crap PC then you're going to need to spend some money.
• There really inst that many...so far

 

[dogbyte_13]

i love it but im giving up on it due to my system being the suck, i have a core 2 duo OCed to 2.67Ghz and 2gigs of ram but my video card just cant handle it, i have a ATI x1550, i have it at 1024x768 with everything turned down and still only get 18FPS max, so guess im waiting for when i upgrade, but other than that even on low settings it looks fantastic.

 

[aFive]

^^^He is right. I have installed the game on my laptop and OMG, it was awful... I managed to get 40 fps constant, once I got to white sands with a bunch of folk + tortage = lag fest. On my desktop, it's pretty nice, don't really have any major drops.

 

[aFive]

Lack of what i'd call "WoW kiddies" so far, the main chat channel is quite good, even on a PvP server, everyone tends to be quite polite and helpful, theres not any real bitching or fighting, theres no groups of people standing around in the cities just dancing with their tops off.

What server are you on? The one I am on is awful, seems to be filled with 5 year olds .

 

[PC-HAngover]

Man I really want to try this game but I hate spending that much $$ on a game I'm not sure if I will like. I guess I have to take a risk at some point lol.

 

[doox00]

great summary Frostex, I have been enjoying the game as well.

 

[aFive]

Man I really want to try this game but I hate spending that much $$ on a game I'm not sure if I will like. I guess I have to take a risk at some point lol.

That's how I felt prior to release; then cave in and bought it.

My biggest complain is the server I started on. Most of the people on there are EX WOW players and little kids. They sit there talking in chat about WoW and complain all the time. I since then decided to try another character and rolled on another PVP server; much better .

Anyway, if you like really great story MMO's that feel awesome and are very smooth, this game is for you. The music is top notch and makes you feel like you are really there. Graphics are great too, besides trees and grass.

This game does take some getting used to, specifically the combat. I think that anybody that just picked the game up would really appreciate the fluidness of movement and feeling of great immersion, specially for this game being an MMO.

As you roll multiple characters you will see that some of the base skills are the same, once you level to 4 and up your character really begins to acquire the skills that are class specific.

Whatever you do, do not roll on DoomSlayer, that's the server I started on. I am still grumpy that I have leveld all the way to 22 on that server and am not sure if I am willing to stay on it. That server is one of the most populated ones, it's hard completing quests at times due to the population; I generally prefer smaller servers. As I have mentioned above, that server probably has the biggest unmature community on it. I made a lvl 1 on every other PVP server just to listen to chat, none are even close to being as n00b.

 

[Superfly3176]

Okay I hit 40 today

Pros:
Combat system, by far the most intriguing part of this game, no clunky, not heavily CC or healing reliant.
All classes can dps well
Beautiful zones
Questing is actually fun
Leveling is somewhat easy
Isn't wow
Quests show you exactly where to go (but not how to get there)

Cons:
Chat/Friends/Guild/UI system is clunky, needs improvements
Maps - Can't see party on map
Not as item/level reliant - more skill + class based
Some quests are bugged
Skill bars don't have enough skill spaces on one bar -- can't bind to mouse.


All the cons are relatively easy fixes.

 

[PC-HAngover]

Okay so what server should I roll on?

 

[jonneymendoza]

im gunna wait till i build a nehalem system before playing my first ever mmo game as my P4 3.2ghz along with a 7800gts cannot handle this game on even low

 

[pandora's box]

ok maybe someone here knows. i have a tempest of set and i want to put the text that pops up in the general chat window that im casting a spell or a spell has been succesfully casted into a seperate chat window so i dont clutter up my general chat window with all this nonsense. how do i go about doing that?

 

[cvinh]

How are the subscriptions paid? CC,Paypal,Online Banking? I don't really want to pay $50 for a game and then have to start paying for monthly subscriptions. If this game came out at $30 I would definitely try it.

 

[phobic]

ok maybe someone here knows. i have a tempest of set and i want to put the text that pops up in the general chat window that im casting a spell or a spell has been succesfully casted into a seperate chat window so i dont clutter up my general chat window with all this nonsense. how do i go about doing that?

Right click general tab, select subscribed channels, uncheck "on screen messages". You can make a new tab and follow the same procedure to have them show there.

Funcom has already said a new UI is in the works. We'll see.

 

[ScYcS]

How are the subscriptions paid? CC,Paypal,Online Banking? I don't really want to pay $50 for a game and then have to start paying for monthly subscriptions. If this game came out at $30 I would definitely try it.

you get 30 days free play with the purchase price of the game. If you don't want to try it for over $30, then wait until it's $29.99....your choice....but don't come back whining in 8 months when you finally got the game and tell everyone how bad it is because all the players are already level 60 or 80 and you're just now starting....

 

[j0j081]

I have 2GB at the moment and i'm finding its not enough. The game requires more than just a decent video card from my personal experience. I have an 8800GTX but there's a 4200X2 processor and standard DDR memory behind it and i'm having problems on anything but "low" graphics right now.

I'm not really sure what's going on with the performance. Some people have high end systems and get crap fps while others like my friend with an 8600gt is able to run it a little higher than medium at 1280x1024 w/only shadows disabled. She does have a Q6600 though. My pc has an e6750/9600GT and I can easily run it on high also w/shadows disabled, the only hitching I really experience is when an area first loads and I look around. Once I've looked around it runs smooth as butter. I think a lot of it may have to do with drivers and system Ram. We both have 3 GB+.

 

[ob1]

There are two extra hot bars you can enable from the options, but I haven't figured out how to change their opacity and stuff like that. It does help though having four hot bars up now.

 

[zoobaby]

There are two extra hot bars you can enable from the options, but I haven't figured out how to change their opacity and stuff like that. It does help though having four hot bars up now.

And those two extra bars are expandable as well. Default size is like 8 extra icon slots, but can stretch to the width/height of your monitor.

 

[Kreator]

42'' westy for the win for the hot button bars

 

[WhiteGuardian]

isn't it based on resolution lol.

 

[[H]ea\/y B]

Is anyone else playing on Tyranny? If so hit me up