Age of Conan (picture heavy)

No, I haven’t quit wow. Signed up to raid today but there wasn’t enough people. But here’s what i got out of Age of Conan, other than the bewbs of course. I bought the Collector’s edition, so here’s the loot:

and the boobs that came in the art book!

The only gripes i have with the whole loot thing were (being all bitchy and nit-pickety):

- The pack I had got were poorly “taped” together. The 4 stickers you see on the front of the box? that was all that was holding the box and packaging together. As such, the chick that brought it to me dropped everything on the floor. Glad that there was nothing breakable or else that would have happened. She did nick the box on the side though, so now there’s a huge white patch there.

- the art book. This game cost me $100 for the collector’s edition. Most games i had ever bought, at “collector’s edition” stage had nice artbooks with a minimum of a thick, firm cover at least, and the average is definitely a hardcover.

The cover of this art book? a real poor thin copy paper. Crumples at the slightest rub. ~.~ *sulks*

The game itself:

Character Creation:

The scene is set at the back of a ship, with what seems like slaves rowing it. the story line is pretty much (from the bare bits that i can gather here and there) you got pushed into slavery, and was on a ship to Tortage to be enslaved. Right after character creation, you got shipwrecked and lost your memories. All of which sounds like a great story line ^_^

But, the actual character creation is pretty fun. You can alter many facets of your character, including the BOOBS and the ASS. which they nicely named posterior and uh… boobs? I did alter her height to reflect my rl height (somewhere around 5 foot) and tattooed her as well. Yeah, i like personalising my characters just a little bit Initially, i hung out her tits just a little. unfortunately, during the multiple cut scenes that were the quests and so on, i realise that her tit graphics cut her arms way too much. i was uncomfortable with that, so i deleted her and started again.

Graphics wise, i had say they are beautiful in their own way. It seems to use alot of resources though, and at medium, sometimes it chugs on my lappy. granted, it’s not the best of graphics card in the first place, but i wish i can see more gorgeous graphics without so much as having my graphics card chuck a spazzo at me. Lineage 2 was great, and still is, without needing all these new spiffy graphics card, turned on full.

regardless, graphics are great. Fact that you can make the arse and tits bigger makes it all the more better. Wait, now i do qualify for nsfw hahaha….
And, the reason why it’s ma15 is also because the graphics do get gory. right now, i have seen quite a few “fatality” involved broken bottles and what not… they aren’t pretty, but damn they are graphically exciting to look at.

Gameplay:

I have only played like, 11 levels worth of this game. So take all this with a pinch of salt ya.

So, let’s start with the default UI. As you can see, the action bars are pretty chunky. The chat box is in an awkward spot, and i really hate those on screen messages as well as the colour of all the chat/onscreen messages fonts - mostly because they are barely readable. Adding people to group can be confusing at the start, and adding friends is equally as confusing.

Basically you have to go into this page to look for people of a certain level, click their name and choose to add them in group or friend’s list. It’s finding the page to do so and understanding it right off the bat that would take some time.

There’s a… tutorial manual of some sort in game that pulls up to the left side of your screen when you start. Whilst helpful, it’s positioning, font size and wealth of information is just a little too much for me. personally… i turned it off as it’s more intrusive than helpful at some point.

Digging around the int3rw3b though, and through the game folders, i came to realise the ui is quite customisable. There’s a folder for customised UI, and there’s at least 3 good and working UI’s out there for AoC. One’s WerikUI, the other is MirageUI and finally there’s the BalMaethorUI.

Looking at the forums though, it seems Funcom themselves are quite unsure of whether Customised UI’s should be allowed or not. So for now, perhaps the safest thing is to look for UI’s that just allows you to customise the size and look of action bars and chat boxes. On a personal note, i would rather go through the hassle of un-customised UI until i am comfortable with the game, just to be uber familiar with everything, heh.

Skills and attributes:

I think it was dungeons and dragons that started this, but i could be wrong. once upon a time, i played games that required people to change their attributes accordingly. some were kind enough that when you hit a certain level, you can re-distribute your attribute points. this can make one wizard quite different from the other, for example, when it comes to mana regeneration and etc etc.
AoC added that on top of the “talents” distribution method that WoW had. The attributes appears to be changeable every level, and talents are available only after level 10. I have been trying to figure out which way i should go so i am essentially a healing class but… it’s not easy. it seems like they have made healers combatants as well as healers - sounds like a dangerous in between to me but we will see. Here’s a look at our available “feats” as they call it.

What i love the most is the lack of need to go to a trainer (or perhaps i do, but i never realised/found it) - every time i ding the right levels, i gain new skills! how awesome is that!

initial quests (until level 20) has 2 sides to it. there’s the multi-player side, where there’s also a chance of getting ganked since its open pvp, and there’s the single player mode in the dark.

anyways, here’s the end of my thoughts on AoC for now. kinda abrupt, but unless i have played this game for longer, it wouldn’t be a fair call on anything else i say.