Age of Conan and my love, hate relationship

My first take of Age of Conan when I first heard of it was “RIGHT ON!!!”. When it was time I ran and pre-ordered it and paid for early access and during EA I was like hmmm, this game isn’t what I thought it was going to be. Now I must admit I am a very picky gamer, so with that in mind I will talk about what I thought about the game. Age of Conan is very beautiful with the graphics but graphics alone won’t save game play. I started off as a conqueror and loved the hell out him the fatalities were badass and I chose to duel wield which by far the most fun I ever had with a character in any game in a long time. But then I started losing interest in the game and here is why. It’s a total quest grind game. It got to the point that I wouldn’t even read the quests, I would just click through the dialog and go complete my task and go off to another quest. I was like “forget making an alt, because there is no way I’m going to run another character through the same starting city and grind out on the same quests”.

Tortage City is the beginning city and you start off on a beach just outside of the city. The City itself is sweet. I loved the look of it. Once you reach level 20 you get to leave the city and visit the rest of the world. Now the first 20 levels are pretty much a solo experience. Your destiny quest which is a very thought out and fun series of quests all have voice over’s and cut scenes but are solo only and takes place at night. In Tortage city the single player part is at night and called “Tortage at night” and the multi-player part is “Tortage day”. All in all it’s a fun start if you are into a grind fest of quests.

Post level 20 is pretty much the same its all quest grinding and just not my cup of tea. I guess for me it’s just hard for any game to beat DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot). I’m a DAOC veteran and I keep going back to it. It’s not only Conan but all the game I have tried. I have played Star Wars Galaxies, City of heroes/villains, World of Warcraft, World War 2 Online, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, DF Online, Adventure Quest, and Mech Quest. And out of all of those games only Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot did I play longer than 30 days. I have played DAOC since closed beta and I still play it until this day.

Tis the life of a picky gamer.