1 year in review - 2015

Yet another Hyborian year has passed and it is time for my savage review. When you look at the list of things that were promised in 2013/2014 it will be pretty obvious that most of the stuff did not get delivered. On another hand ..... Oh snap! Did I just copy/paste intro to last year's edition? 

"Ya you did, also you have been slacking on posts as of late".

 Well shut up, voice in my head, I am back to my blogging routine and OBVIOUSLY I will be back on meds soon enough.

Let me start over: 

Yet another year has passed without the promised crafting revamp. Really, guys? I mean REALLY?

"Now you are just grumpily ranting"

DAMN IT! Ok, lets just dive in:

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

Apart from some unmentionable community managers being angry with me for the 2014 review pretty much NOTHING changed. If anything the monthly letters (in 2015 written by Sezmra) got progressively shorter and less substantial. In the end Tomium made a thread that pretty much said "Ok guys, tell us how to do our jobs as CMs" and asked for a feedback. Apparently it was pretty unsuccess attempt because the thread got deleted and both CMs quited Funcom. AOC is now under new CM management and he already has proven himself capable of turning things around. But that, my loyal readers, is for 2016 review.

EVENTS

The first event was the anniversary/adventure pack called Shadows of Vanaheim which was a disaster by all means. Just read the review. On the up side Matt 'Cirith Gorgor” Bennett  in the interview I did with him pretty much said "we fucked up, this won't happen again" which was very honest and very professional of him.

The team totally redeemed itself with state of the art Halloween event The Shambling Plague. That event was so good that I will actually post a late review soon enough. 

ACHIEVEMENTS, TREASURES, RARE BOSSES, PANORAMAS, TITLES

This update was nothing short of a miracle. Pretty much gave Hyboria a second life and brought the game a little closer to modern MMO standards. I now spend my time in the game going from zone to zone doing all the quests for the achievements and snatching up those treasures along with panoramas. I am doing this mainly for the story and  I have found some real GEMS when it comes to quests that I have missed leveling up back 2008. Being now well versed in the black arts (and by that I mean having good knowledge of REH's Conan) I can really appreciate the creativity that went into the creation on some of the quests. My only wish is that achievements update went on top of another, more substantial update because achieves are great side dish, but fail a little as a main course.

RAIDS

Biggest surprise of 2015 was The Palace of Cetris going live. No one, I mean NO ONE expected the team to actually finish the T6 raid and go live with it. Of course T6 being top tier raiding is pretty much open to few Crom guilds but that is supposed to change with new Raid Finder system. 

So as you can see not much has happened during 2015 but what went live was of great quality (except Shadows of Vanaheim which is just shamefull). If you are into PVE then 2015 has a lot to offer. 

1 year in review - 2014

Yet another Hyborian year has passed and it is time for my savage review. When you look at the list of things that were promised in 2013/2014 it will be pretty obvious that most of the stuff did not get delivered. On another hand new gear mechanics had to be introduced to add any new meaningful content to AOC. Lets see what was going on in Hyboria during those 12 months.

COMMUNITY MANAGMENT

1. All Your Tomium Are Belong To Us
2. [Forum Event] Epic Tales of Uncertainty - a forum game
3. Halloween Streaming!
4. Adventurers vs Kang - Hardmode! - youtube re-post
5. Player Spotlight Rishis
6. Forum re-design

I often give community managers a hard time because I feel like so so very little has been done over the years to really help AOC and it's community. I spilled my beans on that subject here. With an addition of new community manager I didn't expect for things to change drastically, but I gave the benefit of doubt. Without being an asshole about it the above list is what pretty much has been done for the community over 12 months. Epic Tales ended on a less than epic note. Halloween Streaming was two community managers giggling on Twitch and dieing on their low level characters. It was painful to watch as it was pretty obvious that community managers had little to no idea how to play the game. If someone expected insights about AOC, Q&A session with a dev or learning anything about the game then it was a big let down. I don't mind that "shits and giggles" approach to streaming once in a while IF it is a break from your regular streaming that has both purpose and content to offer. If just laughing your ass off for 2 hours on Twitch is the only thing you are going to do over 12 months then why even bother. We also had one youtube video re-post and one player spotlight. What was that about? Why even bother to do something once and then abandon it completely? I am not going to talk about forum re-design. I will just mention that old design was the best thing I have seen when it comes to MMO boards and I am saddened to see it gone. However if it was needed for technical reasons then be it, it's not that super important. Community management, again as always, resorted to posting server status and path notes with addition of Tomium offering a wide array of snarky comments to the players (which is less than welcomed and opposite to helful).

EVENTS

1. Age of Conan's Sixth Anniversary!
2. Age of Conan Halloween

Sixth Anniversary was a bit of a let down because of poor writing. The story was rushed, uninspiring and to make it worst it was used later on for PvP events lore. Halloween even was on the other hand very well put together and pretty much addressing ALL of my concerns about this type of content in AOC. Bonus points goes to Funcom for sticking with this new philosophy of adding something new to the events in every year. 

WORLD BOSSES

1. added a buff which will give players amnesty against criminal/murder status
2. The first kill of each month will now provide a new Portent Token which can be claimed on each of your characters.
3. Portents spawning on the PvP servers now have lower health to compensate for the increased challenges provided by these locations. 

World Bosses are here to stay. While WBs are glorified, gigantic pinatas but no one can deny that it is a super popular content. The improvements to the WBs, especially addressing the problems on PvP servers (where sometimes it took more than 1 hour to take down bosss) made things a lot better.

I only wish that Funcom has went a diffrent route with WBs and instead using gigantic monsters they should have used armies and generals. Cutting through the ranks of Nemedians to kill their general would be, at least for me, a lot more epic than sticking my dagger in some fat, flying demon. This content is what it is and recent changes are appreciated.

ITEMIZATION

1. Update to all PvP vendor weapons to have improved stats that should make them much more competitive in a PvP environment
2. Stats have been redistributed on all tiers of PvP armor. Tier 3 PvP gear should now be of a similar standard to T4 raiding gear.
3. New social items have been added to the Contraption Merchants for purchase using Conquest Trophies.
4. New vendor offers unique new items in exchange for Victory Tokens.
5. New mechanic in a form of Finesse hits,
6. New mechanic in a form of set bonuses
7. New mechanic in a form of item buffs

Even thou changes to existing pvp gear were deemed "very hard" by the Game Director later on we got awesome stats re-balance which resulted in closing the gap between T1 and T3 pvp gear and making T3 pvp gear more desirable for pvp than T4 pve gear. Great change! I did't enjoy pets this year. Pets, pets, pets, everything gives you pet reward. New pvp currency in a form of victory tokes can be spent pretty much on more pets. At very least  with the planned addition of solo arena all those pets are making sense now. The single most important addition to AOC this year were new gear mechanics which were needed for AOC to expand and provide future content. Developers have coded themselves into trap post 1.5 because with no stats cap item budgets could only gone up resulting in T4 gear making pretty much everything painfully obsolete. New mechanics are great for adding new items that are not simply a flat power upgrade and also set bonuses encourage mixing and matching between set pieces. Bonus points goes to Funcom for making finess hits a PVE exclusive and thus avoiding the age old issue of PVE gear being more valid for pvp. Check out more info on new mechanics here.

RAIDS

1. changes to memory cloud, loot has been redistributed over to The Zodiac & Emperor Yah Chieng
2. changes to Temple of Erlic T3.5 raid. At least 1 of the new weapon and accessory items are guaranteed to drop from each boss.Some bosses drop Dragon's Tears, rares, minipets or Phials of Heavenly Knowledge.
3. All existing raid vendors now offer weapons and accessories for sale in exchange for their respective tokens.
5. All existing raid vendors now offer weapons and accessories for sale in exchange for their respective tokens.
6. A new vendor offers new unique mounts, social pets, and morph abilities in exchange for tokens from Tier 1 to Tier 3. This new vendor also offers an exchange for Simple Relic Is > Simple Relic IIs and Simple Relic IIs > Simple Relic IIIs.
7. T5 unchained raids.

I am not much of a raider so I can offer a little insight about raid related changes. T5 raids are developers buying themselves more time in order to pump out T6. Adding T5 was a smart move because it was painfully obvious that T4 raid was .... raided to death (sorry for this bad pun) and PVE players were ready to move on (to another game most likely). T5 raid uses old bosses and raid zones but has new mechanics. I would call it a blatant attempt at stopping PVE population from leaving if it wasn't for the addition of gear with new mechanics.

PVP

1. The contraption merchants now offer an exchange of Campaign Badges into Conquest Trophies.
2. PvP Festival events
3. Daily PvP Questing System
4. White Sands Isle is now PvP Enabled on all PvP servers
5. PvP Minigame streak system
6. A new item, "Indemnity", has been added to act as insurance against a minigame loss
7. Individual minigame statistics are now visible on the player info window. New statistic added in a form of minigames abandoned count.

PVP Festival turned to be something oh-not-so-hot (check my article here). Most of the veteran pvpers ignore daily quests and pvp festival as they have nothing to gain there and what is left are mostly alt farmers that are making the events into Bori 2.0. The event and daily pvp zones lack of proper UI solutions (on screen messages and whispers are lackluster and remind me of MUD games) and it's not even clear where the even/daily quest is taking place, players must go from zone to zone and discover it for themselves (hint: most don't even bother).

But events are what they are: cheap content delivered very fast and I cannot argue with the cost-to-quality ratio because, in all honesty, it still beats Bori by far. 

What I am very upset about are Minigame streak system and minigames abandoned count. Game Director promised that Minigame streak would be also made for tournament mode so to encourage group play in AOC. He didn't deliver on that promise. Furthermore minigame streak quest can be broken/failed not only by losing the game but also via abundance of bugs like server kick, or getting CCed under map. What is Funcom solution to that? New item called Indemnity which pretty much acts as insurance against losing. So what it bad about it? Its cash-shop exclusive item and that is just evil. It's Funcom saying: pay us not to get fucked over by AOC bugs. This item should be buyable with tokens and the fact that it is not is a blatant money grab executed in a worst possible manner. To add insult to injury minigame abandoned count, a new type of visible stat, doesn't really count minigames left but rather the amount of bugs. I for exemple didn't leave a single game and I can boast an amazing 13 minigames left. You can check a video of me getting 2 minigames abandoned in one game (while staying in it!) and see the bug report thread. If I had to sum up pvp content for the year 2014 I would say: most noble of the intentions, most poor execution.

FIXES AND CHANGES

1. Requirements for gaining offline levels have been adjusted. In addition to premium account status, players must now possess a level 70 character before offline levels can be earned on the game account.
2. The active PvP Daily location now provides all players with a buff which will block criminal/murder status.
3. Guards will no longer come to player's aid during the Pictish Festival of Bloodshed (daily or festival week) in the festival location.
4. Players below level 80 will receive PvE XP boosts in the festival location.
5. It is now possible to signup for minigames from the Border Kingdoms : Cimmerian End, Border Kingdoms : Aquilonian End and the Border to Kush.
6. An Auto Loot feature has been added

I really liked how the devs quickly responded to obvious problems. In previous years it took months for anything to get fixed and now a lot of stuff got hot fixed within a week or so. An auto loot feature is amazing addition to the game.

CLASS BALANCE

1. changes and fixes to a lot of classes
2. alternative advancement changes

Changes to the classes were very welcomed as it's been years since even most simple tweak. I especially like how Conqs got finally toned down a bit. Alternative advancement changes were a nice try, but as long as the game rewards stacting +crit everyone will use same set of AAs.

1 year review - 2013

I am kicking off 2014 with fabulous post about what the hell have happened in 2013 in Age of Conan. Nothing much? Probably. Well we shall see in few paragraphs. Grab your favorite brand of bossonian brandy and dive me into ocean of broken promises and half-assed content.

First thing first lets take a looksie at last letter of 2012 which was heavy with the promises for 2013:

1. new freaking minigame
2. crafting revamp
3. new raid
4. new dungeons
5. single server technology

With that feed to us by Funcom who wouldn't go for 1 year sub offer? You did? So did I. And what we did get? We got FUNCOMED. The FC studio dropped the news that it is "re-structuring" and thus we will get fuck all in terms of content. Great timing guys with the sub offers. Masterful job, really.

After the previous game director - Silirrion - stepped down Joel Bylos taken up to the task of game directoring. I don't want for this review to sound like I am giving shit to JayBe here so right off the bat I want to make clear that I think he inherited nothing else than a "shit-storm" (a sandy shit storm to be exact) and he pushed with the cock he got. Given the circumstances (which were beyond his control) I think Joel did a good job.

Keep in mind that I don't even pretend to be objective here. This is my review and so it is written from Fury's PvPer that raids T4 and has little love for all things PVE.

That said I still want to vent few things out so here we go:

Outdoor zones:

• Dragon's Spine

I have criticized DS on this blog many many times so there is no point in going at it again. The zone itself is pretty, but it lack a substantial content (aka "depth"). One you have completed the main quest chain (which is like couple hours TOPS) there is really no reason why you would want to go back here again (for other reasons than to just get into the DS dungeons). A major major letdown, sloppy job, waste of resources and a thousands curses upon thee. 

Raids and Dungeons:

• Sepulcher of the Wyrm

The dungeon remained broken for several months and it offers really sub par loot (unless you are a DT). The visuals are quite nice, but that is pretty much it. Did it twice, never finished it.

• Coils of Ubah Kan

A miniature raid that takes hours to complete. Stupid amount of Bosses and needlessly complicated. This could have easily been broken into 2-3 smaller dungeons. Did it once.

• Halls of Eternal Frost
• Scorpion Caves
• The Caravan Raider's Hideout

I can't really tell since I haven't done them. Fury is stuck in LFG Palace/KK/Monastery mode and the unchained dungeons are considered "too much of a hussle". I have to give a honorable mention to the loot and it's distribution since it is a major improvement over the itemization in SDS dungeons. The loot is delivered in form of quest reward which comes in a form of a personalized loot chest. I like that as it prevents loot rot. Also, to my surprise, FC dev  posted all the items on TL forums and asked for a feedback on them. Furthermore he actually implemented the suggestions (mine too)! This new approach is a welcomed one.

• Temple of Erlik loot changes

As with unchained dungeons TOE got new loot (adjusted accordingly to players feedback). I guess this might be a good incentive for some guilds on Crom to re-visit this raid.

• World Raid Bosses

I am a little torn on this. On one hand the bosses are like gigantic pinata that you whack until candy (loot) falls out, but on the other hand it is a content that is undeniably very popular. I will admit that I have done the bosses more than once already and the quest to kill all 12 bosses that gives legendary loot only sweetens the deal. It is far from what I would call a "good" content (for example why dragons, yetis and such? Why not nemedian general or pictich warlord as boss?), but it is a content nonetheless and one that I am actually taking advantage of.

Mounts:

• Yothian War Mare

I call it the biggest blunder of 2013. Not only this mount is a sickening money grab, but it is also seriously underdeveloped (lack of animations, can't attack etc.). Luckily this monstrosity backfired on FC as it is considered pretty vulgar for anyone to buy this mount yet alone ride it around. Why not horses thou? Why Funcom hates horses? What is wrong with horses?  I can't think of 5 different horse designs on top of my head. No...lets ride gigantic lizards instead...

Community and Marketing:

• Forums merger

I can remember a post from one of the devs in 2009-ish saying that they will NEVER merge the forums (EU + US) because of how the billing works. Lies. Forum merger was rather successful and it worked out great for the community.

Events:

• Age of Conan’s 5th Anniversary

Solid event. Funcom then re-used this tech to create world raid bosses. This wasn't my dream anniversary (we don't get nearly enough Conan in this Conan game :X) but it lived up to the expectations.

• By the Light of the Moon

The event was a bit cheesy (shouldn't all of those Halloween events be that?), but it was a good addition after years and years of lost souls crap. Decent story, decent rewards and a promise of more events to come in the future as JB's stance on events is to add something new every time, but also to keep the old stuff.

Subscription:

• 40 AA points to level 80 characters on Membership 
• Age of Conan is on steam
• Account wide unlocks (social armors, bags)

Very good changes. I think that JB is pressing maybe just tad too much to give people more AA as you literally can't fart these days and not to get some prowess or mastery out of that (depends if you fart around players or mobs). Events and dungeons are loaded with AA experience and free 40 AAs are only sweetening the deal. I have nothing against this apart that I sure hope it is done with purpose aka to pave the way for new AA systems to come in the future (JB mentioned this in one of his first posts on AOC forums).

Systems:

• Server Merge & server move

A smashing success and a biggest achievement of new game director. The process of moving every EU server to US and merging all of them to create big ass Fury, Crom and Rage went very smooth and was very beneficial to the community as a whole. I can honestly say that I can't even remember when the servers moved to the US as my latency is much better now (not necessarily lower, but there are less hicks-up on the server side which happened a lot on Fury-EU). 

Ok ok, so far this looks like a super positive review? Well it might seem so, but for me it was by far worst year since 2008. Apart from doing some world bosses and 3  hours worth of quest chain in Dragon's Spine I was pretty much doing...well minigames and some raiding. That is it. There was no crafting revamp (third year in a row!), no class changes and not a single addition to the pvp. I want content that I wish to do, not a content that I do because there is nothing else.

Regardless of that I am very hopeful for AOC future as the development team showed some new approach to content creation and the communication with the player base is very good as of late. 

Here is to another 5 years AOC!

1 year review - 2012

Once again, once too many times, the season of "savage reviews" is upon us and I am here to chew AOC and spit it out. Or am I? Was 2012 a horrible year for the game or perhaps it was necessary to pave the way to this game's future greatness. Well, grab an ale and warm up yer bones near the camp fire, you are about to find up. Before we dive into the review itself you can now check pass reviews, those dating back to 2008 even under new "yearly reviews" tag. Check it out for comparison purposes.

This year I have decided to change the review process and talk purely about the content/changes and my personal take on them. The old system with the scores doesn't make much sense and, sadly, for most part it would still be a copy/paste job..third year in a row for some items like sieges..
Below you will find the most important additions rounded up into several categories likes dungeons/system changes etc.

Dungeons and Raids

• House of Crom

By CROM! What a worthy addition to the game. House of Crom - both group and social dungeons - are great experience with well written story behind it. The visuals of HOC are simply a benchmark for any future development as they have easily overshadowed anything done to this date. At the same time HOC is a classic example how HORRIBLE itemization can be. The dungeons drop tons of blue gear (all looking great except the assassin one which sucks) but all of it obsolete: if you can get it you already don't needed it and if you need it then chances are you are too under geared to get it. You can also get a nice epic cloak from this place (almost same stats as khitai one) but it is so easy that you can get it in 2-3 runs tops. Really, this place is for rare farming and those rares can be spent only in far far away Khitai which kind of defeats the purpose of having Atlantean themed dungeons if your rewards will ultimately be bought from Khitaian vendors. I am very bitter about how HOC turned out to be rewards wise, but it will always have a special place in my heart. I had my share of fun in here.

• Jade Citadel T4 raid

A major content addition in 2012.Duh. I find it very questionable as to why FC finally completed T4 encounters 2 years after the release of ROGS, but I digress. I have tried T4 two times or so and if I was in T4 raiding guild (which I am not) then I would be raid this place weekly. That is good. My only complains, as always, is assassin armor design. Worst-armor-ever. Considering the amazing looks of ROGS armors T4 pieces are a major let down.

• Dead Man's Hand

A remake of classic DMH with harder mobs/bosses and rare token rewards. This is how it should have been since day one after Turan release. I am not a big fan of Turan addon and DMH is one of the reason for that. I don't like the story, writing, design or the very idea of private questing area as it defeats the purpose of MMO. I guess FC did what they had to fix this garbage, but it's a patch work at best.

• Forgotten City

 Another case of half-baked idea that needed a fix. Really, it boggles my mind that the devs have made this dungeon almost 2 years after ROGS and didn't have a foresight to predict that making a solo dungeon on par with old world villas will not provide sufficient rewards and challenge to people in Khitai armors with AAs. This was a fix to an old content and as such it is barely an addition at all.

• Into The Breach 

The cream of the crop of bad design. I don't think there is a single piece of AOC content out there more "not played at all" than this garbage.  Funcom pretty much scaled up the HPs on the mobs and threw in few blue items and slapped "unchained" sticker on it. Guess what? No one does it. I have barely managed to scrape together a team for it on it's launch day. Never have I seen a LFM message for this dungeon on global chat. Perfect example on how to NOT revamp old content.

• Amphitheatre of Karutonia

I have mixed feelings about this dungeon. It is an old content revamped into new high end dungeon and taking it for what it is I would say it's good. But in post House of Crom expectations AOK falls short it terms of visuals and design. I wouldn't really mind because it's re-used old content so the expectations should be lowered, but AOK went live with TONS of bugs, I mean with some really nasty stuff (like Khitai pets usable in the dungeon, being able to rejoin the boss fights after death). Clearly a rushed, half-assed content, done it a half-ass way.

Systems
Before I go about the specifics I have to mention that all of the system changes were greatly resisted by some who were prophesying about how that single change will "KILL AOC". To give FC credit where credit is due they stickied to their guns with the base concept, but they listened when it came to fine tuning the stuff. The result of system changes is awesome and in all cases I wouldn't want a roll back to the previous versions of the game.

•  Respawn mechanics - Honestly, I don't even remember how the old system worked, so it gotta be great, right?
• Multifeat specifications- can imagine playing AOC now without it. Another rock solid addition.
• Facebook integration- at first I have rolled my eyes at this: facebook integration? For real? But I don't even have a facebook...Well, seems like now my character does have his FB page. There is a small community gathered around FB and AOC and I have to admit that I am using it on a daily basis. An addition that AOC could do without, but in the end it turned out to be an improvement (at least for me)
• Sprint Mechanic changes - best change of 2012 and probably most resisted one by the player base. I find it to be a smashing success. 
• Mount changes - Hyboria, sadly, is still full of Kitten-Raiders aka max level players riding the tiger mount since it's simply the best choice. Funcom attempted to combat this by normalizing across the board all mount speeds so Hybrkanian Horse and Wolf is now equal to tiger. So what? Tiger can stealth and that makes this mount the ultimate, most pimped out ride in Hyboria. I like the mount changes but those failed to make any real impact. Hopefully new Secrets of the Dragonspine addon will bring in some freshness to otherwise kitty-ridden world.
• Khitai changes - I did full report on in here. I like the changes, but it didn't really affected my game play since I was pretty much done with Khitai at that point.

Class changes

• Priest of Mitra
• Tempest of Set
• Bear Shaman  

I have no say whether those changes were good or not because I don't know these classes and I didn't bothered to ask anyone. It didn't break the pvp for me so I am content. It is good that Funcom is doing something in terms of class development and that it is not another assassin/ranger full blown "tear it down and start again" kind of revamp.

• Conqueror - oooops, Funcom managed to screw something up and that is making third soldier class joining the venerable club of "rogues in a plate armor". Guardian has always been a powerhouse with stupidly long polearm reach, then in post ROGS reality the Dark Templar joined it with his great damage and shield supported mitigation. It was only natural that the time has also come for Conq to join in with his instant AOE knock back, blue shield, overcome the odds and really hard hitting DPS. I will never understand the design thought process behind creating a class that is wearing best armor in game, have a bubble and still is doing damage that is enough to cut short the live of most cloth users. Rogues in armor I say! Bah!

To sum it up....
That is what we got in 2012. Good or bad? If you are a raider and on top of that you got several alts then this year was great! Changes to your classes, substantial content and furthermore less grind in Khitai and easier gear for alts (more rares from solo dungeons and epic legs added to vendors). So why this review is the "I need a hug" edition? It was HORRIBLE, HORRID and ATROCIOUS year for me: fully geared non-raider with just one character that didn't get revamped. Need to say more? I haven't been this bored since patch 1.5 when I have hit the brick wall with getting to pvp lvl5 (back then it was HARD) and had nothing else to do than re-running villas for absolutely no reason at all. In patch 3.0 era I am capped at pvp lvl 10 with both pvp T2 and T3 sets, Brittle Blade epic set, almost fully unlocked AA tree and 600 rares that I have nothing to spend on. Hardly ideal. I am missing means of progressing my character and I am afraid that new Secrets of the Dragonspine will not scratch that itch. I am jumping on and off with my semi-alt barb and re-doing low level stuff (like Field of the dead which was great), but I am fully aware that it's not because I am bored with assassin class - it because at this point I cannot progress any further. I will see how things will turn post SDS, but in the current shape - if the game would stay like this forever - I would be done with AOC. A lot of expectations for 2013.

1 year review - 2011

Another year went by so it is time to get savage with 1 year review of Age of Conan development.

First lets go over the most important patches:

Update Notes 2.1.2 - 18th January - the so called guardian mini-revamp. Guardian still does absurd amount of burst damage so I don't really see big difference there.



Update Notes 2.1.3 – Dreamworld Technology Update - this update brought many bells and whistles when it comes to visual eye-candy, but performance is not the name of the game. Hell, I am still stunned that my computer, despite of having card advertised as "the card to be playing AOC on", runs the game worst than it did pre-dreamworld update. This patch also introduced us to "Improved PVP mini-game & matchmaking balancing" which to this day is a joke.

Update Notes 2.1.8 - 7th of April - The refuge of apostate is introduced to Kara Korum zone. Delicious solo experience and one that I am still enjoying.

Update Notes 2.2 - 4th of May - The Ai District and the T’ian’an Distric went live. Visually very pleasing, but overall needlessly hard and thus not really all that popular.  Faction Progression system in Khitai is revamped and upgraded from "this is retarded" to "it should have been like this since day one". Very positive change, but implemented way too late to keep large chunk of players interested in ROGS.This update also brought Crowd Control Revamp with tweaks to duration, cast time, range, immunities or max targets of each CC ability. These changes also included an additional step for most combos which has been added to the starter step.

Update Notes 2.6 – 30th of June - Age of Conan goes free to play as Age of Conan: Unchained. The model, for my taste, is well balanced and implemented. I have stayed as premium subscriber and will continue to buy subscription in the future. Cash shop has wide variety of items and I am often buying small buffing pots. Long awaited "vanity armor tab" makes into the game. I consider it a SMASHING success and no 1 addition to AOC in 2011. Solo dungeons called “The Breach” and “The Forgotten City” are added to Gates of Khitai zone. Khitai faction item's prices are reduced further making ROGS content more enjoyable and accessible.

New PvP Server Ruleset: “Blood and Glory” - 7th of July - complete and utter failure of B&G server due to players going after PVE rewards to gain an edge in pvp. For example freshly dinged assassin would go and farm KK hard modes to easily gain 6 epic armor pieces, 2 epic daggers and a loads of mastery points. On max level people were rather looking for more PVE than engaging in PVP. Lack of solid pvp content on max level also played huge role in that. Seems like B&G just came in too early. Interesting idea, but very poorly executed.

Update Notes 3.0 (Savage Coast of Turan) – 31st August - first addon pack for the Age of Conan:Unchained. Seems like it will be the new model for the Funcom since in Q2 of 2012 we can expect another addon. The Turan zone looks very well done, but making in lvl50 zone rather than max lvl was not the best idea. The pack also brought Iron Statues Isle solo instance (superb quality and gameplay) and group PVE content in a form of Tier 3.5 raid. The high light of this patch was the complete combo revamp and combo skipping exploit fix. This was really game braking exploit for a very long time and many welcomed it with open arms. This exploit fix also, as a consequence of melee damage nerf, made casters and rangers the best killing machines in PVP scenarios.

Update Notes 3.1 - 13th of December - another engine & data base patch. Not only this patch took for ever to go live, but it aslo has brought bugs that are still haunting players in 2012.

And now the regular "1 year review" template:

 Crafting - crafting stood still in 2011. Nothing happened. Funcom wrote that the whole crafting system is getting teared down and build up from scratch. It is 1/10 for me since what we have now is beyond bad, but there is a hope for the future.
Rating: 1/10

Itemization - Big improvement. With Refuge and Iron Statues solo dailies everyone can get their hard mode tokes and build up their armor sets. The Khitai progression revamp also made MOAs more available without extensive grind. One can only hope for more open world, random drops so it is not at 10 out 10.
Rating: 9/10

PVP minigames - no changes. Still you cannot sign up with a group, still you will get ticked off by afkers and as a result of mergers there are more and more players that doesn't know a word in English. I was enjoying minis LESS in 2011.
Rating: 5/10

PVP XP and progression- With the addition of cash shop players can not only catch up with others faster (with pvp xp pots), but also can instantly obtain pvp lvl5 armor buy paying for it. Now I know that a lot of people are upset by this, but seriously you can get better armor buy doing less than 2 weeks of Khitai (yes! It is that easy) and if someone wants to just jump into the pvp with their under geared alt this is the way to go. I am taking 1 point away because no changes to Bori were made.
Rating: 9/10

Class balance - the combo exploit fix was pretty awesome and I cannot imagine how the hell I was enduring (not enjoying, enduring!) this game pre CC revamp. Definitely a solid improvement. 

Nerf rangers -_-' .
Rating: 7/10

Open world PVP - Bori is here to stay. I am bumping the rating because Funcom disabled Bori on B&G server (not that it helped much...) and added looting system. Your opponents can now drop money, Bori tokens, rare potions and even armor pieces. With this system I got almost 1.500 Bori tokens out of minigames alone.
Rating: 3/10

Sieges - Still a feature that was supposed to be iconic for AOC ("experience epic siege battles!") but turned out to be poo on a stick.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild diplomacy tools - There are none. There is no support for guilds and server politics in AOC. Come on! Alliance system! Where is that?
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild city - Nothing really happened in 2011 in terms of guild cities. The new renown levels are needed. I am taking away some points for slacking.
Rating: 7/10

RP support - Hard call. On one hand Funcom added vanity armor which made whole Hyboria more live-a-like, but at the same time the devs trashed every RP server and merged them with Fury and Crom. I haven't seen people RPing in the streets or taverns after merges. I miss that vibe.
Rating: 5/10

80lvl content for non Raiders - With 5 new solo instances there is plenty to do. With this 2011 addition Age of Conan became very casual friendly and more suited for it's population: people with jobs and responsibilities that want to squeeze some playtime here and there.
Rating: 9/10

Updates - Pretty good year with a horrible ending. At first we had constant stream of updates, but then we have hit the post Turan bottle neck with the database update. Definitely better than 2010, but still somewhat disappointing.
Rating: 6/10

Client improvements - the client improved a lot. The crashes, at least for me, are very very rare now. The performance leaves much to be desired thou.
Rating: 5/10


So to sum it up:


The good: the things that improved the most in 2011

- combo exploit fix

- CC revamp

- Khitai revamp

- vanity armor

- free to play model

The bad: the things that Funcom failed miserably at in 2011

- engine updates

- B&G server

- server mergers (putting together communities from couple different servers)

- Conan movie tie-in (but the movie was kinda horrible so I cannot blame Funcom for not making anything better that they did).

The ugly: the things that are still in game to haunt me

- poor crafting system

- non-existent player driven economy

- bugged sieges

- no group pvp content

1 year review - 2010

Last year (meaning 2009) I did a scolding review of Age of Conan development (well deserved I might add), but it seems like 2010 brought a lot to the table:

Crafting - crafting is still almost meaningless because of the reasons stated here. I can honestly say its by far the worst crafting I have ever seen in a mmo. Huge room for improvement. Like HUMONGOUS. I had to bump up the previous rating of epic fail to solid 3 because crafting has such a big impact on guild progression in renown levels and rankings. So if you have your bank stuffed with mats you can now pump out items for an hour or two to help the guild and be done with it until your bank refills. Clearly not enough, but still small step forward.
Rating: 3/10

Itemization - The expansion brought great sets for every class and those can be achieved by doing both solo and group pve. The sets are beautiful, with great stats and distinctive looks. I am taking 1 point away because there is no way for solo players to get hard mode tokens and this denies them access to weapons and accessories in expansion. Hell, I am taking away 2 points because it pisses me off so much. Overall big leap forward and superb job.
Rating: 8/10

PVP minigames - a lot of great changes. New minigame, random vs random, pvp xp for capturing flags and winning. Coward's shame is also upgraded and its working. I am enjoying this content very much and its well rounded up part of aoc. I am taking away 1 point for no premade vs premade option, 1 point for no way to deal with afkers (aka leechers) and 1 point for allowing flag carrier onto the spawn point where your opponents can recapture it forever. That's a bit rough, but since its such an excellent part of aoc, I expect nothing but the best from minis.
Rating: 7/10

PVP XP and progression- I am not going to talk about pvp xp from Bori because "epic fail" rating would have stayed. If you don't do Bori then the game still offers variety of pvp xp gain improvements. You can get pvp xp for minigame quests, by capturing flags, killing opponents, trading tokens for pvp xp and even buying tomes of carnage that give great boosts to pvp xp gained. Great job with the addition of minigame quests and tomes. The recent changes to minigame gear also made it within the reach of almost any pvper.
Rating: 10/10

Class balance - the game feels MORE balanced. As and assassin I obviously cannot be objective, but it seems like no class is topping the charts regardless of player's skill. FC did sin, guard and ranger revamps and more are coming.I am taking away 1 point for how Bori gear affects players performance (tip: WAAAAAY too much) and 2 points for damn combo skipping. Solid improvement, but still a lot to do.
Rating: 4/10

Criminal/murderer system - not a single improvement. A dead feature.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Open world PVP - We got Bori! Seems like FC must just drop the ball at some point in whole year. This is Bori in a nut shell, but your can easly find a lot of multipage threads on official forums. There are players with 200 kills and 100 deaths and pvp lvl 10 gear. Nuff said. I am bumping the rating up from "legendary fail" to "epic fail" because FC tried to make things better with pyre system (that's good, more like that please!) and the Game Director had the balls to, while staying within his professional boundaries and minding the company best interests, admit failure of Bori content. I can respect that.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Sieges - Still very unstable (aka they crash) and the performance is laggy at best. Furthermore some classes still dominate the sieges while others feel out of place for such a heavy duty action. This part of game needs a lot of work so I am giving it savage beating in rating.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Guild diplomacy tools - There are none. There is no support for guilds and server politics in AOC. Come on! Alliance system! Where is that?
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild city - I deem this the most improved part of Age of Conan in 2010. The guild renown, added buildings and NPC gave the cities new life.Furthermore FC rebalanced renown levels on RP related stuff so smaller RP guilds could have access to the RP stuff. I am taking 1 point away because cities in general (apart from some decoration and building placements) still look the same for every guild so: more guild cities customization and personalization please!
Rating: 9/10

RP support - FC added items, clothes, drinks, guild social events, tavern rooms for rent. Huge, huge improvements. The name infractions are dealt with and seems like RP community is finally noticed and acknowledged by FC. I am taking 1 point away because the promised "social tab" for displaying items for looks over items being worn for stats is still not there.
Rating: 9/10

80lvl content for non Raiders - The expansion brought tons and tons of stuff for solo and small group players. Great, long lasting content (even if a little grindy) with superb story line. I am taking away 1 point for MoA grind (its very hard at the beginning) and 1 point for Chosain province zone (it sticks out like a sore thumb, there is nothing unique about it). FC is already talking about new solo instances, but that's for 2011 review.
Rating: 8/10

Updates - This one is a hard call. On one hand FC did 2.1 patch in batches (Craig M. be praised!) and the expansion is good, but they did drop the ball on several exploit fixes (you need to act fast!). Some exploits like combo skipping still remain after 2 years.
Rating: 4/10

Client improvements - the game still crashes on zoning, minigames etc. C'mon, after 2 years this is unacceptable! And DX10 is still in beta.. I am giving it 3 just because they did fix the Grasslands problems in expansion, but that's being generous.
Rating: 3/10

I know that there is a lot more to review, but these are the parts of the game that matter to me. What do you think? Drop me a line in the comments and have a great new year!

1 year of fail

This is something I wish didn't happen: after hiting one year the state of AOC is EXACLY where it has been six months ago. I might just do copy/paste job and call it a day, but lets go over these one more time:

The good:
DX10 - you will probably not use it if you are a "KESH pvper". It's mostly used to stroke epeens of people who have the BALLS to post their cpu speccs in their sigs (who the hell does that?). It looks great non the less so I guess it should be counted as an improvment.
Rating: 9/10

The bad:
Crafting - crafting is nonexistent in this game. Still.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Itemization - Ever since I did about 15 epic KESH runs I am wearing same gear with sloooowly added pvp gear which takes forever to get.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

PVP minigames - currently dominated by premade groups with casters. The only way to win is the get somewhat equal number of casters.
Rating: 2/10

PVP XP - pvp progression got turned into joke. Biggest guilds do "Nekid RP" to get to lvl 5 in no time. Your achievment as honest pvper is meaningless - there are tons of lvl 5 exploiters.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Class balance - Same old same old. Just roll a TOS.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Criminal/murderer system - it got turned from "broken" to "nonexistant". It is used to let your buddies get more PVP XP for killing you so they can reach lvl 5 faster.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Open world PVP - log on, go to KESH, zerg or die. Here is your content, enjoy. The "Cimmerian Boredom Kingdoms" died in two weeks, it was HUGE waste of time to development time and a big letdown.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild dyplomacy tools - There are none. There is no support for guilds and server politics in AOC.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild city - Ghost towns. Same crappy buildings with bare walls inside them. Fun!
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

RP support - GMs no longer act on RP ruleset infraction. Go ahead and make your "Supadupa" Barbarian, you won't get namelocked. Instead of social clothing we got "/fart" emote 0_o
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDAY FAIL

80lvl content for non Raiders - we got Slaughterhouse, somewhat neat solo instance. Even thou I like it a lot, its too little to cover "conent for 80lvls". The Xibaluku (or whatever its called) instance was popular for like 2 weeks, you won't get group for it even inside big guild (everyone would rather raid) not to mention PUG.
Rating: 3/10

Updates - it takes forever for Funcom to do any update.
Rating: 2/10

Keeping the dates/giving out ETAs for updates - they doesn't.
Rating:1/10

Don't care about:
I don't care about PVE/Raid content.

I can honestly say that with 6 months of development time was wasted. Yes, there is a mythical beast called 1.5, but it didn't come out today (not that it should) so I can't review content that isn't live yet. This is where we stand right now. Yes, there have been some progress, but no more than a drunk makes by falling over.

6 months of FAIL

I have decided to do 6 months reviews of Age of Conan development from PVP Assassin perspective - this will be one of many reviews because I am sure I will stick with this game to the bitter end.

The good:
Client - Funcom impoved the stability of client which is like ..."meh" because I have never had problems with it. I guess the FPS rate got better so I can run this game on medium and enjoy fluent PVP. Good job here.
Rating: 9/10

The bad:
Crafting - crafting is nonexistent in this game. All I do is craft some food for my personal usage and thats it. Gems are broken beyond belief so I did not even bother to progress any further.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Itemization - Ever since I did about 15 epic KESH runs I am wearing same gear - Midnight set + PVP lvl2 stuff. If you don't raid you will have nothing to upgrade your gear. Everyone looks the same. Funcom boasted about their freaking 1500 armor sets and social clothing, but I yet have to see them.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

PVP minigames - minigames are broken. People play on the same map over and over, Totem Torrent is out of the question and there are no rewards for capturing the flag - if you go for them I usally means you are getting you ass farmed and your team wants to end the game quick. There is no deepth to minigames. I do minigames and I do them a lot, I just wish they were better.
Rating: 4/10

PVP XP - Its harder than HARD to progress in PVP XP - instead of having few tiers where you get new gear and bonuses FC made getting to lvl 5 super hard and time consuming. After all that killing and XP farming you get you assassin set which will make you look like stygian WHORE. Also FC allowed "guild leave + farm your guild mates" which allowed total noobs to farm their lvl4 in matter of 2-3 weeks. FC ignored that issue regardless of player's feedback
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Class balance - Just roll Necro or a TOS FTW. TOS got 6 month of non stop ownage with +3k critz while being a healer and Necro get insta crits from spell weaving and there are no signs of nerf coming.
Rating: 1/10 EPIC FAIL

Criminal/murderer system - it is broken. You will get flaged criminal for defending yourself.

Open world PVP - log on, go to KESH, zerg or die. Here is your content, enjoy.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild dyplomacy tools - There are none. There is no support for guilds and server politics in AOC.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Guild city - Ghost towns. Same crappy buildings with bare walls inside them. Fun!
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

RP support - beside GMs that take actions on petitions regarding naming violations there is no support for RP in this game. We got fancy emotes but we can't even sit in a tavern and drink a beer in a WORLD OF HYBORIA FOR FUCKS SAKE! Lack of social clothing makes it even harder.
Rating: 3/10 (for emote system)

80lvl content for non Raiders - you can grind Villas for crap money. If there are no people for minigame you got nothing to do except bitching on guild chat.
Rating: 0/10 LEGENDARY FAIL

Updates - it takes for ever for Funcom to do any update. I understand things take time, but they could do small additions to keep the community happy and they don't. Bugs also take for ever to fix (female attack speed being the prime example).
Rating: 2/10

Keeping the dates/giving out ETAs for updates - they doesn't.
Rating:1/10

Don't care about:
I don't care about PVE/Raid content. I don't have an alt so I haven't done any Ymir's pass quests. Raids are just not for me.

I know this 2008 review was very negative, but I wrote how I feel about game and FC - in six months they could do SOOOO much better. Funcom has a lot of work to do in 2009 - I hope my next review will be exact the opposite because things will take turn for the better.