Hyborian adventures

A local game store is selling Age of Conan for just 9,90€, so my bf suggested we'd buy the game, play the 30 days you get for free and see if it's any good.

It is.

Unless you count the community.


Mm, I love the smell of sun-ripened carcasses in the morning!

Okay so AoC is pretty. The landscape is just breathtaking with dx10 graphics on (and I was playing with pretty much maxed settings), and the beginning actually felt like playing some good single-player rpg. I haven't actually played that many rpgs, but I did get these pleasant NWN and even Dungeon Siege vibes. The tutorial island, which comprises the first 20 levels, was fun and exciting though I got lost all the time and felt like a total noobcake when it came to combat (I'm not used to moving around! I'm not very good at anything fast-paced), but luckily I had my bf to save my skinny little ass over and over again :D.


My personal healbot and lil' me.

I created a Dark Templar, which is like a I cut myself to feel alive kind of tank. She's as short as you can get, with a really goofy-looking face and extrawide hips. Later I found out that DTs are generally considered to be the worst class for pvp, and that each patch tends to break their effectiveness as pve-tanks even more. I'm not surprised.

We rolled our toons on a pvp-rp server (Aquilonia), hoping it'd be some kinda nice mix of exciting pvp and the friendliness I'm so used to on Laurelin. After I'd got used to it, I did start to enjoy the feeling of danger when venturing out in the wilds, but lack of any limits actually lead to asshats ganking people who are 50 levels lower, talking to npcs (= player is inside a cutscene and can't leave), loading into an area (only to find out you're dead even before the loading screen goes away) and general griefing during questing. There are even guilds there that are dedicated (and proud of it!) to the sole purpose of griefing new players on the very first pvp map. Luckily the worst gank spots are pretty easy to avoid, and generally I had a good time when just playing with my friends.


The emotes are awesome though! I've got tons of really goofy screenshots of Kro and Agi doing stupid things.

Maybe I shouldn't have read the forums that much and kept the global chat turned on, but on the whole the community "feel" on Aquilonia was so negative I didn't quite feel comfortable there. There was only talk of ganking, griefing and hurt e-peens on every channel and forum topic that I started to miss LotRO enough to go back to my sweet circle of friends on Laurelin. I think I might re-activate my AoC account some day, but not before they fix the pvp 'exploits' (though I might still pick a pve-only server, if I ever returned there).


I never got around to checking out the actual rp on the server - the game sure is more fitting for rp than LotRO.