Age of Conan - single-player

The same goes for my other quibbles - climbing areas that are accessible during night missions but not during day missions, a general lack of loot variation, what I think is an assumption that all players will read the manual before they choose character classes (how else would they learn that necromancers don’t have combo attacks?) - but Godager assures me that, this, too, is “just a lack of polish. MMOs are so huge that you polish all the way up to launch. I can assure you that even as we speak, we are polishing many areas.”

I suspect that if anything keeps me playing Age of Conan over time, it will be the combat. I am not a level-grinder or a guild-joiner, which is why I’ve never stuck with any MMO for longer than a few months. Conan’s destiny-quest aspect - which you’ll return to every 10 levels - could be enough to keep me playing, though I’d have been happier with an every-five-levels scheme. The combat system and my ongoing quest to deliver decapitations is enough to keep me hooked for a while, as is the promise of a mount I can use in combat. Given that a mercenary system will let even loners like me participate in sieges (which we’ll cover later in the week), and that it seems pretty easy to find groups on a quest-by-quest basis, maybe I’ll be able to amuse myself in between finding out why I’m marked and memory-less.

On to day 2 - multiplayer

May 12, 2008