I November/December of 2012 the game had 4 closed beta weekends, which I played a bit in. So now it has been time to see what the state of the game is, what has changed and if it is worth playing. And my answer to that last part is – yes, it could be worth playing. But it is a bit bumpy ride.

Starting the game

One word that comes to mind after playing the game for a bit in the open beta, with the closed beta experience, is the word streamlined. There has been many changes to the game, some small and some fairly significant.  But lets start from the beginning.

Since it is a browser-based game, there is no client installation – the only thing needed is the Unity3D engine web player plugin in your browser. Last time I checked the plugin was available for a couple of different browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer) for the Windows and OS X operating systems. Last time I checked there was no Linux version, but this may have changed by now.

So once you have an account have have logged in, you can just press the Play Now button on the page and off you go. When you get to the character selection screen there is not a huge amount of choice – 4 human races, 3 classes and a little bit of character customisation options.  There were a number of other (non-human) races available in closed beta and one more class, so these are bound to appear a bit later, most likely.

The three classes are Arcanist, Gunner and Warden. The first two are ranged classes, the 3rd one a melee class. Arcanist could be considered a steampunk version of a mage, if one would compare to more fantasy-oriented games.  Each class have three types of weapon options – a 2-handed weapon, two 1-handed weapons (dual wielding) or a one-handed weapon and a shield. All can be equipped and switched between through a click on the screen. This is a nice and fun feature and is available right away, pretty much.

Tutorial

The tutorial is quite minimal before it gets you into the action – pretty much just this is how you move and this is how you hit stuff. The next thing is an enemy to defeat – and after that you gain a level. One thing you may want to change right away (at least I did) is to change the isometric mode camera option to a free mode camera option – which any MMO player probably is more used to. That is a button in the lower right corner, but the tutorial does not mention it explicitly – one may see a tip for it in the load screens though when zoning.

Storywise there has been a Mythstrike and you are part of the evacuation from the city of Delton. Depending on the race chosen the mission dialogue and the NPCs you interact with are slightly different, but all essentially leads through the same steps.

Leveling to 2 and 3 will get each class their 2nd and 3rd abilities to use – they are unique for each class, but still similar in nature across the classes. There are a few tutorial tips shown as you move along. The user interface is also quite minimal at start and will expand as new features are introduced.  There will be two instanced areas to run through with some enemy smashing to get some basics. The tutorial does not mention it, but one significant part of the game is that there are boxes all over the placed which can be smashed and which may contain loot. There are also chests which can be opened with keys. A player starts with 10 keys and may also get more keys by smashing things as loot. Opening a chest uses up a key and chests usually contains better loot than the regular boxes one can smash.

One neat thing with the game now is that all loot is individual, similar to how it was in City of Heroes for example – each player see their loot only and the loot is generally useful for the class one is playing. Thumbs up for this! One still has to collect the loot though and if it is not money or keys, one has to click on it explicitly also (unless you have a pet, more about that later).

The next major shared area to visit is the rail hauler station area, which is the place from which many people are trying to get out of the city from. This area introduces you to what is called Challenge Dungeons, which is something one will see a lot of. They are pretty much the bread and butter of the dungeon gameplay experience in the game. These dungeons start quite easy for people to get a feeling for it.

This section also introduces the three mission types – story missions, side missions and daily missions. Story and side missions are the missions you do once and daily missions are the ones you can repeat. Each is colour-coded – yellow for story, green for side mission and blue for daily mission. Story missions are missions you have to do to progress and unlock various areas etc. The other ones you could choose if you want to do them or not, in theory. In practice you will do most of them and repeat them as well. This is also the litmus test for if you should play the game or not – if you hate these daily missions and challenge dungeons, then the game may not be for you. If you like or love them – you are in the right spot.

Personally I am in a love/hate situation with them – sometimes I think it is really fun, sometimes I find it quite boring and annoying.

The Refuge

The story continues on the train and you get to defeat a badass/boss-type enemy and eventually arrive at The Refuge, the first area in the game. This is the place to be until you are level 12ish, you are around level 5-6 by the time you have arrived there.

Here more of the real things to do opens up. From Refuge there are entrances to a number of dungeons/instanced areas. The story missions guide you through to find most of them, in a suitable order level-wise. As you go along there you can also pick up the side and daily missions – there are mission NPCs outside each dungeon. In Refuge there are 3 versions of each dungeons, related to these side and daily missions – in the next zone this expands to four for each dungeon.

Side missions typically give you some objective to find and/or pick up something in the dungeon. The daily missions give you different types of challenges – open N number of chests, kill Y mobs etc. The last mission is a defeat the boss-type of mission. The boss missions typically require multiple players – however, it is easy to queue up and continue with something else while waiting – if you need to wait. There is also a Hero option available on the multi-player missions, which means that you can try the mission solo if you want.

This is not really explained, I did not know about this last part until another player mentioned it. In general there are many things in the game that are not explained properly, which I think is one of the bad things with this game. There are a few different places as you level up where different choices should be made, but the information about what impact these choices will have is not always clear.

Abilities and gear

One part related to this is the ability/talent tree system. In the old closed beta days there were three flavours of each class which you could select from right from the start. As you leveled up there were somewhat intricate talent trees which one could spend points in to customize your character. Most of that is gone, or rather simplified. The three branches are still available, but only as much as every few levels you may pick another ability from these three branches. There is very limited information about the three choices and you cannot see what choices will be available later – it is all hidden.

Experienced MMO players will find this frustrating and there has been some rage from closed beta players seeing this. I do not like it either – it sucks. However, I do think that experienced MMO players are not the target demographic for this game. A much simplified version will avoid people making a mess of their builds. It will be more linear and boring to build your character from an MMO perspective, but it is probably a  better choice for a more casual audience.

There are still some a reasonably extensive gear upgrade and modification system, but also this has gone through some changes. First of all, these different game systems become available at a much slower pace – every few levels a new systems to improve/manage your gear is added.  Again perhaps a bit boring for experienced MMO players, but probably better for overall gameplay. I actually like this approach, even though I would have liked to tinker with a few things a bit earlier.

The gear upgrade and modification system would probably warrant a post of its own, so I am not going into details here. Most of it I like, although it will most likely become a bit more frustrating and grindy as you get to higher levels. I think it seems better now than in closed beta, more streamlined, but might have issues at higher levels – that remains to be seen however.

The transmuter

One key feature that most people will encounter is the Transmuter. This is essentially a slot machine, which you can win various in-game items, cash and stuff with. There are reward items which are used to operate the Transmuter – each time it is used one of these items are consumed. You get quite a few of them though. I have had as many as 60-70 of those in my inventory so far and only a couple of them may be needed to win something that is useful/good enough. You can win vehicles (steambikes & jetpacks), pets as well as cosmetic/vanity items through the Transmuter and it is not that difficult to get those. They are however temporary though and will expire after 24 hours. Not sure if it is always 24 hours, but at least the items I have won have had that time limit.

Arena fights

In addition to the challenge dungeons there are also multiplayer options in the form of arena fights. There are both PvE and PvP versions of these. I have not tried the PvP ones yet, so I can only comments on the PvE ones. These are for a full team (5 persons) and one can queue up for these just as easy as the challenge dungeons – one cannot queue for an arena fight and another challenge dungeon at the same time though.

The first one in the Refuge is a survival type of challenge. There are waves and waves of enemies coming at the players (about 10 waves in total, as I recall) before the boss enters – the goal is to defeat the boss and one needs to survive long enough to actually fight him in the first place and then also defeat him. Minimum level is 6 for this challenge, however a team of level 6-7 players only will most likely wipe. There is no max level, so any level can join if they want.

There is one such PvE arena fight for each city zone.

Outdoor zones

Between the different city zones (where the missions and challenge dungeons are located) there are outdoor areas. These seems to be crawling with lots of enemies of a certain type which re-spawn quite fast. So the gameplay becomes quite insense going through the area – there is essentially non-stop fighting, unless one tries to rush through the area.

I quite enjoy these areas, at least the two I have been in so far. It is intense and fun. XP does seem to suck though, but it is still fun to do it for a while.

Currencies, In-game shop and market

From my perspective the game has four different currencies:

• Keys
• Shilling
• Spiremarks
• Electrum

The first two are loot drops and/or rewards in the game. You pay some shillings for most things you do in the game and this is the currency you buy with when you buy stuff from other players on the market. Keys are used to open chests and some other boxes, but also for certain gear modification activities, so I consider it a vital currency to consider.

Spiremarks is another currency which is earned through events & challenges. One can also win some through the Transmuter. These can be used for some items in the in-game shop which would otherwise cost real money. Finally there is Electrum, which is the currency you buy for real-world money and which you can use for most of the in-game store items and a few other things, such as increase in storage & inventory space, revival after death etc.

There are a couple of vehicles, pets, cosmetic outfits, potions, crafting material and other things one can buy with Electrum. Some of these things are quite pricey, e.g. pets and vehicles costs in the $20-$37 range (US dollars). At least those are permanent ones – they are also more shiny than ones obtained from the Transmuter. Also, all purchases are per character it seems – you want a pet for all your character and you are an altoholic? You would need to spend a lot of money.

I bought one of the shiny pets (it was shiny…) and it did have some bonuses, although I cannot say that I noticed any of these. From that perspective it seemed a waste of money, although as mentioned before the explanation of these parameters are pretty much absent. It was a guess from my part what they may mean and I may have guessed wrong.

There is one good thing with pets though, but you do not need to buy the shiniest ones for that – they run around and collect loot that drops for you. I find this very convenient. Is it $20-$37 worth of convenience? Probably not, unless one intends to play the game for a fairly long time.

 Final thoughts

In the text above I have described some of the game systems a bit. There has been some quite significant changes since closed beta if one goes into some of the details, not all good. And it seems that it has not had extensive testing, as there are a number of bugs here and there. I think a number of closed beta players have been frustrated and angry with a number of these changes, perhaps because they have been introduced without anyone been given a chance to give feedback on them before the open beta.

However, what dedicated players in forums say and what people playing the game actually do may be two different things and I do not think these changes were just on a whim – the developers probably a lot of data to support that changes were needed.

Despite that I do not like some of these changes I do think that most of it is probably good for the game – at least if you look at it more as a multi-player dungeon crawler than an MMO. But there is polishing and tuning work left to be done – there are elements that can and will frustrate a fair amount of players I believe.

For now I am more on like-it side than the waste-of-time side. Time will tell if this will change. I do recommend to at least to try out the game, but do not spend any big money on it until you are reasonably certain that you may like it.

I like Joel. He has a mix of enthusiasm combined with a no-frills this-is-the-way-it-is approach in his writing, the latter in particular visible when he is replying to comments in the forums. For all three games he has been fairly quick to provide replies to comments and questions people have asked after reading the letter. This is a welcome approach and helps to clarify matters where needed (and possible).

I have read through all three letters and the forum comments made so far; I am going to make a few brief notes about this, going from the most negative to the most positive in terms of player response.

Anarchy Online

Monthly (ahem) Development Update – April 30th, 2013

For veteran Anarchy Online players, there was not really anything new here – they are working on the New Player Experience (new starting experience for new players) and the new engine. Both are expected to go into open beta later this year. With in particular the new engine, this has been something that has been ongoing for several years (6+ years I think) and the NPE has also been talked about for quite a while. When these are ready they will make the game available on Steam.

The update included a few new screenshots with the new engine. Since Anarchy Online has a completely different code-base from the other two Funcom games, there is limited benefit from the shared resource pool for the three games. It seems the game currently has 3 developers working on the game and they themselves much set the agenda for what should be done currently. Joel in this case is more about removing obstacles to let them do their work rather than making any major design decisions.

If they release the new engine and the New Player Experience this year it would be quite nice, but I do not expect much. I am glad though that they are keeping the game running (glares at NCSoft) and do not give up on the whole idea.

The Secret World

Game Director’s Letter – April 2013

This letter was primarily about the next issue for The Secret World, issue #7. This is going to have a Cate Archer/James Bond theme to it and the small bits and pieces Joel mentions about the conent does certainly have a certain secret agent flavour to it.

A new auxiliary weapon will be available – the flame thrower.  Spewing fire is of course always fun, so this will probably be a welcome addition to the arsenal of weapons. There are also a couple of tweaks to the PvP system – I have not done any PvP in the game since around launch, so I do not have any comments on these.

Another detail that was mentioned was the ability to stream custom playlists and radio stations through the client. One thing this means in practice is that people can listen to their own music and audio and not have that in conflict with the voice acting and spoken dialogue in the game.  Sounds like a nice thing to have, although I typically do not have other music playing myself at the same time.

There were also a few brief notes about issue #8, which will take place in Venice.

General reaction seems to have been cautiously positive – the general theme for issue #7 has been mentioned before, so this is probably not entirely new for many people.  Counting the number of comments, this was probably the game with the fewest comments of the three.

Age of Conan

Game Director Letter – April 2013

Age of Conan players have not seen a huge of amount of love in terms of content updates and information in recent times. This seems to be improving. The letter includes a few updates which seems to be welcome.

Server Mergers and Single Server Tech – Funcom aims to get reasonably close to the single server tech that The Secret World uses (people can play with each other on any server when in teams) with Age of Conan as well. This is going to happen in multiple phases, the first phase starting now in May. This means that the EU and US populations will merge and the servers physically located in the same place – which is not the case now.

All of it is not going to be a single happy server family though – there will be a separation between PvE and normal PvP servers still, as well as the Blood & Guts PvP servers. The latter may potentially removed entirely though, since the population on these are quite low.  Most people and I guess in particular people playing on US server may welcome this change – population is significantly higher on the EU servers it seems.

Late last year the first part of the Dragon’ Spine content update was released – more of this will be coming in a near future. As I understand it this is primarily high level/end game content. A couple of dungeons, a raid an some PvP mini-games seems to be on the plate here; some of this should appear on Testlive server in May.

Unchained dungeons and PvP mini-games. Funcom have had a few dungeons which are referred to as “Unchained” – these are existing/old dungeons that has been available in the pre-level 80 game that have received a tougher level 80 version of them. I.e. target level is 80 and there are new mechanics involved to make them more challenging. This sounds a bit like normal vs nightmare mode dungeons in The Secret World. I like the idea and concept with this, one can experience these dungeons even if you have outleveled the original versions.  About 6 dungeons were explicitly mentioned, but I have seen other comments that there may be more than that coming down the line.

The Unchained PvP mini-games are about a PvP experience where gear is not the issue, only player skill. All characters will have  fixed set of gear (for their class, I assume) and are set to max level, so everyone from newbie to long time veteran start on equal footing. For people that enjoy PvP this sounds like it could be a good thing. I might try it out myself also, even though I am quite sure I will suck at it.

Tradeskill system – a signficant revamp of the tradeskill/crafting system has been in the pipeline for a while now and most players seem to look forward to this. There is still a fair amount of work to be done though to get this in place, so this will probably take a number of months before it is in place.

5th anniversary – Age of Conan will be 5 in May and there are some preparations going on for that. There were indications that there may be some kind of live events here. Anarchy Online will be 12 in June and soon after that it is time for The Secret World for its first anniversary, so there would be a few celebrations coming soon.

Miscellaneous Quality of Life fixes – a number of bug fixes and Quality of Life additions will be coming soon also for the game – I guess the “press-key-to-loot” option from The Secret World may find its way into the game here, for example.

As with most MMO game forums, Age of Conan has its fair share of grumpy players. Still, the reactions to the Game Director letter seem to have been quite positive overall. People feel that there is some love from Funcom to this game also.

Age of Conan is probably the game I spend the most time in currently; I think it is a great game and it suites my altoholic tendencies quite well – I have created characters for most of the 12 classes (no Priest of Mitra yet though). The Secret World comes in 2nd place- I enjoy it quite a lot still, but there are fewer game sessions overall nowadays. The plans for the games seem ambitious yet realistic; if Joel’s team manage to pull this off I am a happy player.

These “dungeons” scale to your level and according to the map they are available for level 40-80. Zelmira, my Herald of Xotli, had only done a couple of missions in Gatewai to Khitai before. Both of them are actually mostly outdoor areas visually, albeit small. Each one has a couple of missions and at least for The Breach, one needs to pick up missions before being able to enter the area.

The Forgotten City

For the Breach one needs to pick up missions from Menudsjin in hos camp; if you have done level 30+ missions in Gateway to Khitai you are very likely to have run into him before. And if you read mission texts, you would most likely remember him as well. There is another fellow in Menudsjin’s camp that gives a mission to The Breach as well, but that was not available to me until I had completed the initial run.

The Breach

The Breach has 3 bosses – the first part of the area is a camp where this boss is located. One has to defeat him to get a mission from a nearby NPC to open up access to the next part of the map. The boss fight was straightforward, nothing special. The second boss is a Kang Zai creature which should be roped in on behalf of the NPC from the previous area – when completed he will also open up access to the third and last area.

First area of The Breach

There are a number of smaller Kang Zai’s in the area fairly near the boss, I picked them all off before engaging the boss to be sure. In the boss fight there are additional adds spawned as well, so that is one thing to be prepared for. After defeating boss 2 in it time to get into the 3rd area, which is the largest part of the map. Prior to facing the 3rd and last boss, this is also the place to do the collection mission picked up at Menudsjin’s camp from Menudsjin.

Second boss in The Breach, the Unruly Kang Zai

The last boss is in an arena and a small cutscene is triggered when you enter. The first stage is to defeat some contenders in the arena in a few waves, starting with 1 enemy, then 2 and then 3. During the fights with these the boss is untouchable, but there are spells thrown causing spiky rock circles, which cause knockback and some damage – try to avoid these may be good.

Directly after the contender fights there is another small cutscene and the boss now takes action into his own hands and attacks. This fellow throws some spells that causes fire and rocks to drop; these seems to be targeted at a certain area, so move out of the area when they happen seems to be a good approach here.  After the boss is defeated the remaining mission can be completed; the exit is just next to the boss fight location, so there is no need to run back to get out.

Final boss fight in The Breach

I liked this “dungeon” – not much trash mobs between the bosses and it did not take that much time to complete it. This is similar to the approach of The Secret World “dungeons” – no doubt that idea started off here in Age of Conan.  There was at least a little bit more than spank-the-boss in terms of boss fight gameplay. I think the “dungeon” is on a 20 hour timer, so it can be repeated every so often.

The Forgotten City

The other “dungeon” in the area is The Forgotten City. It is pretty obvious where that one is. Akana, a Stygian lady just outside Menudsjin’s camp provides a mission to the “dungeon”, to explore what she thinks may be an area with an ancient race, the Lemurians. Just outside the entrance there is also another mission NPC, Jiuling – a graverobber who sees a business opportunity.

This dungeon also has 3 bosses, although there is a few more mobs in between the bosses compared to The Breach – still not that much though. The first part of the area provides opportunity to collect stuff the graverobber NPC was asking for and leads up to the first boss, who is standing outside the entrance to the city itself.

First boss in The Forgotten City

This boss was straightforward, although he had a big attack which I failed to avoid and that took out a large chunk of my health. After that it is time to enter the city itself, or rather the ruins of the city. This leads to a quite scenic spot, where one can find the second boss, far out on a ledge. This boss sends out some smaller tornados and occasionally a bit thunderstorm/tornado attack, which covers the whole ledge he stands on. There is plenty of warning before he triggers that attack and one can run away to a safe spot from the attack (it will just go straight ahead).

Second boss is down, nice view from the ledge

The third and final boss is up in the damaged building area to the upper left in the picture above. There are a number of palace guards and similar enemies to go through before getting there. When finally arriving to the room with the 3rd boss one will find him walking around in the room. There seems to be some kind of healing aura in the area. The boss itself is pretty straightforward as well here, although he runs one of the altars that is scattered around the room during multiple occasions in the fight. He heals up at these altars. The altars are possible to interact with though and doing so interrupts the healing.

Final boss room in The Forgotten City

Same as with The Breach, one can get out of the area directly from the final boss room, no need to run back all the way. This was also pretty quick and fun to go through. It will probably not be something I would do very often again, but at least it is more fun than the villas in Tarantia Noble District, which are more about mowing through a number of trash mobs really.

Thumbs up for these two “dungeons”. As I understand it there is supposed to be a group oriented version of these “dungeons” as well, with more challenging mechanics. Sounds like a good opportunity for some quick fun if in a team.

Nowadays, the subscription-only games are the minority and it is perhaps rather they who need to find some added description to their names – although I hope not. I would rather see that there is a perceived value in the product itself rather than trying to entice people with an added twist to the name of the product.

If one looks at the different subscription-to-hybrid conversions, one can see that they have struggled a bit to find a balance with what people pay for, either through the shop and/or a subscription fee.  Some games which use to be somewhat restrictive have loosened their restrictions in order to get more players (and perhaps even paying players).

But perhaps is it a bit too much – reading some forums and commentary on a few sites there is a fair amount of people talking about how much of the game you can play without paying – but not always so much what is worth paying for. When I read questions like “what do I get for the subscription/premium fee” I see fairly often comments along the line of “you do not need to pay to do X, or you need to pay to do Y”. If the arguments is along the lines of “need” and “not need” then the company have really failed to display value to the customers in a good way.

If customers in general rather enjoy the game because they do not have to pay anything, or barely anything, then the game company have failed to show the value of the product. A successful model is where people get hooked and  want to give the company money because they like what they see and they want to get additional value. But if companies focus on the “free” part rather than the value they provide when you actually pay, they will have difficulties in a market where almost everything is “free” to some extent.

One feature which I think some games are not handling well is the community aspect – the “free” player typically have a number of restrictions when it comes to chat, forming guilds etc. I can understand that from a perspective to avoid too much gold seller spam and similar, but it also takes away a key element that can make people attached to an MMO. I would prefer to see a bit more freedom in the community aspects of a game and perhaps less when it comes to content.

(Note: This post contains some spoilers to the level 50 and 60 Destiny missions. If you are still blissfully ignorant about these and do not want to know – just skip reading and just look at the pictures, or something…)

So it was not actually until the mid-50s that I realized that there actually was  another of those Destiny quests that Zelmira could do. Heading back to Khemi all the way from Eiglophian Mountains to pick it up (not a short trip) it of course turned out that the next phase was right there in the Eiglophian Mountains also. For the Destiny 50 mission it was time to say hello again to everyone’s favourite Stygian in Tortage – the lovely lady Mithrelle.

Mithrelle had taken residence in an icy cave; in addition to some Acheronian slaves nearby she had picked up some of the local fauna – Ice worms. The encounter itself with Mithrelle started off with a couple of waves of ice worm minions, which she summoned. Pretty easy to deal with – at this point it is not possible to attack Mithrelle herself.

After these waves (might have been 6 waves of 3 minion worms) a big Ice worm appeared, a boss. At the same time Mithrelle also became possible to attack. Initially I started to fight the big worm, but then thought maybe she will just summon new worms if I defeat this one? So I decided instead strike a conversation (without the conversation part) with Mithrelle directly.

Most of the time it turned out that Mithrelle was pretty much invulnerable – she was shielded, although there were moments when she seemed to loos control a bit. These were also the times where Zelmira also lost control and could not attack, due to an attack from Mithrelle. After a little while I realized that it was predictable when this was going to happen. It then became fairly easy to avoid and attack Mithrelle directly after that.

Mithrelle lost control of the Ice Worm somewhat early in this process of discovery and it attacked her instead. Once this mechanic was figured out it did not take long to defeat her. The Phoenic Medallion part of the north could be picked up and mission was accomplished.

After rounding up this mission back in Khemi again it turned out that the next Destiny quest was at level 60 – I had half expected the next one to be 20 levels after this one at 70, so it was a nice surprise for me. Since I was already in my mid-50s it did not take that many days until I was eligible for the next one.

In the level 60 Destiny mission the next area to go to was Thunder River, in Aquilonia – a level 60-70 zone. The zone itself probably has been mentioned somewhere, but it was completely new to me. As with many other places in the game, Thunder River looked like a pretty beautiful area, although it is supposedly a prison island of some kind, with a lot of wicked people of course…

This mission was about to defeat a fellow named Har-Shebes, which is a Really Bad Guy. If you are an Acheronian demon of sorts, that is the kind of title you tend to earn. Mr Har-Shebes dwelled in a cave in Thunder River area, but obviously valued his privacy a bit – he was not actually found in the caves one entered, only various ghouls, dead dogs and some bloody critters were hanging around something that looked like pools of blood. Except in one room, where a boss (lets call him K) was hanging.

The fight to defeat K has some similarities with the Blood Defiler fight in the level 30 destiny mission – at certain points he ran away to some recovery/protection areas at which point he was not possible to hurt. He did not heal himself though, but there was a DoT running during this time also, eating up some health. Maybe it is possible to stop this prematurely, but I did not figure that out. Instead I used some potions during his recovery periods, which was enough to keep me alive.

After defeating K he dropped a tunnel key. So that means there was a tunnel somewhere to be found. Not very far from K:s location was one of these blood pools. This one was a bit different from the other blood pools – there were more critters around it and there were marking of bloody hands on the walls near it. Looking into the pool a cave area was noticeable. So into the pool I went and then could dive and swim through some caves. Up through another pool was a metal gate, where the  key fit of course.

Next after that was another pool with caves to dive and swim to – this one led to the area where Har-Shebes was located. As any decent Evil Being should have, Har-Shebes was surrounded by a couple of minions (I think it was 8 of them).

The minions surrounded Har-Shebes, with some kind of force field it seemed. It was very easy to kill a minion, but he/she/it immediately respawned and Zelmira was switching and hurting each time. Attacking Har-Shebes did not seem to help either. There was of course also attacks/DoT running during this. In this room there were though two “corridors” whuich where safe from the attack/DoT effects, so it was possible to recover and think what to try next.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts I did notice that there was a moment were a minion got a bit larger and there was a ball of fire circling around them, for a few seconds. An attempt to attack them during this phase turned out to be quite successful – they vanished and did not respawn. Instead the ball of fire appeared above another minion. Same procedure with that one. After 4 minions have been defeated in this way things changed and the force field kind of vanished. Thus it semeed to be a good time to start beating up Har-Shebes directly.

This worked quite well, but after a while it changed again with the force field coming back online. The same procedure was applied though to the remaining minions at this point. With all the minions gone, it was not too difficult to defeat poor old Har-Shebes.

At this point I have all the pieces of the medallion and all my memory should be recovered now. I still have the Mark of Acheron, but have received a mission to get rid of that as well. It will be interesting to see how the story evolves after this and when any further destiny missions will be available to play.

The tone is often a bit brutal, there is a lot of revenge, hunter & warrior honour etc. That makes it even more fun then to see bits of humour slipped in; e.g. an NPC asks to help for vengeful activities, only to say “oops, you actually did that…? We are friends now…”. There are other missions who in various ways make fun of themselves, to send out players on these “kill ten rats” missions.

Most sessions there are at least a few pieces of mission dialogue that can make you smile – or perhaps groan a bit…

In general it seems that the bits and pieces in missions that gets voice acting post-Tortage seems to be some of the more serious dialogue, the ones with an element that is key to the overall story for the region you are in at the moment. There are some characters though that do deliver a bit of humour through voice acting, such as Fenella in Eiglophian Mountains. Her dry way of describing all the ways that may get you killed in the area becomes a bit fun to hear.

While I certainly do not remember all NPC names that I meet and not all of them are as memorable characters as one may find in The Secret World, there are still a number of them that sticks – either because of the general good story, or simply because of the humour.

Time for some R&R at the local lodge

In the Eiglophian Mountains the local Cimmerians seem to hunt elk and bear for meat and fur, with some snow leopards and bobcats thrown in as well. Business is reasonably ok and there there is a fairly constant demand to assist with the hunting. All is not well though, life is disrupted by local tribes of cannibals. The cannibals are rather uncivilized, not much better than at stone age level – normally they would not be a match for the Cimmerians to deal with.

However, the various tribes seems to have become significantly more organized and the sheer number of these cannibal tribesmen are causing significant problems and are causing much trouble among the Cimmerians. There are some indications that there may be some Evil Sorcery behind all of this. (Is there a time where Evil Sorcery is not behind major trouble in this world?)

I do very much enjoy the setting and the scenery here – perhaps is it this combined with real life longing for spring and heading out more into the local nature that has caused an increased time for me with this game. We do not have the mountains here in real life, but one does not need to go away far to enjoy forests, lakes etc away from the bustling city life.

Full moon, mountains, forest, cannibals – what more could one want from a night out?

In Eiglophian Mountains Zelmira kind of reached a milestone, as she passed level 50. My first character ever to reach that level in the game. This triggered a feature which has been in the game for a few years and which I was reminded of when reading the forums – all acounts that have or get a character to 50+ can create a new character, starting directly at level 50. This is a one-time offer only, so only one such character can be created.

While I decided to use this opportunity, it was not actually not something that I was looking forward using. I enjoy leveling characters, so that we can get to know each other and figure out how he/she can evolve in their abilities. Starting with a level 50 character right away is perhaps a bit like meeting a person you have not met for several years, trying to figure you each of you are how and how you can relate to each other. I decided to go with a Guardian, as I saw this as a more team-oriented role to play (tank) and possibly something that would be time consuming to level all the way.

I created a level 50 Guardian thus, but I will not be playing him now – content-wise he would be doing the same things as Zelmira pretty much, so her will wait for a time when I have fewer character around 50 probably, or if I want to put more focus into tanking – which may be after I get some more team play in this game under my belt.

A bit of demo dancing while waiting for a Lycan boss to spawn…

Senmei, my Demonologist, have also received a bit more of time and love recently. After doing most of the missions in the Tarantia Noble District, she has also headed off to Cimmeria and the Field of the Dead. In her mid-40s level-wise, starting to play in this area was quite easy – it also helped a bit to have done the missions before. It is pretty fun, although I think I will play some lower level characters a bit more now also instead – there is not a huge selection of various zones at this level. It could get a bit repetitive.

As a premium player there is also the off-line leveling option and I have 30+ levels in the buffer to use. However, this is not something I want to make any big jumps with – I see this as an option to speed up leveling slightly from time to time, if I do content that I have done a couple of times before. So this will probably get used a bit more at some point, but not yet.

The situation in the picture above is one of the reasons I like to play the game more now; every now and then there is a situation where there are multiple players with the same objective, typically a boss encounter. Often that leads to some kind of team – sometimes that only lasts for the boss fight, sometimes it lasts longer. Bosses can take a bit of time to re-spawn sometimes, which increases the incentive to team up with each other – even if the boss fight would be possible to solo, it is more courteous to share the effort rather than compete for it. It is a bit “old school” compared to public events/quests in some other games, but still gives a similar effect – and also still manage to retain the feel of a virtual world rather than a game.

Jotunheimer

I have 6 different characters in Age of Conan; at this point I have pretty much decided to put more focus on three of them. Jotunheimer is a Cimmerian barbarian who has been quite happy with swinging both axes and swords. Starting with big, two-handed weapons he has switched to do more dual-wielding sword action. At the time of the previous Age of Conan post he was just about to pick up his destiny question for level 30. In the old ages when I played the game this mission was fairly easy. I noticed last year and learned now also that the difficulty had increased a bit – the Blood Defiler Guardian runs back and heals himself a couple of times to full health.

Still, compared to the other characters that I have ran through this mission, my barbarian handled it better than most of the others. Part of that is of course lessons learned from previous fights with the guardian. I started to pick up some more missions in Khopshef Province, but decided it was time to see some new views – and headed off to the Wild Lands of Zelata. I quite enjoyed my time there. Compared to Khopshef Province I thought the story going through the missions were a bit more solid and coherent, most of it fit together quite well I think.

Each of my three characters that I have been playing have been going through different areas in the 30-40 level range; Jotunheimer (barbarian)  in Wild Lands, Senmei (demonologist) in Gateway to Khitai and Zelmira (Herald of Xotli) in Khopshef Province. I have enjoyed all these areas – Wild Lands is probably my favourite from a story perspective, followed by Gateway to Khitai. Despite the quest hub design to give out missions I think the game does a pretty good job in providing story material with their missions. It is not at the same level as in The Secret World, but certainly above average in the MMO themepark space. It is a bit of a shame with the quest hub design that it sort of encourages people to skip through the mission texts.

As this is written, Jotunheimer has just reached level 40 and has now been eligible to pick up a horse. He is a poor Cimmerian though and the prices at the Stable Masters are out of his league still. However, I noticed that both riding training and horses can be picked up for a few veteran reward tokens. It seems I have well over 200 of these tokens and with Basic riding training priced at 1 token and a basic horse at 3 tokens, it felt like a quite easy choice.  So now Jotunheimer has a Mahogany Bay horse for travelling.

Zelmira

Zelmira, my Herald of Xotli, has been mowing her way through the Field of the Dead, which is a level 40-50 zone. At level 47 she has done most of the missions there with a handful remaining. Lots of Vanir to beat up, but also werewolves as well as some more natural wild life has been on the menu.

At one point here it felt that there may be a bit of a gap levelwise, the remaining missions were coloured red. It was at this point that I discovered that there also were another 40+ zone, the Tarantia Noble District. I had seen that there had been mentions of repeatable “dungeons” there (the villas), but I did not actually realize it seemed to be a proper leveling zone as well. Aside from the villas it seems the missions there were for the low 40s range primarily. Zelmira has done 2-3 villa visits, but will then be heading back to Field of the Dead. I really like playing Herald of Xotli, it is a fun mix of melee and magic. Also, since she swings a fairly big weapon it is also easier to hit multiple enemies at once, plus switching to demon form and charging the enemies it certainly feels like going into overdrive. Really fun!

Senmei

My demonologist is a bit more traditional mage type, mostly nuking things with electricity and fire – lots of fire. She has spent all of her time since leaving Tortage in the Gateway to Khitai area. After defeating the Sand Demon there it felt like it was time to move on and the other parts of the world. At the time she had arrived in Khemi, I had also figured out that Tarantia Noble District was a proper zone to play in.

She also needed a horse to move around, so she got herself a white stallion and jumped in to help the poor soldiers with the Nemedians and other problems in the area.  Some of the missions quickly moved into places with enemies a few levels higher, but that worked still fine, most of the time. The times it did not work so well it was still possible to run off near some of the level 80 guards, which swiftly killed the bad guys then. That leads to the thought, if they can defeat the enemies so easily – why don’t they sort out the problems themselves? Probably not politically correct, so it is preferable to bring in outsiders to do the dirty work.

I have quite enjoyed playing all three characters. As I mentioned before, one reason the game is more fun now than last year it that there are more people around. There is almost always some other players nearby. In fact, most of the game sessions I have had in the game since the return a few weeks ago have also involved teaming with others. In many cases this was triggered by a boss to be defeated; either to get some help or simply to avoid competing for the same boss, forcing someone of us to wait for a respawn. In some cases these teams also led to continued teaming doing some other missions as well.

Last time I played the game was late spring/early summer 2012 – right before The Secret World launched.  I enjoyed it back then, but ended up focusing on the TSW instead – plus that Age of Conan at that time felt quite empty to me, as a far-below-level-80 player. It seemed that most activity happened at the max level.

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently returned to the game to see that it was definitely more populated now – this probably has to do with that the game now is available through Steam. Last year when I played the game I barely saw anyone while adventuring and teamed up maybe once in two months. In the past 2-3 days I have teamed up a number of times and I see people all over the place.

While I am not a huge fan of fantasy settings, I think Age of Conan has a number of things going for it:

• Great setting and beautiful environments, with great music in the game
• Fun melee combat, where positioning matters. In most games I find melee combat to be so-and-so, but two MMOs where I really enjoy it are Age of Conan and The Secret World.
• No fellows that are pointy-eared, slender and arrogant that can be thousands of years old
• Fairly sensible outfits, nothing of those incredibly over-sized armor pieces that in particular some Asian MMOs seem to be found of
• Mission NPCs that at least has a bit more motivation for missions than get-me-boar-meat-to-feed-a-village-for-a-week-I-am-a-lazy-villager. NPCs may be bleeding, they have been poisoned, they are simply scared – or they want to cheat you. Or you will try to cheat them, sometimes. Or they are simply insane and tell you anything.
• No fellows that are short, bearded and talk with a Scottish accent
• Some enjoyable class options, e.g. a melee mage that swings big two-handed swords or axes, spews fire and can turn into a deamon – what is not to love about that?
• Just plain fun

I reactivated some of my old characters to more or less continue where I left off. My lineup consists of a number of characters in the 20s and 30s ranges when I started now again. Leveling is fairly quick it seems and my highest character has gone from 39 to 43 without too much effort. At level 40 there are a few options opening up – crafting becomes available and one can also start to use regular mounts.

Not everything is explained clearly in the tutorials and help text in the game. Searching for information on certain aspects of the game through Google does not always turn up useful results, since the game has been revamped in a few areas over the years. So some old information may no longer be correct.  This probably happens with other MMOs also after a couple of years also.

I have been somewhat disillusioned when it comes to fantasy MMOs, perhaps there has been a bit too much of the same on many of them. For me, Age of Conan feels different enough, with higher immersion factor than many other fantasy MMOs.  Try it out!

(Yes, it worked better after a restart…)