My Age of Conan Preview

[peabody]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sully

Peabody! You still playing LOTRO? I noticed your Peabody toon hasn't been on in months.

Hey Sully,

I had a 6 month subscription to LOTRO that expired in either November or December and I decided not to renew. At the time I had done pretty much everything I could do with my character short of raiding. And I just didn't have the time for raiding. I didn't feel like making an alt and didn't think I was going to log on that much to justify spending the money. I burned alot of time with that game for the while that I had it though.

I said to myself that I wouldn't by another MMO because of the time you need to invest, but....

Played for a couple hours last night and spent more time fiddling with the graphic settings than I did playing. I knew my system didn't meet the recommended specs, but I didn't think it was that bad. I ran everything on max settings in LOTRO without any problem. Real frame rate problems for me. I had to pretty much turn everything to low and disable stuff like grass and shadows to get a decent frame rate. I broke down and bought a new 8800gt video card and that seems to have helped somewhat. I have windows XP professional, so I don't know if the jump to Vista wouldn't help out as well.

[MachoMyers]

AoC is somewhat of a hog. Reminds me of when I converted my Windows 98 computer to an XP and everything ran in slow motion. I tweaked some settings and it plays nice on Medium right now. I am only at Lvl 10 right now. The early quests put you more on your own than with a group and right now it feels more like an online RPG than a Massive Multiplayer online RPG. I played some of the Witcher and this game feels somewhat like that but with less on the story and more on environments.

I am sure once the game opens up more and I reach Lvl 20 I will be given more non linear movement. An excellent game so far though.

[HMMurdock311]

Anyone know when/if they will have a trial? Or even a buddy trial system like other MMO's do?

I've played MMO's since getting into UO in '97, and after quitting WoW and playing some EQ2 with buddies I'm always on the lookout for new ones to try... At least 'til W:AR. =)

[MachoMyers]

Quote: Originally Posted by HMMurdock311

Anyone know when/if they will have a trial? Or even a buddy trial system like other MMO's do? I've played MMO's since getting into UO in '97, and after quitting WoW and playing some EQ2 with buddies I'm always on the lookout for new ones to try... At least 'til W:AR. =)

Everyone who buys the game has trial codes they can give to anyone for them to try it out for 7 days. The problem is you cannot download the client online yet so if you want to try it out you need to borrow the discs and install on your cpu.

[Bacardi151]

Quote: Originally Posted by Xavier12

Everyone who buys the game has trial codes they can give to anyone for them to try it out for 7 days. The problem is you cannot download the client online yet so if you want to try it out you need to borrow the discs and install on your cpu.

Once funcom releases the buddy keys (5 for collector's edition, 1 for regular), you will be able to download the client or get it from a friend(use their dvd's ). The consensus is that they havent released their keys in order to get the game stable and running for the paying customers.

After burning out bad in wow ( raiding mt hyjal/black temple) i needed a change of pace. Picked up AOC after reading about it and some goading from Terry. The game still has rough edges, but once I got to level 10 or so, the game began drawing me in. If you come in expecting WOW you will be sorely disapointed. If you ever played Anarchy Online they you will feel right at home ( as far as mechanics and instancing).

Given enough time i expect it to be a great game.

[Millennium]

So, damnit Eddie, what's your in-game name?!?!?!?!

[Bacardi151]

Quote: Originally Posted by Millennium

So, damnit Eddie, what's your in-game name?!?!?!?!

Bacardi, of course.

I'm in terry's guild.

[Skerik]

Quote: Originally Posted by peabody

Played for a couple hours last night and spent more time fiddling with the graphic settings than I did playing. I knew my system didn't meet the recommended specs, but I didn't think it was that bad. I ran everything on max settings in LOTRO without any problem. Real frame rate problems for me. I had to pretty much turn everything to low and disable stuff like grass and shadows to get a decent frame rate. I broke down and bought a new 8800gt video card and that seems to have helped somewhat. I have windows XP professional, so I don't know if the jump to Vista wouldn't help out as well.

Hey Peabody. Let me know if you stumble upon any settings changes that improve AoC performance, because I'm running with two 8800 Ultras in SLI mode (using XP) and the game still doesn't play all that well for me on Medium settings. I also run LOTRO fine with everything enabled, but for all my tweaking I just can't get AoC cranking the same way. But my computer is definitely capable of handling it - I just need to figure out that magic combination of settings that makes things playable. Let me know if you find it!

Also, for anyone who hasn't seen me around online, I'm in Greece right now on vacation. I'll be back Sunday and hope to be playing AoC again soon thereafter.