Above: What we played.

The release of Age of Conan was hugely successful. Many turned out to buy what was to be a revolutionary MMORPG. The combat system alone was to bring the genre out of the rut it had gotten into, and make it a far more active experience. It was also to be the best PvP focused MMORPG since Dark Age of Camelot, with an active risk/reward system giving out the best gear in the entire game.

The sun looked bright around release, shining on the release of AoC and blessing it with a record breaking amount of pre-orders. It was hyped to not only match WoW, but beat it into the ground, I even gave into it against my better judgement and bought it at launch. Alas, we all should have known better.

The first sign that all was not well on the good ship Conan was probably the somewhat significant cut of DirectX10 features from the game. Graphically AoC was set to be a beast, only bested visually by games such as Crysis.

Above: What we expected.

The cut of DirectX10 features showed that this was not the case, and set in some fears as to whether FunCom could handle even DirectX9 graphics smoothly. At release these fears were not allayed in the slightest, with many players left with abominable performance on otherwise brilliant cards; memory leaks were discovered left right and center, and patch after patch seemed to only generate more issues among those who were originally able to play. Content post level 50 was reportedly unfinished, which was a crucial issue, considering the leveling speed was comparatively fast as opposed to other MMORPGs. The omens didn’t look good for the future.

Above: What we actually got.

FunCom continued to make promises, after the first month was over very few of those original players remained, and the community at large took a wait-and-see approach. Could FunCom bail out their boat in time? Or would it just sink like many began to predict.

It’s December now, so what have they done? They’ve had 6 months to patch the leaks, and attempted to make us all believe that November is the new July. For one, their PvP system seems to finally be implemented in full. A few tweaks are probably necessary as is with any major patch to any game, but at least the main draw of the game is now actually existent. A whole new level 80 area, Ymir’s Pass, has been brought back from the box of cut-content and fleshed out into a real zone for end game players looking for a fresh new alternative.

Above: Ymir

FunCom mysteriously seem to have managed all of the class boards to contain the same amount of whining, which is the closest thing to actual MMORPG balance, so they are actually making an attempt to please the fans.

An expansion is already announced to be in the works, and DirectX10 is reported to be in the finalising stages before it is pushed out onto the public beta servers. So perhaps by February, it will be July.