Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (not so) Open Beta [Update 1]
So I’ve had a bit less than 72 hours with the beta and already I can clearly see that it is still a beta, and (hopefully) no where near what FunCom intends to release come the end of May. I’ll break this into small sections so you can find what you care about most easily…
Graphics: The almighty graphics section…oh yes…well, I’m here to tell you that the graphics are good, some may even say they’re great compared to World of Warcraft (which I played for over a year). But in this beta (and I know it’s still just a beta), I was kind of disappointed. Sure, the foilage looks nice, and the bloom effects and the HDR, and the flashy combat animations…but I’m still not as pleased as I had hoped to be with this beta. It’s not a huge deal at this point though, because betas are more about stress an mechanics tests. There are some framerate issues with the beta at this point, as some (including myself) are experiencing 2-3 second “lag” spikes in the frames every 30 seconds or so, but this has been announced by FunCom and is currently being looked into. I’m sure the end product is still going to look amazing. If nothing, it’s heading in the right direction.
Sound: The audio in this game is nice. Nearly all NPC’s in the game read you their quest and chat text, which eliminates you wanting to skip everything that may be story based. The voice acting isn’t bad, but again, these are test missions and quests that are included in the beta so I can’t be too picky about it. Overall, the sound production in the beta isn’t bad and the ambient crickets and bug sounds are always there to keep you company.
Gameplay: This is where everyone is anticipating Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures to shine, and I have to say that the gameplay is definitely different, but not drastically different from those MMO’s I’ve played before. Instead of having an auto attack, everything has the be commanded at the moment you want it. Melee wise, you can swing left, right, or do a centered swing on a mob or opponent. Spells are cast the same as they are in every other MMO known to man: click the button, wait and hope you don’t get hit, and watch your mana dwindle. I’ve only played as a mage-necromancer so far though, mainly because the frame skips were hindering my play, so I am currently stepping away from the beta until a patch for the problem is released. Your health and mana regenerates very very fast, and I have yet to run out of mana during a fight. As far as PVP goes, I haven’t messed with it and probably won’t until the patch for the frame skips is fixed. Overall, the gameplay in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures isn’t exactly anything brand new yet. It’s good and seems to work well when the frames aren’t freaking out, but there still seems to be a lack of innovation I had expected from the game. Again, this is still the beta, so I will not be biased toward buying the final release by it, but if I were the FunCom dev team, I would definitely be looking for a way to improve the beta a bit more, or else they may lose some of the more casual and impatient gamers.
Synopsis: In a nutshell, the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures open beta is decent. It has bugs, as to be expected, but what angers me the most is the frame skip bugs which eliminates my opportunity to fully experience the beta. As soon as this key problem is fixed, I’ll churn out another update, and hopefully be able to explain the classes a bit more and include some video. I may post a few screen shots later as well, just to showcase the beta graphics.
—>Chase
3 years ago