After traipsing about Tortage, the ZAM.com staffers make their way to the main portion of AoC. But what was awaiting them in the greater game? What did they find? Keep reading to discover the answer!

Welcome to Part II of ZAM.com's revisit to Age of Conan's Hyborian Kingdoms. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Part I of our revisit, where we addressed the early stages of the game and gave an in-depth introduction for players who have only heard of Age of Conan by rumours alone. This week we checked out what looms beyond the compelling Tortage story arc and delved into the biggest problem holding back this stunning game.

In last week's revisits, one of the biggest observations we noticed during our play-through was  that these Hyborian Kingdoms are quite sparsely populated, and this serious lack of adventuring fellows made us feel quite lonely - especially once we moved beyond Tortage's awesome solo "destiny" quests. While low populations are a problem for any multiplayer game, MMOs are definitely hit the worst because there are a lot of stigmas involved with joining an established, persistent player base in decline (with little to no fresh blood joining up!).

One of the biggest problems that a lot of potential players face when choosing to play Age of Conan is that keeping up with the Joneses can get pretty ridiculous if the endgame population has a year of solid playtime ahead of you. When a game experiences a sharp decline in population or just a decline in population in general, the predictable result is that, after the dust has settled and the much lower subscription numbers are stabilized, you're essentially left with the distilled and dedicated player base; a group that can be a pretty daunting obstacle for players who want to quickly get into endgame PvP and PvE. Of course, this stigma is simply not true for most modern MMORPGs, as many have learned to avoid the "endgame pile-up" by either making it easier to become endgame viable as more content is released-as in the case of World of Warcraft, or, with Age of Conan, or by simply making skill the most important part of the game.

You heard us right.

While equipment does seem to play a part in making a character stronger, a skilled player can, quite simply, do better with bad gear than a bad player can with good gear. It was quite refreshing to realize this, but it also took some of the anticipation away from getting new gear. Unfortunately, we did find that we weren't quite as excited as we usually are about getting new items, but it's good to see Funcom establishing a fine line between skill and equipment, whereas back in the day equipment seemed to have no meaning what-so-ever.

The other problematic stigma that most declining MMOs face-and this one is actually true!-is the self-fulfilling prophecy. It's no small secret that Age of Conan lost a significant chunk of its subscribers under its old management, and because of that, the game picked up the debilitating reputation of being a "dying" MMO. Unfortunately, what happens when your MMO acquires this particularly nasty stigma is that players tend to avoid playing because they don't want to get committed to a "dying" game. While there is a great number of naysayers on either side of the border, we'll say this right now: Age of Conan is not dying, but it is definitely suffering from the rumours saying that it is - and this could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Either way, moving beyond these stigmas, let's get back to our adventures as we left the bright, bustling city of Tortage. Having just destroyed Strom's reign over the city, our enigmatic rescuer revealed that we had been saved for a reason, and that we would need to venture to our homeland to learn more about ourselves. While some more cynical players may note that the "Tortage Experience" has remained mostly untouched since launch, it's quite important to note that AoC, at launch, had some pretty severe memory leak issues and many users suffered frequent disconnections (not to mention lacking DX10 support). This time around, we never crashed once while going through Tortage, and the game ran smoothly on medium-high graphics under DX10.

As we ventured beyond, one of the first things that we noticed was that, unfortunately, AoC seemed to immediately shift from Age of Conan "the experience" to Age of Conan… the game. While we  really wish we could say that the sparkling immersion of Tortage just kept going, voice acting is still completely absent from NPCs beyond the starter zone and quests quickly converted to "fetch me this" and "kill x of this." On the other hand, it is important to note that Age of Conan is not some kind of terrible monster for having quests of this sort; we'll be the first to admit that we never read quest text from World of Warcraft, and Aion is definitely guilty of these same problems. In reality, these fetching and killing quests, despite being what they are, still provide enough levelling direction to move AoC away from its mob-grinding history.

In a way, our slight disappointment at level 20+ AoC content is not a sign that the game is still too shallow; it's really the fact that Tortage was such a rich experience, and the stuff that comes thereafter is… not. A huge problem here really stems from Age of Conan's low server populations; Funcom deliberately made their solo content engaging because it excludes questing with friends, and therefore they needed to make it interesting for the single player. Regular multiplayer questing, on the other hand, does not need to be as compelling and story-driven as solo content because social interaction can more than make up for anything lacking. Perhaps Funcom they designed "regular" quests to be not too complicated because they suspected that players would begin to form questing groups or PvP ganking groups. Unfortunately, with such a low influx of new players to the game, the problem that arises here is that the climb from level 1 to 80 is a very lonely one.

The result of all of this is that we end up with the transition from story-rich solo content to… ultra lonely questing content. Unfortunately, if AoC adds more compelling solo content for players to get to level 80… they'll simply be encouraging less social play in a game that really demands it. On the other hand, Funcom is definitely on the path to rectifying this with their "Rise of the Godslayer" expansion - not only are they promising tons of new endgame content for veteran players, but Rise of the Godslayer is really aimed at expanding the game sideways and perhaps offering players more variety in their climb to reach level 80.

In the end, one thing that we certainly have to note is that, if Funcom had released Age of Conan as it is right now, there is no doubt in our minds that this game would have been a smashing success in the industry. What's unfortunate, however, is that the public eye has since passed over this compelling game, and now AoC is lacking in a different kind of content: social content. Our own guess is that some server merges, combined with Funcom's newest deals on AoC subscriptions may be just what this MMO needs to revive its flagging populations and, perhaps, prevent the problem of there being nobody left to appreciate the great steps forward Age of Conan has taken. If a fantastic MMO just keeps getting better, but there's nobody left to appreciate it… is it still a great MMO? Don't let it come to that! Give this game a try!

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com