I made multiple alts and went through Tortage multiple times. I've never seen a game go from awesome to terrible so quickly. Whatever they did in Tortage needed to be done for the rest of the game.
Despite what was said in this video, it was actually not really necessary to grind out levels by farming mobs for anything but the last few levels (and that could be avoided if you weren't trying to do it as quickly as possible). There were more than enough quests to get you almost all the way there without running out.
@@kieranmoynihan1161 I played the game. There were quests, but they were your standard WoW quests. It lacked the story and sense of adventure that was in Tortage.
@@kieranmoynihan1161 Perhaps. However, the quests were not intuitive or easy to find, leading most players (people not read up on strategy guides) to decide that grinding was the only way. People who were early access purchasers got promised a mount, but it was only mountable at lvl 40 -- so once they got dropped off after the fun early-game quests, it was like, "What do I do now? I want to ride my mount and potentially build a keep with my guild, I guess I will grind." The abrupt lack of content led ppl to decide that grinding was the only way forward.
I'm still playing Age of Conan to this day... I even have the retail version. I loved it and i still enjoy it. It has a very distinct vibe that I adore.
@Appalachian Packmule i can attest to that. when i played i need help on a quest that was clearly designed for a group. well not only did i not get help i got called every racial slur under the sun
Aaah Age of Conan...truly one of the biggest missed opportunities for greatness in gaming history. Despite all of its horrendous flaws, glaring issues, and lack of content, I still found myself playing it for years on end. The Khitai expansion was actually tremendous, albeit with an incredibly high barrier of required gear and leveling to actually access the Khitai endgame content - which pretty much meant that that content was woefully underpopulated. Funcom repeated the same rough scheme in The Secret World - a GREAT concept with some truly amazing ideas and very unique content compared to the competition, but a woeful lack of quality control and a host of management issues. Age of Conan had some of the best "oldschool" MMO gameplay ever, while The Secret World has some of the best questing in the history of MMOs, as well as truly unique atmosphere. I've often said that if Funcom's ambition and vision could have been combined with Blizzard levels of quality control, the MMO landscape would look quite drastically different today. Alas, what could have been.
Totaly agree...Lots of lack of content and bugs in the first months of 2008. Than i guess from 2009-2010 the game was really awesome for me. I had over 1500 hours of fun and 3 lvl 80s characters from January 2009 till mid 2010. There was not much endgame (Tier 1 and Tier 2 raids were challenging for maybe 3 months), so i just took another character levling up. In the last two month before Khitai i played a lot of PvP (One PvP-Level 4 and two PvP-Level 3). And i was quite good with a positive K/D, many flag steals and you could make good teamplay too. We even had a PvP-guild-keep with a 15 men guild (on a PvE-Server). Khitai brought a lot of content, but they changed PvP-Max-Level from 5 to 10. End of 2010 there were lots of PvP-Level 10 guys in PvP and it was absolutely no fun to compete in PvP anymore. Khitai was fun to explore for maybe 3-4 months. But there were a lot of reapetive quests. Grinding...and grinding...so i was bored and left the game in the end of 2010 after 2 years. I returned end of 2013 after playin THE SECRET WORLD for maybe 1 year in 2012. Still the graphics and the soundtrack were amazing for this time and i had fun to play with a friend a new character from 0 to 80. But the end game still was not satisfying. Even the Tier 1 and Tier 2 - Dungeons were not challenging anymore. Cause bored Tier 4 guys joined these raids - and it was just a running through without tactics now. Vistrix - the great dragon - it needed a lot of raid discipline (2009-2010) to kill him - was goin down fast now without problems. I am happy to play it. With 2013 maybe 2000-2500 hours of game time. Missed opportunity for catching me long term. But still one of the best games i played.
Age of Conan.. despite all the bugs and disbalance, the low performance and stuff... i had some good times in the game. The RP Community was really strong, and had some nice times there.
Age of Conan is the game I’ve spend most time on in my life. I found this video because I missed it after two years without playing. Huexin - full t4 assassin
Tjokker Star a common practice. Rift was the biggest bait n switch for me, a fantastic opening area, through a portal into "deliver this urgent message!" To an NPC standing right next to the quest giver.
i just remember this game for this reason only. It was such an epic game but after that first area everything that made the game feel so good was gone. I have played Rift in a period and i think i was a great game but sure the quests was no the best. i have played almost every mmorpg out there and to find one that you like is sooo hard. I found my game in ESO played it at release and took a 1 year break from mmo's and i have played it ever since i came back. But its a jugle out there.
+Tjokker Star yep, AoC was an amazing experience, until you left that tutorial island. I remember replaying that tutorial with multiple classes and then just quit the game.
I was in the the Alpha (then beta of course) and was so disappointed in the game that I never played it on release. It saddened me greatly because I have been a Conan fan since reading all the books in my youth, but the game never got better. The same bugs on release had been around for 2 years, and there was zero content after L20.
i didnt mind the changes to ESO that much, but i do get you'r point. For me it was not a problem since i have done all the quests in every zone besides craglorn and cyrodiil but im working on that. But the level scaling gave me the chance to play with friends that just recently started playing the game. FFXIV is a good game i played that for some time both on pc and playstation 3 back when that first came out :) i dont know why i stopped i liked the story and the idea of crafting being their own class. I might have to install that again some time to take another look :)
AoC is the game that introduced me to PC gaming. I bought my first gaming computer solely to play it. Perhaps it was just my lack of experience with other games, but I fell in love with AoC from the moment I first set foot on Tortage, and ended up sinking nearly 5 years of my life into it. Since AoC, I've not found another game that could come even close to the level of enjoyment I gained through playing AoC. The combat and open world PvP was just too addicting. It really has ruined every other game I've tried. I spent nearly 2 years just progressing up through the level brackets. I joined a guild and we developed rivalries with other guilds. At level 39 we'd track them down and get into awesome open world pvp battles. We would queue up for PvP mini games and pit our best against theirs. The time finally came we decided to progress to the next tier, so we all leveled up to 59, where we could participate in higher level PvP. I spent about a year just finding people to duel in the Eiglophian Mountains, and doing other pvp things with my guild. Finally after a year or two of playing the game, I finally decided to progress up to 80. The duel pit in Khesh, guild rivalries, more open-world pvp and mini games, exploring Khitai and it's many dungeons. It's just so hard to think back on the memories I have of this game without feeling upset with how it turned out. Unfortunately, Funcom took the game in a direction I, and many others didn't agree with. They implemented changes that completely broke the game and its balance. People left the game, and as it grew empty I found myself alone in a desert that was once a beautiful forest. The day I finally uninstalled it for good left me with a void I've yet to be able to fill. Here I am, nearly 4 years later since I last played Age of Conan, and I still can't play anything else without comparing it to AoC. I don't think I'll ever find a game that can come close to matching it, and it will forever hold a place in my heart.
I got in just after the gem fiasco. The PvP was a once in a lifetime thing. It was every guild for itself politics and battle keeps were amazing. But, funcom added guards, NPC police cops to prevent griefing. Then mismanaged balance of classes introduced crowd control control mechanics. But right before those singularity police cops showed up, game was fuuucking brutal, even afterward.. I swear you will never see this level of PvP again there was more meaning to it. And it was just so gruesome.
Ahh, I remember Age of Conan. the complete drop after level 20 was indeed the reason I didn't continue. Also, the story at that point ended with "YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE!!!!" Well. Yea. So are all the other players. That grated with me from a lore perspective. They could have just said 'You survived your first challenge, good luck out there' and it would have felt a lot better.
I think FF14 is going for a "you are the chosen one" vibe. I don't like being a chosen one born with a special power but I can live with it. As I did with being Dragonborn in Skyrim. Being normal and taking on something that makes you special like the taint or the Anchor magic in Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition is okay. But without a doubt I prefer the story of the self made hero. Nothing special about you. It's just you freely choose to train, quest, get stronger and save the world/region.
What game were you playing? One of the best parts about AoC was that you *weren't* "the chosen one." You were some poor schlub who got swept up into a possessed army and were just lucky enough to escape that fate.
I played the game in 2008 after the initial bug fixes. It had some amazing graphics and great innovative ideas. Many of the problems are mentioned in the video itself, but i'd like to clarify a couple of things. 1. The grinding wasn't too bad. Don't forget that this was 2008 and MMOs were just starting to get rid of grinding, which until then was viewed more as a feature, rather than a flaw. 2. The biggest problem by far weren't the bugs or the unbalanced class system, me and most of my ingame friends quit because of how boring character progression was. When you make a mage you expect to go from a fireball to a fiery meteor, when you make a warlock you expect to go from summoning an imp to summoning a big ass demon. In AoC you start with a fireball and finish with a purple fireball, you start with an imp and you finish with a chihuahua. It was even worse when it came to how your character looked. It was OK for worriers, since they went from ripped garments all the way up to chain shirts with some plating (yes, that was considered lucky). The casters had it worse - they went from a slightly ruffled up brown robe to an almost new reddish robe. Yes, you grind for months and end up looking and feeling exactly the same as you did in the starting area. The graphics really were amazing, but with sh*tty, unimaginative models and textures, the game looked extremely stale. That's the reason I quit and I can assure you that that's the reason most people quit during the initial exodus.
The first twenty levels of Age of Conan was the best mmo I've ever played, everything after level twenty was the most boring mmo I've ever played. You can only complete Tortage so many times though... So I moved on.
because it was all, single player campaign. the voice acting, etc... that was all missing from the rest of the game lol. and getting even 1 gold coin was damn near impossible
"Age of Conan" brought me about 1000 satisfied hours of game with 3 Characters. Absolutely was worth it. Ambience (Soundtrack, Graphic), Battle System, World were beautiful. Lack of Endgame (Focus on Singleplayer and repeatable Quests) and Farming content ruined the game. It had potential to be a second "World of Warcraft". So its really sad to review.
I really enjoyed this game. My WOW guild and I left WoW for this game. We spent then entire summer getting max level and built a level 4 siege castle. We camped max level zones on our server so people couldn't level up in peace. It was fun and brutal. but the raids were broken and bugged and they never fixed them. Our first Guild Vs Guild siege was assisted by a GM and not even he could get the catapults to work and our castle walls had no internal structure, so the enemy could just walk through them. So we had to cancel the sieges.
you made me so sad man, I use to be a guild master for 3 years. one of the best years of friendship and gaming I ever had, people even cried on teamspeak when I left my guild..... :(
Got married and got a kid, was hard working in the military getting home dead and opening my email and have 70 unread email, at the end I left, its unbelievable to say but conan got me some real good friends, and we were a good guild man by the name of Legion of blood.
I still have the hard-copy of this game. I had to go out and by a DVD-CD Rom just to install it. This game was amazing at release. The tutorial was the best part. Miss my Bear Shaman
Ugh. Despite this game's flaws, I had such a blast playing it. I miss it terribly, and think of giving it another shot, but I know it's in vain. I made some amazing friendships that lasted years, and even through it met the person who is now my best online friend, and we've been gaming together for a decade. The music was wonderful, and the feel of the universe was so magical. We were all roleplaying Cimmerian warriors, and we ended up being respected and feared by the community. We had sieges, we had great drama, and tons of fun. I feel like Khitai was such a terrible way to handle an ultimately MASSIVE expansion. It was so daunting and the bar of entry seemed so high that a majority of people never got to explore beyond the first map. In a way, that's lovely in theory, because it gives the impression of a dangerous, unforgiving world, but it was just hard to play the content since many people didn't even try. I have such a love-hate relationship with Funcom. They have terrific ideas, and have this true talent of building amazing worlds. But they're just not great at managing or creating games. The Secret World is also another example of a game I wanted to see succeed so badly despite how fundamentally flawed it was. God damnit, Funcom.
I think Age of Conan is still worth a try for people who played a long time ago or never played it at all. The game got a lot of updates, a lot of quality of life changes, content updates and bugfixes. I just started the game again after a 1 and a half year break and I am still enjoying it (even though I did almost everything in the years before, played for almost 7 years non stop, best gear for several classes, ran dungeons for the 100th time, all classes on level 80 and so on). The 2011 F2P was not good, F2P players had many restrictions but the F2P revamp in 2016 really was a good change, you can play everything without having premium you just can't have more than 10 Gold (which is kinda stupid in my opinion) and have to buy the expansions (like you have to do it for every other game) and they are very cheap (like 9€ - 15€ here in germany) but you can enter every raid dungeon / 6 man dungeon / playfield area and so on. The F2P revamp could be described as the old Premium / Membership, you have no decrease in EXP gain or anything else you just have the basic amount players had in the years 2008 - early 2016 before the revamp, players with premium just gain a little bit more in terms of relics, EXP and faction renown. If you haven't tried the game yet, do it before it completely dies off, play on the server "Crom - PvE", there are still a lot of people and guilds there, ranging from casual / beginner guilds to "professional" end game guilds. There is a lot of stuff to do, mob grinding is almost not needed (only in very few cases but you can basically ignore them) and the games story lines are still incredible.
So, what games are on your 'less-than-a-handful' list that managed a comeback? I want to know if I'm missing something I should give another chance to!
Man, I'm so glad you gave a proper amount of time to talk about this game's music and sound design. For everything it got wrong, the atmosphere and the way to audio complimented it was nothing short of fucking mastery in game design.
this series is really great. i would suggest that, somehow throughout the video, you could do a visual representation of the time elapsed between the different events. maybe it could be ever present on the bottom or shown where we are in the timeline in cut-in images. i hope you make more
"Barbarian" was called "Barbarian", not "Conan". You can see it right there in the screenshot. I liked that game, although there was too much rolling. :P It wasn't licensed, although heavily inspired by it (and even used the Conan main theme drums).
When I was 'told' there were no variations in the tutorial, he lost me. There are 3 distinct paths in the tutorial, all telling about the same situation from different perspectives and quest objectives. Bad info is bad info, regardless of the over-all truth.
I remember sitting in the Ventrilo channel of my WoW guild and one of my guildmates was raving about the game for the week leading up to its launch. Then we didn't see him for another week. He comes back after that just absolutely destroying the game. I don't think I've ever experienced something that had so much hype and lost so much potential that quickly.
Just started a few weeks ago and im having blast. Even with the lack of voice acting outside of tortage this game is still great. Still one of the most unique mmos on the market.
I love age of conan till this day but i understand the frustration of players. The tutorial is so good makes the rest of the game feel blend. The system is great, the ost is awesome, the story is great... but funcon stopped reading foruns and listening to us. So sad.
@ 6:50 Ahh yes, players entering conversations... I remember I was playing a female character and a male player took off his pants, walked up to my camera, and showcased his junk front and center. He knew which direction my camera was facing during the conversation. It's that kind of unique experience you'll never get in a single-player game.
what a nostalgia your video brought!... and I agree -> there is a justified reason why a word "Failcom" exists (to be written, said or most probably screamed by every AoC player from time to time) :) but in the end AoC was by far the best time I had in gaming. especially as a raid leader back in times when t2&t3 was in a progression category, not under-level farm. guild members were regular friends, community was mature, friendly and helpful ... really good times no matter the grind, bugs and seeming lack of content - this game played well, looked well and music was simply excellent, it had a spell ... ohh and plenty of gore and nudity - that also helped :D ;)
I've honestly never played an MMO in my life (not the traditional kind, anyway), but for some reason I really love your videos. You have a very good style of narration that manages to engage without being distracting. I find your videos a great way to pass time when I'm doing other more boring projects that take my attention away from the screen itself, which is always a good thing in my opinion.
I really miss the excitement of starting a new mmo like this one back in the day. I walked around with the hud off soaking in the ambience of this game many times.
Pirates of The Burning Sea should get one of these. As a closed beta player for that one, I have never seen another MMO crash and burn so hard as a result of mismanagement after all the hype since SWG. Thankfully a similar game came and is being worked on: Naval Action and is close to the original vision for PoTBS.
Valarius J. I enjoyed POTBS, but Naval Action seems to have a bit of controversy surrounding it at the moment. Things present and former players have been saying in reviews has left me skeptical of the title for now.
Oh? What happened? Truth be told I haven't played Naval Action in several months so I haven't kept up with it. Last I played it though it was pretty fun even if a bit lacking in content, even for an early access game.
Man, I was so fucking into this game back in the day, I had, for a first time in my life, created and moderated my own guild that had 200+ people in it. Was a different sensation than what I was used to. I was proud of the accomplishments we were able to do even though I never bought the expansions or 'Paid Membership' to get the end-game-everything content. The whole 'Building your own castle and village' behind walls that your guild had to pain-stakingly devote resources into was fucking awesome. We had an awesome castle, gate, and an impressive amount of devoted loyalists who helped get a lot done. They were great times, but many were frustrating too, the pay-walls and the lag/unoptimization of some levels? How they butchered and simplified the combat system? ehhhn... I remember many of my hours were devoted to recruiting people in the start-game hub/island. Black Annihilus, good times.
Nice review. I played AoC since 2009 till recently. The best times playing it were in PvP servers before the PvE focused Rise of Godslayer expansion. It is the bloody epic battles wich i will remember not the imbalance or bugs anyway.
i played this when it was new, 10 years ago. almost everyone rolled female, went topless around town and never really played the game. starting zone was amazing and then it feels like empty zone after empty zone cuz i have no other memories of that game except the guild housing they advertised wasn't in the game for years to come.
I grew up watching my parents play this as officers of Knights of Ironspine. I watched them be some of the first clear raids, as a child even taking over for them at times during these. I saw my father commit some of the greatest trolls in history, such as going into hide on his Demonologist anf blowing up a wagon in Atzel's approach, that would lure in a huge mob of enemies, then quickly go into hide. He would create entire graveyards while bored. I while playing pvp on this very demonologist would go to a ice and lava pvp map, kill my pet, hide, and knock back people into lava, which hilariously wouldn't even give me pvp points. I had once even watched my father on this demonologist fight the Khitan Golem 1v1 after it attacked him. A GM got involved in that one. My family enjoyed the game well into the late game.
Regarding the Steam player count: It's not representive at all, 90% of all people don't play with Steam, most of them use the client you can directly download from the site. Sure, it does not have a really high player count but it's probably 5 or 6 times higher than what Steam shows. If you never tried it, give it a try. There is a lot of content to do for newcomers, play on the PvE server Crom for the best population (big end game guilds, starter guilds, random groups / raids and much more all day long).
@@robertharris6092 That is partly true for games they've purchased on steam IF they originally launched on Valve's platform, but hardly for MMOs that use their own launchers because it literally adds an extra step in launching the game. Even if a game is on steam, as long as it has its own launcher, players tend to go the second route. It's even more so for MMORPGs that launched previously off-steam, years ago, and have been put onto steam years after. Examples are DDO, LOTRO, Neverwinter, and others. That being said, most AoC players have had the game since before Unchained "relaunched" on Steam, and I would presume that those are the players that have stuck around the most. Don't be so one-dimensional, lol what.
God damnit nerdSlayer, your videos actually make me a bit emotional since every single one of them , and the games i've played, makes me think of different groups of friends I've played these games with (some I still keep in contact with, others i've lost contact with completely) I had such high hopes for AOC, not as a WoW killer, but just as a world The newbie area was one of the best areas I've ever seen in a game, period. Single player or mmo. It was just amazing, and the combat felt refreshing compared to the tab targetting we were used to in these games
Age of Conan is and will always be my all time favourite mmorpg. There is something about the game engine that makes the world feel solid and real. Hyboria, along with Middle Earth, is surely the most complete and immersive worlds. Maybe Funcom shoulda taken the Lord of the Rings Online route and just done a World of Warcraft clone set to interesting lore. But sadly, pretty much everything said in this video is true. I still play AoC on occasion, but I'm often left feeling a bit sad thinking about what might have been :(
You put it so right about 'solid and real'. It's very impressive game even for an experienced and bored gamer. This game is the best tribute R. Howard and Hyborea had, ever, IMO
I built a new computer for this game, played it then went to The burning crusade when that launched, then played warhammer online when that launched but then I went back to TBC when that was a fail
I've been binging on these videos: Really dig your informative style cataloging how these MMOs died off. ...The lack of music on this one is kinda spooky though.
I never tried AoC at launch. I hopped on right after the first expansion, Rise of the Godslayer launched. I thought the game was great! It seemed to have a ton of quality content after the starter area of Tortage. Didn't have much trouble with bugs. The population was pretty sparse. But over all I had a very fun time playing out so much Conan lore. The devs were pretty good about staying close to Robert E. Howard's vision of Hyboria. I loved the Conan setting, combat, fatalities, graphics. There is an excellent blend of brutality and beauty to the presentation and art style. The music was fantastic. I think it is among the best video game music to be had, bar none. So I for one loved my time with Age of Conan. Mostly played single player, grouping up for tough quests. Dabbled some in PvP. Have not tried Exiles. I do not know if it has the depth and attention to detail of the MMO. I have played some other MMOs. Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft,. Lord of the Rings, Dark Age of Camelot, among others, but AoC remains by far my favorite.
Until playing AoC my only exposure to Conan were the Arnie movies from the 1980s. But after playing the game for a bit, I became curious about the source material. I picked up a book of Howard's original Conan stories and kind of read along as I played. It was then I came to understand how much the devs were inspired by Howard's stories. The locations were all there and rendered just the way I had imagined. Quests were taken from plots in the stories, and actual characters names were used. Frank Frazetta's art was also a source of inspiration. I liked to play as a Barbarian made to look as much like Conan as I could. I was up to my knees in snow, swinging my two handed sword, fighting Frost Giants when I realized, this is Frank's painting! The scene was identical. I am telling you, the devs were inspired by and faithful to the source material, big time.
Funcom really does do a good job with the LORE aspect of their games. The Secret world is literally frothing over with lore and backstory and immersive content. When you realize they created REAL LIFE websites for FAKE locations in the game world just so you can look them up to find clues to solving puzzles in the game itself... For example the first area is a fictional place in maine, and if you look it up, you will find a website in the form of a fake town hall style community website about the town and it's history and all kinds of crap. Many quests in the first zone require going to this website, or ones like it for other factions in the game to find clues or maps, or things to help you do things like find the password of a corporate employee, or find the history of the town to figure out where to go. It's intense, especially if played with a friend who likes that kind of stuff too. It dawns on you how much they were trying to make an early predecessor to an Augmented Reality game where the game bleeds into the real world to some degree. When TSW eventually gets unplugged, I will be devastated, even if I am not playing it any more, because I don't think anyone will ever come close to what TSW did right.
FateBinder Today people keep saying that the MMO genre is dying, mostly because they limit themselves having the same old "kill X of Y" quests, instead of having a player driven economy like EVE. Well, to me the apex of MMO gaming was the augmented reality from TSW, like you said. Damn, that isn't an idea any developer could have had, that's beyond original. I still remember most of TSW quests, and I played it at launch. For me, it was "The Witcher 3" of the MMOs. I really can't understand why people still underestimate that game.
Funcom is clueless when it comes to running and implementing stuff i heard secret world did get better over time, but for me it was to late i tried the beta felt the game was very underwhelming and i didn't want get burned with this game then i did with AoC
I loved Age of Conan. It pains my heart to see and hear the beautiful game music and scenic vistas i remember with such fondness. I am an avid fan of the classic fantasy of Robert. E. Howard and the lore of this game was so true to the books, it was like a dream come true. Unfortunately Funcom has a terrible managerial/corporate culture, and their business models for subscriptions, marketplace, and even vanity/cosmetics was just exploitatively bad. There was never an acknowledgement of shrinking playerbase, no recognition of player loyalty and long-term subs, while the party-line of Funcom was that everything is just fine. I still think the game is gorgeous on max settings, the world design is breathtaking, and the music is ethereally haunting. If any other company other than Funcom was handling the game and could rebuild their in-game and behind-the-scenes infrastructure, I'd start playing it again in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's a good game that is saddled with very obvious horrible cash-squeezing attempts to milk the playerbase without investing back into the game's upkeep and development.
☝️ I agree. It was a fantasy world for me and I enjoyed being there. The setting was incredible and the melancholy music, well, it made me feel at home.
☝️ I agree. It was a fantasy world for me and I enjoyed being there. The setting was incredible and the melancholy music, well, it made me feel at home.
I am really enjoying your content so far, the whole 'death of a game' seems something new and is really well researched, giving us a nice insight on a game's downfall. Please do make more of these videos! Great job my dude. What other games do you plan on covering?
Ahh, Age of Conan. Game that I have returned so many times and left about as many times, most recently last years summer. The sheer amount of money consumed by it (purchased collectors edition of a game, than expansions, subscriptions and various other services) would be enough to fund a few mid performance PCs. From one perspective I never regretted spending money on that game but from the other I regretted very much spending it on Funcom, they deserved nothing and should have gone bankrupt long before. Too many times have they failed to deliver, too many times have they deceived community and all too often they tried to milk whatever they could milk - look at last 3 years of AoC, they added before that gorgeous Dragon Spine only to left it unfinished and than baited players with various options, summer/spring/anniversary/winter bundles just to milk more and more. Whole T5 was the cheapest move ever, I enjoyed tactics a lot but that's about it, rest was just same old content. Or T6 that was "almost" good except being another token farm. Plug should have been pulled long ago but instead its left floating on ice, though at least now community is not getting deceived anymore with new runes, ugly as f**k mounts (oh wait !) and some social useless items. Now people know that its over. The biggest problem of this game was poor execution combined with financing model. Subscription was never cheap but it was somewhat acceptable until fake f2p when subscription remained mandatory but spending money in item shop became a standard as well. They just always seemed to have wanted to steal more money from me, I dunno if that was only me, but I just always had the feeling with whatever they were doing or planning to do, that yet again they want to grab more cash before they shut it down. Few games gave me that awkward feeling of developer only wanting to stick his dirty hand into my pocket and take every last penny there. Since Dragon Spine there was almost no content development (last years arena was fun but ... after so many years it was like a joke, fighting players or pets in arena for all the same subscription ?) and it seems that those few years playerbase was funding development of Secret World and Conan Exiles. Not quite what one would expect when he was spending on specific product. I have to disagree with some points though, Turan for example was a great and so unique expansion that added more variety during leveling and gave some end game content as well (well, at least until they nerfed T 3.5 and made it casual friendly) - location was just nice looking, music was awesome, those separate islands added more flavor and instances like Fort Ardashir were challenging while also gave a lot of benefits. I really enjoyed it and consider it a big shame that there wasn't more of it. Turan had a lot of potential. One thing that they made wrong was T 3.5 raid, while harder than T4 for the most part, it was shorter and rewards were just not worth the challenge. Some items or weapons were great and most got them soon after they nerfed it. Also, after all this years it wasnt even lack of content, but ultimately even death of old content. With more and more gear grind that at some point turned into token grind (starting with Khitai years before and ending with T5/T6 most recently) - a never ending token grind. At the same time all those additions to the game, higher and higher tiers and eventually crapastic World Bosses left no reason to explore old content. T1/T2 and even T3 became pointless when one could get most of loot from world boss farm, or recently with farming raid finder. Ultimately they have reduced depth of game and flattened the experience with poor excuses for doing so. I'm not even going to touch topics that brought me to the game in first place like PvP, Sieges (anyone who participated those in the early stages must have experienced 2-3 FPS fights, almost like it would be turn strategy or chess game), Crafting and so many things. Promises that never happened and failures that only made things worse. I'm sorry for this rather lengthy comment but to squeeze ten years of hype, fun, experience, disappointment and disgust is not an easy thing. Frankly, it would deserve a proper article or even series of articles to show others - dont screw like Funcom did. And dont buy Funcom ever again, they never learn.
You're right, I have exactly the same feelings. One of the best MMOs in game history. One of the best music tracks ever. A brilliant combat system, a wonderful world. Funcom has been killing this game for years and holds out his hands for players' money
All in all very interesting and i liked the video. I think you should have made it more clear that its optional if u want to play the game trough steam, which makes your numbers from steam innacurate since most of the veterans play it outside steam.
The starting area in Cimmeria was amazing. I was in The Round Table guild on Crom. The game was always well populated. The guilds were thriving the first years. Had a lot of fun raiding as a priest of mitra. Also pvp was quite a lot of fun.
I agree with the overwhelming majority of this video, with one small thing about AMD video cards, I was able to use utility program from amd to correct the FPS. And I would like a video on Shadowbane
I miss this game so much. I used to immerse myself in the world they created. And yes the amazing soundtrack helped a lot. I have mostly good memories of AoC and some painful ones of grinding mobs because of the lack of content.
I like your looks at these games. I saw your one about Star Wars Galaxy awhile ago but didn't sub, but I'm glad this one popped up in my feed! Subscribed!
Sweet! I always look forward to new Death of a Game episodes. I honestly don't know how you don't have more subs, but you can at least count me amongst the current ones!
A great game that I subbed to for the first 2 years through all the endless Noble District grind. I continued to revisit and re-sub to many times until a few years back when I finally just gave up on it. I still like to visit now it is FtP.
New news for Age of Conan: In early 2018, we will be introducing a saga server to Age of Conan. A saga server is a unique server that is live for a limited period of time and comes with unique rewards for completing objectives. All players will start with a fresh, new character that will be transferred to Crom after the saga server’s live period ends, along with any earned rewards. Players will be able to claim rewards on a single character of their choosing.
Glad to see this video, I was young when this game was being hyped up (10 or so) and remember thinking it's sieges, guild cities and real time combat (I also remember the archery being legitimate like aiming and extra damage for headshots) including mounted combat with mammoths would be the coolest best mmo ever. It was disappointing that the project was unable to implement the goals they had, and while I got to play it briefly it felt like it was very hollow.
I think you forgot to mention that there is no cheat detection in Age of Conan. So people can download a free speed hack, or use comber, without repercussions. This virtually ruined pvp in the game. Guys getting 30 some kills because they do more dmg then everyone else. Combos taking less time to complete...this to me is a huge reason people quit. All my friends quit over this and we played the game for years 09-14. Only I come back once in a while to see how it's doing. You have the same people joining mini games soaking up kills using cheat engine. There is no more open world pvp, especially in NA times.
Not sure what servers you were playing on, but I never ran into any cheaters on NA from the years of 09-14 and I was an avid pvp'er. Although I did get a good amount of false accusations. I assume this was due to the huge skill gap in AOC which is one of the reasons for it's pvp popularity.
@@pbarb726 That is surprising because Cheat engine and aoc buddy was popular then. Cheat engine is the cheat everyone still uses to this day...well the remaining 12 people that pvp there. They also have a paid hack called "comber" which melded combos together to cause extra dmg. A lot of people pretend it isn't a problem, calling people newbs etc if they see hacking/cheating. I have 4 pvp 10's. But I will say, NA had way less cheaters then EU/Russia. When they merged the servers TONS of people up and quit because it was so bad
Comparing Funcom to AAA titles by the likes of Blizzard or SquareEnix is unfair though. They rarely have the economic resources comparable to a fraction of those companies and they never have had anything resembling that work force. They are good at making their games look and sound on par with something like that, but underneath that they are really quite a small company that can't keep up with the content-creation speed that people expect from MMOs on that level. This is their main problem when it comes to MMOs, people come into them with expectations of things that it would be flat-out impossible for them to deliver consistently. I really think they backed the wrong horse when they decided to ditch adventure games to focus their resources on MMOs. If they had stuck to what was within their means and what accentuated their strengths (plot, sound, visuals and innovation) they might have built up the means to do the successful, reliable, blockbuster MMOs they clearly want to make, rather than being stuck in the feed-back loop of having to constantly invest resources in things that, while usually good, don't have the longevity for most players that they need to grow as a company in this genre.
It's been buy to play for a very long time, just like guild wars. I bought it when it came out, and have been playing it off and on for free and as a sub since then. Actually, as you get higher in your characters abilities, you have less and less reason to buy a membership. Instead you start wanting new zones to explore, so they ding you for new content expansions (called issues) that if you buy them all, is close to 120$. Not a bad racket for funcom.
Awesome and well researched video! Made me like and subscribe on a instant (And made me watch the entire series) I do hope Tabula Rasa is somewhere on your list too, it's quite the story!
Best comment I ever saw on the AoC forums right before release was, "Will the nipples be ready for launch?"
I made multiple alts and went through Tortage multiple times. I've never seen a game go from awesome to terrible so quickly. Whatever they did in Tortage needed to be done for the rest of the game.
Despite what was said in this video, it was actually not really necessary to grind out levels by farming mobs for anything but the last few levels (and that could be avoided if you weren't trying to do it as quickly as possible). There were more than enough quests to get you almost all the way there without running out.
@@kieranmoynihan1161 I played the game. There were quests, but they were your standard WoW quests. It lacked the story and sense of adventure that was in Tortage.
Movie Games Fair enough.
I played 3 months just in tortage...good times.
@@kieranmoynihan1161 Perhaps. However, the quests were not intuitive or easy to find, leading most players (people not read up on strategy guides) to decide that grinding was the only way. People who were early access purchasers got promised a mount, but it was only mountable at lvl 40 -- so once they got dropped off after the fun early-game quests, it was like, "What do I do now? I want to ride my mount and potentially build a keep with my guild, I guess I will grind." The abrupt lack of content led ppl to decide that grinding was the only way forward.
I played that game for less than six months. The soundtrack, I still listen to it today. Absolute master piece
I'm still playing Age of Conan to this day... I even have the retail version. I loved it and i still enjoy it. It has a very distinct vibe that I adore.
I am glad to hear this, may Mitra guide your path :)
@Appalachian Packmule i can attest to that. when i played i need help on a quest that was clearly designed for a group. well not only did i not get help i got called every racial slur under the sun
my dad played for the past 10 years hes playing the game rn as im typing this. Walking Dead Guild
Still love this game.
the story of this game was amazing.
would be awesome if they put this story line in the new one. :D
Aaah Age of Conan...truly one of the biggest missed opportunities for greatness in gaming history. Despite all of its horrendous flaws, glaring issues, and lack of content, I still found myself playing it for years on end. The Khitai expansion was actually tremendous, albeit with an incredibly high barrier of required gear and leveling to actually access the Khitai endgame content - which pretty much meant that that content was woefully underpopulated. Funcom repeated the same rough scheme in The Secret World - a GREAT concept with some truly amazing ideas and very unique content compared to the competition, but a woeful lack of quality control and a host of management issues.
Age of Conan had some of the best "oldschool" MMO gameplay ever, while The Secret World has some of the best questing in the history of MMOs, as well as truly unique atmosphere. I've often said that if Funcom's ambition and vision could have been combined with Blizzard levels of quality control, the MMO landscape would look quite drastically different today. Alas, what could have been.
what was that one fucking valley and mountain in the beginning? Those viking dudes in their bases at the top were hard
"Blizzard levels of quality" means something very different today...
Totaly agree...Lots of lack of content and bugs in the first months of 2008. Than i guess from 2009-2010 the game was really awesome for me. I had over 1500 hours of fun and 3 lvl 80s characters from January 2009 till mid 2010. There was not much endgame (Tier 1 and Tier 2 raids were challenging for maybe 3 months), so i just took another character levling up. In the last two month before Khitai i played a lot of PvP (One PvP-Level 4 and two PvP-Level 3). And i was quite good with a positive K/D, many flag steals and you could make good teamplay too. We even had a PvP-guild-keep with a 15 men guild (on a PvE-Server). Khitai brought a lot of content, but they changed PvP-Max-Level from 5 to 10. End of 2010 there were lots of PvP-Level 10 guys in PvP and it was absolutely no fun to compete in PvP anymore. Khitai was fun to explore for maybe 3-4 months. But there were a lot of reapetive quests. Grinding...and grinding...so i was bored and left the game in the end of 2010 after 2 years. I returned end of 2013 after playin THE SECRET WORLD for maybe 1 year in 2012. Still the graphics and the soundtrack were amazing for this time and i had fun to play with a friend a new character from 0 to 80. But the end game still was not satisfying. Even the Tier 1 and Tier 2 - Dungeons were not challenging anymore. Cause bored Tier 4 guys joined these raids - and it was just a running through without tactics now. Vistrix - the great dragon - it needed a lot of raid discipline (2009-2010) to kill him - was goin down fast now without problems. I am happy to play it. With 2013 maybe 2000-2500 hours of game time. Missed opportunity for catching me long term. But still one of the best games i played.
Age of Conan.. despite all the bugs and disbalance, the low performance and stuff... i had some good times in the game. The RP Community was really strong, and had some nice times there.
Age of Conan is the game I’ve spend most time on in my life. I found this video because I missed it after two years without playing. Huexin - full t4 assassin
It had no end game content at the start and a lot of us just gave up
Easy they made the tutorial amazing and the when you got out of it, the game was empty.
Tjokker Star a common practice. Rift was the biggest bait n switch for me, a fantastic opening area, through a portal into "deliver this urgent message!" To an NPC standing right next to the quest giver.
i just remember this game for this reason only. It was such an epic game but after that first area everything that made the game feel so good was gone.
I have played Rift in a period and i think i was a great game but sure the quests was no the best.
i have played almost every mmorpg out there and to find one that you like is sooo hard. I found my game in ESO played it at release and took a 1 year break from mmo's and i have played it ever since i came back. But its a jugle out there.
+Tjokker Star
yep, AoC was an amazing experience, until you left that tutorial island. I remember replaying that tutorial with multiple classes and then just quit the game.
I was in the the Alpha (then beta of course) and was so disappointed in the game that I never played it on release. It saddened me greatly because I have been a Conan fan since reading all the books in my youth, but the game never got better. The same bugs on release had been around for 2 years, and there was zero content after L20.
i didnt mind the changes to ESO that much, but i do get you'r point. For me it was not a problem since i have done all the quests in every zone besides craglorn and cyrodiil but im working on that. But the level scaling gave me the chance to play with friends that just recently started playing the game.
FFXIV is a good game i played that for some time both on pc and playstation 3 back when that first came out :) i dont know why i stopped i liked the story and the idea of crafting being their own class. I might have to install that again some time to take another look :)
AoC is the game that introduced me to PC gaming. I bought my first gaming computer solely to play it. Perhaps it was just my lack of experience with other games, but I fell in love with AoC from the moment I first set foot on Tortage, and ended up sinking nearly 5 years of my life into it. Since AoC, I've not found another game that could come even close to the level of enjoyment I gained through playing AoC. The combat and open world PvP was just too addicting. It really has ruined every other game I've tried.
I spent nearly 2 years just progressing up through the level brackets. I joined a guild and we developed rivalries with other guilds. At level 39 we'd track them down and get into awesome open world pvp battles. We would queue up for PvP mini games and pit our best against theirs.
The time finally came we decided to progress to the next tier, so we all leveled up to 59, where we could participate in higher level PvP. I spent about a year just finding people to duel in the Eiglophian Mountains, and doing other pvp things with my guild.
Finally after a year or two of playing the game, I finally decided to progress up to 80. The duel pit in Khesh, guild rivalries, more open-world pvp and mini games, exploring Khitai and it's many dungeons. It's just so hard to think back on the memories I have of this game without feeling upset with how it turned out.
Unfortunately, Funcom took the game in a direction I, and many others didn't agree with. They implemented changes that completely broke the game and its balance. People left the game, and as it grew empty I found myself alone in a desert that was once a beautiful forest.
The day I finally uninstalled it for good left me with a void I've yet to be able to fill. Here I am, nearly 4 years later since I last played Age of Conan, and I still can't play anything else without comparing it to AoC. I don't think I'll ever find a game that can come close to matching it, and it will forever hold a place in my heart.
I got in just after the gem fiasco. The PvP was a once in a lifetime thing. It was every guild for itself politics and battle keeps were amazing. But, funcom added guards, NPC police cops to prevent griefing. Then mismanaged balance of classes introduced crowd control control mechanics. But right before those singularity police cops showed up, game was fuuucking brutal, even afterward.. I swear you will never see this level of PvP again there was more meaning to it. And it was just so gruesome.
AOC will forever be in my heart. For now it has a spot on my TH-cam.
Star Citizen
Ahh, I remember Age of Conan. the complete drop after level 20 was indeed the reason I didn't continue. Also, the story at that point ended with "YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE!!!!" Well. Yea. So are all the other players. That grated with me from a lore perspective. They could have just said 'You survived your first challenge, good luck out there' and it would have felt a lot better.
I think FF14 is going for a "you are the chosen one" vibe. I don't like being a chosen one born with a special power but I can live with it. As I did with being Dragonborn in Skyrim. Being normal and taking on something that makes you special like the taint or the Anchor magic in Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition is okay.
But without a doubt I prefer the story of the self made hero. Nothing special about you. It's just you freely choose to train, quest, get stronger and save the world/region.
What game were you playing? One of the best parts about AoC was that you *weren't* "the chosen one." You were some poor schlub who got swept up into a possessed army and were just lucky enough to escape that fate.
I played the game in 2008 after the initial bug fixes. It had some amazing graphics and great innovative ideas. Many of the problems are mentioned in the video itself, but i'd like to clarify a couple of things.
1. The grinding wasn't too bad. Don't forget that this was 2008 and MMOs were just starting to get rid of grinding, which until then was viewed more as a feature, rather than a flaw.
2. The biggest problem by far weren't the bugs or the unbalanced class system, me and most of my ingame friends quit because of how boring character progression was. When you make a mage you expect to go from a fireball to a fiery meteor, when you make a warlock you expect to go from summoning an imp to summoning a big ass demon. In AoC you start with a fireball and finish with a purple fireball, you start with an imp and you finish with a chihuahua. It was even worse when it came to how your character looked. It was OK for worriers, since they went from ripped garments all the way up to chain shirts with some plating (yes, that was considered lucky). The casters had it worse - they went from a slightly ruffled up brown robe to an almost new reddish robe. Yes, you grind for months and end up looking and feeling exactly the same as you did in the starting area. The graphics really were amazing, but with sh*tty, unimaginative models and textures, the game looked extremely stale.
That's the reason I quit and I can assure you that that's the reason most people quit during the initial exodus.
The first twenty levels of Age of Conan was the best mmo I've ever played, everything after level twenty was the most boring mmo I've ever played. You can only complete Tortage so many times though... So I moved on.
because it was all, single player campaign. the voice acting, etc... that was all missing from the rest of the game lol. and getting even 1 gold coin was damn near impossible
I LOVED AGE OF CONAN! Still listen to the soundtrack sometimes. I want my Age of Conan back 😭😭
I absolutely use the AoC soundtrack in my D&D game. Now that I've started LotRO, I'm going to be using that one's equally amazing soundtrack as well!
"Age of Conan" brought me about 1000 satisfied hours of game with 3 Characters. Absolutely was worth it. Ambience (Soundtrack, Graphic), Battle System, World were beautiful. Lack of Endgame (Focus on Singleplayer and repeatable Quests) and Farming content ruined the game. It had potential to be a second "World of Warcraft". So its really sad to review.
Ere the World Crumbles..
It has been so long and still this tune is embedded in my head...
I really enjoyed this game. My WOW guild and I left WoW for this game. We spent then entire summer getting max level and built a level 4 siege castle. We camped max level zones on our server so people couldn't level up in peace. It was fun and brutal. but the raids were broken and bugged and they never fixed them. Our first Guild Vs Guild siege was assisted by a GM and not even he could get the catapults to work and our castle walls had no internal structure, so the enemy could just walk through them. So we had to cancel the sieges.
I did something similar, we all went from WoW to Warhammer to AOC and then we just went and played TBC because both those games failed
@@sweetfry same
My guild left WoW for Warhammer.
I still remember the chat being filled with "Yeah man, Warhammer is gonna KILL WoW"
From someone who played wow since the beginning, camping low level areas makes you and your guild a bunch of garbages losers.
you made me so sad man, I use to be a guild master for 3 years. one of the best years of friendship and gaming I ever had, people even cried on teamspeak when I left my guild..... :(
Why'd you leave man?
Got married and got a kid, was hard working in the military getting home dead and opening my email and have 70 unread email, at the end I left, its unbelievable to say but conan got me some real good friends, and we were a good guild man by the name of Legion of blood.
I was a member of the guild "Warband" back in the day, alot of us had tons of respect for you guys.
Thank you kindly, you just made my day Svend Jansen. 🙂 We rember your guild as well 🙂
Cried when you left? Jesus, that person has some serious mental health problems ;(
i always wondered how much funcom paid the big bang theory folks to feature their game in an episode.
I still have the hard-copy of this game. I had to go out and by a DVD-CD Rom just to install it. This game was amazing at release. The tutorial was the best part. Miss my Bear Shaman
Thanks so much for this series, I played most of these games you go over and it's nice knowing what happened to them
The only thing I did in Age of Conan was knock people off bridges with my horse lol.
😂😂
THe only thing I Iremember from the beta was that my cuz started off blind and had to train eyesight.
Wait, you can do that? D: I always tried to kick em off but suddenly invincible wall!
SO YOU WERE THE ONE
@Snickeres 557 stfu simp
Ugh. Despite this game's flaws, I had such a blast playing it. I miss it terribly, and think of giving it another shot, but I know it's in vain. I made some amazing friendships that lasted years, and even through it met the person who is now my best online friend, and we've been gaming together for a decade. The music was wonderful, and the feel of the universe was so magical. We were all roleplaying Cimmerian warriors, and we ended up being respected and feared by the community. We had sieges, we had great drama, and tons of fun.
I feel like Khitai was such a terrible way to handle an ultimately MASSIVE expansion. It was so daunting and the bar of entry seemed so high that a majority of people never got to explore beyond the first map. In a way, that's lovely in theory, because it gives the impression of a dangerous, unforgiving world, but it was just hard to play the content since many people didn't even try.
I have such a love-hate relationship with Funcom. They have terrific ideas, and have this true talent of building amazing worlds. But they're just not great at managing or creating games. The Secret World is also another example of a game I wanted to see succeed so badly despite how fundamentally flawed it was.
God damnit, Funcom.
Love your videos man, I appreciate the amount of research and detail you put in them.
I think Age of Conan is still worth a try for people who played a long time ago or never played it at all.
The game got a lot of updates, a lot of quality of life changes, content updates and bugfixes. I just started the game again after a 1 and a half year break and I am still enjoying it (even though I did almost everything in the years before, played for almost 7 years non stop, best gear for several classes, ran dungeons for the 100th time, all classes on level 80 and so on).
The 2011 F2P was not good, F2P players had many restrictions but the F2P revamp in 2016 really was a good change, you can play everything without having premium you just can't have more than 10 Gold (which is kinda stupid in my opinion) and have to buy the expansions (like you have to do it for every other game) and they are very cheap (like 9€ - 15€ here in germany) but you can enter every raid dungeon / 6 man dungeon / playfield area and so on. The F2P revamp could be described as the old Premium / Membership, you have no decrease in EXP gain or anything else you just have the basic amount players had in the years 2008 - early 2016 before the revamp, players with premium just gain a little bit more in terms of relics, EXP and faction renown.
If you haven't tried the game yet, do it before it completely dies off, play on the server "Crom - PvE", there are still a lot of people and guilds there, ranging from casual / beginner guilds to "professional" end game guilds. There is a lot of stuff to do, mob grinding is almost not needed (only in very few cases but you can basically ignore them) and the games story lines are still incredible.
Really appreciating the new audio quality. Well done Nerdslayer :)
So, what games are on your 'less-than-a-handful' list that managed a comeback? I want to know if I'm missing something I should give another chance to!
I'm guessing ESO is one of them
@@AmorphisBob why would u respond to a 6 year old comment? That guy is probably dead by now
Man, I'm so glad you gave a proper amount of time to talk about this game's music and sound design. For everything it got wrong, the atmosphere and the way to audio complimented it was nothing short of fucking mastery in game design.
Dude, I friggen LOVE these videos and analysis. Well done, great idea, thanks man.
this series is really great.
i would suggest that, somehow throughout the video, you could do a visual representation of the time elapsed between the different events. maybe it could be ever present on the bottom or shown where we are in the timeline in cut-in images. i hope you make more
The 3 horsemen of the gaming apocalypse:
- Survival
- Open World
- Crafting
Kickstarer... DLC microtransactions.. yeah way more
I really love this series please keep doing them, they make me very happy!
"Barbarian" was called "Barbarian", not "Conan". You can see it right there in the screenshot. I liked that game, although there was too much rolling. :P It wasn't licensed, although heavily inspired by it (and even used the Conan main theme drums).
Are you talking about age of Conan game or something else?
When I was 'told' there were no variations in the tutorial, he lost me. There are 3 distinct paths in the tutorial, all telling about the same situation from different perspectives and quest objectives. Bad info is bad info, regardless of the over-all truth.
I remember sitting in the Ventrilo channel of my WoW guild and one of my guildmates was raving about the game for the week leading up to its launch. Then we didn't see him for another week. He comes back after that just absolutely destroying the game.
I don't think I've ever experienced something that had so much hype and lost so much potential that quickly.
Just started a few weeks ago and im having blast. Even with the lack of voice acting outside of tortage this game is still great. Still one of the most unique mmos on the market.
YES! TABULA RASA! so excited for this! Great videos man!
Never played an MMO past the trial, but these long in depth overviews/ accounts of these games is extremely interesting. Keep up the good work.
Combat, atmosphere and immersion and the soundtrack oh my god the soundtrack,all were the best to this day in MMO genre
I love age of conan till this day but i understand the frustration of players. The tutorial is so good makes the rest of the game feel blend. The system is great, the ost is awesome, the story is great... but funcon stopped reading foruns and listening to us. So sad.
those funcom forums were such a riot from the beginning. I learned much of what I know about vitriol, bad service and name calling from those forums
The 2004 Conan game was not only Europe. It was also released in North America.
I love this series. Please continue to make more videos like this.
@ 6:50 Ahh yes, players entering conversations... I remember I was playing a female character and a male player took off his pants, walked up to my camera, and showcased his junk front and center. He knew which direction my camera was facing during the conversation. It's that kind of unique experience you'll never get in a single-player game.
what a nostalgia your video brought!... and I agree -> there is a justified reason why a word "Failcom" exists (to be written, said or most probably screamed by every AoC player from time to time) :)
but in the end AoC was by far the best time I had in gaming. especially as a raid leader back in times when t2&t3 was in a progression category, not under-level farm. guild members were regular friends, community was mature, friendly and helpful ... really good times
no matter the grind, bugs and seeming lack of content - this game played well, looked well and music was simply excellent, it had a spell ... ohh and plenty of gore and nudity - that also helped :D ;)
I've honestly never played an MMO in my life (not the traditional kind, anyway), but for some reason I really love your videos. You have a very good style of narration that manages to engage without being distracting. I find your videos a great way to pass time when I'm doing other more boring projects that take my attention away from the screen itself, which is always a good thing in my opinion.
The sound was so good, they reused it in Conan exiles
I really miss the excitement of starting a new mmo like this one back in the day. I walked around with the hud off soaking in the ambience of this game many times.
Pirates of The Burning Sea should get one of these. As a closed beta player for that one, I have never seen another MMO crash and burn so hard as a result of mismanagement after all the hype since SWG.
Thankfully a similar game came and is being worked on: Naval Action and is close to the original vision for PoTBS.
Valarius J. I enjoyed POTBS, but Naval Action seems to have a bit of controversy surrounding it at the moment. Things present and former players have been saying in reviews has left me skeptical of the title for now.
Oh? What happened? Truth be told I haven't played Naval Action in several months so I haven't kept up with it. Last I played it though it was pretty fun even if a bit lacking in content, even for an early access game.
the ship battle was amazing but when you got on land it was horrible.
PotBS would be a good one to do. The developer running that show did their best to run it aground.
Never mind, the devs of Naval Actions are running it into the ground as we speak.
Man, I was so fucking into this game back in the day, I had, for a first time in my life, created and moderated my own guild that had 200+ people in it. Was a different sensation than what I was used to. I was proud of the accomplishments we were able to do even though I never bought the expansions or 'Paid Membership' to get the end-game-everything content. The whole 'Building your own castle and village' behind walls that your guild had to pain-stakingly devote resources into was fucking awesome. We had an awesome castle, gate, and an impressive amount of devoted loyalists who helped get a lot done. They were great times, but many were frustrating too, the pay-walls and the lag/unoptimization of some levels? How they butchered and simplified the combat system? ehhhn...
I remember many of my hours were devoted to recruiting people in the start-game hub/island. Black Annihilus, good times.
Can't get enough of your content!!!
The musical score to this game composed by Knut Avenstroup Haugen is so good. Kreygasm
Nice review. I played AoC since 2009 till recently. The best times playing it were in PvP servers before the PvE focused Rise of Godslayer expansion. It is the bloody epic battles wich i will remember not the imbalance or bugs anyway.
Age of Conan was awesome
was? is! Crom pve :)
@@Slow9402 No, was.
i played this when it was new, 10 years ago. almost everyone rolled female, went topless around town and never really played the game. starting zone was amazing and then it feels like empty zone after empty zone cuz i have no other memories of that game except the guild housing they advertised wasn't in the game for years to come.
Really hope for a wildstar video at somepoint!
TheZamphire he already did one.
Where its not in his uploads o,o
Huh, I just looked at his list. I swear I've seen on if from Nerdslayer before. Weird.
Theres a series called MMO graveyard. Maybe you're thinking of that?
That's it. I figured he changed the name because be were bitching " but that game isn't dead" I guess he took them down.
Love this Death of the Game series, keep em coming :D
Never played the game but i was waiting for the 360 release, really like the video. Great style and very informative
I grew up watching my parents play this as officers of Knights of Ironspine. I watched them be some of the first clear raids, as a child even taking over for them at times during these. I saw my father commit some of the greatest trolls in history, such as going into hide on his Demonologist anf blowing up a wagon in Atzel's approach, that would lure in a huge mob of enemies, then quickly go into hide. He would create entire graveyards while bored. I while playing pvp on this very demonologist would go to a ice and lava pvp map, kill my pet, hide, and knock back people into lava, which hilariously wouldn't even give me pvp points.
I had once even watched my father on this demonologist fight the Khitan Golem 1v1 after it attacked him. A GM got involved in that one.
My family enjoyed the game well into the late game.
Regarding the Steam player count:
It's not representive at all, 90% of all people don't play with Steam, most of them use the client you can directly download from the site. Sure, it does not have a really high player count but it's probably 5 or 6 times higher than what Steam shows.
If you never tried it, give it a try. There is a lot of content to do for newcomers, play on the PvE server Crom for the best population (big end game guilds, starter guilds, random groups / raids and much more all day long).
Lol what? A majority of people using pc play on steam.
You would be surprised...
Robert Harris MMO players generally don’t. It doesn’t make as much sense.
@@robertharris6092 That is partly true for games they've purchased on steam IF they originally launched on Valve's platform, but hardly for MMOs that use their own launchers because it literally adds an extra step in launching the game. Even if a game is on steam, as long as it has its own launcher, players tend to go the second route. It's even more so for MMORPGs that launched previously off-steam, years ago, and have been put onto steam years after. Examples are DDO, LOTRO, Neverwinter, and others. That being said, most AoC players have had the game since before Unchained "relaunched" on Steam, and I would presume that those are the players that have stuck around the most.
Don't be so one-dimensional, lol what.
Not AOC tho, since it was released on steam several years later..@@robertharris6092
Loved this game. Played it for like 4years. This game made me love mmorpgs. Low Lvl pvp was the bomb!!
God damnit nerdSlayer, your videos actually make me a bit emotional since every single one of them , and the games i've played, makes me think of different groups of friends I've played these games with (some I still keep in contact with, others i've lost contact with completely)
I had such high hopes for AOC, not as a WoW killer, but just as a world
The newbie area was one of the best areas I've ever seen in a game, period. Single player or mmo. It was just amazing, and the combat felt refreshing compared to the tab targetting we were used to in these games
I enjoyed this video very much, keep up the good work, also very much excited for Tabula Rasa!
whoa 37 minutes? must have been an asston of work. thanks nerdslayer
tortage was such a great start to the game so sad that the rest was such a flop :(
the music made me so nostalgic.... oh the feels
thx. great video. was looking excatly for that
Really good, thorough coverage :-)
Age of Conan is and will always be my all time favourite mmorpg. There is something about the game engine that makes the world feel solid and real. Hyboria, along with Middle Earth, is surely the most complete and immersive worlds. Maybe Funcom shoulda taken the Lord of the Rings Online route and just done a World of Warcraft clone set to interesting lore.
But sadly, pretty much everything said in this video is true. I still play AoC on occasion, but I'm often left feeling a bit sad thinking about what might have been :(
You put it so right about 'solid and real'. It's very impressive game even for an experienced and bored gamer. This game is the best tribute R. Howard and Hyborea had, ever, IMO
I built a new computer for this game, played it then went to The burning crusade when that launched, then played warhammer online when that launched but then I went back to TBC when that was a fail
I've been binging on these videos: Really dig your informative style cataloging how these MMOs died off.
...The lack of music on this one is kinda spooky though.
Great! Review. Best new youtube channel. Glad to see you're gettin the attention you deserve for these polished videos.
I never tried AoC at launch. I hopped on right after the first expansion, Rise of the Godslayer launched. I thought the game was great! It seemed to have a ton of quality content after the starter area of Tortage. Didn't have much trouble with bugs. The population was pretty sparse. But over all I had a very fun time playing out so much Conan lore. The devs were pretty good about staying close to Robert E. Howard's vision of Hyboria. I loved the Conan setting, combat, fatalities, graphics. There is an excellent blend of brutality and beauty to the presentation and art style. The music was fantastic. I think it is among the best video game music to be had, bar none.
So I for one loved my time with Age of Conan. Mostly played single player, grouping up for tough quests. Dabbled some in PvP. Have not tried Exiles. I do not know if it has the depth and attention to detail of the MMO. I have played some other MMOs. Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft,. Lord of the Rings, Dark Age of Camelot, among others, but AoC remains by far my favorite.
Until playing AoC my only exposure to Conan were the Arnie movies from the 1980s. But after playing the game for a bit, I became curious about the source material. I picked up a book of Howard's original Conan stories and kind of read along as I played. It was then I came to understand how much the devs were inspired by Howard's stories. The locations were all there and rendered just the way I had imagined. Quests were taken from plots in the stories, and actual characters names were used. Frank Frazetta's art was also a source of inspiration. I liked to play as a Barbarian made to look as much like Conan as I could. I was up to my knees in snow, swinging my two handed sword, fighting Frost Giants when I realized, this is Frank's painting! The scene was identical. I am telling you, the devs were inspired by and faithful to the source material, big time.
Funcom really does do a good job with the LORE aspect of their games. The Secret world is literally frothing over with lore and backstory and immersive content.
When you realize they created REAL LIFE websites for FAKE locations in the game world just so you can look them up to find clues to solving puzzles in the game itself... For example the first area is a fictional place in maine, and if you look it up, you will find a website in the form of a fake town hall style community website about the town and it's history and all kinds of crap. Many quests in the first zone require going to this website, or ones like it for other factions in the game to find clues or maps, or things to help you do things like find the password of a corporate employee, or find the history of the town to figure out where to go. It's intense, especially if played with a friend who likes that kind of stuff too.
It dawns on you how much they were trying to make an early predecessor to an Augmented Reality game where the game bleeds into the real world to some degree. When TSW eventually gets unplugged, I will be devastated, even if I am not playing it any more, because I don't think anyone will ever come close to what TSW did right.
you have very low standards never played a game with so much bugs.
FateBinder Today people keep saying that the MMO genre is dying, mostly because they limit themselves having the same old "kill X of Y" quests, instead of having a player driven economy like EVE.
Well, to me the apex of MMO gaming was the augmented reality from TSW, like you said. Damn, that isn't an idea any developer could have had, that's beyond original. I still remember most of TSW quests, and I played it at launch. For me, it was "The Witcher 3" of the MMOs. I really can't understand why people still underestimate that game.
Funcom is clueless when it comes to running and implementing stuff i heard secret world did get better over time, but for me it was to late i tried the beta felt the game was very underwhelming and i didn't want get burned with this game then i did with AoC
I loved Age of Conan. It pains my heart to see and hear the beautiful game music and scenic vistas i remember with such fondness. I am an avid fan of the classic fantasy of Robert. E. Howard and the lore of this game was so true to the books, it was like a dream come true.
Unfortunately Funcom has a terrible managerial/corporate culture, and their business models for subscriptions, marketplace, and even vanity/cosmetics was just exploitatively bad. There was never an acknowledgement of shrinking playerbase, no recognition of player loyalty and long-term subs, while the party-line of Funcom was that everything is just fine.
I still think the game is gorgeous on max settings, the world design is breathtaking, and the music is ethereally haunting. If any other company other than Funcom was handling the game and could rebuild their in-game and behind-the-scenes infrastructure, I'd start playing it again in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's a good game that is saddled with very obvious horrible cash-squeezing attempts to milk the playerbase without investing back into the game's upkeep and development.
I couldn't agree more!
I hope for another mmorpg related to the Hyborian world. Sword and Sorcery forever
☝️ I agree. It was a fantasy world for me and I enjoyed being there. The setting was incredible and the melancholy music, well, it made me feel at home.
☝️ I agree. It was a fantasy world for me and I enjoyed being there. The setting was incredible and the melancholy music, well, it made me feel at home.
I am really enjoying your content so far, the whole 'death of a game' seems something new and is really well researched, giving us a nice insight on a game's downfall. Please do make more of these videos! Great job my dude. What other games do you plan on covering?
definitely top ten most under rated channels on gaming in all of youtube. You are doing god's work by documenting these things sir. Never stop.
Ahh, Age of Conan. Game that I have returned so many times and left about as many times, most recently last years summer. The sheer amount of money consumed by it (purchased collectors edition of a game, than expansions, subscriptions and various other services) would be enough to fund a few mid performance PCs. From one perspective I never regretted spending money on that game but from the other I regretted very much spending it on Funcom, they deserved nothing and should have gone bankrupt long before. Too many times have they failed to deliver, too many times have they deceived community and all too often they tried to milk whatever they could milk - look at last 3 years of AoC, they added before that gorgeous Dragon Spine only to left it unfinished and than baited players with various options, summer/spring/anniversary/winter bundles just to milk more and more. Whole T5 was the cheapest move ever, I enjoyed tactics a lot but that's about it, rest was just same old content. Or T6 that was "almost" good except being another token farm. Plug should have been pulled long ago but instead its left floating on ice, though at least now community is not getting deceived anymore with new runes, ugly as f**k mounts (oh wait !) and some social useless items. Now people know that its over.
The biggest problem of this game was poor execution combined with financing model. Subscription was never cheap but it was somewhat acceptable until fake f2p when subscription remained mandatory but spending money in item shop became a standard as well. They just always seemed to have wanted to steal more money from me, I dunno if that was only me, but I just always had the feeling with whatever they were doing or planning to do, that yet again they want to grab more cash before they shut it down. Few games gave me that awkward feeling of developer only wanting to stick his dirty hand into my pocket and take every last penny there. Since Dragon Spine there was almost no content development (last years arena was fun but ... after so many years it was like a joke, fighting players or pets in arena for all the same subscription ?) and it seems that those few years playerbase was funding development of Secret World and Conan Exiles. Not quite what one would expect when he was spending on specific product.
I have to disagree with some points though, Turan for example was a great and so unique expansion that added more variety during leveling and gave some end game content as well (well, at least until they nerfed T 3.5 and made it casual friendly) - location was just nice looking, music was awesome, those separate islands added more flavor and instances like Fort Ardashir were challenging while also gave a lot of benefits. I really enjoyed it and consider it a big shame that there wasn't more of it. Turan had a lot of potential. One thing that they made wrong was T 3.5 raid, while harder than T4 for the most part, it was shorter and rewards were just not worth the challenge. Some items or weapons were great and most got them soon after they nerfed it.
Also, after all this years it wasnt even lack of content, but ultimately even death of old content. With more and more gear grind that at some point turned into token grind (starting with Khitai years before and ending with T5/T6 most recently) - a never ending token grind. At the same time all those additions to the game, higher and higher tiers and eventually crapastic World Bosses left no reason to explore old content. T1/T2 and even T3 became pointless when one could get most of loot from world boss farm, or recently with farming raid finder. Ultimately they have reduced depth of game and flattened the experience with poor excuses for doing so. I'm not even going to touch topics that brought me to the game in first place like PvP, Sieges (anyone who participated those in the early stages must have experienced 2-3 FPS fights, almost like it would be turn strategy or chess game), Crafting and so many things. Promises that never happened and failures that only made things worse.
I'm sorry for this rather lengthy comment but to squeeze ten years of hype, fun, experience, disappointment and disgust is not an easy thing. Frankly, it would deserve a proper article or even series of articles to show others - dont screw like Funcom did. And dont buy Funcom ever again, they never learn.
At least EA wasn't running it
You're right, I have exactly the same feelings. One of the best MMOs in game history. One of the best music tracks ever. A brilliant combat system, a wonderful world.
Funcom has been killing this game for years and holds out his hands for players' money
All in all very interesting and i liked the video. I think you should have made it more clear that its optional if u want to play the game trough steam, which makes your numbers from steam innacurate since most of the veterans play it outside steam.
Great video and excellent channel man. Keep them coming!
The starting area in Cimmeria was amazing. I was in The Round Table guild on Crom. The game was always well populated. The guilds were thriving the first years. Had a lot of fun raiding as a priest of mitra. Also pvp was quite a lot of fun.
You should do a video on Firefall! That game had such a convoluted development story
i backed that game back when it was announced.. ugh what a load of shit
Can't blame you, it looked promising as hell. It had some really experienced people behind it and it looked and felt really good
I agree with the overwhelming majority of this video, with one small thing about AMD video cards, I was able to use utility program from amd to correct the FPS. And I would like a video on Shadowbane
I miss this game so much. I used to immerse myself in the world they created. And yes the amazing soundtrack helped a lot. I have mostly good memories of AoC and some painful ones of grinding mobs because of the lack of content.
I like your looks at these games. I saw your one about Star Wars Galaxy awhile ago but didn't sub, but I'm glad this one popped up in my feed! Subscribed!
Interesting video. The game really did look like it had a lot of potential.
Sweet! I always look forward to new Death of a Game episodes. I honestly don't know how you don't have more subs, but you can at least count me amongst the current ones!
Conan was created 85 years ago, not 76 (1932 - 2017)...
A great game that I subbed to for the first 2 years through all the endless Noble District grind. I continued to revisit and re-sub to many times until a few years back when I finally just gave up on it. I still like to visit now it is FtP.
New news for Age of Conan: In early 2018, we will be introducing a saga server to Age of Conan. A
saga server is a unique server that is live for a limited period of time
and comes with unique rewards for completing objectives. All players
will start with a fresh, new character that will be transferred to Crom
after the saga server’s live period ends, along with any earned rewards.
Players will be able to claim rewards on a single character of their
choosing.
I'd be very interested I hearing about the matrix online!
Yes please! I want to hear about that one.
oh yeah, I wasn't into subscription mmo's back then so I missed out on thatone. Would like to know what exactly happened to it.
Wow... Theres people that remember Mxo? Lol
I still have my copy of MxO!
I remember that I didn't play it long it wasn't as good as path of neo imo
Glad to see this video, I was young when this game was being hyped up (10 or so) and remember thinking it's sieges, guild cities and real time combat (I also remember the archery being legitimate like aiming and extra damage for headshots) including mounted combat with mammoths would be the coolest best mmo ever. It was disappointing that the project was unable to implement the goals they had, and while I got to play it briefly it felt like it was very hollow.
Love this channel. And all these videos. Great content. Keep it up and you'll be boasting hordes of subscribers.
I think you forgot to mention that there is no cheat detection in Age of Conan. So people can download a free speed hack, or use comber, without repercussions. This virtually ruined pvp in the game. Guys getting 30 some kills because they do more dmg then everyone else. Combos taking less time to complete...this to me is a huge reason people quit. All my friends quit over this and we played the game for years 09-14. Only I come back once in a while to see how it's doing. You have the same people joining mini games soaking up kills using cheat engine. There is no more open world pvp, especially in NA times.
Not sure what servers you were playing on, but I never ran into any cheaters on NA from the years of 09-14 and I was an avid pvp'er. Although I did get a good amount of false accusations. I assume this was due to the huge skill gap in AOC which is one of the reasons for it's pvp popularity.
@@pbarb726 That is surprising because Cheat engine and aoc buddy was popular then. Cheat engine is the cheat everyone still uses to this day...well the remaining 12 people that pvp there. They also have a paid hack called "comber" which melded combos together to cause extra dmg. A lot of people pretend it isn't a problem, calling people newbs etc if they see hacking/cheating. I have 4 pvp 10's. But I will say, NA had way less cheaters then EU/Russia. When they merged the servers TONS of people up and quit because it was so bad
@@pbarb726 Oh and I played on Tyranny server, which became Fury after the merges took place. I played pre Cimmeria/Tyranny merge.
secret world is awesome the combat is not the best but the setting and story are great.still has an active player base so its not dead yet.
My thoughts too, it have a VERY dedicated following
Supposely Secret World is doing a revamp or something but much like City of Heroes. Its barely alive but with dedicated people.
Its going FTP with new starter zones, sounds like its taking the guild wars 2 route,Buy the game to unlock exclusive content
Comparing Funcom to AAA titles by the likes of Blizzard or SquareEnix is unfair though. They rarely have the economic resources comparable to a fraction of those companies and they never have had anything resembling that work force. They are good at making their games look and sound on par with something like that, but underneath that they are really quite a small company that can't keep up with the content-creation speed that people expect from MMOs on that level. This is their main problem when it comes to MMOs, people come into them with expectations of things that it would be flat-out impossible for them to deliver consistently. I really think they backed the wrong horse when they decided to ditch adventure games to focus their resources on MMOs. If they had stuck to what was within their means and what accentuated their strengths (plot, sound, visuals and innovation) they might have built up the means to do the successful, reliable, blockbuster MMOs they clearly want to make, rather than being stuck in the feed-back loop of having to constantly invest resources in things that, while usually good, don't have the longevity for most players that they need to grow as a company in this genre.
It's been buy to play for a very long time, just like guild wars. I bought it when it came out, and have been playing it off and on for free and as a sub since then.
Actually, as you get higher in your characters abilities, you have less and less reason to buy a membership. Instead you start wanting new zones to explore, so they ding you for new content expansions (called issues) that if you buy them all, is close to 120$. Not a bad racket for funcom.
Awesome and well researched video! Made me like and subscribe on a instant (And made me watch the entire series) I do hope Tabula Rasa is somewhere on your list too, it's quite the story!
I sometimes forget how amazing the music is in this game.
All stocks dropped in 2008 due to the recession. Not a good view of the game.
This series is neat.
AoC should've focused on quality quest and lore content. Basically, Tortage throughout the whole game.
I love your content mate, keep it up! Great video!
God I love the first 20 levels. The music and atmosphere and everything is just... ahhh.
Why is there squirrels in the desert? Were they staying in the same hotel? Nobody will ever know....
Rofl. Not my best an analogy, thanks for the laugh
I love this series, dude, keep it up!
the music though. my god it was unbelievable.