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Beautiful but small.
Posted On 06/19/2008 14:11:57 by Clyo

Disclaimer: long post today

There is one thread on the official forum that caught my attention yesterday, linkie to it here, personnal attacks against the OP put aside, most of the posters opinion are true. It's not that AoC is a linear game that I was agreeing with, it's that AoC doesn't offer much choice of where to level up.

AoC is awesomely beautiful but very small if we compare it to what other games had to offer at launch. It's a game where making alts quickly becomes boring  instead of enjoying exploration and new adventures in a new land. In AoC there is only the racial *starting* zone that is different, oh and the housing of course but you can't really level steadily in those zones, you get attacked when harvesting but there is no camp offering lots of mobs to grind or many quests. Most mobs available are preys anyway and they come in a wide variety of levels, no good for leveling when 1 or 2 in the herd is good for you.

For a simple comparison, lets take 3 games at launch:

Everquest
cities: Freeport, Halas, Grobb, Neriak, Qeynos, Oggok, Rivervale, Surefall Glade, Qeynos Catacombs, Erudin, Paineel, Felwithe, Kaladim, Kelethin, Ak'Anon


- wow ok that's 15 zones and all were useful, players were using bank, tradeskilling, socializing, buying spells etc.

World of Warcraft
cities: Stormwind, Darnassus, Orgrimmar, Undercity, Thunderbluff, Ironforge

- 6 cities but all major gathering points for trainers and vendors etc...

AoC
cities: Khemi, Old Tarentia, Conarch village

- mmhmm... only 3 and the only use for them is if you need to travel for a location to another or use the trader or respecc your feats. Most of the players are passing by quickly or on a quest.


Now for leveling zones 1-20

Everquest 1 :
1-20: qeynos catacombs, Befallen, Blackburrow, east commonlands, eastern plains of karana, everfrost, the Ferrott, Gorge of King Xorbb, Highpass Hold, Innothule Swamp, Kithicor Forest, Lake Rathetear, Lavastorm Mountains, Misty Thicket, Najena, Nektulos Forest, Northern desert of Ro, Northern plains of Karana, Oasis of Marr, Permafrost Keep, Qeynos hills, Rathe Mountains, Runnyeye Citadel, Southern desert of Ro, Southern plains of Karana, Upper Guk, West commonlands, Western plains of Karana, Erud's Crossing, Kerra Island, Stonebrunt Mountains, Toxxulia Forest, The Warrens, Butcherblock mountains, Crushbone, Dagnor'S cauldron, Estate of Unrest, Greater Faydark, Lesser Faydark, Ocean of Tears, Steamfont mountains.

- omg I can't believe I wrote all that lol. 41 zones to level up in your first 20 levels ***41***  at launch AND many of those zones had higher level parts where you could come back to hunt different kind of mobs at higher levels.
- ***NONE*** of the 41 zones are small pocket zone done in 20 min like spider caves, maze, sanctum in AoC. And I am not talking about the 20-40+ zones.

World of Warcraft
1-20: Elwynn Forest, Durotar, Tyrisfal Glade, Teldrassil, Dun Morogh, Mulgore, Ragefire Chasm, Westfall, Silverpine Forest, Loch Modan Darkshore, The Barrens, Redridge Mountains, Stonetalon Mountains, The Deadmines and Wailing Caves at the entrance.

- 16 zones, not EQ but not bad at all! 16 is still a lot of choices. Of course if you are Alliance good luck trying to reach a Horde zone for leveling, but it can be done!

Age of Conan
1-20: Tortage city and surroundings (couple pirates, apes, cats), white sands isle, acheironian ruins, underhalls/Askia/dungeon keeps (so small that I'll put them all as one zone since not a lot of mobs can be found there unless you are totally alone hunting there), there is also a cave at the end of the docks where you can hunt snakes and scorpions.

- 5 zones in all. 2 true zones for leveling and 3 others small zones.

Ranting and hopes

... ok, is there a pattern here? Lets get lazy with the years? 41 leveling zones to 16 to 5. And if we take the level 20-40 leveling zones it's 9 for AoC (some small instances), WoW has 24 in that level range and EQ has 34 zones.

What I wanted to demonstrate with those numbers is that with the years, games have managed to make the games more beautiful but more restricted. In EQ you had so many places to level that you could make 5 alts and have them all level up in different places! It's even more true today with the expansions but I wanted to compare games at launch only.

In AoC, say Tortage to anyone who did it 5 times already either over the first month to try to find the class for their playstyle, or for leveling an alt.... it was cool the first time, maybe the second... sorry I will vomit if I have to go through another tortage or Conall's valley once more. I am sick tired of the same mobs all the time and skip voice acting on my alts (I did listened to everything on my first character though).

Was AoC supposed to be bigger or is it how the plans were for it? I dunno, leveling one character is very cool but alts... noooo way. Even in WoW is was less boring, choices were small but still acceptable. Everquest.... well EQ is still the king for variety and different options, if only all zones were revamped with new graphics (a lot are but not all), and also new character skins, and if only they had put quests like in Serpent Spine expansion in the old world, it would draw back a lot of players (we are talking about pve and raiders here not pvp).

So I look foward to slowly explore AoC, hopefully with only one character (choices narrowed on my demonologist or my assassin so far), until level 80 and see what is left to do. If nothing is implemented when I'll be there (am a slow leveler) then I'll cancel and come back when more content is added. The problem is, will my fiance Thorgun cancel before? He is extremely bored at always having to fight the same kind of mobs... vanirs, ymirs... seems like every zone we go into lately  it's those mobs that are there, eiglophyant mountains come into mind.

Links used for comparing number of zones:
Everquest
World of Warcraft
Age of Conan

I want so much to love this game, I really do, for goodness sake Funcom give us more zones! Developing a new game today has to keep in mind what players want and there are enough games out there to make a research and come out with an almost perfect game! Why the hell none of the companies do it then?

I have no idea how long it will take for me to get to level 80, maybe another month or 2 max if I really take my time and play VERY casualy (weekends gets us lots of levels lol), then it's probably bye bye AoC unless many things change and are implemented. So am crossing my fingers and wishing Funcom has many zones hidden in their sleeve that will be finished and released soon =D

Tags: AoC Review



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Viewing 1 - 4 out of 4 Comments

From: ISMurphy
06/22/2008 10:09:03

While I see the points and opinions, you have to take into account the following:


1 - EQ1 was made TOO big, even at launch, and still only a few zones were used for leveling effectively. travel was a nightmare, and many zones became and still are, a barren wasteland nobody goes to. while the options are there, it does not mean it a good thing to have 40 choices to the same answer. if given a choice most gamers are going to pick the path of least resistance and go with the faster or more friendly areas ( i.e. Gfay, FP, Oasis ( later Paludal Caervns ) etc.


2- AoC's game dynamic is geared towards PvP and player interaction, streamlining the zones and quests to bring the populace together encourages people to get in the mix with one another to do the things that having tons of wide open spaces and out of the way areas would seclude you from.


3 - I agree with Tortage, i have 3 characters i jostle between and being in open beta and early access have seen WAY more than my fair share of that forsaken island, but have streamlined it to take but a few hours to get off of there and through the quests and off the rock. i personally would love a different " starting point " to lead off with as i am sooo sick of that place.


4 - there are lots of viable places to level and a few choices, but you have to consider the ease of leveling compared to first gen MMO's. it is quite linear in teh locations you can head to but i have yet to find a location that did not offer varied quests, experience, and offerings.


5 - mobs are not hugely varied, but again you look at the world in which we play. low fantasy in Hyborea consists of basically 3 things: Humanoids, Wildlife, Demons and Unpleasantry. it is the world that limits the mobs not the design or lack of support, while not hugely varied in design, it is what this mythical age dealt with. so what we get.


bottom line is yes the world is comparably more tiny than some other MMO's but as far as leveling the only thing i have seen is past 60 things get a bit tight as far as actual grinding zones but there are viable instances, raid areas, and stuff to get ya through the hard times. already they have plans for 2 new zones and i am sure they will add more goodness after, but the point of it all is this - everything is used and utilized, making the zones, instances, and areas populated and of use instead of wastelands of digital yesterdays passed by the bigger, better, faster paced shiny places of today.


i LOVE this game, i've played every MMO under the sun and besides EQ1, this is the only one to really snag me in quite some time and there are many issues i'd like to see fixed, ideas to expand on, and many things can be improved. Funcom is making great strides to offer these things, there is a TON of space on the world map to fill, and i think people ( not saying you ) need to just calm down and stop the " gotta have it all right now " attitudes and accept the fact that this is a product of massive scale, is in its infancy, and has a lot of room to grow and expand. with what i have seen so far, i cannot wait to see what else is in store.


 


thanks for sharing your thoughts.


From: arcdrag
06/20/2008 11:21:32

While WoW has improved dramatically in leveling, and it has choices now as to where to level, some zones are 10x faster than others causing 99% of the population to flock to those zones to level.  For example, how many Horde level from 10-20 somewhere other than the Barrens? How many people from either side level from 32-42 anywhere else but STV?  Even though you had choices of where to level, it didn't do any good because no one did Badlands quests.  If you tried rolling a spec that is poor soloing (IE holy priest), you had no chance of finding a partner to quest with if you decided to go from 55-58 in Silithus instead of Plaguelands.  I never even stepped foot into Feralas until after they released a few new cooking recipes that were only sold there.  On another note, do any hordies really need any other city than Orgimmar?  Move the druid trainer and jewelcrafting trainer to org and delete all the other cities and most players wouldn't notice a difference to the game.  

Choices are nice, but IMO WoW has a lot of zones that do nothing but take up space on your hard drive.  


From: Clyo
06/19/2008 22:35:08


Emmeran wrote:

I found WoW to have really bad leveling at launch. Most of the zones had no quest givers and the ones that did had a very small amount, not enough to choose what quests you wanted to do.

I was more talking about many choices for leveling not quests specifica;y. WoW bred a new genre of players for whom leveling was done with questing in a very large part. Other games like DAoC, EQ etc. were more about hunting here and there with an occasional quest. But even with many quests (which I like by the way for leveling), AoC have very little zones to cut the monotony... well for now but it doesn't fare well if so little are available at launch.


From: Emmeran
06/19/2008 17:12:09

I found WoW to have really bad leveling at launch. Most of the zones had no quest givers and the ones that did had a very small amount, not enough to choose what quests you wanted to do.


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