Hi again all! Today I will Review the Release Ver. of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, please understand that this Review is only relavent today and will not mean much in the distant or maybe even near future. First I will state my experience time ingame: I was in PvP Weekend, Early Access, and now 2 days into release. I have also been studying this game for over two years and have been in a community AoC guild for around 6 months now. My community guild (which is now ingame) has around 50-80 members and is growing by vast numbers everyday. I am on server Tyranny and am lvl15 now :).

I will start my review by speaking of the manner of MMO AoC is:

• Levels 1 ~ 10 - In a completely instanced world where you learn your beginning skills and how combat/movement works.

• Levels 11 ~ 20 - Takes place in the starting town, Tortage. Here you have other low levels as yourself and a multitude of quests. These quests are in 2 parts

• Single-Player - This is "Night" ver. of Tortage where you are instanced in the town. In this night ver of Tortage npcs and enemies are moved and this give the town a darker, more lonely feeling than the day time.

• Multi-Player - You are given the choice to switch in and out of the multiplayer and singleplayer vers of Tortage. Daytime is signafied as Multiplayer and Night time is Singleplayer.

• Levels 20 ~ 80 - Full Persistant World with few instanced areas.

                 Now this is not a new type of MMO by any means, but I feel that AoC is unique in how it is implemented. You start on a deserted beach, so of course you are alone and shouldnt see others running around like yourself. Then you reach the first town where you really only see others within your level range, this allows for many people to interact around the same level without having to deal with the high traffic that comes with higher levels. This also allows for all characters to start in the same place, again without having heavy overcrowding, which means less time on lower level areas and more for higher levels. Then after you leave the first city you are basicly "full grown" or an "adult" and you are allowed to go where ever you want, granted you can handle the enemies there. I understand that this may sound a tad bias because I've stated the good to this and not the possibly bad but rest assured that I will get there :).

              As I was saying previously this kind of gradual merge from single to multiplayer works out in this game, but I think it only does because of the very indepth story line. This is only the second MMO I've played where I actually enjoyed the cut scenes and/or story line, in most I skip past any story and get on with it.

             The Equipment and Items seem to be completely randomized. I have received multiple items of the same levels that are completely different than eachother in stats. Also at low levels there are new pieces to aquire every 2 levels or so, though like in most games that have items and quest rewards, these reward items usually are much stronger than the normal drops of that level. Also all gear worn, excluding jewelry (as far as I can tell you cannot see rings and such), can be seen seperately. This means that each of the 8 different part of the body can be seperately customized and when wearing different sets it is very obvious that you are doing so. There are 3 levels of armor: Cloth, Light, Medium.

     Character creation in AoC is near the best, if not the best, I've seen in an MMO. Here is a list of the options for creating your character:

The format here is: "Character attibute - Amount of options"

• Character Sounds - 5
• Size - 3 (A triangular diagram with: thin, big, muscular)
• Height - Which is a slider
• Skin Color - 4
• Bodily Markings - 26
• Facial Markings - 25
• Facial Expressions - 10
• Eye Colors - 6
• Hair: 
• Head - 20
• Facial - 11
• Colors - 6
• Advanced Options - This includes seperate body part sizes and Head customization
• Body Part sizes - 6 (head, arms, legs, torso, etc.)
• Face - 25 (including nose, ears, eyes, chin and jawline)

      There are also 3 cultures and 12 classes, each culture is limited to class selection based on the history of each culture. these include:

• Cultures
• Aquilonian
• Cimmerian
• Stygian
• Classes - are broken up into 4 genres of classes
• Soldiers
• Guardian - Tank class utilizing heavy defense and using most all melee weapons
• Dark Templar - Melee class that utilizes dark magic with melee attacks (Like a melee warlock of sorts)
• Conquerors - Melee class that utilizes Auras to make allies stronger (Paladin of sorts)Priests
• Priest
• Priest of Mitra - Healing class, most basic form of a priest
• Tempest of Set - Healing class that utilizes small melee weapons
• Bear Shaman - Healing class that also utilizes small melee weapons and augementation spells
• Rogue
• Barbarian - Like the Guardian class but using light armor for a speedier melee class
• Assassin - A Dual wielding stealth class that can go invisible to most
• Ranger - Mainly using Bows/Crossbows but with the ability to defend in melee
• Mage
• Demonologist - A summoner of demons, most spells take from the players own life force
• Herald of Xotli - Can transform oneself to attack as a melee class while using only light equipment in human form
• Necromancer - Like most necros this class can reanimate the dead and give bonuses to allies through its dark powers

              As I stated before each culture is limited, usually to about 8 out of 12 classes, this is based on the beliefs of each culture. This increases the chances that people will pick for varied classes and characters making it less common to see a class/culture that is the same as yours. On top of this each class starts getting feat points starting at level 10, as far as I've seen there are 3 different feat trees for each class, further giving each player the oppurtunity to costumize there class even further giving even smaller chance of finding someone exactly like yourself.

     Ok as stated earlier in this article, I would get to the downside of AoC, or possible downsides:

•  To start I will say that the servers do get completely full forcing you to be in queue to get on your server. This queue usually lasts about 3 mins, though I have never been put on queue for longer than the time stated when put in to queue.

• Also on PvP servers though a lot of the earlier areas aren't open pvp, there are many areas that are. This makes it difficult to complete simple acts, including doing quests or just simple grinding on enemies. I have been forced multiple times already to ask my guild leaders for help in completing quests in these pvp areas. Now I understand that it was my choice to play on a PvP server, but at times this can very frustrating to people who don't have others to help or who have to wait for help impeding on there time to level and keep up with majority of the game.

• The only other thing that I can really complain about is the constant loading screens. These occur whenever you go inside most any building and of course when entering dungeons. Once you've loaded the first time (from my experience)  the loading screens last only 2-4 secs, still if you're going in and out of a building this can get annoying.

     Now be sure that this is not a Complete review, due to the fact that I am not that far ingame and have not experienced a lot of stuff yet. Once I have experienced this stuff I will rewrite this review adding the new information that I have and possibly the new score.   Thanks for reading and I would love to hear others opinions on this game. Will it be the WoW killer? or is it just Hype? Only you can make this decision by playing or not playing....What will you choose?

Score: 9/10

Pros:

• Indepth Character Creation
• Early levels in instances mean less lag overall
• Very good quality graphics, sounds, and Voice overs
  

Cons:

• Lots of Zoning
• High Traffic on Servers