Age of Conan – A Fun Diversion

Indicative of my continuing disinterest in ESO, I downloaded and installed Age of Conan and played for a good four or five hours over the weekend. Enough time to get my highest level character, a Dark Templar, from level 55 to level 57. (I honestly do not remember what role the Dark Templar is, but I have a sword and shield.)

Also enough time for me to remember why I don’t play AoC all the time.

But before I get to that, there is a lot to like about Age of Conan. It has a very unique and interesting combat style that I have not seen in any other MMO, including all the new action-based games. AoC is particularly good at melee combat. And if you like complicated hotkey rotations and combinations, this game has got you covered. And hey, it’s free.

The other thing I love about Age of Conan is the realistic look and style of the game. It’s similar to ESO actually, and it still looks pretty darn good for a 2008 game. Personally I think it looks better than ArcheAge. I love the Low Fantasy style of sword and sorcery that is in AoC. I wish there were more games like it, or an Age of Conan 2. Or better yet, an Age of Some-IP-Not-Owned-By-Someone-Else 2.

But here’s the problem with AoC: It gets tedious. The TTK is pretty high. (TTK means Time-To-Kill, a term I just recently learned, and indicates how long it takes to kill your average monsters.) While it is fun to do all kinds of neat-looking sword combinations and fight huge packs of mobs, when it takes an hour to fight your way to a quest objective, then another hour to fight your way back to the quest giver, it can get old. And the monsters just keep spawning and spawning. The number of mobs you have to fight reminds me of playing an Action RPG like Diablo.

Anyway, it was a fun trip down memory lane. Maybe one day I will get a character up to level 80.

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