Age of Conan – First impressions

I gave in to my curiosity and picked up AoC the other day. I had been following this game for some time and it seemed as if it was doing things a little differently in terms of MMOs and this is basically what kept me interested all this time. Coming from WoW after 3 years of on/off play I consider myself an experienced MMO player so I figured it wouldn’t take me long to get to grips with AoC.

The first thing I noticed was the DX10 features being dropped for release and while I wasn’t too bothered about this, it seemed strange for a title boasting about it DX10 capabilities throughout beta to drop them in release. Aside from that the game is impressive visually by MMO standards even running in DX9. This however is where I experienced my first problem, the game’s performance. I have a pretty decent rig and even exceed the recommended settings for the game but that didn’t seem to matter. After having tweaked the settings over several days I still hadn’t reached a balance. Indoor areas are were no problem, however the outdoors is where my system was brought to its knees.

I can accept a new game of this genre having some minor issues at launch day and having to download patches for the first couple of weeks but when I can’t play the game without it freezing and locking up every 2 seconds I have a problem. Entering cities was a nightmare with my fps skipping anywhere from 50 – 2fps and my PC sounding like it was grinding itself to death. I even bit the bullet and lowered the game to the lowest possible settings but that still didn’t solve the problem. Even in that state, looking like a game from about 10 years ago did my issues persist. The problem seemed to be the loading of textures and models mainly and got me to the point where I did not want to play anymore. This isn’t a good sign seeing as I have only had the game for a few days.

Aside from those issues I thought the game was quite enjoyable although I’m still not used to the loading of all the different areas as I feel it really detracts from the experience. WoW did an excellent job of having a seamless world for the most part which I feel has spoilt me in this respect. The starting area is quite small and had some good quest lines with voice acting and all the trimmings. I was really impressed with that until of course I progressed to the next major city and thought my game was bugged as no one was talking anymore. As it turns out there is no voice acting for these NPCs which was a huge let down and made the game lose points in my book. I would have preferred not to have any voice acting to be honest at least that way I would not have been so disappointed.

The combat system was refreshing as well as I felt a lot more engaged in combat as opposed to a more traditional targeting system of past MMOs. Talking about the system would take too long in itself but suffice to say the real-time combat really works for this game and is one of its strong points. I joined a PvP server and it turned out to be an interesting choice as there was lots of clashing between players in the PvP allowed ‘zones’. It was also refreshing to get away from all the orcs and elves and just batter some good ole’ humans for a change. The game is gory and naturally receives a mature rating as some moves you pull off can dismember opponents which can be satisfying especially if you are being constantly attacked by the same player.

The user interface is capable but a little bland and could use some scaling options as I dislike having huge buttons thrown at me but that’s just my humble opinion. It does what it’s supposed to do but by no means is it slick.

I just want to mention the resource gathering as well. Each resource appeared to have a ‘health’ rating of 100% which recharged over time. Every time u gather a resource it knocked about 10% off untill there was 10% or less health left. The resource can no longer be gathered at this point until it was above 10% health effectively never letting it reach 0%. An interesting system but I found myself being massacred by higher level players for resources and hardly receiving any. This could pose a problem for lower level player’s at the moment while most people are just starting out but because the resources take so long to ‘regenerate’ it got extremely frustrating. Not to mention that I could hardly find any resources gathering ’spots’. I haven’t decided if I like it yet, maybe I need to spend more time with it to come to a fair conclusion but I found myself thinking that it was no fun halfway through a resource gathering quest.

It seems as I had a lot to complain about but in the end the game has a very unfinished feel to it and could have done with a few more months of polishing. It’s too late for that now and I guess its up to the devs to release patches and update the game as necessary but I’m still unsure of whether I will stay with AoC in its current state, I may wait several months until it has had some more time to be patched before I return.

Portfolio update

I’ve updated the portfolio section so you can check out the content here when you get a chance and feel free to leave any comments. There are two projects which have been added; the first is a clone of the original Gorillas game as seen in the image above and the second is a 3D spaceship model. There are still more projects to come though so stay tuned for updates in the near future.

The end of the road

After a week of some good R&R, it’s time for my final assessment at Uni then it will all be officially over. Lucky for me it’s not a exam but instead just a personal viva so it should be interesting. It’s supposedly going to last an hour or at least that’s how much time has been allotted but I don’t know what I’m going to talk about for 50 minutes. I still can’t believe it, in a couple of hours it will all be over, 4 years at University. It has gone so quickly and I can still remember the first day I moved into res in the first year, boy time flies.

It’s been a great journey for me and while it got difficult and challenged me along the way I enjoyed every bit of it. The question now is where do I go from here? Like many students I’m almost done soon to get my qualifications feeling all good about myself but also have student debt looming over me. I suppose the only thing to do now is get a job and start making some kind of career for myself, another huge step. I was thinking to myself I am going to miss being here in Hull believe it or not, I had started to settle in and grew accustomed to familiar places people now to leave it all behind. As one journey ends another begins and it will be interesting to see what the future holds.

UPDATE: As it turns out I had my dates wrong, my viva is next Tuesday but a little exercise never hurt nobody. Oh well at least it got me out of bed at a decent hour.

Back at the gym

I started the gym again last week after I don’t know how long. This year at Uni has been so busy the gym was the last thing on my mind. Starting again is always difficult though, those first few days are always the worst as everything feels a lot more difficult than you remember. I like to hit the gym early in the morning before all the hustle and bustle of the day but I woke up this morning feeling extra groggy and contemplated going ‘later’ today. I knew in the back of my mind I was only fooling myself and that I was just being lazy so I dragged myself out of bed and down to the gym which is 5 minutes jog from where I live I might add.

Now that I’m back and had my Weetabix, I feel great. Full of energy and wide awake I just have to remember to go to bed early tonight. My sleeping pattern is all over the place as of late after too many late nights of doing work…honest. I will get back into a good routine of about 4 – 5 times a week as I really need to shape up after abusing my body for the past 6 months with take-aways and the like.

Profit or loss?

Have a look at the pic above and gather your own conclusions but I thought I would share this as I found not only hilarious but quite interesting. After some debating I was convinced that the cost of a tin can was more than the price of this product so I did some research on the production cost of a can. I came up with a rough estimate of about £0.01 – £0.02 so how is it possible to make profit on this product considering the contents must be worth more than £0.02, or are they? LOL