Age of Conan

[Masamune]

So I just got it completely installed, and I'm on Tyranny.

I'm a Bear Shaman by the name of Aleksey. Come plaay.

[DarkDragoonX]

I'm really on the fence when it comes to Age of Conan. I've heard it's pretty good, but with Warhammer coming out this fall, I'm just not certain if it's worth throwing down fifty bucks plus monthly fees for a game I probably won't ever touch again when Warhammer hits.

[AlexMax]

Consider me a fencer as well. The prospect of being able to open up on damn near anyone thanks to the world PvP sounds awesome, but then again most of my friends play WoW and most MMO's get boring if you're playing with people you don't know (and no I don't 'know' any of you people nor do I particularly want to go out of my way to play with you either).

So...how eez it?

[Masamune]

I dunno, I can't even fucking play it. It's too processor demanding.

[Archibaldo]

My brother got it he says and I quote: "It's balls dropping amazing."

And this is from a kid who's been playing WoW for about 3 years or something.

[AlexMax]

I dunno, I can't even fucking play it. It's too processor demanding.

What's your specs? According to "Can you RUN it" I meet the minimum requirements but the recommended ones are a little over my head.

[DarkDragoonX]

I got a chance to play the game recently when a buddy let me install the software and use his character for a day. I fall between the minimum and reccomended requirements and it doesn't run very well (though there may be a bit of bottlenecking on my video card). It's passable until you get a lot of people in the same area, then the frame rate becomes pretty terrible. It's a very pretty game, but the odds of me upgrading to top-of-the-line hardware just to run an MMO at an acceptable frame rate is between Zero and Yeah Right.

Seriously though, considering it's an MMO, the system requirements on Age of Conan are goddamn retarded.

[AlexMax]

Seriously though, considering it's an MMO, the system requirements on Age of Conan are goddamn retarded.

Not really. WoW can run on damn near anything, but that's because it has much lower polycounts and much worse looking textures but makes up for it in traditional Blizzard fashion with art style out the ass. AoC looks like it's going for the semi-realistic route, and when you do that you need higher polycounts and more detail to make up for it. So all things considered, it's not unreasonable, especially if you compare Age of Conan with something like Everquest 2 (which came out at pretty much the same time as WoW and had higher system requirements even then)

Your bottleneck actually sounds like it's RAM related. When I played WoW, I ran into the same trouble where it was okayish as long as I stayed out of the city but when I set foot into one it was laggy as all get out for like 3-4 minutes. Upgrading from 512 megs of RAM to a 1 gig substantially increased performance in cities and also made it much less fussy about alt-tabbing to and from Windows.

[DarkDragoonX]

Yeah, I can understand what they're going for in terms of visual quality, it just seems like a strange decision for an MMO. For a genre designed to make money off monthly fees, consciously choosing to set the minimum visual bar so high is rather odd, considering how many potential customers you lose that way.

Eh, I'll be doing a full system upgrade this fall, but by then I'll be devoting my full attention to Warhammer online, unless Mythic manages to really drop the ball on it. If they do, then Conan will be waiting.

[AlexMax]

Yeah, I can understand what they're going for in terms of visual quality, it just seems like a strange decision for an MMO. For a genre designed to make money off monthly fees, consciously choosing to set the minimum visual bar so high is rather odd, considering how many potential customers you lose that way.

Age of Conan is coming out for the 360 next year. I don't know how much lower a bar you can get than "current generation console".