Given the wonderful world of Conan and the interesting combat, it is quite a shame. I can't recommend AoC as it is, and
To this very day it puzzles me, how any developer could have played Tortage and NOT realize how much it would make the rest of the game looked way more flawed that it is in itself. It just sets the bar of coherence and immersion so high, the rest always felt way more pale that it would otherwise.
So, after pausing a year I felt like giving the new expansion Rise of the Godslayer a try. I was always a fan of ancient Chinese, so I was of course curious to see this iteration, the Empire of Khitai. I started as a Khitai Ranger, since I always liked playing a Ranger class in MMOs for the versatile experience. Scout classes are always my favor, not the heavy tanks or mages. Anywho. Tortage was, as ever, a fun and well balanced experience.
Then... I hit the Level 20+ Khitai area. And it was like hitting a marble wall with 100 miles per hour. It's as if someone had suddenly raised the difficulty bar from normal to insane. I know, there are those who enjoy just that, but one might wonder what possessed Funcom to make their new cool showoff area so difficult. I tried out two different servers, Crom and the RP PVE server. Crom is likely the most populated server, but alas, I wasn't very happy there. After five tiresome hours listening to endless talks about boobs, asses, penisses, moms and being gay (you get the idea), I thought if I had to listen to that trash another minute I would explode. So off I went to the RP PVE server. Which proved to be the lowest populated server, but the most decend folks. So I had the choice to either have groups and jerks or nice people but always die soloing.
My gripe Number 1 about Khitai is the difficulty. When you leave Tortage with level 21 or so, the Level 20+ Khitai area is a chore. Most classe will constantly die, and what WOULD work in a highly populated area, just totally doesn't. For the first hours I thought it was another single player area, until I realized the size of the place and finally saw one lone Necro running by. Unless you stick to the one or two really big servers, the game in the lower half is dead as can be. With the strong mobs, difficult quest, fast respawn and many roamers, it makes the level 20+ experience painful and frustrating. I didn't expect things to be easy, but when I compre it to my experiences with LOTRO, Champions Online or Warhammer - games I played in the last 2 years mainly - I wonder how Funcom thought to capture people, given the usualy difficulty most MMO gamers today are used. As it is, it's still the niche game it has proven to be when it launched. The difficulty and frustration I felt was even higher than from Vanguard, and that means something. Its especially because you can hardly control how many mobs you fetch. Sneak breaks so easy, it is almost useless. Roamers are many and have great circles. Respawn is fast. With so few players in the open world, it just doesn't work out.
Besides the new scenery, nothing really changed. Yes you get an Alternative Advancement system, but heck, even the EQ2 AA system was fast paced and easy compared to AoC. Given the unbelievably high amount of XP you have to gather for ANY AA to unlock, any casual gamer can forget seeing anything before being level 40 or more.
A bad deja vu was when I learned a substatial part of the gamer are in daily quests, instanced dungeons and the like, which bring more XP and better loot. It reminded me wickedly of the bane "Labyrinth of the Minotaur" did to DaoC: a vast part of the open world was suddenly drained of gamers. And so it is with Rise of the Godslayer. While in theory there are some players, a vast number just vanishes in dungeon instance grinding, depleteing the already empty overland zones even more. It makes me wonder why a company would make so fundamental and well know mistakes. Instances always draw away gamers and an empty open world is the last thing you want for your MMO. It just adds to the overall difficulty of the game, as mentioned.
The other gripe, itemization, is so far the same as ever. One thing I loathed about AoC was all the way up my Barbarian was wearing iterations of brown sack cloth. The same pattern just with 10 different variations of brown. When I worked my way up questing my Ranger in Khitai, I thought I would get something Asia style, something cool looking. Nada. It was exactly the same brown sackcloth stuff I knew from one year ago.
All in all, I am quite disappointed. Rise of the Godslayer just added more landscape to the game, and thats basically it. The changes beyond that are so minimal and out of reach for any normal player, like all the really cool gear is for endgame and PVP grinder only, it makes going back entirely superfluous. I really wonder why Funcom did not make more of it. Making Khitai a bit more accessible. We live in 2010, people are used the soloabilty of LOTRO, CO, WAR and other games. Compared to that the game felt like a 1985 hardship chore to me. And the game itself doesn't offer enough goodies to compensate for that, not to say that the vast part of the MMO gamer market went into a more easygoing way. I don't get what the desingers reasons were for this, which more or less will prolly be the nail on the coffin for AoC. Given the wonderful world of Conan and the interesting combat, it is quite a shame. I can't recommend AoC as it is, and there isn't really anything new.