Above average for such a subpar genre, however all the problems with the game are too hard to overlook at this time....
My reasons behind my score of a 6 is because while I can't stand the game I do think it is a above average mmorpg so i'm only going to take marks away from actual faults that arn't of my opinion.
I also will say that I will be coming back to review AOC in the future once they have fixed some of my problems I have with the game atm.
I bought AOC and I didn't care to get past level 10 and I know you people will say omg the fun happens at level 40+ or w/e but then that's a serious design flaw having to waste weeks of my life playing a game I don't enjoy just at the slight hope I might enjoy it at level 40+. Also Funcom havn't seemed to optimize the game for the 3870X2 series which should be able to max the game out but I'm having bad stuttering issues and 15 FPS running on medium settings..... Theres bad memory leak issues with my GPU and my system memory which takes the game ages to load and crashes non stop on me and while my Nvidia friends seem to play fine... on ATI I can't and this is nothing to do with ATi's fault it's Funcoms dumb optimization. I've had problems patching too and connecting to the sevrers and just has been a big mess for me but when I finally get in game all the crashing and stuttering starts and 5 min long load times like.
My system;
3870X2
4gb DDR3 1600mhz
QuadCore Intel overclocked to 3ghrz
Creative Xfi 64mb
Anyways my problem isn't with the tech issues really seeing as I put up with them in SWG lol.
So with AOC I just found the game to be really unfun due to what I thought was a poor combat system and a ugly UI which just seems sooo cluttered and dated, specially the Inventory screen which was HORRIBLE. The whole system just doens't appeal to me i dunno why but I just found the combat generally unfun, I didn't like the shield system and I didn't like the Chain spell system in EQ2 and I still don't like Funcoms take on it the combo systme in this game.... I prefer all my spells to be their own like in WOW. Also I thought the combat animations were very poor because of how long they take and while It looks good in videos If i tried to run away while he was doing a attack it looks bizzare like I'm sliding across the landscape and he's doing some move lol.
I really don't understand this whole offline component to a MMO because I play a mmo to play withother people from the start and I just didn't like the whole offline thing because it felt like a POOR single player RPG and would have much rather just played with friends all the time. Problem is though you have to use the single player to level up because it gives you an advantage over playing online which I would have atleats thought it would have been the other way round to give people a incentive to group up in a mmorpg heaven forbid you actually play with other poeple in a mmorpg. This is a problem WOW started really because that game is "play alone together" meaning everyones online in the same server but everyones solo'in because it's faster. I just don't get why you'd play a mmo to solo, you're meant to group up with people and if you want to solo go and play a offline game.
Also I don't see the need for 3 human races which all look the same, I don't know the conan lore but I would have much rather a nice diverse different looking set of races like you get in other mmo's such as WOW. I also found the classes to be very bland and not fun to play..... In WOW you create a character and you just know what class you want to play because they're all so different from eachother and they're all fantasticly fun to play with kool spells. My time in conan however trying out different classes I just found them all to be rather bland and there wasn't one I could find that I liked... It was like logging into EQ2 and having 16 (i think) uninteresting classes to choose from and theres tooo many types of each. With EQ2 it's like why do I need 4 different types of tanks or 4 different types of priests etc etc? I also found the character models to be way tooo Doom 3 plastic looking which put me off even further.
In my mind mmorpgs should be totally seemless and that's what in the end put me off the game because the maps were soooo small and whenever I wanted to go into a building or though a gate I have to go to a loading screen which just isn't very fun. Games like WOW and SWG were soooo fun because it's totally seemless and that's what really brings a community together and builds up the immersion. However In AOC it feels sooo lonely all the time which just isn't nice and eurgh I dunno just hating all the loading screens.... even when you get rez'd you go to a loading screen!
I didn't even see any sign of crafting or a player economy everything was looted which is a shame and didn't seem to be any crafting........ i was told it starts mid way through the game but again WTF? I want to craft and build a player economy and not have to combat all the time! Brings me onto another thing all there is to do in this game is COMBAT! Theres nothing else to do and no social mechanics too youc an play the entire game without speaking to anyone which is such a shame! Again the PVP isn't very fun too because all that happens is the immature community want to spawn camp you for hours and I have no problems with open world PVP because in WOW it was very fun but because the zones are soooo small you can't go quest somewhere else and it ends up as a cluster **** Cause of the zones too it's too easy to get away because you attack someone then they click on the gate and zone out and it's like FFS! Atleats in WOW it's totally seemless and you can chase them across the entire map. I have to say the PVP arenas too are very boring and theres no purpose to them... no end goal but wiping out the enemy, I would have prefered missions in the PVP and stuff like that. I just couldn't like this game and this is a statement to how poor the mmo genre is but it's probably in the top 5 mmo's ever and I hate it but also 99% of the other mmorpgs out there are much worse. However my review score will reflect my fun in the game and I just hated nearly everything about this game and didn't have any fun... It symbolizes the horrible poor direction the genre is going to and I doubt it'll take notes from actualy good mmo's out there like SWG pre cu or UO in the 90's or EVE Online.