I have played WoW since Day 1 [not in Beta though] and have loved it. I was hardcore addicted for a while and then played pretty frequently for the last couple of years.
Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of Blizzard's products, having owned and played through all of WC, WCII, Diablo, DII, SC, and so on. I'm also a huge fan of WoW and hope it continues strong for years to come. That being said, I think there are some major problems currently outlined by many others with WoW, mainly that the game is all about achieving a certain item rather than having fun. Remember the TM vs SS days, when the battle would rage back and forth for hours at a time? There was no honor or items to be gained out of it, it was about fun and doing the best you could.
Anyway, I picked up Conan and played it for the first time last night. Obviously my experience in it is quite limited and this is not a full review but rather a summary of the first impressions.
1. The game takes FOREVER to install. I have a very fast new laptop, the Dell XPS 1730, and it still took at least a couple of hours.
2. The music is phenomenal. I really felt like I was in a barbaric culture where life and death resolved around the strength of your sword arm and your skills in battle. The ambience and the music are just right.
3. The first town looks amazing. It actually looks like its a town where people live and not a collection of shops for me to visit. Seriously, in Org, where the hell does everyone live?
4. The combat is intuitive yet fun. It's neat to try to position multiple attackers so that your swing does maximum damage on all of them. While it's certainly not overly complex, I do think it will cause skill to have a much greater impact on who wins and succeeds versus some other MMOs.
5. Graphics... I am running this currently on an 8700M GT card at low settings @ 1400x900 and it still looks amazing. Seriously, it is next generation graphics. Furthermore, I think the foundation is there for continual updates and refinishes years down the road. As everything already has texture and shape, it should be much less difficult to continue to improve the graphics versus something like WoW where the branches and blades of grass are 2d.
6. Voices are excellent in this game. Everyone seems to have been fitted perfectly with just the right tonal inflections and such to make it immersive and exciting. Again, its relatively easy to forget you are playing a game.
7. Interface is TERRIBAD!!! Seriously, this will probably be one of the first things to get a major overhaul. I really hope funcom allows the same degree of user customization and creation of UIs as WoW has as that is very important in end game. I'm sure they will.
8. The quests are actually intelligent so far. I've had to help a blacksmith who is building a wall by collecting bricks before he will take off the slave shackles so I can enter a city. I mean, anyone who says this game is just the same grind of kill x creatures is being a little hard on it, at least from what I have seen.
9. Character models are awesome. You can customize your guy or gal to look like anything you want. In a spout of originality, I made mine look almost exactly like the king of Sparta from 300. I'm sure I'm the only one who thought of that.
10. The feel of the game is great so far. After only a few hours, I really feel like I'm in a world that is full of blood and chaos in which my actions might actually have an effect. The world is immersive and intelligent.
There ya go, just 10 initial impressions. Obviously this is not a full review as I haven't spent enough time in it yet.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
