Thursday, July 9, 2009

Everyone Wants Me Back

I only subscribe to EverQuest II. Yet currently, I have free play time in the original EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and Vanguard (which has oddly been reporting itself as having 1 day remaining for at least a week now). It seems every MMO I've ever played is clamoring to get me to come back. The most recent addition to that list is Age of Conan.

So far, I've been able to resist most of these pleas to resurrect my old characters. But I decided to bite the bullet and check out the changes in Age of Conan.

And man oh man, I totally forgot how to play. I died like a dozen times before I remembered. Hyborea is littered with my tombstones. If you also took Funcom up on their offer to return to the lands of Conan, I hereby apologize if you tripped over my corpse on your adventures. I do remember enjoying Age of Conan's combat system more. I like the fact your basic attack is directional so you do have to pay attention to shifts in the mobs defenses. While I'm playing a spellcaster, and therefore have something more akin to traditional hotbar combat, I spent some time with melee classes, and enjoyed the combination system. It's good to see a combat system where you have to pay attention. World of Warcraft always bored me because I'd spam hotbars and otherwise usually be staring at another screen. The only other game that has combat that is as interesting - that breaks the standard hotbar spamming model - is Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I don't know that I'll stick around permanently. The main problem I had with Age of Conan is that, aside from the combat, it offers very little that I don't already get from EverQuest II. I'm not that interested in PVP -- I never found PVP to make much sense in a game where time invested is the principle means of advancement. And combat alone can't captivate me.

But if you tried AOC at launch and left due to the general unplayable nature of it at that time, take advantage of this opportunity to try it again!

4 comments:

Yeebo said...

You can add WAR to that list, I'm currently on my ten free days there. I like the "ten free days whenever you want them" model better then the "welcome back week" that CoH and LoTRO use. Of course the "welcome back summer" in EQ and EQ II was pretty damn awesome.

Lars said...

Ah, you are right. I have that ten free days offer as well. Don't think I have time for AOC, EQ2, AND WAR though. :) And DDO goes F2P in less than a month. Too many games, too little time.

Corwin.EoL said...

LOL I've gotten the same "Come back and try us" emails. I resist still. :)

EQ2 is starting to get good again for me and I'm oh so close to 80 now. I cannot split my time, must keep playing. :D

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