Well its been slightly over a week since Age of Conan has come out and first things first - we already have some 80s. No not me, or really anyone I know. I have seen them though. Our guild is ranging up to level 50 in the first week. I am level 30 after a limited play time, and this is my first week review.

First things first. Funcom has succeded in the most successful MMORPG launch that I have had the pleasure to take part in. There have no doubt been issues, but nothing major or ground breaking. The game runs well. There hasn’t been any worthwhile server downtime. People are not getting dropped, oh and the game actually plays well without any hampering bugs.

My only complaint was that it took me 2 evenings to get the game to work. Mind you this was a rarity, my issue was barely mentioned on the official tech support boards. I tried 50 different things and finally I get to play.

Launch praise aside, what else can I say? This game is straight up fun. It is entertaining, the PVE “grind” is barely that. You progress at a solid pace and your character develops at just the right speed. You aren’t overloaded with 100 spells in 5 minutes, and you wont ever play a full night and not get anything new.

PVE is handled similar to WoW in that you go to a town, pick up 15 quests, then go out and do them. The main difference? No thottbot, because the game highlights on your map what region you need to be in to complete the quest. Sometimes its a simple X where the boss mob is located, and other times its a section of the zone that is highlighted. Either way, it keeps the player in the game without having to constantly switch back and forth or research how to play.

There are most certainly some imbalancing issues, but from what I’ve seen there is nothing major. Another point for funcom. I will admit that my Ranger is very strong, but it doesn’t mean I don’t die or that people can’t get away from me. People will complain that I have a combo that does about 80% of most people’s life. My response? It takes 10 seconds to get off, if you are standing there for 10 seconds trying to fight me you deserve to get hit by it. For the DOTA players, compare to being hit by KOTL’s nuke. Bottom line? You’re an idiot.

The combat system both works well, and keeps you busy while fighting. As pointed out the earlier comments of wrist breaker are incorrect. The swinging of the mouse was replaced by directional key presses. How is works is that when you use and ability it will not simply fire off. You must first make a few attacks in a certain order. If you succeed then your ability will work. Imagine if you were playing WoW, and to fire a.. uh… fireball, you had to first hit fireball, and then hit Wand Upper Left Attack, Wand Upper Right Attack. You would see your mage attack with the want in the upper left, then attack with the want in the upper right, then toss out a fireball. If you hit Wand upper left and wand overhead, the fireball would fizzle out.

On the other side, you have defense, which similarly can also be used to block in certain directions. I envision this to making end game pve tanking quite difficult. You can load up blocks in certain areas that prevents a lot of the damage, or you can even it out around all of your body. Obviously loading up on one side will leave you defenseless on another side. You can change all of this on the fly.

I have heard that there is lacking content for the 40s, we will see when I get there.

Other than that, this game is solid and has great potential for end game PVP. Currently on the PVP server, there is not that much ganking. I have yet to experience the GY camping that people were scared about. I’ve also only truly been ganked two or three times. All in all, I can’t wait to hit up the true PVP in this game. It is going to be a blast.