Reflections so far

Another barrage of patches to download this morning, but it gives me a nice time to think on the barbarian class and this game as a whole.

One thing that caught my eye in the updater this morning was that FunCom has already taken to finding cheaters and exploiters (which I've heard of a good number of) and issuing bans or modifying characters to reduce the impact of whatever he or she exploited. Good stuff FunCom, keep it up. You will note that this reason is why you won't see me writing much about class exploits here until they have been resolved. Don't want any of you getting banned!

On to the game itself. Before taking up Age of Conan, I had been playing World of Warcraft (still pop on two nights a week to raid) for about 3.5 years, and before that, Dark Age of Camelot for about 4 years. Other than that, I have dabbled in UO, Lineage and L2, so it can be said that I have a decent understanding of the MMO genre and games in general. That being said, I feel AoC to be one of the most refreshing games I've played, and it is clear that they have been paying attention to what other MMOs have been doing right (or wrong) to make a great game.

A few of my main "cheers" for the game as it stands (since the patch appears to be almost complete.)

• Unique Classes
• Never before have I seen anything like a Herald of Xotli, Bear Shaman, Barbarian or Tempest of Set. These all seem to have very new, innovative styles of play. Whether or not they are fun or properly designed can be debated, but their uniqueness cannot.
• Melee Combat
• A lot of individuals have been putting down the so called revolutionary new system for melee as just having to mash whichever side is open, or unshielded. While I'll agree that that aspect isn't particularly difficult, it is, as mentioned above, new. What I think most people discount is the fact that even though you have something targeted and are standing near it does NOT mean you will hit it. In most games, if you are targeting a mob and try to perform an ability that wouldn't hit, you get an error message. Not here, you waste that Stamina and get no benefit. I like that, less sloppy play.

And, why not, a few Jeers:

• Gear
• Common complaint, the upgrades for gear are few and far between. Getting the trader up and working was a great step toward alleviating this (if you haven't been to the trader yet, get yourself to a capitol and check him out). Quests will reward you will wonderful items.. which is good, since you'll be using them for 15 levels :P
• Crafting
• The crafting system doesn't seem to be fully complete yet. While there is vague information posted, and people have been picking up the crafts, no one is really sure what they do and many have accidentally gotten them stuck in a profession they did not want.

I'll post some thoughts on the Barbarian specifically later. For now, what do you think? What has been the best and worst of AoC for you so far?