Age of Conan - Verdict: Major Disappointment @ YouGamers

YouGamers has reviewed Age of Conan calling it a major disappointment and giving it a score of 76. Here's the conclusion:

In conclusion, Age of Conan has been the biggest disappointment of the year so far. Funcom knowingly hyped up the interest, tightly controlled any information from the closed beta and then went ahead and released a half-complete game, with many of the hyped features either missing or woefully incomplete. Poor customer support together with silly design and implementation errors make things only worse. Sure, they polished up the newbie zone pretty well, and many rookie reviewers happily took the bait and dished out big scores. Funcom must be commended for successful "bait and switch" as the early levels do not reflect what awaits in the later stages of the game.

Now if you fancy MMOs as playgrounds where half the fun is to freely gank people and find new ways to exploit the game, Age of Conan is perfect for that - in its short lifespan there has already been duping exploits, powerleveling loopholes and PvP exploits, and I'm sure there are plenty more for the evil gamers to find. For us less evil gamers, if you decided to jump in, you need inhuman amounts of patience and hope to go with the game box, as what you are getting is effectively a half-finished beta with a subscription fee. There is some potential for sure, but based on historical evidence with Anarchy Online, personally I'm not holding my breath. Simple bugs and missing things will most likely get fixed as the time goes by, but there are several flaws that run so deep that they are almost impossible to correct at this point.

The impressive sales figures of Age of Conan demonstrate the massive demand for a new top tier MMO. Current ones just can't push out new content rapidly enough to keep the players happy, so there is room for new contenders. It's a shame that those players who took the early positive comments based on early parts of the game will most likely end up disappointed - and Funcom will see the greatest monthly percentage drop in MMO subscriber numbers since… well, the launch of Anarchy Online, most likely.

Age of Conan isn't the worst attempt to compete with WoW in the recent years - that honor goes to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - but still it's a failed attempt in many ways. It's not different enough to avoid unflattering direct comparisons, and when you scrape off the pretty visuals and put the actual meat of the gameplay next to Blizzard's juggernaut, Age of Conan falls on its face. In fact, it doesn't compare very favorably even when you size it against the actual gameplay offered by old timers like Dark Age of Camelot or Everquest 2. Shiny visuals and boobies are not enough to cover up the unfinished and poorly designed gameplay. Next contender, please.