Ok so the AOC foundation is there and quite strong. But it so far fails to pass another hurdle which is Longevity, Addictive Hooks, Competition, and a real RPG sense of reward/accomplishment.

They are busting their ass to improve the game though and are regularly taking feedback and fixing things. I think they will do their best to keep improving the game and even redesign parts of it in time to fix its failures. But for now, it just isn’t near as fun as it should be. Ill explain.

Unlike most RPGs that use an easily identifiable system of Percentile increments that you can Quantify and judge how you are increasing in a variety of ways. AOC uses mostly a Decimal system that makes no Sense whatsoever. A level 10 Quiver of arrows for instance will have a .02 bonus, (what does that mean?) and a Level 20 Quiver will also have a .02 bonus and the only difference is how much you can sell it for. There is no Quality in items, they don’t break or decay. So you don’t often feel higher level items are much at all better than lower level. Its very hard to tell if any of your abilities, stats are getting any better using this archaic decimal system. The slope of improvement to most abilities is so slight that if you were to put a marble on it after 10 levels, the marble would not move. At Lv 20 the marble might start to wobble a little and at Level 30 it might barely start rolling.

Most all skills you gain are just slightly more powerful versions of the skills you start the game with. Some animations may be different, but the effects mostly the same. Many of your talents you wont see any effect difference at all.

Items are terrible. You rarely care about completing quests because your rewards will be so minimal that you don’t really care about the items. Random drops are 99% useless or again very minimal.

Overall it just lacks the addiction commonly found in MMOs that push you forward by offering another carrot to lead you forward, while engrossing you in Lore. Oh and Items have 0 lore in AOC.. Not even a minor description. You can’t even find letters or books that are readable. There is no description of scrolls, maps, letters, books, artifacts, nothing. They are just generic little icons to fedex to someone or sell to a vendor. Most everything feels very generic, there is no Charm or mystery. But a lot of cliches to bore you. No cursed items, or things that make Conan Comics mysterious and foreboding. Sometimes a quest does some surprising thing, but its very rare. And again their is hardly ever a decent reward or anything to find exploring on your own.

The game needs work, and Funcom are constantly improving the game, but It’ll be a good 6 months I think till the game is really interesting enough to play through to about Level 40 and above. Even below that you will get really bored pretty fast as you hope to find things to draw you back to playing your character. The game definitely needs more Cowbell, as they say, and I don’t mean Graphics quality. WOW has a ton more “Cowbell” pushing 1/4 the pixels.