"Pre-topic information"
Right off the bat, I'd like to state: I'm not out to incite flames, annoy anybody, or troll the forum. These are my opinions, and I'm fully open to disagreement--but if you can't at least be civil, please post elsewhere.
I come from a broad MUD/MMO and roleplaying background--I've spent significant amounts of time in the following games:
Anarchy Online
Auto Assault (beta and release)
D&D Online (beta only)
Earth & Beyond
EVE Online
EverQuest
EverQuest II
Final Fantasy XI (beta and release)
Gemstone III/IV
Granado Espada (beta)
Guild Wars (beta and release)
Horizons
Lord of the Rings Online
The Matrix Online (beta)
Maple Story (embarassing)
Neocron
Phantasy Star Online
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Planetside
Ragnarok Online (beta and release)
Silk Road Online (beta and release)
Tabula Rasa (beta only)
World of Warcraft (beta and release)
I also spent small amounts of time in other MMOs: PristonTale, RuneScape, Knight Online, FlyFF, Lunia, etc.
Topic at-hand
And now we come to Age of Conan. To be honest, I didn't follow AoC's development that closely. I had a horrible experience with FunCom's launch of Anarchy Online. They basically released the game half-finished and expected us, the playerbase, to pay for initial development. I was relieved to see--or so I thought--that FunCom had invested more time in Conan. The more I learned about Conan, the more I liked what I saw. The combat system, the city building and the PVP-oriented and more mature-themed world.
My initial impressions of Conan were overwhelmingly positive.
I've seen voice acting in only a few MMOs to date: Earth and Beyond, EverQuest II, a little in WoW. The voice acting in Age of Conan really impressed me. It's well done, and there's a lot of it.. in the beginning. Conan has such a strong start, with so many quests and content jammed into Tortage that I was quite happy. Even though I didn't have access to feats yet, my characters were gaining combos or abilities very often.
More than that, the voice acting was able to pull me in and actually "care" about the quests rather than skip over the dialogue and mindlessly grind them away. Especially the Destiny quests--I was very impressed by the class-archetype tailored Destiny quests. My Herald of Xotli and my Assassin had different, but intertwining subquests.
One leaving Tortage, I unfortunately realized that the majority of the game did not receive the same attention as Tortage, or even half as much. Highly touted features are basically non-existent: the high-tier/complex city building (and the PVP conflicts to siege them), the gathering/crafting system is overly tedious and shallow, there's comparatively zero content 50-60 and even people's characters are half-finished.
Character stats do nothing; skills do have a tiny effect, but it's hard to see. An enormous percentage of my character feats are broken, or are basically worthless. Many of my abilities have generic, unimpressive visual effects; I expected them to get more and more impressive as I leveled, scaling with my power--but no, it seems that they're just not finished. Loot and character customization is essentially non-existent.. it reminds me of FFXI in some aspects, because I see every lowish level mage running around in exactly the same red robe I had myself, followed by the same blue robe I had myself.
I am not a powerleveler--I have not "rushed to the top" only to find no content waiting for me. I've found a comparatively little amount of content post-Tortage, period. I realize the game was just released, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable to expect there to be content through the released levels, much less end-game content: little PVP, meaningless city building, uninteresting, tedious/broken crafting and no voice acting--a stark comparison to the content of the first few levels.
Inevitable World of Warcraft comparison
I am not an enormous WoW fan. I enjoyed the game: I played with a raiding guild, got up to max, collected my blue class set, fought in the Battlegrounds, got bored and quit. I came back for the expansion, rinsed and repeated.
The WoW comparison is necessary because in many respects, AoC minics WoW features, and because it's the best benchmark for a well-rounded, polished MMO with broad-based appeal and general quality.
Also because numerous features, like the feat system, are essentially lifted right out of WoW. Same structure, same design. I'm fine with that--I LIKED the talent system in WoW. But like I said before, many feats are non-functional, worthless or completely visually bland. The resource gathering system is also lifted out of Horizons/Warcraft, which I'm fine with--I liked that system, too. But it completely lacks depth--essentially unfinished, I'm shocked that this made it into the game rather than sealing it off until it was ready, like they did briefly with the Trader.
The PVP minigames are interesting, somewhat similar to the Battlegrounds in WoW. But at least on my server, barely anyone plays them and there's little reason to actually do so. Sitting in the queue for an hour to play a few minutes is not my idea of fun.
The quest-based grind of WoW and City of Heroes, compared to the mob slaying fest-grind of the original EverQuest works fairly well for AoC--assuming there are actually quests, rather than nothing, as is the case for the high levels. I'm not thrilled by it--it lacks originality, EXCEPT in the Destiny Quests which I previously said are very well done. But post-Tortage, there's been two for me. One at 30, the next at 50--this is really, really disappointing.
In the end, it seems that AoC is trying to emulate WoW in a lot of ways, with its own twist--but FunCom got ahead of themselves and released the game about a year too early. I doubt I'll be playing after my first-month ends, but I'll be back down the road, with the hopes that FunCom will eventually put the same love and care into the rest of the game as they put into Tortage.
Feedback is welcome; I just ask that you remain civil.