Quote:IGN posted up an exclusive look at AoC’s PvP and Raiding yesterday. In the article they talk about Raiding and PvP in the “end-game” or rather max level. The first waves of disappointment came when I read this:

“If you want to get the best armor and weapons in Age of Conan, you’re going to have to raid, something you can’t actually engage in until you hit level 80. There’ll still be dungeons that players can band together and delve into before the cap, but for large-scale, 24-player encounters against enormous bosses that require highly coordinated attack patterns to defeat, you’ll have to wait until the end game.”

*sigh* So basically it’s another treadmill of raid to get gear to raid to get better gear to raid to get gear. I thought we left that crap behind in World of Warcraft? I’m tired of having to spend hours every night raiding dungeons for a chance at loot. I’m tired of being forced to find 23 other players to even have a chance at getting good items or seeing epic encounters. It gets worse. You would think that perhaps maybe PvPing would be an alternative. Well it is, but not only does it sound incredibly difficult but the gear that you can get from PvP isn’t even better than the PvE gear and only the best PvPers are every going to see it. Here is how hardcore their system sounds:

“It’s also possible to lose experience when killed. According to game director Gaute Godager, this won’t drop you from one level to another, but it is possible for your progress to be brought all the way down to zero for your level if you’re constantly getting killed. To further add to this mechanic’s hardcore nature, you only gain a fraction (somewhere between one half and one third) of the experience for a kill compared to the amount lost for a death. Yikes.

The whole point of the system is for only the most skilled players to rise to the top, instead of having everyone who put in enough time eventually get to the highest PvP level. Once you do get high enough, special equipment unlocks and becomes available for purchase, and the gear is supposed to be extremely powerful. It’ll be comparable to raid gear, though its statistical bonuses will benefit PvP play more than PvE. According to Gaute, raid gear will be more accessible than the high-level PvP gear.”

So finding 23 other people to successfully raid is going to be easier than obtaining the PvP gear? I don’t need a full time job here. I need a fun game. I’m getting very discouraged already that Age of Conan is taking 10 steps back after they took 1 step forward with their interesting combat mechanics. I can’t sacrifice what little life I have to this game in order to have comparable loot. So much emphasis is being placed on gear in Age of Conan that the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that gear will dictate strength. If I can’t put in the time it takes to raid or PvP hardcore 24/7 then I will not stand a chance against someone who does. No thanks.

I have been there and done that too many times. I’ll be completely honest here and tell you guys that the thought of having to live through this horrible game design one more time makes me want to skip the game altogether. Does this form of play interest ANYONE out there (aside from you millions still running on WoW’s treadmill)? It doesn’t interest me at all. I really had no idea that AoC was going to mimic WoW’s shoddy design.

Graev is sitting across the room shaking his head right now saying: “The thought of having to raid and accrue DKP or participate in raids over and over isn’t appealing. I don’t want to feel like I’m forced to attend every raid just so that I can finally have the DKP or points to cash in down the road. I wouldn’t mind going on a raid every now and then but I don’t want to be forced into attending every single raid to compete. I will once again have to wait until every other person gets their item or whatever until I can finally get something. That just sucks. I don’t want to have to modify my play style to be a hardcore raider. I didn’t think this game was about raiding. That’s not fun to me.”

Raiding Treadmills and Hardcore PvP grinds = Kiss of death

(I walked away from the comp and left this post sitting here unpublished to think things over and talk more with Graev…)

We have decided to still get the game. -BUT- we will not be participating as “hardcore raiders”. We’re going to go as long as we can without buying into that horrible excuse for gameplay. If we can raid a couple nights a week in short raids and get some gear great. But once we have to modify our playstyle we’re going to quit.