Beckett Gaming

I’ve been in Age of Conan (AoC) for about a week. While that’s too early (and I’m only a level 13 Herald) to comment on the big picture, i.e. everyone tells me the game comes alive after level 20, my gameplay has been enjoyable considering I rarely read forums or look for tips and just jump in and punt. The most stressful part has been technical.

I’m playing on a laptop (I play all my games on my 8 month old Toshiba X205-SLi1 with dual GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB VRAM and a Core

2 Duo T7250 Intel chip) which I would think should be able to handle this game’s hardware requirements. However, I often get prompts about my plug-ins, possible corrupt files on start-up, game lag (in Tortage) and occasional crashes. It could be faults on my end, but I’ve been to NVidia’s page and Toshiba’s and loaded the latest plug-ins and done scans and never found any corrupt files. In any case, I’m hoping these teething pains will iron themselves out. Most of the time it works fine and playing solo I’m moving forward at my own speed, which I like.

I don’t feel the pressure to get to the top level faster than anyone else and find the coolest gear (yet).

Eventually I’ll join a guild, make a few friends and get really into the game. I purposely started on the same server as our Editor so we can play together when we’re around the same level. Now, playing the Herald, a combination melee and casting character…I like it. I especially like the fighting system, better than WoW’s, using special combination abilities, touching keys in combination to create a nice attack. It takes a little trial and error (and dying a few times) to find the right combinations, but it’s a trip to finally get some screen splatter by doing it right. I imagine you eventually get some better personal storage (WoW’s seems better right now). I constantly have to dump stuff I’d like to sell later for lack of room. For those just beginning AoC, I’d say don’t buy much from the vendors in Tortage early on as you’ll pick up the same item or better from a kill. I’m just taking every quest I can find and in no particular order getting ‘em done. I’m looking forward to the bigger picture of what is touted as the ‘real game’ after level 20.

-Eric Bloom, a long time gamer and the lead vocalist of Blue Oyster Cult