Weekly poll - player class

Let's find out the most (and least) popular classes with this week's AoCBlog poll. Since it has been over a month since the launch of Age of Conan, I expect most players will have found the most appealing class for them. Personally, I'm still sticking with my Demonologist - the damage it can deal isn't what I expected (considering the squishiness of the class) but it's still the closest to offensive mage that I usually like to play in MMOs.

The last week's poll was about Age of Conan rating. The result was 3.39/5 or 6.78/10, a respectable score, but nothing like the ratings most gaming portals have been giving to AoC. There barely were any 'best' votes (5), but the majority of players gave it a 4, which shows they still enjoy the game despite it's flaws. I think this kind of rating reflects the current state of the game much better than, say, 9.4 that Gamezone gave it.

On another note, I'm finally done with my exams, so I'll have more time for all the good stuff (including AoC), and of course getting back to regular posting here in AoCBlog.

Weekly poll - game rating

This week I'll ask you to rate Age of Conan on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being best and 1 being worst). Take everything into account: not only the overall game quality, but the "fun factor" as well. You can find the poll on the sidebar to the right. Note: there are some problems with IE7 users not being able to vote; to fix them, you have to add http://www.google.com to the "Trusted Sites" list of Internet Explorer. My apologies for the inconvenience (yeah right... about time you sir got Firefox!).

The last week's question was about leveling speed. I made a pie chart about it since I like pie.


I expected even more players to be in the 61-80 range already, but it looks like 41-60 is still the largest so far. Frankly, the leveling speed seems a tad too fast to me. Most people however counter that with the fact that Age of Conan is all about "endgame" (raids and massive PvP sieges) so you want to get there as soon as you can. I just hope once I get there, most of the features will be working.

Weekly poll - leveling speed

It's time for the weekly AoCBlog poll again! This week's question is really simple - what is the level of your main Age of Conan character? Leveling in AoC seems pretty fast to me, too fast even - but maybe that makes sense for an MMORPG which is concentrated on the endgame content. Then again, there doesn't seem to be much endgame content implemented yet. Let's see just how many people rushed through the levels - you will find the poll on the sidebar to the right.

As for the last week's question, it was about the performance of Age of Conan. I asked if people were happy with how AoC runs on their PCs (considering the hardware, of course) and here are the results we got:

Are you happy with Age of Conan's performance?

Yes: 28
Somewhat: 18
No: 28

Total Votes: 74

As you can see, only 38% of the players who voted on the poll are happy with how AoC runs on their computer - the results are not unexpected, I might say. While it's true that Age of Conan has beautiful graphics and because of that requires a powerful system to run smoothly, even people with modern PCs are sometimes experiencing problems. I know that for a fact as I had some trouble with my ATI Radeon 3870 and Age of Conan myself.

I should probably note that this poll won't necessary be accurate as only 74 gamers have voted; however, I'm pretty happy with the result as it is the very first poll I posted on my blog, and expect a lot more votes in the future :-)

Age of Conan Powerpoints system

I assume most of you got Clan of Conan #17 in your e-mails already; if not, you can always just read it online. It is really an important issue as it outlines some of the biggest upcoming additions to the game. Putting the additional quests, voice-overs, some new dungeons and UI polishing aside, it boils down to three major additions - Kingship (and the whole guild alliance system coming with it), PvP consequences and Powerpoints.

Powerpoints seem to be an alternate advancement system that should give you something to do after you hit lvl80, among other things. Here's a condensed version of how you can obtain these:

• By having an active subscription (1 Powerpoint / week for every character)
• By having many guild members (1 Powerpoint / week for every guild member, provided 100 or more guild members login at least once a week)
• By owning a battlekeep (1 Powerpoint / week for every guild member)
• By winning PvP mini-games (1 Powerpoint / every 40th mini-game you win after lvl40)
  
• Post-level 80 reward system (1 Powerpoint / each level you advance beyond 80)

As you can see, there are numerous ways to earn Powerpoints; and everyone will be earning at least some of these since they come weekly with your subscription, too. "Grinding" beyond lvl80 will probably provide diminishing returns (since experience required to "level up" increases with every "level", or should I say, Powerpoint you get); grinding mini-games, on the other hand, could be harder than it seems, unless you do it with a group of friends. Being in a big guild looks like your best bet if you want to benefit from this new system.

The best part is, of course, using Powerpoints to your benefit. Here's what you can do with them:

• Buy Powerfeats which can give your character new buffs and abilities
• Use limited offers that Funcom will put into the game regularly to buy special items, mounts or even spells
• Buy exclusive items using a combination of gold and Powerpoints
• Turn gathered pearls into Powerpearls and socket your weapons with these (funnily, this does seem to apply only to pearls but not any other gems, so save up your pearls, folks!)
• Convert Powerpoints into "rested experience" for faster leveling.
  

Personally, I believe leveling is fast enough as it is, so I expect most people to use their Powerpoints in order to improve their characters or items and make them stronger in end-game PvP or raids.

Overall the Powerpoint system looks to me like a nice addition to the game - it is made to reward veteran players (the longer you play, the more Powerpoints you gain) and obviously as a means to keep those subscriptions active. It also seems to rely on guilds a lot, proving that Age of Conan is very much a guild warfare based MMORPG.

You can start earning Powerpoints once your "free" month is up and your subscription starts, but note that you won't know how much of them you actually have until they add a tracker in the interface by the end of June. Visit the official Age of Conan website for more info on Powerpoints.

Coming up next post is Kingship - once I read up and find out more info on it.

Weekly poll - game performance

This post is the first one in series of weekly polls that I will be posting on every Wednesday. I might even make a nice-looking chart with some comments on last week's results next time! This is just an experiment, so we'll see how it goes. If you want to vote in the poll, just look at the sidebar on your right.

This week's question is: are you happy with Age of Conan's performance? Do you feel it runs as well on your PC as it should, considering your graphics settings and hardware specs?

My answer to this question would have been "no way!" a few days ago (if you read my post "performance issues", you'll know why) but installing 64 bit Vista has done nothing short of a miracle in improving the performance of the game. While it could be much better, now the game runs at least close to what I'd expect from my system. Hopefully this will only improve in the future!