I wonder how many people are actually pausing to notice some really nice touches.
The attempts at natural behavior AI and spawn positions for animal beasts impress me. So much more normal to see two wolves feeding on a dead deer, rather than in equally spaced out intervals. I saw a lion pride crossing the desert sands (male, female and cubs).
These beasts can roam a fairly large circle (human sentries too), so waiting for them to space out is a valid gameplay tactic. And sometimes if they don't, then it leads to interesting tactics (can I survive all of them, can I hit one and run and string out the pack, etc...)
Different species will sometimes attack each other. Though this can lead to oddly amusing situations. (I watched a lvl 26 wild boar one-hit gore a lvl 1 bunny to death. Must have been in a bad mood. :P)
Nice logical scenic touches abound. Here's the magical version of hydroponics, inside a hermit witch's cave.
The path to her cave is also amazingly well hidden, despite a waypoint system. Heading straight for the mark on your map will bump you into tall mountain ranges, and it takes some exploring before you find your way in. A number of people end up asking for help, but it's nice to reprise the Explorer/Trivia hound role and be the one in the know.
Speaking of Explorer roles, the gathering nodes are not marked on a map. This could be because the game's still buggy, but it opens up a tremendous niche reward for Explorers to find them.
One serendipitious touch: the map system in Age of Conan is superlatively excellent. You can zoom into various magnifications of views ala Google Maps, on both the main map and the radar window. (Oh, how I loathed the too small LOTRO radar.) And to top it off, you are able to add Map Markers with captions to note various spots of interest.
As far as I know, these map markers are just in some simple xml file, so it is absolutely possible to share markers with people. And also suggests you can have a near unlimited amount of map markers.
Yep, so lazy people who hate mapping will just proceed to download something that shows them every spot of interest on the map. Nothing new. Websites like this have sprung up all over the intarweb, but now you can have an in-game reference too. Which has to be convenient.
For an obstinate explorer like me, this is a godsend. Now I can make my own marks. I'm spotting gathering nodes by eye and marking my own maps. Some day I'll compare them to the internet ones and see if there's any I missed and vice versa.
Besides gathering nodes, I'm using the map marker system to take note of hidden quest locations. Age of Conan has sneakily hidden items on walls, in dead end alleys, out in the wilderness that end up as quests. Now these are things someone following the yellow exclamation marks are never going to find.
I'm also finding that talking to various unmarked NPCs also yields a number of quests. I suspect this is bugged. NPCs should be showing yellow exclamation marks. But what the hey, extra Explorer reward for now.
Discovering rez points across the map also give a nice and presentable xp bonus. About 1/2 to 1/3 that of an ordinary quest.
And I had serious flashbacks to nostalgic mud days when I visited an inn to turn in a quest, and ended up staying for ten minutes to listen to NPC chatter. Various NPCs were gossiping about the storyline of the zone, and the Troubadour chanting his songs just stopped me in my tracks.
Troubadour: My next tale is, The Ghost Kings.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,
Troubadour: From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;
Troubadour: There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.
Troubadour: A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;
Troubadour: Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
Troubadour: There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;
Troubadour: The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,
Troubadour: Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
Troubadour: While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;
Troubadour: They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.
Troubadour: Hear now the tale of a cursed man, doomed to walk in dark places. The tale of "The Singer in the Mist".
Troubadour: At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells, And I have trod strange highroads all my days,
Troubadour: Turning my feet to gray, unholy ways. I grope for stems of broken asphodels;
Troubadour: High on the rims of bare, fiend-haunted fells, I follow cloven tracks that lie ablaze;
Troubadour: And ghosts have led me through the moonlight's haze, To talk with demons in the granite hells.
Troubadour: Seas crash upon dragon-guarded shores, Bursting in crimson moons of burning spray,
Troubadour: And iron castles open to me their doors, And serpent-women lure with harp and lay.
Troubadour: The misty waves shake now to phantom oars -- Seek not for me; I sail to meet the day.
Surprisingly nice writing for NPC text that few people might ever listen to. I halted screeching from my routine quest-running, and settled down to watch my chat scroll by.
On googling, it seemed to be the poetry of R. E. Howard himself. Which is still a damn nice touch to put it in game.
Visually, Age of Conan is still stunning. The amount of effort put into the art, and animation is mind boggling. Even the basest of enemies look fantastic. Makes me want to upgrade my video card again, cos it probably looks much better than I can see.
Bosses are sized to heroic scale too. So they turn up more gigantic than surrounding mobs. Makes for really great imagery.
I had to climb up a tremendous cliffside just to get to them. Very cool. Death animation on killing the first one made me laugh out loud. They just stop. And pause. Leaning on their club. For a while. Staring at you. Then the message gets through that they are dead... They proceed to tip over, ramrod straight like a felled tree. THUD.
No jerky LOTRO animation complaints here. Age of Conan pwns in its combat and death animations, especially when you add on all the fatality possibilities.
Oh, and I still totally in love with the verticality of their zones. The amazing thing is, you look down and you know you can get there. It's absolutely reachable.
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