Hyboria needs some work: Age of Conan is lackluster.

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03 June 2008

by br3ntbr0

Is this how it feels after level 40 in AoC?

Most of AoC's player base has been rewarded for being patient with Funcom. Many people (myself included) forcast doom and gloom for Age of Conan based on the events of their poorly managed open beta and the terrible performance of both beta clients down the stretch. After 1 or 2 quality patches however, the game made a complete turn around (from a performance standpoint) with just enough time to spare so that everyone interested in the game could feel easy about buying it. All was well in Oslo and the champagne flowed as their servers filled up.Fast forward a few weeks. Now that 400k of us have purchased the game and entered Hyboria, I see another big milestone for Funcom: turning box purchasers into long term monthly subscribers. We are all still playing on our first free month of time right now. I have been wondering how many people may go back to WoW, EQII, LotR or whatever game they were playing before, or try something new and leave AoC now that the "new car smell" might be wearing out. The way I see it, they have only a few weeks to patch the game a few times to try and hold on to these types of players. After that, the free month is up and then we'll see who starts paying to play. Some folks in the blogosphere (i.e. Keen and Graev) have already decided not to play past the first free month, probably for some of the same reasons that I'll list here. I will throw out the disclaimer before I air my gripes here: I still like this game over all, and just want to see it improved to be something I love instead of something I'm just playing for the moment.

/gripe on:

Technical requirements. I know that this one is purely a system problem, as I only have a 7600 series NVIDIA card. I pretty much have to play with everything - and I mean everything - on its lowest settings to get a game playable to my standards. I have yet to average over 25fps, which gives me a playable game, but it is not the beautiful game that most people see. I just think that the high technical requirements kill its chances of gaining large market share. I just don't want to have to drop 200 bucks to get the latest 8800 series card so that I can crank up the settings on a game. I dislike that playing this game makes me feel like I need to start the upgrade process again after just a year of purchasing my current system, and reminds me of one of the core problems of PC gaming. With that said, I'll probably be saving up some scratch so that I can grudgingly go to newegg.com and buy a new card anyway. With system upgrades this can be trivialized, but I'm talking about mass appeal again, and high system specs hurt its chances.
Immersion. This is the hardest thing to describe. I'll ramble a bit about this and hope that I can edit it to make some sense, its a very hard thing to put my thumb on. I just don't feel immersed in the game most of the time, and its hard to pinpoint the root cause. The music is great, one of the best collections of music in any mmog right now. The graphics (when you can afford to turn them up) look really good. Its not the way it looks, or how it sounds. I guess I just can't figure out who I'm fighting against, or what my adventure is supposed to be about. It just feels like I'm trying to get to 80 and that's it, no higher purpose. I don't know if its a problem with the IP that doesn't lend itself to being immersing, or if its something else. Who am I supposed to be fighting against in AoC? In WoW you had a clear enemy...the Alliance or Horde, depending on your characters alignment. In WoW it was the overarching theme in the game from the time you created a character till the end. In AoC, the enemy is...who? Why am I wondering the world and completing quests for people? I just seem to have missed the overarching story somehow or it has failed to give me an immersed feeling. The IP also excludes people who really like a Tolkien type of high fantasy world, one that has proven to house the most successful mmog's to date. I can speak from experience on this, as my wife has loved playing WoW but sees no attraction to the Conan IP. I know others, male and female that feel the same way. I guess there might just be something a little more immersing to some folks about playing as a Gnome or an Orc.
"You can't hide while being observed." HOLY GOD WTF IS THIS? I see it all of the time when trying to hide in AoC. I can be in a solo instance that is empty after killing the last mob and I see this message. What is observing me at this point, corpses? Empty bags of loot? What the hell does it mean that I'm being observed, anyway? And why in god's name can't I hide when being observed, isn't that the point of hiding anyway...to not be "observed"? I think it might be less irritating if I just knew what it meant and why it was happening. What a PITA this has turned out to be, and it needs to be fixed. Please don't tell me its working as intended, I may die inside a little bit.
Instancing. I understand the need for it, and that it helps with stability. However, World of Warcraft showed us all that you can have a big, immersing world while keeping the instancing to a bare minimum. AoC has replicated many things that WoW did well, but this was not one of them. What a complete PITA this has turned out to be, definitely in the first 20 levels. Yes, I know it happens way less once you get out of Tortage but it still happens. It probably wouldn't be as big of a deal if the tools built into the game actually worked, or had some instructions somewhere available. There is an option that appears when you right click a player in your group that says, "summon player to instance". I interpreted that to mean, "hey, you guys are in the same place but different instances so summon him to your instance." But apparently this does not work, or I have no idea how to use it since it isn't documented anywhere. All I get from trying this is a message that the player is already in my instance. Oh really? He's not next to me, yet on voice chat he and I are standing at the same coordinates. Another sub-gripe of this is the instance selection tool. First, I want it to tell me what instance I'm in. There doesn't seem to be an indicator telling you what instance you are in so that people can meet you, just a list of available instances. Now its good that the tool is there, it lets you select which instance you want to go into. The problem is that it will reload you at the nearest respawn point. If you happened to be on the edge of the map where you thought your friend was and you both use this tool to try to meet up, it will put both of you at that closest spawn point. Well, that's cool till you realize that you have to run 15 minutes back to where you were, further wasting time. Can't it just reload you at the same coordinates? By the way, this works great as a traveling shortcut if you know which spawn point is closest to where you want to go, so at least I've managed to find the silver lining to this cloud.
Tortage. It was mildly cool the 1st (and only the 1st) time I went through it. Now it is a deterrent to trying new characters. I don't want to go through 20 levels of Tortage to be able to try out a new character. Oh, and good luck to you if you have friends that decide to start playing and you want to help them through Tortage. Most of it is full of single player instances that you can't go into without the quest. Also, see the above gripe about instancing because you will find yourself in different instances than your friends very often. Good luck describing this crap to them too unless they are seasoned mmog players. I'd love to see Tortage be completely optional after an account has 1 character that has been through it.
PVP mini games. I guess I am really spoiled coming from WoW, where you only need to wait a matter of minutes to play a battleground. In AoC, if I can get in a game per hour I feel like I'm getting alot in. I would have hoped that Funcom had the foresight to see the problems that WoW had when it first introduced battlegrounds, when the queue times were horribly slow. I hope Funcom has already considered the need to consolidate PVP mini games to something that works across servers to help with this issue. As far as variety goes, I played 4 battlegrounds for my entire WoW career and the fact that there weren't more created in the 3 years I played is one of the reasons I left that game to come to AoC. My hope is that AoC will create more than just the 2 types of games with a total of 4 different maps. That lack of variety will get old very soon.
PVP experience. Not working at all. I can kill 50 players in world PVP or in mini games and I never get any PVP experience. The only thing I see working is the kill and death stats in the player info UI. My Ranger has 77 kills and 15 deaths. He's also got 0 PVP experience and is still PVP level 1.
PVP rewards. I see no point to PVP in any form in this game other than the pure thrill of fighting other players, which wears thin quickly. I understood that there was supposed to be PVP rewards that you could get based off your PVP experience. I hope this isn't an end game only thing, as it leaves little to do while leveling up other than grinding out PVE experience until reaching 80. My guess is that like many other things, its not in the game yet.
Death while talking to NPC's. In AoC, talking to NPC's for quest purposes basically throws your view into "cinematic mode" for lack of a better description. During this time, you can do nothing but progress through the quest dialog to get out of this mode. In cinematic mode you have no control over your character. There have been times when NPC's have beaten me to my death while I was talking to a quest NPC and I didn't even realize I was being attacked because my sound was off or my headphones were on my desk instead of my head. It hasn't happened to me in a while, but when this would happen I would basically have to log out of the game because I couldn't access the resurrection menu (or it wouldn't even show) when I was in cinematic mode. No doubt that players on PVP servers know about this all too well, and lie in wait for people to talk to NPC's for a free grief kill too. Cancel cinematic mode when players are in PVE or PVP combat please. There is literally nothing you can do to prevent this kind of death on a PVP server other than never talking to NPC's while in a PVP zone.
Bad quest design and bugged quests. First, there's too much running. Dear god if the same 2 NPC's send me back and forth to each other again I will find a way to kill them both. There are a few entertaining quests in the game, but there are more monotonous ones in the game than there are good ones. At least the travel to and from the major cities is fast. There are also poorly designed quests, where the mobs you need for a quest are before the NPC that gives a quest to kill them. In a linear dungeon, you'll probably kill them and then get the quest to kill them after the fact. When they are dead before you get the quest, you can't complete it since the needed mobs are already dead. Yeah, this happened to me. Then there's the normally expected bugged quests left and right that won't let you finish or start them.
Grouping is lackluster. Is there a reason to group with people? Is there some experience benefit I get from being grouped, because as of this writing I do not know. I think I've soloed from 1-39 and only did my first group instance at 40 when I hit the Sanctum of the Burning Souls. Locating teammates is harder than it should be. Look, we've come a long way from EverQuest where you had to type out x,y coordinates to each other to find out where someone was and meet them. The mini map and large maps will only show your teammates to you as long as they are within a certain range. After that, you have no idea where they are other than to ask them to give you x,y coordinates or to name a common meeting place.
Respawn times. Again, we've come a long way from the original EQ and camping spawns in order to complete quests (or to get loot) is for the birds. Multiple times I've had to wait (waaay too long) for a mini boss or some other mob to spawn so I could complete a quest, and yes this is worse in the Tortage area than anywhere else (yet another reason for Tortage to be optional) but it still happens. I did this on a PVE server too, I don't even want to think about how the problem gets worse on the FFA rule set PVP servers.
Guild taxes not implemented. There is a nice game mechanic to tax guild members so that the guild can afford to pay for all the things needed to make and keep up a player city and guild keep. It would be nice for guilds to have this functionality that many expected to be there at launch.
Tradeskill quests. Once you hit level 40 and you talk to the NPC's to acquire a given profession, your quest log gets spammed with a handful of quests. You can't delete these and it will almost undoubtedly fill up your quest log. By the way, did I mention that you can't delete these quests? Think you can just drop the profession and start over? Uh yeah...let me know how that works out for you. You'll likely end up bugged with no way to do the quests.
Lack of quest content. Why is the level cap 80 in this game? It seems that there's probably only enough quest content for about 60 levels right now in AoC. I'm not at that level yet, but people in my guild are in their 70's and I constantly hear them talking about finding good "grind spots". Oh god, hearing that just wreaks of old EQ. They are talking about grinding because they've hit a pocket where there just seem to be no available quests for them to work on.
M rating. I actually DO like this, (love the fatalities) but I'm male so violence and nudity kind of fit into my demographic. What I don't like about it is that it turns other people away from the game. I just think that along with the high technical requirements, this will again cost Funcom market share and deprive the game of staying power. Some people won't want to play AoC due to the nudity and blood. This is another factor that will keep AoC popular with a niche audience, but will prohibit it from getting WoW like numbers. MMOG's are social games and depend on populated worlds to prosper, I just think this is another limiter in that regard. In order to play devil's advocate, I will say that the Funcom folks themselves have never intended for this game to be a WoW killer, and they know that the game is not for everyone. But are there enough subscribers to keep them going at a high level given that information? I don't think so, but I've been proven wrong before so only time will tell.
End game PVP is poor. I've seen reports on the official Funcom forums that the "Border Kingdoms" where all these sieges are supposed to take place are nothing more than replicated instances of the resource gathering zones. Sieges are limited to 24x24, only at scheduled times. This seems to take the thrill out of pushing to level 80, it just doesn't seem like alot of fun based on the feedback that I've read about it. It makes me wonder what enjoyment I will get out of level 80 endgame PVP, if any.

I understand that you don't get a fully fleshed out mmog in the first few weeks after it launches, I get that. However, there are major game mechanics and balance issues here that need to be addressed regardless of the fact that the game is new. Personally, I will only be forgiving of an MMOG due to how new it is for only so long. After I reach the point where I don't feel that I need to make excuses for game, I'll to stop paying to play. I'll take a break to come back later and re-evaluate its progress at some point in the future. I am probably more patient with others in this regard, but I know for a fact that I have seen posts stating this exact same thing on the Funcom forums. We'll soon see if they are paying attention to user attitudes or not.

I hope Funcom is as diligent about addressing these issues going forward as they have been to this point. They've posted information about improvements they are making for class balance and playability, but those are focused on caster classes right now. While that is good for players of those classes, the issues I see are not really class specific. Class balancing will happen throughout the life of the game and I accept that. Another good thing they've done is to be heavy handed with cheaters. They've banned some accounts and actually shut down an entire sub system (the trader) of their game in order to correct the problems. All of this is good, yet there is still more to be done, as I'm hoping the guys in Oslo realize.

I can't really see much of the player base maturing to max level and still dealing with some of this stuff, and it would be a big failure if Funcom let even some of it hang around in the game too long. A few buddies of mine were talking on a voice server last night and we all agreed that we didn't see how AoC has staying power right now. We are of the opinion that between Warhammer Online and Wrath of the Lich King (provided both of those launch this year as stated) that Age of Conan doesn't seem to have enough staying power to stop us from wanting to leave for those games. We also agreed that AoC seemed to just be the game of choice right now if you aren't playing woW, that it was the best non-WoW thing available. This line of thinking brings me back to my earlier thoughts on how Funcom may have been lucky instead of good in regard to the interest in the game right now.

I'm now at the bottom of this post and I realize that my gripe list is very long, and that's not good, mainly because I know I have not touched on everything. Anyway, there it is in all its glory. I just see these items as things that need to get addressed as soon as Funcom can possibly put time and effort into them. I'm still playing AoC, somewhat half heartedly at this point, and only then because I have friends playing. I think AoC is definitely something to wait another 30 days for to see if they can get the game more fleshed out. I have no idea why some people are rushing to be level 80 in this game, its going to serve to do nothing more than burn them out and make them realize all these gaps faster than anyone else.

Do you agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know, I'd love to get the feedback on these thoughts from the gaming community that is playing AoC right now.

12 comments:

Openedge1 said...: OMG...such a huge post...
I started to write my opinions of all your points, and then got lost..

Maybe you should have made this a two parter...lol

So, in that respect, I will comment in two parts...

I do want want to note...the 7600 video card is over two years old...and can also be limited by CPU...there is no doubt the game is harsh, but as I keep telling people, I run the "recommended" specs, and have great framerates..so, something is limiting you...find it..Video, CPU, Ram...whatever..

Your overall story is the Destiny Quest, to find out who you are...there is no "specific" enemy...as Conan had different enemies...it was never just Thoth Amon..
In EQ2,,,there are hundreds of enemies..
LOTRO has one enemy, yet, isn't that game...boring?

Bug on hiding...I am aware of that...but, lets take into account...if I am down the street, and you try to hide in the bushes, don't you think I maybe "observed" that? I am not trying to explain the bug away...but, the "observation" comment about hiding when observed...well...you were observed?...lol. Does this mainly happen in Dungeons? Maybe the sounds travel too far to hide?
Ah...hey...can't blame for trying...lol

Using WoW as the comparison for instancing was a fail...sorry...the graphics do not compare...there is no collision detection in WoW...so there remedy was to let everyone run through everyone one else...you are a hollow 3d shell..so, yea...no horsepower needed.
EQ2 uses instancing like AoC, and some of those zones are way smaller than AoC, Guild Wars didnt even allow anyone outside together...but those were huge zones..
I think AoC hit a good middle ground there...

I have more...but for now...those are some of my comments..
I will state...I know AoC is not perfect, and hopefully they rectify these problems...
Luckily we can talk with our wallets...eh?
All I know is it will be hard to go back to the grainy textures of EQ2 and WoW for me..and let alone the slow down combat system will make me sad...need the faster combo action of AoC...

Waits patiently..........; June 3, 2008 11:22 AM
Anonymous said...: I've been reading through your reviews and comments. I pretty much agree. Last night I hit the wall. I needed an Ymir group, there was one forming, it was in a different instance and I discovered they'd stealth changed instance switching--you now need to be at the respawn pad.

I logged out and played City of Villains, got a nice group, kidnapped two people, leveled. The game didn't crash. My powers worked. I was able to get a group. And honestly, the combat is almost as interactive and fun as conan.; June 3, 2008 11:34 AM
Relmstein said...: I also like the Mature rated combat in the game and find the fatalities a lot of fun. In fact I haven't really found anyone who has said that the mature content is keeping them from playing. Most blogs and forums are filled with people who say they like the darker and more gritty nature of AoC's low fantasy. I think political correctness is causing people to expect a M rating to hold AoC back but from what I'm seeing its helping it get subscriptions.; June 3, 2008 1:05 PM
br3ntbr0 said...: @Openedge
Yeah, I guess I went overboard spilling out my thoughts here and probably should have broken it up. I guess the blog is aptly named in this case lol. I will agree that my video card needs updating, I have just enjoyed playing other games that let me get away with it whereas AoC does not. I don't have a problem with the instancing until it impacts grouping negatively, which it has done from time to time. I guess the destiny quest has failed to pull me in from an immersion perspective. I also have not played LotR so I can't speak to that.

@Relmstein
I think my frame of reference is mass appeal, which Funcom specifically has said they know they won't have. That is what makes AoC what it is, and will probably leave it with a loyal following for years to come. But, I don't think it will compete on a large scale for very long because of this perceived limitation. My assumption here is that the more passive types of gamers that like the high fantasy, stylized graphics and easy playability of WoW probably won't like AoC since it doesn't fit into those areas. I'm generally one of the least politically correct people out there so I love it when I can stick a sword through some guys chest and then flex at him as he falls over dead :); June 3, 2008 2:25 PM
Keen said...: "I understand that you don't get a fully fleshed out mmog in the first few weeks after it launches, I get that. However, there are major game mechanics and balance issues here that need to be addressed regardless of the fact that the game is new."

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the topic as well.

Very nice and detailed writeup br3ntbr0.; June 5, 2008 4:22 PM
br3ntbr0 said...: Glad to see you stop by Keen, I follow your blog posts as well. I think you and I are have a very similar mindset regarding mmo's, and that has brought us to WAR. I look forward to the next Chaoscast!

/cheers; June 5, 2008 4:27 PM
Unwise said...: Great post br3ntbr0. You pretty much summed up my feelings on the game perfectly.; June 5, 2008 4:51 PM
Anonymous said...: The Observed bug is due to the corpses "seeing" you, test it on on a new corpse, if you are inwithin its undead view range you'll get that msg, nip away from it behind a wall or something and bingo stealth :); June 5, 2008 8:46 PM
br3ntbr0 said...: Thank the gods someone figured that bug out, it was the most aggravating one I had to deal with. Now I know!; June 5, 2008 9:10 PM
Anonymous said...: Aye, its the above Anonymous again, it drove a few of my guildies and myself mad for a while until it was figured out :); June 7, 2008 10:30 PM
Anonymous said...: Think you summed it up perfectly.

Wrote down my own thoughts at http://alexb.joeuser.com but didn't manage to sum it up yet ;)

Shame about what they did with conan.. had real high hopes for the game.; June 17, 2008 3:23 AM
br3ntbr0 said...: If they stay aggressive with these patches twice a week, it may not take long for them to flesh out alot of the problems I had with the game. Their big PVP patch that is coming up this summer will also help out alot. However, I still choose not to pay for a game that is still in such need of work. After 5 years in development, it was my expectation that most of this would have already been in the game in some form. There's just a crapload of features, items, quests, etc that weren't even in the game at launch. Its like they launched a framework with tutorials, now they are adding content ><; June 17, 2008 8:43 AM

Is this how it feels after level 40 in AoC?

Technical requirements. I know that this one is purely a system problem, as I only have a 7600 series NVIDIA card. I pretty much have to play with everything - and I mean everything - on its lowest settings to get a game playable to my standards. I have yet to average over 25fps, which gives me a playable game, but it is not the beautiful game that most people see. I just think that the high technical requirements kill its chances of gaining large market share. I just don't want to have to drop 200 bucks to get the latest 8800 series card so that I can crank up the settings on a game. I dislike that playing this game makes me feel like I need to start the upgrade process again after just a year of purchasing my current system, and reminds me of one of the core problems of PC gaming. With that said, I'll probably be saving up some scratch so that I can grudgingly go to newegg.com and buy a new card anyway. With system upgrades this can be trivialized, but I'm talking about mass appeal again, and high system specs hurt its chances.
Immersion. This is the hardest thing to describe. I'll ramble a bit about this and hope that I can edit it to make some sense, its a very hard thing to put my thumb on. I just don't feel immersed in the game most of the time, and its hard to pinpoint the root cause. The music is great, one of the best collections of music in any mmog right now. The graphics (when you can afford to turn them up) look really good. Its not the way it looks, or how it sounds. I guess I just can't figure out who I'm fighting against, or what my adventure is supposed to be about. It just feels like I'm trying to get to 80 and that's it, no higher purpose. I don't know if its a problem with the IP that doesn't lend itself to being immersing, or if its something else. Who am I supposed to be fighting against in AoC? In WoW you had a clear enemy...the Alliance or Horde, depending on your characters alignment. In WoW it was the overarching theme in the game from the time you created a character till the end. In AoC, the enemy is...who? Why am I wondering the world and completing quests for people? I just seem to have missed the overarching story somehow or it has failed to give me an immersed feeling. The IP also excludes people who really like a Tolkien type of high fantasy world, one that has proven to house the most successful mmog's to date. I can speak from experience on this, as my wife has loved playing WoW but sees no attraction to the Conan IP. I know others, male and female that feel the same way. I guess there might just be something a little more immersing to some folks about playing as a Gnome or an Orc.
"You can't hide while being observed." HOLY GOD WTF IS THIS? I see it all of the time when trying to hide in AoC. I can be in a solo instance that is empty after killing the last mob and I see this message. What is observing me at this point, corpses? Empty bags of loot? What the hell does it mean that I'm being observed, anyway? And why in god's name can't I hide when being observed, isn't that the point of hiding anyway...to not be "observed"? I think it might be less irritating if I just knew what it meant and why it was happening. What a PITA this has turned out to be, and it needs to be fixed. Please don't tell me its working as intended, I may die inside a little bit.
Instancing. I understand the need for it, and that it helps with stability. However, World of Warcraft showed us all that you can have a big, immersing world while keeping the instancing to a bare minimum. AoC has replicated many things that WoW did well, but this was not one of them. What a complete PITA this has turned out to be, definitely in the first 20 levels. Yes, I know it happens way less once you get out of Tortage but it still happens. It probably wouldn't be as big of a deal if the tools built into the game actually worked, or had some instructions somewhere available. There is an option that appears when you right click a player in your group that says, "summon player to instance". I interpreted that to mean, "hey, you guys are in the same place but different instances so summon him to your instance." But apparently this does not work, or I have no idea how to use it since it isn't documented anywhere. All I get from trying this is a message that the player is already in my instance. Oh really? He's not next to me, yet on voice chat he and I are standing at the same coordinates. Another sub-gripe of this is the instance selection tool. First, I want it to tell me what instance I'm in. There doesn't seem to be an indicator telling you what instance you are in so that people can meet you, just a list of available instances. Now its good that the tool is there, it lets you select which instance you want to go into. The problem is that it will reload you at the nearest respawn point. If you happened to be on the edge of the map where you thought your friend was and you both use this tool to try to meet up, it will put both of you at that closest spawn point. Well, that's cool till you realize that you have to run 15 minutes back to where you were, further wasting time. Can't it just reload you at the same coordinates? By the way, this works great as a traveling shortcut if you know which spawn point is closest to where you want to go, so at least I've managed to find the silver lining to this cloud.
Tortage. It was mildly cool the 1st (and only the 1st) time I went through it. Now it is a deterrent to trying new characters. I don't want to go through 20 levels of Tortage to be able to try out a new character. Oh, and good luck to you if you have friends that decide to start playing and you want to help them through Tortage. Most of it is full of single player instances that you can't go into without the quest. Also, see the above gripe about instancing because you will find yourself in different instances than your friends very often. Good luck describing this crap to them too unless they are seasoned mmog players. I'd love to see Tortage be completely optional after an account has 1 character that has been through it.
PVP mini games. I guess I am really spoiled coming from WoW, where you only need to wait a matter of minutes to play a battleground. In AoC, if I can get in a game per hour I feel like I'm getting alot in. I would have hoped that Funcom had the foresight to see the problems that WoW had when it first introduced battlegrounds, when the queue times were horribly slow. I hope Funcom has already considered the need to consolidate PVP mini games to something that works across servers to help with this issue. As far as variety goes, I played 4 battlegrounds for my entire WoW career and the fact that there weren't more created in the 3 years I played is one of the reasons I left that game to come to AoC. My hope is that AoC will create more than just the 2 types of games with a total of 4 different maps. That lack of variety will get old very soon.
PVP experience. Not working at all. I can kill 50 players in world PVP or in mini games and I never get any PVP experience. The only thing I see working is the kill and death stats in the player info UI. My Ranger has 77 kills and 15 deaths. He's also got 0 PVP experience and is still PVP level 1.
PVP rewards. I see no point to PVP in any form in this game other than the pure thrill of fighting other players, which wears thin quickly. I understood that there was supposed to be PVP rewards that you could get based off your PVP experience. I hope this isn't an end game only thing, as it leaves little to do while leveling up other than grinding out PVE experience until reaching 80. My guess is that like many other things, its not in the game yet.
Death while talking to NPC's. In AoC, talking to NPC's for quest purposes basically throws your view into "cinematic mode" for lack of a better description. During this time, you can do nothing but progress through the quest dialog to get out of this mode. In cinematic mode you have no control over your character. There have been times when NPC's have beaten me to my death while I was talking to a quest NPC and I didn't even realize I was being attacked because my sound was off or my headphones were on my desk instead of my head. It hasn't happened to me in a while, but when this would happen I would basically have to log out of the game because I couldn't access the resurrection menu (or it wouldn't even show) when I was in cinematic mode. No doubt that players on PVP servers know about this all too well, and lie in wait for people to talk to NPC's for a free grief kill too. Cancel cinematic mode when players are in PVE or PVP combat please. There is literally nothing you can do to prevent this kind of death on a PVP server other than never talking to NPC's while in a PVP zone.
Bad quest design and bugged quests. First, there's too much running. Dear god if the same 2 NPC's send me back and forth to each other again I will find a way to kill them both. There are a few entertaining quests in the game, but there are more monotonous ones in the game than there are good ones. At least the travel to and from the major cities is fast. There are also poorly designed quests, where the mobs you need for a quest are before the NPC that gives a quest to kill them. In a linear dungeon, you'll probably kill them and then get the quest to kill them after the fact. When they are dead before you get the quest, you can't complete it since the needed mobs are already dead. Yeah, this happened to me. Then there's the normally expected bugged quests left and right that won't let you finish or start them.
Grouping is lackluster. Is there a reason to group with people? Is there some experience benefit I get from being grouped, because as of this writing I do not know. I think I've soloed from 1-39 and only did my first group instance at 40 when I hit the Sanctum of the Burning Souls. Locating teammates is harder than it should be. Look, we've come a long way from EverQuest where you had to type out x,y coordinates to each other to find out where someone was and meet them. The mini map and large maps will only show your teammates to you as long as they are within a certain range. After that, you have no idea where they are other than to ask them to give you x,y coordinates or to name a common meeting place.
Respawn times. Again, we've come a long way from the original EQ and camping spawns in order to complete quests (or to get loot) is for the birds. Multiple times I've had to wait (waaay too long) for a mini boss or some other mob to spawn so I could complete a quest, and yes this is worse in the Tortage area than anywhere else (yet another reason for Tortage to be optional) but it still happens. I did this on a PVE server too, I don't even want to think about how the problem gets worse on the FFA rule set PVP servers.
Guild taxes not implemented. There is a nice game mechanic to tax guild members so that the guild can afford to pay for all the things needed to make and keep up a player city and guild keep. It would be nice for guilds to have this functionality that many expected to be there at launch.
Tradeskill quests. Once you hit level 40 and you talk to the NPC's to acquire a given profession, your quest log gets spammed with a handful of quests. You can't delete these and it will almost undoubtedly fill up your quest log. By the way, did I mention that you can't delete these quests? Think you can just drop the profession and start over? Uh yeah...let me know how that works out for you. You'll likely end up bugged with no way to do the quests.
Lack of quest content. Why is the level cap 80 in this game? It seems that there's probably only enough quest content for about 60 levels right now in AoC. I'm not at that level yet, but people in my guild are in their 70's and I constantly hear them talking about finding good "grind spots". Oh god, hearing that just wreaks of old EQ. They are talking about grinding because they've hit a pocket where there just seem to be no available quests for them to work on.
M rating. I actually DO like this, (love the fatalities) but I'm male so violence and nudity kind of fit into my demographic. What I don't like about it is that it turns other people away from the game. I just think that along with the high technical requirements, this will again cost Funcom market share and deprive the game of staying power. Some people won't want to play AoC due to the nudity and blood. This is another factor that will keep AoC popular with a niche audience, but will prohibit it from getting WoW like numbers. MMOG's are social games and depend on populated worlds to prosper, I just think this is another limiter in that regard. In order to play devil's advocate, I will say that the Funcom folks themselves have never intended for this game to be a WoW killer, and they know that the game is not for everyone. But are there enough subscribers to keep them going at a high level given that information? I don't think so, but I've been proven wrong before so only time will tell.
End game PVP is poor. I've seen reports on the official Funcom forums that the "Border Kingdoms" where all these sieges are supposed to take place are nothing more than replicated instances of the resource gathering zones. Sieges are limited to 24x24, only at scheduled times. This seems to take the thrill out of pushing to level 80, it just doesn't seem like alot of fun based on the feedback that I've read about it. It makes me wonder what enjoyment I will get out of level 80 endgame PVP, if any.