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Gamers: Fighting change with a cry of “Boom! Headshot!”

Jun 12, 2008 Games

Image © Funcom,
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Much like my other half, I’ve been spending the few scant moments of free time I have each week with Age of Conan. While I won’t dive into gushing technical details I will simply say a few quick things:

1. The game is gorgeous, and I seem to be able to run it on good setting without bleeding edge tech. I can’t wait for DX10 Support.
2. The music and sound design is nearly perfect. The music runs the gamut from moody and lonely to grand and sweeping. The sound effects are marvelous. Two words: “crunchy snow.” I even have the music playing in my car.
3. The game-play is quick and addictive but still has depth to it. Quests abound! I’ve not grown tired yet.
4. Adult approach for the WIN! Blood and Nipples (trademark pending). It’s what you get when grown-ups make a game for grown-ups. Despite all the brouhaha over the inclusion of nipples (in the prudish US) or Blood (in the squeamish EU), the game is doing it’s best to be realistic and cater to decidedly adult audience; Crazy things like, when you stab people, there’s blood and that women actually have nipples. Oh the horror!

Now, all that being said, the game has it’s issues: it’s got a memory leak, of course. It’s got unfinished areas (though not anywhere near as bad as things like we saw in places like the Kojani area of Vanguard). It’s got classes still being tweaked and balanced, leading to the inevitable cry of “NERF!” in the future. It’s not perfect, but in comparison to everything else I’ve played or beta tested for it’s absolutely the most complete and engaging MMoRPG.

Unfortunately and predictably, the game also has another slight problem. It’s infested with gamers.

Image via Wikipedia

For a group of people that typically pride themselves on razors edge technology, I have never seen so many resistant to change since I left the panhandle of Florida. This game takes advantage of the best technology available today, but because it is different than the beloved WoW, these people will absolutely lie to both themselves and you. I have seen, on more than one occasion “This game sucks. WoW still beats it hands down.”

Well, usually it’s something more like “U R suxx0rz Cnoan! WoW>AoC!

Seriously, with a perfectly straight face (likely drooling Mountain Dew), the people will say that the music, game-play and graphics in WoW all surpass Conan. A game made to run on mediocre equipment from 4 years ago is being compared favorably to a game actually designed to run on equipment this year, using graphic and audio technologies not even available when WoW was born. The fact that someone can actually say these words with a straight face is a testimony to the power of denial. Anyone with a functioning brain stem can simply look at the two games side by side and make the appropriate comparative statements.

On the WoW side we have the cartoony idiocy of Warcraft with midgets running around on giant metal chickens. We have elves with 7 foot ears sticking straight out of the side of their heads like fleshy antlers. We have dwarves doing the Macarena in bright pink and purple garb. We have Disney’s version of a MMoRPG. Colorful and shiny to keep the little kiddies involved and focused. They might as well have given out a WoW mobile to hang over the crib. Only appropriate since most of the people singing its praises were 1 or 2 when the game was released.

On the other hand we have the splendor of Conan: Blood and Nipples™. We have scarred warriors and jagged looking weapons instead of jagged graphics. We have war mammoths with metal spikes hammered through their tusks rather than lag spikes in Iron forge. We have weapons designed to look and act brutal. We have real colors, sounds and people. We have a game designer that took pains to make their game world as realistic and gritty as possible without taking the magic out it. They managed to make a fantasy game without elves in it that people actually enjoy playing.

Despite this, the WoW idiots keep coming over and keep spending countless hours bitching about Conan’s few flaws or that it won’t run on their 2003 iMac. I believe the fact they’re here is a testament to how dated and crappy their beloved game is. The problem is these short-sighted, 16 year-old idiots are taking up valuable time and space in my game. They turned the new player help chat channel, something most games really do need, into a battlefield of idiocy that was yanked down in a day. They clutter up out-of-character chat with 3 hour long discussions of how the night elf is more sexually appealing than a human female. They are inevitably the same idiots that make up character or guild names like “girl” or “Ninja Space pirates” and think that they are just terribly witty. These people are the tea-bagging idiots of the game world.

The one brief hope I have is that, looming on the horizon, is the brightly colored and cartoony Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. I’ve already heard people talk about this game as the successor to WoW and, based on my limited experience with the beta, I’d tend to agree. The game is a decided improvement over WoW, of course, as pretty much any well-funded MMoRPG made 4 (or 5, if it ever launches) years later should be, but it’s the same feel; the same bright colors. I can almost hear them asking for “mah purplez” already. It’s why I’m no longer involved in the beta.

I know, I know. The prevailing wisdom is that, “Without these idiots, there is no game. You have to have these guys support the game to keep it open,” but the prevailing wisdom is just plain wrong. Most of the people I personally know (or know through my wife) that were still playing WoW before AoC launched were playing it because there was nothing else to be played. The lack of alternatives is singly responsible for the 8 million subscribers that WoW reached. No small feat, that, but with millions of gamers out there to keep these type of games supported there is no reason that two games can’t exist in this genre. The fact that Everquest and Everquest II were, and remain, successful is ample proof of this.

All I can ask is that the two camps separate themselves on their own. I can hope that when WAR launches most of the idiots calling their character “Drizzt” or “Anaykin Skiwolker” will run back to the kiddie nonsense they love so much. At east this is an update. At least you can compare the two side by side without having to constantly throw the handicap out that “well, this game is 4 years old.” At least this is an improvement.

The problem is that I can easily imagine that WAR players will be favorably comparing the game to tactile, interactive holograms in 50 years.