Why I Play the Way I do, Part Whatever

Age of Conan.

Now there was an MMO that shaped my in-game playing over the years, despite the bugs and mishandling of the Conan property by Funcom. 

That opening beach area. The graphics
still look good even after 14 years.
From mmos.com.

There was so much promise in that game, and I'd sung its praises before, especially in the starting zone, and I've been disappointed how the game played out. From the delay in the button pushes to the bait-and-switch from Tortage to the rest of the leveling content, it's a damn depressing situation at times. But that game simply won't die.

Ah yes, the character creation screen. And
the boob slider, which starts at roughly
a C cup and goes to 'How is she walking?'
From the IGN Age of Conan Wiki.

No, I haven't logged into the game in the past couple of days; I believe my time at logging in at all is at an end. But what sparked my musing about the game was how the mobs in WoW behave compared to AoC, and because of that I have a hard time following through on some of these YouTube videos showing how people can solo farm stuff in various instances/locales.

A couple of weeks ago --when Linna was still in the mid-60s*-- my questing buddy was trying and failing to accomplish some farming that she'd seen another guildie perform in Slave Pens. She'd also checked out some YouTube videos, and she kept dying. So I dropped by and kept her buffed, rezzing when necessary, for about an hour or two. During that time she showed me a couple of the tricks, showing how you can run from one point to another and not have to worry about the mobs following you. 

Yes, this is one of the sole pics that show
Linna around an instance. So far, that evening
spent in Slave Pens' opening area has been
the only time she's been in a BC instance.
(And for the record, we were talking about
the guinea pigs, not any human grandchildren.)

 

"Oh!" I replied. "And here I thought there was a barrier there or something."

"Nope! They just won't aggro here." A bit later, when we were in Dire Maul: East, she pointed out a location and said that was a reset point there. In both cases I kind of shook my head and muttered to myself that these two things would never work in Age of Conan. 

***

The mobs in Age of Conan are pretty brutal at level. Compared to other mainstream MMOs, they're on the Dark Souls end of difficulty in that it's not just a primary enemy you have to deal with, but how nearby enemies react as well. Back in the day, if you pulled one baddie, depending on how you pulled you might end up with 4-5 additional enemies ganging up on you. The mobs aren't linked per se, they just react to whatever nearby mobs are doing. It's quite impressive --especially for the era, when you'd not expect MMOs to behave in that advanced a fashion-- but it instilled in me an extra amount of caution in how I leveled out in the field. And in Age of Conan, you are most definitely not on the "superhero" end of power while leveling. Even Neve and Linna, who were both leveling in quest greens acquired from what must be 5-10 levels ago, feel more powerful than the average Age of Conan toon.

And tips and tricks that work in a game such as WoW simply will. not. work. in Age of Conan. 

AoC was designed with the hardcore in mind, back when PvE hardcore content meant more than "very long attunement processes".**

***

If Blizz wanted to, they could close out these gaps in the system that allows certain reset points and solo farming items to exist. The key point here is "wanted to", because I suspect that the Blizz devs themselves take advantage of these little quirks in the system, so why would they shoot themselves in the foot? And it's also important to note that since these little flaws in the WoW matrix were discovered, it's become a bit of a game to find these semi-legal loopholes. If those loopholes were closed when WoW was young, the devs would have at least had history on their side, but by letting them stand they're now considered part of the game. 

Some people would call it inventiveness, others laziness, and still others would call it 'cheats'. 

Like, oh, using the Immature Venom Sacs to deal with Viscidus in AQ40. 

Someone had to figure out not only would those sacs work with Viscidus, that they were tradable among people in a raid, but also that people had to farm the damn things in Lower Blackrock Spire by using quirks in the system to get the spider mobs down quickly enough so that the timer on the sacs they acquired wouldn't expire. Is it a kludge? Yes, of course it is. Does it work? Yes, it does. Is it what was intended by Blizz to fix the challenge? No, likely not, but that's the point. It was a solution that presented itself by someone who knew the reset points and could quickly farm a lot of sacs instead of farming mats for poison cleaning potions.***

***

I guess you could say that because those little quirks and gaps exist in WoW, it makes WoW more appealing to a certain type of player: one who likes a challenge and thinks outside the box. Age of Conan taught me how to pull conservatively and at the right angles for solo play, and WoW hasn't rid me of that just yet.

*Boy, it might have been even less time ago than that. Feels like a bit of a blur.

**And nudity. Don't forget the people who like nudity in their MMOs. But seriously, I wrote this back in 2011 --before SWTOR released-- on my first real post about Age of Conan: WoW, by comparison, is pretty tame stuff.  Sure, you have shades of gray with NPCs' morals, but you also have discernable good and bad guys.  There's nothing like dark and darker imagery that you get out of Age of Conan.  Considering that WoW is doing something completely different with it's blend of High Fantasy and Steampunk, that's to be expected.  Blizzard doesn't take itself too seriously, while AoC is like the student dressed all in black sitting at a table in a dimly lit coffeehouse, grousing about 'art'.

***Or didn't have access to the poison removal totem that Shamans have.

EtA: Fixed a grammatical mistake.