My 30 day trial of Age of Conan ended recently.  I didn’t get to play it as much as I’d expected, because the game was practically non-functional with the 1 Gb of RAM my computer has.  I ordered a 4 Gb upgrade, but had to wait, and then install it, and then I was out of town, and yadda yadda yadda.  The point is, I only really was able to take away a few lessons from it.

• Loading screens and quick fetch quests don’t mix.  I’ve always found “Go talk to X and come back” quests annoying.  They were, though, basically free XP, and I’m not going to complain about free XP.  What I will complain about, though, is when talking to X requires four separate loading screens.  One to leave the inn, one to enter the X’s house, one to leave X’s house and one to go back into the inn.  This annoyance was lessened a bit when I upgraded my RAM, but before that, each screen was anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds long.
   
• Loading screens should encompass ALL of the loading.  If you’re going to insert a loading screen into your game anyway, then at least use said screen to load all of the assets that need to be loaded.  Often, when I’d leave the inn, I’d be pleased to see the loading screen speed by.  The bar filled quickly and in no time at all I was standing outside the inn.  The problem: not much had apparently loaded.  Textures were non-existent, NPCs hadn’t loaded, and, worst of all, it was impossible to move around while all of this was loading.  So, I had to stand there in front of the inn, waiting for everything to catch up.  I’d much rather look at a loading screen during that time.
   
• Active combat is a good thing.  I very much liked the combat in AoC.  I had a few complaints (slow reaction time, seemingly unreliable queueing of actions, spell animations that end before the spell is cast), but I think those would have gone away with practice.  I felt engaged by the combat system, and I could see potential in the blocking system.
   
• Speaking as a guy, bare breasts are always nice.  Speaking as someone who’d like to see video games progress into maturity, rather than just adult content, I wish they’d have been a little more… active with the sexuality.
       The best example from my short playtime would be Casilda.  You rescue her early on, she seems to be a prostitute, and she offers to “reward” you, but nothing ever comes of it.  This is a lost opportunity.  I don’t intend to sound perverted, but had the developers the guts, they could have added a dialogue tree or two that led down a path where you actually get that “reward.”  No need for a mini-game, or even a graphic cutscene, but some sort of real relationship development would have been wildly unexpected, and would have launched Casilda out of the realm of simple titillation.  
       The sex in AoC is really just provocative, and not much more.  It’s there to shock and excite, but it really seemed to have no bearing on the game.  Again, I didn’t get very far into it, so that may change, but I doubt that. 
   

I think that’s about it.  I didn’t really get enough playtime to get much more.  I’m simply not in the mood for another fantasy MMO, but if I was, I’d probably stick with AoC.  As it is, I still might check it out again in six months time or so, once a few patches and updates have dropped and the game’s been broken in a bit.