Well, first of all the game used to have terrible technical issues, check
the technical and general forums at
aoformuns.funcom.com to see the abundance of complaints.
But even if it weren't for those and the game was actually playable most
of the time, it is not that great IMHO. The graphics are superb, the soundtrack
is nice, it has loads of interesting items and a very neat skill system.
A great game then you say - well no. What I have seen so far of gameplay
(and I played since release) consisted of either going into fairly similar
missions (there are six or seven not-that different base missions that create
random areas), killing mobs there and collecting treasures or standing in
the outdoors, killing mobs there and collecting little or no treasure.
While this is somewhat fun, especially with a good group, it gets tedious
pretty quickly. With the money you make (and its fairly easy to make lots
of money) you buy stuff to kill stronger mobs so you get more money and experience
to kill even stronger mobs. Levels go to 200, so you can presumably do this
for a few months. No one has any idea what to do once you reach 200 yet.
The uniqueness of the handcrafted dungeons and quests in Everquest is totally
missing, everything has a sheen of sameness. After 15 or 20 missions they
all start to look the same. And standing in a spot blasting away at endless
streams of monsters to get a level every half hour or so is not very fun
for long either. There is a PvP element of course, but it seems doubtful
for me it ever will be possible for a not 24/7 player to venture into any
PvP areas without being instantly slaughtered by powergamers.
Now, in a while Funcom wants to start a storyline. Maybe then, there will
be something meaningful to do. But I would suggest you wait until the first
bits of the storyline have been released and you can read about how it works
out before buying this game. If you want to level lots and get lots of
cool items in random places I suggest Nethack or
Angband, graphics are worse but they are at least stable and the plot
is better and they are free. And if you want a multiplayer experience I would
suggest UO or EQ (don't like AC very much either, too much sameness there
too), or Diablo II if you are into pure hack and slash. Only if you have
tried all those and want to see something new and paying 50 dollars plus
a monthly fee isn't that much to you can I recommend AO.
Maybe - and a big maybe - it might be worth it if you are a die hard Sci-Fi
fan as there are no alternatives out there I am aware of. But if it doesn't
make that much difference to you if you blast a mutant with a "Freedom arm"
energy pistol or if you slash an orc with a magic sword, you'd rather have
a good game, I would stay away from this till it matures a lot. Perhaps forever,
as there are quite a few competitors in Beta already.
