Mitra's Method: Stephen "weezer" Spiteri's Age of Conan Column

Through the Eyes of Mitra: Age of Conan Beta Journal Entry #1

There were more than enough quests in Tortage to get me through, bred and ready for the next stage, and enough left over to keep me busy for a little while longer and maybe feeling a bit more confident about entering the greater part of Hyboria if I ever felt a bit apprehensive about doing so. My estimation is that there's enough content (as far as quests go) to take you to at least level 21 or 22 if you decide to complete every single quest on offer in Tortage. While going through Tortage from beginning to end with the quests I completed only took me approximately eight hours' worth of gameplay, I feel that I could have been there for at least double that had I decided to pick up a few more quests and not speed through most of the dialogue. Yes, I rushed through parts, I admit it, but only because I was so keen to see what came next.

The quests are well designed and extremely well-written, as they make you feel like you're part of some thing grander, and you, as a player, are left with a feeling like it actually matters what happens to these characters that you interact with as a result of your own actions. I actually found myself by the end of things in Tortage wanting to go back to see how things had changed after the storm had cleared. If you're the sort of person that skips through quest dialogue and so forth, then give yourself a slap in the face now for even considering doing so in 'Age of Conan'. It would be a great insult to the quest designers to rush through dialogue options and what-not especially given the great amount of research completed and thought done going into writing these quests. As a player in this tapestry of drama and adventure, it felt truly as though I was single-handedly weaving the threads of this epic tale, unravelling it bit by bit.

I'm going to put a close on this journal entry, but I'm going to finish by saying that Tortage is probably the best introduction to an MMO as far as "noob zones" go, and I don't use the word "best" loosely or tentatively; I mean it! These are my personal feelings, however, but the whole experience left me thinking, "If this is what a 'noob zone' has to offer, I can only imagine what the rest of the game has in store for me".

Anyway, if you'd like to find out what I will be journaling about next time, you're going to have to come back in again and again to AoC on WarCry see for yourself, because next fortnight we're back to a regular edition of Mitra's Method.

Until next fortnight, this is Stephen "weezer" Spiteri,

Out.

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© Stephen Spiteri, March 2008