Why pay to play a game that's still in beta? You'll more than likely quit because of Funcom, not the game
The games finer assets contributed greatly to the hype; one of the first games to support DX10, innovative combat mechanics, exciting end-game raiding content, mature rating, bar brawls, etc. Unfortunately, after release the developers over at Funcom decided they wanted/needed to pull the plug on most features that were advertised. In fact, a handful of features listed right on the box don't even exist in the game or have been toned down significantly.
Though AoC is still young and going through a fine-tuning process, most of the issues being ironed out should have been taken care of before the IP went gold.
At this point, paying to play is just like paying to test out beta.
The devs continually implement patches that do more damage than good; test realms weren't used, let alone introduced, until just a few weeks ago.
As a matter of fact, most gamers ended up quitting the game not because of the actual game, but because of the developer. Which brings us to the main issue at hand and the source of my review.
Compared to the industry standard, Funcom's maintenance of their IP and their customer service are horrendous. Prior to public release and into the first week, Funcom's official forums were brought down due to their lack of crowd control. Complaints and technical issues flooded the forums which in turn gave a lot of bad publicity for a newly released mmo. When the forums were finally reinstated Funcom asked its consumers to ignore all negative testimonials and that there was nothing wrong with their product.
When I bought the game I was optimistic and confident. However, Funcom's ignorance has proven time and time again that AoC will not flourish any time soon. The lack of communicaton was always a major issue; patch notes weren't introduced until after people had petitioned and complained. Ghost patching is another issue, an extremely annoying one at that. To this day, infuriated gamers constantly rant and fume about the latest, undocumented, stealth nerf. When these nerfs cause too much of an uproar in the community Funcom comes around proclaiming the so-called nerf is actually a "bug that snuck in" during the patching process.
The customer service and support offered from Funcom is nearly non-existent. Email inquiries are never answered, with the exception of the automated response message. In-game support is arguably harder to get than epic items off bosses. A petition system is used to get in touch with a GM. Players wait hours on end within a queue which more-often-than-not times out or resets without any given reason. After several hours, if you actually do manage to get in touch with a GM you're introduced to their limited repertoire of issues they can assist you with.
In most cases, if you bring up a bug or technical issue the in-game GM will direct you to the website and ask you to submit an inquiry via email. Which, as I wrote above, go unanswered about 100% of the time.
Age of Conan is pure visual eyecandy with a refreshing combat system. Unfortunately, the game is unpolished, incomplete and released several months too early. This is one mmo that is definitely worth looking into further down the road, however, considering how sluggish Funcom is at addressing real issues, I wouldn't expect that time to come anytime soon. Your time is best invested elsewhere until then.