This review was written by an old guildie of mine who is currently beta testing the game. As someone who was eagerly awaiting the release, this is not good news to me. From what people are saying, it may not even be worth purchasing to try on release.

Anyways, the review:

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Yah it really sucks.... I was really really looking forward to AoC but as each day goes by we find that
something else isn't shipping with the game. The lack of DX10 support bums me alot because this was
going to be the game of standard with graphics. Right now they are sadly using a modified Anarchy Online
engine and we all know how old that game is. Don't get me wrong though, the game does look decent
but there are alot of performance issues due to them trying to stretch this engine too far. So we will see
what happens there.

Also they stated the game would ship with 30 regions/zones. We currently only have about 7-8 in the game
and they are expecting now that it will ship with only 10-12 of the 30 zones. You may think well..... 10-12
zones is ok..... LOTRO and WOW dont have many zones but they are really big..... Well in aoc the zone aren't
big and you really don't have much option to explore in these zones. Most of them are in small valleys between two
mountains. You cannot move up these mountains at all unless there is a path. Either its too steep or they have
invisible walls EVERYWHERE. So with them making these zones as cramp as they are with no options to really explore we're in trouble.

On top of that add in loading times every time you leave most towns, enter/leave buildings, zone, enter pvp or enter
your player town. These load times are quite long due to the dated engine being used.

The only current pvp in the game is a version of capture the flag and it is instanced JUST like wow.
Anyone remember Warsong from wow? Well this is very similar. That it for pvp right now. No barfights like said
and no open world pvp yet. The siege warfare isn't comming along that well and may not ship either.
Oh yea by the way the whole bloodcoin thing... Not in the game yet and they wont talk about it.

The game currently only supports male characters so all you shim lovers look out. You can only make a dude at
this time. In the same area, character creation, only about 4 classes are done with about 6 more unreleased
and untested. They may not come in at release either.

Crafting... Unseen and unheard of. Not in the game at this time and we have NO clue when or if it will show.

Player towns? Not in the game yet and not known when these will show.... They haven't really been discussed or tested. Unknown if these will be out with launch.

Guilds...... Well these have hardly been enabled yet. You can make the guild but if you try to use any functions in the tab the guild disbands. No functions have not been implemented yet. Cannot invite, kick, tax, promote/demote, mail.
All you can do now is invite people in a 5m radius. So only the GM can invite and only if you're right on top of them.
This only works 5% of the time also.
The only real guild function that is in the game now and working is the message of the day, lol.

Soooooo thats the story. These are the main items missing from the game. They keep stating that they will not be moving the release date back anymore. They said they already moved it from October to March and cannot do this anymore.

The point is this..... This game will go Gold in the next 30 days.... Give or take 5-7 days.... That is ALOT of stuff
to put in, test and fix before gold time.... Once the game goes gold that is what they are going with on ship date.

On top of these missing items there is a laundry list of game altering bugs that will not allow you to play very long
or at all.... I understand this is beta and I've tested almost every MMO since UO..... You can tell when stuff isn't right
and this has that feeling. This game maybe GREAT 6-8 months after release or after their first expansion pack a yr into the game..... BTW... That is the talk right now.... most of the missing game features includeing DX10 will be in the first expansion pack... soooo Look out! Its going to be a bumpy ride!


Ohhh yeah! I almost forgot. There is no more plans for Open Beta in aoc. They said they don't have enough
time for one due to the time cruch.... They said they have all the people they need already.....
Guess what that means? They don't even know if the engine will be able to handle a full server load...
Look for terrible server reliability for the first month or two after release. (Think they changed this actually.)

One of the most hated features of AOC and how I stumbled onto it.

I was walking from town to town and city to city one day and noticed with I entered "Tortage," one of the newbie
cities, I was given an option
"Enter Tortage Day Instance: 100004589"
"Instance: 100004590"
"Instance: 100004591"
"Instance: 100004592"
"Instance: 100004593"

At first I was confused... What does this mean? Soooo I randomly clicked one and entered the city.
After a bit of playing I heard someone in OOC chat ask for help with a quest.... I figured
"Sure! Its a hard quest and I could use help too." We spoke in tells and decided to meet by the inn....
You cannot group invite someone unless they are right on top of you..... Well we both goto the inn
and cannot see each other. After some time guessing we asked others in OOC about this.

We were told that Funcom decided to have a player cap on each zone, pvp area, structure, etc.
What this means is that soon as that area hits that cap... right now estimated at a couple hundred people.
Another instance is started and you must join that one......

Imagine what this does to the imersion of a game when you cannot see other people your guilded with because they
are in the correct zone but not the correct instance. In my opinion this is a TERRIBLE idea. Funcom thinks its great
though..... Sigh....

If you do decide to play.... Prepare to have a rough time meeting up with guildmates or others you know.
Looks like we will be forced to pug alot of stuff unless things are forced to change.

I'm actually not surprised by this. Another MMO with a huge let down. Looks like that one is crossed off the list. I still have Warhammer and Stargate to look forward to.

(sigh) *checked off of list*

(sigh) *checked off of list*

Yea, it's quite sad that all of these MMO's look promising when they are first announced. Once it reaches alpha, beta, and public beta, they blow chunks. Disappointing :(

How old is this review? Cause pretty much everything he wrote there is either now in-game/added/fixed. I've been following AoC pretty closely and from what I see it's coming along really well.
Also I want to add that the developers said that all current beta testers are playing an older version of the game (5 months or more I think they said) and they haven't yet converted the newer version of it over to the testers yet.