I've played a few hours of the AoC open beta and have some initial thoughts. First, it should be clear that this is not a beta. The purpose of a beta is to do some rigorous final testing on software that is ready to go gold. Beta testers should be catching edge or corner case defects that are difficult to find. No, the state of AoC right now is alpha. In my three or so hours of testing I crashed 4 times and submitted 4 bug reports (not including the crash reports). If I had been more diligent I could have submitted many more reports for things like missing text, misspelled text, and garbled text. Several times I found myself suddenly unable to touch buildings or bridges--I would walk through buildings and fall through bridges. At one point I found myself at the bottom of the world, in the sea. There was a huge mountain behind me and a lone two story wooden house floating a couple of feet above the ocean. The game is buggy as hell and there is no way they will get that stabilized in a few weeks.

On to game play. I was left trying to find what is unique and interesting in this game verses a game such as Witcher. Some of the mechanics are slightly better, but overall I could be picked up from one and dropped into another and there would be little way for me to tell the difference. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly, but I was expecting something more. Perhaps it becomes better when you are deeper into the game?

Even if the story becomes more engrossing that will not make up for the unbelievably simple AI. As far as I can tell, the AI is no different than MMORPG's I played years and years ago. NPCs stand around doing absolutely nothing waiting for someone to come within the radius of their zone. They don't look around, they don't scratch, they don't stretch. They just stand there stiffly, like poorly thought out automatons. The only real interaction I was able to induce is when I managed to draw an archer into the zone of an enemy archer. And I use the word "interaction" in its most general meaning, because it consisted of both of them stopping in the open and firing arrow after arrow at each other until one was dead. They didn't attempt to evade the arrows or find cover or retreat when badly injured. They didn't even make any sounds when they were hit. As a final note about AI, I was fighting a jungle ape and it cast a spell on me. A jungle ape. Cast a spell. Enough said about that.

I've been looking forward to this game for a long time. I want to love it. I would even settle for liking it quite a bit. I don't. What am I missing?