If you're getting this error when installing the game (which is apparently very common), all you have to do is run the game and rather than click on "Play", do the following:

1. Click on Settings
2. Click on  Resource / Database
3. Click of Verify Data Integrity

The verification program should then run. It'll take a while but it should sort out your problems. It will tell you how many files have been fixed, but it should sort out any problems you have with the game.

Note: If you have any other options to tick under the Verify Data Integrity option, then make sure you select those too.

Happy gaming. 

Well, consider my timbers well and truly shivered! I've just played an hour or so of Age of Conan and it seems that everything Funcom was saying about the game is true.

There was a whopping 2.6gb "miracle" patch which took an age to download, but it transformed the game. I played all the way up to the city of Tortage, and reached level 5.

And, I take back everything I said. The game plays beautifully; no lag or crashes or even particularly evident bugs. The zoning is perfect and the voice acting is great.

But it's the combat that's most exciting, possibly the best in MMO history with fast and frenetic action.

I'll have a more complete review soon, but Age of Conan could really be a contender for game  (MMO) of the year. At least on first inspections.

More to follow... 

This was supposed to be a beta review, but as I can't even get the game to start, all you're going to get are the negatives.

I had tremendous poblems installing the game, with all kinds of error messages, but - as per the PVP Weekend - the game installed and ran, patched and played.

Only it all hangs on the loading screens.

I can make a character with an exceptionally choppy handful of frames per second, and I can load up the game one in every ten attempts, but there are just too many problems with the code (appalling frame rates, glitches and problems) to make this game worthwhile.

If you're one of the lucky ones who is playing generally problem free, then fine, but I urge everyone else to avoid Age of Conan until the game has received at least some positive reviews that the title has been optimised to actually work.

Right now I think we're all playing the Macintosh version of the game on our PCs. That can be the only excuse for releasing such a shoddy piece of code. 

In their defense, Funcom has stated that the "open" beta is using an older version of the game code installed with lots of analysis software running to obtain configuration statistics. I find this bizarre in the extreme, and probably not even true. The open beta has been the chance to show off the game, to engender people to your title, and to really spread the positive word of mouth. The last thing you do is release a buggy version of old code to the public. Funcom has swiftly shattered all expectations of the game in one clumsy sweep. If this old version of the game story is true, they've made a critical mistake and may have doomed their game to mediocrity. If it's false, they're in a whole mountain of trouble as the game is nowhere near ready for release.  They can't win either way (well they could have by making a polished game on release - but that doesn't seem like an option for them).

We've learned so much in the last ten years. The public knows better. We're more discerning than we were back in the days of Anarchy Online. We have lots more options in the games we play. Polish is king and if a game doesn't make the grade, we can abandon it for another. We've seen the previous casualties, yet the only people not learning the lessons of the past are the developers. Learn the lesson now: 

Don't Release Half-Finished Game Code. Polish is King! 

So, Age of Conan released WAY too early? You betcha.

Come back in six months - or wait for Warhammer Online.

Both are an alternative (and far less frustrating) option to paying to beta test Age of Conan on its release at the end of May.

I got my Fileplanet beta key for the Age of Conan open beta week event. Hurrah!

I was particularly concerned about getting a key. As I said in last week's preview, there is no way I'm going to buy / preorder the game until I've seen signs that it's a lot more playable than it was over the PVP weekend. So many people complained of having all manner of problems, and while the game is only £24.99 (including free War Mammoth or Rhino - depending on where you order), I still got burned with Hellgate London and won't be buying another heavily bugged game again - ever!

Age of Conan looks great, but if I wanted bugs I'd go watch Starship Troopers.

And if I wanted to simulate the pain of playing a heavily bugged game with none of the joy, I'd watch Starship Troopers 2. 

The open beta event starts on May 1st, so look for more NDA-breaking news and information around then*.

Check out the Fileplanet Age of Conan mini website. I must gripe about the fact that Fileplanet now has a kind of lottery where you've got to compete with everyone else for beta slots. I know their betas are in pretty huge demand, but it still makes me think 'why am I paying for a chance to be in beta?'

I'm sure I'm not the first to grumble about this and I hope this isn't the start of a worrying new trend. 

Anyway, check out the Fileplanet page for a chance to get in beta and let's hope for a fantastic open beta with all the bugs and glitches resolved. 

* That was a joke! C'mon, you knew that, right?

Here are some of my favourite screen shots from the Age of Conan PVP Weekend.

I didn't take any of the Capture the Flag game, and I couldn't play Annihilation, so all you have is the gorgeous-looking environments and characters.

Before I start: did you know collision detection is in the game? That's right, when you run into other characters there's a hefty thud! No longer are other character spectral, they have mass, and you can't run into them. There are pros and cons to this system, but I really do prefer it as it feels more realistic. 

THE NECROMANCER

The Necromancers seemed, on the whole, to be fairly versatile. You can have a variety of weird necromantic monsters (like zombies) at your disposal, and the exact number of creatures seemed dependent on their power and your own level. They were pretty useful, although not having any control mechanism meant they were exceptionally unwieldy. A simple pet control mechanism is a must.

The Necromancers do look amazing, though, with their bone outfits and their feather headdresses.

Powers range from summonings (as mentioned above) to direct damage, AoE and Damage over Time spells. There also seemed to be the occasional rare summon when you conjured a temporary huge beastie which lasted a short while doing massive damage, before fading away.

It was all very well thought out, but the Necromancers felt, for all their powers, somewhat weedy, their spells all but useless in PVP.

DEMON FORM OF THE HERALD OF XOTLI

The Herald is another spell-casting class, and I didn't get to play with many of their powers, but they're a cross between a sword-wielding warrior and a spellcaster.

You can transform into this rather impressive looking demon form which gives you major buffs to your physical stats. The power is on a timer so you can't just turn it on and off at will. 

I wouldn't like to meet him on a dark night, though I think you'll agree that he looks fantastic. I didn't get to play too much with the Herald of Xotli, but they look a lot more capable of dishing out melee damage in PVP. 

CHARACTER PET: SUCCUBUS

Everyone's been complaining about the complete lack of boobies in game, so here you are: a rather fetching green-skinned succubus, the pet of the Demonologist. As you can see, her maiden modesty is protected by a matching emerald thong (from the infernal version of Anne Summers, probably), but she does look rather impressive.

PARTICLE SPELL EFFECTS

I chose this image because there's been a lot said about the lack of good spell effects in the game. Well, as you can see there's plenty of particle effects from spells, and lots of nice colours, too.

This is the staging area for the Annihilation PVP and the place where characters have one minute to prepare their buffs for combat. 

I really do think the game looks stunning and while I'm not running it in DirectX 10.1, I think you'll still agree how lovely everything looks. 

PVP STAGING AREA 

This is the touch down point for the Annihilation PVP game. This is the point where the timer counts down to zero and the gamers eagerly let out a whoop of joy and dash for the barrier to engage is some carnal slaughter.

I, of course, gave a sigh of despair as my PC met with the loading screen of doom - clearly, I wasn't in favour with the gods and need to bulk up a load and sacrifice my first born to the dark powers before I can engage in some Annihilation PVP. 

PVP STAGING AREA - ALLIED TERRITORY  

This is the first of the exceptionally pretty outdoor locations for the PVP - Annihilation event. I can't tell you a great deal about the actual game because my PC wouldn't load up the event (curses). But, as you can clearly see, the locations look gorgeous with lovely skies and water effects.

I will say that the FPS went down to around 7 - and this is just a staging area. I guess we can only wait and see what kind of FPS we get when the game is finally released. 

PVP STAGING AREA - PARTICLE EFFECTS

I thought this picture was worthy of note because of the particle effects, swirling smoke and mist effects.

The world really is a dark and violent place, and the developers have gone out of their way to make it a dark and brooding, yet beautiful fantasy world. 

CHARACTER PROGRESSION SKILL TREE

The skill trees (of which two are shown here) are plainly identical to those of other games, you get one skill point per level, with a bonus every ten levels. 

We can't talk about the Skill Trees too much but the system is really evocative and atmospheric and there were lots of skills I'd have liked to have bought. Fortunately, with eighty levels and around 84 skill points at maximum level, you've plenty of points to play around with.

What IS interesting is that you have different ranks for the different Talents, which means you have a hundred different ways to specialise - lots of options means lots of different character specs - exciting. 

It looks like you start accruing skill points at level 10 and get 2 for every 10th level (hence 12 at 20). By that reckoning you'll have 86 at level 80. 

I just hope all skill trees are equally viable (something that's never really happened in other games) making multiple options possible rather than one cookie-cutter version of each class. 

There were some delicious looking skills in that list, and did I see Lich Form at the bottom of one of the skill trees? Why, I do believe I did!

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS 

And that's your lot for this screenshot session, coming next is the open beta, which should be a whole lot more fun.

I will say, as a summary: PVE great fun. PVP needs a lot of work.

Funcom has already said that with all their analysis software working in this version of the beta things were running rather slow, but once all that has been turned off and the engine optimised even more, we should be seeing great FPS and the game should be a lot faster.

Now all we can do it leave the game in Funcom's capable hands and see what they can deliver in the next thirty days. I imagine there'll be some serious sacrificing to the dark gods in order to get this game in ship shape condition for the end of May release.

In closing, Age of Conan could be amazing. It's certainly done all the ground work for an exceptionally fun and different enough to other popular games to carve a niche for itself. All that is needed now is a month of polish from the developers, some serious server streamlining, and we've got a cult hit on our hands.

I've been checking out the Age of Conan beta again this morning, and while there have been patches galore, I still can't access the Annihiliation PVP, which is a great shame as the preview is all about it. The Capture the Flag game is dull as dishwater and I've no more interest in playing it (after two games).

So, to close off this weekend review I've got some screen shots (which I'll post later) and some closing words.

The game really does look great. I know Funcom is working on the PVP imbalances, but my concern is that without complex analysis, their balancing efforts are going to be lacklustre at best. I'm no great technology expert but there MUST be programs you can run to perform millions of simulated battles to get the best balance.

I do think the game needs another few months of development time, even with my high end PC I still only got 7 FPS in the PVP areas. 

I still feel that from an old gamer's perspective, Age of Conan isn't quite ready for a release. The engine isn't as robust as it could be, nor does the game have the right amount of polish to compete with games already in existence. The patcher still doesn't work properly (was getting all kinds of error messages) and the Loading Screens still endlessly hang with no indication as to whether things are working way in the background.

It is an intriguing concept, though and has lots of nifty ideas - lots of things done different enough (to WOW) to stand out from the crowd, but for me, it's not different enough.

While I'm sure Funcom will swiftly iron out the most glaring of bugs before release, for my taste, it still needs another few months of polish before eager gamers everywhere get their shapechanged paws on it!

For the player, a beta is a chance to see a glimpse of a game and to see how stable the engine is. It’s like a try-before-you-buy offer, a chance to get excited at the wonderful potential of a new game.

For the developer, a beta is chance to get some much-needed server performance code and to show their engine off to a massive number of players.

One thing we’ve learned from years of betas (and there has been a decade of MMO betas now) is that polish is king. A smooth running and easily accessible beta will get the gamers flooding in. That didn’t happen here. It’s my experience that Age of Conan is not that game, at least from this weekend's PVP beta experience. Read on to find out why.

Playing the Game: There were two elements to the beta: the short single player game and the PVP element. The single player game was fun (taking you up to around level 6) and gave you a brief teaser into the powers of your characters. There’s a great deal of atmosphere and the quests are interesting enough. Combat is fun and fast, although the three 'directional' button to attack different parts of the body system seems something of a redundant mechanic and I don’t see the point of it (it's like a watered-down system of a far more complex system). It didn’t feel much like real-time battling to me, although it did feel different to, say Warcraft, which is a good thing for those people wanting something new. I will say that it was nice and responsive, which helps with that split-second timing. I think I need more time to grow to like it – it certainly was intriguing. Weapons and abilities are on timers but it doesn't feel like you're endlessly left with nothing to do while those timers reset (as in other games).

Graphics: With eye-gouging DirectX 10 compatibility (although that was disabled for this release), the graphics are stunning. That said, with the lag monster and his mother conspiring to make everything behave so erratically, it’s impossible to give a true indication of how the game will look in the final product. While the graphics weren't so good for the environments, the characters were stunning - quite certainly the best in any game so far. My necromancer had a raven feather headdress and bones for his outfit - everything was beautifully realised and looked stunning. How the game will run with fifty people running around in battle is another matter entirely...

Stability: I’m very concerned about stability. If the developers can’t get the game to work smoothly for a few (and there were only perhaps a hundred people in game) players, then what will the game be like when there are hundreds clamouring to access the log-in servers? We'll get a better indication in the Open Beta, but right now I'll admit to being somewhat nevous about server performance...

Game Balance: Release is almost upon us and for Funcom to be making such fundamental balancing acts at so late a stage in the game is a tad worrying... But change is needed, for the classes are horribly unbalanced with some classes simply unable to defeat others. It makes PVP very frustrating right now and it'll take more than a few developers to vaguely tweak the numbers to put this right.

PVP: The PVP is interesting enough, but it's nothing new (capture the flag, anyone?). It's too slow and confusing and, as I said, the class balance is totally off. It certainly didn't feel like cutting-edge next-gen MMO technology (or indeed anything revolutionary and exciting) which is what I was hoping for. Talking of character imbalance, some characters were barely taking damage with three of my minions on them and me chain-casting offensive spells. Mind you, as a necromancer, I was advised that they are exceptionally weak – again another major negative for a PVP-based game where balance is vital.

Loading Screens: What the game needs more than anything else is more loading screens. Because right now, there just aren’t enough of them! There’s one when you log, one when you die, one when you zone, one when you cough (OK maybe I made that one up!). And with every loading screen I had no idea whether the game would load up, crash, or hang. At one point I half expected a “Bonus Loading Screen - Get Ready to Reboot!” message to flash up (but it didn’t – that was just my natural cynicism taking charge)! There are too MANY loading screens. A small, but personal gripe.

In summary: What we have with Age of Conan is an experience with code that plays like alpha code at times – far from the polished software I'd hope to expect on the verge of release – although this could just be the beta phase we’re in – it’s very hard to draw many conclusions from this. Everything was so slow and unreliable (especially in PVP) that it was almost impossible to give an accurate indication of the kind of experience we're going to see on release. I find it exceptionally worrying that so many bugs / omissions and problems still exist in a game not 30 days from being on shelves. That said, my FPS were consistently high, and, despite some weird server glitches, constant crashes and game freezes, there looks to be a really interesting game here with lots of potential.

That said, I would strongly advise the world to hold fast on those pre-orders until the reviews come flooding in. I said exactly the same about Hellgate London, and aren’t you glad you waited?

There’s a lot that’s interesting in Age of Conan, but poor server performance, some very high PC requirements, and a buggy engine offset those positives. There's a lot of room for improvement, but is just one more month enough to iron out all the creases in this title?