So now that the fourth and (thankfully) final chapter of the Age of War is upon us lets take a look at what this lovely age has brought us, and what lessons can be learned from it.
Chapter 1:
Clan Emblems:
In chapter 1 we saw the implementation of the new Clan Emblem system. Now clans can pick and choose from various designs and colours and place them onto banners, shields and various things. Is this relevant to an age of war? For the most part yes, every army needs to have their own banner and emblem so this one seems to be on point.
Clan Hoards:
Pick up small and large treasures and place them in a set radius from the coffer where you can dump your gold and silver coins / bars / dust into. Show off the spoils of war you have collected! Exceptā¦ unless you are specifically on a pvp server and are on a very active one at that, is there anything war like about this feature? Sure some random NPCās materialize out of the aether to attack you every not and then, and you are gimped into walking (all of this only even applies to the large treasures btw), but this is more of a tomb raiding feature than a war like feature, at least in my opinion.
Now lets get into what they call āBalancingā Iāll just copy here from the patch notes, and then comment.
Humans (including thralls) have had their health reduced, but still vary in threat level between tribes as before
So in an Age of War our āSoldiersā (aka our Thralls) have been reduced to a bunch of lazy slackers no longer at the peak of their physical condition. Uhā¦ isnāt this exactly the opposite of what one would want out of their people who they are taking with then while going to war?
Stamina costs and regeneration adjustments
Stamina cost for weapons have been greatly increased, from numbers ranging 3-9 to numbers ranging 10-40
The second jump when double-jumping now also incurs a stamina-cost. The cost is the same as a normal jump. A normal jump with 60 Agility costs 12, and so the total cost for double-jump is now 24.
So the Generalās of the Armies (aka the players) are now so out of shape that they can hardly swing a sword of manage to jump off the ground without becoming completely winded!!! Yeah what a great concept for an Age of War!
The stamina regen pause has been decreased from several seconds to 0.1 seconds, thus you will start regenerating stamina a lot sooner than before. Related server default values have been changed, and will be force-set upon patching
Oh silly me, I forgot they would add in this caveat so you could just have infinite stamina. 
Shields have had their base durability halved
Because using a shield in a time of war is just nonsense!!!
Cost for crafting repair kits have been doubled
Legendary and Unique items can not be repaired in any way
Chapter 2:
New Purge System:
Well, we finally have a reason for the clan hoards, and itās a new purge system that you can just completely and utterly opt out of!!! Because nothing say WAR like saying ānay, I donāt wannaā.
To trigger a Purge successfully there must be a valid path from outside of your base all the way through to your Hoard and Coffer. Should this path be destroyed or blocked the Purge will retreat.
Purge difficulty is scaled to the amount of treasure inside of your coffer!
Up to a pointā¦ once you go past a certain point there is no increase in reward soā¦why would you ever go past that?
Loot Revamp:
Hmmā¦ I meanā¦ did the loot actually need to be revamped?
Legendary chests no longer spawn in the world next to so-called World Bosses. Instead, you may find legendary chests at the end of dungeons.
I mean, you STILL have to kill said world bosses to get the keysā¦ but now you are forced to go into dungeons to use said keys? How is this an improvement?
The Library of Esoteric Knowledge and the Voidforge no longer grants completely random recipes. Instead, the system is deterministic and will give you a recipe that you do not have.
Now THIS is an actual improvement.
Changed hyperarmor
Need I say moreā¦
Greater pets with skins will no longer deal less damage than their default counterparts.
Why was this ever a thing in the first place?
Priests can no longer summon a āgod bubbleā (God Protection).
Avatars now last 10 times as long but do 10 times less damage with their attacks.
Soā¦ if you do the mathā¦ they are the same. The total amount of damage being dealt is ultimately the same, it us just being dealt at smaller increments stretched out over a longer period of time. Why? What was the purpose of this āchangeā? This truly seems useless, other than perhaps taxing the servers for even longer, whichā¦they certainly do not need.
Chapter 3:
Taverns:
You can craft your own tavern and IF you trigger a purge and obtain a bartender you can begin to hire NPCās that come and visit your tavern. Is this relevant to the theme? Wellā¦ every army needs a place to kick back and relax when they are not actively fighting soā¦ I guess? It is really awful that they force you into doing their new purge system to obtain a barkeeper though.
The Siege of Al-Merayah!:
Well, until they patched it this was a way to insta level your thralls to 20, and all you had to do was fight 1 boss, while bypassing everything else in the place. I mean, you can still kill said boss while bypassing the rest of the place soā¦ 
I honestly donāt bother with this thing so I canāt really talk much about it.
Added Camel Mounts:
Well, mounted combat is a thing is war, so having more mount options is a good thing. Though they didnāt work for how long?
Humanoid and Animal enemies will now rotate during their attacks to better track players when fighting
Yeahā¦ they are already working on removing this from the game.
Changed Potion of Midnight crafting location to a crafting station near the Werehyena that teaches the recipe.
This station is the only place where the Potion of Midnight can be crafted.
Previously crafted/stockpiled Potions of Midnight have been removed due to the change in how they are crafted.
So they decided to just remove everyoneās inventory because they changed the locations where it is crafted? Thatās a pretty s**t move.
Noticeably missing from their patch notes:
The removal of mouse facing. Another feature that they have had to go back on and add a box you can check to go back to ābasicallyā the old way, because their ānew and improvedā way of combat was so utterly horrid even they could not ignore how much it was hated.
Chapter 4:
Fatalities:
On the surface one would think that such a feature would make sense in a brutal war like age. In practice it breaks the flow of combat, causes issues with pathing to the intended target when there are multiple enemies you are engaged with and all sorts of other problems. Fatalities worked so much more simply in Age of Conan they they do in Conan Exiles, why did they feel the need to make they even more complicated?
Follower Overhaul:
Lets not get excited here, they did not overhaul the followers. They changed WHERE their commands are located, AND they removed the STOP command, which was extremely useful. Now they added a āfleeā option. Is the new UI good? Was it worth it? Perhaps. But in the grand scheme of things, it did not really do anything for the theme of an Age of War as it did not make they any more useful.
Destructible Camps in Siptah:
Well, it is good that they are not ignoring this map completely! And in an Age of War having the ability to destroy an NPC camp does make sense. Iāll let the Siptah faithful answer how this one is working.
New Purge Encounters:
Soā¦they have added waves of exploding golems and meteors falling from the sky to the purge. Or you know, you can still just skip it.
Siege Weapon - The Ballista:
Well, we have needed new seige weapons for ā¦ 5 years now? Any thoughts on this from the PvP crowd?
And then we have the biggest joke of the entire list of patch notes.
Quality of Life Improvements
Quick Stack and Quick Split
There is literally nothing QUICK about the removal of splitting exact amounts!!! It is now a process of split split split split split split FINALLY I HAVE AN AMOUNT CLOSE TO WHAT I WANTED (re-stack all the other stack back together). This is NOT quick and is NOT an improvement. And they have ALREAY announced that they are going back and removing this āimprovementā in their next hotfix.
Dye Changes
Donāt even get me started on this one. This is one of the single most idiotic changes that never needed to occur for any reason what so ever. There is yet again nothing about this which is an improvement, not the fact that you are limiting it to a level requirement AND a feat to be unlocked to use a random dye bottle you find on a corpse / in a chest, but oh no, itās not even THAT simple. Letās just move forward ā¦
13 unique item filters which you can use to sort and organize your inventory by, based on associated item tags and identifiers
You know what they didnāt mention. The ability to sort thing HOW YOU WANT TO. Custom sorting was removed.
Added āAuto face forward on attackā toggle under the Gameplay tab in Settings. Turning this option on automatically makes your character turn where your camera is facing while attacking.
This option is turned OFF by default.
Yup! This is to fix their horrid combat āimprovementā from Chapter 3. But if you didnāt read the patch notes you might not know this toggle exists and since itās turned OFF by default they are still attempting to force you to play with their bloody awful garbage system.
Stamina now begins regenerating 1 second after consuming or exhausting your supply (from 0.1 seconds)
OK, so they are attempting to correct the infinite stamina issue they introduced way way way back in chapter 1. But they still havenāt address what is really causing the infinite stamina at all. And even if they do remove it, they havenāt addressed the fact that you will be so winded by doing even the most basic of anything that any corruption build is utterly useless (so they already said screw you to Age of Sorcery as soon as the very next Age started). But itās a startā¦ I guessā¦?
The Sword of Crom now properly deals damage to all enemy types, even when held by Thralls.
Weapon stats have been adjusted as a result
The stats have not been āadjustedā. They have been eviscerated on a criminal level. This is a LEGENDARY weapon with less durability than an IRON weapon. But do to it being a legendary weapon it CAN NOT BE REPAIRED! Oh and just as a big old F-U they also went in an re-adjusted any SoCās in peoples inventories and removed any modifiers on them to boot, even on single player games.
Not mentioned in the patch notes:
You can no longer use the right mouse button to equip armor from your inventory to yourself, or to your thralls. You can no longer use the right mouse button to eat food. I am sure I am missing other things as well.
So now I have to ask this simple question. Of all of the above mentioned changes, how many of these have anything at all to do with the theme of an AGE OF WAR?
And I have a question for Funcom, what have you actually learned from this debacle of an Age?
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