I deleted my first review, which was made 2 years ago at their combat overhaul. Now i have logged over 4800 hours on the game, have played everything from alpha hardcore pvp, to super casual rp. I have head admined on the largest rp server at the time of its existance Exiled Revenants RPPVP, and was co-owner of an experimental rppvp server where we attempted to have a more free-flow sandbox rp server where pvp and consequence was a constant threat. We no longer pay to keep the server up for reasons listed below. Here is my review.

Conan Exiles is a game i always supported for a long time. I am a HUGE conan lore nerd and love the universe. I love survival games, and i love melee combat pvp games. Combined into one and this WAS a dreamgame for me. The game has the potential to be the best survival game on the market, HOWEVER! The number one thing standing in its way are two things. Funcom, and the community.

Funcom is notoriously bad at game balance. Sometimes i think they dont even play their own game. Conan exiles game balancing in terms of damage output vs armor damage mitigation is ♥♥♥♥. Many 1 shot builds easily attainable on even un-modded servers. Warhammers, Axe/shield, and bows are the only weapons that are viable if you dont want to get your ♥♥♥♥ kicked in, and even then server desync will often be the reason you die more than your skill, though of course some people learn to play in horrible lag, use warhammers and kill you without you being aware until 10 seconds later you explode in a cloud of gore and wonder what the ♥♥♥♥ happened.

Beyond the ♥♥♥♥ balance in pvp between players, pvp with players/thralls is even worse. All the problems of fighting players, but against npcs that benefit more from armor than players do, do more damage than players do, and have 10 times as much hp. Named Bearers start with 9.9k hp, can use any weapon ingame, and benifit immensly from armor more than players do for damage mitigation. Basicly, outfitting 1 named bearer in flawless epic heavy, giving them a legendary warhammer and they can solo any boss ingame, and are near unkillable when assisting a player in pvp. They are a bigger threat than other players in fact. And with Funcoms update coming out, they are being buffed more with levels beyond their starting stats with no word from the devs if they are nerfing thralls, in fact they even say they werent, as thralls pre-patch will be weaker than leveled thralls post-patch. Only antagonizing a problem further. Basicly, the games broke, and pvp is not fun anymore. Dont bother, it will only piss you off as most elitist pvp combat involves running around each other in circles trying to 3v1 ppl and if your ambushed run-poke combat while seeing who has the most healing food/potions. The only fun pvp is to be had on rp servers with no-heal in combat rules. Which brings me to my next point. The community.

The second thing holding conan exiles back is a toxic community. the pvp elitist community as stated above is a bunch of hardcore metamancing cowards who spend 90% of their time in combat running from their opponent healing rather than fight, OR combat just involves spamming gods and crashing servers. Where the game shines and dies is the RP community. The PC Conan community at this point is surviving entirely on the backs of a dedicated RP community, however that same community is filled with two groups. 1: Failed PVP'ers who want to to to rp servers cause they wanne be big fish again but cant handle the hardcore pvp servers, and 2: carebear erp'ers. Dont get me wrong, i have done my fair share of ERP, but i also enjoy pvp, dueling, arena fighting etc, and many rp servers activly either frown on pvp'ers, discourage it, or put so many rules/roadblocks in your path to engaging in consequence minded rppvp that it isnt even worth the effort.

Too many people want to own their own server, and not enough people want to build long lasting communities in conan. The game is dying. There are hundreds of empty servers and a small handful of populated ones, and those that are populated exist because people would rather join a big server and ignore the many problems on it, rather than join smaller growing communities. They put up with admin abuse, toxic community members, and all the problems listed above until they get sick of it, leave and make their own server, which noone will join unless people activly poach from other communities. And funny enough, most large servers poach from smaller servers. I could go on for hours about my complaints about this toxic community, and understand i complain because i love the game immensly, i spent 2 years playing it exclusivly and have so many good memories, but the state of the game and community is in decline and this is a warning to any reading. Do not dive in. It is a cesspool of cringe and frustration.

MY FINAL UPDATE!: Returned to play with some old friends and saw they added microtransactions and season... the crom coins cost 10USD-1200 coins, a cosmetic pack can cost from 1500=7000 coins, and in said pack is never even comparable to how much you used to get for DLC's. Releasing dlc's every month for 10 bucks a pop was an insult enough when it gave 3 armor sets, weapon sets, build styles and decor, but now you pay 15-25-30dollars for just the decor, or just 1 armor set, or in some cases 3 decor pieces cost 1-14 dollars, and you cant buy in 1 dollar ammounts so you end up spending 20-30-40 dollars for crom coins, never spend all of it, are left with extra and so feel obligated to buy more to spend when something new comes along. this is HIGHLY TOXIC marketing, messing with a persons concept of cost-reward analysis by putting a new currancy in between whos value is inflated horribly compared to USD and giving less than ever before. If i still cared i would suggest every player quit and boycott the game until they either remove the bazaar and return to selling proper packs, or the game shuts down. The community is dead with only a few thousand players who have been around for a decade now and are dedicated likely never to quit because they have no other conan survival game with such mod support to customize, and the devs know this. They at this point are just milking the ♥♥♥♥ out of their community for every nickle and dime they can and its disgusting to see.