Age of Conan paid magazine PC Gamer for good Preview

Age of Conan certainly has ended in disappointment.  How did PC Gamer give the game such high praise during the Preview edition when the game wasn’t even officially released?  PC Gamer USUALLY waits for a game to be considered offically released before they review a game, but to Preview a game in such detail is telling readers it’s ok to go out and buy the game.  I’m referring to the printed magazine article and not the online review done by a PC Zone UK writer (part of GameRadar).  PC Gamer made the game sound so great and really glazed over the class imbalances, broken quests, issue with low-settings, lack of guild and PvP content, and other bugs that were hidden by the generalities of the preview.  The Age of Conan was put on the front cover and really given a great pre-review that gave the impression that, despite a couple of bugs, the game is fun and ready to pay-for-play.  Since PC Gamer’s preview of AoC, I’ve now lost faith in the one magazine that used to be objective.

EDIT: I made the mistake of calling PC Gamer’s Preview a Review on 7/30/08 post. That has been corrected.  PC Gamer did publish in their September 2008 edition a Review of Age of Conan, scoring it at 77%, which is still too high considering the issues still present with gameplay and lag spikes.