More general thoughts

Five years of work, and previous experience indeed helped Funcom a lot in preparing this game, but there are just a lot of issues to be fixed if this should become the next World of Warcraft. From interface bugs, to classes needing balance, and to quest and zone bugs, you can find them in all flavors and sizes.

Again, the starting area is great and somewhat polished, but just wait till you venture further into the world.

The worst parts are from level 41-46 and from 56-80, when the lack of quests forces players to grind their way, which is not pretty at all.

Knowing all that, what I'm about to say may come as a shock to you: I think Funcom made the right decision by launching the game now, even in the state that it is.

Why? Because it's not a bad game at all, and they can focus on bugs and adding content now. They have until Christmas in my opinion, to get everything in good shape, or the Wrath of the Lich King bulldozer will pass right through them leaving nothing but dust. If they'd waited until the game was polished, their release date would probably be Christmas as well.

So why should you buy an unfinished game. Well, because it's more than 90% finished, it's still a good game, and you really don't have anything else similar to play. The commitment I've seen from the developers is also very good, and the game is patched weekly or two times a week, with loads of fixes. New content will be added in those areas lacking it soon, and even more voice acting quests are being introduced as we speak. If you just start the game now, you have almost nothing to be afraid of, because by the time you'll get to level 80 with your favorite character, it's most likely everything will work smooth.

Now let's have a look at the available races and classes

Three races are available to play in Age of Conan. Four classes can be picked in total, depending on what race you are. Further down the tree, you can select twelve subclasses, but not all races can become every sub-class. It's not as complicated as it sounds, let's discuss this in detail:

The Aquilonians are the noble race, and their kingdom expends throughout most of Hyboria. Aquilonians can become Rogues, Priests or Soldiers .

The Cymmerians were once a slave race, but now King Conan, one of their own, is sitting at the throne of Aquilonia. Cimmerians can become Rogues, Priests or Soldiers as well.

The Stygians are desert people coming from the South. They are the only ones who can master magic in Hyboria. Thus, they can become Rogues, Priests, or, of course, Mages.

Every character has 3 feat trees, similar to talents in WoW. As they gain levels, they can specialize further down a tree. 2 of those trees are specific to each sub-class:

Rogues can become Assassins, Rangers, or Barbarians. This means everyone of these guys will have 2 specific feat trees and one common tree: the rogue one, as their basic class is rogue.

Priests can become Priests of Mitra, Bear Shammans, or Tempest of Set (Tempests? hahaha).

Soldiers can be Guardians, Dark Templars, or Conquerors.

Mages can be Necromancers, Heralds of Xotli, or Demonologists.