Written by Jeff Buckland, 5/23/2008
Played on:
Windows
1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU
3GB DDR2 RAM
8800M GTS Video
Windows XP
System Requirements
It's been more than three and a half years since Blizzard unleashed World of Warcraft, and since then no other MMORPG has even come close in terms of popularity and lasting appeal. Many games have come and gone, some of which were decent efforts that simply weren't enough to topple the king, some of which were so bad they weren't worth bothering to play - even if they were free. The MMO veterans at Funcom released the somewhat well-received Anarchy Online seven years ago, and after a false start on another project, have been working on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures for the last five years. Conan promises a realistic look along with all the spells, healing, and bashing of most fantasy games, but an M rating - the first for an MMO - is also included. This means cussing is allowed in chat, topless character models are fine, and blood and gore are common occurrences.
Washing ashore
Age of Conan starts off players as a slave, a survivor of a crashed ship on the island of Tortage. Character creation gives you a good number of options, and three races and twelve classes are included, all of which is chosen right from the start. Tortage is full of danger and is under control of a madman and the priestess that gives him power. During your first twenty levels, players work with others and alone as a sort of extended tutorial to the game. When you leave Tortage at level 20 or so, the world opens up and your real adventures begin.
The lands of Aquilonia, Cimmeria, and Stygia are expansive and impressive, stretching out in fields and climbing up in huge mountains, with settlements and towns spotting the landscape. While there are plenty of fantasy elements here - evil shamans, shambling undead, magic bestowed by the gods, massive ancient ruins, supernatural beings - you won't find very many of the classic fantasy races here. It's pretty true to the Conan books, so there aren't any gnomes, dwarves, ogres, orcs, trolls, dragons, and the many stereotypical monsters that you might expect. The more realistic look, better graphics (with a steep increase in system requirements - more on that later), and change in fantasy landscape really does make a big difference. All of the players and most of the NPCs actually look like humans so you may find that your first impression may not catch you like World of Warcraft's infectious cartoon style did, but its grounding in a more believable fantasy world might be just as charming if you give it a while.
Busting heads and healing wounds
Combat in Age of Conan is very different than in some games. Here, melee attacks are not unleashed an auto attack key, and special moves are more complex. In this game, you press a button for every attack you make, and you can attack in three directions: left, center, right. (Later in the game, you get a down-left and a down-right attack as well.) Your special attacks are combos that you start, but then use your regular attacks to complete. So Ursine Brawl I for the Bear Shaman will require you to start it, then hit a left attack, then the right and you will finish it up with huge damage and a powerful animation. These combos can lead to fatality moves if you kill an enemy with them, and some are really brutal and satisfying to do. From severing limbs (and then heads) to crushing parts of the body to impressive impaling maneuvers, fatalities look very impressive - in the Conan beta they looked a little disjointed, but that's been fixed - and can really stave off boredom when you're taking out hordes of enemies with your buddies.
Healing is unique, as well, as the game allows healing classes to still contribute to much of the group's damage. Players are supported mostly with heal-over-time spells that are tossed on before or during a battle and can be quickly unleashed, and in the meantime these classes are quite capable of doing some powerful combos and casting some nasty spells. In fact, their healing often actually improves when they get in the fight. There are some more classic-style heals with cast times as well, but they are fired out generally in a frontal cone - this requires people to coordinate their positions, something that many games don't impose on healers. Still, this is an incredibly fun game for a healer, who gets to keep their group alive but still kill stuff at the same time. Generally, most everything in this game has at least some partial area effect to hit multiple enemies or friends with, and that goes for melee attacks, spells, heals, and buffs as well.
It makes for a much more action-oriented style of play, too. It's a totally unique experience in an MMO, quickly moving from camp to camp or room to room, smashing enemies' skulls and keeping your companions alive without having to stop constantly and watch a cast bar. Sure, playing damage-based casters like the Demonologist and Necromancer do feel a lot more like other MMOs than the other classes do, but they're more of an exception than a rule in Conan.
Borrowing from the greats
Most of the features you've come to expect out of an MMO, many of which are thanks to World of Warcraft, are working in Age of Conan. Mounts, quick travel, auction houses, banks, mailboxes, quest NPCs, journals, linking items in chat, maps (and these can be zoomed in on like Google Maps), and a ton of other stuff is included here. Interface mods are already available, although it remains to be seen how far modmakers can actually go to change the game - so far, it doesn't seem that mods with the complexity seen in World of Warcraft are possible here.
There is a mix of different kinds of instancing in Conan, but for most of the game you will be fighting alongside people you may not have chosen to do so with. Unlike what you might be used to, not every combat-heavy zone is instanced just for the player and his or her group (although most indoor dungeons are), and while that may turn some off, the quest system and spawn rates generally make it less of a hassle than you might think - this is not like sitting idly in camps of monsters, slowly droning out the experience points back in EverQuest.
