Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games [MMORPG]'s have certainly been big sellers in recent years. No need to even list titles, as you read this, games like World of Warcraft, EvE Online, City of Heroes / villians, DAoC, EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online and the list only gets bigger start popping in to your head. It's no joke that the MMORPG industry is booming right now, with quite a few, very anticipated releases on the way. But just a few days ago [May 20th - 2008] Age of Conan was released to the public to indulge in the adventures of the Hyborian world - Based around American author Robert E Howard and his circa 1932 book "The Hour of the Dragon" spawning the Conan series. So grab your loinclothes, spear, shield and big breasted woman!

Seeing as though Australia is pretty crap when it comes to games and the fact it takes us 10 years to get games [Blatant exageration with a capital B...] I'm going to go over some of the interesting things posted by Jeff Buckland of Atomic Gamer on his review of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Posted Here. But before I begin, I have taken a pretty good look at the game, watched plenty of pre-release movies and listened to my American comrades who pre-ordered to get in early, talk about it. [Wait whilist I turn on some Conan style Rock music!]


See More Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Screenshot at IGN.com

"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."

Players pretty much start out on a ship as a slave, at this point you create your character with all the facial features, body features, builds and so on. The actual customisations would rival any MMO's out there, it's very indepth, and I'd be suprised [unless using the default] that you would actually meet someone that looked just like you. The idea behind this was, instead of recognizing a player by their name [like most MMO's] players would instead be recognized by what they look like as well as their name. Interesting concept and certainly an awesome feature, as we all know, everyone in an MMO want's to be individual, not another generic being wearing different armour / clothes.


See More Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Screenshot at IGN.com

The combat mechanics are like no other. Instead of having Auto-Attacks and then a "Cast Bar" where you store all your spells / attacks / skills, then simply click a skill in some sort of endless-boring-spam-the-best-skill-you-got-then-insert-the-game-doing-an-auto-attack-for-you before your next skill starts style, Conan has changed this completley. No more auto attacks. Instead you have the ability to attack in 3 directions, Left, Centre and Right and as you progress in the game, you gain the ability to attack Down-Left and Down-Right. Combinations are also added to this, allowing you [when doing attacks in a certain pattern] to unlock combo attacks. Performing these combo's [amoung dealing addtional stronger damage and cool animations] may include fatalities. Yes that's right, you can Crush body parts, remove limbs and Cut heads off. Tell me that doesn't sound like fun, eh?

"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."

Coordination is something some MMO's don't have, especially when grouping. I remember a few times in some MMO's that I have played, where we have to kill [generic boss] in [generic instance] and it seems as though, once you figure the fight strategy, it's all pretty straight forward. Tanks up front, Ranged DPS at the back, healers on the tank/s and DPS group at the back et cetera. With conan, players will need to coordinate their positions so healers have the ability to heal them, instead of the healer just being able to click on the player, and as long as that player is infront of them and within range, the heal cast will procede. This also makes healer classes more desirable to play, healers aren't gimped in Conan.

"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."

The zones within Conan aren't contiguous, basically they don't connect to eachother to make a no load game. Instead, travelling between zones [which is free] contains a load screen. Certain zones are instanced, which is good to avoid overcrowding but there are also "Normal" and "Epic" versions of zones, for those that wish to get a good challenge out of an area if they wish.

It's also good to point out, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is pretty taxing on your system. That out-dated PC you are using to read this article may struggle to run the game. Recommended System Requirements are CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 or equivalent CPU Speed: 2.4 GHz System Ram: 2 GB and you will want a pretty decent mid to high end range Video Card if you want to start turning some of the vital options up [Draw Distance for example].


See More Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Screenshot at IGN.com

The reviews so far on Conan have been pretty good. A lot of the reviews out there mention issues that existed back in BETA that have been all but fixed is a good thing to hear. The fact that the game has had a smooth release, and little bugs to talk about is also a good welcoming. Here is what Jeff Buckland had to say at the end of his Atomic Gamer Conan review:

"Age of Conan serves up satisfying action and a style all its own in an MMORPG package that's hard to resist - as long as you meet the system requirements, that is. It won't put WoW out of business, but then again, nothing will for a long time, and that doesn't mean this isn't a great game with tons of appeal and a hopefully more mature audience. The future is always uncertain for any game going head-to-head against a Blizzard title, butFuncom has put forth the best effort yet and they deserve any amount of success they can carve for themselves."

If you're into MMO's or at least looking into trying one out, this is certainly the one. Make sure your system is up to scratch however [go on, get that upgrade!] and you should be in for a good time.

Atomic Gamer Review by Jeff Buckland | Age of Conan Official Site

My question to the readers. What do you think of Conan?, What do you think of Conan compared to other MMO's on the market? Is this the WoW killer?