The Age of Conan is upon us! (Page 2 of 3)

The Art of the Sword

Disorientation pretty accurately describes much of the experience of playing Age of Conan, since so much of the game feels painfully incomplete. Take the graphics engine, for instance: Conan is, hands-down, the most beautiful MMO we've ever seen. When the sun casts mottled shadows on lush, flowing underbrush and rivers gleam in a thousand points of light beneath a sapphire sky and rolling clouds, it's hard not to drop your jaw.

But zoom in on your character, and you'll notice that her hair clips through the headpieces you wear. Climb down a ladder and you'll start the descent from six feet above the highest rung, holding onto air. And next to Hyboria in daylight, the nighttime environments are so unimpressively dull that you'll crave the sunny companionship of multiplayer within minutes.

One feature that Conan was touted for early on was its brutal, interactive combat system, in which you can attack from different angles and chain them together into fatality-capped combos. There's no denying that if you play a melee class, you'll adore the interactivity; the combat is tangible, and the finishers are brilliantly bloody. Indeed, even some healers are melee classes, and the bulk of players will be able to enjoy beautiful decapitations with a side order of XP. But if you play a caster, the fatalities you can expect will float targets off the ground for a few seconds, surround them in an aura of light, and then release them. No sweet camera shots, no blood fountains to speak of.

One Word: Inconsistent

The fact of the matter is that Age of Conan was released before it was done. The 1-20 leveling experience is mostly complete, with nifty features like voice-acted quest givers and a rich storyline granting players a solid, next-generation RPG experience. But the further you get from the starting levels, the more you'll have to deal with smudged content. The voice acting will mysteriously disappear, along with the quests, the single-player story, and the engaging instances. The primary reason to keep playing the game will be forming guilds and engaging in epic, PvP sieges with characters that have grinded to 80.

Nevertheless, Conan's core features are brilliant. Blood, sex, power, vengeance, lordship, and lust together drive a game that has tremendous potential, despite its lackluster polish. In the months to come, Hyboria will grow into a gladiatorial contender that you may well want to experience, World of Warcraft fan or not. For the moment, though, this is a game best left to the MMO crowd that's been craving an M-rated change of pace.

Comments [11]

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LIVINGLEGEND69

why would they launch a unfinished game. it seems like it had a lot of things going for it

JPThunder01

LIVINGLEGEND69 Posted at: 06/10/08 at 5:41 AM PST why would they launch a unfinished game. it seems like it had a lot of things going for it
It's a trend in MMOs to release a game that's basically unfinished and have paying customers test it out for them and report any bugs for free. That way they dont have to pay as many game testers. MMOs are a total scam and waste of time.

Kyhrel

I agree that they should have polished off the higher levles to match the beginning levels, but no MMO is EVER finished. The day they shut it down is the day it is finished. If you are still playing it at that point...grats you beat the game. To me WoW had a problem similar. I loved playing through to level 60. I could barely stop. Once there it became countless raid after raid after raid to the same dungeon with a group or 40 man raids to try and assemble a full armor set or that super rare item. The larger the raid the more greed seem to play a factor. Molten Core was horrid to my memory. All the arguing over who could use this and that, who could roll on what and why, and whose fault it was we died(lol). I'm not sure how PvP is now in WoW, but OMG the battlegrounds were terrible. The CTF games were not too bad, but the large scale fields were crap. I'm going to try AoC, but I'm really excited about Warhammer Online. WAR!!!!!!!!

Dethskull

IMO Everquest 2 is superior to WoW in every way,any fan of WoW should try EQ2. I have tried WoW and thought it was basically a kiddie EQ2 on very easy mode.

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