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PC | RPG | Age of Conan: The Hyborian Adventures

Boxart for Age of Conan: The Hyborian Adventures
Age of Conan: The Hyborian Adventures 102 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.25
  • SOUND: 4.00
  • CONTROL: 4.00
  • FUN FACTOR 3.50
  • AVG USER SCORE 2.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.5

Feature: This Persistent Life/ Age of ConanThe Hyborian Adventures- Hooray for the Delay!

Feature by Miguel Lopez | 08/17/2007 | 12:26:36 PM PST

Reason #2: The PvP will be better for it

Age of Conan will ship with a suite of varied and expansive PvP elements. If you take a look of the list of classes that will be included in the game you'll notice that it's pretty long. What does this mean? Well, as anyone who's played a PvP-heavy MMO will tell you, achieving an acceptable level of class balance is akin to hitting a moving target traveling at the speed of light. There's no other way to slice it: the five extra months will ultimately result in a more complete PvP package at launch.

The more time beta testers have with the game, the more meaningful the feedback they can deliver to the developers, who, in turn, can more effectively iterate on the game's systems. Five months is a long time, and while it's frustrating when a game you're hyped about gets pushed, I find it helps to keep in mind that, when it comes to MMOs, delays are typically a good thing.

Reason #3: Cross-system compatibility

The Xbox 360 version of the game was originally slated to release in March. While Godager stated in his letter that this version would be similarly delayed, I'm not buying it 100 percent. There is quite a bit of grumbling within the beta community about this. The beta testers in this case are sort of ambivalent about the game's future console community. If you played Final Fantasy XI, then you'll know where they're coming from. Anyway, some people are interpreting the delay as Funcom catering to console players at their expense. This is extremely short sighted.

A MMO's health is typically measured by how many people are playing it. As logic would dictate, a game's population should increase the more platforms for which it is available. People who bemoan the fact that console players will one invade their virtual worlds are probably the type who enjoy getting up in arms about things, regardless of their merit. To those people, I say this: get with the times. It's only a matter of time before more persistent-world games will go the cross-platform route. This is called progress.

That said, Funcom hasn't explicitly stated that both versions of the games will reside on the same servers. I'm just hoping they will. It'll be good for the game, and it'll be a great precedent to set. Five months seems like plenty of time to ensure that this will happen.


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