Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Posted By: Chris on Jun 09 2008

When it comes to the MMO genre, the player certainly has his or her pick of games to play, and new to the list is Age of Conan. When a new MMO comes up, it is always going to be compared to the current majority favorite, which is World of Warcraft, and Conan is no exception. This new and interesting “adventure” MMO-RPG is one of the first of several new massive online games coming out this year with the promise of toppling the empire that is World of Warcraft.

Graphically, this game looks beautiful. The animations are very lifelike, the character models are very clear, and the monsters are frighteningly realistic. However to accomplish all of this you’re going to need on monster of a rig to run this game on maximum settings. While this game will run on many machines its best viewed with all the settings turned to the max. The in-game cuts scenes are also beautifully rendered, however after the first 20 levels, losing the lip-synched audio certainly takes away from the appeal.

Since the game has gone live it has enjoyed a smooth launch. Everything from installing the game, patching it, creating a character to starting the game is as easy as can be. After the first large patch it seems that patches are frequent but small in nature. It’s also good to see that the developers are doing everything they can to not only make this a smooth launch but to also keep balancing the game so that it is fun for every one. While some features are still disabled it is pretty clear that the the developers will enable them soon.

There are many different classes the playing age of Conan each with the unique roles and abilities. Classes are quite unique in this game; the “tank” of a party in other games is usually considered the meat shield that isn’t there for damage, just simply kept around to take the hits. This isn’t true in AoC, while a tank is certainly not going to hit as hard as some of the other classes, they can certainly hold their own in a fight. This is a refreshing idea, as no one wants to have to assemble a group in order to complete every task in the game. The idea of threat/agro generating attacks and abilities is also different in this game. Every time you level, you are given points that you can put in various general abilities, be it climbing, running, or in the soldier archetypes case, Taunt. This gives all of your attacks increased threat/agro generation, while still giving you the ability to do damage.

While there are many great things about this game, it certainly shares in its fair share of faults. As mentioned before, after you leave the starting area, you loose lip-synched cut scenes, which certainly takes away from the appeal. The cut scenes themselves are well done, however sometimes while you are speaking to a quest giver, the camera suddenly drops to your avatars ass region. While this is an added bonus if you have created a female character, it is still quite annoying.

While the game is rated M for more than obvious reasons, it still manages to have its fair share of immature players. One of the anticipated side affects of a game with this rating is the fact that, in theory, only adults would be playing. It seems however that no matter where you go, or in this case, how you rate a game, you still get what seems to be a chat filled with twelve year olds and a game filled with jerks. The common theme in “out of character” chat, which is similar to general chat in other games, is either bashing World of Warcraft, anything American, or both at the same time. While bashing the competition of the game is understandable, it still seems to happen more often than it should.

Pity should be felt for anyone that has created a character on a PVP server. One of the major selling points of the game was Player versus Player combat everywhere; however this is still a flawed system. One of the major problems is the advantage that ranged/spell casters have over melee fighters. To catch up to a ranged player, a melee fighter will need to sprint, which uses precious stamina. However to attack with melee abilities in the game costs stamina. Spell casters use mana to use their abilities, and as such, do not use stamina as much; therefore they can easily stay out of the reach of a melee fighter, and keep him on the run until he is unable to perform combo attacks.

The combo system is quite unique, you choose a combo to perform and you will need to swing your weapon in a certain direction to successfully pull off the combo. The problem with this also comes into play during pvp where some combos stop you dead in your tracks, while your enemy is running around. Many fights feel like two people are running blindly at each other flailing their arms about.

The game isn’t perfect, and few are. It certainly has its problems; however it also has many great features. Age of Conan isn’t going to be a game for every MMO lover, it is going to be a game where you either love it or don’t. In the age of massive multiplayer games, Age of Conan certainly stands out, but not enough to stand above the rest.