It is always very difficult to write about a new MMORPG. Well maybe difficult is not the appropriate word; tricky! Yeah, that's it. Why? Because a game editor must always act as a weatherman: tell gamers a bit about the past of the genre, the present, similarities with other titles, and then make a good prediction about the future.

So I guess I'll start with that then. After a million copies sold to date, and one of the most successful launches of a MMORPG ever, along with a big break from the competition (everybody just stays put and waits for Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft), it's safe to say Age of Conan is a hit.

However, it suffers the same problems as most MMO games at launch: stability and balance issues, plus bugs. Add to that the fact Conan is rated M (18+), and requires a solid gaming platform in order to be able to play it. If you expected cute pink elves fighting big worms with purple balls (of energy! don't think dirty!) and a game that you could give your nephew as a gift for Christmas, think again!

Age of Conan action takes place in a fantastic universe created by American author Robert E. Howard in 1932. The role of Conan the Barbarian made Arnold Schwarzenegger famous in the movie with the same name which premiered in 1982 (when I wasn't even born yet! I'm old, but not *that* old). Conan was a Cimmerian who eventually became king of Aquilona, the most powerful kingdom of the Hyborian Age. Apparently there's a rumor of a new Conan movie that is about to be released this year; however nothing is certain, and you didn't hear it from me.

The Conan universe is very gritty and dark, and Funcom, the developers, made sure they stayed true to the same path. Fatality finishing moves like decapitations are present in the game, along with a lot of blood, violence, and naked breasts. Both female (yay) and male (unfortunately). The fatalities are especially cool if you manage to kill another player with them; and really nerve-wracking if you are the victim. I remember I was attacking a boss at level 18, when a level 8 player decided, for his own personal reasons, to attack me. As I was fighting the boss, I turned left to face my sneaky attacker. One weapon swing, and off goes the head *chop*. Very funny!

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By Crom! By Mitra! By Set!

Age of Conan is similar enough to its MMO predecessors and different enough to bring a fresh new perspective on things. The brutal fantasy world of Hyboria seemed like the right choice for the Anarchy Online's developer Funcom, moving them away from the sci-fi universe; although so many Warcraft MMO clones are based on that. I guess what I'm trying to say is I would love to see games past over everything fantasy these days.

Conan features breathtaking graphics, and you'll sometimes just relax while staring at the beautiful environment. Although advanced DirectX 10 support was promised, the game doesn't use it yet: DirectX 10 graphics will be introduced later this year at Leipzig's Game Convention. I am not saying however every place is unique and looks fantastic, as a MMO has to be really vast and most of the times resources are reused.

Game sounds are immersive, and give you the feeling you are actually in Hyboria. There are four settings of sound quality in the main menu, along with some optimizations for various sound cards. Yes, Conan supports accelerated sound, and basic to more "exotic" speaker configurations like 7.1. It's not just the support for latest technologies, but the effects and voices as well. On the character creation screen you can even customize your player's voice, picking one out of the four available presets. Weapons clashes, spells, monsters, chopping your enemies here and there, slashing and cutting your way around, not to mention your surrounding environment, are just the way you pictured them to be.

It's impressive that voice acting was added to the game, to every NPC character up till ~level 20. That's your starting area, the island of Tortage, which is a nice way to get you into the big online world.

Likewise, the beautiful and lush jungles and the vast harbor amazes you every step of the way if you can afford to play the game on high. Even if you have a lower system, I really encourage you to set everything to max just once, and take a look.

Things however go a bit down from here, because once you pass the starting area you will be disappointed to find out many quest givers just lost their voice in the process. Graphics are still good, but they are thought at a larger scale: not many more variations. If it's desert, then it's a desert all around. Plus I really don't like mosquito sounds! Makes me paranoid. And if you go to the more populated zones like Aquilonia, you will find the house design ok, but a little too alike. Oh, and be prepared for your FPS to drop! I don't know exactly what you can do, because everything I tried seemed pointless once I entered this area, which seems to be the nexus of Hyboria. The only good advice I can give you is to lower environmental occlusion setting, from high to low, or none. That helps... a bit.

Back to the audio part of this game, the music is absolutely incredible. It is worth to buy the Collector's Edition of the game just to get the music CD along! Medieval inspired songs from various cultures can be heard in different areas of Hyboria, without anything being to specific. You can say from time to time: "hmm... this sounds a bit Irish", or "this is similar to Braveheart soundtrack", or "this song is like something in Lord of the Rings".

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More general thoughts

Five years of work, and previous experience indeed helped Funcom a lot in preparing this game, but there are just a lot of issues to be fixed if this should become the next World of Warcraft. From interface bugs, to classes needing balance, and to quest and zone bugs, you can find them in all flavors and sizes.

Again, the starting area is great and somewhat polished, but just wait till you venture further into the world.

The worst parts are from level 41-46 and from 56-80, when the lack of quests forces players to grind their way, which is not pretty at all.

Knowing all that, what I'm about to say may come as a shock to you: I think Funcom made the right decision by launching the game now, even in the state that it is.

Why? Because it's not a bad game at all, and they can focus on bugs and adding content now. They have until Christmas in my opinion, to get everything in good shape, or the Wrath of the Lich King bulldozer will pass right through them leaving nothing but dust. If they'd waited until the game was polished, their release date would probably be Christmas as well.

So why should you buy an unfinished game. Well, because it's more than 90% finished, it's still a good game, and you really don't have anything else similar to play. The commitment I've seen from the developers is also very good, and the game is patched weekly or two times a week, with loads of fixes. New content will be added in those areas lacking it soon, and even more voice acting quests are being introduced as we speak. If you just start the game now, you have almost nothing to be afraid of, because by the time you'll get to level 80 with your favorite character, it's most likely everything will work smooth.

Now let's have a look at the available races and classes

Three races are available to play in Age of Conan. Four classes can be picked in total, depending on what race you are. Further down the tree, you can select twelve subclasses, but not all races can become every sub-class. It's not as complicated as it sounds, let's discuss this in detail:

The Aquilonians are the noble race, and their kingdom expends throughout most of Hyboria. Aquilonians can become Rogues, Priests or Soldiers .

The Cymmerians were once a slave race, but now King Conan, one of their own, is sitting at the throne of Aquilonia. Cimmerians can become Rogues, Priests or Soldiers as well.

The Stygians are desert people coming from the South. They are the only ones who can master magic in Hyboria. Thus, they can become Rogues, Priests, or, of course, Mages.

Every character has 3 feat trees, similar to talents in WoW. As they gain levels, they can specialize further down a tree. 2 of those trees are specific to each sub-class:

Rogues can become Assassins, Rangers, or Barbarians. This means everyone of these guys will have 2 specific feat trees and one common tree: the rogue one, as their basic class is rogue.

Priests can become Priests of Mitra, Bear Shammans, or Tempest of Set (Tempests? hahaha).

Soldiers can be Guardians, Dark Templars, or Conquerors.

Mages can be Necromancers, Heralds of Xotli, or Demonologists.

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So which one should you pick? Well, here's what I've gathered about each of them so far:

The Assassin is your regular damage rogue. Contrary to popular beliefs, he cannot stunlock and has in fact very few crowd control abilities.

The Ranger uses bows or crossbows as you might have suspected to range-attack unaware foes. He is weak in melee combat however. What's interesting is that as a ranger, you have to aim manually at your opponents, and mashing a key on your keyboard isn't an option.

The Barbarian lacks damage but has increased crowd control; with many stuns and knockbacks available, he actually is the stunlock rogue. He also benefits from being in a party or raid group, as his damage increases if more people fight alongside with him.

The Priest of Mitra is your (not so regular) healing priest. It's not a static fight for him, and most healing abilities come with a damage component, or are cone ranged.

The Bear Shamman combines healing with damage while shapeshifted.

The Tempest of Set is your damage-flavored priest. Using lightning bolts as his primary attack combined with a good range rooting ability makes him a fierce opponent.

The Guardian is your main tank, although he can inflict heavy damage as well in some cases as he is the only one specialized in using polearms.

The Dark Templar is an unholy warrior, who has tanking, damage and healing abilities, but does not excel at any. He can steal life from his enemies to heal his own party and himself.

The Conqueror is a warrior specialized in dealing damage, whether he does it with a big two hander or two swords, or anything similar really.

The Necromancer is specialized in dealing ranged magic damage and summoning minions to aid him in various situations.

The Herald of Xotli is the battlemage. He uses a two hander, and combines melee damage with magic damage (usually fire). He can make quick work of most enemies, but he wears cloth armor and he is really weak to attacks. Furthermore, he needs to get into melee range to deal damage. He can transform into the demonic Avatar of Xotli for a short period of time, so you should stay out of his way when he does.

The Demonologist is your actual mage, dealing range magic damage. He has only one pet, as opposed to the Necromancer who can summon many.

Let's see how the combat system works

What Funcom calls "Real Combat" is an interesting approach to the standard RPG combat system. Indeed, you have all the abilities and standard attacks of a RPG, but each melee ability (does not apply to spells and ranged) has to be performed as a combo. You start with 3 basic weapon swings: left, front and right. Pushing these buttons (1,2,3 default) will attack your opponent in the respective direction. Each opponent (monster or real player) as some kind of a shield around him. By default, the shield has the same strength on all sides. But you or the AI can choose to weaken one side and strengthen another. You can for example expose your right side and reinforce the left side if the enemy prefers attacking there. You will deal/receive damage all the time, but the amount varies proportionally with this shield and the side you are attacking, taking a hit.

As your character grows, more weapon swing directions are added to your attacks. Special abilities rely on performing a combination of directional attacks in order to be unleashed. -> ,<-, -> for example can trigger an ability. But if you fail to perform the combo (by pressing something wrong), you won't be able to do that special attack.

Spells don't use the combo system, and ranged has its own level of difficulty by having to aim manually.

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But what can I kill?

Well you can start with killing players early by picking a PvP server. However, since there are no factions or sides, player versus player mode in the world is free for all. Which means 10 players can ally and kill you without mercy several time, and for no particular reason. Be warned! If you prefer a more safe, epic world, choose a PvE server. You will still be able to fight but only in special battlegrounds.

An interesting twist we still have to wait and see how it plays out is the guild versus guild feature, siege, and town building. Yes, having an architect in your guild can allow you to create an entire city under your command. The top 8 guilds as I understand are able to have towns on each server, and are also responsible in guarding them from other wanting guilds.

Which brings me to...

Professions and gathering

I won't talk much on this, as there's nothing special about it. At level 30 you can start quests for your gathering professions. You can pick them all: copper mining, tin prospecting, cotton gathering, woodcutting, and so on. You will learn as you complete each quest to gather more advanced stuff. The tricky part is resources aren't marked on the map (so add a mark yourself when you find one!), and that you'll have to have all quests in your log at once, which reduces your available quest slots roughly by 10 (30 in total).

As for the production professions, you can do all the quests related to them, but can only pick one. So think carefully. There are some already traditional professions like alchemy, armorsmithing, weaponsmithing, and the most unusual one: architecture. As I've told you before, architects build guild cities. As for the other professions, they are pretty much self-explanatory.

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Conclusion

... because this article has already stretched too long.

Age of Conan is certainly worth your time assuming you have a powerful, current generation, PC and are ok with the game rating: Mature, 18+. 18+ means not so much violence as you may expect but it does mean blood and dismemberment from time to time. It also means the player base is more mature, and you won't probably encounter passionate item-grinder kids that have no life and dropped out of school for a computer game. You will be delusional to think however that everyone past 18 years old is an actual mature person.

Age of Conan is currently one of the few, if not the only competition to date for World of Warcraft. They have till Christmas to catch up with the players, fix all the bugs, and bring new content where it lacks. If they manage, we will have 2 giant MMORPGS in our hands. Anyway, the game is still strong, and you should still give it a chance for 2-3 months at least. Who knows, you might end up a big fan.

Gameplay: 86

The fresh approach on combat system, as well as immersive sound, music, graphics, the dark and gritty Conan universe outweigh the bugs and balance issues, but Funcom still has a lot to work at. And I've seen signs they are indeed doing their best, so we are in good hands folks. Recently, combo dance has been introduced, yay! What are you waiting for? Visit Hyboria today! (and get a free toaster oven!)

Graphics: 89

The engine is powerful enough, and the game can visually be breathtaking in some areas. Some other areas are just ok. Either way, we are still waiting for late August - early September for the DirectX 10 patch. The game still doesn't support it.

Multiplayer: 89

I'm not sure about the free for all combat idea on the PvP servers, but I guess it's better than nothing. Other than that, it's your regular fun MMO, with guilds, battlegrounds, duels and everything you'd expect from a massive scale RPG, plus siege wars, war mounts, mounted combat, raids and more. A bit more work needs to be done to the party chat and guild chat interface.

Sound: 90

Great sounds with a lot of options for any speaker configuration. Fantastic music, and a lot of quests done with voice acting bring a unique feeling to the player. Waiting for more voice quests!

Hardware: 73

Everything cutting-edge is supported or will be supported soon (DirectX 10). That said, the game has a lot of frame drops in certain areas, and long load times. There is still a lot to be worked here. Please have a good system when trying to play this. Don't say I didn't warn you.