Unofficial Tex Murphy

So I know MMORPG's are by some not considered to be an entertaining game. Some people actually regard them as work. (See Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw's Zero Punctuation, for instance)

But in all regards, Funcom did everything right. I can't believe how well made this game is. You've all heard of the World of Warcraft craze, I assume. This will blow WoW out of the water. It's an honest-to-goodness mmorpg for the adult crowd. No cartoonish style. No childish humor. No endless movie-referencing.

It's the world of Conan the Barbarian. And if you like the comics, you'll like the game, it's that simple. I've read Conan since childhood, my brother was a somewhat avid reader of the stuff. And... It's good. It's so much FUN.

And to quote Yahtzee: "Fun? Remember that? Fun? What we used to have before gaming felt like a second job?"

Which is true of World of Warcraft at least, I played it for two years, and the last few months I was so endlessly tired of the game, that I ripped myself from the trance I had fallen in and stepped back. I realized that mmorpg's are generally poor games that drone on and on (not unlike me) about boring content. The world is static, the gameplay is repetitive and the monsters are all the same, except for the colorscheme changing as you grow in levels. And perhaps slightly changing the name.

So what makes Age of Conan good? It has an interactive combat system. You need to acquire player-skills to become good in the game, not just mash random buttons and hope for the best. It's got blood. I realize that to some people, that might not be a good thing, but this is CONAN we're talking about. There *should* be blood. And the lopping of heads. And such.

Other things that makes this game worth mentioning is something I'd never have guessed would become an issue in any mmo. It's got simply stunningly beautiful music. Yes. Really. It sets the tone so well and creates an atmosphere I didn't know was possible in such a game.

And then finally we come to the bit that might interest you lot. The npc interaction system, or if you want to call it something else - the "Talking-to-the-characters" bit. It's not just run over to someone, click them, and receive quest anymore. It's also interactive. You get dialogue options! Yes, it's true! You get to choose your attitude as well as your playing style! You may get the same quest regardless of your options, but there's a clear difference between grudginly agreeing to do a job for money and accepting a task out of the goodness of your heart. It feels, dare I say it, adventure game-esque.

You can read a whole bunch of reviews on the web about it, but it's best if you try it for yourself, if you're into that sort of thing. If you like mmo's but have grown tired of Everquest, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes & Villains or any of the countless others - I highly recommend Age of Conan. It's fun. It's good. It's well made. It's different than the rest.

And it's not even a full week since launch. How smooth is that?

-Fred

PS: Also, the phrase "...then you can go gargle wolf piss." is included.

PPS: I'm playing on US server Cimmeria, a cimmerian ranger named Pharl. Come see me, we'll have a laugh and a brew!

I'd try it, but I'd have to overclock my system so badly I'd need liquid nitrogen pouring on the parts to keep everything cool. Looking at the box, it gives required and recommended system requirements (yes I really just said required requirements), and my PC doesn't even meet the required requirements, running at less than 2.0 Ghz with 512 megs of ram. And the game recommends 2 megs of ram and 3 Ghz.

Otherwise I'd like to try it, because in my opinion WoW has turned into Everquest in Warcraft pants, where everything is dedicated on continuous raiding to move a single step. That's not to mention the mistreating of the overall storyline, but I won't go into that.

I don't think Warcraft is much like Everquest. Everquest eventually changed to copy wow a bit I think.

I tried it on a friend's PC yesterday. I spent about 15 mins with the character creator making the ugliest looking man i could. Only got to do the first quest as he wanted to test something out. It seems interesting. I guess it depends on whether the people i play wow with will jump over, and if i want to leave wow without ever hitting 70 (and i've had the game since launch) ><

I've heard that later in the game the quests stop being Dialog and become more WoW like with the scrolls and quest descriptions. I also noticed the game has a lot of Kill X many of X and collect X many of X, the classes look way to similar to WoW's and the interface does too.

This is going by first impressions though from the beta So I have no idea what the final product ended up like. I may get curious and actually play it

You can't compare the beta to the finished product, trust me. They're like night and day. I can't believe it's the same game.

-Fred

Fred Buer wrote:You can't compare the beta to the finished product, trust me. They're like night and day. I can't believe it's the same game.

umm yeah you're telling a QA tester that lol, I think you can since this was stress test beta (all MMORPGs go through this phase at the end). Granted I hadn't played for too long since it was the last week and I was busy with the present grind fest which was my job to play an MMORPG . I built my career out of MMORPGs so it takes something pretty special to make me go "ok thats pretty cool". I've played a lot. I may be curious to check this one out, but before I do anything I'll wait till some adventurous players get to level 100 and let me know how it is at the end. Ideally thats what I want to hear. After playing world of warcraft and hearing about the level 70 stuff, I got bored around level 30 and gave up, mainly because the quests were utterly boring, the items were basically the same thing with a different model/icon and every monster was the same, just a little bigger and with flashing Red instead of Green text . Really led me to realize what I hate about MMORPGs and that is the repetitive grinding of the same crappy mobs over and over and over again. Granted it is much funner with friends but thats just it, WoW is only successful because of the social element. If Age of Conan has actual gameplay in there somewhere (which I'm hoping it does since I have been looking forward to this game for a while now.. "conan fan here") then I'll start playing.

I'll admit the graphics look great but I don't play an MMO for its graphics.. hell I did work for Nexon you know and their games look like arse.. but are excellent gameplay. (Sgalaxy is a good one as its star craft online and doesn't consist of grinding rather tactics, and yeah its ugly )

I don't have any time for MMOs these days so you can understand my hesitation to playing this. I don't want to get caught up in something that becomes a drain on money and time like WoW was.

Really I'm looking for a game to restore my faith in MMOs.

You have to use your playerskills to defeat someone in pvp, for instance. I was level 23, and I got attacked by a level 56. He didn't kill me. He didn't even catch me. I ran circles around him, and I managed to get away from him after two minutes. If he could play, never mind play his class, he would've killed me without a doubt.

There is no auto-attack. There is no push-one-button-combat. There is however a very in-depth combat system based on directional attack. Left swing, right swing, stab, swing at head, swipe left and swipe right. If I understood it all correctly.

Then there's the combos, which let's you unleash hell and fury. Did I mention you get to lop off heads? You get to lop off heads.

You've every right to be sceptical, but I'm telling you, honestly, it's worth a try. It really is. If it wasn't, if I had any doubts, I wouldn't say that.

-Fred