Scott Tortorice
Senior Member
Back in 1932, Robert E. Howard created the mythical character Conan the Barbarian and the world of fantasy was never the same. The iconic character first appeared in Weird Tales, but over the years has conquered his way through numerous books, comics, two full length movies and even video games. This past May saw the release of the newest venture in the Conan saga, Funcom’s MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (henceforth referred to as AoC).
AoC is arguably the most anticipated MMO to date. In the first month alone, Funcom has shipped over 1 million copies and boasts around 700,000 subscriptions, making AoC the most successful launch of an MMO ever. What is it about AoC that has people all over the world excited about this game? Could it be the Mature rating for the blood and the gore? Or perhaps the fact that you can run around as a topless female character? Maybe it’s the endgame PvP content with guild cities waging massive battles with one another? The revolutionary real time combat? Or is it the fact that Funcom is trying to buck the often formulistic MMO genre? I would have to say YES to all of these! However, therein lays the problem with AoC. Funcom might have attempted too much, too soon. Early on, it becomes apparent that AoC was unable to buck the all-too-common trend of gameplay and graphical bugs, missing or broken content and balancing issues.
AoC’s troubles really begin at installation as this process can take anywhere from 45 minutes up to 3 hours, depending on your PC (I suspect that part of the reason for the lengthy installation is that AoC requires 30 gigabytes of hard drive space!). Mind you, that doesn’t account for the mounds of patches that you will have to download in order to bring AoC up to date. I happened to be one of the lucky ones whose installation was only around 45 minutes with 30 minutes for patching.
AoC currently has 3 races and 12 classes, with the classes based on 4 archetypes - the Soldier, Rogue, Priest and Mage. Your choice in race will determine which classes are available to choose from, as not all races have access to certain classes. Character creation in AoC is rather robust compared to other MMO’s. Of course, there are your standard options of male or female, choice of hair, eye and hair color. But it’s the additional options that make it unique, such as being able to choose your combat voice, facial and body markings and the ability to adjust the size and shape of your various body parts - something that generally is only seen in single player RPGs. It’s obvious that Funcom wants as many unique characters adventuring in Hyboria as possible.
The story begins with you as a slave on a Stygian slave galley off the coast of the Barachan Isles. The vessel you’re on is damaged and later sunk during a nasty storm, and you will find yourself washed up outside the city of Tortage. When you awake, you discover that you have no memory of who you are or where. In fact, that is how every player’s story begins and if you’re an alt-aholic, that is how their story will begin too. It’s an interesting design choice on the part of Funcom - one that I don’t necessarily agree with - but it does give plenty of opportunities for new players to find groups and even do some PvP.
The first 5-6 levels are spent in a single-player tutorial zone where you rescue a damsel in distress, face your former slave owner, and navigate your way through the jungle. While in the tutorial, you’ll be learning the many aspects of AoC with the help of an in-game pop-up tutorial menu, including such topics as inventory, looting, the character screen, quests and quest rewards and, of course, combat.
Combat
Speaking about combat, I think it’s time to cover arguably the most talked about feature of AoC: its real time combat system. Combat in your typical MMO is based around auto-attacks and countdown timers for special attacks. Combat in AoC is fundamentally different and closer to something you would find in a fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter. There is no auto-attack in AoC; instead, you must actively swing your weapon by pressing the shortcut key or by clicking the attack on the hotkey bar. At the start of the game you can swing your weapon in one of three directions, left, right and forward, with other directions becoming available later in the game. It’s this ‘Directional Combat’ that really sets AoC apart from the rest of the pack and becomes even more important when you realize that enemies have what’s called ‘Focus Defense’. What this means is that when you target an enemy, you will notice 3 icons surrounding them - these are called shields and will show the focus of an enemy’s defense. The more shields they have focused in one area, the better their defense will be against your attacks. Exploiting the defense of an enemy with your directional attacks is the key to being successful in combat.
AoC also uses combos for special attacks. To begin a combo, you click the icon or use the shortcut key, then input the corresponding directional arrows as indicated by the combo. To help make the process easier, a pop up window will appear on screen indicating the directions required and in which order to enter them. Initial combos will only have one direction to input, but gradually become more complex as you progress through the game.
If a combo does enough damage to kill an enemy, then there is a chance that you can finish them off with a fatality. Fatalities are bloody, gruesome, and a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately, there seems to be no information on how to increase your chances for a fatality and in the beginning it felt like fatalities were performed at random - until I looted an item that added 2% to my chances.
Something worth mentioning is that players can also block or dodge incoming attacks. Blocking requires you to hold down the Active Blocking key, and dodging requires you to double-tap a movement key. Both options are nice to have, but I never used them. Blocking drains stamina and stamina is needed to pull off devastating combos. No stamina means no combos, and no combos ultimately means an almost certain death! Blocking would be much more useful if there were special abilities that are usable only after a successful block, allowing you to counter-attack with a devastating combo. As it is now, blocking just reduces the amount of damage that you receive.
As a melee class, I had a blast with the combat but it was a painful learning curve for me. If I can quote a certain Jedi Master, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” And that is very true with AoC. Because of the fundamental differences in combat from other MMO’s, one can find themselves very frustrated in the early levels of the game. And as I gained levels and faced tougher enemies, I began to feel the pain of not having some sort of auto-attack. The player can get easily overwhelmed by needing to move, attack and perform combos. Usually, I would find that I had screwed up a combo because of my divided attention. As a result, combat in AoC can be very frustrating indeed.
Problems
Having completed the tutorial, players will then make their way to the city of Tortage where time will be split between multiplayer and single-player quests till level 19 or 20. Daytime in Tortage is the multiplayer portion of the starting zone. During the day you can venture to areas like the White Sands or the Underhalls, group with other players and even participate in some PvP. Unfortunately, I found that the multiplayer quests throughout AoC are very generic and typically have you doing three things: kill X number of enemies, gather X number of items, or retrieve an item for someone. Night time is strictly single-player and where you will be working on your destiny quests. Unlike the multiplayer quests, destiny quests are very well done, varied and feature some nice voice-over narrative from NPCs.
Once your time is finished in Tortage, you then are sent to your home country, Cimmaria, Aquilonia or Stygia. It’s at this point in AoC where the pace starts to slow down. Combos and abilities are awarded at a much slower pace, the destiny quests are few and far between, and you’ll have a tough time finding an NPC with any voice-over narrative. In fact, much of the post level 20 content appears broken, bugged, or just plain missing. PvE content becomes a bit sparse starting around the mid level 40’s, forcing one to grind endlessly on mobs in order to advance to higher levels. The most common issue you will encounter with quests will be the inability to complete the quest. Essentially, the item or person you are to interact with will continue to offer the quest even if you have already completed the requirements for the quest. Other issues: armor gives little benefit, guild cities cannot be upgraded, siege weapons don’t work, graphic glitches run rampant and there are serious performance issues for large scale PvP encounters (and these are just a few of the problems with the game). And if that wasn’t enough, AoC features one of the most ludicrous bugs ever in an MMO: swing animations for females are slower than males, causing them to do less damage! Personally I think that’s outrageous, and it has caused quite a stir on the official AoC forums.
Unfortunately, crafting in AoC feels as though it was implemented at the last minute and seems to be little more than an afterthought. At level 20 you can begin harvesting resources. First, you must seek out a trainer before you can gather and collect, and you can choose any or all harvesting skills. Some harvesting is instant like skinning, which requires you to only kill an animal, and some require you to harvest from a “resource node” such as a forest or mine. You can begin crafting items from the resources you’ve gathered at level 40 with players choosing two crafting skills from the five available. Harvesting and crafting are on a tiered system for leveling with the gamer needing to complete a series of quests from a trainer before advancing to the next tier, with each tier granting you new recipes, better items to craft or resources to gather. Yawn. Nothing really new here.
Pizzazz
Fortunately, the visuals are far more polished with AoC sporting some stunning graphics and nice audio elements. Funcom spared no expense bringing the world of Hyboria to life. Highly detailed characters, beautiful landscapes, marvelous cities - it’s easily one of the best looking games out now. If your computer only meets the minimum requirements to run the game, however, then be prepared to have AoC do a combo move fatality on your framerate. AoC does boast a myriad of options to tweak your graphic settings in order to get the game to run as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately, DX10 did not ship with the retail version of AoC and will be integrated later this year.
The audio portion of AoC is equally as impressive. The soundtrack itself is wonderful, from the opening title theme, the ambient atmospheric background music while adventuring, to the loud dramatic combat music; it really draws you in and sets the tone for the game. The voice acting is primarily limited to the early levels, but is very well done and becomes sorely missed later on. Combat sounds just right with weapons thudding and clanging off of enemies as you grunt with each swing. AoC even incorporates the sound of spattering blood, something that quickly becomes a welcomed sound as it indicates the death of your opponent! All of this really serves to make combat an audible treat. Rounding out the package are nice atmospherics such as the chirp of birds in the air, flies around a corpse, the running water of a river and the sounds of hidden animals in the jungle. The graphics and sound all combine to make AoC a very immersive experience.
Closing Comments:
Age of Conan is a beautiful game that does many things to set itself apart from other games in the genre. The fact is, though, that AoC often plays as an unpolished and half-finished game. Nonetheless, technical issues aside, it is a testament to the game that there is still fun to be had with its excellent soundtrack, beautiful graphics, unique combat system and immersive early game content. If Funcom can get the game fixed and polished in the coming months – as I suspect it will - then Age of Conan has the potential of becoming a great game and landmark MMO.
7.0 out of 10
AoC is arguably the most anticipated MMO to date. In the first month alone, Funcom has shipped over 1 million copies and boasts around 700,000 subscriptions, making AoC the most successful launch of an MMO ever. What is it about AoC that has people all over the world excited about this game? Could it be the Mature rating for the blood and the gore? Or perhaps the fact that you can run around as a topless female character? Maybe it’s the endgame PvP content with guild cities waging massive battles with one another? The revolutionary real time combat? Or is it the fact that Funcom is trying to buck the often formulistic MMO genre? I would have to say YES to all of these! However, therein lays the problem with AoC. Funcom might have attempted too much, too soon. Early on, it becomes apparent that AoC was unable to buck the all-too-common trend of gameplay and graphical bugs, missing or broken content and balancing issues.
AoC’s troubles really begin at installation as this process can take anywhere from 45 minutes up to 3 hours, depending on your PC (I suspect that part of the reason for the lengthy installation is that AoC requires 30 gigabytes of hard drive space!). Mind you, that doesn’t account for the mounds of patches that you will have to download in order to bring AoC up to date. I happened to be one of the lucky ones whose installation was only around 45 minutes with 30 minutes for patching.
AoC currently has 3 races and 12 classes, with the classes based on 4 archetypes - the Soldier, Rogue, Priest and Mage. Your choice in race will determine which classes are available to choose from, as not all races have access to certain classes. Character creation in AoC is rather robust compared to other MMO’s. Of course, there are your standard options of male or female, choice of hair, eye and hair color. But it’s the additional options that make it unique, such as being able to choose your combat voice, facial and body markings and the ability to adjust the size and shape of your various body parts - something that generally is only seen in single player RPGs. It’s obvious that Funcom wants as many unique characters adventuring in Hyboria as possible.
The story begins with you as a slave on a Stygian slave galley off the coast of the Barachan Isles. The vessel you’re on is damaged and later sunk during a nasty storm, and you will find yourself washed up outside the city of Tortage. When you awake, you discover that you have no memory of who you are or where. In fact, that is how every player’s story begins and if you’re an alt-aholic, that is how their story will begin too. It’s an interesting design choice on the part of Funcom - one that I don’t necessarily agree with - but it does give plenty of opportunities for new players to find groups and even do some PvP.
The first 5-6 levels are spent in a single-player tutorial zone where you rescue a damsel in distress, face your former slave owner, and navigate your way through the jungle. While in the tutorial, you’ll be learning the many aspects of AoC with the help of an in-game pop-up tutorial menu, including such topics as inventory, looting, the character screen, quests and quest rewards and, of course, combat.
Combat
Speaking about combat, I think it’s time to cover arguably the most talked about feature of AoC: its real time combat system. Combat in your typical MMO is based around auto-attacks and countdown timers for special attacks. Combat in AoC is fundamentally different and closer to something you would find in a fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter. There is no auto-attack in AoC; instead, you must actively swing your weapon by pressing the shortcut key or by clicking the attack on the hotkey bar. At the start of the game you can swing your weapon in one of three directions, left, right and forward, with other directions becoming available later in the game. It’s this ‘Directional Combat’ that really sets AoC apart from the rest of the pack and becomes even more important when you realize that enemies have what’s called ‘Focus Defense’. What this means is that when you target an enemy, you will notice 3 icons surrounding them - these are called shields and will show the focus of an enemy’s defense. The more shields they have focused in one area, the better their defense will be against your attacks. Exploiting the defense of an enemy with your directional attacks is the key to being successful in combat.
AoC also uses combos for special attacks. To begin a combo, you click the icon or use the shortcut key, then input the corresponding directional arrows as indicated by the combo. To help make the process easier, a pop up window will appear on screen indicating the directions required and in which order to enter them. Initial combos will only have one direction to input, but gradually become more complex as you progress through the game.
If a combo does enough damage to kill an enemy, then there is a chance that you can finish them off with a fatality. Fatalities are bloody, gruesome, and a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately, there seems to be no information on how to increase your chances for a fatality and in the beginning it felt like fatalities were performed at random - until I looted an item that added 2% to my chances.
Something worth mentioning is that players can also block or dodge incoming attacks. Blocking requires you to hold down the Active Blocking key, and dodging requires you to double-tap a movement key. Both options are nice to have, but I never used them. Blocking drains stamina and stamina is needed to pull off devastating combos. No stamina means no combos, and no combos ultimately means an almost certain death! Blocking would be much more useful if there were special abilities that are usable only after a successful block, allowing you to counter-attack with a devastating combo. As it is now, blocking just reduces the amount of damage that you receive.
As a melee class, I had a blast with the combat but it was a painful learning curve for me. If I can quote a certain Jedi Master, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” And that is very true with AoC. Because of the fundamental differences in combat from other MMO’s, one can find themselves very frustrated in the early levels of the game. And as I gained levels and faced tougher enemies, I began to feel the pain of not having some sort of auto-attack. The player can get easily overwhelmed by needing to move, attack and perform combos. Usually, I would find that I had screwed up a combo because of my divided attention. As a result, combat in AoC can be very frustrating indeed.
Problems
Having completed the tutorial, players will then make their way to the city of Tortage where time will be split between multiplayer and single-player quests till level 19 or 20. Daytime in Tortage is the multiplayer portion of the starting zone. During the day you can venture to areas like the White Sands or the Underhalls, group with other players and even participate in some PvP. Unfortunately, I found that the multiplayer quests throughout AoC are very generic and typically have you doing three things: kill X number of enemies, gather X number of items, or retrieve an item for someone. Night time is strictly single-player and where you will be working on your destiny quests. Unlike the multiplayer quests, destiny quests are very well done, varied and feature some nice voice-over narrative from NPCs.
Once your time is finished in Tortage, you then are sent to your home country, Cimmaria, Aquilonia or Stygia. It’s at this point in AoC where the pace starts to slow down. Combos and abilities are awarded at a much slower pace, the destiny quests are few and far between, and you’ll have a tough time finding an NPC with any voice-over narrative. In fact, much of the post level 20 content appears broken, bugged, or just plain missing. PvE content becomes a bit sparse starting around the mid level 40’s, forcing one to grind endlessly on mobs in order to advance to higher levels. The most common issue you will encounter with quests will be the inability to complete the quest. Essentially, the item or person you are to interact with will continue to offer the quest even if you have already completed the requirements for the quest. Other issues: armor gives little benefit, guild cities cannot be upgraded, siege weapons don’t work, graphic glitches run rampant and there are serious performance issues for large scale PvP encounters (and these are just a few of the problems with the game). And if that wasn’t enough, AoC features one of the most ludicrous bugs ever in an MMO: swing animations for females are slower than males, causing them to do less damage! Personally I think that’s outrageous, and it has caused quite a stir on the official AoC forums.
Unfortunately, crafting in AoC feels as though it was implemented at the last minute and seems to be little more than an afterthought. At level 20 you can begin harvesting resources. First, you must seek out a trainer before you can gather and collect, and you can choose any or all harvesting skills. Some harvesting is instant like skinning, which requires you to only kill an animal, and some require you to harvest from a “resource node” such as a forest or mine. You can begin crafting items from the resources you’ve gathered at level 40 with players choosing two crafting skills from the five available. Harvesting and crafting are on a tiered system for leveling with the gamer needing to complete a series of quests from a trainer before advancing to the next tier, with each tier granting you new recipes, better items to craft or resources to gather. Yawn. Nothing really new here.
Pizzazz
Fortunately, the visuals are far more polished with AoC sporting some stunning graphics and nice audio elements. Funcom spared no expense bringing the world of Hyboria to life. Highly detailed characters, beautiful landscapes, marvelous cities - it’s easily one of the best looking games out now. If your computer only meets the minimum requirements to run the game, however, then be prepared to have AoC do a combo move fatality on your framerate. AoC does boast a myriad of options to tweak your graphic settings in order to get the game to run as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately, DX10 did not ship with the retail version of AoC and will be integrated later this year.
The audio portion of AoC is equally as impressive. The soundtrack itself is wonderful, from the opening title theme, the ambient atmospheric background music while adventuring, to the loud dramatic combat music; it really draws you in and sets the tone for the game. The voice acting is primarily limited to the early levels, but is very well done and becomes sorely missed later on. Combat sounds just right with weapons thudding and clanging off of enemies as you grunt with each swing. AoC even incorporates the sound of spattering blood, something that quickly becomes a welcomed sound as it indicates the death of your opponent! All of this really serves to make combat an audible treat. Rounding out the package are nice atmospherics such as the chirp of birds in the air, flies around a corpse, the running water of a river and the sounds of hidden animals in the jungle. The graphics and sound all combine to make AoC a very immersive experience.
Closing Comments:
Age of Conan is a beautiful game that does many things to set itself apart from other games in the genre. The fact is, though, that AoC often plays as an unpolished and half-finished game. Nonetheless, technical issues aside, it is a testament to the game that there is still fun to be had with its excellent soundtrack, beautiful graphics, unique combat system and immersive early game content. If Funcom can get the game fixed and polished in the coming months – as I suspect it will - then Age of Conan has the potential of becoming a great game and landmark MMO.
7.0 out of 10