Beta Impressions: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
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A wretched hive of scum and villainy; the famous line from Star Wars, fits the world of Hyboria pretty well. A world full of cutthroats ready to stab you in the back for the few tins you have in your money purse. Funcom has taken the works of Robert E. Howard and created a lush and vibrant world full of danger.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, takes place during the time that Conan sits on the throne as King of Aquilonia. You start the game with your character, who was a slave upon a galley ship, washing ashore of the Island of Tortage. From here you have to fight your way through to the gates leading to the port town of Tortage. Combat does not follow the same route as many other MMOs.
Instead of hitting an attack button and watching your character auto swing at your enemy, in AoC you need to use one of the three attack buttons, one button for left, one for right, and the other for straight ahead. On top of that, enemies have shields that they can shift around themselves to give them better protection from your attacks, forcing you to vary up your attacks to hit them where they are least protected. In addition to these three directional attack buttons you have normal attacks much like any other MMO; draining life from your opponent, charging up to your opponent, throwing fireballs and electrical bolts, etc. Each class has their own set of abilities that set them apart.
From what I’ve seen of the questing system it will keep you busy and there seems to be enough of them to avoid grinding levels at least in the beginning 20 or so levels that I have experienced. During Open Beta, Funcom kept the main destiny quest under wraps pretty well. We were able to experience the first few levels of it but they kept it capped at level 13 so the story line would not get ruined. For the last day of Open Beta they jumped characters to level 20 and transported them to each race’s home city.
There are a total of three races; the Aquilonians, Cimmerians, and the Stygians. Which race you choose also determines which class you can pick. The Aquilonians can be priests, assassins, rangers, barbarians, guardian, conquerer, or dark templars. The Cimmerians can pick from bear shamans, ranger, barbarian, guardian, conquerer, or dark templars. The Stygians can choose from tempest of set, assassin, ranger, demonologist, necromancer, and herald of xotli.
Once you reach level 10 you start to receive one feat point for every level you gain. Feats are similar to talents used in other MMOs. You can use your points in the feat tree and each class has three feat trees. Feats are used to augment your character by making spells more powerful or by giving you new spells or abilities.
For those of you who like to make stuff, AoC has a crafting system which you can partake in once you reach level 40. I believe this is a good idea since the beginning levels go so fast and most the gear wouldn’t be used for that long before you throw it away for the next item. For crafting there is the weaposmith, armor smith, alchemist, architect and the gemcutter. For the gathering profession there is mining, prospecting, skinning, stonecutting, weaving, and woodcutting. From what I have been able to gather, each character can have one profession I haven’t been able to find any info on whether it has been changed or not.
For those that like PvP, there are several options to choose from. There are of course free for all PvP servers where anything goes just about anywhere. There are PvP mini games like capture the flag and team battles. Out in the Border Kingdoms, on each server there are 9 battlekeeps that guilds can take control of and by using resources such as metals, wood, and stone they can build huge keeps. Every so often the guild occupying a battle keep will have to defend it against another army in order to maintain keep occupying it. Smaller guild won’t be left out, as they will be able to occupy towers in the Border kingdoms as well. There will be benefits to holding a keep or a tower, such as a library giving a bonus to casters.
The graphics are some of the best you’ll find in any MMO and most other games for that matter. The characters move realistically with a few minor problems here and there. Like pieces of clothing showing through outer layers, though this seemed to be fixed in open beta with the last wave of patches on the second to last day. The game ran great on my computer with some stalling (Funcom’s word for the momentary freezes that happened here and there) every once in awhile, although this too seemed to disappear after the last set of patches. Funcom has been quick to jump on problems and get them sorted out before release. One thing I didn’t like were the trees, if you stood still and looked at them they were beautiful, but if you stand under certain ones and spin in place they look like the branches are rotating. Very weird but it is due to the software they used to make the trees.
AoC is a mature rated game and rightly so, nudity and decapitations are the flavor of the day and this all stays true to Robert E. Howards writings. All in all, Age of Conan has left me wanting more and with launch day fast approaching, I can’t wait to get in the game and chop some heads off.
