TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

By Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor

Five years is a long time. Two presidents can be elected, young men and women can complete their schooling at a university, and a family can have a handful of children. Most employees can hardly stay in a job for more than a few years in the modern era, and the length of time a person finds employment in the video gaming industry is far shorter than five years.

Yet here we are, five years after the original unveiling of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and the game is now up and running on servers all across the world. Barbarians, conquerors, and assassins are lining up in droves to be the first to meet with the mighty King Conan, and still more are joining the realms every day. The world of Hyboria is a crowded place these days and the Ten Ton Hammer community managers have been working day-and-night to bring you the best information we can find about everything in the game, from Feat Calculators to Class Guides.

The world in Age of Conan is a brutal and violent place.

However, for those of you that haven’t taken the plunge, the world of Hyboria may seem like a brutal, savage place. Stories of rough beta experiences and unfortunate server issues have been piling up across the internet, casting a harsh shadow on the raw world. That said, there are a number of questions many of you have been asking on forums, email and IM exchanges, and in talks around the water cooler.

What can I expect from Age of Conan? Will the game play on my computer? Is it worth my money?

While I cannot answer these questions for each and every person on the internet, I will do my best to give you my broad first impressions of a game that I consider to be one of the most revolutionary titles to hit the massively multiplayer online gaming space in years. This is by no means the official review for Ten Ton Hammer, it’s just my experiences with the Age of Conan world straight from store shelves on to my computer. I hope you enjoy it.

A Fresh Start in a Harsh World

For the experienced MMOG players, Age of Conan starts with the sort of introductory set-up we’ve come to expect. Installation of the client is a fairly enormous and time consuming prospect, and it took me over a day to download the entire monolithic file from the Funcom servers. However, as soon as the client was installed and patched, I had no problem logging into the game. Unlike some reports, my pre-order headstart went off with only a small amount of downtime, right at the end of the headstart.

After a series of cinematic sequences and movies, the player logs into the game and is asked to create their character. You’re presented with a number of choices, ranging from your race (Aquilonian, Cimmerian, and Stygian) to your class (Assassin, Barbarian, Bear Shaman, Conqueror, Dark Templar, Demonologist, Guardian, Herald of Xotli, Necromancer, Priest of Mitra, Ranger, and Tempest of Set), on top of the basic sort of options concerning your height, build, and facial options.

Even at this early level, however, it becomes obvious that Funcom knows that they’re making a game for a crowd that has already experienced a number of MMOGs before their game. By clicking on an “Advanced” settings tab, players can adjust almost everything about their character’s appearance: from the size of their waists to the width of their cheekbones. For me, character customization is always a fascinating part of developing your online persona, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Age of Conan developer.

Sexuality certainly isn't ignored in AoC.

Once I had spent thirty minutes absorbing every facet of the creator, it became quickly apparent that even at the basic “Medium” graphic settings, the art style and beauty of the Age of Conan experience is clearly and abundantly visible. The in-game character models are some of the best that I’ve seen in an MMOG, and even though AoC strove for a more “realistic” approach to graphics, the developers at Funcom pulled it off with such flair that it’s hard to find any reason to fault the choice.

And once I entered the game, the graphics continued to shock and awe. As my character’s body sank to the bottom of the ocean after a disastrous shipwreck, the undulating waves of the water distorted my view of his body until finally he washed up onto the shoreline.

Telling the Story of Conan

Frankly, the beginning of the story of Age of Conan is a bit clichéd, but almost all video game opening sequences are. You begin your life in the savage land with no memory, yet you have been branded with a “dark mark” that has stripped you of all your previous memories. It’s your duty to regain your memories in hopes that your knowledge of the rising evil can be used to aid in King Conan’s battle against the demonic forces.

First time participants in the world of Robert E. Howard need not worry about knowing the lore of the world beforehand. Although I’ve read a number of Howard’s short stories, I’m nowhere near as competent with the Conan mythologies as some, and I easily fell into the twisting yarn that Funcom had produced. Even though the story may have clichéd beginnings, it’s easy to feel that your character is venturing into the middle of a vast adventure where he or she is the central protagonist.

Every dialogue encounter is seen through the eyes of the player character.

Unlike most MMOGs, many of the quest interactions you have with the characters in the game are done using a combination of voice work, Knights of the Old Republic style camera angles, and branching dialogue trees. Although many MMOG players simply plow through this sort of text interaction, this sort of high detail work is what drew me to Age of Conan in the first place and the whole presentation looks to have gone off without a hitch.

As many previews and first impression reports have stated in the past, your character begins his experience on the crowded island of Tortage where a vast number of drunks, prostitutes, and conmen reside. As you advance through the city, taking on one quest after another, you’ll become quite familiar with many of the faces: Laranga the Red Hand traitor, Donus the beggar, Phaedic the drunk sea captain, Sigurd the inn keeper at the Thirsty Dog Inn, and the list only continues on from there.

Crush Your Enemies

While all of those faces may speak with you time and time again, most of them will be only concerned with one thing: getting revenge on those who have wronged them. From the lowly alley wastrel to the exiled noblewomen, almost all of the NPCs want you to kill for them. Your quest journal – which I have rarely read thanks to the intricate voice over work – will be full of “Kill X” quests by the time you reach your teens.