Age of Conan: Out of the Box
May 20, 2008Editor's Note: It's
We've been following the development of Funcom's Age of Conan for several years now. The chance to adventure in pulp author Robert E. Howard's "low fantasy" Hyborean universe -- a sweaty, decadent place where half-clothed princesses, subhuman monstrosities and human sacrifice are the order of the day -- would be irresistible to any fantasy fans unimpressed by decades of Tolkien-esque fantasy worlds. Add to this the prospect of a new action-oriented combat system (and its delicious PvP possibilities), the chance to build our own battlekeep and participate in massive siege warfare and we were sold. Hyborea has finally opened its doors to the general public and GameSpy's been in the thick of bloody combat ever since.
The Savage Land
The greatest attraction of Age of Conan is implicit in the game's title. This isn't a game about Conan; it's a game about Hyborea, Conan's world -- and what a world it is. The game immediately impresses by dint of the sheer physical beauty of its setting. Funcom's Hyborea is a Wonderland of variegated landscapes ranging from the raw jungles of the Baruchan Islands to the stark desert of Khemi to the severe slopes of Conall's Valley. All of them offer immediate treats to the eye but even more fun for the dedicated explorer. Funcom's Hyborea is unfortunately segregated by instances into self-contained landscapes bounded by invisible walls, but when there are delicious little details waiting to be discovered with every step (check out the "road apples" in Tarantia) this is pretty minor.
Naturally, a savage land wouldn't be much fun without savage people. The game's avatar creation system is an exceptional example of its type. Players get the opportunity to adjust virtually everything about their character from the angle of their eyes to the size of their butt to the kinds of scars or tattoos they'll sport. All of it works well and creates a stunningly attractive (if occasionally scary) populace. In standard MMO fashion, players will be able to get better armor and equipment as they level up; here too, Funcom's artists shine through. While nothing a player can wear betrays the game's low-tech setting, it's always easy to tell the difference between ragged lowbie gear and higher-level loot.
The game's setting is also honored through a series of well-written PvE quests that are filled with a tongue-in-cheek disregard for any kind of civilized morality. A particular favorite is an early quest in which a merchant murders a group of religious pilgrims by abandoning them in an area infested by crocodiles. The player is then tasked with killing the crocs, cutting them open and gathering up the valuable gems the pilgrims were wearing. A later quest has a distraught family ask the player track down a missing family member in Stygia. When the player discovers the missing man has been killed and eaten by one of the giant pythons that wander freely in the Stygian capitol, their reaction is joy that the man was "...chosen by Set to serve Him in the next world."
Quests do tend to fall into the classic "bring me eight foozle tails" mold, but the developers make PvE questing interesting by layering lots of low-quantity fetch-and-carry quests into the landscape. That means that rather than requiring the player to get fifteen or thirty corrupted wolf tails they may only need three. Odds are, though, that the player will have a half-dozen or more similar quests requiring the same creature or others in a tightly contained geographic zone. The result is lots more "ding" and "quest complete" moments that keep any single quest from getting boring.
We're also enjoying the game's bloody combat system. While we have yet to experience some of the higher-level fighting or any serious PvP action, what we have played makes us eager to explore more. Unlike traditional MMOs, combat in Age of Conan is more akin to an action game. Players control the direction of their attacks via the "1", "2" and "3" keys and they'll also develop "combos" that do extra damage or place status effects or trigger other funky powers. They can protect themselves by using "shields" that can be rotated using the control panel. This leads to some pretty hairy in-game struggles in which players (or groups of players) try to coordinate various combos to bring down more powerful enemies or support each other's combinations.
Adventures in Technology
Unfortunately, while being raw and crude is an attraction when it comes to the setting, it's not quite as much fun when it comes to the game's technological infrastructure. The first few "Early Access" days found message boards filled with people having difficulty logging in to the game, getting their account credentials registered and recognized and claiming the proper bonuses. In the first day of general admission, we also had some difficulty getting our access codes recognized, though this may be a function of overloaded registration servers and have nothing to do with the game itself. A few retries on our part eventually got us straightened out and once we logged in we've found the game running smoothly and without a connection hiccup ever since. We've also experienced an occasional delay in loading textures, though they're not bad enough or severe enough to be game-breakers.
An equally bad issue has been a few unscrupulous guilds who have apparently discovered some type of exploit that lets them gain money and experience far more quickly than intended -- so much so that players have reported seeing level 50 and 60 characters (out of 80) running around after only three days of play. Given the inevitable influx of gold farmers into the game, this is an invitation to economic disaster.
Certain aspects of the game also suffer from a distinct lack of polish. The UI, for example, is a clunky collection of buttons and controls that hide rather than highlight important information. A tiny triangle on the radar, for instance, allows players to switch instances in common areas. This is important because in order to keep the game smooth and populations in common areas fairly low, the game is heavily instanced. That means that getting groups together takes an extra five minutes just to get everyone in the same instance.
The game's chat system is also atrocious. It uses poor color choices and tiny fonts for text that can't be changed from within the game. It's also annoyingly difficult to properly tab conversation channels or subscribe to the right ones. Guild controls are weirdly split between the "Friends" and "Guild Management" buttons.
Hyborea's Future
There's much more to explore in Age of Conan, of course. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the early game (especially the first twenty levels) is that they're intensely focused on questing and killing monsters. There's a much richer world of crafting, keep-building, organized (and unorganized) PvP, guild-vs.-guild competition and brutal siege warfare to discover. We'll see how much fun it is to get there and whether it was worth the trip in our official review. Check back in a few days for our final verdict on Age of Conan.
©2008-05-20, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The biggest technical headache so far has been the loss of the Traders and the shenanigans of exploiters. Traders are in-game NPCs that serve as a player bank, an auction system and a mail system. As earlier games have found out, launching without a viable auction system is a major handicap; while Funcom has stated that the issue is minor and it's working on the problem, this is an issue that needs to be resolved quickly.