By: John "Boomjack" Hoskin, as viewed at the Age of Conan Launch Event in Oslo, Norway.

If you missed Part 1 of our Age of Conan launch event coverage there here is a snippet to get you started,

TenTonHammer.com was fortunate enough to be invited to the Age of Conan launch event being held in Oslo, Norway. This may seem like an unusual place to hold a party and it would be for any game but Age of Conan. Not only is Oslo home to Funcom, the development team behind the title, but Norwegians may be the closest race on this planet to Conan himself. The average Nord towered over my meager six-foot frame, and that was just the women, don't get me started on how tall the men were. One guy was so tall that it was snowing at his head and raining at his feet.

In Part 2, I recounted the thrill of mounted combat and the exhilaration of building guild cities.

I imagine that there will be few things more exhilarating than partaking in a city siege, mounted or otherwise, as the time and material investment that guilds will have to deliver in order to own a city are enormous. Building a city will take "a long time" according to Erling. We were shown a dramatically sped up demonstration of a city being built. I'm not sure what "a long time" is, but I expect it will take guilds vast amounts of time just to harvest the materials necessary to build a city.

But, that is all behind us now. Ahead of us is the vicious, brutal, sexual world of Robert E. Howard. Ahead of us is player versus player combat, cities being burned to the ground, the weak, the weary, the sick being trampled under the hooves of mammoths. Ahead of us is the steaming, breathing, living part of the game that calls out "This is Conan" in a voice so deep that it makes your heart skip a beat as you feel it rumble to your very core.

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How many inebriated press can you jam into a harem room?

Those of you with fast connections and a burning desire to not read what I spends countless seconds writing can watch the video version of this article in which Erling Ellingsen, Product Manager and Gaute Godager, Game Director describe raids and siege PvP. If you prefer an unobstructed view, unshackled by grammar or facts then keep reading.

Erling got the presentation underway by mentioning that raids will take two to three hours. This would buck the trend currently flowing through the industry where the tendency of late has been to shorten raid durations catering to the 'casual gamer' who doesn't have three hours to spend playing. Personally, I enjoyed the old 199 person Everquest raids that lasted for eight hours. Unfortunately, it limited the number of people who could actually progress through the raid content. Many games have even moved to 'winged dungeons' which effectively break a raid up into smaller, more digestible parts. Not so Age of Conan, then again...read on.

"Massively multiplayer online games are very, very much about your social status. You are who you are in terms of how you are connected to the people around you.....You show off your new equipment and it is like having a Porsche, because people know that behind this status symbol is a tremendous effort." -- Gaute Godager

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PvP in the real world.

Gaute hinted at an attunement system of sorts when he mentioned to the broad stream press that at level 80 players would complete "quest series" that would allow them to enter the "deepest darkest dungeons". He also mentioned that raids would mostly consist of 24 people, four groups of six. It wasn't clarified if the non-24 person raids were larger or smaller.

He also hinted that raids would be tiered into three levels. Players would essentially gear up from one raid to prepare for the next encounter. There doesn't appear to be a dearth of raid content to experience and consume. Gaute slyly mentioned that there were " several hundred hours of raid content" in the game and a little bird informed me that there were 18-20 different raiding dungeons to enjoy.

After a brief description of what a raid was, remember there were non-gamer press in attendance, Gaute and Erling took a group of Funcom employees and entered Black Ring Citadel, one of the raid instances in Age of Conan.

The first boss that we were shown was a large, unsightly, green creature that left a trail of poison smoke everywhere that it walked. I will forever refer to that mob as Rosie O'Donnell. Dragging Rosie around the encounter was a bad idea, but it didn't stop the Funcom team from doing just that to show us how the mechanic worked. During this fight Gaute explained the roles of the archetypes to the non-game press. The Soldier, as many of you know is the tank or damage absorber, the Rogue and Mage archetypes are damage dealers, while the Priest are tasked with keeping the rest of the group alive and being blamed if the raid wipes. It is worth mentioning that healing in Age of Conan is primarily regenerative rather than instant, which makes for a more fluid and busy encounter experience for those of you who play Priest classes.

The second encounter that we were shown involved "Fire and Ice" a succubus and an incubus who became more powerful if you allowed them to fight near one another. This seemed like a rather benign encounter, although it was very difficult to tell since the Funcom employees couldn't take damage. What did slip here was that raids can be 'saved'. If you decide to pack it in and come back to the raid tomorrow you can, with the mobs you have cleared still gone from the encounter allowing you to start where you left off. Raids can be saved for up to one week.

You can't have a raid without monumental rewards. Age of Conan will offer three different "raid sets" or epic gear. Never fear raiders, you have phat lewt we just didn't get to see any stats or mouseovers.

The whirlwind tour of raiding continued with the defeat of one more boss. Next on the Erling and Gaute show was a city siege which was done faster than you can say "main stream media want to see things go boom".

Remember those guild cities that you were so proud to build? The ones that took countless hours to craft into exactly what you wanted? Well, there are hundreds of players outside who want to burn them to the ground!

We were shown the basic layout of a city and informed that sieges will work on a timer. The defending guild (group of players) will set a window within which they can be attacked. This window will have a minimum size (which was not disclosed), but could be made larger. The larger the window the more benefits and more powerful the benefits that the guild would receive for holding the city.

In order to conquer the city the attackers must break through the outer and inner walls before occupying the keep. Think back to dating in high school. It's a lot like that. Mammoths and it is rumored rhinos will have attacks that can be used in siege warfare. Truly, we didn't get to see much of or experience much of the siege environment, and it wasn't the right crowd for the developers to be going into deep detail. The broad stream media were happy to see a city getting hit by a mammoth. Now give them a beer and send them on their way.

I decided to go back to my notes from Leipzig GC last year where, get this, we were the first media to ever see Age of Conan siege in action. At that event we were told that attackers would build siege weapons to use against the keep. Fortunately there will be no friendly fire. So, fire up those trebuchets and let fly.

I leave you with the immortal words of Robert E. Howard,

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Age of Conan: Unchained Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Dissecting and distilling the game industry since 1994. Lover of family time, youth hockey, eSports, and the game industry in general.

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