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

By Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor

When novelist Robert E. Howard first conceived of Conan the Barbarian in early 1932, he could not have imagined the impact the muscle-bound conqueror would have on the world. Novels, short stories, comic books, feature films, television shows, and video games have all been spawned out of the world that Howard first created, one that is eerily similar to our own and yet maintains an element of the fantastic that few authors have emulated. The world of Conan is a dark, gritty place, and fans of Howard’s works have been exploring that place for years.

The day that the developers at Funcom announced that they were creating an MMOG based on Howard’s creation was a day of rejoicing for many Conan aficionados. The fans were finally going to have an opportunity to explore the world that had been only seen in their imaginations, and it would occur in a game called Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Yet years passed by and the developers at Funcom continued to promise those same fans that their world was coming. It simply was going to take more time than expected. The steadfast remained beside the Norwegian-based developers through thick and thin, until the eventual day came when Age of Conan was released upon gamers everywhere.

The developers behind Age of Conan wanted to make a testament to Robert E. Howard's original writings.

On May 20, 2008, the world of Hyboria emerged before the eyes of thousands of eager gamers who were ready to take the plunge into that bloody landscape. But as many MMOGs are prone to bugs and other issues, so was Age of Conan. Although a number of reviewers were quick to heap praise and accolades upon the game, many gamers were experiencing a variety of bugs and unexplained bans. While some players enjoyed smooth, glitchless gameplay; others were beat down by constant graphical issues.

At Ten Ton Hammer, we have a policy to give newly released MMORPGs several weeks to reach a comfortable place in their gameplay state. Although games should be fairly polished when they are initially released, most MMOGs still encounter some growing pains once they are able to nab game data from thousands of players. On top to of that, few MMORPGs can really be experienced within the first week of gameplay, and we wanted to insure that we had at least encountered up to 40 levels of experiences before weighing in on Funcom’s MMORPG.

While this review does not attempt to place any sort of scoring on the end-game raiding, sieging, or PvP elements in Age of Conan (Editor’s Note: That’s an article for another day), we do hope that we can offer gamers who were still sitting on the fence about this MMOG some answers regarding the current state of the game and whether or not they’ll have fun roaming around the world of Hyboria. Since we’ve published multiple looks at the initial experience in Age of Conan, this review will offer a more comprehensive look at Age of Conan and what gamers can expect in their travels through Hyboria.

Battling Your Worst Nightmares

Due to their very nature, most of the gameplay in MMOGs focuses around combat. The rise of massively multiplayer games has been centered on this idea, and millions of players have logged in to MMOGs simply to continue to explore the ever-growing intricacies of their favorite game’s combat system. Starting with the graphics-based MMOGs, combat has become the ever-present factor in our MMOG play sessions.

Unlike many MMORPGs, Age of Conan uses a combat system that is giant step away from the combat many players grew used too in EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Rather than simply have players hit their auto-attack buttons and shoot off spells and abilities as their cool down timers wear off, Age of Conan has players actively engage in combat using their “directional keys” which fall unto the “1-2-3” buttons on a keyboard. Along with the direction keys, the AoC developers also created multi-movement combos for players to use as part of their combat encounters. For example, my Conqueror can use the combo “Feint Attack” that calls for the player to make an upward attack and a right directional key attack. Once those two keys have been pressed, my Conqueror would break through the defenses of his combatant, leaving my enemy wide open for my slashing attacks.

Combat in Age of Conan is definitely one of the key elements of the game.

While combo systems aren’t entirely new, the idea of using the directional attacks in conjunction with shield indicators that appear on every enemy in the game is a novel concept. Though the shield indicators may appear clunky to some, they certainly force the player to be more involved with the combat process. Rather than simply sitting back and spamming one hot key over and over again, players are now forced to examine their enemies to see which combo would truly be the most efficient at dealing damage to the enemy.

For me, the combat system is probably the best part of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Although some players have argued that the melee combat in the game can become monotonous, I have yet to experience any sort of discomfort from swinging my sword in a variety of directions. The variety of player character combos does diminish quite dramatically after level 20, but even with that in mind the combat still retains a fascinating sort of interactivity that really isn’t a part of any other MMORPG. When you combine the hands-on nature of the combat with fatalities that are as gratuitously violent as anything from Mortal Kombat, you create a system that is absolutely action-packed and dramatic to boot.    

The counter-point to this argument is the fact that most spellcasters still retain many of the trappings that are part and parcel to the old style of MMOG combat. Many of the “pure” spellcasters, like the Priest of Mitra, Demonologist, and Tempest of Set, still wage war using the standard hot key method. Though the developers at Funcom have stated that this occurred on purpose, I was still slightly disappointed that the pure casters didn’t have the amazing assortment of fascinating combos that were available to the horde of melee classes in the game. That said, I’m sure that plenty of gamers appreciated the fact that some of the old MMORPG flavor still existed – at least in some part – in Age of Conan.