Age Of Conan seems to have pulled off a miraculous last-minute recovery. The long, uneven development process culminated in a troubling beta test for the MMO; one that seemed to threaten a bugged, poorly optimized game. Now live, however, the game is suddenly leaner, stronger and more stable.

Although clearly not leading the MMOG pack at the moment, Age Of Conan nevertheless delivers some fresh ideas and does so with a world that is imbued with lashings of muscular myth-making from Robert E Howard’s epic Conan novels. It can be a genuinely beautiful world for those gamers playing on a high-spec PC, and the gritty, bloody, realistic theme is an unusual – and oddly encouraging – direction for an MMOG to take.

The much-discussed action slant to the combat provides us with rather more dynamic systems than those usually associated with the damage-over-time MMO model. Completing the right set of key presses after activating a power will determine if the killing blow is dealt, and getting chains of these combos right is vital to defeating powerful enemies.



Likewise, the spread of powers – from being able to transform into a nightmarish demon, through climbing and sneaking to less esoteric magic use – tries hard not to conform entirely to our expectations. This is a double-edged sword, of course, and Conan often ends up feeling undefined and unclear. WarCraft’s clear-cut classes might lack originality, but they make up for it in absolute clarity. Conan’s parade of identical, identity-free treasures do nothing to encourage the kind of character crafting and loot hoarding that makes these kinds of games so compulsive.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Age Of Conan is, perversely, what it takes from singleplayer games. Interactions with NPCs are delivered through dialogue trees, with animated, voice-acted sequences. These make no practical difference to the quest-gathering grind of the overall experience, but do add some color to the world.

Dialogue Trees

What’s rather more impressive is the use of instancing to create an ongoing personal adventure during the first 20 levels of the game. This over-arching plot gives players something to aim for, as well as enabling Funcom to make use of more potent, personalized storytelling elements than we’re otherwise familiar with in MMOs.

If there’s a major problem with Age Of Conan it’s that we’re too comfortable with its routines. It’s not a radical enough development of the fantasy RPG for anyone to feel inspired or challenged. Later developments in player-versus-player warfare might offer interesting experiences – but there are vast tracts of all-too-familiar kill and fetch activities to complete before that even becomes a possibility.

Age Of Conan has, happily, started out on its journey in a far better state than many other MMOs that have appeared in the past three years, but it nevertheless lacks the genuine desire for change that the genre so desperately needs. In many ways Funcom has played it safe and simply aped what has worked before. That seems to be OK by the 400,000 people who signed up in the opening week, but it still feels like a wasted opportunity to strike out in a fresh direction. Blizzard’s success still looms over everything that’s going on here, and that just can’t be healthy.

 

Verdict: 7/10