Hands on with Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

I got to spend some time playing  Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures which was awesome to say the least. MMOs have been very popular of late, and Eidos has been working on this game which takes a new approach to the genre.

Most MMOs will have you interacting and playing with other players throughout the entire experience. Your actions rarely have any real influence on the entire world. Age of Conan will have ways for your character to follow a set storyline that will influence how the the world evolves. They are still working on this, so we don’t have a lot of details on this just yet.

Something that should be noted about this game is that it is bloody and violent. From the start Eidos has said that they’re looking for an ‘M’ rating, for things such as blood, gore, nudity and sexual content. Why would a company limit their player base by trying to achieve this rating? While talking with one of the developers he said that they wanted to remain true to the world of Conan, which is comprised of those elements. Kudos to them for trying to stay as true to the original material as possible.

Gameplay was fun, you have a lot of elements that you’re used to like character classes, however, you start the game as one of the common classes like a Cimmerian, Aquilonian or a Stygian. Once you reach level 5 you can choose an archetype such as a soldier, mage, rogue or priest.

Traditional combat has also been changed up. Rather than clicking on a specific target, then attacking, you won’t target at all. In true barbaric style your attacks will hit any enemy that is within your reach.  You can string together attacks to make some awesome combos, though using these will trigger a cool down timer.