Right next to the EA stage, Eidos was demonstrating their lineup - including Tomb Raider Anniversary for the Wii and a bunch of other console titles. Oh, and Age of Conan. In fact, a large portion of the booth was reserved for FunCom's upcoming MMO.
Eidos booth and the most important piece of the Age of Conan exhibit...
Age Of Conan looks really good. We also got the see the game.
Somehow this corner of the Eidos booth attracted the highest number of photographers. Odd.
Eidos had some systems set up to demo the game, and I gave it a quick spin. In the first 30 seconds I understood why the game got postponed to next year. While the visuals sure looked impressive, there were numerous small bits in the UI and gameplay that were, put simply, unpolished. Nothing major, just teeny bits that spell out that the final polish hasn't really even started yet, and in a project as complicated as a MMO, that takes time. These days, after the bar was set high by World of Warcraft, releasing an unpolished product would be commercial suicide, so I appreciate that FunCom is taking their time with this. Age of Conan's gameplay appeared to be fairly conventional, but with enough originality to avoid being instantly labeled a "WoW clone". The fundamentals seem to be there, but FunCom will need all the time they have until the planned March 2008 launch to polish things up.
Age of Conan in action.
Age of Conan looked visually nice, but there are still some rough spots left.
The inventory system - looks fairly conventional.
Some spells and abilities of a level 40 Shaman.
Some PvP action.
Age of Conan off the Eidos video wall - notice the silly placement of the swing/cast bar, one of the unpolished aspects of the UI.
Next to the Eidos stand, GOA was demonstrating Warhammer Online, GunBound and Pangya Golf. I'll return to GOA's stand tomorrow for a closer look.
The Warhammer Online booth - sadly the demos had not yet started when we went past it.
Games: Half-Life 2: The Orange Box
