Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Developer - Funcom
 Hands up if you've heard of Conan, the erstwhile barbarian? Keep 'em up... still counting... yes, okay. Lots then. Pretty much the same response the audience at this year's Edinburgh Interactive Festival screenings gave Erling Ellingsen (Funcom's Product Manager), when he asked the same question and it's also the reason why they chose to go with that particular licence. The cost of a licence can really eat into a game's development budget but if it's a popular choice, then sales are more guaranteed. Ka-ching! After a brief, testosterone-filled FMV trailer (see below), we were introduced to the game itself, albeit an early beta copy with a rather lacklustre connection to the servers in Norway. On face value, much of what AoC:HB has to offer is similar fare to any other fantasy-based MMORPG: quests, exp points, guilds, fighting - the usual. However, Funcom pointed out some unique aspects to their hairy-chested offering, citing that these facets will help lift the title above the masses and draw in the punters. For example, they were particularly keen on pointing out that this is all about the world of Conan and if you've ever read any of the books, then you'll know what you're in for: no elves or gnomes, just hacking off heads, drinking beer and shouting "Crom!" at every buxom women that dares cross your path.
Age of Conan: E3 2007 Trailer
Conan himself, though, was a wily old coot and liked to play his part in ruling and politics. Amazingly, Funcom's game will reflect this too - guilds will be able to build and man castles, perhaps even whole towns; such battlements can be laid siege to by other groups and you'll be able to return fire by manning the likes of catapults. Spread over a total of 300 km2 of play area, split into different geographical regions, there should be plenty of room for a decent guild to build a nice little empire - the possibilities that this leads to, such as enemy infiltration and spying, sound very enticing. Mounts will be available to travel around the zoned world (so no seamless background loading unfortunately), and they can be ridden into battle too.
Combat, in general, is a bloody, "hands-on" affair - due to the nature of MMOs, real-time swordplay would be fraught with problems but the alternative, "click-to-attack-sit-back-and-watch", can be just as frustrating. Funcom have aimed for something in between - one can select a range of different attack directions, linking them up into combos which result in the ubiquitous cranial launch system so fond amongst the barbarian horde. Magic gets a good look in too and although the spells are nothing unique, one can chain them up in a spell pool, unleashing them later to chaotic effect. Overdo it though, and one runs the risk of soul corruption, a quick sojourn to Hell and lengthy battles with demons and their horned friends. With 14 different classes to choose from and up to 80 levels to climb, the game sounds like a beginner's or solo player's nightmare - the other trump that Funcom has up their sleeve is that the start of the game is completely single player. Ellingsen mentioned about an hour of game time, but this would obviously vary from player to player, and could well be entirely different by the time the final version is released. To keep the appearance of MMO-ness up during this stage of the game, NPCs can be engaged in fairly broad conversations and the AI system ensures that they will go off and sleep or drink when it is time to do so.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was initially aimed for the end of October but a recent announcement pushed this back to March. This was to give plenty of time for polishing, tweaking and fixing the issues raised from the feedback out of the last beta session. The title will be available for two platforms, PC and Xbox 360, with the former being funded by the usual monthly subscription; no specific details were given about the costs but one should expect it to be the same as the likes of WoW. How this will be handled on the 360 though was not covered, so it will be interesting to see if Funcom expects gamers to cough up a fee in addition to that required for Xbox Live. Ellingsen roughly described the hardware requirements as being "Oblivion-like" which suggests that once you're over a certain graphics card hurdle, it will be mostly CPU-bound. No details as to whether dual or quad core support, but Funcom will have two modes, DX9 and DX10, when the mayhem finally starts in March 2008. We'll be keeping a very close eye on this game, as it looks like it could be an awful lot of fun - the PvP elements might just make it a winner over the likes of LOTRO. Crom laughs at your other MMORPGs!
Head to the next page to see a gallery of screenshots from Age of Conan - ranging from samples of the latest version to the earliest releases.
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