By Staci Krause
Having just seen Age of Conan at GDC, it was fresh in our mind how the game
plays. At E3, they stepped it up a bit, showing off three different classes in a
group setting. We also took a look at the recently released trailer that blew us
away and upped the anticipation factor for this title ten-fold. For anyone not
in the know, Age of Conan is set in the Robert Howard universe, using the Conan
novels, comic books and extended universe as source material. It's a pretty
adult game, as such, aiming for an M rating. It's a massively multiplayer online
role-playing game with an action oriented combat system. Funcom told us they are
making it specifically for the casual gamer, who has maybe 20 hours a week at
most, but that a hardcore gamer will find much to love.
Of the three classes, certainly the most interesting was the Necromancer. A
necromancer is a pet class that can have up to 8 pets at a time. Each type of
pet has an associated pet point cost and, at any given time, 8 points can be
used. Players can use the points to create 8 smaller, weaker pets or 2 tough
ones, and so on and so on. We took a look at two different types of pets, a 1
point scorpion and a 2 point Ilderith. When I first saw the Ilderith on the
screen, I was taken aback. They are huge, towering over the players. They are a
casting pet, which makes their size all that much more interesting a choice.
All this took place in a high level bandit camp called Atzel's Approach. It
is built on the remains of ancient ruins and has a series of quests and mobs to
play through. One thing this showed off is how the game can dynamically build.
The camp area will be as big as it needs to be to accommodate the number of
players in that area at that time. So, you won't be dealing with a situation
where you want to fight in this one specific area and complete those quests, but
100s of others do as well, and you all have to wait for the right spawns.
Instead, it will get bigger as more people come into the area, and then pare
back if there's only a few folks on. It takes the idea of instancing and puts it
into a common area, a great idea.
We also got to look at some of the emotes. We were told there are over 2000
animations in the game, which is quite a lot, but Funcom, having experience with
Anarchy Online, knows how much players love to goof off. The emotes will also be
able to be scripted into groupings, so players can custom create a series of
emotes to tell a story or create their own special form of dance. The drunk
animations are very well done, as they certainly wanted to show that off to us,
and this aspect of the game promises a pretty neat addition to the social
experience.
They briefly mentioned there will be a master/apprentice system, but did not
elaborate on it. There will be a lot of crafting in the game, and people
interested in PvP will be able to craft high level items that will help them, so
they don't necessarily have to complete quests that will give them high level
loot to be competitive. Beyond that, we didn't learn much new. Funcom did say
they are on target for the October launch date, though, so we might not be
waiting long to find out exactly how much fun this game.
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