Waking Dead

I finally finished off the second part of my Destiny quest yesterday, and with it hit the level cap for the Open Beta. It had been a rocky road littered with intermittent crashes, graphical errors, one massive crippling disk access bug, and the bane of all MMORPGs – lag. But despite these problems, Age of Conan for the most part delivered on its promises. I felt part of the world, immersed in the brutal and often-times devastatingly beautiful land of Hyborea.

The Open Beta takes characters up to level 13, enough to see the opening single player section of the game and the first half of your Destiny quest in Tortage. Opening with your character washed up on the shore, you get the first 5 or so levels to yourself, getting to grips with your character class and the unique combat system.

The first thing you’ll need to be aware of is that all attacks are triggered; there’s no targeting an enemy and auto-attacking until they’re dead here. Each time you click a directional attack or cast a spell, you’ll do one hit. After a few levels you’ll get to play with combos which are special attacks that allow you to string together several swings with a proc at the end of it. As I was playing a Barbarian, most of my combos revolved around either stunning the opponent or opening up wounds (a DoT that makes your opponent bleed over time).

After escaping the jungle I finally got to enter the first multiplayer section of the game, the port of Tortage. The first thing that hits you is how detailed this world is – easily surpassing World of WarCraft, and this isn’t even a capital city. I filled my quest log and started exploring, taking in the dense jungle that surrounds the port, and the island of White Sands that lies just over the water.

Quests in Age of Conan are interesting, if not in structure then at least in flavour; I don’t think WoW would ever let you con a whore into deviant sexual activity so you can fill a vial with her blood. The dialogues are all fully voiced as well, and play out in mini cut-scenes that serve to focus the action around you, rather than the other players wandering about.

I’ll talk briefly about the Destiny quest line as well. This is the main single-player quest that opens up at level 5 and concludes at level 20. By speaking to your class trainer in Tortage, you can choose to uproot the corruption in the city by venturing out on your own at night. This spawns an instanced version of Tortage at night, and features much tighter quests with cut-scenes and scripted events – impossible in a multiplayer zone. The quest has a real epic feel to it, and because you’re on your own, you feel like you’re the first one to succeed rather than the endless queue of winners you get in other MMORPGs.

I think overall, Age of Conan is shaping up to be a fine way to spend the next 3-6 months. Despite the technical problems it has done enough for me to keep my pre-order open, and that’s without spellweaving, capital cities, raids, crafting, sieges, battle keeps… if it’s all as well thought-out as these first few levels, I’ll be a happy man.

Next for me is to try out the other class archetypes before launch so I can settle on my main for the full game. Barbarian has been fun, if a little one-dimensional, but I’m itching to try out a magic-user. Necromancer next I think, and then maybe Guardian. I’ll write up some additional thoughts on these classes, plus a comparison with the Rogue archetype, some time next week.