The Anvil of Crom: Getting into Godslayer

You might have heard about a little expansion that recently came out, Rise of the Godslayer or some such. Yes it's been getting a lot of press around these parts, particularly up to last Tuesday's launch. As some of you snarkier keyboard cowboys have noted, said coverage has since died down. Contrary to popular conspiracy theories though, that's not because of a buggy expansion launch but rather because we've been spending so much time playing it.

I mean really, who has time to write about games when you could be playing the heck out of them? Eventually responsibility did rear its ugly head and here you have this week's column, i.e. what passes for my initial impressions of the live expansion client. Since we covered Alternate Advancement in detail in our beta preview, this week's piece is a little lighter on the game play details and a little heavier on the general atmosphere.

So, join us past the cut as we take a break from our dueling rangers and head for Hyboria's exotic far east.

Ah, Khitai. Lush, rolling grasslands, undulating fields of golden brown and jade green, and a plethora of new mobs just waiting to be wantonly slaughtered by hordes of leveling adventurers. I've recently made my way through the Gateway to Khitai play field, the first stopping-off point for the new expansion, and while it's not perfect, I'm happy to report that it is more than adequate to the task of transitioning new characters from the training wheels of Tortage out into the game world proper.

By way of comparison, I recently took a look at another post-Tortage option, Conall's Valley, and way back at launch I worked my way through the Wild Lands of Zelata post-newb zone. The Gateway to Khitai is clearly meant to fill the same game play function but, unlike the previous two zones, it is a wide open expanse with several diverse sectors. Conall's Valley, stunning though it is, feels a bit claustrophobic after spending a few hours wandering the deserts of Khitai, and the Wild Lands are fairly rote as far as visual variety goes.

In terms of questing and PvE content, the Gateway to Khitai trumps Age of Conan's other intermediate zones (excepting Knopshef Province, which I have yet to visit) in terms of quantity. Were it not for the Ymirish group quests that remain in my journal due to them being impossible to solo, I would have exhausted all of the Conall's quests by the time I hit level 30. By level 35, I was venturing into the higher level Fields of the Dead and, appropriately, dying quite a lot.

The Gateway to Khitai suffers from no such lack of quests, and, whether it's because there are actually a greater number of them, or because I gained a fair amount of XP simply by fighting off mobs as I was wandering around gawking at the scenery is hard to say. A second play through would confirm one or the other, but as it stands, I'd have to say that Khitai is a superior zone in terms of content. In fact, I had such a good time exploring the intro zone that I'm hard-pressed to say anything negative about it. I suppose the only thing that grates is the fact that there is no 40-60 play field, so it's back to Cimmeria until my avatar is able to return and experience the rest of the Khitan content (which is designed for level 80s).

This disjointedness is a somewhat vexing byproduct of Funcom's decision to stagger the level ranges across the new expansion so dramatically. On the one hand, it's nice that they opted to throw a bone to the level 20-40 crowd at all, as an expansion normally dictates high level content almost exclusively. On the other hand, it seems like there's a lot of Khitai left to explore, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them add in additional low and mid-level dungeons, and possibly even whole zones (like they did with Ymir's Pass) over the long haul.

Also worth mentioning are the random travel encounters. I'm sure many players opt to pay the higher costs and skip right to the new zones, but for my money, they're fun, well-made diversions and I hope to see more of these added in the future. The kracken and the zombie infested oasis were particularly enjoyable, even to an old anti-instancing curmudgeon like me.

In the interests of injecting a bit of objectivity (or is it negativity) into this piece, I have to pick on Funcom for the quest journal. More specifically, I can't believe it's still capped at 30 quests, as I already had to delete and reacquire quite a number of quests in the pre-expansion game. Neglecting to address this in an expansion that adds literally hundreds of new quests is just flatly unacceptable.

Finally, I've done a bit of Khitai-flavored roleplaying in addition to the standard kill, quest, and PvP fare, and the expansion does a marvelous job of setting the stage for storytelling. Besides the obvious visual and audio excellence, the choice of Khitai itself is something of a boon to Howard fans and lore-conscious roleplayers, as just enough hints were dropped about the far eastern kingdoms in the original stories to provide some background, but nowhere do the various Conan authors describe Khitai, its customs, or its people in exacting detail. This leaves quite a bit of room for the player's imagination, and the roleplay is all the better for it. If you're looking for a good reference site, check out the three-part series on Khitai Geography and Ecology, Religion and Culture, and Peoples and Trade over at TheCimmerian.com.

That's all we've got time for this week (must get back to Khitai after all). Next week we'll check in with my rangers and take a look at Age of Conan's crafting and harvesting options. Or maybe we'll hum a few bars about the PvP mini-games. Come to think of it, we could even talk about raiding and/or guild cities and sieges. You just never know around these parts.

Until then, I give you the greatest concept art ever.

Jef Reahard is an Age of Conan beta and launch day veteran, as well as the creator of Massively's weekly Anvil of Crom. Feel free to suggest a column topic, propose a guide, or perform a verbal fatality via jef@massively.com.