Dragon*Con impressions: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Funcom was at this year's Dragon*Con in force with demos of their upcoming MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. While the game isn't slated for release until March 2008 (we hope), the game Funcom showed us looked pretty slick -- though they're still tight-lipped on the feat system (that would be "talent trees" for you World of Warcraft-ers) and the "spell weaving" system the magic users will have access to. We did, however, get a good look at the gameplay as well as a look at the game's female models. For those of you who have to see these things for yourself, Funcom is accepting applications for beta-testers, but for full details on what we saw at Funcom's demo, keep reading!

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The game begins, as MMOs are want to do, with character creation. You start out with a choice of races (Cimmerian, a Celt-like race; Stygian, a North African/Egyptian-like race; or Aquilonian, a Greek/Roman-like race) and a wide variety of appearance customization options. You can heavily modify your bodytype, chose from many hairstyles (which are changeable later in the game if you wish), fully customizable facial features, and many different options for tattoos. And though I don't have have any clear shots of them (and probably couldn't post them if I did -- the female models start out with minimal clothing), female characters are an option, and in a break from the Conan lore, can be just as powerful as their male counterparts.

Before we jump into the game, a bit about the interface. From what we've seen, there's nothing shocking in its design -- Funcom hasn't tried to reinvent the wheel. I'm afraid that none of the official screenshots have UI elements displayed, so you'll have to get a glance at the UI elements using our fuzzy, digital-camera-from-a-distance shots.

The only things out of the ordinary are the buttons in the upper left, which have no obvious function, though I speculate that some of them may access the player's inventory. And then above the hotbar there's a swing bar, which allows you to control the direction of your weapon swings in melee combat. (More on the game's combat system later!) Other than that, we have some menu buttons at the top of the screen, a tried-and-true round mini-map in the upper right, a casting bar in the dead center of the screen, a combat log on the left-hand side, a bar for your health, a bar for your target's health, and a hotbar for easy access to all of your abilities.

This is all we know about the game's UI for the moment -- and with about six months before the game's release, this may get shuffled around before we see it live.

But for now, back to gameplay! Your character begins life on a galley ship as a slave -- when you're shipwrecked, you have the opportunity to break free and begin your adventures in Hyboria.

Once we're off the ship, our task is to pick up our first quest (side-note: Funcom tells us we won't be killing any rats in this game), complete with yellow exclamation point, and head towards the nearest town, escorting a slave to the safety of the nearest town, fighting pirates along the way. (And unlike the World of Warcraft escort quests with which I'm more familiar, your escortee will stop, cower, and hide when combat begins.)

Combat in Age of Conan is a bit different than what we've seen in other MMOs. Beyond simple point and click, melee combat is a series of directional sword swings (5 directions for melee classes, 3 directions for caster classes) which you control completely. Your swings can be chained into combos which, on success, give you a blood frenzy buff to you and your party and provide a small chance of a "fatality." Fatalities are exactly what you think they are -- Mortal Kombat-style finishers that are exceptionally gory, complete with blood splatters on your screen.

Though they weren't yet ready to show off spellcasters in the game, they did tell us a bit about combat with casting classes. In the same way that melee classes will be able to link different types of swings to create combos, spellcasters will be able to link different types of spells together using the spell weaving system. These can be powerful magical effects (just like melee combos) -- but magic in Hyboria is a dangerous thing, and your spell weaving can also backfire on you.

Starting at level 5, you can chose from one of four available class archetypes: Priest, Soldier, Rogue, and Mage. And at level 20, you can select a class based on your archetypes. A Priest can become a Druid of the Storm, a Priest of Mitra, a Scion of Set, or a Bear Shaman. A Soldier can become a Guardian, a Conqueror, or a Dark Templar. A Rogue can become a Barbarian, a Ranger, or an Assassin. And a Mage can become a Demonologist, a Necromancer, a Lich, or a Herald of Xotli. While we don't have full details on what types of abilities and specific spells each class will have, Funcom does give us some general information about each of the options.

Though we're told you can solo all the way up to level 80 (and all classes have some damage capacity), there are also small group options starting around level 8 to 10 and continuing throughout the game. The standard group size in Age of Conan is 6 players, and it scales up to raids of 24 players (or four groups). Group content will scale based on the number of players approaching it and their levels -- though we don't have full details on how this will function, and we're told that you should still expect to head into group content, especially raid content, with a full group of players. The game will also feature an integrated system to help find groups for these encounters.

On the PvP side of the coin, the game features battleground-style combat (instanced, with your character teleported in from wherever you might be) -- we got to see a brief demonstration of a capture the flag style PvP combat (in the game it will be 6v6, though our demo only had two players). The play was between two casters with succubus-type pets. The casters traded ranged damage spells and used various shield abilites while the succubi dealt melee damage across rocky terrain. It struck me as a typical capture the flag style game -- the fun to such games tends to be in class balance and strategy, which we don't yet know enough about to comment. These battles will reward you with blood money and small amounts of experience.

However, while this battleground-style combat was all we saw, in the final game there will also be able to participate in large-scale siege weapon PvP in the border kingdoms and drunken brawling (which is precisely what it sounds like -- though there is the interesting aspect that what you drink changes the amount of damage you can do).

While we're still missing a lot of details on the game -- and you can make or break an MMO with the details -- the gameplay Funcom was showing has my curiosity piqued. And with the mantra "easy to learn, difficult to master" on everyone's lips, it seems like Funcom is pulling some pages from Blizzard's playbook -- and with the continued success of World of Warcraft, that can't be all bad.