Video Games : Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Collector's Edition

• First Mature rated MMORPG: Savage, bloody, violent and sexy; delivering the true essence of Robert E. Howard’s original vision. Real Combat System: Fight mounted or on the ground. Team up in battle formations
• Diverse Gameplay: Build cities, craft unique artifacts, explore a fantastic world, befriend others and master the use of magic, steel or bows. True Conan Experience: Explore King Conan's amazing universe.
• Conan’s World: Enter a gigantic and savage world spread across the three nations of Aquilonia, Cimmeria and Stygia. Explore jungles, deserts, mountains, valleys, dungeons and cities all depicted in rich, realistic detail.
• Form guilds and lay siege to hostile castles in massive PvP battles. Team up with other players in clans or face the Hyborian dangers all by yourself. Let your imagination run wild with thousands of options.

• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames Official Strategy Guides)
• Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset
• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures 60-Day Time Card
• Ideazon Age of Conan Keyset for Zboard

• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames Official Strategy Guides)
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• Ideazon Age of Conan Keyset for Zboard
• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
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The MMORPG finally matures

A troubled King Conan on his throne. View larger.

Test your metal in close combat. View larger.

Straddle War Mammoths & Killer Rhinos. View larger.

Lead your guild in player vs. player battles. View larger.

Explore the pleasures & pitfalls of the Hyborian Age. View larger.

Set in the later years of Conan’s life, after he has famously become king by his own hand, the game centers around the fragile state of Conan’s rule in Aquilonia. Surrounded by enemies and hostile nations, Conan’s rule hangs by a thread and in the end, it’s up to players, either singly or backed by their guilds to turn the tide for or against the embattled king.

Massively Multiplayer Gaming for the Adult Player
One of the most highly anticipated MMORPGs in recent years due to the strength and familiarity of the Conan franchise across a variety of major media, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is the first of several releases planned for the franchise, all of which are aimed at an adult audience. Firmly rooted in the savage, bloody, violent and sexy Hyborian universe, players can expect a graphically beautiful game blended with gritty gameplay that is true to both the barbarian hero from Howard’s writings and the Schwarzenegger influenced version from books, movies and comics.

Available Cultures and Classes
Although Age of Conan contains a wide range of peoples, its playable cultures are currently limited to Aquilonians, Cimmerians, and Stygians. Within each of these players can choose from a selection of archetypal character classes, although available classes and subsequent subclasses are not necessarily the same within each culture. For example, archetypal classes for Aquilonians and Cimmerians are Rogue, Priest and Soldier, while Stygians are represented by Rogue, Priest and Mage. Further differences exist within subclasses for each. See the basic breakdown of all three cultures below:

Aquilonians: Internally divided, but united against their barbarian neighbors, the Aquilonians live lives on the edge. Their kingdom, with its prosperous cities, enlightened culture and religious freedom, is known as the "Flower of the West." Yet for all this and despite the power of King, Conan I, it is a land where culture clashes and unrest are always a threat.

Cimmerians: As the Hyborian Age comes to an end the northern barbarian clans of the Cimmerians know that the end of their time is drawing near too. King Conan I of Aquilonia is himself a Cimmerian, though not typical of his people. Although his life has been filled with wanderlust, his Kin care nothing for what occurs outside their clan territories.

Stygians: Masters of the magical arts and ruled by their consuming worship of the serpent-god Set, the Stygians excel at occult and diabolic lore. They learned long ago that true power lies in knowledge and in pacts with dark powers. This single-mindedness has allowed them become the only culture to harness the secrets of the Mage class and power that comes with it.

Modes Singleplayer as well as Multiplayer
Unlike most MMORPGs, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures includes a significant singleplayer experience as well as deep overarching multiplayer gameplay. This is an atypical MMORPG feature, but one that has a purpose. Players enter the game as a lowly galley slave with no memory of his/her past, and over the first five to 20 levels of singleplayer action build the skills necessary to survive in the game's multiplayer levels. During this time you will traverse a variety of rich environments including jungles, deserts, mountains, valleys, dungeons and cities packed with NPCs, beasts and monsters, before eventually leveling up and moving back to your chosen culture’s homeland. Because the only character-related choices that players have to make at the game’s opening are their looks, clothing and culture, this singleplayer mode is important in deciding what class and subclass to pursue and thus the level of impact your character will have in greater multiplayer portions of the game.

In-game levels 20 and above are strictly multiplayer. 20-40 introduce players to guilds. 40-60 deal with large scale combat. 60-80 have the player interacting with King Conan and levels 80 and up represent end-game play. Here gameplay changes as social aspects of MMORPG gameplay take over on a large scale.

Real-time Combat That Takes Queues from the FPS
Traditionally MMORPGs have utilized a mix of auto and turn-based functionality in their combat systems, but Age of Conan dispenses with that, instead drawing inspiration from FPS/action games. Firmly rooted in the brutality of the Hyborian universe, game developer Funcom has devised an action-based system that not only provides the sense of actually being in the fight, but also requires the player to participate in it. That means no simple targeted attacks. Players can attack and defend from nearly any position in real-time, whether on the ground or atop a mount, while standing still or on the move. It’s a recipe for carnage and one that fits right into the world of Conan.

The combat system in Age of Conan comes in three forms: drunken brawling, mini games like CTF and massive Player vs. Player battles, which lets you engage in siege combat to defend or attack a city. All are easy to learn, but difficult to master, providing hours worth of play and replay value and are the core of this new cutting edge MMORPG.

Additional items included in the Collector's Edition

• Hand-finished, metal-embossed oversized collector's box with inlay page and individually numbered holographic sticker
• Leather map of Hyboria (faux) 14" x 20"
• The Ring of Acheronia (exclusive in-game item)
• Unique Bonus DVD featuring trailers, behind the scenes, developer diaries, and rich artwork
• Official Age of Conan soundtrack CD
• Art Book (128 pages)
• Five free guest passes giving friends online access to the game for a limited time
• The Drinking Cape (bonus in-game item)

System Requirements:

	Minimum Specifications:	Recommended Specifications:
OS:	Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
Processor:	Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
RAM:	1GB	2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
Video Card:	NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better	NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
Video Memory:	128MB	512MB
DVD-ROM:	Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive Space:	30GB of Free Space
Other:	Broadband connection required for online gameplay

 

Customer Reviews

Average Rating:

Rating: - A great game that never was...
I really wish Funcom would have waited and added content to the game before the released it. This game has probably the best combat system ever designed for an mmorpg and that's where it stops. Quests lack depth, pvp isn't fun, end game content didn't work...I could go on and on. Give Funcom another 6 months and this could be a great game but, it is probably too late. Server populations are 1/4 of what they used to be and falling rapidly.

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Rating: - Pretty Good.
Pretty good and the fatality moves are Awesome but think I will be sticking with LOTRO.

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Rating: - Great, for the first day of play...
Yes, the opening area of Tortage is a great game - great story, great way to learn the ropes with multiple quest types which ideally suit the class you choose - full of replayability, in this first area.

After leaving Tortage, the game degenerates into a clone of every other boring MMO on the market.

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Rating: - Bugs, lack of content, and missing key features bring this game down
Great graphics and atmosphere along with some interesting game play don't make up for the bugs, lack of content, and missing features.

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Rating: - This would have been a vastly different review, a few months ago
Below is my review of the game; however, I did purchase the Collector's Edition and I have to say that the CE reminds me a lot of the game. Flashy, beautiful on the surface but ultimately lacking. You're basically spending $90 on 5 buddy passes (which requires your friends to use your discs for installation or they have to pay $3 to download the game), an ingame item that only works up until level 40 and didn't really provide a big boost, a really nice artbook, the soundtrack, the artbook and a map. Sounds like a lot, but I had buyers remorse; and it's $10 more expensive than the Warhammer Online CE which included a lot more items...if you're set on purchasing AoC, I would just go with the standard edition.

On to the review:

The funny thing about expectations is just how much it can ruin or promote a game. As an example, I was one of those annoying people who ended up not liking Fable as much as I'd hope to (and complained about it to deaf ears) because I had followed it from its first announcement to its eventual birth. In the same way, I have followed Age of Conan far longer than I should have. Four years. Longer than most engagements.

Well, after finally "marrying" Age of Conan (and buying it a "fancy" ring by not only purchasing it, but dropping $90 on its shinier Collector's Edition), I can understand why the divorce rate in America is so high. It all falls back to expectations. For me, things started out wonderfully. We had our honeymoon in Tortage and for the first weekend or so, I was in complete heaven. The first twenty levels of the game are perfectly plotted and staged, with wonderment occuring around every bend. The story that plays out is small and self-contained but feels epic and truly feels like the start of something great.

Then the honeymoon ends.

Leaving Tortage, things start to sour. The story takes a complete backseat, with story-centered quests popping up every 10-20 levels or so, and instead you're treated to relatively empty environments that are stocked with creatures, sometimes with incredibly long respawn counters. So, you think..."wow, this is a huge change from the first twenty levels" but you keep on keeping on because new shiny skills keep popping up.

Undoubtedly, you'll start to run into problems. Instances won't work as they should and some won't even let you in (half of my guild couldn't access the 40-80 level resource instances like Frost Swamp where some of the epic gear starts to drop). The ones that do let you in, you realize, oftentimes have quests that only one person per instance can complete. There you go, having to repeat a not-too-inspired zone five or six times just to complete a quest. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, if the zones were interesting. But they're not; some of them are simply windy small passages resembling mazes that open into larger, empty rooms. Very boring.

At about the level 60 mark, you start to realize that maybe you rushed into this relationship a bit quick. Maybe your friends were right and this person you find yourself waking up next to is a complete mystery. From here until the end, you start to wonder if the developers (Funcom, a group I have/had the upmost respect for--look at my reviews for Dreamfall and The Longest Journey) spent their four+ years of development on creating Tortage.

I divorced Age of Conan last night. It wasn't as messy as I was expecting. There are some good ideas here. Tortage is amazing (the first few times you go through it, at least) and a lot of kudos should be given to the team as they crafted a story that could be told from four different perspectives. The combat system is an interesting take on a stagnant genre and I've discovered that it makes other MMOs feel slow by comparison. And the graphics are unmistakeably beautiful. But like that dumb model, once you strip away the beautiful exterior and the assets, you start to realize that there's not much depth underneath.

I loved Age of Conan in the beginning. Now, I just feel annoyed. There's a lot more I could have discussed (the lack of customer support, petitioning for issues that took days to be resolved, the horrible online community, the horrible lack of community outreach, the boring zones, the broken content, the content that was originally promised then silently scrapped, etc.), but the point is that Age of Conan isn't what I was expecting. Some people might enjoy it, but there's not enough content here to keep me coming back.

In the meantime, I'm getting back in the saddle. There's another one I have my eye on. I've seen Warhammer Online slyly making eyes at me from across the room. I've been thinking that maybe I'll saunter over and say hi. But this time, I'm going to take it slowly and get to know the game beforehand. This time, hopefully, I won't be burned.

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