Preview: Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 18 March 2010 / 7,300 Views
In May 2008, Funcom released their hugely anticipated MMO, Age of Conan. The game was perceived fairly well and even had healthy sales. At one point, we heard of a million units sold and over 700,000 subscribers. Pretty soon the honeymoon phase wore off and Funcom was hit with massive amounts of account cancelations. This could have been the result of that other MMO releasing an expansion or maybe Age of Conan stopped being fun after level 20. At any rate, Funcom is back on their feet and dressed to impress with an expansion entitled Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer. While at the Game Developers Conference last week, we met up with Funcom and learned a bit more of what's to come in Rise of the Godslayer.
The overlying plot of the game involves an empire in peril. The once proud land is in chaos due to the actions of a young Conan who was faced with a tough choice. He had heard of a powerful gem, The Elephant Heart, which lay atop a tall white tower. Determined to possess this gem, he scales the tower only to find there is no gem. Instead, he finds a sorcerer has captured a pacifist in exile named Yag-Kosha. He is now old and decrepit, but at one time had a severe desire for power and enslaved his mentor. Yag-Kosha pleads with Conan to end his life. It was the tough choice Conan made to end the suffering of Yag-Kosha that will forever haunt him.
Today, 25 years later, Conan is the king and realizes that Yag-Kosha was a living god to the people of the village of Khitai. Now Conan has to deal with the people, whose god he has murdered. This is the story of the rise of a godslayer. If you want to read more on Conan lore, there are decades worth of stories and comics you can read and some are even available online.
In this new expansion, you will experience a new faction system, new mounts, new dungeons, and a new playable race, the Khitans. The first game focused too much on combat, whereas in Rise of the Godslayer the developers have put much more time into content and community. This will allow for longer and more enjoyable play experiences for new and seasoned players alike.
You start in the lands of Khitai, which are a reimagining of the ancient world with strong Asian influences. The game will commence in Pai Kang, where the emperor resides. The world is vast and less linear than the original Age of Conan. There are still zones, but when you enter a new zone, you can turn around and see where you just came from, which gives you a true sense of connectedness and fluidity between zones.
This time around, there is a lot more character customization. Your character can be as ugly or as beautiful as you want him or her to be at all times. This preferred look will stick to your character throughout the game as well. For example, as you upgrade armor sets, your outward appearance does not change. As many know, in other MMOs, equipping a certain armor set will change your appearance and make those with the same equipment look similar. The developers wanted to stray away from this and give the players a chance to keep the initial individuality that you sometimes lose in other games of this genre.
Ten factions exist in the game, which you have the choice of allying with or becoming enemies with. Every faction has unique armor sets. You can change factions throughout the game, but realize that certain vendors or areas will not be available to you if you choose to do this.
Mounts are another welcome addition to the expansion. I really love what Funcom is doing with mounts. Instead of just buying a mount from a vendor, the player needs to earn it. For example, to catch a mount the player needs to go out into the field and choose a desired animal (either a young tiger or wolf). You can then raise the cub, train it, and have it fight alongside you in battle. Eventually, the player will have to decide whether the tiger or wolf becomes a combat pet or mount. This is an important decision because the player can only have one tiger and one wolf and both have different techniques and abilities as fighters.
One problem I've had with MMOs in the past is if I don't play 24 hours a day, I cannot compete with someone who has played all day. This is true to some extent in Age of Conan, but a user can only have six abilities active for combat at a time (sometimes less if you choose an ability that takes up two slots). If I choose wisely, I may have a fighting chance without putting in 500+ hours. However, those who do decide to immerse themselves in the game for those lengths of time will have more options available to them. Also, there is not any respecing. If you want to change from a PvP (Player vs Player) build to a PvE (Player vs. Environment) build, you can just swap out your abilities.
I was able to take a peek into one of the new 6-man dungeons in the game called The Celestial Acropolis. The developers of the game stressed that these dungeons need to be fun. You will probably run them more than once, so they have implemented features that will attempt to change things up if you decide to return. For example, mini-bosses may appear at a different junction than the last time you ran through the dungeon.
In one part of the dungeon, your avatar will come to a chasm that is impassable. If you remember that 'emotions are the key to success', which you were told earlier, you will be able to figure out that using emoticons are the answer to building a bridge which can get your to the other side of the chasm. In fact, emoticons will be used throughout the whole dungeon, including boss fights. Funcom decided to create the bosses first and then build dungeons around them. This way they were able to scatter clues about how to properly take on the bosses from the beginning. The dungeons do have hard modes, but you won't just select them from a menu. You may have to use emoticons to 'anger' the boss, which will make him tougher to defeat.
The largest dungeon is 6-man dungeon and the largest raid is 24-man raid. There will be four new playfields each having three new dungeons. These are short and should take you around an hour or slightly more. If longer dungeon crawls are your forte, you'll be interested in the Pillars of Heaven. This is a much more traditional arena with six main bosses that will take you much longer to complete.
The first boss is called the Brass Mask. This battle takes place outside with archers set high up to the side of you. At certain times during the fight, the archers will cause a hail of arrows to rain down on the players. It's up to you to find cover and protect yourself.
Another very rewarding feature of Age of Conan is the loot. If I want a certain piece of armor, I may not want to go through the dungeon twenty times before the last boss drops it. Bosses drop emblems and special items. So if my dream piece of armor does not drop, at least I have emblems I can trade in for something comparable. The last feature of the game that stood out to me was how you can upgrade your feats. These will upgrade in real time, so you can set them before work or school and have them completed when you get home. At least my character is gaining something while I am out of the house.
Now let’s address the elephant in the room. Will this be a Warcraft killer? No, but it doesn't need to be. I was chatting with the team about this briefly and we all agree. Warcraft is a culture now. It has entered the mainstream. An MMO can have half the subscribers that World of Warcraft has and still be wildly successful. Funcom is not aiming to be better than Warcraft, nor should they. Blizzard has worked on the Warcraft MMO for 10+ years and that really does not compare to the development time for Age of Conan. Funcom realizes that the MMO genre is a marathon and not a race.
Age of Conan had a great start with Hyborian Adventures and that success should continue through Rise of the Godslayer and beyond. My only fear is that people will not give the game a chance because they didn't play the original or didn't enjoy it as much as they would have liked. I think this new expansion deserves at least a chance with everyone and I hope the game can follow through and meet my expectations.
The Rise of the Godslayer does not have a release date yet, but will hopefully be available on the PC sometime this year. Additionally, the game's developers have been working closely with developers in Korea and will be localized there sometime in the future, as well.
See you in Khitai!
