Pro: Interesting tweaks to combat; Awesome mounts; Player-built cities
Con: It's not World of WarCraft; There's no telling what the level grind feels like; Endgame doesn't look accessible to casual players
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As expected, organization and cooperation between players appears to be vital to endgame success. The rewards seem worth it. Godager and his team demonstrated how a guild of around 30 members can pool their resources and build a city. More conservative players can erect a crafting town in an instance, safe from the steel of marauders. Those who thrive on player-vs.-player combat have only a handful of places where they can break ground. These areas will likely be heavily contested, and the buffs and other rewards will be great. These towns are also pretty damn cool. When built, the fortress rises from the dirt, much like a building in a real-time strategy game. Spreading out from the main hall are a series of battlements, each with positions from which players can defend -- and defend they will. With a limited number of places to erect these bases, the competition for these spots will likely be fierce. Luckily, digging in your heels has its perks: Arrows fly farther from elevated positions, making high walls an ideal place to pick off attackers.
It's nearly impossible to measure a massively-multiplayer online game from only a couple of hours of preview. But our initial impression is that the game appears to be graphically stunning and thematically bad-ass. Still, there's no telling whether Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures will be as fun as a barrel of Ape Lords or a veritable Wheel of Pain. Either way Gaute Godager swears (by Crom!) that we'll be playing the PC game on May 20 -- with an Xbox 360 version destined to hit somewhere in the future.
This preview was based on a publisher-driven demo of the game. The game is scheduled for release on May 20.
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