GC 2008: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Updates Impressions

By Justin Calvert, GameSpotPosted Aug 22, 2008 9:51 am PT

We pay a visit to Funcom's lively Games Convention booth and head behind closed doors for a look at some upcoming content and DirectX 10 features for Age of Conan.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has been live for just more than four months right now, and though it's undoubtedly a great game, its players have been very vocal as far as complaints and suggestions are concerned. Funcom has always thought of itself as a company driven by its community, and if you're a fan, it'll probably come as no surprise to you that the Age of Conan team is currently working on implementing a number of fixes and new gameplay features. There's also an expansion pack in the works, by the way, but all we know about it is that it's scheduled for release sometime in 2009. Judging by a piece of teaser art that we were shown today, the expansion pack will feature masked Asian warriors who look a lot like the immortals that the Spartans go up against in the movie 300.

One of the more damning criticisms being leveled at Age of Conan since its release is the fact that, at certain character levels, there's simply a dearth of content to play through. There are a number of new content areas in development that will be appearing in the live game soon, and today we had an opportunity to check out a few of them.

First up was Tarantia Commons, a slum district that's part of the existing Tarantia City but which players are currently kept out of by a locked gate. Given that it's home to two warring gangs, Tarantia Commons is a dangerous area to frequent at night. As a hero in the Age of Conan world, you'll be able to undertake missions for either or both of the gangs in question, and though there will undoubtedly be plenty of violence involved, we're told that Funcom is aiming to incorporate more puzzle elements in the game via future updates. Tarantia Commons is a locale designed for players of level 40 and above, which, if you've ever played a character at that level, you'll know is definitely an area in need of new content.

Another all-new area that we had an opportunity to take a look at was a mountainous zone known as The Dolmen that's designed for level 50 to 55 characters. Bandit forces are a constant threat in the area, and one of the sample quests that we were shown will task you with lighting signal fires dotted around the region in an attempt to call reinforcements to the aid of a settlement under attack. We were told that this zone will add "dozens of hours of content" on its own, and it also appears to be a great example of how Funcom is starting to incorporate Conan influences from a variety of different sources. For example, we saw the "wheel of pain" structure that appeared in the 1982 Conan movie, and later we encountered a beautiful frost giant's daughter lifted from a story by Robert E Howard. The beautiful, scantily clad girl was clearly beckoning the player to follow her up into to the mountains, and we're told that, sometimes, she'll reward those who oblige her with some kind of reward. It was a trap on this occasion, though, and within moments of reaching a spot where we could be alone with her, two angry giants (her brothers) showed up.

Still exploring the same mountains, we were surprised when the entire zone started to shake as if there was an earthquake. As it turned out, there was, but it wasn't being caused by shifting tectonic plates or anything like that. Rather, a giant named Frost Father was to blame. Currently bound in chains deep inside an evil-looking, amphitheater-themed prison, this giant is the son of a god and, as we later discovered, he's much larger than the giants that we encountered earlier.

In addition to new quest zones, Funcom is working on the construction of new dungeons as well as the revamping of existing ones. One of the new dungeons that we were afforded a brief look at is the aforementioned Frost Father's place of imprisonment, a gigantic structure populated by all manner of demons and the like that will be suitable for characters at level 65 and above. Your goal in this dungeon, other than killing bosses to collect new-and-improved loot, will be to free the Frost Father, though we should warn you that it's not yet clear if he'll be appreciative or resentful of your efforts on his behalf.

prev

82 Comments

  • IncipitOmega

    Posted Apr 21, 2009 1:04 am PT

    And in response on Shiftfallout's comment I just read...If u played that long to have a maxed out character,a guild with 200 members and a guild city,how can u say the game sucs ? Pffff,as I see it,u don't understand ****.

  • IncipitOmega

    Posted Apr 21, 2009 12:56 am PT

    Allready a great game..with all these improvements it's only getting better...

  • angusmandude

    Posted Nov 10, 2008 5:06 pm PT

    This game rocks but people go "errrrrrr....it not complete like fallout 3 or wow...errrrrrr" DER it isent i played wow in its 1st month and IT WREAKED LIKE CRAP AoC IT WAY BETTER THEN WHEN WOW was in its first 6 months WHEN WILL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND GAMES DO NOT COME COMPLETE (MAINLY MMO)

  • ACougar

    Posted Sep 29, 2008 12:15 pm PT

    This game had such great potential, FunCom did a lot of things right that most games out there have done wrong... but that's not enough when your world is simply too small and it doesn't live and breathe as it should, especially in the lvl 50+ zones. They should have held the game back another 2-3 months and just now released it. They weren't ready for prime time when the game was released and now their losing too much of their customer base. Unless FunCom can work a miracle and fast, this game is dead.

  • philby00

    Posted Sep 24, 2008 2:57 am PT

    maybe they couldn't talk about memory leaks and crashes and stuff because of a non disclosure agreement when they did the review?

  • Koal_Jadian

    Posted Sep 3, 2008 7:39 am PT

    people should stop paying monthly subscription fees for MMOs where you get less content and gameplay value than in regular games. You shouldn't have to pay for an online community when its free elsewhere.

  • redscorpion78

    Posted Sep 3, 2008 6:00 am PT

    Some of you dont know what you talking about.. This game was ok in the beginning, when i reached level 50 and got my horse, the game turned out to be horrible, the world is just not as living as wow and it lacks the feeling and depths, unbalanced not exciting character leveling. its a dissapointment people will all leave soon. WAR will be the game everyone have waited for it will a more living and interesting world period.

  • Pedalhead

    Posted Sep 3, 2008 2:22 am PT

    Unfortunately this will be too late for many people (myself included), who have already cancelled. The nail in the coffin for me was that Funcom knew about the gem duping exploit & did nothing about it, meaning some guilds have a massive advantage with a T3 keep etc early on.

  • Nokols

    Posted Sep 2, 2008 6:50 pm PT

    Seriously, i'm gonna wait till DX10 comes out to re-subscribe, I really didn't feel like a valued player, bugs, memory leaks (most under 32-bit, but my new comp is now 64-bit...) unbalanced classes, immature community, chat interface is just plain weird, graphical errors, optimization, and I have fallen through the world...

  • gfile

    Posted Sep 1, 2008 1:20 am PT

    Well, thats a lot of great news from Funcom ...as a fan of R. Howard, i simply can`t wait for new addons and DX10 feature ...finally!!! I recently bought a 4870 to fully enjoy this masterpiece and i dont have any major complains except a few bugged quests and lack of "non elite" quests on the lvl 76-80 range.

  • Shiftfallout

    Posted Aug 30, 2008 12:41 pm PT

    Skopas, i dont know what you are talking about. As a guild leader with over 200 members, a guild city and max level, AoC turned out sucking, bad. The whole guild wanted to quit. The problem is, funcom makes it look better than it really is, and they will not be reliable, their GMs have been caught helping players cheat, mass bannings for no reason, no QA team, dead servers, every fix brings 100 new broken bugs, and lies upon lies by funcom. Im not overexagerating, which is the sad thing.

  • skopas

    Posted Aug 29, 2008 4:15 pm PT

    Well, I'm getting mine any day now and I'm playing it. I bet I will think that it rocks!!... I cant believe how much complaints go to this. Usually it's from freaks who deserve to stay with WOW. Filtered minds=Filtered play. Wait for Wrath of Geeky Litchi...and take cartoon network with u.

  • kindreadth1

    Posted Aug 29, 2008 1:15 pm PT

    Great game, however:

    Lag with more than 20 people on the screen.
    Lucky to get 20 people on the screen.
    If you aren't 80, then you're dead to single hits from level 80s.
    If you don't dupe your gem suits at 80 then you're gimped. At 80, it's all about who can one shot who first (except casters since stacking dmg gems on these guys doesn't do squat).
    Bugs bugs bugs
    Memory leaks
    Entire feat trees and balancing need to be revisited yet they feel the need to continually push out patches that deal with cut scenes from Quest givers. Fyi, there's an option to bypass these but it doesn't work.
    They just continually break more stuff with each patch and don't fix anything that is considered by most "game breaking"....

  • swordaxe

    Posted Aug 28, 2008 8:26 am PT

    Maybe another year, two tops, this game will follow Hellgate London. The only difference being it would have surpssed Hellgate on hype by about 100%.

  • xDj1nn

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 7:28 pm PT

    Have you ever played WoW in a private server?

    I'm feeling the same way playing on Official Funcom's servers... It's desert, I'm stuck on lvl 31 cuz there are so few ppl on my lvl, that I can't complete de Group Quests. We don't have a full access on what the AoC should have(promises and promises...), They have too many servers for just a few ppl.
    The last step to be completely a Private AoC Funcom's Server is to ask for donations to keep up and giving godly items as trade for the donation.
    They need to fund all server's as possible into just a few...

    My suggestion is to make the players free from paying the monthly price until they fix all the issues... I've just received mine and I'm in the 30 free days, probably I'll not renew my subscription after these 30 days...

  • buckizard

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 10:48 am PT

    What a disappointment this game was. After playing several MMOs (WoW for way too long, LoTRo)I was excited at all of the new things this game had to offer. Bugs, limited content, instancing everywhere, horrible crafting, etc, I just couldn't take anymore. And yet they are already working on an expansion as well as the 360 version?!! Joke.

  • TheGreenMonkey

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 9:52 am PT

    I have a lot of fun playing AoC, and while I experience some issues, I don't feel they are near to what some of the other players have. I've also experienced many of the same issues in other games as well, from LotRO to WoW to Vanguard(I was really hopeful for that one, but meh, talk about a broken game) to many others.

    I really enjoy the combat system AoC has, although I do find myself using the same combos repeatedly, but that is not any different than other games. And the graphics are just amazing, and as soon as DX10 support is added I will be among the first to switch over.

    The quest content for the most part is decent, not exceptional but decent, although more often than not I find myself clicking through dialog unless I find a story that really catches my eye. I did run through Onyx Chambers for the first time the other day and that was very exciting, and I even won the roll for a very nice helmet. They could use more content across all level ranges though.

    The crafting system could stand to use a huge revamp and I feel like it is a huge grind sometimes. The biggest problem I have is that some resources are extremely hard to gather, especially for the Alchemy profession, and buying them can be a pain because the prices for some items are just outrageous.

    Other than an occasional disconnect, although I do not know if that is AoC or my ISP, I don't find many problems overall with the game. I think if they fix the existing issues they are having with memory leaks and crashes, the new content will be a huge addition to what I think is already a great game.

  • vheffner

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 7:40 am PT

    You all seem to forget how messed up WoW was for at least the First 6 months this game is barely 4 months in and runs better then wow did from the start, I have also had way more fun in AoC then the 2 years I waisted on WoW, this is a great game, great battle system, great graphics, if it doesnt run smooth for you its YOUR machine not the game. runs great for me and most the people playing, im really glad to see the upcoming content and look forward to it.

    I also find it funny that people complain about the PvE content (seeing as there are not that many guilds much further past Yarehmka(second boss of tier 2 raiding)), sure PvE is fun but this game is hevily based on PvP, so sorry you chose the wrong game now take your butt back to WoW, AoC is to hard and gritty for your young baby eyes.

  • jubal3

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 7:26 am PT

    Your continued shilling for FunCom is really getting tiresome. They released a game with terrible bugs, no itemization and a severe lack of content, but you didn't catch that because you only played the 1st 20 levels when you initially reviewed the game.
    Funcom's failure to respond to these issues in a timely way, their utter neglect for the PVE side and their continued empty promises make this game a loser. And yet you fail to adequately cover those problems, instead choosing act as a mere surrogate for the FC PR staff. Why don't you stop wasting our time and just re-print the FC press-releases. At least that would be honest.

  • HeavyMetalBard

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 5:31 am PT

    -Too many skirts
    -Lack of itemization
    -Stat mechanics
    -Too much instancing (raid/group zones?..lame)

    All factors which made me cancel.
    Im going to Vanguard

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Quick Links

Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Forum | Check Prices

Check Prices: $9.99 – 84.99

GameStop $9.99 SHOP ›
Newegg.com $84.99 SHOP ›
Amazon.com $32.67 SHOP ›
advertisement
advertisement
Click Here

Related Unions

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Boxshot Enlarge the boxshot
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Game Stats

  • Rank:
    815 of 76,325
    (down by 136)
    PC Rank:
    284 of 12,530
    Highest Rank:
    1 in 2008
    Tracking:
    8,310 Track It»
    Wishlists:
    5,359 Wish It»
  • Player Reviews:
    397
    Player Ratings:
    4703
    Users Now Playing:
    986
  • Number of Players:

    Massively Multiplayer, Massively Multiplayer Online Modes: Competitive, Team Oriented

  • Top 5 User Tags:
    1. age of conan
    2. conan
    3. funcom
    4. hyborian adventures
    5. mmorpg
  • Mature Rating Description

    Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language. Learn more

Full Game Details »Close
Also on

Games you may like…

Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.

See More Similar Games
advertisement