Age of Conan
What can I say, who will ever dethrone World of Warcraft ? I suppose it will be Blizzards upcoming MMO itself, the king is dead, long live the king.
Age of Conan was an ambitious attempts, focussing on lore, theme and atmosphere instead of casual playability (such as WOW and all the "free" online MMOs such as Dofus, Rappelz etc.) The lore was very well implemented, yet one must wonder who knows Robert E.Howard's fictional canon anyway ? Compared to the LOTR, Star Trek Online (tba), Star Wars Galaxies or even WOW (as to the previous games set in the universe) the Conan universe may not be of that interest, although we all love and adore Arnold swining his sword in the three movies where he portrayed the barbarian
Still, I very much enjoyed the setting, good graphics and a great sound (music as well as effects) made the world a joy to explore, unlike other MMOs. Yet, the gameplay was nothing out of the ordinary. Go there, kill that, collect that, medieval errand boys all over. PK was possible but implemented in a coherent systems, rewarding or punishing you in any way. The "fighting system" did not rely on skil, although this had been advertised as such.
The "adult" theme is basically just a joke. How can you call yourself a game for grownups and basically credit this fact to big boobs bouncing around all over the world ? So that is what grown ups do, look at jugs....and.....adolescents and young boys don't ? Yeah, right. So, you find as much CS:Kids and sociopathic nitwits here as everywhere on the internet, which promotes, lets face it, the domination of people who cannot cope in real life.
Good Effort and Id rather have a company trying to break the mould and do something new instead of copying WOW (such as WAR) and trying to cash in someone else's ideas.
Anyway, stay away from it, the ship has sunk
