Recently with the FilePlanet beta giveaway keys for Age of Conan, the upcoming mature mmorpg from Funcom, we had the chance to take a look at the first 13 levels of content and gameplay of this game. 

First impression while entering the game gives us the extremely beautiful graphics that this game has to offer, and the next the choppiness load for 5-10 secs and then steady frame rate. We tested the game with e6750 Intel dual core processor, 8800 GTS 320 mega GFX Card, and 2 gigs of ram 800 MHz, 1280x1024 medium to high, 2xAA.

The frame rate after everything loaded was around 30 to 60 fps which was great, but the frustration came from high first loading time on big zones, and choppiness 5-10 secs if many players were around you, things that may be fixed on release. 

The first levels you are ex slave finding a way to the nearest town Tortage, to get your freedom and recover your memory of who you really were. Our character escaped from the slave’s ship he was, during a storm he was washed ashore to this territory. 

On your way to Tortage you encounter your first enemies and quests, and here comes the movement and combat. Character control is very well done, you use w, a, s, d to move and the same time you can move your character to any direction when you hold right click mouse button, and with left mouse button hold you can look at your character or surroundings. 

We engaged our first enemies with the club we had at disposal, an attack to left, one to the right, one frontal and bang the bad guy is down. At the beginning you can attack 3 ways, by using 1,2,3 keys, where 1 is left, 2 is front, and 3 is right, and the idea is to hit the enemy where is not protected, it shows you a barrier on each site of the enemy. These protection barriers you can assign them too, for your protection. At first you have 1 for each side, front, and sides, and you can remove one from sides and add it front thus receiving less damage from that direction. This works well on PVE, but on PVP I guess u have to be quick and it a little tricky. Besides these attack angles, you receive during your levels abilities, skills which are finish moves, or a skill that throws the opponent a few meters back or does a big damage, which are pretty helpful and entertaining when used. 

Most of the quests givers have a audio speech and cinematic, which introduces you better in to the quest, giving you a reason to make it instead of just reading something, you see emotions and those motivates you or not to continue with the task at hand. 

Character evolvement goes with skills, feats and abilities. Skills points that you receive you distribute to characteristics as perception(detect hidden enemies), bandaging (quicker heal outside the combat), Renew Mana, Casting concentration, hiding, climbing, and taunt(good for generating extra hate or threat to keep the mob on you while tanking). Besides this we have feats also know as talents in other games, from lvl 10, which improve your character overall from three trees to choose or specialized in, and the abilities that you receive when you levels, combos. 

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

There is also a PVP system besides the Siege PVP, similar to Battle Ground in World of Warcraft. You can enter anytime from anywhere in queue, to play this PVP Mini Games to gain PVP levels and feats, and with these you will get PVP items (déjà vu?). These minigames includes Team Annihilation and Capture the Flag type, which you already guess how they work, eliminate the other team and capture the “skull” for the their team for a few times to win.

While I am PVP person I am not impressed too much about the combat used in PVP, because it somewhat limited, at this level and from the design, but overall we will see after release in our review, at higher levels how it works.

Overall Age of Conan made a decent impression on graphics, entertaining PVE combat, and great atmosphere trough the world. Bad points receives on optimization, I don’t think they want only subscribers with super high end pc, cause that won’t bring them to much money max 100k subs, I see from now, if they don’t optimize the engine, also the PVP combat is not that complex or player skill based as it should but it to early to decide that, and 3d items in inventory are horrible, reminds of Gothic, I always hated 3d items in inventory plain ugly!. 

Later comment:

One of the things that annoys me the most, the game is too instanced, in Tortage on each building you enter it an instance, and the loadings on some maps. MMORPGS should be instanced only on dungeons and a few zones, but highly use of loading zone and instances on normal things like houses, rooms and small zone push the game away from the immersion of a MMORPG, an open world. Will see how is this used at higher lvls but on buildings in city probably is be the same..

In the end I recommend you guys to play it first trough buddies keys after release, or now with “open beta” keys before you want to buy it.