About Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures
Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures is an Online Action RPG currently being developed by Funcom, best know for their highly successful futuristic MMORPG Anarchy Online and critically-acclaimed adventure game The Longest Journey. As the name suggest Age of Conan takes place in the world of Conan, a dark and brutal fantasy world created by Robert E. Howard. The Conan stories take place on Earth, but in the mythical (created by Howard) "Hyborian Age," between the time of the sinking of Atlantis and the rise of the known ancient civilizations. According to Howard himself (in The Phoenix on the Sword): "...between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise.
There have been several Conan games in the past, but Aoc is the first big budget game with a Conan licence and is now one of the most anticipated online games currently in development. In Aoc you don’t play Conan himself, but the game will let you explore the Conan universe together with thousands of other players online. The game will be split into two sections. The first will be a single-player experience that is played while connected to the game's servers, but without interacting with other players. It will see the player creating a character and then guiding that character through a traditional single-player roleplaying adventure. The second section takes the character created during the single-player portion online, where the player can interact with others. The online world promises to be dynamic, as players may form guilds (player organizations) and take over territories and erect cities, which are vulnerable to attacks by both humanoid NPCs and players. While the game appears to have many of the markings of a traditional MMORPG, Funcom has never explicitly referred to it as such, instead preferring the term "online action RPG.
The game also features Funcom’s revolutionary “Real Combat” engine. A new multi-point melee system allows the players to swing their weapons where they direct it, in real-time, going head-on against the formulaic nature of online RPG combat. You can create player-made battle formations, and command both NPC’s and other players in epic multiplayer battles.
Visually AoC looks to raise the bar for online RPGs, with huge landscapes rendered with an incredible amount of detail that really bring the Conan universe to life. Funcom has yet to announce an official released data for Aoc, but the game is expected to hit the market 4Q 2006.