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Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
An MMO for a more "mature" audience, at least that’s the mantra Funcom utters about their recently launched "Age of Conan". What exactly makes this a "mature" game? The "M for Mature" ESRB rating, the fabulously gory fatalities, or is it the promise of in game nudity? After spending much of my free time this past weekend playing through "Age of Conan," I’m still not sure what exactly makes this game so much more mature than your other MMOs other than the potential for topless women and the occasional vulgar language and brutal fatality.
Upon initial impression "Age of Conan" is a beautiful looking MMO, no doubt about it! The promise of future support of DX10 effects via a "soon to be released" patch will only benefit an already gorgeous MMO. In an era where most MMO worlds look ages behind our current gen graphics, "Age of Conan" is an MMO graphical jewel.
The character creation screen is pretty robust for an MMO allowing you to make various small and large tweaks to your appearance, including several tattoos and scars. Of the several cultures to choose from, each has its own interpretation of the various basic fantasy RPG classes. I created a male Tempest of Set, which is the "spellcaster/healer/priest" class of the Stygian culture.
Every newly created character arrives in the city/state of Tortage after a devastating storm wipes out the slave ship you were serving on. It is here where you will learn to play the game and your class properly for the next 20 levels, give or take. Tortage is your typical "n00b" zone with your basic fetch quests, kill x number of this, and solve that mystery.
What really sets Tortage apart from other MMO starter cities is the well done voice over work for all your quest giving NPCs. Reading blocks of text explaining why sorcerer Y needs X number of frog tongues is not really my idea of "immersion." I demand voice overs for all MMO quest NPCs from this point forward!
Another very unique feature of Tortage is the ability to carry out story specific quests in your own private instance of the world (aka single player mode). The entire single player mode in Tortage takes place at night, while the multiplayer mode takes place during the day. This MMO single player mode for important story quests ensures that you will experience the story on your own without any griefers, or long periods of waiting for the quest item/enemy to respawn. This is an ideal way for my "lone wolf" styled play habits of most MMOs I play, while still maintaining the option to "group" and take on more "epic" challenges. Who really needs to group up to run fetch quests anyway?
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