Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures

However, as impressive as the distorted faces of the barbarians and the mounted combat demo was, there's something else going on in Godager's presentation that really caught my interest: the idea that Funcom is really trying to include everything that a classic fantasy MMO has done in the past ten years, and improve on it. As Godager talked about the diversity of gameplay he mentioned the mini-games of drunken brawling, the classic dungeon-crawling, and the sprawling storyline that sees gamers tied to the fate of King Conan himself. Then it was time to talk about the epic PvP combat in which players will build cities and fortresses and fight for control of a few resource-rich realms in the middle of Hyboria. This is where Godager's plan for the endgame lies, and the huge map, with all its resources and defensible positions tells of the kind of epic warmongering the game is intending to play host to.

It was this construction demo, in which Godager's high-level gaming team raised vast defences, a keep, and half a dozen buildings from the ground, that made me realise that there was an outside possibility that Age Of Conan will do what no fantasy MMO has managed since Dark Of Camelot, and that's create a compelling endgame.

The Funcom team isn't just trying to give us eighty levels of troll-butchery and lady-rescuing, they're also trying deliver some reason for gamers to fight, and to organise. Building cities, and then fortresses, will provide huge bonuses for your entire team - so there's every reason to defend them, or to attack them if you're without these resources. If this siege game can work - and we can already see major battles, diplomatic posturing, and all the intrigue and logistics that makes games like, say Eve, so compulsive and so worthy of investment of time - then Age Of Conan could run and run.

Despite this being the most interesting thread in everything that Funcom has achieved, it's also the one that won't make its true nature known until the game is up and running. Funcom knows this too: it can develop it and play it so far in beta testing, but the true nature of these kinds of game worlds never really comes out until the big guilds have got stuck in and figured how to exploit or break anything and everything. Once we hit that stage then Age Of Conan will either reveal itself to be a masterpiece, or a mistake. Either way, it should be an interesting journey.