The world itself, while not all ripped straight from comic pages, is a site (sic) to behold. Made up of around 180 square miles, it’s not only massive but also surprisingly diverse. The original books and comics had tales of many different countries, all of which are loosely based on real world empires. Native Americans, Egyptians and Vikings all appeared, among others.
All of these 'nationalities' are options during the initial character customization screen, which is cleverly placed in real time aboard a slave ship in the midst of a storm out at sea. As soon as you’re done creating your new digital self (via a series of sliders to rival
Oblivion and
Mass Effect) your ship suddenly crashes and you wake up washed ashore on a tropical beach. A kind soul - a surprise character to meet so easily in a land of barbarians - finds you in the sand and, after rousing you, informs you that if your slave master gets to the town first and informs them that there are slaves about, you’ll never get through the town gates without a pair of irons on. And so your adventure begins.
Graphics
Unfortunately, due to a brief little issue with a texture not loading properly the demonstration was skipped ahead a few levels (40-ish) so that we could see the capital city, where
Conan currently reins as king. Due to this being a pre-open beta build of an MMO, the streets were only populated with NPCs. We were assured, however, that there could be hundreds of people around at any given time and that the bustling streets were truly a sight to behold. Thankfully, even without the impressive number of characters the art and architecture is already rather breathtaking. In fact, everything about this game's graphics impress. While it’s not
Crysis, it certainly gives all future MMOs a pretty high bar to try and jump going forward. Considering the fact that the version we were shown was only running in DirectX9 mode on an XP, I can imagine that the extra little bit of shine and shadow that comes with DirectX 10 will truly dazzle.
Conversely, one major concern I had the whole time I watched the game played was that it seemed to lack a distinguishing style. While this may not seem like an issue now, one of the biggest concerns when making or choosing an MMO is longevity. While
WoW has never been a
Gears of War-like showcase, it has always just looked good. Even today. Another example of this is the immensely-popular-among-tweens,
Hobo Hotel. It’s far and away the least impressive looking browser game, but its intentionally retro look has allowed it to be successful even longer than
WoW and it has just as many if not more users world wide.
Conan may look great now, but four years on I worry people will become put off by the realistic yet plain-ish look of it. Only time will tell though.
Combat / Gameplay
The combat, as mentioned before, is real time-ish. I’m not sure of all the specifics, but from the quick overview we received, it appears that you start of with a few basic attacks - vertical or horizontal slashes with your sword, for example - and then as time goes on you develop a broader selection of slashes and the ability to chain them together.
The trick seems to be a matter of knowing which to use when as certain attacks will counter others. I believe there are stats that also affect who wins certain clashes, but again there was a lot to cover so some things will have to wait for a full review.
