Age of Conan News

Florian Eckhardt has written an intresting insight into the racial undertones of Robert E. Howard’s Conan titles.

And that’s the rub. In my opinion, Howard’s supposed racism was actually a very clever literary device, less racist than a literary example of cultural archetyping. In essence, in creating Hyboria, Howard wanted a large fictional canvas upon which he could indulge his love for history and historical drama without having to be burdened with the responsibility of rigid historical accuracy.

and the goes on futher to say:

The Age of Conan developers have been understandably defensive about Howard’s perceived racism, and that’s certainly a wise business move: it simply isn’t worth starting a controversy about, especially when — with a few small alterations — they can take advantage of the breathtaking richness, the lavish viscerality and the epic scope of the Hyborian Age without alienating any focal groups.

Overall its a very intresting insight into some of the controversy surrounding this much anticipated MMO.

Souce: Destructoid

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This video is poor quality, however it does show off some unseen features including a player made city.

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Curse gaming got a tour of the Eidos studios in Redwood, California and a hands on testing of Age of Conan.

Recently we had a chance to visit the Eidos studios out in Redwood City, California. So what was the topic of the visit you ask? Oh, nothing much, just an Age of Conan Hands on experience where we had two hours to play through the game at various levels; a freshly created character, a level 13 character, and a high-end character.

The article goes further into detail about unit frames, inventory, combat and character creation. The curse crew even got new video footage!

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IGN has awarded Age of Conan “Best PC Persistent Online Game“, read on for their summary.

At the very least, Age of Conan is trying to do something a little different with its combat system. We’ve seen the game a few times now, and it hasn’t performed particularly well, but we still have hope. To attack opponents with melee swipes, you hit one of five keys to trigger specific attacks. As your character progresses you need to chain certain keys together in sequence to pull off special moves. At its core, the system remains similar to the mind-numbing hotkey triggering of past MMOs, but after playing, this seems a little more interactive and involving. We should note that this award is nearly impossible to grant properly. MMOs are meant to be played for hundreds of hours, not two or three. Still, in terms of outlook, this seems to be the most promising. It has a vast fictional universe to use as narrative, and boasts lush environments to draw players in. It’s also not an expansion pack, such as EverQuest 2’s Rise of Kunark or Guild Wars’ Eye of the North. We’ve got our fingers crossed.

Not outstanding, but it seems to have at least beaten anything else this year. Lets hope they polish it to perfection in the next 100 days.

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Kelly Heckman over at GamersInfo has posted her impression of the E3 preview she played. While not as in depth as I’d like, it does offer some new screen shots and info not yet posted elsewhere.

It was nice to see a purpose behind the combat (and death) I’d so diligently spent several hours experiencing previously. One does not play at death; one experiences it. I loved the dynamically generated camps; the idea of the Frost Giant is fantastic. I do hope the female avatars have the look of the woman in the trailer — she’s who I’d want to be in this universe. And chat, pretty please get that figured out? Otherwise, I will have to macro, “Help, I suck!”

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