One bothersome thing about the combat system is that it does start to feel a little awkward with a mouse and keyboard. I feel like pushing number keys and movement keys at the same time, leaving me wondering whether a gamepad would be more suitable. Hopefully I can find a way to work around it by rebinding some keys.
Questing
The early levels are designed to familiarize players with the basics of the game's interface and combat system, which they do quite well. Quest givers have the telltale exclamation mark above their heads, and there are tons of voice-overs. Talking to quest related NPCs actually hides the interface and snaps your camera into cutscene-like cinematics. While it's kind of neat, I think I'll be looking for the option to turn it off soon.
Tortage has quest arcs that are divided into day time and night time, which you switch between by talking to Tina in the Thirsty Dog Inn. During day time you are in the world with other players, but at night you are adventuring through a solo instance. Subsequently you get the flavor of both single-player and multiplayer gameplay as you level in Tortage.
Day time questing involves most of the things we've grown accustomed to in MMORPGs. You'll be asked to perform the usual assortment of collection, deliverly, and hunting tasks. If there are too many players in the area for the spawn rate, you can switch to a different instance, as all zones in the game are duplicated depending on population. The night time story arc is centered on your character, and offers more depth than the day time adventures. It is quite linear, which is bit frustrating when you come across a bug that keeps you from progressing through it, but of course, these things are to be expected in a beta.
Dying comes with a penalty in Age of Conan starting at level 10, although it's not overly harsh by MMORPG standards. Your base stats are temporarily lowered and you lose a small amount of XP unless you recover your corpse.
Player vs. Player
Funcom intends to give fans of player vs. player combat a wealth of options in Age of Conan. Unfortunately, the bulk of them aren't available until level 20 or higher. It looks like there will be at least one free-for-all PvP server where pretty much anything goes. At the moment you don't drop any loot when killed on a PvP server, and the death penalty is the same as it is in PvE.
All servers will have instanced PvP matches similar to those in World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, as well as The Border Kingdoms, an area designated for building and sieging battlekeeps. PvP matches become available at level 20, and there is a separate reward system for PvP accomplishments. As I understand it, crafting, city construction, and Border Kingdom battles arrive at around level 40.
The Bottom Line
Given how much Age of Conan is trying to encompass, it will be hard for the game to live up to expectations. The introductory levels give you a good feel for the combat system and immerse you in a relatively rich storyline, as they're intended to, but if you're playing for PvP and sieges, as many people are, the single-player bit may start to wear thin. You also have to wonder how interesting Tortage will be a second or third time through on alternate characters.
The mounted combat, city building, and Border Kingdoms are going to make or break Age of Conan for me, and I'm probably not alone. The combat system is solid, but these end-game elements are what could really set this title apart from the current crop of MMORPGs. It won't be long now before gamers take over Hyboria, so stay tuned for a review after we've spent some more time exploring the Age of Conan.
