[Info] A WoW player's guide to Age of Conan

[JoeThePlumber]

World of Warcraft has brought thousands, millions of players to the MMO genre that may never have tried it before. Despite that, It's become increasingly obvious over the years that WoW players are not necessarily "MMO players." Even though they enjoy the style of gameplay, many of that millions-strong army only play World of Warcraft. When they want a break they go off to play completely different types of games.

I like to introduce you World of Warcraft players to a brand new experience: Age of Conan. And compare it to WoW and give you all the lowdown about the stuff you care about!

Questing

The first thing a veteran WoW player is going to notice in Age of Conan is that you don't start out in a public space. Instead, you'll begin life in Hyboria as a slave washed ashore on a jungle beach. This area, in the jungles outside the city Tortage, is a private instance. Much of the beginning elements to Age of Conan can be tackled inside the solo instances, a part of the game referred to as the Destiny quest. In fact, if you choose, you can play through about level 20 purely in this solo instance component.

The instance, which represents the city of Tortage at night, allows you to understand Age of Conan's story in a unique way. Your character will be at the center of political and military struggle, with gods, demons, and magic thrown into the mix. Of course, you can also return to the day-side of Tortage and engage in fairly typical MMO-style quests. The familiar question mark/exclamation point quest notifications are here in Age of Conan, and some of the rewards you'll get for completing these quests are enjoyable. We recommend you stay primarily on the night-side of the game to enjoy the story, only popping back to the day side when you feel you need to gain a quick level to deal with too-tough content.

Combat

Easily the biggest departure from World of Warcraft's diku-MUD DNA, Age of Conan features a realtime combat system. Instead of activating an auto-attack mode and firing off abilities to enhance your gameplay, every stroke of Conan's axe corresponds to a keypress. When you first start the game you'll have just three attacks; one straight forward and one each to the right and left. These correspond to the 1-2-3 keys. Enemies will have visible shields around their heads and bodies, letting you know where they're defending. Your job is to avoid the shielded areas and go for the weak spots. Open shields yield more damage all around.

Combos are also a big part of Conan's combat. Starting almost right away, your character will earn the ability to fire off keypress combo attacks. Early level attacks require a single keypress to activate, and which direction you need to swing will be indicated on-screen. Depending on which class you're playing, these combos will achieve different ends. Some will cause DoTs, others huge knockback effects. Regardless, you're going to want to use combos as often as you can – just as in World of Warcraft you use your spells and abilities to bring down your opponent more quickly.

Tone & Graphics

As you bring your opponents to their knees, a Warcraft player may be in for a shock. Age of Conan is an 'M' rated game, and earns its rating with an excess of blood, gore, and dismemberment. Slaying enemies with combo moves makes it more likely that you'll do a devastating finishing move on an opponent. These moves range from subtle stabbings to vivid beheadings, and do a great deal to evoke the harsh world of Hyboria.

These violent acts will seem all the more realistic, given the difference in the two games' art styles. While Blizzard's artistic license has allowed for low-spec PCs to journey to Azeroth, only beefy gaming machines need apply entrance to Hyboria. The realistic art style and tech-intensive client are another big departure from the familiar.

Magic

For the most part magic in AoC will feel very familiar to a WoW spellcaster. Most spellcasting classes, though, feel very different. Instead of the cloth-wearing backrow DPS or healing machines World of Warcraft offers, several spellcasting classes in Conan are made for the front lines. These battle mages mix spell and sword to deadly effect. Another tweak from WoW's gameplay is the concept of spellweaving. This dangerous and nuanced enhancement to magic is only available to certain classes, but brings some of the realtime dangers of melee combat to the casting classes.

Crafting

Fans of WoW's crafting will find a very different mechanic in Conan's world. Avatars aren't allowed able to craft until level 40, when they are given access to crafting quests and crafting abilities associated with their crafting professions. Characters must choose from one of five different disciplines, and can make items from up to six different tiers of equipment. Despite the differences, many of the crafting careers will sound similar: Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Alchemy, and Gemcutting are all very similar to their WoW counterparts. The only profession entirely alien to the World of Warcraft experience is the Architect, a vital character in any powerful guild.

Guilds

In WoW, a guild is essentially just a dedicated chat channel and a group bank. Age of Conan's guild system has many, many more elements layered on top. The most notable of these is the guild city system, which will allow dedicated groups of players to construct vast fortresses and towns in designated private instances. These towns and keeps can serve many purposes for the inhabiting guild, and can even be invaded by opposing factions.

PvP


For the most part, Player vs. Player combat in Age of Conan will seem very familiar. On non-PvP servers, the majority of this combat style will take place in instanced matches very similar to WoW's battlegrounds. These PvP mini-games offer some typical gameplay styles like capture the flag or deathmatch. The truly exciting PvP element in Conan is the city siege, which will see huge guilds clashing in the streets of their player-made cities. Those conflicts will pit the defenders against raiders in a pre-scheduled event, with War Rhinos and Mammoth mounts making an appearance on the fields of battle. The first step is to tear down the walls ... past that, it's on to glory.

Every server, regardless of type, will see PvP in the Border Kingdoms. These are the locales where player cities can be built, and hold more in common with elements of the game Dark Age of Camelot than World of Warcraft. Mini-keeps called towers are spread throughout that region, giving smaller guilds the ability to participate in the territory conquest aspect of the game as well.


Leveling

AoC avatars will gain power in ways very similar to the Warcraft experience. Starting at level ten, players will begin gaining feat points that can be slotted into ability trees. One tree is a 'general' tree that gives all-around benefits to the player's character. Two more provide more specific paths to explore, allowing you to customize your character into the role you desire. Skill points also become available at each level. Most skills are passive bonuses, tweaks to background mechanics that will keep your character alive longer, allow them to regenerate stamina faster, or climb more difficult surfaces.

Mounts


Just as in World of Warcraft, Conan characters gain access to their mounts at level 40. There the similarity ends, as combat from horseback is a prominent feature in Age of Conan's later levels. From your mount, unique abilities become available that will allow you to best large groups of foes. The larger mounts also see use in Player vs. Player city sieges. Instead of siege weaponry, pre-ordering players can deploy their War Mammoths to knock the very bricks of the city walls from their mortar.


Economy

Gold farmers and buyers aside WoW got a good Economy system in place and it does work for the most part. And here comes the bad part of AoC the original system was pretty much a copy of WoW.


UPDATE: 1 major update has re-added a much-missed feature: the Trader. Traders are a combination bank, auction house, and mailbox!! All you have to do is drop your wares into the bank and set the item as 'for sale'. There's no option to do a traditional auction; other players can purchase your items at the price you list, or not. Additional tweaks to the game correct a leveling exploit formerly available via the apprenticing system, correct a few class ability issues, and smooth out a number of UI issues.

And the AoC Economy finally can go to a healthy point

There are four types of currency in Age of Conan: gold, silver, copper, and tin. One hundred units of one currency represent one unit of the next currency value, like so:

1 gold=100 silver
1 silver=100 copper
1 copper=100 tin (yeah they got a lower level them copper)




Endgame

Well now what can you do when you hit L80? In WoW you got lots of things to do like raid instants/rep grind/arena/battleground/daily s and so on. Well in Conan there is no rep grind. But there are however Raid instants and there will be epic gear rewards for hardcore raiders and do not forget about the big pvp guild siege warfare. (think lotr movie like battles) And yes PVP will reward epic gear also.

Anyway here is a video for you to enjoy that give you a sneak peek of a 20 minutes 24-man live raid in Kishata's Black Ring Citadel (with lots of cheating so it fit in the time frame) and a pre-recorded glimpse at siege warfare.
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Addons

The game designers will allow addons/mods some are already in the work like WerikUI its a Interface (GUI) modification. And there will be more like it does look like the game will become a hit...

Update from Moritz-M: I took a quick look at that UI and it seems that you can only do static changes, at least in that UI is no scripting part, it is only describing a different look, If that is correct then don't expect AddOns like in WoW: You won't be able to setup the look inside the game - think of a actionbar or unitframe mod without a configuration menu, if you want to change it you have to hand edit the files. Pretty much any mod that does more than just modifiying the look of standart frames won't be possible at all.

Age of Conan VS Guildwars

There where some people saying that Age of Conan is just a updated Guildwars with a new battle system, Well lets just look into this...

Guildwars is a game where you are mostly play in instants and you are alone till you come to a city hub where you go in a shared zone and you can invite people there to go with you in the outside instant world. And mostly a quest is go from a to b and kill some demons beasts that popup in your way there are 20 levels and you can start like a L20 right away and go do some pvp.

In AoC you are indeed starting out in a single player instant (but you may known you can skip this all and go to the main land but you miss out on lots of story) but so soon you can to the first city this may take like like 2 hours if you are really bad. You have a choose you can stay in the single player mode all the way to level 20 (night world) or can go to the day world and see others running around group up with them outside the city's there are however world changing quests that need be done into the night world in a kind of mini instant.

But so soon you are level 20 the game turn a complete 360 on you and you go to the real always multi player lands you still can solo if you wish but even if you solo you will not be alone and still see that others run you by just like in WoW.

very hard to compare the two other than paths in the first levels.... Both are completely different games...


More Coming Soon


As you can see, Hyboria offers a number of intriguing twists to the MMO genre. I did not cover some of the more subtle distinctions, the nooks and crannies of Conan's world. But It's an MMO and they are hardly Blizzard. There is stuff that is flat out broke and components that make very little if any sense. All that being said, this is the best MMO I have ever played and I plan on staying for a long time.

Why don't you go find out for yourself if the grim, gritty tract that is the Age of Conan is right for you? Or the complete wrong game!?

(A big part was taken from Massively)

[shadowbladex]

Thank you very much for this. This has helped me understand AoC so much more
It sounds like a awesome game. I might just have to look into it

[evann]

Im definetly getting AoC I <3 you. +Rep

[Obama]

thanks dude. i understand this game soo much more. +2rep. this has what ive been looking for.

[strobel]

lol (filller)!?!?

[spike999]

why lol?
this is nice.
ill rep u tomorrow. thanks (alrady repped someone tdoay)

[JoeThePlumber]

Happy you like it

[TK770]

I want to get AoC now lol.

[TehGoggles]

I think the combat system will be cool, at first, then It will get annoying.

[Neossjin]

Hmm, AoC sounds really cool.

[Zharkake]

+ rep for Making this up for people, but it isn't as great as you think, its like Fury Lots of Great Concepts and they havn't executed em very well, i was in the Tech Beta. Its a Decent Fun Game But in the End WoW Will probly be better, but hey it was just the beta they normaly throw other crap in on the release

[~OddBall~]

Economy? Nice tho +repicles.

[Clovian]

Should have at least said its not your guide, copy+pasted from A World of Warcraft player's guide to Age of Conan - Massively

[aggeron]

Question:
Are there group/raid dungeons?
At what level do you encounter pvp combat most likely?
Any rewards for pvp?

[Brochkids]

i wanna try AoC now =P