age of Conan

[Smirker]

I've seen trailers and development previews of it at a convention and it DOES look very very good. Even though it will have a hearty pvP aspect the devs have really put in a ton of work into it and it shows.

 

As with most MMORPGs it WILL be charged monthly; but I don't think they've settled into how much it will run yet.

 

On a small side note, I've followed FUNCOM (the developer) since they put out "the Longest Journey" and other Single player games and I even participated in the early fiasco that was was Anarchy online. The way that Funcom straightened themselves out should be applauded and held up as a standard in gaming companies (yes, I'm looking at *YOU* Electronic Arts). In fact, Funcom was the company that has heralded most of the really big changes in how MMOS are run. No corpse runs (players of EQ1 and other MMOs of that generation remember them all too well I'm sure), Instanced dungeons and hotlinked items in the game chat are just a few examples that come off the top of my head.

 

However, I think the developers were even working around the chief complaint of PvP players -- the Griefing of newbies. The first part of the game is played as a single player and lets you experience teh background of the game and come to terms with teh consequences of real-time combat. Also, I think that PvP is for the outlying areas - but one can always team up and fight barbarians/monsters as well.

 

If you're looking for a free MMO; you can actually download and play Anarchy Online (the base version which still lets you go all the way to level 200 out of 220) for free from Funcom. be warned though; the learning curve on the game is very steep; but it is very well done. And the community is very helpful too. I did it for a spell several months back and was very impressed with how much they'd improved teh game - but I still dislike the open PvP areas (as you get higher level your missions will be increasingly in the areas where players from the other faction can ambush you. While there is some juvenile ganking done still I'm sure; the majority of it has largely gone to other games.

 

However, I'm sure that Age of Conan will be very well done and I will be trying it for sure when it comes out. After it's had 3-6 months to mature after release - MMOs always need a little extra time post-release to work out major bugs and such due to how far too many of them are run. While I'm sure Funcom has learned their lesson on this front, I prefer to be more cautious of my playtime since I don't get as much of it as when I was younger. ;)