Gamezilla

Having been part of the closed beta for the original Age of Conan, launch day came and went without any new surprises since I had already had an in depth (albeit buggy) primer of the game. With Rise of the Godslayer it was different, my first impression of the game came this morning at 8:00am before work. The planned downtime was increased from 12 hours to 24 hours with the patch download starting at 2:30am BST. So I stay up for that, playing Warcraft in between and then finally go to bed.

So I kick off the game first thing and notice nothing different at first, sure my Mirage UI is not working (which I expected) and Conarch is unusually empty, as is Old Tarantia. Khemi on the other hand is very busy with people all heading in the direction of the Khitai travel point (I swam there). Firstly the plan was to get MirageUI to display the Perk bar, a forum post on the US forums showed how to edit the XML but this didn’t work for me so I left it as is for the time being.

A quick inspection of the Feat trees showed me the Alternate Advancement bars that I had been waiting to see, lots of options but amount of points you need to get them is massive 1,000,000 for the first points for each of the 3 types. I completed a quest on my way to King Conan’s castle (via the claim “Summons” quest) and got 7000 alternate advancement points. So I foresee a bit of a grind fest here, I’m glad it’s not going to be fast. There is also the time based option which allows you to gain points for each 18 hours played (I assume this will scale as you progress).

On finally making it to the Khitai travel point in Khemi (I needed to swim across the river) I promptly set sail to the new land. On route I am confronted with a Kithan with four eyes talking in riddles. All full speech and very nice animations and movement. I read and listened to all the dialogue and if the rest of the role-play encounters are like this then we are in for a real treat. This four eyed Khitan gave me 2 quests for the new lands.

Once finished talking to old four eyes I find myself in the first zone. Guards appear to have green names now as opposed to yellow and I see the familiar PVP action of people intercepting people on horses. An assassin in particular killed a mage on a horse. So with my conqueror, decided to teach the assassin a thing or two. Thanks to the conqueror Overcome The Odds and the Retaliation (and indeed retaliation), the assassin pretty much killed himself, a couple of Hail of Furious Strikes (HoFS) and he was down. The mage came in towards the end to help exact some revenge on the Assassin.

I walk up a nearby rock, go into hide and log out until after work. So far, Age of Conan Rise of the Godslayer seems brilliant. I cannot wait to explore the world of Khitai later today and begin my journey through this eagerly awaited expansion. Brilliant!