All flash no substance. Unfortunately, this is the best way to describe Funcom’s latest entry into the MMO market, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Age of Conan looked to be a real contender in a genre dominated by World of Warcraft, with over 400,000 in initially reported subscriptions and review after review giving it high marks. Around the late 30s to mid 40s, Age of Conan simply becomes boring and tedious to downright unbearable in the fifties, a far cry from the 1-to-20 gameplay showed off by Funcom at various shows and the beta Player-versus-Player weekend leading up to its release.

The innovative and compelling combat system is anything but, as it suffers from a hard-coded delay within the button sequence, leading most three-button combos to take five seconds to complete. Even though the combo system led to some downright amazing fatalities, no amount of limbs flying can take away from the reality that you are basically playing a "Simon Says" mini game. The problem of slow combos is compounded in PvP, where most melee players opt to circle their prey and swing wildly rather than actually use them. This also led to an early dominance in Player-versus-Player by ranged characters, something that just doesn’t seem right for a game based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Maybe someone at Funcom should have been looking at Cabal, because its combo system is hundreds of times more engaging and skill-dependant than Age of Conan’s system.

The questing in Age of Conan is your standard fare: kill X amount of Y, deliver goods from NPC A to NPC B, etc.. However, Funcom even dropped the ball here, with quite a few quest items and even some quest kills not shared with party members. To some degree, it actually becomes detrimental to group, not good for an MMOG. Not to worry though, for Age of Conan is a heavily-instanced game: the majority of the time, you will not run into more than 40 other players in your instance, so quest items and kills are not heavily camped. Unfortunately, this gives a single-player feel to the game, as you quite honestly will not run into the same person twice for days, except on the occasion where you are looking for someone in particular to kill or in a PvP hot zone.

PvP is also sorely lacking in Age of Conan; in factm over the month and two weeks of play time, I only entered four PvP mini-games and it wasn’t from lack of trying. This leaves PvP-oriented players like myself with only three options: attack guild or party members in hopes of starting a larger conflict, kill people in PvP hot zones, or grind to level 80 and take part in a siege system which, to this day, is still not working correctly.

I must admit that, even after 400+ kills and nearly 200 deaths, performing a fatality on another player doesn’t get old. That being said, PvP without risk-reward (no item drops or player loot) is no different than a game of Call of Duty 4, except you’re paying $15 a month for it.