Conan MMO: First Impressions

It's been a week since I installed this thing, and now it's time to report in about it. This wasn't a game that I was actually anticipating, to tell you the truth. I mean, the genre is just so... done already. But, all that aside, you can still do a good job with a worn genre. With that in mind, this game truly excels.

Main highlights: guild cities, dynamic combat mechanics and boobyshake!

FWIW, we're all on Dagoth server.

A best friend once pointed out that he would rather spend hours at a time staring at a woman's backside than a man's. Everyone has at least one female character, typicallyt their "main". When it looks like you are trekking through a hot sweaty jungle, it can be fun to doff the top and enjoy your jog skyclad. You can run in your nickers too, if you'd like (or enjoy the embarrassing view of a tiny package, for male characters). The appeal, of course, wears off quickly, but just knowing the option is available is teh hawt.

Combat in Conan is actually pretty much the same as combat in WoW, but with three specific twists that change the entire playing field:

• Combat is proximity based: if you are fighting two or three mobs at the same time, your damage gets distributed across them all. Don't get too cocky unless you are equipped with some thick armor; my Herald of Xotli doesn't put up very much defence in a dress.
• The direction of every single attach is decided, as is the direction of any available defence. Each time you strike, you choose the direction that your attack comes from: upper left, upper or upper right. Your opponent (as well as yourself, IF you have defense) may have defensive icons around their charcter indicating which direction they want to be protected most from. Obviously, you want to try and coincide the direction of your attacks with the angle of least defense.
• Combo attacks are triggered by keying in the correct sequence of directional attacks after a specific combo is initiated. This generally translates to clicking one attack direction and then clicking a different one several times. It gets complicated when you have to account for attacks occurring both before and after the combo is initiated. And then you can string combos together...

Finally, there are guild cities. There will be player built cities that can include vendor buildings as well as fortifications. When your guild begins to build it's city, the server begins an NPC city to stand against it. All kinds of craziness involved here, but it's all another score or more of levels away from understanding it directly. This is really what I'm looking forward to: finally, a town of my very own! First we need to get 24 people in the guild, tho...