Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures E3 Previews

AtomicGamer, Boomtown, and GameClubCentral are all offering up new E3 previews of Funcom’s upcoming Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. A snip from AtomicGamer’s article:

The three playable races are the Aquilonians, the Cimmerians, and the Stygians. While you’ll pretty much always start out in a single player setting as little more than a barbarian with a club, eventually you’ll make it to level 20. This is when you get to choose your first character (archetype) and can now go online and start playing a real MMORPG. From here on out, it’s online only, and at level 40 you choose your real character class. Then at level 60, you’ll choose your class specialty. Do note that while the online monthly fee will start to apply the moment your first character goes online, your credit card will not be charged any fees until that point is reached. The SP game still actually plays online, but you’ll still be fighting alone and once you do this once, later characters you create can jump online immediately at level 20 right from the start.

A snip from Boomtown’s article:

Make no mistake Age of Conan is not about crafting or other secondary activities. The game focuses on combat and for that purpose it utilizes a rather unique Real Combat system. Imagine a pizza which you cut into six slices with your sword. That’s how you control the battles either via the numeric keypad or the Xbox 360 controller. You’ll learn to make combos during the course of the game, and you’ll be able to make some very cool (not mention extremely gory) attacks that for instance cuts the head off your enemy. If you’re really good you can hit several opponents in one swipe. All animations are created using motion capture making the combat must see action.

And a snip from GameClubCentral’s article:

Players activity in the world will trigger conflicting NPC formations to occur. As players explore and populate areas and towns, the NPC populations nearby will respond by growing more rapidly. As like NPC’s encounter each other in random world space, they will band together in larger and larger groups until they form a village of their own. The villages will continue to grow and send out larger and more dangerous war parties over time until either the players band together to destroy the village, or the NPC’s drive all the humans from the area.