Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Interview

Shacknews has conducted an interview with Funcom’s Gaute Godager, in which the game director addresses questions about various topics related to Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

Q: Tell us all about the character creation system: what races and classes are available (and a bit about them); how distinguishable will my, for example, human barbarian be from all the others; etc.

A: The character creation is easy to get into, but [a] very deep system that should be recognizable to most RPG fans across the globe. You start at level 1 without choosing anything but your race. Each of the three races, Aquilonian (Roman like race), Cimmerian (Germanic, Celtic race Conan’s race) or Stygian (as I mentioned Egyptian) have a distinct look and abilities. First of all there is a limit to the classes you can choose as a race. For instance, only Stygians can become mages but they can not become Soldiers. In addition each race have some different abilities in the amount of out-of-combat health, mana and stamina regain.

You choose your arch class at level 5, as you enter the city of Tortage. Here you can chose from 4 different paths: Mage, Priest, Rogue or Soldier. Their abilities should be somewhat self explanatory to most RPG fans, but it is worth noticing that the different classes that spin off the arch classes will be different from race and religion.

At level 20, when you enter the multiplayer part, you chose your class. Here you can chose from around 25 different classes, depending on your arch class.

You customize your character mostly with Feats , binary abilities that let you access various powers or abilities. They can unlock your ability wear armor, cast spells or do special moves. There are more than 14k different feats in the game, all sorted by Class, race, featline and level so there is no doubt a massive and deep system for the player to be able to customize his character. We have a clear goal to let all characters look, feel and play differently from another. Our visual character customization will go hand-in-hand with our RPG character generation and hopefully make many, many distinct classes and characters. Funcom is known to let players really customize their characters, and have a real choice in how they build their characters.

Conan is also offering a special social class (or Prestige Class if you like) to define how your character will work in a social setting. They are called Lord, Command, Crafter or Master. The Lord will be expert at building cities, the Commander at formations and group size, the Crafter at making objects and the Master at commanding followers. All will be very useful in guilds and give special guild bonuses and abilities used in City Building, PvP and Crafting (tradeskills).