Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer Revealed, Preview

Funcom has revealed the previously unnamed Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer expansion pack at GamesCom, and Eurogamer has already published a preview so we have an idea of what to expect from it.

There’s no raised level cap in Rise of the Godslayer. There is a new continent, the Asian-themed Khitai (which comes with a new player race, the Khitan), but it contains lower-level content – for level 20 up – as well as a high-level challenge. There are no new classes, and no more levels, but there is an alternate advancement system that will broaden the range of each existing class as well as increase its power. There isn’t just more stuff to do, but there’s a greater variety of it; raising wolves and tigers from cubs to fighting companions to mounts, taking sides in factional struggles.

In short, Rise of the Godslayer expands Age of Conan horizontally, not vertically. It puts some much-needed meat on the old barbarian’s bones. Game director Craig Morrisson doesn’t quite put it like that, of course, but he agrees that the point is to make the whole game, not just the new content, better – and he’s keen not to face the age-old expansion problem of making what’s gone before suddenly meaningless. “With expansions there’s often the feeling of breaking things up, and running the risk of having players become ‘detached’ from the original setting,” he argues. “We didn’t want all the great high-end content we have now, and have been building, to be instantly negated by their first few days of exploring in the expansion.”