Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Preview

[GameBanshee News]

Strategy Informer offers a preview of the upcoming FunCom MMO Age of Conan. Unrelated to that, PCGames has some screenshots here.

“That’s been pretty much our biggest focus throughout the entire development – to revolutionize the combat system in MMOs” states Erling Ellingsen, Funcom’s product manager. A bold statement, might I add.
“We’re all so sick and tired of just walking up to something, clicking the mouse and seeing your character attack every third second or so. It’s really boring.”

He’s not wrong – MMORPG combat has always been a very dull aspect of the genre and one that, until now, has shown no real sign of progression. In Age of Conan, “real combat” is the key. Your basic attacks are mapped to directions around your character and hitting the appropriate key will cause them to swing their weapon in that direction. For example, if you have three enemies stood directly in front of you and you swing your blade widely from left to right, you’ll cut straight through them. Now, this sounds fairly standard stuff but in the MMORPG world this level of interactivity in battle is currently unmatched. Magical and special attacks are now activated by performing a combo, rather than jabbing at a number key, all the while the games excellent animation ties all the strikes and blows together to resemble something more God of War than World of Warcraft.

Spotted on Blue's News.