Boomtown has a
hands-on preview of Age of Conan which is all the more interesting for being played on a low-end computer, system specs being one of the more sensitive points of the game.
I knew this was going to be tricky when I decided to try the Beta of Age of Conan with a Geforce 8500 GT graphics card while my 8800 Ultra was getting repaired but after some tweaking I have to say that I am fairly satisfied with the frame rate. I have not been able to turn all of the detail up and I am using DX9 instead of DX10 (which won’t be available until release) yet even the lowest settings scale better than the likes of Oblivion and still manage to give you a good view into the distance. You can tell from the moment you log on to the game that it has been built to look amazing but also that a lot of work has gone into making sure that as many people can run this game as possible without feeling that they are wandering about in a drab uninteresting land just because they don’t have the best PC money can buy. This of course being a Beta means that Funcom still has some time to wring out as much muscle from the DreamWorld engine as possible before the fun begins in earnest.
The way the game starts is very abrupt but refreshing because it lets you get your feet wet as soon as you have created your character – literally. The character creation is very detailed and cleverly done on a slave ship floundering in heavy seas. Once you have decided on your Avatar’s looks and attributes you wake up on a beach, shipwrecked and wearing not much at all.
Spotted on
Blue's News.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Preview 
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