Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Previews

Several more hands-on previews of Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures have surfaced around the internet. The first is at GameSpot:
Tortage is also a city filled with taverns, which will be perfect for the new drunken brawling player-versus-player combat system. Drunken brawling is one of the three types of PVP that will be in the game, and it's designed to be the most fun and social. This isn't about killing the other player but rather getting into a raucous bar fight. Basically, your character can get drunk on various beverages, and each one might confer a different fighting ability. Mead will transform you into a bruiser in battle, while wine might be good if you want to be more of a swashbuckler. Instead of weapons, you'll use everyday objects, such as bar stools. And thanks to a ladder ranking system, you can build up a reputation as a good drunken brawler. The two other PVP modes will be minigames, such as capture the flag, and the massive PVP mode, which lets you engage in siege combat to defend or attack a city.

The second is at GameSpy:
Funcom is also hoping to revitalize the age-old MMO activity of "camp grinding." MMO players raised on "modern" games may not be familiar with this pursuit, which involves traveling (usually in a party) to a "camp" where certain types of monsters spawn, in order to kill them for experience points. These usually aren't literal camp sites; just spots in the persistent world where monsters of the same type roam. In Age of Conan, however, the camps you'll visit will most likely be discrete spaces where bandit-types are holed up.

The third is at IGN:
Special skills are still required for magic. This was the first time we had a chance to see the magic system in action. Using some GM cheats they loaded up their character with all the trappings of a Herald of Zotli, which amounts to someone that uses demon magic. In fact, this class over time will begin to look more and more like the demons they take their magic from and summon. You can get a better look at some of the magic spells in the video interview on the media page, but there are already some effects in that use some geometry as well as the obligatory particle effects. Pillars sprout from the ground, fire arcs across the skies and all you would expect.

And the fourth is at TeamXbox:
Conan has been built using Funcom's proprietary Dream World engine, which appears more than capable in handling what it's being asked to do here. We're already noted that the characters are highly detailed, but the accompanying screens also reveal that the game world is sharp. Godager moved the camera perspective high into the air so we could see how expansive the Conan universe is. Not only is the level of detail high with trees and buildings having lots of texture and color but it'll also be a big area in which to travel. Godager claimed that the game's terrain will cover about 500 square kilometers or close to 200 square miles.