Age of Conan came a long way since its release in May 20, 2008, a flagship project by a Norwegian game developer, Funcom. It became an online game that aims to focus more on the mature group of online gamers. It features the savage world of Hyboria, where you can choose to build your character from four distinct races ( Aquilonian, Cimmerian, Stygian and Khitan), and four main classes with twelve branching sub-classes. The combat system in Age of Conan is also different from other online games, as it uses an engine called "Real Combat," this system has no auto attack instead it lets you choose a direction for your attack.
After a few months of its release, Age of Conan had experienced different difficulties in its overall status, due to its predictable quest design and missing features that gathered several complaints from the gaming community. The "Devs" made a couple of updates to address these concerns, but still there are some issues that are left unresolved. This made a lot of gamers unhappy and most of them cut their subscription, after only a few months of playing. Funcom, otherwise made it clear that "this game is not for everybody." But the sudden drop of followers really affected the overall performance of the game.
For over three years, Age of Conan followed the standard business model of most online role-playing game companies, and that would be "Pay-to-Play."Considering this would be more profitable back then, but the sudden saturation of the MMORPG genre had led to many alternative ways to earn some profit. That's the reason why so many online game companies go for a new business model, they call "Free-to-Play."This type of business strategy offers the game to everyone for free, which means you can play it anytime you want without the need to pay for any monthly fees. The only things you need to buy are the premium items, which can help your character progress in the game.
As of July this year, Age of Conan offered its fee-to-play version which is called "Unchained."This version boasts several new updates and contents that did not materialized before in 2008. Ultimately, it will bring fresh features for its loyal player base and hopefully attract more potential gamers into its fold. When I visited the world of Hyboria for the second time, I noticed the big improvement they did and some of it made the game more playable now. Though being a free account inhibit some limitations, consider it as just a preview of what you can expect if you really upgrade your account into a premium one.
There are however some issues still present on this game, one old issue I experienced are the lag spikes. Which can be attributed to the amount of information this game, must send to and from the server. As my character reached the levels that is worthy of PVP, I tried to battle on some of the known arenas, and I noticed a lot of balance issues with the different classes, a factor that can break the enthusiasm of some players.
As a final conclusion, I still consider Age of Conan: Unchained - a game that is worthy of our time. It is true to the lore of Conan the barbarian and would even make Robert E. Howard proud of how this game was transformed into a sexy and savage rendition of his novel. Though, you really need to shell out some bucks to enjoy its full potential.