MMO Gamers

Age of Conan expansion announced

“…….the introduction of two new classes…..fitted out in heavy scale armour the Shock Troop provides a much needed soldier class for the Stygians …. the Scholar, a powerful Aquilonian wizard ………discover the new lands of Darfar and Kush and venture deep into the Black Kingdoms ……take the battle to the Hyrkanians in the new battlegrounds of Turan and conquer NPC controlled battlekeeps and claim them as your own, then defend them against other players in new constant PvP…..”

None of this is true. I made it up. Sorry if I got anyone excited out there, but I did it to highlight a few things.

When I started playing Dark Age of Camelot it had already been out a while and was onto its second expansion, the Trials of Atlantis. By the time I’d picked up Everquest 2 it was with the release of Kingdom of Sky, their second expansion. I held off on trying EQ2 because it lacked a PvP element. KoS introduced one and I spent about five months on a PvP server before I decided I didn’t like their PvP much and changed servers. World of Warcraft had been out for over a year before I tried it.

Of the dozen or so MMOs I’ve played, not including betas, only three of them I purchased and played from release; Tabula Rasa, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Age of Conan. So what’s my point?

When I played DAoC, EQ2, and WoW they were all polished games with an expansion or two under their belts. Like all MMOs they were constantly evolving, introducing new features and improving on existing ones. Hell, EQ2 only introduced the Dressing Room with which to view armour before purchase last year. Conversely, TR, PotBS, and AoC were not polished; missing key features, buggy, requiring optimising; the list could go on. Actually, listing AoC with TR and PotBS doesn’t do it justice because I think it’s monumentally a better game. 

So if we look to the future, what kind of game would Age of Conan be and what might an expansion include? We already know to expect new zones and new battlekeeps in a future update, though the delivery date is still uncertain. And assuming that AoC doesn’t get decimated by the Warhammer release, and I think it won’t, or go the way of Vanguard, 18 months on from release and still no expansion, well then what would you want to see?