One of the first huge enemies I’ve encountered in the game. I had to climb to the top of a mountain in Connel Valley to find them. Much larger than their flatland brethren. Unfortunately they were a bit of a push-over compared to what you’d expect from something their size.

In the 1920’s a depressed and talented pugilist took up his hand at writing for pulp publications of the time. Later this man would become a contemporary of era standing next to pillars like Howard Phillip Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Stemming from his love of history, particularly that of Europe and Asia, he created the Hyborian Age (”Hy” being Irish for “country of” and “Borea” meaning “north wind”). In this setting he solidified his previous fictional works of the brave Pict warrior Bran Mak Morn and the exiled Atlantian King Kull as the Thurian Age of “the past” and set the scene for his most famous character: Conan.

What started with a short poem (poetry being R.E. Howard’s first passion), he created the land of Cimmeria spurred on by a memory held of hill-country in the heart of Texas after a winter rain. It was from this land which Conan left to seek his crown, and the land which Howard hardly wrote about besides that it was a war ravaged nation of nomadic tribes. When Howard wrote Conan he used the character as a vent for understanding his own internal conflicts about society and lonesomeness. Yet he still understood how to tell a good story: weave an interesting yarn.

“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

As I’ve only recently found Howard as a writer, I’ve long been an admirer of his work without even knowing it. My interest stems from many viewings of the campy and violent outing of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan. While quite different from the Howard stories in point, it gets much of the essence of the character just through the acting and setting in which the film takes place. As a young boy it captivated my imagination. Years later when I found HP Lovecraft I never realized that he and the writer of Conan weren’t only good friends, but that I’d read some of Howard’s Cthulhu mythos stories. He and Lovecraft were good friends and writing partners. They died within a year of each other, both tragically: Howard committed suicide after the death of his mother, and Lovecraft a victim of cancer.

My first videogame experience with Conan was before I’d ever even heard of the NES with the Apple ][ game Conan. I spent many hours attempting to learn this game, and it remains one of my fondest memories on the Apple ][, even though I’m positive I never even finished the fourth level. Twenty something years later Funcom has released Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures. It’s one of those online games that everyone’s talking about. As I’m not completely adverse to such things I got swept up in the hoopla and decided that, yes, I did want to play this game because it offered a setting which I thought excellent for something on such a massive scale.

My time with the game so far has been brief and mixed, but outside of the bugs (somehow more acceptable with new online only games) I’ve loved nearly everything about it. Recently I found a way past a fake wall in the game and, as I’m wont to do, I explored behind the scenes quite a bit and got some fantastic screenshots. I’m withholding more infomation about the game itself because things are still early (as far as MMO’s go) and I’ve still yet to see nearly half of the game, so today I just give you my cartographic experiences behind the scenes in a pictoral manner. Fear not though, I’ll talk more on the game proper at a later date. Till then I recommend picking up the original RE Howard books.

This first image I present with the HUD is only to point out the upper right mini-map to show that I am indeed, off the map… as thought the abrupt end of the earth isn’t enough of a clue Also, I took over 30 screen shots behind the scenes, the following are only the choicest of the group.

As a side note so I don’t seem perverse with the above “up skirt” image, that was taken while swimming through mid-air and not from the ground looking up.

When I was in high school I saw my first game of Warhammer played on a giant miniature battleground taking up two fold-out tables. It was a stunning display of dedication, strategy, and cash expenditure. Previously I’d played many tabletop RPGs with miniatures, but this was like watching grandiose G.I. Joe battles taking place over a whole back yard with organization and rules. It was on such a massive scale that I was instantly interested.

Unfortunately when I ventured further into the world of Warhammer, attempting to learn the game and build an army, I was hindered by my cash flow. It was expensive to build an army, and the prospect of painting all of these tiny little things was intimidating to say the least. While I never did end up building a full army or battling anyone I was always interested in the game and aspired to one day actually get further involved.

As a brief background for the unacquainted, Warhammer is broken up into two main games: the first is a high fantasy setting similar to Dungeons & Dragons, the other is Warhammer 40k which takes that same setting and essentially transplants it into the future. Personally I find Warhammer 40k more interesting because it’s not every day you get to fight space goblins and undead with nuclear capabilities. What they share in common is the massive sized armies of miniatures for combat.

When Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (cleverly abbreviated as WaR) was announced as an MMO I was still a bit skeptical on the whole genre and only listened to the exuberant EA Mythic PR with half an ear. Recently Patrick Klepek of MTV Multiplayer convinced me to pay a bit more attention to the game because of the way that WaR will handle large scale public battles. Also, since the game’s announcement I’d become more open and welcoming of the concepts of MMOs. So I began to poke around a bit about more details on WaR.

After looking around it turns out that what I kind of invented in my head about WaR is nothing like the game is going to end up being. From what I’m reading it’s going to be very much like World of Warcraft, but with the foreknowledge of what is “wrong” about that game. Everything that WaR will bring to the table is going to either be “just like WoW, or better” or it is “fixing one of the inherent problems with WoW.” Essentially the game views itself as “the next WoW,” which, to me, spells overall failure.
See, one of the greatest advantages of using the Warhammer IP is the armies and the large scale combat. WaR will put the player in control of only one character: as soon as I learned this my interest level dropped from fairly high to quite low. The experience of building an army to play real people on fold out tables covered with green felt and miniature landscapes is something that most people can’t obtain. The chance of playing an MMO where you are the commander of an army you built yourself was something that seemed perfect for me. It even made sense within the rules of MMOs.

Dream a little dream with me if you will. You start out as just one hero, a commander without an army to command. The first ten levels or so involve completing quests which gain you prestige. After a certain point you can start to recruit your squad with one or two soldiers. Which character types you pick, how they’re equip, and what color you paint them is basically how the class-system would work. When you hit the maximum level the player should have a large squad to bring into combat with a few vehicles in their control as well. The world of Warhammer would allow for very unique level of customization based on what race, type of squad, and weapons you focused on training.

Now for the “end game.” You have your squad nice and strong so you join an Army (rather than guild) and you play out your role commanding your squad in large scale army combat. My imagination tingles with the possibilities of dynamic emergence this game could have. But that’s not what WaR is going to be and it just feels like wasted potential.

This isn’t saying that the game will be bad, it’s just that I’m disappointed. Because of this I decided to pick up Age of Conan: an IP and world that interests me and it seemed that the game is trying to be something other than “the next WoW.” The depth of combat and involvement attracted me to AoC rather than waiting a few months to see how WaR ends up. To quench my desire to control and fight huge armies I picked up the 2004 PC RTS Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and a couple of the expansions off of Steam. While not the best game ever made, it does satiate my wonton lust for large scale combat nicely.

Maybe I just need to wait until someone uses the Warhammer 40k IP for an MMO to get the game I want.