Age of Conan starts off players as a slave, a survivor of a crashed ship on the island of Tortage. Character creation gives you a good number of options, and three races and twelve classes are included, all of which is chosen right from the start. Tortage is full of danger and is under control of a madman and the priestess that gives him power. During your first twenty levels, players work with others and alone as a sort of extended tutorial to the game.

It's pretty true to the Conan books, so there aren't any gnomes, dwarves, ogres, orcs, trolls, dragons, and the many stereotypical monsters that you might expect. The more realistic look, better graphics and change in fantasy landscape really does make a big difference.

Still, this is an incredibly fun game for a healer, who gets to keep their group alive but still kill stuff at the same time. There are some more classic-style heals with cast times as well, but they are fired out generally in a frontal cone - this requires people to coordinate their positions, something that many games don't impose on healers.Generally, most everything in this game has at least some partial area effect to hit multiple enemies or friends with, and that goes for melee attacks, spells, heals, and buffs as well.

In age of conan game, you press a button for every attack you make, and you can attack in three directions: left, center, right. Combat in Age of Conan is very different than in some games. Your special attacks are combos that you start, but then use your regular attacks to complete. Here, melee attacks are not unleashed an auto attack key, and special moves are more complex.

In fact, their healing often actually improves when they get in the fight. Healing is unique, as well, as the game allows healing classes to still contribute to much of the group's damage. Players are supported mostly with heal-over-time spells that are tossed on before or during a battle and can be quickly unleashed, and in the meantime these classes are quite capable of doing some powerful combos and casting some nasty spells.

It makes for a much more action-oriented style of play, too. It's a totally unique experience in an MMO, quickly moving from camp to camp or room to room, smashing enemies' skulls and keeping your companions alive without having to stop constantly and watch a cast bar. Sure, playing damage-based casters like the Demonologist and Necromancer do feel a lot more like other MMOs than the other classes do, but they're more of an exception than a rule in Conan.
Borrowing from the greats

There is a mix of different kinds of instancing in Conan, but for most of the game you will be fighting alongside people you may not have chosen to do so with. Unlike what you might be used to, not every combat-heavy zone is instanced just for the player and his or her group (although most indoor dungeons are), and while that may turn some off, the quest system and spawn rates generally make it less of a hassle than you might think - this is not like sitting idly in camps of monsters, slowly droning out the experience points back in EverQuest.

Most of the features you've come to expect out of an MMO, many of which are thanks to World of Warcraft, are working in Age of Conan. Mounts, quick travel, auction houses, banks, mailboxes, quest NPCs, journals, linking items in chat, maps (and these can be zoomed in on like Google Maps), and a ton of other stuff is included here. Interface mods are already available, although it remains to be seen how far modmakers can actually go to change the game - so far, it doesn't seem that mods with the complexity seen in World of Warcraft are possible here.