I’ve been watching this development quite closely for a while, now, as it kinda closes a loop for my own personal development. Since I came to REH by way of Conan, by way of gaming, it’s somehow appropriate that I comment on the game, by way of Conan, by way of REH. This is what Kurt Vonnegut uncharitably called “[fill in the blank] disappearing up its own asshole.” It’s a good term, though. I’m going through the looking glass. That’s right, I’m going to join the 100,000 some odd players, gamers, hard-core sword freaks, and thirteen year olds who skirted around the Mature Content warning to play the Age of Conan MMORPG game as a Robert E. Howard fan. I’ve done my pre-order for the Deluxe edition, with extra bells and whistles, as well as extra in-game goodies for folks who want to shell out the extra cash. They are promising me a war rhino. I have no idea what the thinking is behind that. Where the hell am I supposed to put it? In my bag of holding? Come on.

I’m also attempting to wrangle a new, souped-up computer (I needed one, anyway) to allow me to safely play the game with no lag time (crucial in big battles). In the interest of offering up a somewhat balanced review of my playing experience, I’ll be throwing up a daily report here whenever I play the game: my initial impressions, experiences, and even player interactions. I have no idea whether or not it will help you decide to try the game, but I will try to be pithy, in any case.

I’m not a stranger to online gaming; I just don’t like it all that much. Oh, the games themselves are fine. But I’ve found that, with only a handful of exceptions, the majority of the online gaming community are a passel of heathens and savages, ill-mannered little troglodytes that kvetch and bellyache about everything that can actually hold a teenager’s interest and opinion in the game. Power gamers, the lot of them. They all want an axe that does eleventy-hundred points of damage that costs no endurance to swing and kills everything they want it to kill. And they want it at first level. Any changes made to the game brings them sobbing to the forums to complain about how everything is now ruined. And the rest of them, who were complaining about the game being unbalanced, start complaining that it’s now unbalanced in the other direction. They are impossible to make happy.

And yet, there’s a massive culture in this country that mashes these people together on servers and have them interact with one another. This is what has, up until now, kept me from playing fantasy games online. That and the generic-ness of it all. Did you ever play Diablo? Sheesh. Talk about blandsville.

Well, that’s going to change (I hope), since these guys mention in every press release that this is based on Conan’s world as created by Robert E. Howard. His name comes up a lot. And, if they are to be believed, they are cleaving closely to the stories and descriptions from Our Favorite Writer. Will the adventures match the vision? Am I, by creating a character in this virtual world, becoming a pasticher? Will I ever find anyone online who doesn’t type in LeetSpeek to the exclusion of all else? Only time will tell.

Once everything gets up and running, if there are any regular Cimmerian readers who would like to play alongside what I’m doing, I’ll post my handle and server along with everything else. Heathens and savages need not apply.