Alright, so thanks to a friend of mine, I got to try out the Age of Conan Beta this weekend. From what I heard, they said it will be one of the greatest MMO’s. Without further adieu, this is my story.

Introduction:
Saturday Morning (3pm is morning for me) I log on AIM and start the download from fileplanet (mistake number 1). At first the download failed about 2 hours into it because firefox & windows are shit, so I get the download manager from filefront which can resume downloads and all that jazz. I start the download and I’m getting a decent rate, about 400Kbs. Well, the game is 12 gigs so it’s going to take 10 hours.

Fast foward to 10 hours. I get home and install the game. It takes nearly 30 minutes just to uncompress and install. Then another 20 minutes to patch. Finally, I get into the game to hear this awesome war music, complete with battle drums, and other ambiance-it’s incredible! It’s getting me pumped! Only problem is………. NO VIDEO! It’s just black with music playing. So I wait a bit, and figure maybe the game didn’t load right. So after a few attempts, I google a solution to change the game’s res and it worked!

Ahhh-finally I’m at the login screen. It’s not very detailed, and the text is very tiny and hard to read but whatever. It’s just a login screen right? So I goto login and I’m left to find “SERVERS ARE CURRENTLY DOWN TILL 11AM GMT!. ****! I wanted to play it NOW, not later…..What a disappointment….. So I hit the hay and sleep.

The next morning I wake up like a crazy kid on Christmas morning, ready to sever some heads in Conan. I load up the game, and I actually get it! Amazing! I’m at the character selection screen, and I’m taking a look at my friend’s characters there, but none of them are rendering…. Only the backgrounds (which look bad ass btw). Who cares right?

Character Creation:
I select a server to play on…….only PVE servers are up (eww) so I select the first one and start making a character. Wow, character creation is pretty detailed. It’s kind of like the Sims 2, maybe close to Oblivion’s. You can adjust the height, width, skin tone, chin, eyes all that jazz. Only problem is, there’s only 3 different “races” (Aquilonian, Cimmerian and Stygian) if you can call them that (they’re all human). Kinda lame. I would have loved to play something other than the same thing I play in real life. Oh well.

Each “race” has limitations. Only the Stygian can be a mage type, while I’m not certain what the other race limitations where. After that, theres 12 classes to choose from. I could list them all, but you can look them up online. I choose a ” Herald of Xotli” because they have an ability to transform into a demon. Bad ass if you ask me.